aside the soft material of the nightshirt he wore.
She might have laughed at the oddity of that if she hadn’t been so needy, so desperate to keep touching him…and to have him awaken and touch her.
The hand on her hip squeezed and he sighed, his body flexing under hers.
Ah...there you are, my beautiful man.
He came awake in the next instant and Tyriel yelped at the suddenness as he flipped them so she lay under him. He stared at her with wide, startled eyes.
She smiled at him. “Hello.”
“Tyriel...what...how?” Shock had chased away the sleep from his eyes and he looked at her as though he feared she’d disappear from his sight.
“I don’t know.” She forced a smile and laid a hand on his chest where his heart pound like a Wildling festival drum. “Can we figure it out later? I seem to have this vague recollection of you claiming that this heart beat only for me.”
His only response was to crush his mouth to hers.
She moaned into his kiss, twining her arms around his neck only to release him a moment later so she could fist the material of his nightshirt in her hands. Breaking the kiss, she said, “Off. I want this off.”
Aryn shoved up onto his knees and went to peel it away only to pause a moment to study the fine material. He cocked a brow at her.
“Likely Alys’s doing.” She looked down at the silk covering her to her waist. Between her wiggling and Aryn’s incessant movements as he clung to her while sleeping, the gown was in a tangle around her waist. “While I’m sure my father is pleased I wasn’t in here naked with you, I doubt he had any hand in...that.”
His lips twitched as he yanked the offending material off, then came down over her. “If this is a dream...” he murmured, his lips against her neck.
“It’s not. Oh!”
He’d slid down and caught one silk-covered nipple in his mouth and the pleasure of it ripped through her, savage in its intensity.
“Aryn...” Her lashes started to close, but she forced her eyes to stay open. She didn’t want to blink, want to miss a moment of this—an impossible dream somehow made real.
“Are you attached to this gown?” Aryn murmured, kissing a path upward until he could murmur the question in her ear.
“Attached...? What? No.”
“Good.” He shoved up once more and Tyriel’s only warning was the glint in his eyes as he curled his hands in the laced-up vee of her sleeping gown. It ripped.
She was just a decade shy of her first century.
She could knock a fully grown human male across the room with one blow if she chose.
There was simply no reason for her heart to leap into a mad race at what Aryn had just done. But race, her heart did.
He curved his hands over her waist and tugged her upright, wrapping one muscled forearm around her waist to hold her against him as he brushed the remaining shreds of her sleeping down again.
Then, as his eyes blazed bright with need, he bent his head and pressed his mouth to the center of her chest.
Tyriel’s bones melted and her head fell back, spine arching as the heat of his caress turned her muscles lax.
“Now that’s a beautiful sight,” Aryn murmured.
She started to lift her head but he closed his mouth around one nipple and the raw pleasure laid her low.
Distantly, she heard a thud but it had no bearing on what was happening here and now, so she ignored it.
It was harder to ignore the next sound—crystal shattering against a stone floor.
But of them jerked in reaction, but Aryn moved far quicker as the two of them looked over to see Tyriel’s father and the Royal Consort standing in the doorway, both wide, arching doors thrown open and several servants at their back.
As Aryn yanked up a coverlet from the bed to tuck around Tyriel, she gaped at her father.
“Da! A bit of privacy would be nice! Haven’t you heard of knocking?”
Prince Lorne blinked, the look on his face one of sheer amazement.
“Knocking?” he asked in their native tongue, his voice raspy. “You have lain unmoving in this chamber for nearly a month and now you fuss at me to knock?”
Tyriel gaped at him.
Alys, her lovely face aglow with a smile, stepped up and took her consort’s arm. “Prince, perhaps we could...discuss this matter after the princess has had time to...bathe and dress.”
Lorne looked over at his consort, then back at Tyriel, and