13
As Kiernan walked Mary back to her room, she felt the crackle of anticipation in the air. The promise, she was sure of it, that something was going to happen tonight, something that she had been waiting for since the moment she had stepped foot in this Keep.
After he had gifted her the horse earlier that day, she had spent the rest of the evening with him. The two of them had taken dinner together, sitting next to one another at the large table where his subjects gathered, and she had felt his leg pressing against hers beneath the piles of venison and bread that weighed down the table before them. As though he wanted her to know, with no shadow of a doubt, that her closeness was the most important thing to him in that moment.
As though she could have mistaken it for anything else.
And now, after everyone else had retreated to bed, he was taking her to her bedchamber. Though she had joked with him that she was perfectly capable of finding it on her own, he had insisted on walking her there himself, as though he was not quite ready to be apart from her yet. She knew how he felt. Every time they parted, she found herself craving more, making some dealwith whatever spirit might have been in charge of such a thing to steal a little more time with him.
He paused next to the door when they reached it, and she hesitated before she spoke. In this fragile moment, she knew she had to convince him to stay a little longer, to make just a little more time for her before he vanished.
“Thank you for my gift,” she told him softly, pushing a strand of hair back behind her ear where it had escaped the plait her maid had put it in that morning.
“Aye, I’m glad to have given it to you,” he replied. “Though I suppose I’ll need to give you lessons before you can ride out on her.”
“I’m a quick learner,” she assured him, tipping her head to the side. As she spoke, it struck her how suggestive those words must have sounded, coming out of her mouth as they stood just outside her bedchamber.
His eyes flashed with amusement, the implication not lost on him either.
“Are ye, aye?”
He rested his thumb on her chin lightly, his fingertips caressing the side of her jaw. His hands were rough and callused, but somehow, that made his gentleness seem even more tender to her. As though it were reserved for her, and only for her. As though there were nobody else in the world who got a chance to experience it.
She swallowed hard. Her lips tingled with the anticipation of the kiss she wanted so badly. But she did not how to put it into words for him, how to tell him what she wanted. She had never craved it before in her life, and the words seemed to escape her.
“Is there anything else you’d like to learn, I wonder?” he murmured, as his thumb inched up towards her lips. She let out a low moan as soon as she felt him touching her, unable to hold back. There was something almost unbearably exciting abouthaving him so close, yet not knowing if he was going to give her what she wanted. She wasn’t sure she could take another night alone, but it wasn’t her choice to make.
And it never had been.
“Yes, I do,” she breathed finally, answering his question at last.
“And what might that be?”
Her breath hitched in her throat. Did he want her to say it? To put into words the truth of the lusts she had been taught to keep to herself for so long? Her mind spun as she tried to make sense of it, of the enormity of what he was asking. She could feel a warm heat flooding her cheeks at the mere notion of saying it out loud.
But, as he gazed at her, a look of amusement on his face, she knew it was the only way that she would get what she ached for. He wanted to know she needed this as badly as he did.
“I want…”
The words caught on her lips. He raised his eyebrows at her, silently prompting her to keep talking. She closed her eyes, gathered herself, and then forced herself to continue.
“I want you to take me.”
There it was. The words she had been far too scared to say out loud. A confession to the darkest pits of her desire—to her husband, no less, the man who laid claim to those parts of her. When she opened her eyes once more, a smile had creased up his lips.
At last, he closed the distance between them, and kissed her hard.
The two of them stumbled over the threshold to her bedchamber together, her hands in his hair, his fingertips trailing along her waist and down to her hips, where they dug in tightly. Like he had on their wedding night, he guided her back towards the bed and moved on top of her, letting her feel thepressure of his manhood against her hip. There was no doubt that he wanted more, he hardly had to put it into words for her to understand.
She gasped as he slid his mouth to her neck, his hands moving around her to deftly undo the strings of her dress. His tongue traced along to her ear, dipping inside for the barest moment as he pushed down the straps of her dress, and eased them away from her body, exposing her for the first time.
He knelt up between her legs, gazing down at her once he had stripped her dress away from her. She was wearing nothing but a slip, and it barely concealed what of her body lay underneath. To her shock, he took the flimsy fabric in his hands and tore it away from her body, tossing it aside, before he dived down on top of her and covered her exposed body with his hands and his mouth.
His lips trailed between her breasts, his hands groping at every inch of her he could find. It was as though he were a starving animal, feasting on her greedily, taking in every part of her he was able to. She grasped onto his shoulders, feeling the strength of him, reminded, all at once, of how easy it would have been for him to take anything he wanted from her if the fancy had so taken him.
But he’d waited. He’d waited until she had been able to tell him that she wanted him. And now, as he ravished her, his tongue dipping into her navel before he traced it along the crease of her thigh, he would not hold back, he would not still his desire for her.
He kissed her once more, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close, so she could feel the steady thud of his heart against her chest. He was pressing himself into her, and, even though his clothes, she could sense that the size of his manhood was… something to be seen, that was for certain. He reached down to his trousers to release himself, and she caught a glimpse of him as he drew himself into his hand.
