The Dragon’s Daughter and the Winter Mage by Jeffe Kennedy

~ 16 ~

Wordlessly, pretty much unable to summon any thought at all, she nodded. He nodded slightly also, mirroring her, his rapt gaze holding hers as he slowly moved his hand to gently cup her breast. She moaned, feeling all of herself give a sigh of relief at the feel of him. His hand was big and her breasts small, so he held all of her in the palm of his hand. “Isyn…” she sighed, torn between wanting to press herself into his touch and bracing for a careless observation about her lack of bounty.

“You are so unutterably beautiful,” he murmured, his thumb traveling lightly over her nipple, gaze on her face, carefully observing her reaction.

“I know I’m not,” she replied, feeling there should be honesty between them. “You don’t have to feel you need to say so.”

He raised a brow in question, and she gasped as he rolled her nipple lightly between thumb and forefinger, the sensation indescribably delicious, suffusing her with a sweet desire that felt unlike anything she’d ever experienced. “If I were a poet, I’d make myself mad attempting to compose sonnets to do justice to how you look at this moment.”

“Just as well you’re not a poet, then,” she teased, surprised to find she could find humor while engaged in sex play. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to her that there could be teasing and laughter, too.

“As my sanity is already in question?” he replied, answering laughter in his voice, dipping his head to trail kisses along her collarbones. “Tell me if you need me to stop.”

“Never stop,” she commanded fervently, hoping that he’d be able to forge through any last-moment hesitation she displayed despite herself.

“Or pause, then,” he replied on a soft laugh. “This is all for you. Only what gives you pleasure. No pretending for my sake.”

She didn’t think she had the wherewithal to pretend anything, simply receiving the simple, sweet susurrus of his lips on her skin, his body against hers. “I think I’ve been waiting all my life for this,” she breathed, the realization almost too huge to bear.

“I think I have, too.” He spoke the words against the hollow at the base of her throat, so she couldn’t see his face, but a note of regret wove through them.

“We have now,” she reminded him. “And this is everything.”

“Yes.” Lifting his head, he kissed her lips, toying with the tie at the neckline of her slip. “May I?” he asked, watching her closely.

She nodded, licking suddenly dry lips. He noticed. “We can stop here.”

“No,” she said, a bit too vehemently. “Please don’t stop. I’m only…”

He waited, then raised a brow, still toying idly with the lace, the light tug rippling through her awareness. “Tell me,” he coaxed. “You know you can tell me anything.”

She could, which was also everything. Could more than one thing be everything? There needed to be another word for the totality of all these feelings and realizations. She took a breath. “This, all of this, feels so good that… I’m afraid of it changing.”

“Changing?”

“No longer feeling this good.”

He nodded gravely, holding her gaze. “Protecting the wound, yes?”

She released a breath. Oh. “That is uncannily perceptive, yes.”

“You were the one to teach me,” he commented. “It’s a useful metaphor. Shall we stop?”

What if this was all they’d have? Tomorrow everything could change, and they’d be torn apart again. “I don’t want to stop,” she whispered, testing the words aloud. “But… can we go slowly?”

“As slow as you like, Briar Rose,” he murmured, kissing her with excruciating sweetness. “Just remember, the moment it changes from anything less than wonderful, then I stop and we go back to find what does feel good. All right?”

“All right.” If she hadn’t already fallen head over heels in love with him, she would have right then. Was it possible to fall in love over and over again? Perhaps so. No one had ever said anything like that, not that she’d heard or read, but the prospect of reveling in that ecstatic tumble over a lifetime with Isyn felt like that infinite possibility. As long as we’re alive… Well they were alive now, and she intended to make sure they stayed that way. And she wasn’t missing a moment of this, especially not out of fear of what the stupid Henks of the world had made her feel.

Thinking of Henk, though, reminded her of his comments about her disappointing figure. She put a hand over his on the laces at the neckline of her slip. “Not this, though, not yet?” She tendered the request, braced for his disappointment, but he smiled, immediately complying and sliding his hand down her back.

“How about I stay over the gown?” he murmured, pressing kisses along her jawline.

“Is that enough for you, for now?” she asked, breathless from the build of nerves and the relief of his easy accommodation—and from the way those kisses thrilled through her body, now that she was no longer worrying about what would come next.

“Briar Rose,” he breathed. “It’s already enough. This is more than I dared to hope for. So much so that I wonder if I’m dreaming all of this.”

“Then I’m dreaming it, too.”

