“I believe that as well.” Ballard’s comforting pats became slow caresses that traveled the length of her spine.
Louvaen sighed her pleasure at his touch. “I’m also more pleasant-natured than most people think.”
The hand stroking her back paused, and he snorted. “Now that just makes you a teller of tall tales, Mistress Duenda.” He swatted her lightly on one bare buttock. “I suspect you strop your tongue every morning before you get dressed.”
Delighted by his amusement, Louvaen thwacked him on the shoulder in retaliation. “Don’t make me break your nose again, de Sauveterre.” She pulled away from him enough to see his face. The bed’s semi-darkness cast his features in shadow, revealing only hints of his nose and the ridges of his cheekbones. The lambent shine she’d noted in his eyes when she first encountered him chained in his cell shimmered in the gloom. His smile faded beneath the pressure of her thumb as she traced the outline of his lips. “I’ve never kissed you,” she murmured, beguiled by the softness of his lower lip under her touch. There’d been an almost-kiss when she’d flicked the honey from the corner of his mouth with her tongue. Since then she’d dreamed of fully kissing that tempting mouth.
“I understand why,” he said against her fingers. A flicker of something dark danced in his gaze and vanished.
Louvaen moved her hand from his mouth and tilted her head. “Why do you say that?”
He shrugged, flashing a parody of a grin. His teeth gleamed white in his dark face—good teeth, straight and very human except for the curved incisors.
Something inside Louvaen twisted. He always seemed so unconcerned with his appearance that she had grown accustomed to it as well. His short reply revealed a bleak acceptance that if one of his disfigurements didn’t repel a person, another would. Inwardly, she wept for him. Outwardly, she frowned and tapped the bridge of his nose. “You are a vain creature, my lord.”
He jerked in her arms. “What?”
“I didn’t say I neverwantedto kiss you, only that I hadn’t.” She nestled against him, echoing his gasp when his arousal pushed between her thighs. Louvaen had spent sleepless hours wracked with indecision and guilt. She desired Ballard de Sauveterre, desperately wanted to invite him to fulfill his threat of taking her to his bed. Only the lingering sense of fealty to Thomas had stopped her. Thomas was dead, had been so for three years. If his spirit watched over her, it likely scoffed at her for being a “daft lass longer in legs than sense.”
Louvaen smiled at the thought and cradled Ballard’s face in her hands. “I’m going to learn this proud face again, my lord. And if you are in hell once more, you’ll just have to bear this trial for a little while.”
She started with his forehead, her lips brushing the creases and marks made by time and the flux. He rested pliant in her embrace, hot hands idly stroking her back and bottom as she trailed meandering kisses across his cheeks and nose, the arches of his eyebrows and the delicate skin at his temples. His thick lashes tickled her mouth where she kissed his eyelids. “You feel good in my arms,” she said. The groan vibrating up from his chest thrummed across her breasts. His jaw flexed under her caress, his body quivering when she dipped her tongue into the hollow of his throat.
He kneaded her bottom before sliding down to grip her thighs and lift one of her legs over his hip. The position opened her to him, to the soft give of his bollocks and his hard shaft made slippery by her body’s response to him. “Witch who would bed a beast,” he whispered. He clutched her and rolled, and suddenly she was on her back looking into his shadowed face. Firelight outlined his hair and the breadth of his shoulders, sheened in sweat. His hands traveled up her sides, one stopping to cup her breast while the other burrowed into her hair. His promise mimicked hers. “I’m going to learn this lovely body and beautiful face, Louvaen Duenda.” The rough pads of his fingers rubbed her nipple. Louvaen clutched his shoulders and bucked against him. “And if I’m in hell, it’s a torture I’ll gladly suffer.”
He did to her as she did to him, learning the curves and angles of her face with his lips, the taste of her skin with his tongue, the scent of her hair with his nose. His fingers counted each rib, glided over the expanse of her belly and stroked the heart of her until she twisted so hard on the bed, she nearly unseated him. She bit his neck in retaliation, savoring the tremors of his body and the low growls escaping his mouth.
Her revenge didn’t slow him down. Blankets were kicked to the foot of the bed as Ballard used his tongue to paint designs on her skin. He paused at her breasts, taking his time to suck one pink tip into his mouth while his fingers danced across the other. Louvaen banged her knee on the bed screen hard enough to bruise. The pain was nothing more than a distant twinge as she squirmed in her lover’s arms and whispered encouragements to him. His lips followed where his hands had traveled until he crouched at the end of the bed, his face between her thighs. Her knees splayed wide under the coaxing pressure of his thumbs. She almost knocked them both to the floor when he put his mouth on her, her heels digging into his back as he held her down with a heavy arm. She listened to her own cries—deep, bestial sounds—while Ballard tortured her with slow, sucking kisses and the slide of his tongue inside her. A last flick of his tongue had her keening her climax, and she squeezed his head so hard with her knees she was sure she crushed his ears.
