Radiance (Wraith Kings Book 1)(54)

He settled them both and waited, even as the waiting killed him. “Ildiko?”

Ildiko gave him a quick smile. Her hands abandoned his arms for his lower back. She kissed him, tongue flicking over his lower lip. Brishen pulsed inside her, and her smile widened. “I’m fine, my lovely prince,” she said and kissed him a second time. “Don’t stop.” Her clasp on his back tightened, and a soft moan threaded her voice. “It feels too good to stop.”

Grateful and relieved, Brishen needed no further reassurance. She was fire in his arms, hot and sweet. Her moans and softly worded encouragements, the feel of her surrounding him as he thrust inside her—slow and deep, shallow and fast—destroyed any lingering coherent thought he possessed.

Every near withdrawal had her clawing at his back; every hard pump of his hips made her croon her pleasure in his ear. Brishen angled his hips, a minute change in his position. Ildiko’s eyes grew wide, and she emitted a strangled sound.

Brishen froze, horrified. He’d hurt her. He stared down at her, eyes equally as wide. “What’s wrong?”

She held his hips prisoner when he made to pull out of her. “No!” Her legs flexed on him. “Do it again.”

“Do what?” He gawked at her, bewildered. She didn’t act as if he hurt her.

“That thing with your hips,” she said and wriggled hers to coax him into action.

He tried to recall exactly what he did. The angle, a mere shift in his body that forced his pelvis down onto hers and stroked a different spot with each thrust. Brishen repeated the motion, and Ildiko did her best to climb up his body.

His jaw dropped. “That?”

She nodded frantically, her thighs clamping so tightly against his torso, his muscles protested. “Again,” she commanded him between pants. “Do it again.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” he teased, exultant that he could make his wife burn the way she made him burn.

Whispered affections, drugging kisses and the steady rock of hips: Brishen balanced on the edge of release, struggling to read Ildiko’s ever-changing expressions as she met his thrusts and moaned her pleasures.

She suddenly stiffed, her arms tensing as her fingernails carved tiny crescent moons into his skin. Her moans flattened to harsh gasps, and her eyes closed. “Brishen. Brishen.” She chanted his name, and whether it was a desperate prayer or affectionate curse, it didn’t matter to him. Ildiko came apart in his arms, her body flushed and hot, and arched until he thought he’d hear her spine crack.

The sleek muscles gripping his cock tightened and pulsed with her release. Brishen buried his face in her neck and surrendered his control. His groans chorused with her gasps as he came hard inside her.

His climax rolled through him, leaving him both blissful and utterly stripped of vigor. His heart pounded in his chest, and he sucked in sweet gulps of air like a man saved from a drowning. Were Ildiko a Kai woman, he’d collapse on her, letting her take his full weight. He braced on his elbows instead and raised his head to regard his silent wife.

The flush to her skin had receded a little, though her chest rose and fell in shallow pants. She regarded him with an expression in her eyes even he could read: stunned amazement. She opened her mouth, closed it and opened it again only to say nothing.

Brishen brushed the tip of his nose across hers. “Breathe, Ildiko,” he said between his own short gasps. “Just breathe.”

She exhaled a strand of his hair away from her face. Her smile held the smug satisfaction of a cat that had caught a particularly juicy mouse. “That was neither awkward nor messy.”

His eyebrows climbed, and he tucked his hips even closer to hers to stay inside her. “Oh, it will get messy, wife, the moment we move.”

One small heel roamed up his calf to his knee. She traced his cheekbones with her fingertips. “I don’t mind,” she said softly.

“Nor do I.” He kissed her, and she kissed him back, her mouth working its magic so that his blood heated once more, and his cock hardened inside her.

He took her a second time as the sun marched west and then a third when they were both drowsy and exhausted from their lovemaking and lack of sleep. The third time was a slow melding of bodies and low sighs. When it was over, Brishen rolled to his back with Ildiko draped over him. She was asleep before he could cover them haphazardly with the bed linens.

He followed her into sleep only to be awakened what seemed like moments later by a brisk knock at his door. Those moments must have been more like hours. The candle he kept lit for Ildiko had melted into a pool of wax, the flame extinguished. Full darkness enveloped the room, and the air had grown colder. Ildiko was nowhere in sight, and he frowned.

The knock came again. Brishen rubbed at his scratchy eyes and sat up. “What?” he barked at his annoying visitor.

“Your Highness, you’re past the gloaming. You can’t sleep anymore.” Anhuset’s admonishment was muffled by the door’s thick wood.

Brishen scowled and swung out of bed to pad naked across the room. He slid the bolt aside and yanked the door open to the sight of his cousin’s smirk and his personal servant’s flinch. “What are you doing here?” he snapped.

Her gaze made a slow journey from the top of his head to his feet. “Cousin or not, you’re a fine figure of a man.” Her smirk deepened at his impatient growl. “Etep here fetched me. He said you didn’t respond to his calls or knocks. He thought you might be ill.” She looked past him to the bed and its rumpled sheets. “Obviously he worried for nothing. You’ve only been conquered.”