The Sword (27 page)

“Yes, you do.” She wasn't going to give him the option of refusing. She had always believed both husband and wife should wear rings. Picking it up, she slid it carefully onto his finger. “With this ring…I thee wed.”

Her fingers trembled as she finished it, making their marriage even more real, with this token of her world's ways. Saber folded her hands in his, lifting them to his mouth. His gaze grew dark and heated, and she knew he was feeling that much more bound to his otherworldly bride, too.

“Okay, break it up!” Koranen mock-ordered. “Any hotter, and those amulets I made will have to start working!”

Wolfer kicked their double chair in the nearest leg with his boot heel for emphasis. “Take it upstairs, you two.”

“As you wish.” Standing up immediately, Saber tugged Kelly up, then scooped her over his shoulder. She shrieked and thumped his back with a fist…but not nearly with as much vigor as she had at their very first meeting.

Her lips brushed his back in a kiss, not in a bite, before she pretended to demand, “Put me down, Saber!”

“You heard my twin. Not until we're upstairs.” He strode for the north archway, then did a U-turn back to the table. Grabbing the four ward-sigils, he tucked them into his overtunic, adjusted his bride on his shoulder, and took his burdens out of the hall.

S
aber crossed to the bed as soon as the door shut behind them. The covers, just a sheet and a blanket to ward against the cool summer nights, had been turned down slightly on both sides, while bedposts and headboard had been wrapped with real garlands of sweet-smelling flowers. Tossing the bedding down over the flowerless footboard, he lowered Kelly from his shoulder to the floor, then fished the sigils out of his tunic. Sorting them out, he handed her the ones with her name.

“I think on opposite posts would be best,” he murmured, gesturing at the diagonally opposed ones. “I'm not certain which side either of us will end up sleeping on, night after night; I have no preference, myself, and this way the wards will enclose both of us completely.”

She nodded and crawled onto the bed instead of going around, pausing only long enough to toe off her ankle boots at the edge. He eyed her backside, draped in soft aquamarine silk, then shook his head and quickly hung up the fire-ward sigil on one of the nearer posts. Saber then bent and removed his own boots and crawled onto the bed to reach the far post to hang up the night-peace amulet. When he sat back on his heels, the task done, aquamarine-clad arms slipped around him from behind.

“This silk may be lightweight…but I'm feeling rather warm and overdressed,” Kelly murmured in his ear. “How about you?”

Just feeling her warm breath against the curve of his ear made him hot. Feeling her palms flatted against the muscles of his chest, stroking upward, then down again, brought him to an instant boil. Because her fingers went all the way down to his belt and started working on the buckle. “Kelly…”

“I may be physically a virgin, but I paid attention in my sex-education classes,” she murmured with a smile, tossing his belt away. “Did I tell you it was my favorite subject?”

Turning in her arms, Saber cupped her face and kissed her. Sweetly. Gently. Doing his damnedest to go slow instead of now, now,
now
like his body demanded. “We have all night, Kelly…and we may only have one time of it before the verse is fulfilled.”

“If your universe knows what's good for it,” she asserted in a low, feminine growl, “that damned Disaster will stay away until
after
dawn.” She shifted her fingers to his overtunic, which laced down the front.

Out of self-defense, Saber pulled her fingers away. “You are the one wearing the most clothing; we will remove your garments first. Though I am not sure what to
call
your odd mix of clothes.”

“I thought I'd start a comfortable fashion trend,” she sighed against his lips, leaning forward to kiss him again.

“Women wear skirts, in Katan,” he pointed out between kisses.

“We're not in Katan. We're on Nightfall Island,” she reminded him, pulling back so he could attend to the laces of her tunic-vest. “And I like pants more than skirts; my thighs sometimes get chafed, in skirts.”

He stopped with the ties halfway loosened to glance down at her aqua-clad thighs. Her legs were shapely, feminine and wonderful, the kind meant to wrap around his hips…

“Chafing my thighs is
your
job,” Kelly added with a grin.

Saber closed his eyes on a groan. When she chuckled, he snapped his eyes open again. She was drawing out the laces the rest of the way, teasingly sliding one out of a hole, then the other, then back to the first for the next hole down the row. It aroused him; not because it was an innocent, ordinary undressing action, if done torturously slow, but because her smile while she was doing it was pure feminine temptation, knowing exactly what he was longing for beneath the slowly removed garment.

