Page 105 of The Ragpicker King
“So youwerehiding. You didn’t just get lost.” She could hear the amusement under the exasperation in his voice, like a vein of crystal running through granite.
“Does it matter? I don’t belong here.”
“Lin.” She turned to see Conor looking at her; he was not wearing his crown she realized. “Your grandfather is the King’s Counselor. I invited you myself. You are no interloper at Marivent.”
“Why?” Lin whispered. Outside the folly, the rain fell hard enough to strike silvery sparks from the packed earth. “Whydid you invite me?”
And in that moment, she realized that this was the reason she had come. To ask him this question. To know why he wanted her here.
“Lin.” His voice was ragged. Even with the mask, she could see he was staring at her, with almost a fixed look, his gaze traveling from her eyes to her lips, over her body, weighted as the touch of a hand. She felt the heat in that look as it traveled over her, like a scatter of sparks against her skin. “Are you truly asking? Because I should not answer that. For my sake, for yours. For the sake of so many things.”
She tilted her head back. “Please,” she said, and she saw the shiver that went through him at the word. Her own pulse quickened. “I am not afraid of the truth.”
“No. You are afraid of nothing. You have certainly never been afraid of me.” He lifted a hand, slowly, almost as if he could notbelieve what he was doing, and laid it against her cheek, his skin cool against her hot face. “But there are some answers, once given, that can never be taken back. Never forgotten.”
She reached up, circled his wrist with her fingers. She felt the hammering beat of his pulse against her fingertips. Imagined his heart, frantic as her own, driving his blood. “Tell me,” she said. “Or I will go.”
“Why did I ask you to come?” he whispered. “Because I could not do anything else. Even as I sealed the invitation, I raged against myself—my own stupidity and selfishness—and still I could not stop myself.” His fingertips stroked her cheek, the lightest touch, but the tide of fire that washed through her veins was hotter than blood, enough to make her lips part, her body tremble. “I asked you because when I am not with you, Lin Caster, I feel as if some part of me has been torn away. I feel as if I ambleeding,insensible with the pain of a wound no one can see save myself. When you are with me... It is the only time I feel whole.”
Lin was outwardly still. But inside, it was as if something had broken—a phial of one of Merren’s poisons, the kind that brought sweet death, flooding her veins with fire. And for the first time she understood the Story-Spinner tales, how people could line up week after week to hear the slow progression of a tale that would make them feel even the shadow of the shadow ofthis...
“Lin?” Conor whispered, and she could hear the fear in his voice, fear of how she would react, fear that she would turn and run.
She closed the last bit of space between them. She sensed the warmth of his body before she rose up on her tiptoes and kissed him. He froze for a moment before he caught at her, drawing her into him, against him. He made a noise deep in his throat. The sound of a man who has been clinging to a rope by his fingertips for hours, and has finally let go, abandoning himself to the fall.
To kiss him seemed as natural as the rain, and as unruly. Her kiss had been gentle, but he did not return it gently. He slanted his mouth over hers, parting her lips with a hard flick of his tongue. Hetasted of fruit and wine. His tongue curled against hers, drawing a moan out of her throat. She stretched up toward him, almost on the tips of her toes. He sucked her lower lip into his mouth, running his tongue across it, making her squirm against him.
His clothes were damp, plastered to his skin. She could feel all of him, feel that he was hard against her. She knew the physiological reasons, knew the whys and hows of it, but had not expected the way her own body would respond to his desire. Her nipples hardened against the inside of her bodice. A hot spike of wanting wound its way from her belly downward. She arched up against him, not caring about anything except that he not stop kissing her.
The rain had become a blanket, a continuous, thrumming patter, holding them inside. Making sure no one came near them. His hands dropped from her face to her body, slid roughly around her waist. She heard him curse, and then his hands were in her hair, pulling at the pins Mariam had so carefully placed there. He flung them away from him as they came free—flung them as if he hated them—hurling them to the stone floor where they clinked like coins. Her hair came down in long waves, tangled by its compression and by the humid air. He buried his hands in it with an animal growl, the strands slipping through his fingers. He kissed her temples, her cheek, kissed along her jaw, down to her throat. Kissed the racing pulse there, the evidence of her own turmoil. Brushed his lips along her collarbone.