“A shared dream,” he murmured, brushing his lips hypnotically over hers. “Our own alter-realm, where only you and I exist.”

To her surprise, that sounded lovely, the image resonating on a deep level. In the shadowed nest of furs, in the small room locked away from the dangers of the world, it was as if only Isyn and she existed, entwined in trust and… love? This could indeed be love.

Breath gusting out of her, she wound her fingers through his hair, combing them through the tangled silken skeins of ivory, spreading them over her as he kissed her. Freed of the worry of how this might turn sour, she yielded to his kisses and caresses, trusting him to take care of her. His hands skimmed over her, leaving shimmering enchantment behind, his lips finding delicate, hidden spots that made her shiver, licking and nibbling her into mindless ecstasy. She moved under him, wanting all of him, her core aching and empty, needing him to fill it. Restless with the urgent need, she tried to open her thighs, not quite succeeding, pinned as she was between him and the furs. Isyn lifted his head, gaze smoldering. “Gendra?”

“I want you inside me.” She bit her lip, vague apprehension pouncing, the odious sense of Henk thrusting into her while his eyes stared into nothing dissolving some of the delicious warmth Isyn had filled her with. No, she was done with that.

Of course, Isyn noticed her reticence. “I don’t think that’s what you really want yet.”

“But—”

He kissed her, gently and sweetly. “We have time.” His full lips twisted in wry humor. “We have nothing but time.”

A whimper of protest escaped her at the prospect of remaining unfulfilled. She’d never been this excited, this needy. How could she sleep? Perhaps she could sneak off to the privy to finish herself off, but the prospect of that pale imitation of what she felt with him combined with the dank chill of that hole was hardly appealing.

Isyn trailed his hand down the narrowing of her waist and over the flare of her hip. “Perhaps I could touch you, as you did me?”

Mute at the tantalizing thought, she nodded. If his caresses on the rest of her felt rapturously intense, how would this be? Unbearably intimate—though she supposed that wanting him inside her would’ve been even more so, which spoke to his good sense in hesitating there. Zeph had always argued that Gen had gone about things backward, and she could see that now. Because Isyn still waited on her answer, tracing soothing circles on her belly as he watched her face, as if listening to her thoughts, she found words. “I would like that. No one has ever touched me there before.”

He let out a hushed breath of sound. “How did this Henk manage to get his miserable excuse for a dick inside you without touching you?”

He sounded so indignant and incredulous that she giggled. “There were quite a few errant proddings.”

Groaning, he rubbed his face with the hand he’d been leaning on, his other flat on her belly, a comforting weight. “On behalf of my gender, I apologize.”

She stroked his cheek, tucking a wild lock of hair behind his ear so she could better see his beautiful face. “Funny—Jak said much the same thing. Only he disowned Henk on behalf of your gender.”

“Fitting,” Isyn acknowledged with a nod. “Perhaps I’ll hate Jak a little less now.”

Hate Jak? “But why would you hate him? In truth, you and Jak would probably get along famously.”

Isyn turned his head, kissing her fingers, eyes on hers. “Because he has your admiration, and I am not so noble that I can set aside the jealousy.”

How astonishing to contemplate that Isyn might be jealous. Perhaps she shouldn’t have told him so much about her friends. Speaking too frankly had always been an issue for her. But Isyn’s jealousy also pleased her, which probably didn’t speak well of her own character. Still, it made her feel powerful in a way she’d never felt with a man before. Wanted.

“You are the only one who means anything to me, Isyn,” she confessed on a whisper, taking the risk of coming too close to saying aloud that she loved him. He wouldn’t want to hear that from her, not so soon. She’d only sound desperate and needy. But she did need him to know that only he mattered, wanted him to feel the truth of that.

Reaching down, she covered his hand with hers and drew it down her thigh to the hem of her rucked-up slip, until he met with bare skin. “Don’t do this just to prove that to me,” he cautioned, his fingers caressing her skin as if of their own accord. He held her tightly with his other arm, his expression fierce with like wanting.

“I’m not,” she promised. She parted her legs, lifting her hands to drape over her head in sensual abandon. Holding his rapt gaze, she smiled, sensuous and powerful as never before. “Touch me, please.”

Gendra lay spreadout beneath him like a goddess made flesh, like an ideal woman stepped out of his adolescent wet dreams to grace his decades-empty bed. Her hair spread in chestnut waves beneath her, catching gold and russet flames and framing her gilded skin where it showed, the sheer slip hinting at her figure with dips and shadows, so long and gracefully slender. And always, those magnetic eyes drew him, the violet cast of the blue reminding him of something long forgotten, a kind of nostalgia for something he’d lost without realizing it.

