Page 135 of Stardust Child

“Remin?!”

His Grace was coming quickly up the stairs and into the hallway, and Mionet turned just in time to see the white blur of the duchess in her chemise, racing out of the dressing room and flinging herself into the tall man’s arms, nearly sobbing with joy.

“Oh, Remin, Remin!”

“I’m sorry I’m late,” he said as he caught her, lifting her off her feet altogether and burying his face in her hair. “Oh, wife, how I missed you…”

It was only polite to look away. Such an excess of emotion was unseemly. And a moment later, the door to the bedchamber banged shut and locked with a definitiveclick.

Thatwas how a Segoile stage romance ended. Mionet pressed her lips together and went to clean up the dressing table.

* * *

“You’re all right? You’re really all right?” Ophele asked between kisses as Remin carried her across the room, pushing back against his chest to verify the lack of blood. She had been imagining all manner of horrors ever since nightfall.

“I will prove it.” Remin sat her on the bed and bent to give her a kiss so deep and searing that it burned every thought from her mind. Distantly, she was aware that he was disrobing, breaking the kiss just long enough to pull his shirt over his head.

“I didn’t…see,” she said against his lips, and gasped as he tore her chemise from hem to neck.“Remin!”

“I want you,” he breathed, dragging her back onto the mattress with a sinuous roll of his big body. His skin was like ice, his hair plastered to his head from the rain outside, but his tongue was warm when he bent his head to lick up her belly. Ophele shuddered.

“You’re so cold,” she said, pulling him to her, urging him above her. “We have to get you warm…”

It was hot inside her. She couldn’t tear her eyes from his as he pressed urgently against her, already hard, his hips rolling up to slide himself back and forth against the slim saddle between her legs, coaxing slippery desire from her. Once, twice, and a third time, a teasing preparation, and she was looking straight into his black gaze when he pushed, caught, and slid inside her.

“I’m home,” he said hoarsely, and his mouth covered hers.

He was home. Ophele wrapped her arms around him, wrapped her legs around him, and held him to her. It was all so familiar, his scent, the way he moved, she even knew the feel of him under her fingers, the roll of his muscles and the flat gouges and slices of scar tissue that patterned his body. She knew him in the dark, she would have known him anywhere, even from just the sound of his deep voice as he gasped his pleasure. With every sense, she drew him in and felt as if her world was whole again.

“Ahhh…haaa…” he panted and bent his head, crushing her mouth under his. “You’re taking me…sodeep…”

“I missed you.” There were tears on her cheeks. She shook them away impatiently, her voice quavering between octaves as his hips smacked into hers. “Ohhhhh, harder, harder!”

This was a feast after a long famine, and Remin devoured her. She felt his teeth, she felt his tongue, she felt the hungry grip of his hands as they rocked together, feeding something worse than hunger. The rolling motion of his body was like a kiss between their skins. Further he drove into her, straining into her depths, his long thighs stroking ceaselessly against hers.

His breath was hot now. It burned her throat as he panted, faster and faster, pounding her cries of pleasure from her until at last he filled her with that rushing white heat that made her mind haze, and her body sing with completion.

And then they lay together in a tangle of limbs, and Ophele laid her head on his chest to hear the deep, regular thumping of his heart.

“I’m so glad you’re safe,” she said, almost purring as his big hand slid lazily up and down her naked back. Remin’s caresses made her feel as contented as a cat. In the afterglow, she examined his body and found it whole, except for a massive purple bruise on his left forearm. Appalled, she lifted it and turned it over to find a matching bruise on the other side. If it hurt him, he gave no sign. “Oh, Remin. Was it…very bad?”

“It wasn’t easy.” He nuzzled the top of her head and gently withdrew his arm. “I will tell you about it tomorrow, wife. Did you keep yourself well?”

“I missed you,” she said again. “So much. But…did you find it?”

“We foundsomething,”he said, with careful emphasis. “Exactly where you said we would, little owl. I had sketches made, and we’ll discuss it tomorrow. And there was something…elseout there.”

Ordinarily, this would have been as good as torture, dangling these tantalizing tidbits for her brain to pick at. But Ophele decided she could wait, just this once. Rolling onto her stomach, she propped her chin on his chest to better admire him, tracing the familiar angles of his face. Even by lamplight, she could see the paler skin where his beard had been, the high blades of his cheekbones reddened by ice and wind and cold.

“You shaved,” she realized. “When?”

“Mmm. I did,” he said, rubbing his palm over his jaw, looking a little embarrassed. “I stopped by the baths on the way back.”

“What? Why?”

“Six weeks without a bath,” he said bluntly. “I know how everyone else smelled, I didn’t want to come home to you like that.”

“But…when did you get home? I thought you weren’t coming,” she said, trying and failing to keep her voice steady. If she was being fair, she knew she would have felt the same, but the thought that he had been in Tresingale all night while she had been listening so anxiously for him made her chin wobble treacherously.

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