“I know.” She drained the wine and passed the empty goblet to him. He refilled it from the pitcher that shared space with the candle on the small table. “I’m happy for them both. A little jealous too.” She stared down at her feet.
Her unexpected confession surprised him. “Jealous of what, the wedding or the marriage?”
She snatched the goblet from him and took another drink. She didn’t hand it back. “Oh gods, that wedding. Tomorrow night can’t be over soon enough. We’re drowning in the pomp of it all. I don’t know how Sodrin has kept his mind intact these past weeks.”
Radimar didn’t either. “Testament to your brother’s good character.” He captured the goblet, placed his lips where Jahna’s had been, and drank. This time he kept hold of the vessel. “Then your jealousy is for the marriage? I thought your dream was to become a Dame of Archives.”
She sighed. “It’s my goal, not my dream. There’s a difference.”
He couldn’t argue that. “Then what is your dream?”
Jahna studied her hands where they rested in her lap, slender fingers pale and ink-splattered. “You’ll think it silly.”
“I doubt it.”
She turned to face him more fully, knee pressed to his. “I want to chronicle. It’s in my blood. But not here, waiting for someone interesting to arrive so I can write down the life they experienced. I want to write down my own life, see and experience those things scribes like me put down on parchment. I want to see them firsthand. Like you. You’ve lived an interesting life.”
Her words set his heart to racing. Did he truly hear what she was saying or only what he so desperately wanted to hear? That the idea of a nomadic life appealed to her? That it would in no way hinder her passion for written history?
He kept his voice even and questioned more. “But why do you envy Sodrin and his bride? They won’t be travelers after they marry. In all likelihood, they’ll confine their times on the road to short trips to familiar places: Hollowfell, Timsiora, the villages closest to those places.”
Her unmarked cheek went red while the blemished one turned a darker purple. “Because as foolish as it sounds, I too want to marry, have children, be a wife.”
His heart stopped.
Then took up a beat to outrace a horse’s gallop. “Ah, Jahna,” he breathed, and her name on his lips was the prayer of a supplicant.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I told you it was silly.”
Her startled gasp echoed in the room when he reached over and lifted her onto his lap, her legs straddling him as her skirts tangled around her hips and his. “It isn’t silly at all,” he said once she settled.
She was warmth and softness and fine skin. The curve and slope of her waist and hips under his hands sent all the blood in his body straight to the erection swelling between his legs. Her eyes rounded even more when he shifted his hips and the proof of his desire for her pressed firmly against the juncture of her thighs.
“What if I told you that my dream was to take a chronicler as my wife? To have her travel with me so I might show her those things ancient and fantastic that dot this kingdom and others? To buy her more ink and parchment than she can ever use? To be the father of her children?”
Jahna inhaled a harsh breath, the action settling her hips even harder on him. Radimar bit back a groan. “What are you saying?”
He was not a bard blessed with the ability to fashion words into gems that sparkled, but he was honest, he was forthright, and he loved this woman with every thread of his being. “Be my wife,” he implored. “Allow me to be your husband. All that I have and all that I am are yours, and I will love you beyond the end of my days.”
Tears made her eyes glossy. One spilled off her bottom lashes to slide down her cheek. She held his face in her hands. “Yes,” she said. “Oh yes.”
The kisses they shared in the garden were nothing compared to the ones they exchanged now. Jahna’s hands plunged into Radimar’s hair to hold his head still while she sucked his tongue into her mouth and rocked her body against his in a plea she couldn’t express with words.
They fell back on the bed in a tangle of skirts and cloak. Those were soon thrown to the side, peeled off Jahna’s body with frantic tugs and in one instance, the sharp edge of a knife on knotted lacings. Radimar’s garb followed and they were soon skin to skin, entwined together under layers of blankets and furs.
Radimar eased the covers back for a moment so he could see Jahna’s nude body in the candlelight. The room’s cold air made her pink nipples harden, and gooseflesh pebbled the curves of her breasts. A rapid pulse beat in her neck, and the shadowed hollow of her throat beckoned him to kiss her there. “You are beautiful, Jahna. I’ve always thought so.”
She slid her arms around him with a happy sigh, arching to get closer when he kissed her from the top of her head to her narrow feet and all the sensitive places in between.
The covers were suffocating and the candle burned low when Radimar rose above her on his elbows and stared down at her flushed face with the glassy eyes and lips swollen from his deep kisses. His erection nudged against her opening, demanding entrance. He ignored the urge and leaned down to plant feather kisses across her eyebrows, the bridge of her nose and her chin.
Jahna did the same to him, until impatient with his delay, she slid her legs up the side of his hips and bent her knees. The movement opened her more fully to him, and he gasped with delight.
“The women say it can hurt the first time.” Her fingers flexed against his sides. “I don’t care. I want you inside me.” She urged him forward, thighs flexing hard.
He resisted, despite his body nearly screeching at him to end such sweet torture.
“Patience, Jahna.” He gave her a reassuring peck on the lips when she groaned. “It can hurt if a woman’s lover is imprudent and clumsy. I am neither of those things.”