The Dragon’s Daughter and the Winter Mage by Jeffe Kennedy
~ 18 ~
With Isyn’s deep forest gaze burning hot into hers, even without him looking at her unclothed body, Gen felt more than naked. She felt as if she’d peeled off her very skin, leaving herself exposed, vulnerable, rawly open to even a hint of dissatisfaction in his eyes. All she seemed to be able to think about were Henk’s offhand comments about her lack of womanly curves, saying how he’d thought a shapeshifter would be able to make her own body more appealing. How wasn’t that what every woman wanted, after all, especially if she was the sort apt to take lovers freely. When she’d started to explain that shapeshifting didn’t work that way, he’d been so clearly disinterested that she’d stopped talking.
Even the much kinder Wim had remarked on her small breasts. Tiny, but delicious. Like she was a dessert served in miserly portions. When Wim had commented, it had been irritating but little more than that. Now, however… If Isyn showed similar, even gentle scorn, it might break her. This was the agonizing side of loving so swiftly and deeply. She trusted Isyn with her heart, but she was so afraid that he’d be disappointed, no matter what he claimed.
“May I look at you?” he whispered.
She nodded, mostly because she was determined to see this through. Get it over with. Isyn wanted to look on her naked body, to draw her, and likely make love to her after—and she would give him that and more. If she couldn’t enjoy sex with this man she loved more than her own life, especially in these new days of the bloom of first discovery, then… well, then she would know, yes? And once she knew, then she could decide how to proceed. Reconnaissance first, then strategy. That had always been her father’s advice—much as he’d cringe knowing how she planned to apply it.
Besides, if she ever got home and had to recount this tale, which her friends would drag out of her with the relentless determination of a mule team, Zeph would never let her live it down if Gen had to admit she chickened out. Also, if she didn’t look good to a man who hadn’t seen a woman in fifty years, then she needed to rethink some things. Forget dragon form—maybe she did need to figure out how to shapeshift her own body. Or give up men completely.
That actually sounded like a decent option, as she couldn’t imagine being with anyone but Isyn like this.
So, she stepped back, far enough for Isyn to see all of her, dropping her hands and straightening her shoulders to show off what little she had to best advantage, resisting the urge to pull her veil of hair around her. No hiding.
She couldn’t bear to see his face, to witness a crease of disenchantment, and she thought he’d be kind enough not to comment, so she looked past him at the featureless stone wall, what she hoped was a welcoming smile pasted on her lips. The moment stretched on, however, and she shifted, uncomfortable, feeling on the verge of tears. Maybe this had been a terrible idea.
“My Briar Rose…” Isyn murmured. “You take my breath away. I have no words for the glory of your beauty. I must draw you.”
She risked a glance at his face, to check for lies or flattery, but his rapt expression told her everything she needed to know. With his wet hair darkened and hanging heavy, it set off the paleness of his skin, the glitter of his eyes—hopefully not fever—and caught the firelight with ivory gleams on the drying wisps. He studied her, gaze traveling slowly over her naked limbs, absorbed as if memorizing every line.
“Would you turn around for me?” he asked softly, gaze still on her body.
She did, turning a slow circle, finding she liked the sensation of his close regard.
“So beautiful,” he murmured, almost as if to himself, which felt even more honest. “Again, but lift your hair?”
Relaxing, warmed by his obvious admiration, perhaps feeling a little bit beautiful and sensual, she slowly piled her long tresses high on her head, pivoting slowly for him as she did.
“Oh, yes,” he breathed. “Now lie on the bed,” he instructed with more confidence, a fervor of excitement in his voice.
Oddly thrilled by the intimacy of the moment, no longer anxious, but filled with a welcome sensual languor, she did as he urged, going to the bed and throwing back the soft furs, stretching herself out. Isyn fetched his drawing supplies with alacrity, moving more easily in his excitement and with his attention focused elsewhere, dragging the stool into place and setting his things down. Then he came to her, hands hovering over her like hummingbirds, contained energy buzzing.
“May I?” he asked hoarsely.
She nodded, words somehow beyond her.
“On your side, please. Like this.” He adjusted her deftly, almost impersonally—if not for the burning desire in his eyes. Tucking one of her arms under her head so she pillowed her cheek on her bent elbow, he draped her other arm just below her breasts. Then he extended the leg she lay on, drawing up the other so her bent knee rested on the bed in front of her groin. Grunting with satisfaction, he began arranging her hair, draping long locks of it to trail over and around her naked limbs. She marveled at the intent, absorbed expression on his face, how he seemed at peace in a way he hadn’t been since she met him. How badly she wanted him to be pleased with her. How urgently she wanted him to keep touching her.
