Page 29 of Stardust Child

“Remin, Remin, ahhhh,ohhhh!”Her hips bucked forward and he felt her climax on him in spasms, driving her body down onto him so hard he had no choice but to follow. The eruption was sudden, immense, almost volcanic. A mingling of fluids, of heat, his already-sweaty body made more so as she fell forward, her wetness slicking him messily. Ophele crumpled over on top of him and lay motionless.

He couldn’t feel his face.

“No, don’t move,” he managed fuzzily as she shifted, slitting his eyes open to look up at her. Her face was buried in his chest, their heated bodies sticking together with perspiration. “Too much. Just for a minute.”

“All right,” she whispered, and made him hiss through his teeth as she fluttered around him, as if to extract every drop of his seed from him.

“Don’t…do that,” he said, strangled.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to.” One golden eye opened. Her hair was a mess, half of her coiling curls collapsing and the knot at the back of her head tumbling down. Her skin glowed. She looked beautiful. “Was that…all right? What we did?”

“I dare anyone to say otherwise.” He was surprised by how much he liked it when Ophele took charge. He had never been entirely sure that she wanted him, much less with the desperate hunger he felt for her. All this time he had been trying to temper himself, so he wouldn’t hurt or frighten her.

“I bit you,” she said apologetically, touching a spot on his chest. Remin peered down at himself.

“So you did,” he agreed, closing his eyes. “If you want to use me that hard, wife, you have to be gentle with me afterward.”

One corner of his mouth tugged up and he lifted an arm when he felt her weight shift, catching her chastising hand.

“I’ll be sore for days,” he said mournfully, making her burst into giggles.

“Are you saying I’ve worn you out?” she asked, daring to tease him back, her eyes dancing with mischief.

“Never.” His lips teased hers, and he could feel himself hardening. “I am claiming my forfeit,” he told her, and pushed up into her. “Do that again.”

It was a different sort of hunger that drove him out of bed later, and Remin went to the washstand to wipe away the evidence of the day’s rigors, grumbling a little as various aches asserted themselves. He was so dusty and sweaty that the thought of putting clothes on his sticky skin was unpleasant, but he was hungry enough to be cross about it.

“Oh, Remin, your back,” said Ophele behind him, sitting up in a tangle of blankets. “Someone hit you?”

“Of course,” he said, glancing back at her mildly. That was what happened in a fight. He could feel a few tight, heated spots on his back and there was a hell of a welt on his left shoulder, probably from someone’s sword. Pouring water into the washstand, he dipped a cloth in it to wipe himself down, but Ophele appeared beside him.

“I’ll do it,” she offered, dressed only in her clouds of hair and holding out a hand for the cloth. “You said I should be gentle with you. After.”

“I did,” he agreed, bemused by this reversal of roles. Normally, it was him tending her. He let her nudge him over to her bath basin, which was ludicrously small for him, and sat down as Ophele hauled over some water. They always kept a few buckets handy.

“It’s purple,” she fretted, pouring water over his head in much the same way she did to Master Eugene. “On your back, doesn’t it hurt? You said you’d be fine…”

“I am fine,” he said, and lowered his head toward her as she lifted his arm to wash down his side. “Do you want me to prove it again?”

“No, that’s all right.” A smile tugged at her lips as she knelt on the rushes beside him. “But I could send for Genon…”

“I don’t want Genon,” he said flatly. “I want to be clean, and I want food.” His stomach growled audibly.

“But it’s right over the bone—”

“Food.”

She chewed her lip and dumped another bucket of water on him.

“All right,” she said, and pattered over to her trunk to pull on a fresh chemise and dress, then twisted her hair up into a somewhat respectable knot on the back of her head. She paused, visibly nerving herself, and snapped open the shutters of the window over her trunk.

“Sir Tounot,” she said, leaning over the sill. Her cheeks were pink. There was no way Tounot didn’t know what they had been doing just five minutes ago, and Remin scrubbed silently, watching as she lifted her chin. Her ears were red. “Would you mind sending someone to fetch food for His Grace?”

“Meat,” Remin ordered from his basin. He had fought fourteen men and then been ravished by his wife. He wanted real food.

“He says he wants meat.”

Tounot’s voice was an unintelligible murmur, but Ophele seemed satisfied as she closed the shutters and returned to Remin, plucking the cloth from his hand.

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