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Chapter Thirty

Aurelia

I n the wake of my suggestion, the smolder in Marc’s gaze sears hotter. His hands linger by the sides of my face.

His voice drops even lower than mine did. “What sort of a conquering did you have in mind?”

I wet my lips instinctively, feeling him track the movement like a touch across the sensitive skin. “I don’t believe we’ve ever fully consummated this marriage, husband.”

Marc sounds as if he’s tried to stifle a groan. His mouth descends on mine again, the heat of the kiss washing away every other concern.

His hands drop to my hips. In one smooth motion that proves just how much strength his well-built body holds, he lifts me onto the edge of the map table.

As he presses closer against me, my head spins with desire. I wrap one arm behind his neck and kiss him even harder. An embarrassing whine of need is building in the base of my throat, driven by the first traces of friction at my core.

I manage not to cry out in protest when Marc pulls back, but it’s a near thing. He gazes at me, his face flushed and his eyes glittering, like I’m an astonishing treasure he’s just uncovered.

His voice comes out with even more of a rasp than usual. “Gods know I’d like to take you right here on this table, but I don’t trust that no one will come through the door. And I’d like our first proper time together to be more than a hasty rutting.”

The promise in that statement sends a tingle all the way to my toes.

I manage to gather my composure. “Then I’d better retire to my chambers.”

Even though he was the one to pause our encounter, Marc releases me with obvious reluctance. I take a few steadying breaths, willing the flush from my own cheeks, and stride to the door with him stalking a careful distance behind me.

In the hall, my full host of guards shifts into a semi-circle around me. They’ve been following me even more closely since the missing vicerine and marchion proved that even the nobles of my court might become my enemies.

I say nothing until I’ve reached my apartment. At the door, I give the assembled soldiers a grateful smile. “I need to contemplate our next steps. Please see that no one disturbs me until I tell you otherwise.”

The guards offer brisk nods of agreement. After Marc has stepped in to take his usual post inside the room, the door shuts with a heavier click as I slide the lock over .

No one should be able to enter these chambers without my permission.

Marc is already reaching for me. He traces his fingers down my sides to my waist and walks me backward to the bed. “I want to see all of you. I’m going to admire every inch of this terrain I’m conquering.”

A giddy laugh tumbles out of me, but a pang of tension squeezes my heart at the same time. He’s admired me before, but never for long—not with a totally clear head.

As he reaches for the ties on my gown, I stop him. “We should start by removing this.”

I slide off the gold-and-sapphire ring that’s aided me in so many of my plans and set it apart from us on the bedside table.

Marc watches, his gray eyes darkening. He might not know exactly how I’ve used my ring, but he already guessed that I’ve been able to affect people with it somehow. I’d imagine he can deduce that it factored into my manipulations of our past intimacies as well.

But it’ll have no part in our interlude this afternoon. Everything we both experience will be completely real.

I return to him, and he works at my dress with small caresses of my back and sides. As the bodice loosens and gapes, he can’t seem to resist leaning in to brand the crook of my neck with his mouth. But then he eases back, nudging the fabric down to pool at my feet.

I lift my arms so he can strip my chemise off me too. He tugs my drawers down to join my dress.

His gaze rakes over my naked form, drinking in every inch of me as he promised.

My skin may not be as smooth as it was before my pregnancy and my belly may not have lost all of its extra curve, but if anything, my husband looks more awed by my body than he did when he first saw me this way a year ago .

I let him get his fill before grasping the collar of his uniform. “Do I get to share in the admiring?”

The corner of Marc’s mouth quirks upward. “I would never deny you, wife.”

Together, we unbutton the shirt. Marc tosses it aside, the muscles across his shoulders and chest rippling.

The smooth gray discoloration that covers so much of his face seeps down his neck but peters out by his collarbone. It seems anyplace his skin was covered by his clothing, the combination of Bastien’s and Raul’s magic didn’t imprint on it.

I trace my fingertips along the edge of the scar and up across his cheek. With a rough sound, Marc bends to kiss me again. Then he hefts me up as he did by the table and carries me onto the bed.

He lays me out on top of the covers, my head nestled on a pillow, and kneels between my knees. For all I’m spread out before him, his gaze doesn’t leave mine.

“That one time,” he says. “In Lavira. I didn’t imagine any of that , did I? I never fell asleep.”

The memory of how much pleasure he managed to stoke in my body even when I didn’t want to feel it floods me with heat.

“That was all real,” I confirm.

A full smile lights his face. “Then I’ll start with what I already know you’ll enjoy.”

He doesn’t torment me with the lead-up this time, perhaps as impatient to revel in the pleasure of this act as I am. After a few strokes of his hands up and down my thighs, he crouches down and laps his tongue over my sex.

That’s all it takes for bliss to jolt through my torso. I bite my lip against a whimper. My bedroom door is solid enough to prevent most sound from traveling through, but I don’t want to take the chance of getting too loud .

Marc hums approvingly and leans closer. He braces his arms on either side of my hips in the most intimate of embraces and buries his face between my thighs.

His tongue strums over my clit and delves between my folds. His lips work over every place I’m neediest with pulse after pulse of rising pleasure.

I can’t hold back a moan, as much as I try to muffle it. My hips rock of their own accord, urging him on.

Marc doesn’t bother to come up for air. He devours me as if I’m a meal he’ll never get enough of, sucking and licking and pumping his tongue inside me.

I clutch his hair, the rising waves of bliss shocking gasp after gasp from my mouth. He swirls his tongue across my clit, and I come apart in a crash of ecstasy.

