The Consolation Prize (Brides of Karadok #3) - Alice Coldbreath Page 0,118

he could look into her eyes as he stroked deep inside her. “You’re so beautiful to me, Una,” he shook his head slightly. “I should have told you that before now, but I didn’t know how to say it to someone, when I truly meant it.” He looked frustrated.

“And it’s not just the way you look. It’s who you are. You ought to be bitter and distrusting, but you’re not.” His words broke off as his voice thickened. “You always think the best of me and defend me, even when every impulse must tell you I’m undeserving. You make me want to deserve your good opinion, Una. To deserve you.”

Una bit her lip, her breath coming fast. Was he telling her that he loved her? Or merely esteemed her above other women? Or was it much the same thing? It was hard to concentrate when their bodies were joined, and he was moving in that way against her. She stroked her hands over his back, feeling his rippling muscles, as her eyes fluttered closed.

As she lifted her legs to wrap them about his hips, she felt the dull ache at her waist where Waleran’s knife had grazed her skin. Despite that slight discomfort, the pleasure was coiling low in her belly and climbing higher by the moment.

“Una,” Armand groaned. “I want to hear your voice, my love.”

“You do deserve it,” she told him breathlessly. “No one could suit me so well as you. From the start, you gave me everything I needed. Every time.”

He lifted his head. “I did?”

She nodded and she felt him pulse deep inside her.

“I can’t hold off,” he groaned, his hips thrusting against hers vigorously. “Come with me.”

Una’s eyes flew open as she blazed and caught fire and convulsing around him. Armand held her gaze, his own turning molten as their passion consumed one another. Afterward, the only sound in their room was their mingled panting breath. They lay in a close embrace, for several long comfortable moments, before Armand started kissing her again, very tenderly.

“You have the loveliest mouth, Una. I’ve thought so many times, and this is the first time it has occurred to me to tell you so.” He stroked her mouth with his thumb. “It’s this bottom lip that’s the culprit. It’s so full and plump and distracting.” Una laughed, but ended on a wince. “What is it?” he asked quickly.

She was forced then to admit to the scratches at her waist from the knife point. Many exclamations followed and Armand was roused to fetch a washing cloth and minister to it tenderly.

“It’s nothing,” Una protested, but Armand would not be consoled and desperate to distract him, she was forced to cast about for a change of subject.

“You did say it to me once before,” she confessed. “That you found me beautiful, I mean.”

He lifted his face from his solemn contemplation of the series of tiny red crisscrosses against her skin. “I did?”

“On our wedding night.”

She had caught his attention now. “Tell me.”

“You lifted your head off the pillow and said, ‘How did you make yourself beautiful?’ ” Una recalled as Armand flushed. “It was the nicest compliment anyone ever paid me,” she responded stoutly. “For you looked so surprised and sincere when you said it. It quite touched me.”

Armand was silent a moment. “Gods why am I so hopeless around you, wife?” he groaned at last, flinging away the cloth and stretching out beside her to adjust the pillows behind them. “I swear, my address is meant to be quite polished, but around you it deserts me completely!”

Una hid her smile against his shoulder. Strange to say, she quite liked that thought. “Maybe because for once, you are being genuine,” she teased. He did not look mollified, though one hand started to stroke up and down her thigh.

“Even drunk I must have noticed these long legs,” he murmured. “And how good they feel tangled with mine.”

“You like my legs?”

“Very much. I never appreciated tall women before you.” He squeezed her rear. “I noticed your nice plump thighs when I woke bleary-eyed the next morn, and your sweetly rounded backside. I was annoyed I could not remember our tryst.”

“Oh?” she was somewhat startled by this unexpected inventory of feminine charms. Why had she thought men appreciated things like dainty ankles and pretty hands, she wondered dazedly? Or perhaps Armand was just a different type of male.

“And I very nearly embarrassed myself at that first inn, when you bent over to wash in