“Are you comfortable?” he asked.
“Yes, so much that I could fall asleep like this.”
“Please don’t. I need you to be looking at me, just as you are right now, thinking whatever it is you’re thinking.”
“All right.” She flushed a little, shivering as he ran a hand over the round of her hip. When he caressed her that way, she felt she actually had curves.
“Are you cold?”
“Not too much.”
He went and added a few logs to the fire, glanced back at her, then added another. Smiling wickedly, he lowered himself to the stool and shook back his hair. “All the better to see you,” he teased. “Now don’t move.”
She found she didn’t mind his intent gaze after a while, relaxing under the intensity of his artist’s eye, imagining the strokes of the charcoal against the scraped bark were his hands and mouth tracing the lines of her body. He worked swiftly, a light in his face that gave a hint of how he must have been before time and trials wore him down into sorrow. Time ticked slowly by, the touch of his eyes like a palpable caress, the scratch of charcoal a touch she could nearly feel against her skin, heating and arousing. Need bloomed in her, hot and demanding, and she had to fight to remain still, arousal heating and slicking her sex so she wanted to restlessly rub her thighs together. To distract herself, she reviewed the memory of Isyn touching her there the night before, his deft and clever fingers so intimate and knowing, playing her body with the same artistry as he displayed in his intent study of her.
“You can move now,” he said, startling her out of her reverie.
Relieved to be able to release some of her internal tension in movement, she stretched, long and languid—trembling at how his eyes followed along.
“Do you want to see how I see you?” he asked quietly.
Did she?She didn’t know. “If you’d like to show me,” she temporized. “I’m sure the drawing is wonderful.”
He breathed a laugh, shaking his head. “Less flattering my pride and more truth, please.”
It would be cowardice not to look. “All right.”
He levered himself to his feet, gesturing for her to stay where she was. “It’s funny—I’m beginning to think you say ‘all right’ when you’re not convinced but want to please me.”
That was probably not incorrect—and not an easy observation to swallow. Gen knew she liked to please people. Her mother was forever chiding her for it. Don’t worry about what other people want. What do you want?
Isyn lowered himself to sit on the bed beside her, holding the drawing. She glanced at it nervously. “Do you trust me?”
“I do,” she answered, realizing she meant it.
“Then look.” He handed her the drawing.
She stared at the image, recognizing herself and yet not comprehending how he could see her this way. That was her body, certainly, long and skinny, but her knobby shoulders and elbows had somehow been rendered to be sylphlike, her small breasts made delicately lovely, the curve of her hips and gangly legs almost elegant. And her eyes… they dominated her face, lushly lashed and full of simmering knowledge. He’d also given a savage glint to her eyes that was oddly familiar, though she’d never seen it in the mirror. With a start of wonder, she placed that look: Her mother had it, especially when she hadn’t gotten to shift as much as she wanted to, as if the wilderness gleamed in her eyes, looking to emerge and prowl by its wild lonesome.
“I’m not sure I got the eyes right,” Isyn murmured, studying them as she returned her gaze to his. “I suspect I could spend a lifetime trying to capture them.” He feathered fingertips over her cheek, smoky with the scent of charcoal. “I’d wish for blue pigment, but I doubt that exact shade of indigo exists anywhere but here.” Tracing the line of her brow, he smiled, almost sadly. “Not that I have a lifetime to spend.”
She caught his hand, their fingers lacing together. “None of us knows if we’ll live past the next day, past the next hour or minute. You don’t need a lifetime. You have life right now, which means everything is possible.”
“A good thing to remember, my earnest optimist.” He lowered his head, kissing her gently, jumping when she gasped. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” Releasing his hand, she tunneled hers into his still slightly damp hair, drawing him down and coaxing him into hotter, more passionate kisses. She gasped as his big, rough hand cupped her bare breast, her nipples, already taut with arousal, tightening almost painfully, and his glance flicked up to her face.
“No?”
“Yes,” she said firmly. “It’s just… intense.”
“Intense,” he murmured, easing her to lie on her back and propping himself on one elbow. His expression was reverent as he trailed his fingers around and over her breasts, teasing her nipples lightly. She shivered from the billowing heat, not cold at all. “I’m trying very hard not to be jealous that my annoying little brother kissed you here first.”
