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Talasyn wasn’t embarrassed by the dampness that she knew he could feel, although she probably should have been. What shewasembarrassed by was the flush of pleasure that warmed her all over at his endearment. She sank her teeth into his plush bottom lip, taking advantage of his surprise to flip him over. He let out a soft grunt as his head hit the pillow, gazing up at her with silver-rimmed pupils blown wide.

“If you ever”—she straddled him fully, biting back a whimper of shuddery delight as she ground down on his hardness—“call me that again—”

“Isn’t it the truth?” His hands wrapped around her waist, holding her in place as hethrust. Just once, but it was enough for a hoarse shout to roll off her tongue at the abrupt, unexpected friction against her core that had her eyes fluttering shut. And thenhewas rolling her over, she was spread flat on the bed once more, held down by him, by his mouth on hers and his knee between her thighs. “Aren’t you beautiful?” he broke the kiss long enough to ask, before swallowing her protest with his lips. “Aren’t you so small in my arms?” As if to emphasize his point, he ran a hand down her body until the mound of his palm was past her navel, showing her how he could span her midsection like this, the tips of his fingers grazing the undersides of her breasts. “Aren’t you wet?” he asked huskily, that same hand sliding lower still, back to where she needed to be touched so badly that it was painful. “Aren’t you my wife?” he rasped in her ear.

“Bastard.” She contemplated kneeing him in the groin, butsomehow her legs spread wider, granting his wandering touches more access. Her right hand slipped under his shirt, tracing the chiseled musculature of his abdomen. “You only think I’m beautiful when I’m all done up. You said so yourself.”

Alaric winced against her skin. She felt his shoulders tense, then fall with something like surrender. “I lied,” he said, and it was another wall—so laboriously constructed—being demolished. He sprinkled kisses on her brow, her cheeks, and the tip of her nose. Feather-light kisses, filled with a tender reverence that made her soul sing. “You’re always beautiful. Even when you want to string my guts up like paper lanterns.”

He kissed her on the mouth again and she let him, and she kissed him back, her free hand tangling in his hair as her hips canted toward his wrist, searching for more friction. “Move your fingers,” she grumped, digging her nails into his scalp.

He nuzzled at the tip of her nose. “I knew that you would be bossy.” He sighed in contentment, and in the dark it felt as though he was smiling against her lips, but before she could be certain, he complied with her curt instructions and slowly glided his fingertips over the increasingly dampening silk that covered her.

Talasyn would have wept with relief that the pressure building up within her was finally being taken care of, if she hadn’t moaned first. Encouraged by the sound, Alaric strewed hot kisses along the line of her jaw, matching the rhythm of his mouth with that of his fingers rubbing silk into wet skin. Her body strained into his as she instinctively hungered for more closeness, her head thrown back, her throat exposed to his greedy mouth.

The evidence of his desire rocked against her hip. And there was quite alotof evidence from the feel of it, hot and heavy in his trousers. Wicked curiosity blazed through her and she reached down, working him loose, wrapping her fist around him.

He made a strangled little noise in the back of his throat, as if he were dying. He buried his face in the pillow by her head, panting roughly against her cheek as his hand crept beneath the band of her undergarments, the tips of his fingers gliding along her wetness.

It was a touch that rippled throughout her entire being.She rose and curled like the tide, melting against him, melting all over him. She bit into the round of his shoulder to stifle her whines, completely taken aback by how exquisite it felt to be touched down there by someone else. He chuckled, raspy and deep, and a burst of annoyance caused her to pull back slightly so that she could glare at him even as she tightened her grip on his cock. “That sounded entirely too smug for someone so hard,husband.”

His eyes flashed silver in the moonlight and he crushed his lips to hers again. “I’m not being smug,” he muttered into her mouth. “I will give you anything you ask, as long as you never stop touching me. As long as you come for me.”

And slowly, ever so slowly, he pushed one finger inside her.

Talasyn cried out—from pain or from pleasure, she could no longer tell. The lines were blurred. The wires were crossed. She rode Alaric’s hand, mindlessly chasing the feeling, her own fist working around him, matching the pace that he set. He was smooth and thick in the circle of her palm, as solid as a rock, growing harder still as his kisses to her face and neck turned half-crazed.

She was almost there. She didn’t know what would happen, what it would mean if she came undone like this with him. What would happen after. “Alaric, I’m—” she tried to say and broke off, not recognizing the needy, breathless stranger who spoke in her voice.

But he seemed to understand. “I’ve got you,” he promised hoarsely. His free hand tucked a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. “Let go, Tala. I’m here.”

She was distantly aware of herself, muffling a sob into his neck, twisting against the sheets, straining closer, closer, until there was no more space between their bodies and it waseverything, it was a reprieve from loneliness, it was delight upon delight, Sky Above the Sky.

And she careened into it, and off the edge. The night disintegrated into shards of white heat. She fell into release with a ragged moan, her toes curling at the long, glorious spasms that consumed her in rolling waves.

Alaric kissed her through it all, swallowing her drawn-out sighs, rocking his finger gently inside her until it became too much and she squirmed, and he pulled back his hand.

But that was the only part of him that she would allow to leave her. The hard length of him twitched eagerly in her half-limp palm and, with some effort, mustered through the delicious, lazy, slow fog that had enveloped her, she pumped her wrist in experimental strokes. His breathing shallowed and he thrust into her fist haphazardly and then, with a groan, he was coming, too, she could feel it, warm and wet on her palm, dripping down her fingers in her dazed afterglow.

He collapsed on top of her. Alaric—always so stiff, so inscrutable, so carefully controlled—went slack above her, his mouth moving against her collarbone, torn between prayers and kisses. She couldn’t understand what he was mumbling into her skin and she didn’t care—there were no words for this. His dark hair was tickling her chin, so she raised her other hand to stroke it flat, her fingers curling into the softness of it, holding him against her as they both caught their breath.

Talasyn came back to herself with all the languidness of a feather wafting to the ground. She blinked to clear the haze from her eyes, staring up at the ceiling. Her gaze fixed on the tapestries above the bed, the sewn stars and the glimmering moons, the dragon of Nenavar...

Nenavar. Sardovia. Kesath.

It all came crashing down on her again, all at once.

What were they doing?

She was going to get everyone killed.

Large arms reached around her waist, trying to bring her closer, but she stiffened at his embrace. The embrace of the Night Emperor.

Talasyn drew her hand back from Alaric’s hair to push at the wide slab of his shoulder. “Get off of me.”

He lifted his mouth from her clavicle. At first, he didn’t seem to understand. He squinted at her as though searching for answers, his brow creasing in bewilderment—hurt, almost. She remained still beneath him, turning her head to the side so she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes.

Then the common sense that had overtaken her must have returned to him, too. He rolled off her in an instant, scrambling as far from her as was possible without actually falling off the bed.