Page 29

Chapter Twenty-Five

Guinevere

Kissing Oskar had never been the problem, Guinevere reflected. Her body knew what to do whenever his pressed up against it, their mouths slotting together like jigsaw pieces reunited at long last, falling into a rhythm as old as time.

He was still a little angry with her. She could tell from the roughness of his kisses, the way he formed a fist in her hair and pulled so he could angle her head the way he pleased—not violently, but firmly.

Firm enough for a shivery coil of excitement to snake low through her belly, its warmth dripping down to the place between her legs.

She kissed him back with all of the fervor that she could summon, with all of the fever in her veins.

She was tugging at his shirt, and somehow they were separating briefly so he could yank it over his head, and then he was slanting his hot mouth over hers again while she ran her hands all over his bare chest and biceps, relearning him, a lesson she would never tire of.

He deepened the kiss with a muffled curse, one of such gravelly pleasure that her toes curled, and the large fist in her hair dropped down to join its fellow that had snagged at the fabric of her neckline.

She was wholly unprepared for what happened next—there was a sharp tug, and the sound of ripping seams burst like a thunderclap through the room as he ripped open her bodice.

“ Oskar! ” Guinevere shrieked. Although she could probably stand to sound a tad more dismayed. “You made me leave six dresses behind in Druvenlode, you can’t just go around tearing what I did bring—”

“Think of it as a charitable endeavor. Poor Pudding’s overloaded enough as it is.

” Oskar shoved the torn bodice to Guinevere’s hips, his topaz eyes glittering as they fixed, hawklike, on her bare breasts.

“Gods, princess,” he breathed out, all quiet reverence.

“How can you think that I’d even look at any other woman? ”

She preened at that. She couldn’t help it.

Oh, she was vain. And easily ruined, too—that could never have been more clear than when he bent his head and took her left nipple into his mouth.

Suddenly she was the most wanton woman to ever walk the earth, arching into his lips, clawing at his muscular shoulders, chanting his name.

Every swirl of his tongue over her taut bud felt like a river of light across her skin.

And when he sealed his lips around her and sucked —she could die from the sheer pleasure of it.

Her world narrowed down to the sweet pulsing of his mouth and the curve of his tusks against her sensitive flesh.

She tugged at his soft midnight hair and whimpered and begged, climbing toward her little death but never reaching it.

Teinidh was fluttering along with her, spinning and swaying, trailing bright flames through darkest chasms.

By the time both her breasts were slick and flushed from Oskar’s attentions, there were overwhelmed tears in Guinevere’s eyes. He huffed when he saw them, his finger lightly dashing them away from the corners of her lashes. “You cry too easily.”

“It’s your fault, this time,” she sniffled.

She was so dizzy with want that she could do nothing but rest her head on his shoulder when he swept her into his arms and carried her, as one would a bride, to the sole bed shoved up against the wall.

He laid her down over the sheets and took her boots off for her before removing his own, a task greatly hindered by the fact that he couldn’t seem to look away from her exposed chest for too long.

She laughed through her tears and held her arms out to him, and his lips quirked in a wry half smile as he crawled on top of her.

He plied her with one heated kiss after another, over and over until she was melting into the mattress, drunk off the taste of him.

Time spiraled on in wave upon decadent wave, and at some point in that blur of glorious sensation, her torn dress was stripped away and his trousers were rolled down and the wearing of undergarments was consigned to the dustbins of the past, but she was only vaguely aware of any of it.

She was floating in her dream of Oskar and all that lovely wilderness brought forth by his kisses, his caresses.

Thus, she was more than a little disgruntled when he propped himself up on his elbows, lifting his mouth from hers with no indication of putting it back where it belonged anytime soon. Before she could voice her annoyance, though, he peered down at her with a solemn tenderness that stole her heart.

“Gwen,” Oskar rasped, “are you sure? We don’t have to, if you’re not sure.”

He was hot and hard against the inside of her thigh. It wasn’t lost on her that what happened next would be a point of no return.

Guinevere swallowed, searching for the right words. She reached up to trace the line of Oskar’s jaw. It clenched into the curve of her palm.

“So much of my life consists of choices made by other people,” she whispered. “This is the one thing I get to decide. And even if it wasn’t—even if my straits were less dire and I was as free as the leaves blowing across the Amber Road—I would still want it to be you.”

He closed his eyes. “I don’t deserve you, sweetheart,” he mumbled.