When she pulled out the last bit of cord, she slipped off of the bed and stood next to it, leaving on the unlaced vest. But instead of removing it, Kelly slipped her hands under the front of her skirt and long-hemmed blouse, and did something there that, moments later, dropped her trousers. Peeling them off delicately one leg at a time, she took off her socks in the same graceful motion, then reached under the edge of the vest and removed the half-skirt.

He couldn't get enough of her legs. Pale, softly muscled, and dusted with freckles below the hem of her blouse. The sight reminded Saber of that first, torturous glimpse he'd had of her femininity, the first day he had brought her clothes to wear. There had been plenty of skin on view during their incarceration in the bathtub, but this hinted at the illicit and forbidden, rather than the blatant. Saber held his breath as Kelly loosened the ties of her blouse at the lace-trimmed wrists, but she didn't remove anything else, yet.

“Your turn. You're wearing more clothes than I, now,” Kelly reminded him with a smile.

Slipping off the bed, he stripped tunic and shirt in one motion from his chest. Then cursed with a rueful laugh as the sleeves stayed tied to his wrists. Laughing openly, she helped him, since his hands were trapped inside the sleeves, forcing her to tease out the laces and unknot them.

Saber grinned and tickled her hands with his fingertips, making her narrow her eyes at him. As soon as both hands were free, Saber stooped and slid his fingertips up the backs of her thighs, then cupped her buttocks in his palms. And frowned and wiggled his fingers, feeling the odd texture there. “What are you wearing, under there?”

Kelly giggled at the ticklish sensation. Squirming free, she backed up a step, then finished loosening the ties holding the gathered sleeves and neckline in place. A shrug out of her vest, a tug on the fabric underneath, and the blouse loosened completely. It dropped, pooling at her feet, revealing the see-through lacework of her homemade lingerie.

At the highly provocative sight, Saber stiffened instantly. In every way. “By the gods!” He stared at hearts-within-hearts, woven in the same white intricate openwork that had trimmed her clothes. The lace-made fabric did nothing to conceal the underlying dusky pink of her nipples, or the coppery-blond curls of her mound. “What is
that
?”

“Undergarments. In the wedding-night style of
my
world,” she added, resting her hands on her hips, with just a slight, coquettish cock of one hip to the side, emphasizing the curves that had filled out over the past month and a half. “I take it you like it?”

Like it?
His manhood was straining so hard at the exotic, erotic sight, he was surprised the lacings of his trousers hadn't broken! Under the intensity of his gaze, her nipples tightened, thrusting against the stitched-together lace that she had somehow made into fabric.

His knees gave out along with his control, and Saber dropped to the hardwood floor. His hands caught her hips, his head tipped up as she swayed, and his mouth caught one of those tight buds through the textured lace. Suckling greedily, he heard her gasp and tried to gentle his pace, but the texture, the warmth and taste were driving him too hard to be ignored. Cupping her other breast, he latched onto its peak, too. He suckled her through the lace, inflamed by the knowledge she had deliberately worn such scandalously arousing garments just to walk the eight altars with him.

Her strained cry cracked the fever in him, and he tore his mouth away to look up at her. Caught in her teeth was her lower lip, which Kelly did any time she was worried or overwhelmed. It reminded him that, enthusiastic or not, she was still physically innocent. Breathing hard, Saber scooped her up and laid her on the blanket-stripped bed. He pressed a kiss to her soft, lightly freckled belly, heard her indrawn breath, and licked the skin of her stomach. She gasped, breath hitching in her lungs. This close to the core of her, the scent of her heat made him dizzy with need, as all of his blood pooled in his loins.

“Beloved—these garments have to go.
Now
,” he added, drawing the very brief undertrouser-like thing down over her hips, trying to be careful with the flimsy garment. “Before I rip them from you.”

If he had been anyone else, Kelly knew she would have been nervous to have even that nonexistent barrier stripped away from such an intimate location on her body. Saber, however, had seen her waterlogged and rushing to the bathroom, thanks to the watersnake venom. Hardly the most decorous of moments in which to be naked…and they had been naked in their misery literally for hours, together.

The only thing she longed for now was for his hands, his mouth, his body touching her where the lace had been only moments before, the underpants tossed to the floor. His comment about ripping her hard work made her fumble at the hook-and-eye fastenings between her breasts. This wasn't her old universe after all; garments like these were clearly one of a kind, from his dumbfounded, impassioned expression. She couldn't just skip down to the nearest department store's lingerie section to buy more, if anything happened to this set.