“Then you should erase his kisses with yours.”
His brows lifted in a wicked arch, eyes sparkling lambent green. “What an excellent suggestion.” And he bent his head, placing a kiss on each trembling nipple. He proceeded to lavish them with kisses, teasing and arousing, until she strained with need, pulling him to her. Groaning deep in his throat, he followed, the strain of bracing himself over her only part of the reason for the bunched tension in his shoulder and chest muscles as she ran her hands over them.
“Gendra,” he murmured in gentle protest, “I don’t want you to—”
“I want you to,” she insisted. In a bold move that would likely shock her more staid self later, once she was away from the seductive shadows of the firelight and an artist-warrior’s hands, she captured his hand and guided it down to the juncture of her thighs, spreading her legs and flattening his palm against her melting sex. “I want you,” she added breathlessly.
He stroked his fingers lightly through her folds, and she shuddered so hard at the gripping need that she had to hold on to him. “You’re so wet,” he said hoarsely, curling his fingers into her so her hips rose in plaintive need.
“Because you’ve been teasing me all this time,” she breathed, holding his gaze, feeling boldly sensual with this man who saw her as beautiful, who saw her. Perhaps more clearly than anyone ever had. “Every stroke of your drawing felt like your hands on my body. Touch me, Isyn. Touch me everywhere. I want all of it.”
He slipped a finger inside her, eyes darkening as she moaned, pressing her sex against his palm. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she said, too quickly, because he arched a dubious brow.
“I think I’ll keep checking back on that,” he mused, sitting up some so he could stroke his other hand down her straining body. “There’s a great deal I can do to please you without going there.”
“I want you inside me,” she begged, not sure how to convince him.
“I am inside you.” He pressed the finger filling her passage upward, the sensation extraordinary, making her gasp with the unexpected pleasure. “Feel me inside you,” he purred, his face shadowed amid the fall of firelit ivory hair.
“That’s not what I mean,” she managed to say. “And you know it.”
“Oh, I know it,” he agreed too easily, smiling as he added his thumb to pleasure her from without as his finger pressed up from within, extracting a garbled cry from her as she convulsed. “I don’t plan to disappoint you.”
“Good,” she nearly snarled, “because then I might have to kill you and eat you—and then what good would you be to me?”
Laughing a dark, sensual chuckle that accompanied a wicked smile, he added another finger, stretching her vulva with keen pressure. “I can’t wait until I see you with actual claws. You’re very tight, Briar Rose.”
“I don’t care.” She dug her blunt human nails into his shoulders. “Please, Isyn.”
“Patience,” he murmured, dipping his head to capture her nipple in his mouth, making her arch in offering, working his fingers deeper inside her. “We’re doing this slowly. No getting it over with.” He nipped her taut and sensitized nipple with his teeth, extracting a sharp cry from her. “I’m not letting you push me into doing that to you.” His mouth closed over her stinging nipple again, salving and stimulating, pulling more of her aching breast into his warm heat, making her squirm in mindless need.
“You wouldn’t be,” she whimpered.
“I know I wouldn’t.” Releasing her breast, he stared into her face, the shadows making him look dangerous, a predatory shimmer in him that weakened her knees, the vulnerability of having his hand intimately stroking her somehow delicious. “I see you, Gendra,” he murmured. “I love you, Gendra. All of this is for you.”
Never taking his eyes from hers, he curled his fingers inside her, her hips arching with the intensity of the core-deep ecstasy, only to meet the heel of his hand pressing down on her pearl of pleasure with acute, keen delight. With his free hand, he cupped her breast, lightly pinching her nipple between thumb and forefinger, and she thrashed under his tender, devious manipulation, feeling as if she might become unmoored without his strong arms to hold on to.
“Please,” she sobbed.
“Yes,” he murmured. “Let go, my magical rose. You can let go with me. I love you. I’ve got you.”
She felt it, too, as if that golden net still wrapped around her, holding her safe from the hostile sea. He’d taken her captive, and she belonged to him as surely as if her skin remained in his possession, along with her heart, along with her body, which sang for him. “Isyn!” she screamed his name, holding on to him as she came apart, thoughts reeling in all directions, her sex plunging hard against his firm grip, her anchor in the black and stormy seas.
