“Taar, I want to . . . try something.”
He tips his head back, looking up at me. Those heavy eyelids cannot quite hide the sudden gleam in his eyes. “What would you like to try, myzylnala?” That smile of his pulls once more at the corner of his mouth, melting my heart like wax.
I’m not entirely certain what I mean to try. He’s been so ardent in his delight of my body, I haven’t yet had opportunity to learn how to express ardor in return. I know I like the look of him and the feel of his great, rock-hard solidity beneath my palms. Butthere must be more I can do.
“Do you want to come inside me?”
Taar groans and presses his face into my breast. “More than you know,” he growls, but then he shakes his head and looks up at me again. “The time is not yet right. Soon. I hope soon.”
Despite these reassurances, a bitter pin pricks at my heart. I know Taar is committed to me, to this marriage of ours, no matter how unwillingly entered into on both sides. But something holds him back even now. I close my eyes and see once more the council of elders—eight withered figures seated on a dais in a great, darkdakath.So ancient, so weathered and wrinkled, one would not guess the great power they wield over their people. It is they who even now stand between my husband and me. I’m sure of it. They would have killed me outright to break my bond to their king, even when I had done them no personal harm.
Now? I have executed a terrible crime in the eyes of all the Licornyn folk by setting a hearttorn unicorn free. Only death can atone for such a sin.
A great weight settles over my soul. But Taar shifts on the bed, bringing his head up alongside mine, and turns my face to his. His lips lower gently, touching mine for a moment, before he draws back a hair’s breadth. “Do not dwell on such dark thoughts, my love,” he murmurs, as though he’s somehow read my mind. “Stay in this moment. With me. For a little while yet.”
I nod, smiling a little wanly. My smile deepens, however, as myhand, resting on his chest, begins to glide lower, lower. His eyes light up. He catches his breath as my fingers run through the dark brush of hair at his loins and find the great length of him. It had relaxed while we lay in repose but responds immediately to my touch. I grin like a fool, pleased at my own power. I play with him. Slowly, unhurriedly. Watching his face for every slight change in expression. The little starts of surprise, the parting of his full lips, the hitches of breath.
“Do you like this?” I purr in echo of his own words spoken on our wedding night.
He moans. “Oh,zylnala,I think you know the answer to that already.”
With a little laugh, I let go of him, plant my hand on his chest, and push. For an instant I feel the tremendous bastion of strength that he is. Not in a thousand lifetimes could I budge him an inch if he did not allow it. But he gamely rolls onto his back, pulling me on top of him. I recline on his chest, kissing him sweetly at first, then more fiercely. I angle myself so that his manhood is now between my legs, rubbing up against me, and feel the yearning for what could be. The rightness of it, the need.
But Taar takes my face between his hands and pushes me gently back from him. “No, no,” he whispers, his eyes closed, his brow puckered. “I beg you, sweet love, don’t tempt me beyond bearing.”
I bow my head slightly, resentful perhaps, but accepting of his wishes. “What else should I try?” I ask, a trace of petulancein my tone. Then I flick my lashes, catching his eye. “I can do what you did for me. Is that not so?” Something comes back to me, something Fyndra, my father’s favorite mistress, told me in her efforts to prepare me for my wedding night to the Shadow King. I’d hardly believed what she described at the time and felt utterly sick to my stomach at the prospect of having to perform such an act on the monster who was to be my husband. Strange how here, with this man, the idea no longer repels me. I want so much to repay him for the pleasure he has given me. Nothing else seems to matter.
Taar stares into my eyes. He looks tense, as though he’s holding his breath. “You need not do anything,zylnala,” he says, though there’s a huskiness to his voice I can’t fail to notice. “I do not want you to—”
I kiss him, cutting off his words abruptly. I slide my tongue between his lips and let it dance there, even as my searching hand glides down his abdomen and finds his length once more. The sound he makes deep in his throat when I grasp him thrills me to my core. Using his own technique as my guide, I let my kisses run down his bearded jaw, his neck, his massive chest. Farther down I work, drinking in the musky scent and taste of this magnificent being who is my husband.
“Oh,zylnala,”he groans as I venture lower still. “You will be the death of me!”
I giggle against the skin just below his navel. “A good death, I trust?”
“The worthiest end a man ever—”
He breaks off with a cry as my lips and tongue find what they seek, and I discover the great pleasure of stealing a warrior’s breath from his lungs.
Not long after, as we lie together in a satisfied tangle of limbs, I notice again that golden mark on his chest. I’m struck with an odd sense of familiarity, though I’m quite certain I’ve never seen that mark before.
“What is this?” I ask again, smirking a little to think how my question was so easily deflected earlier.
This time, however, Taar looks down to where my fingers rest against his sternum. “Ah,” he says, “that is theruehnarmark. From ourvellarceremony. Do you not remember?” When I shake my head, he touches my chest, running his fingers gently down between my breasts. “You have one too. The match of mine. See?”
Though initially distracted by the thrill of his touch—gods, will I ever get over that feeling?—I look and find, to my surprise, that he is right. There’s a mark, very similar to his, shimmering beneath my skin. It glows softly, pulsing out from inside me. “What in the worlds!” I exclaim, sitting up abruptly and angling my head in an effort to see better. I touch the mark, half expecting to feel heat,for it’s quite brilliant. “That wasn’t there before!”
Taar chuckles, unfazed by the sharp glare I shoot his way. “Forgive me,zylnala!” he says, holding up his hands. “I don’t mean to laugh at you. But that perturbed pout of yours is too much for me, I fear!”
I lightly smack his shoulder with the back of my hand. “When you’re quite through being amused at my expense, would you mind explaining?”
“Of course not.” He sits up as well, every muscle moving with such complete control and power, even for such a slight effort. It makes my mouth go dry. Leaning over, he trails his hand once more across my breast and over the mark, very nearly making me forget all my petulance in that sudden burst of tantalizing sparks. “It is a sacred symbol,” he tells me, his voice soft but always edged with that trace of danger, “used in thevellarjoining to anchor the bond between us.”
I remember now. Quite vividly in fact. The shock on the young priest’s face when his king told him that he intended to marry the slave he’d just purchased. How his fingers trembled when he poured liquid from a small bottle into his hand and used it to mark my skin and Taar’s. I’d guessed then what was happening—my people have a similar custom, the heartfasting ceremony, which takes place between a betrothed couple just before the bride sets out on her Maiden’s Journey, to make sacrifices to the gods in honor of her coming nuptials. I had escaped my heartfasting with the ShadowKing by convincing my older sister, Faraine, to don the ceremonial veil and go in my place. To find myself suddenly in the same predicament I’d taken such pains to avoid had only added further insult to the terror and indignity of my wedding night to Taar.
It all feels so different now. I might have lived a new lifetime in the intervening days and nights, so altered am I, down to my very essence.
“I thought thevelrawas that cord which bound our wrists,” I say, lifting my right hand and turning it back and forth. “I’ve always felt it there, since that night.”