Marc replaces his tongue with his thumb, continuing to stroke that sensitive numb until I’ve sagged into the bed with my release. He grins. “I can’t imagine a sight I enjoy more than watching you unravel with pleasure. I think I need to enjoy it at least a couple more times today.”

I let out a breathless laugh. “I don’t see any reason to argue.”

He chuckles in return and kisses my inner thighs on both sides before making his way up my torso. His lips chart a path across my hips and belly before lingering on my breasts.

“I’ve never given these the worshipping they deserve, have I?” he murmurs, and laps one tip into his mouth. As he teases that nipple with his tongue, he trails a thumb over the other.

Heavy quivers shoot through my flesh. I whimper and squirm beneath my husband, a knot of need returning to my core despite my recent release. My hands trace over the muscles of his shoulders and down his back until he lets out a groan.

He lifts his head and surges up so our mouths can collide again. As he kisses me, he fondles one breast and then the other as if he means to provoke every spark of pleasure he can from their slopes.

His groin brushes my sex through his slacks, and a desperate mewling escapes me. Our lips break apart; I grasp at his pants between us. “I’ve been waiting more than a year to be able to welcome you properly. Let’s not delay it any longer.”

Marc’s next laugh comes with a brief hitch. “And I’ve been waiting more than a year to properly understand what it should mean to be your husband. I’ll satisfy you every way you need, wife. And not just in this bed.”

The promise brings a lump to my throat. He’s already made good on it in so many ways.

The last lingering doubts I’ve held on to crumble away.

As he fumbles with the fastenings on his slacks, I touch the scarred side of his face. Marc pauses to glance up at me.

The words catch for a second before they spill out, propelled by the swell of emotion inside me. “I love you.”

They come out so quietly that at first I’m afraid he didn’t hear me. He stares at me, his expression blank.

Then the most brilliant smile I’ve ever seen from him stretches across his face. He draws my face to his and claims my mouth, long and lingering, until every part of me is trembling with anticipation.

When our lips part, his head stays bowed over mine, our foreheads brushing. “Then I’ve done one thing right with my life, no matter where else it leads me.”

He kicks his slacks the rest of the way off. I open myself wider with a gasp as he slides his cock over my folds.

As Marc lines himself up, he holds my gaze, one elbow propping him over me, the other resting on my thigh. I raise my knees instinctively.

He presses in with a catch of his breath and a dip of his eyelids, but his eyes stay locked with mine. He slides into me torturously slow, drawing out the sensation until all my nerves are tingling.

When I’m full of him, Marc stops as if he’s absorbing every sensation of the moment. Gazing up at him, I’m hit by a smack of emotion—the knowledge that I resisted this act for so long, that I never believed I could possibly want it, and yet here I am.

Somehow the husband I reviled has become an irreplaceable part of my life. To go forward without him feels as wrong as losing any of my princes.

Something must change in my expression. The haze of pleasure on Marc’s face fades with a frown. “Are you all right? If you don’t?—”

I grasp his arm before he can retreat and beam up at him. “No. I want this. So much. I was only thinking about how far we’ve come.”

He catches my lips again with the tenderest of kisses. Just when I think I might die from waiting, he starts to move.

He eases back and plunges deeper, again and again, bringing a fresh surge of bliss each time. Delight radiates across my skin and breaks my breath into panting.

My thighs press around his hips. My arms loop around his shoulders, locking him with me. Our lips part and collide, more kisses smattering across cheeks and jaw and neck, wilder with every passing minute.

I’m already primed after my first orgasm. It only takes a few more slams of his cock against the giddying spot inside me before another wave of ecstasy wracks my body.

I muffle my cry against Marc’s shoulder. He keeps pumping into me, urging the wave onward.

Then, as I start to come down, he flips us over so I’m lying atop him.

When I blink down at him, his grin returns. “I’ve found I have a taste for being conquered too. Why don’t you ride me like you did Bastien so well last week, my empress?”

I don’t know what sends more of a thrill through me—his request or the fact that he can refer to my intimacy with one of my other husbands so fondly.

I shift my weight over him, adjusting his angle inside me, and the groan that tumbles out of him inflames me even more. I’m so sated, but I have even more capacity for pleasure I haven’t unearthed.

Bracing my knees on either side of him and my hands on his sculpted chest, I rock up and down. It takes a minute to find the right pace, to hit all the spots that set off the hottest sparks inside me.

Marc reaches up to fondle my breasts again, adding more spikes of delight to the mix. When I start to buck faster over him, his eyes roll back.

“Fuck. I don’t know how I ever thought I had you before. This is everything.”

All I can manage in response is a wordless murmur of agreement.

Marc’s breath turns ragged, but he trails his hand down my body. “You need to come with me.”

He strokes his fingers over my clit, and I bite my lip against a sob of pleasure. The jolt sets me bobbing even faster, taking him as deep as I can bring him.

My fingernails dig into his chest. My head falls back. And just as Marc’s control breaks with another groan, I hit a new peak.

A spurt of heat fills me as my whole body sings with the heights of bliss. Quaking with the sensation, I sag into Marc’s arms.

He clutches me tight against him, the two of us still entwined as closely as any people can be. Alongside the heady rush and the affection filling me, a thread of relief ripples through my chest.

We have come an awfully long way, much farther than I could have imagined a year ago. I couldn’t be more grateful for that.

But how much farther do we need to go before this fragile peace we’ve founded is truly safe?