KANE

“IWANT TO TRY SOMETHING,” Arwen breathed, as I mouthed the soft silk of her nightdress over her stomach and ran my fingers down her

slender, toned legs.

With great difficulty I lifted my mouth from her body and peered up at her. Her cheeks were still flushed from the winter snow. Rosy and feminine. Her nose a little red, too. She pushed stray hairs out of her face and I imagined what my signet ring would look like glinting on her left hand. The thought sent a near-predatory need to claim her skating across my bones.

“Mhm?” I crawled closer and trailed indulgent kisses across her warm collarbone. “My sweet wife.” I brought my mouth down to her stomach, lifting the inhibiting dress up, yanking her thin cotton undergarments down

—

“Kane.” She laughed, weaving her hands through my hair. “Did you hear me?”

Gods, I love how she says my name…

“Kane?”

I sat up, a little rattled. A little ashamed. “Of course, yeah.” I tried not to look at the way the strap of her nightdress had slipped and exposed her nipple. “What is it you want to try?”

Arwen shimmied up against the pillows and brought the thin silk strap back up, concealing her breast. I breathed more evenly.

“I’ve noticed you like to maintain control,” she said. “When we’re in bed. I think we should try the opposite.”

I recoiled, examining her.

“Just once,” she amended, as if concerned for my well-being.

But a sickening thought was clanging through my mind. You’ve done things to her she hasn’t liked. Demanded too much. Allowed your obsession with her to—

“No, no, Kane—” Arwen grasped my hands in hers, her brows pulling together urgently at whatever was bare across my face. “Not for me. I love

— I wouldn’t change—” She shook her head. “I want to do this for you. I think you might find it…freeing.”

“Sure,” I said, a little weakly, the thought of forcing myself on her still acrid on my tongue. “Whatever you want, I’m game for.”

Arwen brushed a gentle hand across my face and I closed my eyes with the touch.

“Lie down,” she instructed.

I did so, and fluffed a pillow behind me to my comfort before spreading myself wide across the bed. My shirt had come off the minute we’d crashed into the bedroom, and my pants as well. I was bare save for my breeches.

Arwen’s hair looked like caramel in the glimmer of soft candlelight. She moved to sit on her knees between my legs and ran her fingers over my thighs tortuously slowly. When she drifted a single finger across my low waist, I bucked up toward her.

She released a devious smile—a flash of white in the night-covered room. “Must I tether you to this bed, my king?”

Gods have mercy. “I’ll be good.”

Arwen seated herself more comfortably between my legs and brought her hand up to her breast. My cock tensed as she squeezed, her cheeks flushing, that evil little strap slipping down her shoulder once more. Her hand was so small, cupping herself. So delicate as she rubbed her own nipple softly. I made a low noise I didn’t recognize.

My mind blanked as she brought her other hand underneath the hem of the silky fabric. I could only imagine how her fingers brushed between her

legs.

I lay there helplessly as she circled in no rush at all, her breaths a little ragged. The only contact her folded legs between my own. Her eyes had shut, her beautiful lips parted, and I could hear the sound of her arousal. The wet, slick noises as she played with herself for me. I needed to drag my tongue across that wetness more than I needed my heart to keep beating.

And the fucking useless nightdress—I’d shred it with my teeth. “Take it off,” I said roughly.

“You’re not supposed to be making demands,” Arwen said, eyes fluttering open.

“I’m a little beside myself.” An attempt at a joke, but it came out all too sober.

Arwen, flushed by her own ministrations, obliged, pulling the silk fabric up and over her head.

And the view…Exquisite. On her knees, fully bare, those heaving breasts pointed and full. Flushed cheeks and ripe, ready center glistening as she spread her legs wider for me. Arwen watched me study her, my breath husky and uneven.

My restraint was eroding. My erection painful and pleading for some relief. I was lightheaded, unable to bear another minute, another second, when I could see clearly her own need dripping down her smooth thighs.