As magical as this interlude had been, the exquisite release she’d brought him to, he felt the weight of responsibility. She possessed such a trusting heart, her artlessness giving her a kind of naïve innocence that he raged that she had been treated carelessly by these other men. Gendra deserved to be treasured and worshiped, and it had fallen to him, with his rough and clumsy hands, to show her how it could be between lovers.

She deserved better than him. Except he had no intention of giving her up.

So he kissed her, lingeringly, the way she liked, measuring the hum of her body in response, her thigh silky smooth under his hand. Gradually he drew up her slip, taking his time, savoring the gradual change in texture to her inner thigh, where the skin became satin as shadows, plush in its concealment from the world. He’d never felt anything softer than the skin of a woman’s thigh just below her sex, the satin of the jewel box framing the most precious of all places.

Gendra moved restlessly under his explorations, opening to him, the heat from her aroused sex radiating through the small distance, the slickness of her arousal inviting him. With a groan, he tangled his fingers in her silky curls, imagining them to be the same rich chestnut as her hair. He wanted to see her, savor every line and curve of her, but he could also understand how this would be easier, safer, the shrouding shadows and firelight like a comforting embrace. The shared dream.

With slow caresses, he eased his fingertips over her plump lips, the hiss of her breath against his lips encouraging him to do more. Parting them, the slick heat making it easy, he elicited a startled moan from her, the purring desire exactly what he hoped for. Lifting his head, he watched her face as he stroked her, learning the layers of her inner petals. Lucky for him that her expressions revealed everything.

He loved to look at her, eyes heavy lidded and sensually gleaming, the violet shaded indigo glimmering through the dark lace of her lashes, her gorgeous lips parted as if in mid-kiss.

He also needed to look at her, to be sure of her reactions to him. And so she would know that he was with her, that she was the center of his world. He might not be a young and vital lover, but he could give her all of his attention—something he’d have been too impetuous and selfish to offer when he possessed a youthful body.

In return, she gazed at him in wonder, fingers tangled in the hair at his temple, hips moving in a gentle rocking with his slow caresses. Every woman was different, he recalled, the memories of youth returning in a joyful flood, rather than tainted with the bitterness of what he’d lost. Like every painting demanded something different from him, every woman liked to be touched in a different way, in different places, at different speeds. He found Gendra’s rhythm as if he’d been born to it, leading her through the intimate waltz as if they both heard the same music.

When she climaxed, her pleasure rippled through him as well, her cries of completion a song he’d been searching for. So he drank them in with his kisses, inhaling her and breathing his joy in her back in a living cycle. Tangling, combining, and recombining. Together, at least for now.

While we’re alive, everything is possible.

Some time later,Gendra shifted, turning into him, snuggling her charmingly cold nose into the nook of his throat and shoulder. His hand and arm had long since gone numb from him leaning on them, but that was a small price to pay for the luxury of having her so lusciously available to his touch. Taking advantage of her change in position, he tugged her slip back into place, then smoothed his free hand over the outside of it, up the back of her long, slim thigh, cupping her tight little bottom. All of her fit so neatly with him. It felt like fate, if he believed in such things.

He hadn’t forgotten the age differential. In any other place and time, he could never have lured the nubile young Gendra to his bed. Well, he could have in his own youth, perhaps. He’d have done as Wim had, seducing the exotic and lovely shapeshifting visitor. With the arrogance of his station and youthful belief in his prowess—likely misplaced—he, too, might have charmed the Tala woman with the intent of seduction.

And he might have treated her just as badly, scarring her fragile and innocent heart in the same way as the others. The thought made him shudder for his past self.

And, in the wisdom of age, he’d have known better how to treat a gift like her, but he wouldn’t have dared. No, he wouldn’t have indulged himself. But here, in this place and time, in the timelessness of the Winter Isles, she could be his for a little while. And he could give her everything there was in him to give.

She pulled back slightly, opening her luminous eyes still heavy lidded with pleasure. “I know I’m not supposed to ask what you’re thinking about, but you seem to be contemplating something important.”

He caressed her soft cheek, tracing the line of her cheekbone from the delicate skin under her eye to her temple and along the shell of her ear. All of her so perfectly made. “Why aren’t you supposed to ask me what I’m thinking?”

She shrugged a little. “Men don’t like it?”

“Only men who have no thoughts in their heads don’t like it. They’re ashamed to admit their empty-headedness.”