He seemed to freeze then. Burying his face in her hair. She could hear his ragged breathing in her ear. He seemed hesitant, as he almost never did, as if he could not decide what to do next. As if he could not imagine she wanted him to continue.
She took his hands in her own, firmly guiding them. Setting them against the bodice of her gown, where it hooked up and down the front. Nothing she had ever done—not even declaring herself the Goddess Returned to the whole of the Sault—had felt as daring as this. She lifted her hands away, heard his intake of breath. Hoped he understood what she could not say aloud.
Touch me. I want you to.
The hooks melted away under his fingers, her bodice gaping open. Not hesitating now, he kissed her again, even as his hand slid under the neck of her chemise, cupping her breast in his hand. His fingers were hot against her skin, his thumb circling her nipple expertly, making her gasp into his mouth. She arched into his touch, wanting more.
She felt him smile. He walked her backward until her spine collided with a pillar. She heard him whisper,Lin, my Lin,before he bent his head and took her nipple into his mouth.
She was not prepared for the piercing arrow of desire that shot through her. She moaned, scrabbling at him, pulling the hem of his tunic free of his trousers. Her wet fingers glided over the bare expanse of his belly, silk skin stretched over hard muscle. The air smelled of lightning and she wanted him like she had never wanted anything.
He lifted his head from her breast. She could not see his expression at all, but his breath had gone harsh and uneven. He kissed her hard and deep, seizing her around the waist. Lifting her. She caught at his shoulders, bracing herself. His body pressed into hers. She could feel him shaking. He was using his body to hold her up, even as his left hand slid under her skirts, even as he touched her there, at the heart of herself.
She had only ever touched herself like this, and had not imagined what it would be like for someone else to do it. But the pleasure was like a whirlwind. It took away all other thought. She moaned helplessly against his mouth as he stroked her, circling, and the pleasure of it began to wind tight within her, a coil of intensity, tightening and tightening.
Still gripping his shoulder with one hand, she reached down with the other, undoing the buttons of his trousers. It was too dim to see anything; she worked blindly, in the dark, felt him spring free, hard against her palm. Hard and soft at the same time, skin like hot silk as she began to stroke him, operating almost entirely oninstinct, guessing what he would like—her hand wrapped around him, gliding up and down—
“Ah—Gods—Lin,” he gasped, and she felt a momentary triumph, that she had stolen his words, reduced him to incoherence. His mouth crashed against hers. She arched her hips, guided him toward her. He was lost, far beyond any hesitation, and she was glad. Her legs tightened around his waist as he drove into her.
Time seemed to stop. Lightning illuminated the sea, turning Conor’s gray eyes to silver, rimmed with the darker silver of the mask. There was pain, but she didn’t care. He was fully inside her, his lips against her throat. She could hear his desperate breathing as he held himself utterly still—for her sake, she knew, so as not to hurt her—though the effort made fine tremors run through him, his hands shaking at her waist.
She dug her hands into his hair, into the fine curling strands, black as raven’s wings, black as crow feathers. The ribbon of the mask tickled her fingers. She kissed his mouth, tasted the rain on his skin. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “Love me. I want you to.”
The noise he made in response was barely human. He drew back before sliding into her again, and she sensed he was still trying to hold himself back. To exert control over himself. She would have none of that; she wrapped her legs more tightly about him, pulling him deeper inside her. His eyes went black; she sensed she had driven him over the edge, and was glad for it. Glad for the way he gripped her hips bruisingly, glad for the way he drove into her, and that coiling feeling inside her tightened and tightened until she was sure some part of her would break apart. No book she had ever read had prepared her forthis—this debilitating, overwhelming pleasure, rising with every movement of his body against hers, and she could understand why people fought and died and wrote poetry about this. And it rose and rose until the pleasure crested and broke, arrowing through her like lightning spearing the sea.
She heard him suck in his breath as the spasms tore through her. A moment later, his mouth fastened over hers as he thrust into herone last time. She felt him break, felt the moment as he came to pieces in her arms, his fever-gasps of pleasure caught between them, and she knew he was wholly hers in this moment. That he belonged to her, to this space between and around them.
