Radiance (Wraith Kings Book 1)(52)
Please, he prayed—and he didn’t know if he prayed to Kai gods or to the statue-still woman pressed against him—don’t refuse me.
Ildiko’s black-eyed stare sharpened, and she peered into his gaze as if searching for something. Whatever she found transformed her expression. Her lids lowered, sinking to half-mast. Her breathing deepened, and her lips parted, revealing the edges of her upper front teeth. Hardly daring to hope and half dizzy with want, Brishen watched, fascinated, as the tip of her tongue darted out to swipe across her lower lip.
The silence yawned between them as she continued to stare at him. “What is it, Ildiko?” he asked. “What do you see?”
His question acted as a catalyst, breaking a spell that held him beguiled and her enthralled. She opened beneath him; not just her body. All of her. He sensed it in every part of him.
She twined her arms around his neck and tilted her head until her lips brushed the corner of his mouth. “My beautiful husband.” she said. “I see radiance.”
He groaned low in his throat as her mouth captured his. Ildiko buried her hands in his hair, pressing him closer to slide her tongue across the sensitive skin under his top lip and then his lower one. Brishen returned the caress, plying playful swipes at the edges of her lips and along the corners until she rocked in his arms, hips bumping against his in clumsy rhythm while he learned her taste and she learned his.
Ildiko didn’t kiss as a Kai woman did. Her kisses were forceful—a sucking, nipping dance along his lips with her tongue seeking entrance past the barrier of his teeth clamped tight against intrusion. It was as if she’d forgotten the sharpness of his fangs or simply no longer cared.
Brishen pulled away despite Ildiko’s protesting gasps. He pressed a finger to her lips, the tip of one black claw barely brushing the end of her nose. The air felt thin in his lungs. “I’ve seen humans kiss. You mate with your mouths.” Just the words sent a spear of heat straight to his groin. He was so hard, he ached. “I can’t do that, sweet wife. I’ll slice you bloody.”
Oh did he regret such an obstacle. For once, and probably the only time in his life, he wished for more human attributes. Horse teeth didn’t seem so bad or so ridiculous at the moment. He’d take Ildiko’s mouth the way he would take her body—deep and slow with hours spent dedicated on nothing more than savoring the taste and feel of her.
Undaunted by his warning, she tugged him back to her. “Maybe you can’t,” she said. “But I’m not limited by a mouthful of sword blades.” Her pupils glittered in the shadow he cast across her face and body. “Part your lips.” Spellbound, he did as she ordered. Ildiko rested her mouth lightly on his. Her lips tickled his when she spoke. “Slide your tongue out—just a little.”
She’d be the death of him before they ever consummated this marriage. Brishen’s body screamed to be done with it and slide inside her. His mind begged patience, delighted by this journey she took him on as the day waxed bright beyond the closed shutters.
Ildiko’s lips closed around the tip of Brishen’s tongue and sucked. He jerked in her arms, shivering at the new and pleasurable touch. Her tongue brushed his, a seductive caress that coaxed him to offer her more. He did and was rewarded by a longer suckling. Brishen moaned into her mouth, giving her more until his tongue twined with hers in the mating dance he’d so envied and coveted earlier.
She echoed his moan. Her arms, linked loosely behind his neck, fell away so that her hands could busy themselves with stroking him from shoulder to waist, pushing him to rise up so they could travel the hard planes of his abdomen.
Her fingers traced the ridges of his ribs, wandering higher and closer until her thumbs glided across his nipples. Brishen ended their kiss with a one-word prayer, back arching like a drawn bow as a lightning bolt of sensation shot across his chest to encircle his back and rake down his spine.
Ildiko’s calves crossed over the back of his thighs and locked him in place. One hand splayed across his back, pressing him down so that she bore more of his weight. Her lips followed where her hands had played, teasing a trail from the hollow of his throat to the line of one collarbone and down the planes of his chest.
Brishen’s claws gouged furrows into the pillows on either side of her head as she alternated between worrying his nipple with her tongue and blowing gently across the sensitive tip. His hips ignored the dictates of his mind to stay still. He thrust against her, enamored with the sleek feel of her thighs cradling him and the hot wetness that dampened both her nightrail and his linen breeches. Human women were obviously much like Kai women in that regard. Ildiko wanted him as much as he wanted her, and somewhere in his fogged brain, Brishen recognized that it was she who savored him at the moment and not the other way around as he originally planned.
He pulled himself out of reach, ignored her protests and captured her wrists in one hand. Her odd eyes were glassy, the blue of her irises completely surrendered to her pupils. A darker flush painted her pale skin. Brishen caught sight of the ragged amaranthine stain on the underside of her jaw from her earlier foray to the dye house. He bent and traced its outline, first with the tip of his nose and then his lips. Ildiko moaned softly in his ear.
Her eyebrows rose when he scooted them both down toward the foot of the bed and stretched her arms above her head, her wrists still manacled in his light grip. “You’ll be my undoing before I can take another breath, and I want this day to last far beyond a breath,” he said.