Page 34 of Traitor Son

Silently, he sat down behind her, lifting the end of the thick plait that streamed down her back. The maids had put her hair back for the night, but he wanted to feel it in his fingers and see it fall in a curtain around her.

“May I?” he asked, plucking at the ribbon, and saw her tentative nod.

Untying the ribbon at the end, he pulled it loose, and the plait came apart like skeins of silk, so long and luxuriant that it coiled around her on the floor, shining in umber and maple.

“What are you reading?” he asked, maneuvering her slender body into the shelter of his own.

“The Will Immanent.”She clutched the book as if she thought he might take it from her. Her dark lashes lowered, hiding her tawny eyes, and he couldn’t resist tugging her hair aside to bare her beautiful shoulders, brushing his lips over her skin. Just a little taste.

“What’s it about?”

“Theology,” she said. “About how the divine manifests in the world and how the will of men conflicts with the will of the divine.”

“Oh?” Her chemise was loose around her shoulders, a wide opening that bared the back of her neck and several inches of her spine, the contours of fragile bones and smooth, light muscle under skin like sugar.

“It’s interesting,” she was saying. “Like this:If we assume the divine infinite as a perfect presence, then what purpose has the divine for creation? If the divine is a perfect presence manifest in all things, what is the purpose of imperfect beings? The divine is the divine, its supremacy is innate. Therefore, the contest of wills is the will of the divine.”

It had been a very long time since Remin had a tutor.

“What does that mean?” he asked, more interested in what she would say than what the book said.

“Well, I haven’t read the arguments yet,” she began, “but I think it’s saying that if there is a divine presence like the stars, then the fact that they created the world and put people in it that contradict their will is proof that they want the conflict to happen. If you were a god and you created me, and you didn’t crush me like a bug when I argued with you, it must be because you want me to argue with you.”

“And they tried to convince me you were simple,” he said, after a moment.

“Well, that’s just what I think,” she said, embarrassed, and looked up into his eyes as he took the book from her and set it aside.

“I want you to stop thinking,” he murmured, and covered her mouth with his.

* * *

In the Daitian cosmogony, there was a demon of desire that seduced women with such sweet words, his love-talk lingered in their ears forever afterward, until they starved their hearts out with longing.

His Grace wasn’t much for talking, but he certainlylookedlike he could be a demon of desire.

Stretched out on the rug by the fire with his jerkin undone and his boots kicked partway under the bed, Ophele couldn’t understand what someone like him could possibly want with someone like her. He was so big, so male, so serious and forbidding.Husband.In what mad world was Remin Grimjaw nibbling on her fingertips? And why did shelikeit?

“Come here,” he said, pulling her to him to torment her some more. She sprawled over his chest as he kissed her, his hand framing her face so the rough pads of his fingers brushed her cheek, curling back into her hair as if he were learning the shape of her bones.

Ophele still felt shy when he kissed her, uncertain what she should do, how she should respond. It wasn’t at all what she had imagined it would be, neither the chaste kisses from the romances she read or the fearful and repellant act she had imagined in a loveless marriage. Heteased her with the slow motions of his mouth, drawing her in like a whirlpool, slow and dizzy and sucking her under before she knew where she was. He bit her lips. One hand moved stealthily over her body to cup her breast and when she gasped, he stroked his tongue into her mouth, a diversionary tactic to precipitate an invasion.

This was not chaste. It didn’t feel loveless.

But he didn’t love her.

“I wonder if you’ll ever tell me what’s going on behind those eyes,” he said against her lips, making her blink in incomprehension, and then he crushed her mouth under his own, his big hand gripping the back of her neck to eliminate all hope of escape. He kissed her as if he were drinking her down, the muscles of his neck and jaw working as his tongue plundered her. There were sounds to the kiss, liquid and hungry as the sea, the sound of his heavy breathing like the roaring of waves.

He sat up. Somehow she was in his lap with her arms around his thick neck, feeling his hands sliding over her body from her shoulders to her thighs, eager caresses that made her feel as if she was melting. When he lifted his head, he looked so handsome he almost didn’t seem real, and she thoughtlessly lifted a hand to touch his broad cheek, her thumb brushing the swooping scar over his cheekbone before she realized what she was doing.

She jerked her hand back.

“You can…you can touch me,” he said, low. “Ophele…”

He closed his eyes at her tentative caress. The corners of his eyes tilted upward; she hadn’t noticed that before, an almost exotic curve at their outer edge. After everything they had been through over the past few days, it wasn’t quite so embarrassing to touch him, to feel the stubble on his jaw and the line of his straight nose, the bristle of his thick black brows. Like a huge dog, he pushed his face into her palm and made her giggle.

“I won’t hurt you,” he promised, stern-faced but with a twinkle in his eyes. She touched him with her fingertips, brushed the grim line of his jaw with her thumb, and even wondered what it would feel like to stroke his rough cheek with her smooth one.

Thatwas a little too bold. Her face flushed.

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