But there was no danger now. Not as long as the water ran over him and cooled him of the heat he knew he was generating. There was no guarantee that this was foolproof, no guarantee that the water could compensate as he grew more and more aroused, but he couldn’t bring himself to behave with fear when all he wanted was to act with passion. She was there, she was beautiful, and she was willing to risk so much just to be with him. When had anyone, any woman especially, been willing to stick her neck out to be seen by his side? To be held in his hands? To revel in his touch?
Rush dropped to his knees, uncaring of the stone that bit into his skin, no doubt cutting him. What did he care for any of that when there was a gorgeous feast awaiting his senses? His hands raked down the back of her body. He felt her fingers fumbling to grip at his hair as he pulled one of her legs up over his shoulder. The action spread her open to him, allowing him to see the smoothness of her, the plump thrust of her clit from between her outer lips, and the pretty pink of her moist, intimate flesh. He reached out to touch her, going directly for what fascinated him most and forgetting there might be a more clever way to go about it.
She felt his fingers against her clit. An outrageous sensation, or so she thought until one of those fingers slid immediately inside of her, seeking for the tight feel of her. Feeling overwheled Ambrea tensed up tightly, pushed against him in sudden confusion even as her body devoured the sensations and reacted to them in its own way. He tore his eyes from the sight of her when he felt her lock up in resistance. He looked up at her. Ambrea had never before seen such an open, fascinated expression on his face. Always he had been so guarded and so shuttered, so filled with his mistrust of others and his conviction that, given half a chance, they would betray him. But the way he was looking at her just then it could only be described as innocence. Pure and unadulterated, the last thing she had ever expected to see on him.
“Am I hurting you?” was the first thing he wanted to know. It was always the first thing he wanted to know. Was she okay? Was she safe? And she knew he didn’t do it just because it was his job.
“No,” she said breathlessly. “I’m just not … it feels … I’ve never felt …”
He nodded even though she was unable to complete a single thought. Perhaps that was because he didn’t remove his touch in the slightest.
“Just let me know if I hurt you. Or if you don’t like something. You’ll do that, right? You’ll tell me?”
“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” she said as pleasure shuddered violently through her. The sensation was so keen that it made her eyes fill with tears.
“But you’ll tell me,” he demanded of her.
“Yes. Of course,” she gasped as he worked his thick finger even deeper inside of her.
“Good,” he muttered as his attention refocused on where his touch met her body. Rush felt hot wetness oozing down over his probing finger, and he let loose an appreciative growl. He gripped her between her legs and pulled her forward onto his mouth. Now it was his tongue stroking boldly over her stimulated clit, followed quickly by the entirety of his mouth. He was oblivious to the water sluicing down her skin. It was not even a factor in what he was seeing, feeling, and tasting. It most certainly wasn’t a factor in the incredible way she smelled—alluring and sweet, and here it was all in concentrate, like a liquid ambrosia that was purely and intensely Ambrea.
He lapped his tongue over her again and again, devouring the delicate taste of her even as he breathed in the smell of her. It was all Ambrea, Ambrea in resoundingly full dimension. The impact of it sent fiery heat down the length of his already distended phallus. He believed that were it not for the water rushing over his body, he would have burst into flame. He didn’t know how much of that was truth and how much of that was a perception of passion, but he was overwhelmed with the feeling.
More than anything, he wanted to lose himself inside her, to thrust into that tight place that housed and wetted his probing tongue. But he became keenly aware that to thrust into her body would be to seal himself away from the cooling protection of the water. Without the run of water over his skin, how would she be protected from being burned?
Rush suddenly sat down hard away from her, pulled back completely in the rising bathwater. He lifted his knees, propped his elbows on them, and settled his head between his hands after running them through his hair and sending a shower of water droplets bouncing off their ends. Disoriented for a moment, Ambrea had to catch her breath and draw her wits back into place. She looked down at him as she stood over him, saw how his hands were shaking and through the crystal clear water could see that he was rapidly loosing all interest in anything sexual.
It was hard for a moment not to take it personally, not to feel a horrible flush of embarrassment run over her face and move down through her body. Her first instinct was to think she had done something wrong, that there was something about her he didn’t like. Perhaps she was far too green even for him. To wait so long to be able to express desire and then be disappointed by the experience?
“I-I’m s-sorry,” she heard herself uttering awkwardly as she turned first left, and then, remembering where the steps were, turned right in an attempt to escape the moment. But he reached out and snagged her by the wrist, locking his fingers so tightly around it that she couldn’t possibly have broken free.
“For what?” he demanded. “For being perfect? For being normal? For being just as fragile as every other woman in the Three Worlds? I’m not rejecting you, Ambrea,” he said softly then, seeming to suddenly realize what she must be thinking in that moment. “Spirits curse me, is that what you think? That I’m rejecting you for some reason?”
