“But we are not speaking aboutthatthis night,” he said, his voice almost like a purr, soft and deep.
He saw beings,people, that weren’t there? Like…spirits?
I wanted to ask him the many questions that arose from his admission but I knew he wouldn’t answer. In addition to unnerving me, he’d also meant to intrigue me. And he’d succeeded.
“Push your hair over your shoulder, will you,leikavi?” he murmured. I frowned, hesitantly brushing it back…before I remembered. He threw another chunk of meat into his mouth and his gaze went half-lidded as he gazed at the obscene outline of my nipples against the wet material of his ridiculously thin tunic.
A small scowl crossed my features, which I think surprised him because he laughed, loud and deep as I maneuvered my hair back to the front, making certain it draped across both my breasts.
“Oh, come now,” he murmured. I swore hepouted. “Surely telling you why the Dakkari call me the Mad Horde King earns me a nice treat. It may make me more amenable to other questions. I would become sodistractedI might not realize what I let slip.”
I blew out a small breath, regarding him carefully. He was a strange male, that much was certain.
But he was amalenonetheless. And I’d watched Viola tease the boys in our village enough when we were younger to know how to react. I’d been jealous of her then.
Slowly, though my belly tingled with the dizzying forbiddenrushof it, I brushed back the hair covering my right nipple as a compromise. Did my spine straighten as I did? Did I purposefully present my breast to him, like an offering?
I couldn’t be certain. However, I admitted, silently to myself of course, that I…likedhis gaze on me.
“Ah, how you please me,leikavi,” he rasped, his eyes glimmering with the shadows and highlights of the fire burning in the basin. “I cannot wait until you let me suckle them.”
My breath hitched, his words immediately conjuring dozens of images in my mind. I wondered what that wouldfeellike.
“Now, tell me what I want to know,” he commanded with all the high-handed authority of a male expecting to be answered. The command of aVorakkar, one who’d been whipped endlessly, one who looked at me with fire in his eyes, one who saw people that were not there…
How could I deny him anything?
Chapter Nineteen
“Mamanalways protected me,” Vienne began. “I told you that when I was younger, she had a dream—a premonition, she believed—that I would be taken from her. Since then, she kept me close. Sometimes, too close. She didn’t let me roam the village alone, not unless my sister or my brothers were with me. My father took pity on me, however. He was still alive then and he knew how desperately I craved time…away. Alone.”
She’d just wanted to be free, I mused.
Reaching around her, I snagged the goblet of wine, tipping it up to my lips. The wine burned a wonderful heat down my throat, quenching the worst of my thirst, as I listened to the pleasing, quiet lull of her voice.
“I was never alone,” she admitted softly. “One day, my brothers were out repairing fences and my mother, grandmother, and sister were working in the home. My father let me walk the village myself. He told me it was just our secret. Then he left to help my brothers.
“There was a boy. One who I think fancied my sister. My sister’s very beautiful, so all the boys in our village liked her,” she said quietly. “But that day, he was talking to me. And looking at me. And Iwantedto do something a little reckless because I knew I might not get the chance again.”
She blew out a small breath, color heating her cheeks.
“He kissed me and…I liked it,” she admitted softly. “We slipped into the forest next to our village.”
“Go on,” I murmured, my eyes straying to her lips. I swallowed when her tongue darted out to wet them.
“It happened so fast. He was kissing me and then he, um, pushed into me. Twice. Then it was over.”
I huffed out a sharp breath.
“That’s all,” she said quietly. “It’s not much of a story.”
Her cheeks were burning and I found the sight of her like this quite…tantalizing. I also found it tragic thatthathad been her first experience with sex and pleasure.
“Did he make you come?”
“C-come?” she questioned.
My lips curled.