He helped her sit up and peel the upper garment away, tossing it aside like he had the panties. Then he dropped her onto the feather-stuffed bed by cupping and suckling both of her breasts hungrily one after the other, making her groan and fall on her back. He divided his attention greedily among first one breast, then her mouth, then the other breast, licking with his tongue, scraping with his teeth, nipping with his lips. Panting, Kelly arched her back into the arousing actions, holding his arms where they were braced on the bed to either side of her, then cupping his head when he shifted up and kissed her mouth.

Just when the sensations within her started to be frustrating, Saber kissed his way down her ribs, along the soft dip and curve of her belly. He reached the ticklish zone around her belly button, and she giggled, then laughed, then gasped as he discovered how much it stimulated her by nuzzling and licking the dimple in her flesh with his nose and tongue. As she squirmed under him, alternately calling out his name and ticklish protests in half-moaned, half-giggled pleas, the blond mage worked his body down between her knees, parting her writhing thighs with his wrists.

When she was gasping with each breath from the ticklish nips of his teeth and lips against her thighs, he pulled back with a smile, sitting up on his heels between her calves. His fingertips stroked from her ankles to her thighs, slowly, over and over as he sat there between her legs, the front of his silk trousers blatantly tight with his arousal.

First over the outside of her legs from ankle almost to waist, then up the tops of them, shin to knee to the tender skin where leg met hip. Then farther and farther to the inside of her twitching legs…until his fingers stopped mere inches from their goal. Deliberately as she watched, he stared right there. Let her feel the cool air of the room on her private core as his fingers pressed against her flesh, slightly parting her nether lips. Letting her feel the heat of his stare as he looked nowhere else, sweat beginning to bead on his slowly tightening muscles. Letting her know just how ready he was for her…and how hot and slick and ready she was for him, just from being looked at so intensely.

Finally, slowly, in agony of waiting and wanting, she watched him dip down. Felt the cool, silken caress of his chest-length hair brush her thighs. Felt his fingers inch closer, then part her even more. Felt the hot, wet glide of his tongue against her most intimate flesh. Her moan slid up into a tight cry, as his tongue flicked once, twice, then suckled intensely at that one special spot, and her back arched as her eyes squeezed shut, as she wailed with the first, full-blown orgasm a man had ever given her.

Saber couldn't get enough of her. He nipped with his lips, he licked every inch with his tongue; he even thought about using his teeth, but her hips were twitching too much with involuntary need to safely try. Then she bucked without warning; in fact, she nearly broke his nose, but it was worth the brief pain as his otherworld-woman cried out, clutching at the covers in the need to anchor herself in her climax. Delving back in, Saber dragged out her pleasure as long as he could.

Only when her cries, her gasps, her groans had slipped back down into moaning pants, her body quivering and drained for the moment, did he reluctantly kiss his way back up to her belly. Saber drifted his mouth over her breasts for a few moments and then finally up past her Katani-style marriage torc to her parted lips. He groaned himself, when her tongue flicked out and tasted herself on his mouth in little licks.

Her energy came back. More languorous than before, but it came back, and it was strong enough to push him over, onto his back in the middle of the bed. He groaned again when her naked weight settled against his half-clothed body.

His hands occupied themselves with her backside as she mated their mouths together in devouring kisses. Somehow, Kelly got her own hands on his biceps, pinning his arms and upper body down so that when she slid her mouth down to his throat, then to his collarbone to nuzzle around his own thin, stiff marriage torc, he couldn't successfully drag her back. She brushed her lips against his chest, enjoying the tickling of the sparse dusting of dark golden hairs across his skin. Saber loved the sensuality of the act.

When she reached his nipples, Saber groaned and gripped her arms, unsure he could take such incredibly delicious torture. Each lick, each nip, shot straight to his throbbing groin. And when she did the equivalent of what he had done to her breasts, sealed those kiss-swollen lips around him and sucked on the flat, rosy-brown disc of one of his nipples, he arched up with a shout. But she wasn't done with him. He rasped her name out in desperate warning, when she trailed all the way down to his belly button, bared just above the waistline of his new trousers, and he shuddered, every muscle tightening against the urge for release when she dipped her tongue into his taut navel.