The fall back to earth left her limp, gasping for breath and with legs as wobbly as an old table. Ballard slid up her body enough to rest his head on her chest. Louvaen wondered if he could hear the gallop of her heartbeat as she strove to fill her lungs with air. She massaged his scalp, his hair damp with perspiration. “Who exactly is the beast in the bed, de Sauveterre?” she teased.
A rumble against her sensitive nipple made her jump. He kissed the tip in apology and inched further up until they were face to face. A thin line of sweat trickled from his temple and down the side of his face as he gave her a smug grin. “Speak louder, woman. My ears are still ringing from that bludgeoning you just gave me.” His grin softened. He caressed her nose with a fingertip. “I’d be disappointed to hear only delicate sighs from so bold a woman.”
Louvaen looped her arms around his neck and tugged him down until her lips ghosted his. Every muscle in her body thrummed from the aftermath of her orgasm, yet she wanted more, needed more of this man—so grim in his manner, so generous in his passion. She trailed a path with one hand from his shoulder, across his chest and the rigid muscles of his abdomen to the stiff cock pulsing gently against her slippery thighs. He gasped into her half opened mouth when her hand curled around him and stroked from base to tip. Her fingers came away sticky. She tucked them into her mouth, savored the faint flavor of salt as she licked them clean.
“Gods, Louvaen, I’ll come before I’m inside you if you continue.”
She reached for him a second time, holding his hips with her trembling legs. “That’s not a bad thing, Ballard, but I’d rather you came inside me.” She guided him to her, her tongue sliding between his lips as he slid deep with a single thrust. Louvaen groaned at the fullness, spread her legs wider to take him. She had not made love to a man since Thomas, and her body was no longer accustomed to the feel of a cock inside her. Ballard might not be quite the horse the lusty princess once compared him to, but he was endowed well enough to make her gasp in his mouth with every slow pump of his hips.
He paused and broke the kiss. “Am I hurting you?” He waited, strung tight as a bowstring.
She caressed his cheek. “No. We’re just a snug fit.” She smiled and tugged on his hair to bring him back to her. “Kiss me again.”
Ballard obeyed her command, his tongue entwining with hers as he rocked back and forth, quickening from deep plunges to short, shallow strokes and back again. Louvaen locked her ankles behind his back, angled her hips and gripped his buttocks to bring him harder against her. He ended their kiss a second time only to bury his face in her neck and suck the soft skin between his teeth. She grunted at the pleasure-pain and clutched his arms as he went rigid, his breath gusting hot along her neck. He groaned into her hair. A swell of heat filled her belly, followed by a slow throb as Ballard settled heavy in her arms, spent.
They lay together amidst a heap of tossed pillows. Content to lie beneath him and let him catch his breath, Louvaen idly traced the markings on Ballard’s body, fingers sliding down his back to rest at the base of his spine. She savored his weight on her, inside her. They were a sweaty, sticky mess, and she loved all of it. Each breath he exhaled pushed her deeper into the mattress; every twitch of his muscles caressed her skin. He finally lifted his head to look at her.
“This is a small bed,” Ballard observed wryly. Louvaen laughed, cutting it short as her muscles tensed. He wrapped an arm around her hip to anchor her to him and rolled them to their sides. “Careful. I’m not ready to leave this sweet place just yet.” He kissed her softly, tracing the outline of her lips with his tongue.
Louvaen returned the kiss, indulging herself by sucking his lower lip between her teeth to nibble at him. She released him at his faint moan and grinned. “It is a small bed. Is that why you offered yours first?”
The crows’ feet at the corners of his eyes deepened. “Mine is much bigger. I’d not be dodging your knees and mine while I nibbled your thighs.”
In their current position, the light from the hearth illuminated his features, casting the scars in high relief. She recalled the portrait in the corridor, the dour ruthlessness stamped on his unscarred face. He told her he’d been born and raised a warrior, a Marcher lord skilled in the arts of combat and bloodshed. She’d seen him spar with Gavin, taking the bigger, younger man down several times before Gavin got the best of him a time or two. He hunted boar alone, a dangerous endeavor even amongst a group of armed hunters. She didn’t doubt he’d make a deadly opponent in any fight. That he once relished warfare had been evident in the painting. Not so much now. He was neither gentled nor softened, but something had tempered him, blunted the thirst for battle simply for battle’s sake. Despite the many scars and twisted magic marking him now, Ballard de Sauveterre was far handsomer and more intriguing than the man who’d stood impatiently for the portrait.
Louvaen twined a tendril of his hair around her finger. “Your bed next time.”
His arms tightened on her. “Next time?”
