Endless Knight(100)

Jack had found them beautiful too.

Block that out! I was Aric’s wife. I’d wronged him in the past, had consigned him to misery for hundreds—no, thousands—of years. I needed to make this right. Like penance.

He rubbed his thumb over my bottom lip with a hand that had begun to shake. I got the sense that he was losing his polished control, his desire stoking hotter and hotter. “You could not be lovelier.” He looked like he was about to devour me, giving me both shivers—and chills. “I am a patient man, sievā, but tonight . . .”


There was something vaguely threatening about his words. Misgivings about this arose. Too fast.

Yet then he leaned down to kiss me, taking my mouth until my thoughts had blanked again. When he trailed his lips to my neck, flicking his tongue over my skin, his mouth was so hot, it was dizzying.

He’d always been polished and sophisticated. Now the raw force of his need staggered me. Between kisses, he murmured in Latvian.

“What are you saying?”


He drew back, curling his finger under my chin. “That you taste like life. You are my life now.”


His words felt so final. If he’d looked possessive in that far-distant past, now he looked as if he’d lost himself.

In me.

I was about to ask if we could take this more slowly, when he lowered his head to my breasts, kissing me there. The pleasure was so intense, I had difficulty recalling my misgivings, could only sigh his name.

When I arched my back for him, he groaned around one tip, then the other, pulling with his lips, flicking with his clever tongue.

Had penance ever felt so right?

Against my damp skin, he rasped, “Better than millennia of imaginings.” When I squirmed with need, he lifted his head. Eyes smoldering, he said, “I’ve imagined other things as well.”


His grazed his lips past my breasts, down my belly, his warm breaths ghosting over my skin. He nuzzled my navel, then continued his path lower. Lower.

“Uh, Aric?”


With a desperate groan, Death . . . kissed.

44


I stared up at the ceiling, limbs sprawled, mind dazed from the pleasure he’d just given me. “I . . . you . . . where did you learn that?” Was there anything he couldn’t do?

Quaking with eagerness, he gave a pained laugh. Eyes brighter than I’d ever seen them, he said, “You’ve never wondered what I think about as you dance for me? I pretended things were different and you craved my touch, my kiss. I fantasized a thousand things I wanted to do to your beautiful little body.”


Mouth back at my breasts, he snatched off his pants. I caught glimpses of him naked—and the mere sight of him made me weak with need.

As he moved over me, between my legs, he shuddered out three words: “At last, sievā.”


Wait, something was wrong . . . what was missing? My eyes widened. “Do you have, um, protection?”


He tensed. “At this particular moment, are you truly asking me to go fetch something for you? Perhaps you’d like a glass of wine as well?”


“No, it’s not like that. What if I got pregnant?” Jack had been so careful. Stop torturing yourself, Eves. For the best . . .

“It might not even be possible for me to help create a life,” Aric said. “But we’ve nothing to lose by trying. If you want to end the game, this is one move that’s never been tried. How could we ever harm each other if we started a dynasty between us?”


“Aric, I’m too young!”


He rested his forehead against mine. “You are not. Now that we are together, the game will lag on. We will continue to age as long as more than one Arcana lives. Already seventeen of your brief mortal years have passed. Twenty-three of mine.”


He was talking about starting a family? When I wasn’t even sure the sun would ever rise again? This was too intense. He was.

Too carnal, desirous. His manly needs.

No, don’t think of the witch! “I can’t do this tonight.”


“Are you jesting?”


“Things are moving too fast.” Spinning, flying, like the days here. Maybe I needed to get back out into the world, stop eating the lotus, and then find my footing with this man?

Aric raised himself on straightened arms, his gaze narrowing down at me. “Your hesitation stems from another cause, does it not?”


Did it? I’d accepted that there were serious obstacles between me and Jack. But he’d said the two of us could get past anything—and at the time, I’d believed him. He’d asked me to give him a chance just to get to me.

If I did this tonight, I wasn’t giving Jack the chance I’d promised him. Didn’t I at least owe him the opportunity to tell me his side of the story?

I knew this thinking was na?ve, ridiculous even. It could never work out between us, not after what he’d done. Hell, I was probably too far gone in my feelings for Aric.

Then a simple truth struck me: by sleeping with Aric, I was making a decision about my life—but I didn’t yet have enough information to make that decision.

And no one could make me choose anything before I was ready.

No one.

“It is because of him.” Aric twisted around to sit on the edge of the bed, squeezing his brow so hard his arm bulged.