Leida was certain her heart stopped beating for a moment, before starting again and pounding in her ears like a war drum. “What are you saying?” she whispered.
His mouth twisted, caught somewhere between a frown and a smile. “You are a suspicious, foolish favorite, with a poor opinion of your master. Because of Ariadoc’s twisted wing, he will never fly fast enough to mate with a dragoness. He asked me to help him find a favorite. Sivatte was perfect for him, and the last I heard, she is as beguiled with him as he is with her.”
It was stunning news, and she felt the urge to both laugh and scream. A ruined voice and four years of misery, lightened only by the joy of her daughter’s presence—it could have been avoided had she just possessed the courage to ask him what he was about.
“I would have told you, had you asked. There were no secrets. But you expressed little interest in my trips to Meck’s Laketown, so I didn’t mention it.”
She thought of Vala, three years old and blessed with the magic passed on by the father she had yet to meet. Her arms came to wrap around Magnus’s waist. “Gods, Magnus, what have I done?”
Magnus held her,savoring the feel of her in his arms, the knowledge that she turned to him for comfort. His thoughts still reeled with her revelations, the terrible repercussions of her actions and the reasons for them. When she told him of using one of the arcane and deadly spells to help her voice, he thought he’d burst into flame. Terror warred with fury as he considered her imprudence, and he thought the silvered choker might well be an ornament of protection instead of punishment. Certainly protection against herself.
“Leida,” he murmured, kissing the top of her head, “I will bind you to one of my cavern walls with a length of iron chain if I ever suspect you’ll try something so foolish again.” He felt her hiccup against his chest.
“Allay your fears, Magnus,” she said into his shirt. “It was a hard lesson well learned.”
Magnus leaned away from her in order to see her face. It was tear-stained, blotched in spots, and her eyes were puffy. She had never looked more beautiful to him. “You destroyed your voice in a failed attempt to gain my approval, and possibly my loyalty. You ran from me because you thought I’d replaced you with another favorite.”
Leida reddened, lowering her eyes. “Yes.”
“You truly do have a very poor regard for me.”
Her head snapped up. “That isn’t true!” she cried.
He smiled at her protest. “Such extraordinary measures to attain what already belonged to you.” She gasped. “Do you remember when I said you took from me that which I held most precious?” He felt her tremble.
“Yes, and I’m sorry, Magnus. Had I known the ring meant so much, I would have chosen something else. I just wanted a keepsake.”
He placed a finger against her lips to stop her nervous explanations. “I wasn’t speaking of the ring, Leida.” Her eyes widened as his meaning became clear. Magnus cupped her face in his hands. “Sivatte’s loveliness will remain long after you and I are both brittle bones in the earth’s embrace. Hers is a near immortal race.” His thumbs glided across her cheekbones, tracing the fine lines appearing at the corner of her eyes, marks of years passed, years spent with him. “But she pales in comparison to my favorite, a woman with the night in her hair and the moon in her eyes.” Her fingers dug into his back. “Even when you are gray and lined, I will still think you the most beautiful woman ever born.”
Her moan whispered into his mouth as he captured her lips in a kiss, one gentle and long as he made love to her mouth. The sky had lightened even more, a hint of the dawn hovering on the horizon, but neither he nor Leida noticed. Magnus’s fingers worked at her bodice, unlacing her with impressive speed. Their shoes and clothes soon lay in a heap at their feet, and he stepped back to admire her, note the changes in her tall frame since he’d last seen her in her full naked glory.
Pale and long-limbed, her body had filled out. She was still slim, but the reedy, girlish thinness was gone. Instead, her waist curved and flowed into rounded hips, and he could see the silvery track of thin scars lacing her lower abdomen, just above the triangle of dark curls. Leida stood silent as he continued to gaze at her. He was eager to bury his face between those full white breasts once more.
“Childbearing agrees with you, Leida.”
She gave him a small smile, both bashful and beckoning and returned his stare. Magnus held still as her gaze passed over him, pausing at his chest and arms, his flat belly, and the blatant proof of his desire for her. “You are beautiful as a man, Magnus,” she whispered. “Almost as beautiful as when you are dragon.”
She could not have extolled his physical virtues in a better, more sensitive way, and he reached for her, sighing audibly with pleasure when she pressed against him from shoulder to shin. Leida echoed his sigh, winding her arms around his neck and trailing small kisses along the top of his shoulder, over his collarbones and around his throat. They sank to the blankets, a tangle of arms and legs as they rolled together. The occasional slide of her damp curls against the base of his cock tempted Magnus to pull her leg across his hip and take her as swiftly as he had at the stream bank. It would be just as good, just as frenzied, but he restrained the urge, wanting to relish this encounter, enjoy her in every way denied to him for the past four years.
He rolled Leida to her back, stretching her arms above her head. The position highlighted the line of her belly, the curve of her breasts and the dark pink nipples stiff with arousal. Magnus crouched above her and lowered his head, sucking one nipple into his mouth while worrying the other with his fingers. Leida’s moans echoed in his ears, soft wordless pleas that drifted into even softer hums as she held his head in her hands and pressed him closer.
He switched to the other breast, groaning against her skin as she lowered her arms to stroke his chest, her fingers pausing at his own sensitized nipples and pinching gently. He almost came in that moment, a powerful surge of sensation flooding his thighs, coursing through his stiff cock. She whimpered in protest when he abandoned her breasts in favor of her belly. The whimpers quickly changed to sighs as Magnus ran his tongue in a long damp line down her middle, pausing to dip into her navel before gliding over the gentle curve of soft, scarred skin just above her womanhood.
Magnus shifted his arms to find a more comfortable position in which to pleasure her. The movement caused his hand to brush the wine flask lying forgotten on the ground near the blankets. He paused, eyeing it for a moment before raising his head to leer at Leida.
Her brows rose in puzzlement. “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head and reached for the flask, sitting up between her spread thighs. He wiggled his own brows at her, making her giggle. The wine was sweet on his tongue, neither too cold nor too warm. Magnus swallowed the first sip and offered the flask to Leida. She shook her head in refusal.
“What mischief are you planning, Magnus?” Her hands continued to rove over him, sliding across his thighs and belly. He stopped her hand as it reached for his cock.
“Not yet, my beauty. I cannot think when you stroke me.”
She pouted. “And that is a bad thing?”
“No,” he murmured, leaning down to place a kiss on her belly. “It is never a bad thing to feel your hands on me. But it is distracting, and I want to indulge in that bit of mischief you speak of.”
Magnus tipped the flask again, filling his mouth with the wine. But this time he didn’t swallow. Instead, he held it in his mouth and stretched out on his belly between her legs, his shoulders at her thighs and his face hovering just above her thighs.
