her against him. So many times before, they’d sat in this intimate way to talk, to kiss.
And it seemed that talking was what she intended now. “I think you have learned very well the games royals play,” she said. “You are simply not willing to play them.”
With a rough laugh, he told her, “There is one I’d like to play now. Lady Junica asked me to find out how you survived the wraiths.”
Lizzan went still. Uncertainty crossed her expression. “Why does she wish to know?”
“So she can tell the Krimatheans. She says you evaded the answer before.”
She gave a troubled sigh. “So I did.”
“Now she wants me to seduce the answer from you.”
A sputtering laugh cleared the shadows from her face. “Truly?”
“Truly.”
“And how would you do it?” Grinning, she leaned closer until her mouth was but a breath away from his. “With delicate kisses and poetry? Were there lessons in seduction given to the palace, too? Did you avoid them or attend?”
“No lessons,” he rasped against her lips. “I know what to do with you.”
“Once upon a time, you did.” She brought her hand forward to cup his jaw, her thumb slipping over his bottom lip, drawn back tight over gritted teeth as he bore the onslaught of his need. “What would you do with me now?”
“All that I have dreamed these many years with my cock in my fist,” he told her, his voice as harsh as her breathing suddenly became. Always it had been thus, that Lizzan responded to his words and his need as if they were another touch. “I would lick at your throat until you were begging for my mouth on yours.”
“That has always been a good start with us,” she said huskily, the pulse racing beneath her skin. “But if you kissed me, you could not tell me what you would do next.”
“Over and over, I would taste your mouth until we were both dizzy, until your eyes could not longer see and you could only cling to me.”
“I am not so weak.”
“I would make you so, Lizzan.”
She did not argue that. Breathlessly she asked, “And then?”
“Then you would most likely complain how you needed and ached here.” His palms slid up her sides to cup the softness of her breasts, half covered but unconcealed by the water. She arched her back, gasping as his thumbs swept over the hardened peaks, and her reaction sent hot pulses of lust the length of his shaft. “These baths are supposed to heal every pain. Yet I think only my mouth could ease yours.”
Her laugh jiggled the softness filling his hands. “I think you are right.”
“So I would worship your tits with my tongue and teeth.” He bent his head so that she could feel the warmth of each word against the wetness of her skin, jealously watching the water lap at her nipples with her every panting breath. Despite the heat, the tips of her breasts had tightened into rosy buds, and the evidence of her arousal pushed his own toward agony. “Let me, Lizzan.”
“Once,” she breathed.
Only once. With his gaze on hers, Aerax lifted her breast and lightly closed his teeth over her nipple, his tongue teasing the trapped flesh as he gently tugged. By her moan, the pinch of his teeth was all pleasure and no pain.
“That I would do,” he told her gruffly, aching for another taste but she had said once. “Until you could bear it no more.”
“Aerax.” His name became a needy whine and her hips began a helpless rocking. “I cannot bear it now.”
“But you would. For so long.” Gripping her rounded ass and stopping those torturous movements, he pulled her closer, burying his face in her throat. “As you did when we hunted the falt.”
Whose white pelt they would lay beneath them on their moon night. But it had still been a midsummer day when they’d hunted the falt, and they had not even completely hauled the enormous tusked beast onto the lakeshore before they were upon each other. Barely restrained he’d been then, too, as he’d kissed her until she’d clung to him. Then he’d worshiped her breasts, sucking at her nipples until she’d been nearly sobbing with the pleasure of it.
“More seed have I spilled over that memory than any other,” he told her now, his mouth skimming the curve of her neck. “How you grabbed hold of my hair and shoved me to my knees, then pushed my mouth to your cunt and told me to