After that reaction, she wasn’t thinking it any longer. She lowered herself to her knees between his legs, the water coming to just above her breasts. The beating of the water falling behind her created a tidal effect, making her body waver back and forth toward him no matter how hard she tried to steady herself. She reached out to touch his rugged face, her fingers smoothing over the length of the whiskers he had allowed to grow these past two days. They were soft to the touch, thickly blond, and gleaming like gold as the sunlight bounced off the bathwater and shimmered across his face.
“The only thing that keeps me from you is the same thing that has ever held me in check,” he said to her vehemently. “Were I given a choice, I would be buried deep inside of you right now. But clever as you are, as incredibly wet as you are,” he said as he brought her fingers against his lips, “you cannot bring your clever waterfall inside your body. When I think of the pain you would feel—”
“Shh,” she hushed him softly as she reached to hug him, drawing his head to hers, kissing his cooled cheek with a slow touch of her lips. “This was never meant to be a complete answer, Rush,” she told him softly against his ear. “Just a training ground. You can hand a man a sword and he can hack and slash at things and maybe do a little damage, but skill and finesse come with the building of strength and control, with lessons learned and mastered. Come, let’s make a lesson.” She stood up and held her hands down to him. His brows were drawn down tight in the center of his forehead, but he took her hands and let her help him to his feet. “But I will make a disclaimer right now, Rush. I expect to be burned. I know you will not mean to. I know you will not want to, but because we are doing this blindly without the guidance of someone who knows any better than we do, I expect we will make mistakes.”
“That is unacceptable to me,” he ground out, pulling his hands free of hers.
“What is unacceptable,” she said in that hard voice he had come to know as inarguable, “is you living half a life. You are prisoner to yourself just as surely as I ever was to others, Rush.” She held out her hand to him. “One day you are going to have to cross the line,” she said quietly. “You’re going to have to take action to get what you want. To claim what is rightfully yours. Why not take that action today?”
That made him smile a bit wryly, and he chuckled softly
as he shook his head at her. “Ah. That’s a low blow, Princess.”
“That’s ‘Empress,’ ” she corrected him, forcing him to meet her eyes. “Empress because I threw in my lot with a stranger who seemed as crazy as the day was long. I’m asking you to do so with a friend who is far wiser than that and just as brave.”
He smirked. “Brat.” He sat there for a long minute just looking at her, then with a noisy, capitulating sigh he put his hand in hers and together they rose to full height. “But if you get hurt …” he tried to threaten her sternly.
“I will use a burn salve and it will be gone in hours. Please. Must we go through this again? Hush and stand outside the fall of water.” She maneuvered him outside the stream of water, but he was still standing almost thigh deep in it in the tub. “Now create fire in the palm of a single hand.”
“While in the water?”
“If you are able to do it, then you are right, it is possible you will be able to burn me. But if you can’t do it, then perhaps you have nothing to worry about.” She gave him a provocative smile, her hand falling onto his chest and drawing a brief caressing shape over it. “If you need inspiration, I could very much help with that.”
“But I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on bringing fire to a single hand,” he said with an appreciative little growl. “Now stand clear.” He pushed her back a bit, the distance a little too overprotective. He’d never burned her while not touching her.
Ambrea watched him concentrate, watched him try to create fire in a single hand. She carefully kept an eye on the water and the air around him, looking for steam or that telltale ripple in the air that said it was heating up.
There was nothing.
“So,” she said softly after watching him try with all his will. “It seems we’ve discovered your weakness, Rush. You can’t create fire while part of you is immersed in water.”
“It would seem so.” He shot a sudden look at her that seared and burned far more than any fire might have done. “But let’s give it a wee bit of a testing, shall we?”
And just like that she was swept into his arms and under the crush of his mouth. Just as easily as he had shut everything down earlier, he threw a switch and turned it all back on again. And Ambrea was very okay with that. She did notice that he took the added precaution of moving them back under the fall of the water.
“Ah, that’s better,” he rumbled, his voice deep and rough as his hands slid fast and hot all over her skin. “Watching you stand there naked, these pretty breasts of yours so proud and so damn tempting. If that couldn’t inspire heat in my hands and body, then nothing can.”
“I think you’re mostly right. But I’ve seen the power inside you, Rush. I believe with a little practice and a little control you can make anything happen, or not happen. At your will.”
“Perhaps. Right now, Empress, my will is to create a bit of fire inside you. Let’s start with that, shall we now?”
She was too breathless to speak, so she merely nodded her head.
Balkin had carefully followed in the wake of the empress’s departure. After all, he did not want his curiosity to be blatant. He couldn’t imagine where else she would need to be. He had instructed everyone to keep court business away from her. At least, for today. Tomorrow, however, was another story. Tomorrow he wanted them to overwhelm her, to flood her with all their business as they would never otherwise have dared to do. So far, she had shown a surprising bit of strength and backbone, but a few insults thrown at her by one of the more imprudent prelates was nothing compared to the clamor of what it took to manage the state of Allay.