His mouth fastened onto hers, drinking in the mewling cries, his body hard on hers, pinning her and holding her through the convulsions. Then, even as she began to quiet, reaching to draw her scattered thoughts back from the depths they’d vanished to, he renewed the stroking, kissing his way down her neck.
She moaned, low and long. “I don’t know if I can…”
“I know. Trust me.” And he bit down at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, not hard, but firm—an unbelievably erotic sensation, as if lightning had struck, and she cried out, feeling her fluids gush over his hand. Isyn laughed, dark and delighted. “Those other men were fools.”
Before she could ask what he meant, he was urging her to her knees, laying back so she straddled him. “Your pants,” she said, trying to scoot back.
“Not yet.” Grasping her hips, he moved her forward until she nearly met the stone wall.
“What are you…?” She choked out a gasp when he dragged his tongue through her slick folds.
“Feasting,” he replied. “I advise you to hold on.”
She had nothing but the stone wall, but her fingers found what purchase they could in the desperate pleasure he wreaked on her body. With his fingers again inside her and his devastatingly clever lips, tongue, and occasional teeth, he drove her wild, the climaxes coming one after another until they blurred into one. She thrashed and bucked in the frenzy of it, the rock-hard grip of his rough hands on her hips holding her ruthlessly in place as he feasted on her indeed. She pressed her cheek against the stones, the gritty caress of them on her tender nipples yet another tease.
At last, when she was wrung out, sobbing for breath, voice hoarse from screaming her pleasure, wilted and boneless, he sat up, carrying her with him as he pivoted to sit on the side of the bed, her straddling his lap so his erection pressed against her belly. Though he still wore his pants, the leather erotic against her nakedness, spreading her thighs wide, he’d undone the fastening at some point. He kissed her deeply, tasting of her and oddly like the sea and flowers, as she curled languidly around him. A kiss she’d remember for the rest of her life. His hands poured through her hair and over her skin, gripping her bottom to rock her against him, his cock hot and huge against her.
Then he broke the kiss and gazed into her face, searching her eyes. “Shall we stop here?”
The words took a moment to penetrate. “No. I want it all.”
“You’ve had plenty.”
“Not enough.” She kissed him, drawing on those sensual lips. “I want all of you. Please, Isyn.”
He chuckled, deep in his chest, holding her close against him. “I’ve discovered an odd quirk in myself.” His hands tightened in her hair, his expression fierce in arousal. “I seem to love to hear you begging me.”
“Please, Isyn,” she whispered hoarsely, adding a whimper that made his cock spasm against her. “I’m begging you. I need you inside me.” She rose up on her knees to take the pressure off his leg, bringing her sopping sex to hover over the head of his cock. “Please, Isyn, please…”
Transferring his grip to encircle her waist with one bracing arm, he used the other hand to position himself, the thick head of his cock pressing just inside her. “This?”
“Yes, please.” She rained kisses on his upturned face, so gorgeous with his lambent green eyes and ravenous expression.
He lowered her a bit, her body easily sliding over him, then stopping, holding her easily as she attempted to take more of him. “Like this?”
“More,” she begged wildly. “More more more.”
“Look at me, Gendra,” he murmured, catching and holding her gaze. With both hands on her hips, he slowly lowered her, her body enclosing his with dreamy intensity. He filled her, stretching with a pleasure that became almost agonizing. She shuddered at the intimacy, his eyes marking it. “I’ve got you,” he told her firmly. “I love you.”
She almost wept with the keen immediacy of the moment, her heart and body thrumming in one need, a single, core knowing. She took him fully inside her, their bodies sealed together, their spirits intertwining, the sheer delight of their joining a delirious pleasure that simply hadn’t been possible with anyone else.
His eyes flared green fire, face set in a rictus of arousal, his hips flexing into her, the penetration so deep she cried out, then pressed down. Gazes locked, they found their rhythm, rocking together, the shivers of impending orgasm gathering, drawing tight into her groin, her belly, her breasts and heart. He pressed the flat of his hand against her lower back, pressing her even tighter against him. “Gendra, I—”
“Let go,” she urged, even as she held on tighter. “I’ve got you. I love you.”
Throwing back his head, he released a guttural cry, hoarse as the howl of a wolf, his hands vising on her as he thrust repeatedly, deep into her core. And she rode the wild waves of his climax, her own need feeding off his until she burst, following after with her own higher melody of inarticulate desire. And love.
