Page 83 of Shadow Queen
It was enough to push him over. His body betrayed him and moved before his mind could stop him. He swept his arm around her and covered her mouth with his. Tahla kissed him back with a hunger that drove a frenzy within. Her body moved against him, demanding more than a kiss. She pulled up his shirt, and he broke from her lips long enough to let her take it from him. Then they collided again.
While he’d never touched a woman, he wasn’t ignorant in ways of the flesh. Primal desire whispered in his ear, instinctively telling his body exactly what to do. He ran his hands over her hips, down the backs of her thighs, and lifted her against him. She wrapped her legs around his waist.
Caspian walked her to the bed as she peeled her dress off over the top of her head. She wore nothing underneath, and the feel of her skin against his drove an animalistic desperation to escape the rest of his clothing. He laid her back onto the bed, not knowing quite how he managed to shuck off his boots and breeches and find himself naked over her. Not that he cared for how. The warmth of her body was intoxicating, and he was rapt in it.
He moved between her thighs, but as she positioned him to slip inside her, he paused.
“What’s the matter?” she panted.
He shook his head softly. “Nothing,” he whispered, trying to temper his need. “I just want to look at you for a moment.”
Her large brown eyes moved back and forth between his. How could any man not be swallowed into their depths? Everything about her was perfect, even her imperfections. Caspian had never thought he’d be pulled from the values he’d held all his life, but it didn’t feel like he was acting against them. Something more than temptation called to him now.
Slowly, he brought his mouth back to hers. He slipped his hand behind the nape of her neck and—gently, tenderly—held her to him. He let his lips bare his heart. When he pulled back again, her eyes held a look he didn’t understand.
“That’s a lover’s way to kiss a woman,” she whispered.
“Then I’ve revealed myself.”
She shook her head slowly. “Don’t say things like that.”
“I don’t want to just madly take you like this, Tahla.”
She raised a brow. “Is this where you deny yourself pleasures of the flesh again, and we spend the night drunk on each other’s words?”
“No,” he whispered, “this is where I decide I’m yours.” He had been since the moment he first laid eyes on her. “But I want to give myself to you, not lose myself in you.”
She reached up and brushed his cheek with the back of her fingers. “I told you not to say things like that. I can’t love you, Northman. I cannot be yours.” Her voice held a twinge of regret.
“I know,” he said sadly, and bent his head to kiss her again. It didn’t stop him from being hers.
She kissed him back, and he tightened his arms around her. Tahla reached down to guide him back to her, and he sank inside her. They both gasped and lay still in the silence. His body begged to move, to thrust, to fill his need, but he stayed. He wanted to feel her, to know every part of her.
Slowly, she started to rock her hips against him, and he matched her rhythm. They moved together as one. Never had he felt so close to someone. He pushed himself deeper. His need for her was beyond the want of the flesh, beyond desire. He loved this woman.
They alternated between love and desire—between moments of feverish build and the slow of relishing one another.
As they moved, he felt her hunger for him grow. She shifted and rolled them so she could take the top, and she straddled him with her hands spread wide against his chest. Her breaths came faster now, and the thrust of her hips more fervent. He worried he might not last until her peak, but as her body clenched and bucked around him, he let his own climax come.
He was no stranger to the pleasure of release, but with Tahla it came deeper, richer, etching her mark into his innermost self. The fall of a thousand rains stippled across his skin, and the hold of a thousand chains bound him to her.
She collapsed on top of him, and they both lay panting. Caspian wrapped his arms around her and mouthed gentle kisses along her shoulder. He could stay like this, with her, forever.
Tahla pushed herself up to sit but didn’t pull free. Her warmth still surrounded him. She brushed a lock of hair from his brow.
So many things he wanted to tell her, but most were confessions of his heart—things he couldn’t ask from her in return.
“I fear for you going to the Wild,” she said.
She feared for him. He smiled. “Don’t. I’ve lived a life to be envied, and I’m grateful. I accept my fate whenever it may come.”
“I don’t accept it,” she told him. “Come back to me, Northman.” And she leaned forward to kiss him again.
Chapter twenty-four
ThejourneytotheWild felt endless. It took longer than what it would have taken to reach Mercia. The flatlands of the Horsemen tribes gave way to rocky hills, slowing their pace. Norah found herself looking northeast, knowing Mercia wasn’t far beyond the horizon. Her heart longed to change her course, ride to her grandmother, her kingdom, her home. But they journeyed on.
The Wild came into view as any other forest, ordinary and unremarkable. Norah knew it was anything but. They stopped at the edge of the tree line and dismounted. Sephir tossed her head, and Norah put a hand on the mare’s neck to calm her.
