Page 86 of Heart of the Shadow King

His lips part. His is the face of a starved man gazing upon a forbidden feast. War wages in his soul, raging and resistant. I cannot bear it. I long to reach out, to clasp his head and draw him to my bosom, to guide his lips to my trembling flesh. Instead, I twist in my shackles, gripping the chains just above my wrists, and arch my body toward him. Offering myself. Offering everything I am. Every hope, every longing, every need.

He bows his head. The warmth of his breath blazes across my skin. His tongue emerges from between his lips, tracing a long, leisurely stroke along my breastbone. I jolt in my chains, then press toward him. He strokes again, turns his head slightly. Uses his teeth to pull the little remaining bodice away. Then he takes my nipple between his lips, teasing it with the tip of his tongue in a featherlight dance. I gasp, sensation bursting through my veins as I writhe, shifting from one foot to the other. “Vor! Oh, Vor!” I whimper. My body is so flushed, heat threatens to evaporate the water beading my flesh.

Vor pulls away. I cry out wordlessly at the loss of his lips, his tongue. Deaf to my need, he turns away, kneels. Drags the bucket a few inches closer, swirls his cloth, squeezes the excess. I crane my neck, staring down at the top of his head, struggling for something, anything I might say. He catches hold of my ankle, lifting my foot from the damp cell floor. He’s washed my feet before—I remember it so vividly, that moment by the lake. He bathed my wounds with such tenderness then, it had filled my chest with a warm glow.

This is not like that. He’s quick, almost harsh in his movements, clutching first one foot then the other in a grip tighter than these manacles. By the time he’s done, he’s breathing harder, a steady growl of sound in his chest. He’s crouched before me, one knee on the ground, the other up as he balances. Affording me a clear view of the swell against the seam of his trousers.

He releases my second foot, but I do not set it back on the ground. I reach out, rest my toe against his inner thigh. He catches his breath, turning his face up to me. His eyes flash dangerously, but I do not look away. Slowly, I glide my foot along the muscled length of his leg until I meet the warm hardness of his groin. Vor groans. His head tilts back, his eyelids dropping shut as I rub back and forth, feeling him harden in response to my touch. I may be the one in chains, but in that moment, I feel powerful. Dangerous.

His hand shoots up under my skirts, clamping down hard on my calf. I startle, choking on a scream. He opens his eyes, glaring up at me. His teeth flash in a snarl. “Sorceress,” he growls. “Would you torture me even now?”

I can’t breathe. Not with his hand gripping my leg, driving all my senses wild. I stare down at him over the loosened laces of my bodice. My pale breast gleams with beads of moisture. Heat floods my center, the pressure intensifying by the moment.

“I am no sorceress,” I whisper softly. “I’m your wife.”

“You would break me apart.” He grimaces. His grip tightens painfully. “You would enter my mind, steal my will, tear me to pieces.”

“No, Vor. I could never—” I break off with a cry as his hand slides up my legs, fingers trailing along the delicate skin of my thigh to my buttocks. His fingers dig hard into my soft flesh even as his other hand reaches under my skirts and presses the dripping cloth against my core. He rubs back and forth, driving me wild even as I drove him. I moan, move my hips, frantic to make friction against that cloth, against his fingers as he cleanses me. Droplets of water roll down my legs, pool at my feet.

“You’re wet,” Vor growls. He drops the cloth and runs his finger between my soft folds. “Hot and wet.”

I whimper again, hips gyrating. His finger moves, stoking my fire brighter. I twist in my chains, my eyelashes fluttering, ready to give in to everything he calls to life within me. But just at the last, excruciating moment, he withdraws his hand. “What are you doing?” I gasp, choking on my own frustrated need.

His mouth curls in a bitter line. “I should leave you like this.”

“No, Vor!”

“I should leave and walk away now. While I still can.”

“Please, Vor, I’m begging you—”

A shuddering cry bursts from my lips as his hands grip my hips and yank me to him where he kneels. His head vanishes underneath my skirts, his nose pressed against my newly washed flesh. I wrap my leg around his shoulders, bucking my hips, angling toward him.

His mouth finds me. His tongue is hot and slick as it moves against my core. I grip the chains with both hands, pull up higher, and wrap my other leg around his neck. I lean back, head lolling, damp hair trailing behind me. The links creak as I rock back and forth in time to his rhythm. “Vor! Vor!” I moan, his name a song on my lips.

I feel it then—chambers of my heart which had locked down tight open wide as streams of spirit rush through. My spirit. His. Meeting in a great, crashing wave of power, flooding my senses, flooding my world. I receive his anger, his rage, his horror. I feel his lust, his craving, his need. Every hot and desperate thing. And I want it. All of it. All of him, both pleasure and pain.

Inferno heat erupts inside me. Waves radiate from my center into every fiber of my body and being. I cry out, my voice trapped within these close, small walls.

But beyond the walls—

—beyond all warding and blocks—

—through layers of lead and guilt and fear—

—theurzulresponds. A chorus of a million voices, vibrating in the walls, the ceiling, up through the floor. Singing in time with my own quaking body.

A song of power and destruction.

A song of renewal.

36

VOR

Am I even now lost in her spell?

Surely there can be no other explanation for this intense longing infusing my soul. The feel of her, the touch of her, the taste of her . . . she fills my heart, my senses, driving everything else from me. There is no room in me now for anything but her. Faraine. My wife.

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