Radiance

  Brishen gazed at his cousin. Anhuset. Sharp, intuitive, she knew him better and longer than anyone. Something about his demeanor alarmed her. “Asleep in her bed, unlike either of us.” He withstood her silent scrutiny. She’d have her say, and his best course of action was to wait until she did.

  “Unless your sword arm needs improving, there are better ways to spend a sleepless day. I know a dozen women who’d be happy to cool the fire for you.”

  He’d briefly entertained the thought. Ildiko had once hinted she didn’t mind if he took a mistress, yet he wondered if that still held true. Three days earlier they had lain together in his bed. He hadn’t imagined the delicate shiver that raced down her body as he nuzzled her temple, and that shiver had not been fear.

  “I wouldn’t survive the affections of a dozen Kai women, cousin. Besides, only one can cool the fire.”

  Anhuset’s lips twitched. “And that one isn’t Kai. What has Ildiko become to you?”

  “The fire.” He nodded once to her and started to leave the arena.

  She called to him. “Don’t you want to spar with me?”

  Brishen shook his head and kept walking. “No. I miss my wife.”

  “Are you sure you’re not trying to avoid me beating you into one big bruise?”

  He waved away her taunt. “That too.” If he didn’t dawdle, he’d have a few hours to bring Ildiko back to his bed where she belonged and sleep the last daylight hours away with her by his side.

  Anhuset wasn’t finished with him yet. “Your Highness, when Lord Pangion arrives at Saggara this evening do you wish for us to escort him from the main road or from the gates of the redoubt?”

  He halted, cursing under his breath. Serovek. The dinner. He’d forgotten. He pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. The headache he suffered from the sun just grew worse. Brishen was tempted to tell Anhuset to kindly escort their guest back home the moment he arrived. Such an action though guaranteed a neighbor no longer amiable or forthcoming with information.

  “Meet him and his party at the main road.” He was glad for the hood which hid his smirk. “Anhuset, you’ll attend the dinner and the dancing afterwards.” The low snarl that met his command widened his smirk to a grin. Brishen walked away, listening closely for the tell-tale snick of a sword unsheathed or the breath of air cleaved by a flying dagger.

  He returned to the manor unscathed and found its occupants still deep in slumber. His personal servant slept in a modest chamber nearby. Brishen let him sleep, unwilling to rouse the man in the middle of the day just to bring him water for a bath. A face cloth and the water in his wash basin and pitcher would have to do. The sodden breeches were discarded and tossed in a heap in one corner. He scrubbed away the dirt the well water dousing missed, donned a pair of the linen breeches he was truly starting to despise and made his way to the door between his chamber and Ildiko’s.

  Sleeping naked next to her that one time had been a mistake. Ildiko had caught him off guard by waking up before him. Luckily, neither of them were prone to cuddle in their sleep, or she would have discovered very quickly that his deep affection for her was changing into something far beyond the platonic. Trapped under the covers until she left to change in her room, Brishen had collapsed on the bed with a frustrated groan once he was alone and vowed they’d sleep separately after that. His vow lasted less than a day. He wanted her beside him.

  Were he his father, Brishen could turn the door thin as parchment and walk through it to retrieve his wife. Were he his grandfather, he could pass through the solid wood, as ethereal as any wraith, but the magic was fading in the Kai with every generation born. Brishen conserved the magic he possessed and limited the use of his power to a few chanted words that slid the bolt free on the other side.

  He eased around the door and discovered a bleary-eyed Sinhue rising from her bed in the shallow alcove in one corner of the room. He held a finger to his lips for silence. She nodded and lay down, her back to him.

  Ildiko sprawled in the middle of her bed. Asleep on her stomach with half her face buried in the pillows, she presented him with a profile that shone as pale as the sheets in the darkness. He once called her a hag of a woman. Leached of color except for the bitter mollusk pink that surged under her skin in uneven patches when she was angry or embarrassed, he’d found her both ugly and peculiar to behold. Had it only been a few months earlier that he bore such thoughts of her?

  Looking at her now, Brishen wondered how he could have thought her unsightly. Her eyes still brought him up short on occasion, especially when she teased him by crossing them toward her nose, but he’d ceased comparing them to parasites. They were just eyes, different from his and fascinating in their own way with their colorful irises and black pupils that shrank or expanded depending on the light or her emotions.

  Her eyes were hidden from him now, behind closed lids edged in bronze lashes. Serovek had called her beautiful, and Brishen hadn’t missed the long stares cast upon her by the Gauri noblemen who attended her wedding. He tried to see her as a Gauri man might but failed in the endeavor. A sudden realization made him smile a little.

  One of his wife’s greatest strengths, and a thing he most admired about her, was her ability to adapt to a situation and still remain steadfast in her own sense of worth and place. Brishen no longer viewed her with the eyes of a Kai and couldn’t view her with the eyes of a human male, but that held no consequence now. He saw her as she’d always seen herself—as simply Ildiko. For her, it was enough; for him, a gift beyond price.

  He reached down to thread her loose hair through his fingers. She murmured in her sleep and rolled onto her back, exposing delicate collarbones and the outline of her breasts beneath her nightrail. She lay before him, a study in shade and shadow-play.

  She didn’t startle when he slid his arms beneath her and scooped her up from the bed. Her eyes opened slowly, and she nestled against his chest. “Is it evening already, Brishen?”

  Brishen kissed the top of her head as he padded from her chamber to his and kicked the door closed behind him. “No. Still midday. Unlike you, I no longer sleep well without you next to me.”

  Ildiko patted his chest with one hand. “Your fault. You told me to go.”

  He tightened his embrace. “I did and was right to do so.” He climbed into his bed still holding her. The sheets were cool on his legs, Ildiko hot on his torso.