Giggling, she stroked a hand over his shoulder. “You could never be that man. Your head is so full of thoughts, it’s a wonder you keep it upright.”

He let his head loll on his neck, as if too heavy to keep up any longer, dropping his hand and letting his head thump into the pillow. A good excuse to change position. As a bonus, it encouraged the laughing Gendra to lever up to lean over him. He feathered a hand through her long locks, guiding them to drape over his skin in a silken tease. “I’m thinking…” he said slowly, “that I’m only wise enough to appreciate you now, when I’m too decrepit to treat you as you deserve—but that in my vigorous youth, I would’ve been too callow. It’s a conundrum.”

She smiled, softly and enigmatically, running fingertips along the delineations of his collarbones and chest. “Maybe it’s fate that we met now. The will of the Three.”

That echoed his thoughts too precisely for comfort. “But to what purpose? There’s no sense in trapping you here with me.”

“A good question,” she mused. “But it’s an interesting coincidence otherwise, that you alone of all on your ship fell through the rift to this place. And I alone of my group did the same. I feel connected to you, Isyn, as if we fit together. As if you are the one I’ve been looking for.” She blushed, averting her eyes. “I know that’s a lot to say and far too soon, but I feel like it’s important.”

His heart squeezing so hard he almost couldn’t breathe, he took her hand, lacing her fingers with his. “It is too soon,” he agreed, tightening his grip when she would’ve pulled away in embarrassment. “But I feel the same. I’d never tell you this otherwise, but I’m totally and completely in love with you, Briar Rose. I have been since the moment you first spoke in my mind.”

Her face crumpled, eyes luminous with tears, and for a heart-struck moment, he feared he’d royally fucked up by imposing an old man’s sentimentality on her. “I’m sorry,” he hastened to say. “I don’t want you to feel pressured by—”

She stopped him with a kiss, deep and full of longing. “Never apologize for that,” she whispered when she broke the kiss, cupping his cheek. “For loving me or for saying so. Because I am head over heels in love with you, Isyn. I fell in love when you caught me in your net, and I keep falling in love with you. Every new thing I learn about you makes me love you even more. You are the one for me.”

“Well, if I’m not, I won’t live all that much longer,” he joked. “So I won’t take up too much of your time, and you can find someone else.”

“Don’t say that,” she told him fiercely, a predatory fire in her eyes. “You’d better plan to live a very long time, because there will never be anyone else for me.”

“Don’t you say that,” he pleaded, aghast at what he’d done to her. “You have a long life ahead of you.”

“In the Winter Isles, among the folk?” She tsked. “Not much to look forward to.”

“Your friends will rescue you.” They had to. “They have Falada to guide them. They’ll find you, eventually.”

She scoffed lightly, giving him a rueful smile. “It’s the ‘eventually’ that worries me. They haven’t shown up yet, and it’s been at least an hour there by my measure. That means they weren’t able to follow immediately. It could take them days or weeks to track me, which means years and decades here.”

Years and decades in which he might be long since committed to burial beneath the ice of the arctic sea, food for the fishes. “Then we need to escape.”

She cocked her head, curious, cautious, but not arguing. “What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “But we know those portals are the way out. They continue to exist. We both came through the one in the ocean, at vastly different times. It must still be there.”

“I never found it.” She was considering the idea, though.

“Did you always remember to look, though?” He remembered her conversation when she was the orca, nothing near as sharp as her mind was now.

“Not always,” she admitted. “I was cold and tired—and injured by that harpoon.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t be. Saving my life more than made up for it.” She looked thoughtful. “How did you force me to shapeshift back to human form anyway?”

“I wove magic into the net. Remember the old fairy tales where the fisherman uses a magic net to catch a mermaid wife?” He ran a hand down her arm, love for her blossoming inside so he felt twenty again. “I thought, why not try? So I netted me a magical shapeshifter and lured her into my bed.”

Her lips curved in a generous, sensual smile, and she leaned down to kiss him. He’d never tire of kissing her, of sinking into her floral scent, savoring the slide of her skin against his. “And now you’ve captured me,” she purred. “Do you have my sealskin hidden under the bed so you can keep me with you always?”

He shuddered at that. “Those stories are kind of horrible, now that I think about it.”

“True. But they gave you the necessary key. You were able to trigger my shapeshifting when I couldn’t. There’s precedence for that, other magics that have controlled shapeshifting externally. There has to be a reason that shapeshifting doesn’t work in the alter-realms. We’ve visited three of them—four, counting this one—and that’s a consistent element of all of them.”

