Understanding swept through him, and Mordred lifted her onto the hand-hewn dining table in the queen’s privatechambers. She moaned into his mouth when he drew her thighs around his hips, the sound of her response nearly undoing him entirely. Mordred no longer knew who was seducing whom, which of them was luring the other into a trap. Nor did he care.
She snatched up one of his hands with her much smaller one, shoving it roughly beneath her chemise. His fingertips met the plushness of her full thigh, soft skin covered in golden down that shimmered in the firelight when he drew the garment up around her waist. When Nyneve said his name in a breathless little cry, Mordred felt something deep within him shatter. Her hands left his tunic, one trailing down the front of his aketon, the other gathering up a fistful of his hair. Careless and out of his mind, he pressed her into him, one palm flat on her back, the other sliding down one sleeve of her chemise.
Her breasts heaved into his chest. Every last bit of him throbbed mercilessly for this bold, inconvenient, and utterly impossible sorceress, and he found he did not care what the consequences were.
“You drive me mad,” Mordred admitted against her jaw, his mouth trailing down her neck.
“Unfortunately, you do much the same to me,” Nyneve replied in a strained tone so unlike the way she usually spoke. To underscore her words, she rolled her hips into his.
Mordred’s vision went white. He pulled the neckline of her chemise down further, worshiping the curve of her breasts with his kiss.
“Be good, won’t you?” Nyneve murmured, tangling her fingers deeper in his hair. “Stop interfering.”
He drew away, frustration curling in the back of his throat even as the pounding of his blood demanded that he give the sorceress whatever she damn well asked for.
“What?” Mordred asked. His hands stilled on her chemise.
“Stop interfering with my position at court,” Nyneve said, louder now, looking up at him. The fire blazed in her eyes, bright as a funeral pyre. He was but ash in her flame.
“Did we not just agree to a truce?” he asked pointedly.
She rolled her eyes and pouted, but it was a mask, none of that desperate hunger he had seen before. The fingers splayed on the front of his chest trailed down to the hard evidence of his desire. Despite himself, Mordred groaned, bringing his forehead to hers.
“Do not think you can kiss me silly,” Nyneve whispered in his ear, teeth grazing his skin. “Make a formal bargain with me. I’ll even fuck you right here in the queen’s chambers. On this very table, if you wish.”
At that, he broke away from her, breathing heavily. His light tunic and padded aketon were suddenly far too much clothing in the stifling chambers, every stitch of his garments pressing painfully against his skin. It would be so easy to give her what she wanted. A few words, a single Thread of magic. But this was a war, not a battle, and he had felt her fingers slip into the pocket of his aketon. He doubted she even expected him to agree; it was just one step in whatever she was planning.
“What is this?” he demanded with a scoff, gesturing to Nyneve on the table, her mouth swollen from the intensity of their exchange, shift nearly exposing her heavy breasts, a dangerous gleam in her eyes.
She shrugged one shoulder to her ear, the sleeve of her chemise tumbling down her arm, the fabric peeling farther away from her breast.
Mordred swallowed, steadying himself. Then he crossed his arms and took several steps away from her.
“I thought youlikedbargains. Exchanges. A jewel for a jewel,” came Nyneve’s voice, calm now.
He took a deep, long breath. When Mordred turned, he knew the cold, unaffected mask he wore so well was back in place. “I prefer my pleasure freely given,” he replied, glowering down at her.
“Suit yourself,” Nyneve said, voice edged in anger, not so calm now. She slid off the table and began to pull up her chemise. He could not help but notice how badly her hands shook.
“You are accustomed to weak men,” Mordred warned, prowling a few steps closer to her as she stood and retrieved her kirtle from the hearth. “You will find I am not one.”
But he was still standing there in the room he could leave at any time, he knew. And Nyneve knew it too, because when she stepped into her kirtle, as easily as if she were dressing in her own chambers, she raised her chin to look at him.
“We’ll see, won’t we?”
If only she knew he was, in fact, not even a man at all.
Chapter Twenty-One
Nyneve
If Nyneve were completely honest with herself, she would be able to admit that the most important thing she could do right now was go back to the cottage, lie down on the pallet, and pretend her hands were Mordred’s elegant, long-fingered ones until she could think clearly again.
But Nyneve’s pride would not allow such a thing, so instead she hurried down the keep’s dark stone corridors. She needed to get to the infirmary and put her mind entirely toward work. Not the taste of him—woodsmoke and the metallic edge of cold rage—or the way all his hard angles slotted perfectly into her soft curves. Not how it would feel to take him inside?—
“No,” Nyneve muttered under her breath, apparently too loudly, because a passing page looked at her with a quizzical expression. She ignored him and continued on her warpath.
Mordred had clearly been given a good amount of power in his bargain. He was certainly capable of putting her under a thrall—because whatelseexplained how she’d just behaved?
