Radiance (Wraith Kings Book 1)(51)

Sleeping naked next to her that one time had been a mistake. Ildiko had caught him off guard by waking up before him. Luckily, neither of them were prone to cuddle in their sleep, or she would have discovered very quickly that his deep affection for her was changing into something far beyond the platonic. Trapped under the covers until she left to change in her room, Brishen had collapsed on the bed with a frustrated groan once he was alone and vowed they’d sleep separately after that. His vow lasted less than a day. He wanted her beside him.

Were he his father, Brishen could turn the door thin as parchment and walk through it to retrieve his wife. Were he his grandfather, he could pass through the solid wood, as ethereal as any wraith, but the magic was fading in the Kai with every generation born. Brishen conserved the magic he possessed and limited the use of his power to a few chanted words that slid the bolt free on the other side.

He eased around the door and discovered a bleary-eyed Sinhue rising from her bed in the shallow alcove in one corner of the room. He held a finger to his lips for silence. She nodded and lay down, her back to him.

Ildiko sprawled in the middle of her bed. Asleep on her stomach with half her face buried in the pillows, she presented him with a profile that shone as pale as the sheets in the darkness. He once called her a hag of a woman. Leached of color except for the bitter mollusk pink that surged under her skin in uneven patches when she was angry or embarrassed, he’d found her both ugly and peculiar to behold. Had it only been a few months earlier that he bore such thoughts of her?

Looking at her now, Brishen wondered how he could have thought her unsightly. Her eyes still brought him up short on occasion, especially when she teased him by crossing them toward her nose, but he’d ceased comparing them to parasites. They were just eyes, different from his and fascinating in their own way with their colorful irises and black pupils that shrank or expanded depending on the light or her emotions.

Her eyes were hidden from him now, behind closed lids edged in bronze lashes. Serovek had called her beautiful, and Brishen hadn’t missed the long stares cast upon her by the Gauri noblemen who attended her wedding. He tried to see her as a Gauri man might but failed in the endeavor. A sudden realization made him smile a little.

One of his wife’s greatest strengths, and a thing he most admired about her, was her ability to adapt to a situation and still remain steadfast in her own sense of worth and place. Brishen no longer viewed her with the eyes of a Kai and couldn’t view her with the eyes of a human male, but that held no consequence now. He saw her as she’d always seen herself—as simply Ildiko. For her, it was enough; for him, a gift beyond price.

He reached down to thread her loose hair through his fingers. She murmured in her sleep and rolled onto her back, exposing delicate collarbones and the outline of her breasts beneath her nightrail. She lay before him, a study in shade and shadow-play.

She didn’t startle when he slid his arms beneath her and scooped her up from the bed. Her eyes opened slowly, and she nestled against his chest. “Is it evening already, Brishen?”

Brishen kissed the top of her head as he padded from her chamber to his and kicked the door closed behind him. “No. Still midday. Unlike you, I no longer sleep well without you next to me.”

Ildiko patted his chest with one hand. “Your fault. You told me to go.”

He tightened his embrace. “I did and was right to do so.” He climbed into his bed still holding her. The sheets were cool on his legs, Ildiko hot on his torso.

Her hand wandered along his shoulder and up his neck until she cupped his jaw. Her dark pupils nearly swallowed the blue in her eyes. “Secmis is a vile and evil woman, Brishen.”

He turned his face into her palm and planted a kiss in its curvature. “Don’t bother with lavish compliments, wife,” he said. “You’ll never endear my loathsome mother to me.”

Ildiko shook with sleepy laughter. Her amusement faded, and in the room’s tenebrous shade her eyes glistened with sympathy and something else that ignited the desire simmering restlessly in Brishen’s veins. “My noble prince,” she said. “You are...” She frowned, searching for the words.

“A dead eel?” His hands tracked their own paths over her body, learning each curve beneath the thin nightrail.

“No,” she said. “More like a raven. Dark and elegant.”

“A clever scavenger.”

Ildiko gave him a mock scowl. “A beautiful bird.” She thumped him on the arm. “Stop fishing for compliments, you vain creature.”

Brishen rolled, taking Ildiko with him until she lay fully under him. Her thighs opened, and he sank against her. They both gasped and stilled, all traces of humor gone. If she had no awareness of his body’s reaction to her before this—and Ildiko, by her own admission, was neither that innocent nor that foolish—she couldn’t mistake it now.

Forearms braced on either side of her head, he kept most of his weight off her, careful not to crush her into the bed. Ildiko’s eyes were wide, her breathing thin and quick, an accompaniment to his own labored breaths.

He played with the curling strands of her hair that caught on his fingers like spiderweb. “I am no poet possessing honeyed words,” he said. “But you have always known me to be forthright with you.” Gods, his muscles shook as if from cold in his effort to stay still and not thrust hard against her. “I want you, Ildiko. Want to sink so deep into you that neither of us will know where one ends and the other begins.” Only the darker blue rim of her irises still shone around her pupils. His voice had gone guttural, and he worked to soften it. “I’ve never forced a woman, Kai or human, and I never will. If you refuse me, this will stop, with no ill will between us.”