Balkin lived in the royal wing, mere doors down from the royal quarters, so he had a right to walk these particular halls, whether by the outer approach or by following the receding procession through the private receiving rooms and council chambers. He came up on the small crowd of milling servants who seemed at a loss as to what to do with themselves. They’d all been locked away and out, denied access to the royal person. Yet the definition of their jobs demanded they be ready to serve the empress at a moment’s notice. So essentially they couldn’t leave.
Most of them anyway. The entirety of the picture became clear to him when he realized that there was one royal servant missing. The Tarian. Balkin had been trying to make heads or tails of the brute since first laying eyes on him. He’d decided that he was a mercenary hire, a bit of muscle she had acquired to help make her feel safe as she took her place in decidedly hostile territory. Truly, it was a wise choice. He begrudgingly had to give her some credit for it. But unless the Tarian was going to taste every bit of her food and sleep guard beside her bed …
But here now he was entertaining another idea. What if the Tarian was going to be sleeping in her bed? It was a major breach in court etiquette if he was locked away with her behind closed doors. It allowed for the speculation that they were lovers. Some wild savage like the Tarian male was proving to be was, however, far from an acceptable choice as a bedmate for the Empress of Allay. The nobles would not stand for it, and neither would the Tari-hating commoners. Indeed, it surprised him that she would make so unwise a move in her opening salvo to win the favor of the court and the country.
“Why stand you all here?” Balkin demanded of them loudly and gruffly, watching the servants jump in their own skin at the surprise of his strident voice. “Why do you not attend your mistress?”
The only one who had not jumped at his voice turned to meet him eye to eye, a notable action because commoners had never been allowed to meet the eyes of royals under the rule of his brother. But he knew this woman. She had been in exile with the princess. She would not be used to the sound of his voice or the fear it ought to instill in her.
“You. Are you not companion to the empress?”
“I am, great lord.” She gave him what he would consider a begrudging bow. But still she did not look away from his eyes. It ought to have enraged him under any other circumstances, but for some reason her backbone stimulated him. That she had a pretty face and a fine set of tits didn’t hurt either.
He let his appreciation show as he stepped up to her, broke into the safety of her personal space. At last she wavered and her gaze flew from his. She wanted to step back but was torn, he could tell. She was confident in the strength of her mistress, but not as yet confident in her own place amongst the court. She was a pretty fish out of water. He could use her against Ambrea if he played her right.
“Your mistress should never be left alone with anyone whom others might perceive as below her regard,” he reminded her. “It is your job as her most trusted servant to protect your mistress from unseemly behaviors. What is your name?”
“Suna,” she answered, clearly trying to find her footing against him. She bravely raised her chin and met his eyes. “I have been companion to my mistress for many years, great lord,” she said, clearing her throat a minute before becoming a bit more strident. “Her protection has always been my ultimate goal. I can assure you, she is very well protected with her Tarian by her side. And if she wishes to confer with him in private about matters, it is innocently meant and essential to her safety and protection.” She squared her shoulders then, and Balkin got an instant erection at the sight of her proud stance. “And anyone who thinks otherwise is a lascivious prig. My mistress is innocent of men, as she has always been. She is also pious and sweet and would not ride just any stallion that trotted across her path.”
“I never said she would. I only mentioned that perception is everything, and here we have a corridor full of servants with opinions of their own who do not know your mistress as well as you do.”
“Opinions are rather like assholes,” she countered crudely. “Everyone has one and they are all usually full of shit.”
Balkin chuckled, giving her what he deemed his most charming smile. “Truer words were never spoken, Lady Suna. But where would we be without the rules of etiquette and genteel behaviors? Such chaos creates fear among those little assholes. And bef
ore you know it, they are crapping all over your sweet mistress.”
He turned to the milling peons in the hall. “Be gone, all the rest of you! The only ones who ought to be here are the empress’s personal guard and the Lady Suna. She will fetch any of you who are needed when you are needed.”
They began to hastily clear out under his order, and turning back to Suna he smiled again. Though she remained strongly raised against him, he saw her flush darkly over the rise of her cheekbones. He reached out to brush back a loose curl where it rested on her collarbone, the length respectfully and obviously shorter than that of her royal mistress. He suspected she was a very loyal girl and she would report all of his actions to her mistress, so he remained well behaved and did nothing untoward, although that didn’t mean he wouldn’t remember her in the future. But it would be fun to toy with the little fish.
For the moment he would use her to report good things about him to her mistress. She would tell Ambrea that he was kind, concerned, and fair. That perhaps he was a good source of information, a good place to turn when she needed guidance. In a very lowered voice he spoke to her.
“Whether your mistress’s behavior is pure and innocent or more tawdry, that is her private business. It is your responsibility, Lady Suna, to keep opinionated witnesses to the ultimate minimum. You are loyal to the empress, and that is good. You must protect her and her image at all costs. It is one thing for there to be rumors, quite another for someone to say, ‘It’s true. I was there standing outside her private rooms when they were locked away together.’ You understand?”
Suna nodded, her expression turning contrite and a bit lost. Clearly she was angry with herself for not acting more definitively.