You need to wind down. You are practically hissing your breaths, you lascivious bastard.

As if she could tell the pain I was in, Arwen pulled me free of my breeches and my cock sprang forth, swollen and heavy and beading moisture from the head.

“So beautiful,” she murmured, appraising me.

“You have no idea,” I said, watching her wet, round lips part and her tongue swipe across them.

My body twitched with ruinous need, the desire, and the difficulty of staying still, oscillating across me. Arwen didn’t seem to care. She parted herself with one hand and ran her now-soaking fingers across that spot she craved. A soft moan slipped from her lips.

The sound that came out of me was crude. Debased. My mind—empty as she trailed her hand lower and slid a finger inside herself.

“Dear Gods,” I swore.

Arwen drew the finger out and dipped it back in, wetness clinging to her hand. My mouth watered. “Please,” I breathed. “I need to taste you.”

All control, all dignity abandoned me—I’d take a beating twice over to lick her clean.

She only withdrew her finger again, and after a moment of thought, leaned forward to bring the hand to me. Her slickness shone on her fingers in the candlelight, her eyes molten and dark with pleasure.

My mind fragmented. I couldn’t think past my pulse as it hammered. “May I?”

Arwen only nodded, squirming a bit at the unquenched desire I knew ached between her legs.

Possessive, savage need sent my cock throbbing as I wrapped my lips around her delicate, silken finger and sucked. Her heady taste altered something in my body. I might have been groaning as I held her dainty hand and shoved it deeper into my mouth, licking indecently between her fingers. If she choked me with them I’d probably come.

Arwen nearly lost herself in her moan. She withdrew her fingers and placed a single soft kiss against my sternum. My fists swallowed as much bedsheet as they could muster. The yearning to touch her again was more powerful than anything…I couldn’t take much more of this…I’d erupt from my own body soon. I needed to douse myself in her.

Light honeysuckle filled my nose and my mouth watered as she licked down my chest, stopping at my hip bone to drag her teeth across my low abdomen. Her hair fell across my cock, featherlight.

“Cruelty…this is cruelty.”

My skin was too tight on my body. My heart careening toward some kind of combustion.

“Is it?” She hummed, her tongue licking up and down the inside of my thighs. “I don’t think so…”

I couldn’t form words as Arwen climbed atop me and wrapped her hand around my cock to guide me into her.

My groan was as rough as gravel. Breathless, from both the sight of her, parting as she pushed my aching length inside, and the sensation. Perfect, silken, mind-melting tightness gripped me.

It might have ended with Arwen’s sweet whimper. The carnal noise as she rocked her hips—that alone might have been enough to finish this little game and send me up and on top of her, flipping her to her back and pounding into her body like a madman. Drawing climax after climax from her, coaxing her through the savage waiting, through the begging, through the need…

But she had asked for this. And I would not be selfish with her.

So I surrendered, shutting my eyes, allowing her to move herself at whatever pace she wanted. Arwen rode me slowly, her warm slickness enveloping me. Each arch upward and lowering down, delicious and maddening and more than I could stand.

She quickened her pace. Milking me, whining a bit as she ground herself closer. I’d memorized enough of her perfect noises to know she was minutes from climax. She leaned forward, gripping my arms, fingernails jutting into my biceps, her face inches from my own, and met my gaze.

It was moments like that—the mere latching of her olive eyes onto mine almost sending me over the edge—in which I realized how utterly at this woman’s mercy I was. She could have told me to throw myself off our balcony. I would have been plummeting through winter air before she’d finished the command.

The thought at one time might’ve terrified me. The powerlessness of loving someone with all that I had and then some. I loved Arwen with all of myself, and then all the things I hoped to be, too. But tonight, that love only made me feel rooted. Tethered to someone. Bound to them, and bound to this life because of it.

