Fragile shoulders and slender arms, soft breasts he longed to cup and nuzzle. She pushed him toward a madness he’d held at bay for more years than the lives of empires. He might be the coward she accused him of being, but she was reckless beyond description. Cededa counted the rapid pulse beats in her neck, tracked the glistening rivulets of rain coursing down her cheeks like tears while she stared at him with wide gray eyes.
His voice sounded guttural to his ears. "What would you have of me, Imogen? A fuck on a filthy floor? In a room where I once swived my wives, my concubines, even my ministers' wives?" He tugged on her hair, drawing her closer, until her mouth nearly touched his. Her quick breath whispered across his lips. "Be glad I walked away. You're an innocent. Untried and ignorant of those pleasures painted on the walls.” He stared at her mouth, plump and glistening with rain. Ripe fruit waiting to be plucked. “I’ll wager you’ve never even been kissed.”
And oh gods did he want to. But if he did, he wouldn’t stop at a kiss. He wouldn’t stop at a hundred kisses unless it was to strip off her clothes and fuck her on a wet altar stone in the rain. Her lids had lowered, and her lips parted at his words. He shook her lightly before pushing her away. “You wouldn't survive me, Imogen. I’ve bedded more than a few hedgewitches in my past and found the pastime pleasurable, but I've no use for innocents. That includes you."
She cowered away from him as if his insults were hammer blows. He unfolded his legs and slipped off the altar stone, eager to flee a second time. She was right. He was a coward.
Her voice, ragged and breathless, stopped him on the temple steps. "Well, I usually have no use for an immortal warrior king who runs from an unarmed woman, yet here we are."
Cededa turned slowly to face her. Imogen had changed positions. Instead of sitting cross-legged, she’d drawn her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Whether for warmth or in defensive reaction to his harsh words, he couldn’t guess. While her eyes reflected her pain, her expression was serene. “You insist I know nothing of mating, of lovemaking, as if it’s a flaw in my character instead of a gap in my experience.” Her chin lifted at a haughty angle, and she stared down her nose at him. “I’m asking you to teach me, Cededa of Tineroth. I’m not asking you to love me.”
He stared into her eyes, seeing desire, wariness, and an emotion that made his shriveled heart skip a beat.Ask me, Imogen. Ask me to love you. I could. You would make it so easy. The words stayed trapped behind his teeth, a plea thought but left unspoken. He returned to the stone, never breaking his gaze with hers. “Yes,” he said simply and held out his hand.
They sped to the palace, Imogen running to keep up with his long strides. Her chamber door cracked against the wall when Cededa threw it open and just as quickly kicked it shut with his foot. He spun Imogen until her back was to him and sliced through her lacings with one quick swipe of the knife he carried at his belt. Bodice and tunic split apart, revealing her long back and the graceful indentation of her spine. Skirt and shift followed, falling to a wet heap at her feet until she stood before him, shivering and gloriously naked.
He resheathed the knife and turned her face him. “Afraid?” he asked, his voice not much more than a growl.
Imogen’s eyes, gray as the rain-washed sky, flashed, and her chin rose in tell-tale challenge. “No. Are you?”
Cededa had never turned away from a thrown gauntlet; he didn’t plan to start now. He shucked his own garb and shoes faster than he’d rid Imogen of hers and yanked her into his embrace, heedless of the fact they were both still wet from the rain. Her skin was cool against his, roughened in some places by goose flesh.
He closed his eyes, lost to the feel of her under his hands. How long ago had he held a woman in his arms? Savored the feel of supple limbs and soft breasts? What madness had seized him in those shadowy years so long ago that he’d willingly traded this touch of paradise for bleak immortality?
Imogen entwined her arms around his neck and tilted her head back. Her dark hair spilled over his hands where they rested just above her buttocks. Those heavy-lidded eyes challenged him, daring him to walk away a third time.
“I’ve no patience to be a teacher, Imogen,” he warned.
The corners of her mouth curved upward. “But I have patience to learn, and I learn best by doing.” Her arms tightened around his neck. “Now kiss me, Sire.”
He was powerless to resist. His mouth captured hers, opening her to his tongue. She tasted of rain and heat, her tongue twining with his until he wondered which of them would consume the other. For someone who’d never engaged in such intimacy, she threatened to turn him into a scorch mark on the floor. She groaned into his mouth and sucked his tongue. Shivers wracked his body, and she pulled him ever closer. He hoisted her up, hands sliding beneath her buttocks to brace her against him. Long legs wrapped around his waist and squeezed until he grunted a protest.
She was the first to break the kiss and gasp for air. Eyes glassy and mouth swollen, she buried her hands in his hair. “That isn’t kissing,” she said between gasps. “That’s magic.”
He carried her to the bed. Her legs slid down his sides as they fell onto the mattress. Cededa rolled, carrying her with him so that he bore her weight. It was she who initiated the second kiss, as all-consuming as the first. Blood and lust pounded through his veins, ignited by the lethal power of Imogen's frantic hands as they stroked his chest and ribs. Her hips rocked against his until his fingers gripped her bottom to hold her still. The motion pushed him to the edge. If she didn’t stop, he’d lose the last, fraying threads of his control and come on her thighs.
This time he ended the kiss with a soft tug on her bottom lip. Imogen stared at him, her lips red and full. Her nostrils flared with every short breath. “Why...”
Cededa reached up and placed a finger against her lips. His own harsh breathing clipped his words. “Patience, Imogen.” He smiled. “It seems I’m not the only overeager one.”
He rolled her beneath him, wedging one leg between her sleek thighs. He braced himself on his elbows, Imogen’s head and shoulders framed by his forearms. Her hair spilled across the pillows, dark against skin made rosy by her passions. Slender hands wandered over his shoulders and down his back, leaving heat trails in their wake. Her bane crashed through his body, his muscles quivering under its onslaught. In Imogen’s touch, death was neither cold nor insidious but a candent force that set him alight and freed him from immortality’s shackles.
“What are you thinking?” she whispered. She tucked loose strands of his hair behind his ear.
That you are beautiful, and I am dying. He didn’t answer her. Instead, he lowered his weight onto her, pressing her into the mattress as his mouth mapped a path from her jaw to her neck to her collarbone and finally to her breast.
Imogen arched her back as Cededa's lips closed over her nipple and suckled. “Oh gods.” Her invocation became a litany as he teased one breast and then the other and nuzzled his face into her cleavage. She hooked an ankle behind his thigh and pulled. The motion drove him forward so that his hips rocked hard against the cradle of her pelvis, and she rubbed his cock in a wordless plea.
Her actions inflamed him. He left her breasts and rose to his knees. Imogen’s eyes widened when he grasped both her wrists in one hand and stretched her arms above her head. “Do you trust me?” he asked. She stared at him for several heart-stopping moments before nodding. Cededa relaxed his tense shoulders and smiled.
Were he not already on his knees, the sight of Imogen bare and vulnerable under him would have put him there. He'd known and loved many women of stunning beauty, but none compared to the supine grace of Death’s handmaiden. He held her wrists captive with one hand and used his free hand to play silent music over her soft flesh.
He started at the hollow of her throat, tracing the memory of the key scar that had once spread from her neck to shoulder, much as his did now. Her delicate collarbones shifted beneath skin as smooth as silk. Her breasts swelled to the curve of his palm, nipples—still damp from his mouth—hardening even more at the light flick of his fingers against their tips. Imogen moaned and squirmed in her captivity.
"Be still, Imogen."
"I can't help it." She clamped her thighs on his hips and squeezed.
"You can, my beauty," he crooned.
