A Kiss of Fire (A Kiss of Magic #2)(4)

Raja Sin was dressed in more clothes than he usually liked to wear. He had not dressed as the Sarens did. Lords no. He could never be trussed up in such high collars and intricately knotted cravats. They wore jackets with square tails as well. More clothes. Sin wore a simple cross-tied white jerka, the light fabric resting loosely around his body. It had long cuffed sleeves, but they were loose and free as well. Along with a pair of snug white breeches and highly polished black knee boots, he was as dressed up as he could possibly manage and still feel as though he could breathe.

He looked around the crowded ballroom with sharp eyes. He was waiting. Waiting for the one reason why he had come there dressed in all this confining finery.

She entered the room and a silence, followed by a rush of approved sound fell over the crowded room. He didn’t blame them. She was magnificent. As beautiful as he had remembered her to be. His heart thudded with excitement. He was overwhelmed with the urge to go to her, scoop her up and march out of the ballroom with her. He would take her on his horse and ride to the farthest reaches of what the Kiltians now called the New Territory. He longed to take her to his home…to his bed. Where he would drink wine from her navel and lick honey from her skin.

The very thought of it made him hard.

Sin moved to the wall, leaning back against it as he watched her and tried to get the reactions of his body under his control. Tried to get everything under his control. He told himself, not for the first time, that this was sheer folly. That he was risking everything for the want of a single woman. For all he knew she was a shrew without an ounce of passion in her, awkward in bed and cold to the touch.

But he didn’t think so. As he watched the grace with which she moved he could imagine her moving like liquid beneath him, those longs legs eagerly wrapping around his hips and buttocks as he lunged into her again and again.

Damn it to both hells. He was never going to get his body under control long enough to approach her. And he would approach her. It would just be a matter of time. He would let everyone else swarm her at first. He would bide his time.

“Raja Sin,” someone spoke up beside him.

He jerked his eyes away from Ariana and looked at Triumvir Hittite. The man was almost as big as Sin was in both weight and height. His hair was shock white, his eyes a probing silver. His hair was long and caught back at the nape of his neck, as was the style of Saren men. Sin’s own hair was cut short to his nape, falling in short waves along his crown.

He liked Hittite. There was something hard in the man’s eyes that Sin respected. Like Sin, he was not an encumbered man. No wife. No children. If his research was correct, no close family living. And his research was almost always correct.

“Mason Hittite,” he greeted in return, trying not to look guilty of ravishing his fellow triumvir from afar. “How do you fare this evening?” It was as polite as Sin knew how to be. He wasn't one for pretty words or speeches, wasn't even decent in mixed company like this, but he would try his best not to make too many waves.

“Well, thank you,” Hittite said, raising a brow in marked surprise. Clearly he had marked Sin’s politeness for what it was. An act. But the other man accepted Sin’s attempt at civility. “And yourself?”

“Well, thank you,” he echoed.

“There are a great many people here,” Hittite pointed out needlessly. There were. Too many. But it was the only guise he could use to get close to her. The guise of diplomacy. “You should be able to see many old friends and make many new ones.”

“Yes,” he said. “I think I have already struck a new trade agreement with a Hajee. They are great purveyors of porcelain and silk.”

“Porcelain and silk?” Again that brow rose. “Do you have much need of those?”

It was a thinly veiled racial remark. He knew that hard living in the mountains meant there was little room for delicate things. But things had changed. And some things had stayed the same. Silk was a luxury, it was true, but it was one they had loved well enough in the Kiltian culture.

“There is always use of porcelain. Everyday things are constantly in use and in need. You know this.”

“I do indeed,” Hittite said amiably. “I had thought porcelain to be something you created yourselves.”

So perhaps it had not been a cultural slur after all. Hittite was curious as to why they didn’t make their own porcelain.

“We have not the clay nor the skill to make our own.”

“Hmm. I had thought with all those mountains there might be good clay. I am wrong. Well then, I am glad you have made a new friend for your country.”

“As am I.”

“Better still that we are now friends.”

“Better still,” Sin agreed. “Though it will take more time to forget the war than it did to wage it.”

“Such is always the case with war. Plus, there are many who took great offense to giving you the land that we did, making so many Sarens homeless in the process.”

“And how did you resolve this?”

Sin already knew the answer.

“We gifted free lands in the wild country. It is a hard life, but it will be a good one.”

“Had the wild country been along the Kiltian border we would have gladly taken it. It is not as much grasslands as the New Territory, more wooded. But we would have made our way, cleared fields. We would have done anything for more space.”