Page 68 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

I had some experience in that regard… withhumanmen, of normal sizes and shapes. Losing my virginity had been briefly painful, and then rather tepid, but then, I’d lost it to one of the Cathedral hostlers, when we were both nineteen and utterly inexperienced. The next one had been a bowyer’s apprentice, a shy man who made up for the lack of wild passion with technical experience.

So I understood men and what sex entailed. What I had no experience with was the pulsing member behind me, which felt too big to reasonably fit inside a human being, and even without touching it, I could feel something strange about the shape.

Maybe it was the fear of his thirst combined with the warmth of his body to inspire the sudden jolt of lust, but I was… curious.

I wanted to know if his cock would be silky and heated over the hardness, if I could fit my fingers around him, what the strange shape of it was.

If he could even fit in me at all. If he would touch the rest of me as carefully as he held my hands.

I licked my lips, my lungs suddenly feeling shallow and airless, and prepared myself to make my desire and curiosity clear, to at least ask my husband what he was hiding about his body—

Bane drew in a hissing breath as I moved, and his hand tensed around mine.

With a smooth motion he pulled away, cold air hitting my back with all the pleasure of exposing myself to a winter rain.

“I wasn’t attempting to hint at things you’re not ready for,” he said gruffly, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I can wait.”

I scrambled to pull my dress closer around myself, feeling the outrage of a soaked cat to be ripped from the comfort of the nest so abruptly. Not only that, but the icy air brought me back to myself—if I had started something, would it only be sex?

Or would he want to feed?

If all my skin was exposed, if he lost any control… for the same reason I felt desire, I also felt fear. He was too strong to be stopped.

The ripple of lust became a pool of dread. I reached for my journal, then I stopped and really looked at him.

His shoulders had risen, the broad curve of his back displaying the sharp nubs of his spine as he gazed at the floor.

He was defensive… because of me. Because I’d run from him the first night he’d tried to touch me, completely rejecting his advances.

Ihad inspired this apprehension in him; it was terrible to see a creature like Bane, so self-assured in every other respect, look as though he were expecting me to scream at him or slap him away.

Swallowing a sudden burst of self-loathing, I pressed my palm to his shoulder, clambering on my knees across the mountain of blankets until we sat side by side.

Let me find new clothes, I signed, gesturing to the brocade left in a pile on the floor.And I’ll come find you again.

Bane watched my hands move, and my heart ached at the wariness in his eyes. I got up to grab my journal and found the last page I’d written on.

I’d like you to spend some of today with me, if you can, I wrote.I’ll go put new clothes on, and if you could keep me company for breakfast, I’d like that. I won’t keep you from your duties, but I feel that I haven’t seen you as much as I’d like.

He read over my shoulder, his breath ruffling my hair, and I felt some of the tension leave him.

“Oh, we’re going to spend the day together,” he said, smiling a little, some of the light in his gaze displacing the wariness. “I have something I want to give you.”

You’ve already given me too much. I arched a brow, tapping the end of my pen against my sentence to emphasize it. I was a servant living like a queen. Giving me anything more would practically be a crime.

“As the Lord of the Rift,Iget to make the rules on what constitutes ‘too much’.” He was grinning openly now, and I kept my eyes firmly on his face. As much as I feared the bite of those fangs, I couldn’t divert my curiosity about the rest of his body, and the last thing I wanted was to drive him away or… or make him think I was appalled at what I saw.

So I rolled my eyes and wrote.As Lady of the Rift, don’t I get a say in this?

“Not today, you don’t. Try again tomorrow, but I don’t think you’ll want to.”

Now a different kind of curiosity was piqued.What is it?

Bane rose, stretching, the muscles of his back rippling. I looked down for a moment, trying to hide the faint flush in my cheeks. He pulled one of the oddly-tailored shirts from a wardrobe, and I only looked up once he’d pulled it on and leaned over to read my words.

“It’s a surprise.” He held out a hand, and I took it. “I’ll walk you to your chambers for your morning ablutions, my lady. And then the rest of your day will be fully monopolized by yours truly.”

He lifted me from the bed and I gathered up the brocade, pulling it on with unseemly haste, but I very much wanted to get the dressing part of the day over with so I could move on to the important things.

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