And it was that connection—the way our souls had at some point become one shared life—that racked through my bones and sang in my blood as her hot breath fanned over my mouth. As I licked her lips slowly—

the taste of them like honey and sunlight. Paradise and my thorough undoing. And then I couldn’t resist any longer.

I lifted my head and angled my mouth against hers. Wild and inelegant, our lips twined, my hands still fisted in the sheets, which I’d ripped clean through at some point—

“You can—” she choked out. “You can touch me, now. If you want—”

Thank the fucking Gods.

My hands shot to her body, her soft skin like warmth incarnate after eons of brutal winter. I bucked up into her—barreling, frenzied—I couldn’t feel enough of her. Her hips, her breasts, her hands, grasping clumsily for my own, her cheeks and delicate chin and the spot between her legs that I circled and rolled and—

As if she hadn’t realized it was happening, Arwen’s climax tore through her. Ruthless contractions pulled her innermost muscles tight. She sobbed, racked by pleasure, full of me and whimpering my name in breathy, agonized, pretty little moans—

I came with a vicious roar, my hands full of Arwen’s soft flesh and long hair. Thrusting up as white-hot, exquisite ecstasy spun up my spine and down my legs, spurting out of me and into her.

Arwen collapsed on top of me, heaving.

Reduced to nothing but panting breaths, I tried to re-form my fractured mind around the eternity of pleasure that had enveloped me.

After a long while, Arwen said, “Did you like it?” “Very much so.”

I could almost hear her grin, and found myself doing the same.

We had only slept together a handful of times—one of the greatest tragedies known to man—and yet in such a brief period, she’d come to understand something so deeply personal about myself, I hadn’t even known it. And I’d been bedding women this way for years. “You’re a perceptive little bird, aren’t you?”

Arwen nodded against my chest and I laughed. “Did you like it?” I asked.

“Yes,” she admitted. “Not every time. Mostly I like when you…”

Heat simmered in my veins. “When I what?” I could hear the growl already taking root in my voice. I was useless around this woman.

“You know. When you handle me.”

I barked a laugh. “Good Gods, I hope that’s not what it is I’m doing.” “But,” she said, “I did like it. It was empowering.”

“You are always powerful.”

Arwen nodded noncommittally against my chest.

“That thing you do, with your lighte…” The image of Arwen’s bright white fire, blinding and scorching and nimble, soared through my mind.

“Sunfire,” she murmured, and I knew her eyes were closed. “In my head I call it sunfire.”

“It’s not anything I’ve seen before.” “Really?”

“Really. That sunfire…it’s just like you. Beautiful and dangerous. Soft but unbreakable. Strength and vulnerability in one.” I ran my fingers tenderly along her back. “It makes sense that it’s the embodiment of your lighte.”

I was a lucky bastard. I’d fallen in love with a woman who opened up my mind in ways I’d never imagined. Who showed me how strength could be found in tenderness, or how the vulnerability of giving yourself over to someone could be a mighty, fortifying force. I’d fallen in love with a woman who was my friend. A light in pitch-darkness. A bird to guide me home.

Never mind that war was looming and our miserable fates were sealed and we’d already lost so much. Never mind that we might never truly be married. I was lucky just to be holding her tonight.

For a while she said nothing, only nuzzled her head closer to mine. Worming her way into the crease of my head and shoulder she called my nook. Eventually, I wondered if she’d fallen asleep.

Until she asked, “When should we be married?” “Tonight?” I laughed faintly. “Tomorrow?”

Arwen rolled from my chest and onto her side. “You’re right.” “I am?”

She sat up. “Tomorrow. Before we go back to Solaris. I want to live in this moment. Right now. Who knows what’s coming…Like you said earlier, we deserve all the joy we can get these days.”

“Did I say that?” It didn’t sound like me.

“No,” she said, undeterred. “But it’s what you meant.”

I grinned, basking in the soft glow of her positivity. “I love it in there.” Arwen’s eyes narrowed. “Where?”

When I placed a finger between her brows, her bright smile lit the room like sunlight.