She turned pink with delight at the endearment, her fingers scaling the ladder of his ribs while his lips trailed an ardent path from her temple to her cheek, then down her neck to the hollow at the base of her throat.

His lean hips slotted fully between her spread legs, and the blunt head of his erection nudged at her entrance.

A fresh surge of arousal swept through her, mingled with some apprehension.

He felt… thick. Surely all that wasn’t expected to go inside her?

But she knew Oskar well enough by now—knew that, if she showed even the slightest trace of hesitation, his mulish sense of honor would cause him to put a stop to the whole affair.

So she arched up, hooking one leg over his waist, and the tip of him began to sink in—

Oskar let out an undignified yelp, canting his hips away from hers, one hand pressing into her belly to hold her still. “ Slowly, Gwen,” he said through gritted teeth. “Nice and easy. It’s your first time.”

Guinevere wasn’t so sure that she liked the sound of that.

There was so much of the world that she had yet to discover.

So much yet to see. And so little time. She began to protest, but Oskar shut her up with another fierce kiss.

She returned it, happily looping her arms around his neck, relaxing, giving him free rein to position all the pertinent bits down there if it was so important…

And then he was wrenching his mouth from hers and gripping her shoulder almost hard enough to bruise, pushing forward and inside, and it felt odd, it truly did, far bigger than fingers, opening her up.

His dark brows knitting together in utmost concentration, he reached down and thumbed at her pearl, his tongue flicking out to lave her nipple at the same time.

She keened, her inner walls releasing another wave of wet, admitting more of him inside her.

There was a twinge of pain that made her tense, and he went statue-still at once, his topaz eyes searching her face.

“I’m all right,” she assured him. “You may, ah, proceed. ”

He didn’t look like he believed her, but he gave a shallow, experimental thrust. It felt sort of nice. Another thrust and her mouth fell open, her eyelids fluttering. He buried his face in the side of her neck as he rocked into her. “Shit,” he groaned. “You feel amazing. Gods. ”

His praise went down like finest ambrosia.

Encouraged, she mimicked the rolling motions of his hips with her own, and suddenly he was so deep inside her that she all but arched off the mattress, stretched and filled beyond what she had thought possible.

Whatever pain she might have felt, though, was quickly washed away when Oskar gathered her close, raining sloppy kisses all over her face and throat.

His next thrust was the most forceful one yet, knocking a sound that was nearly a sob out of her lungs.

“Oskar,” she said plaintively, “I’m so full, please, you’re so—it’s so much—”

He froze again, twitching inside her. “I’ll stop,” he gritted out, as breathless as she felt. His expression was utterly wrecked, strands of dark hair falling across his flushed, sweat-dampened face. “Let me just—”

He withdrew, so carefully that it almost broke her heart. Wildfire slipped into the fractures, and she dug blunt nails into his shoulders, keeping him halfway in. Keeping him there, with her.

“I didn’t say that it was too much,” Guinevere rasped. “I didn’t say to stop.”

Oskar’s topaz eyes blazed with relief. He pressed his forehead to hers, muttering something that sounded like both a prayer and a curse against her cheek.

Then he slammed back in.

Guinevere saw stars. She truly did. They streaked across her vision and fell into the flames that sang inside her.

She gave herself over to the oldest song in the universe, to a rhythm that she’d been made for, to a place where no mercenaries or sinister presences or mysterious trunks existed.

A place that was just her and Oskar. The bed creaked and the sheets twisted and their lips caught as they moved together, urging each other higher.

A line was crossed at some point, some boundary hurtled over, and all of his immaculate self-control snapped.

He rutted into her mindlessly, until she was crying out from pleasure and raking her nails down his back, both of them lost in delirium.

“Good girl,” he ground out, slick with sweat, pupils blown wide, a young god above her, his broad shoulders the roof of her world.

“Taking me so well in that tight little—”

“Don’t say things like that.” Some lingering shred of primness made her interrupt in between pants.

“It’s really not”—he swirled his hips against hers, the tip of him hitting a spot inside her that set off sparks—“ oh, ” she moaned, and then she came, spasming around his thick length.

She could swear that his eyes all but rolled into the back of his head when he felt her clamp down.

Tendrils of warm, radiant bliss spread through her until she was boneless, until she lay beneath him, sated and pliant, murmuring nonsensical words of encouragement while he drove into her and followed her down into delirium.