Or, perhaps, Summer thought as Dilys left off watching her to attend to his own food, the real enchantment at work was the man sitting beside her, close enough she could practically feel the warmth emanating from his fragrant skin. He smelled of exotic oils, rich and masculine and utterly enticing. The bronze of his skin was decadently dark and gleaming against the pristine white of the table linens and his equally snowyshuma.His hands were large and strong. Her gaze wandered up his arms, paused at the impressive bulge of his biceps, then swept across the even more impressive breadth of his shoulders and chest.Everythingabout him was large and strong.
A disturbing warmth unfurled in her belly. Since coming to Wintercraig, she’d grown used to being surrounded by giants. The shortest Winterman she’d met yet stood at least six feet tall, while Wynter himself towered well over seven, all of them as strong as they were tall, rippling with hard, powerful muscles. Yet none of them made her feel as small, as delicate, or as womanly as Dilys Merimydion did right now, just sitting beside her at a dinner table. She wanted to stroke her hands across all that naked, gleaming skin, to rediscover its silky softness and the hard swell of muscle beneath. She wanted to explore all those intriguing, iridescent tattoos, trace their swirling lines with her fingers. Taste them with her tongue. Take him inside her body again and again and again as she’d been dreaming all week. Summer squirmed a little in her seat, then glanced up to find Dilys’s gaze fixed on her with such drowning intentness that her heart slammed against her chest.
She dropped her gaze, scolding herself soundly for her abominable lack of control around him.
Summer desperately cast around for some topic of conversation to stop him looking at her like he wanted to eat her up and blurted out the first nonsexual thought that came to mind.
“Tell me about your friends who died fighting the Ice King.” Before the words had even fully left her mouth, she was flushing with equal measures of shame and horror. The Calbernan had unsettled her so badly, she’d forgotten how to make polite conversation! In no culture anywhere on Mystral was it considered acceptable to probe a guest about the recent loss of a loved one. She reached out instinctively to lay her hand upon his arm in apology. “I am so sorry! Please, forget I asked. It’s none of my business.”
Instead of taking offense, Dilys covered her hand with his own. “The question is no offense,moa myerina.Calbernans who die with honor would wish to be remembered, their victories celebrated. Besides, their deaths earned me the right to sit here beside you today, so why should you think they were none of your business?”
“I don’t mean to cause you distress. It’s clear you mourn them still.”
“Of course. I will mourn them all my life.” His thumb stroked the back of her hand, each brush a featherlight caress. “But a Calbernan’s heart is large. Though his losses may be many, so too are his joys.” He smiled. “Aanas Holokai was the oldest of my friends who fell that day. He and I were cabin boys together on our first voyage to sea. He had a bright smile and a voice that could sing birds from the sky. He had just earned hisulumi-lia”—with his free hand, Dilys brushed a finger across the swirling blue tattoo that looked like stylized waves across his right cheekbone—“and he was eager to find alianaof his own and start a family. He dreamt of a sweet, soft-spoken woman who would allow him to protect and pamper her. A woman to whom he could sing each day to bring her joy. He wanted a large family. As many children as his wife would wish to give him.”
“If he hadn’t found thelianahe wanted here, would he have bought one off the slave markets?”
A shrug. “Probably. There are many women on the slave markets who are in need of devotion and care.” His jaw tightened. “Sadly, Mystral is full of barbaric brutes who treat women no better than cattle. It brings us joy to free women from such places. Even those rare few who choose not to wed a Calbernan are offered safe haven in the Isles.”
“You free the women you buy from the slave markets?”
His brows rose. “Of course. What did you think we did with them?” There was no offense in his tone, only curiosity.
“The obvious, of course. Your men want wives. They buy women from the slavers.” She spread her hands.
He sniffed. “No Calbernan who has earned theulumi-liawould ever take an unwilling woman to wife, no matter how much gold changed hands. All enslaved women are freed and courted and wed to the Calbernan they choose of their own free will. Or wed to none of us, if that is their desire.”
“Yet you just told me your contract with Falcon promised you one of the Seasons in marriage.”
“Yes, and whichever one of you I chose would have come to Calberna, where I could have courted you properly, and you would have accepted me freely before we were bound in marriage.”
“Have you always been this arrogant?”
“Not arrogant,” he corrected. “Confident. There’s a difference.”
“Not much of one, from where I’m sitting.”
“I am a prince of Calberna. I have trained my whole life not only to lead our warriors to victory into battle, but also to serve and protect the women who are our heart and our true strength. I have spent years learning what women want and how to provide it to them, so that when the day came for me to find myliana, I would know how to be everything she needs. And, believe me, Gabriella, those were lessons I attended to very intently.”
Her cheeks went hot as she remembered how well he’d provided what she’d needed during their interlude in Snowbeard Falls Grotto. Ducking her head to hide her blush, she took a last spoonful of Ingarra’s Summer’s Sweetness, then nodded to the servants who’d come to clear the table in preparation for the next course. “So what will you do when your three months are up and I won’t marry you? Will you seek a wife on the slave markets?”
He tossed his head, sending the long, silky ropes of his hair flying back over his shoulders to stream down his back. “That is not a concern.”
“Don’t be so sure of that.” She tugged her hand out from under his and reached for her flute of sparkling wine.
One sleek, dark brow arched. “Ah,kalika u moa kiri,sun of my heart, before my time here is over, youwillfreely choose me to be yourakua.You will claim me and bind me as your husband, your lover, your life’s mate, the father of your children, your helpmeet and your protector.”
She forced the corner of her mouth to curl. “In your dreams,” she scoffed and lifted the wine flute to her lips.
“Yes, Gabriella. In my dreams.” His voice dropped to that low tone that sent shudders of fire through her veins. “And in yours, too, I suspect.”
Her hand shook, making wine slosh over the crystal rim of the flute and drench her fingers. Her gaze shot to his. He couldn’t possibly know about those dreams...could he?
His lips curved in a knowing smile. He took the wine flute from her unresisting fingers and set it aside. Then, holding her captive with those mesmerizing golden eyes of his, he lifted her hand to his mouth and slowly licked the wine from the fingers.
Each slow, warm, moist rasp of his tongue shot through her body like an electric current, sizzling from the sensitive pads of her fingers straight to her feminine core. Still holding her gaze, he dragged her hand down to press her palm against the hot, naked skin of his chest, curving her fingers around the massive swell of his pectoral muscle.
Her mouth went dry. Sweet Halla, he felt like sin, like every wicked fantasy she could ever dream of. Rock-hard muscle beneath soft, satiny skin. Her fingers flexed and trembled against his flesh. Her whole body trembled. His mouth curved in a slow, simmering smile that made her squirm in her chair, and his golden, leonine eyes glowed with lazy, masculine satisfaction.