  Her hand wandered along his shoulder and up his neck until she cupped his jaw. Her dark pupils nearly swallowed the blue in her eyes. “Secmis is a vile and evil woman, Brishen.”

  He turned his face into her palm and planted a kiss in its curvature. “Don’t bother with lavish compliments, wife,” he said. “You’ll never endear my loathsome mother to me.”

  Ildiko shook with sleepy laughter. Her amusement faded, and in the room’s tenebrous shade her eyes glistened with sympathy and something else that ignited the desire simmering restlessly in Brishen’s veins. “My noble prince,” she said. “You are...” She frowned, searching for the words.

  “A dead eel?” His hands tracked their own paths over her body, learning each curve beneath the thin nightrail.

  “No,” she said. “More like a raven. Dark and elegant.”

  “A clever scavenger.”

  Ildiko gave him a mock scowl. “A beautiful bird.” She thumped him on the arm. “Stop fishing for compliments, you vain creature.”

  Brishen rolled, taking Ildiko with him until she lay fully under him. Her thighs opened, and he sank against her. They both gasped and stilled, all traces of humor gone. If she had no awareness of his body’s reaction to her before this—and Ildiko, by her own admission, was neither that innocent nor that foolish—she couldn’t mistake it now.

  Forearms braced on either side of her head, he kept most of his weight off her, careful not to crush her into the bed. Ildiko’s eyes were wide, her breathing thin and quick, an accompaniment to his own labored breaths.

  He played with the curling st
rands of her hair that caught on his fingers like spiderweb. “I am no poet possessing honeyed words,” he said. “But you have always known me to be forthright with you.” Gods, his muscles shook as if from cold in his effort to stay still and not thrust hard against her. “I want you, Ildiko. Want to sink so deep into you that neither of us will know where one ends and the other begins.” Only the darker blue rim of her irises still shone around her pupils. His voice had gone guttural, and he worked to soften it. “I’ve never forced a woman, Kai or human, and I never will. If you refuse me, this will stop, with no ill will between us.”

  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.

  She frowned and wiggled teasingly beneath him. “But I’ve only had a taste.”

  “That’s more than I’ve had,” he countered. “Have you enjoyed me so far?” He preened at her enthusiastic nod. “Then be fair, wife, and let me enjoy you.”

  Ildiko unfurled along his length, a silk ribbon tipped from a spool to ripple and stroke him from chest to knees. “Oh, well then,” she breathed. “I don’t wish to be unjust.”

  She stopped him before he could return the touches that so inflamed him. Her hand stroked his hair. “Close your eyes,” she said.

  Brishen frowned. If Ildiko worried he’d find her the hag he first met in Pricid’s royal gardens, she had nothing to fear. His vision of her was irrevocably changed. “Why?” he asked, wary of her reasons.

  “Because I’d have you see me with your touch.” Her mouth curved into a smile. “It’s how I see you in this blind darkness, Brishen, and it is a wondrous thing.”

  He’d been the recipient of heady praise from mistresses as in lust with his title as they were with his body. No such honeyed words ever came close to these and their power over him.

  She kept her arms above her head, even after he released her wrists. Brishen closed his eyes and let his other senses overtake his willing blindness. He took his time, exploring every hollow, swell and nook of Ildiko’s neck and shoulders. She smelled of flowers and the scented oils imported by the caravan peoples who traded such indulgences for spells and charms from Kai shaman. She tasted...human.

  He could think of no comparison. Soft skin with a hint of spice and a sweetness he’d tasted nowhere else in either food or on the supple, muscular limbs of the Kai women he’d bedded before his marriage. Her differences intrigued him, seduced him.

  He didn’t remember removing her nightrail or his breeches, but they somehow ended up in a discarded heap on the floor by the side of the bed. Free of any barrier between them, Brishen indulged himself by easing more of his weight onto her.
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  “Ooh,” Ildiko said on a sigh, her heavy-lidded eyes almost closed. “You feel good.” She drew swirls on his back. “We should have done this much sooner.”

  Brishen’s chortle vibrated between them. His forthright wife. “I couldn’t agree more,” he whispered in her ear.

  He set her to squirming in his arms, her soft moans a sensual cadence in his ear, while he kissed and licked a path from her shoulders to her belly, stopping for long moments to repay her torture of him by flicking his tongue back and forth across the tips of her breasts. That she didn’t pull away from fear of his teeth spoke of her faith in him and the sure knowledge he would never hurt her.

  A subtle quiver of tension passed through her body under his hands as he kissed a path downward toward the juncture of her thighs. Brishen opened his eyes. His heightened senses warned him that delicate vibration had been one of unease instead of eagerness.

  Ildiko gazed at him steadily, her features somber. She lowered her arms to card her fingers through his hair. She didn’t try and wiggle out of his reach. This wasn’t a matter of trust so much as experience, or its lack. Brishen knew that while his wife wasn’t completely ignorant of bed play, her introduction to its many intimacies by her previous lover had been limited. Her statement that three romps in the bedroom or the hayloft had not made the effort of a fourth worth the trouble revealed a great deal.

  He’d have to tamp down on his eagerness to explore every part of her in a single day. The knowledge that he had a lifetime to draw out the anticipation of familiarizing himself with his wife’s lovely body evaporated any of his initial disappointment.

  Brishen bent and traced the circumference of her navel before kissing a return path up her belly, to the valley between her breasts and finally to her chin. Ildiko gave him an abashed look. “I haven’t tried that yet,” she said.

  He framed her face in his hands. “So I gathered.” He smoothed away the lines between her eyebrows with his lips. It’s not a failing, Ildiko.”