“Because this intelligence you spoke of controls that magic somehow?”

Her eyes darkened, nearly black in the low light of the dying fire. He should get up and put more logs on, but he felt too lax and lazy, snuggled with his enchanting lover under the furs. And his leg barely throbbed, he realized, the chronic ache that had plagued him having ebbed somewhat. The eroding pain would no doubt return in the morning, but for the moment he’d relish the sweet release.

“The intelligence uses magic of its own,” she mused, “taking on various forms, maybe controlling the rifts and travel between realms. The rules of magic change in the alter-realms in other ways, some kinds suppressed, others enhanced. Were you this powerful of a mage before you arrived in the Winter Isles? It seems like you said before that you weren’t.”

“Exactly. I had some magic. Enough that I could see Falada and communicate with her after a fashion. Small things, visions, an affinity for knowing the weather. A fortunate quality of having sunshine when I wanted fair days.” He grinned at the memory, a wide smile she returned. “I was very popular for picnics and excursions to the beach. But nothing like what I can do here. My abilities have continued to grow over time, too.”

“Interesting.” She firmed her lips, thinking. “I’d love for you to consult with Stella and Lena. I’m putting another log on the fire.”

“I can do that,” he protested belatedly, moving to stop her.

“I’m already up.” She gave him a saucy smile, stretching, the filmy slip falling around her long, lovely body, the sheer material catching on her rosy nipples. Unlike his impatient youthful self, he was fully willing to wait to see her fully naked, to draw out the anticipation in little hints and glimpses. Speaking of which, there was an enticing sight as she bent over to add logs to the fire, the slip clinging to her small, taut bottom, dipping into the cleft between. He’d love to lift her gown and expose that bottom and all the delights awaiting in that shadowy cleft, to run his hands over those smooth globes, perhaps gently bite her so she squealed and then subsided into those breathy moans…

“…anything like that. Isyn?”

“Hmm?” He realized she’d asked him a question that had not made it to his brain.

She put her hands on her hips, shaking back her long hair and frowning. “You’re tired. I think you’re falling asleep.”

“On the contrary.” He held out a hand to her so she’d come back to bed. “I was distracted by my beautiful lover. The sight of your gorgeous bottom made me momentarily senseless.”

Taking his hand, she squeezed it, then climbed over him to snuggle back into her spot. The place at his side that should be forever hers. “That’s very sweet of you to say, but you don’t have to flatter me.”

“It’s not flattery if it’s a simple observation,” he noted, kissing the tip of her nose. “What were you asking me?”

“I was saying that I wonder what you could do with access to the Star of Annfwn, and if you’ve ever used a focusing artifact like that?”

“The Star of Annfwn?” he echoed. He’d been distracted indeed not to hear her first mention of the famous jewel. “Stella has the Star?” At Gendra’s confirming nod, he whistled long and low. “So Queen Andromeda has officially made her niece heir of Annfwn.”

“I wouldn’t say officially, as no one but us knows that Nilly has it. Andi thought we’d need it on this mission. And we have. It’s been useful for Stella to control the rifts. Since you can focus your magic with objects also, like making the net, I’m wondering if you could do something similar to locate and open the rifts.”

“Deep in the freezing water.”

“Well, there are logistics to consider.”

“Like whether this decrepit human would drown or freeze first.”

“If we worked fast, we could avoid either eventuality.”

“Allowing me to survive to freeze or drown on the other side of the rift.”

“It’s not nearly as cold there, and if we can nail down the logistics, then you could survive the other side as well.”

“You’re relentlessly optimistic.”

“An excellent balance for your unrelenting gloom.”

He laughed, pulling her under him for a long, deep kiss. She tasted of flowers, too, of sunshine and life. No matter what plan they came up with, it would at least get her home, and that was all that mattered. “Am I that bad?”

“You have good reason,” she replied, confirming it without saying so.

“I resolve to do better.” Skimming his hand over her slip, he cupped that bottom he’d been admiring. “Things have been looking up lately.”

She sighed, pressing close to him. “You really should sleep.”

“So should you,” he agreed reluctantly. He had to remind himself she was still recovering, though she was healing at a remarkable rate. Something to do with her inherent magic, an idea that niggled at him, so he set it carefully aside to allow that seed to sprout and bear fruit.

“But this is nice,” she purred, settling into a comfortable sleeping position.

“This is more than nice.”

“Yes,” she agreed sleepily. “This is everything.”

Yes, she was everything. As long as they were alive.