Jeweled (10 page)

“Are you hungry?”

She sat up, the blanket falling to her waist and the chill air kissing her bare breasts. Shivering, she covered herself. “I guess that depends on how much food we have.”

He gave her a part of a loaf of bread.

“Thank you.” She took it and bit into it. Chewing, she looked around the room, seeing his clothes hanging near hers. Then his state of dress registered. He wore a pair of underwear, tight ones that defined his rear and the shape of his cock in front, but that was all. She couldn’t help the sweep of her gaze over his body. She had always known that Anatol was a good-looking man in the face, but his body was good-looking, too. Muscle rippled and flexed over his chest, stomach, and down his strong-looking legs. She wondered how he’d come to be so in shape, since he’d lived in the palace his whole life and his magick was cerebral in nature.

Of course, there were many mysteries to Anatol. How was it he seemed to know his way around the streets? Why was he so much more at ease with their situation than she was? Why had he never played the palace political games like everyone else? Anatol remained an enigma to her on many levels.

She swallowed her bit of bread, her body reacting in a wholly new—and completely unwanted—way. “I found food for at least a couple of days if we ration it.” He jerked his head toward the top of the dresser, where a burlap bag lay.

“How did you get it?”

His face darkened. “I took risks.”

Her stomach dropped out as images from the beheading flooded her mind. “Don’t do that.”

He flashed a cocky smile at her. “I didn’t know you cared.”

She stared at the rest of the bread in her hand and forced her voice to be flat as she answered, “I only care because you’re linked to me. My care for you is only selfish.”

“Of course, Evangeline. Are you cold?”

“A little.”

He took the rest of the bread from her hand, wrapped it in a bit of cloth, and set it on the night table. “Move over and I’ll warm you.”

She turned over and settled down on her side. Anatol blew out the lamp and tucked in beside her, his strong chest flush against her back and his legs against the backs of hers. His arm curled over her waist and his hand lay on the mattress snuggled just near her stomach.

Her modesty had left her sometime while she’d been growing up and she’d stopped caring about showing her nude body to others, but there was something different about this, something unsettling. Something intimate. It made her stomach roll and flutter.

“Relax,” Anatol sighed against her ear, raising gooseflesh all along her arms. “As beautiful as you are, I’m in no condition to take advantage of the situation. Sleep.”

The state of his lower body gave lie to his words, his cock poking into the flesh of her rear, but she closed her eyes anyway, too tired to care very much about it. Men had hard-ons for women. They lusted and wanted to fuck anything that moved. It was no big surprise that Anatol would want to fuck her. He was a man and she was a woman. Those were the rules.

Anatol finally fell asleep sometime during the night despite the fact he had Evangeline naked in his arms. In the morning he woke up before she did and sat on the edge of the bed watching her sleep. The morning light eased through the window, bright as it reflected off the deep, fresh snow that had fallen all night long. They were very lucky they’d managed to find shelter. She’d tucked the blankets up tight under her chin, concealing the rest of her body. He’d had an eyeful of her bare breasts the night before when she’d sat up, groggy from sleep, and the feel of her soft, bare skin all night had tormented him.

He was no virgin. Anatol had been with plenty of women, though he was sure his number of sexual conquests couldn’t touch Evangeline’s. That was because he needed to care about the women he bedded. He’d learned that early, after a series of empty affairs in the palace had left him ravenous for more sex—something to fill the hole that his life there seemed to produce in him. That was when he’d begun to sneak out at night, sometimes during the day, leading a dangerous double life that could have gotten him killed.

Whereas Evangeline had learned to reject relationships and emotions, Anatol had embraced them. That had been his survival mechanism. It was also how he understood the harder path Evangeline had taken.

She shifted and sighed, turning over. He wanted to ease the blankets down and stroke her body until she responded, until she woke panting for him, slick between her thighs and needing him to fuck her. He wanted to touch her breasts, explore every hill and valley of her nipples. He wanted to go lower, pet her pretty cunt and suck on her clit until she screamed his name.

His hands clenched. He could do it. He knew he could seduce her, make her enjoy sex for the first time in her life.

But it was too soon.

He wanted Evangeline, but he wanted the whole of her—he wanted her to care for him before he took her, though there was a dark part of his mind that whispered maybe the way to her heart was through her body. Through sex, pleasure. Maybe if he gave her enough orgasms, he could touch her heart. He was certain she’d never climaxed during sex before. He wanted to be the one to make her do it for the first time.

He pushed up from the bed and stalked to the window. The street was silent and still, save for a few tracks from the intrepid or the desperate.

The rustling of blankets drew his attention. Evangeline rose and, shivering, made her way across the room to see if her clothes were dry. He knew they were still damp because he’d checked them already.

He let his gaze drop from her narrow shoulders to her small waist to the flare of her heart-shaped rear. She was lithe, like a dancer, slender as a reed. Her breasts were topped with luscious red nipples he could suck on for hours. Her long blond hair brushed the small of her back and the same color of light hair covered her mound. The area around her tattoo and jewel were still red. He scowled, examining them from afar. He didn’t like the looks of that at all.

“I know what you want, Anatol,” she said without turning around. She sounded bored. “I can feel you watching me.” She turned and spread her arms. “So take me, I don’t care.”

I don’t care
.

He wanted her to
care
.

“I was looking at your jewel and tattoo,” he grumbled.
Partly
. “It’s cold. Get back into bed.” His voice came out gravelly in frustration.

She retreated under the covers, nibbling on the rest of the bread from the night before. “You should come back to bed, too. I promise I won’t bite.”

Yes, but
he
might. And he might do a whole lot more than just bite her. He might give in to the strong urge he had to fuck her so well and so hard that he would emblazon himself on her body and in her mind so that forevermore she would remember him.

“I’m coming back to bed just as soon as I make a disinfectant for your lower back.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“I took a little salt from a cookshop the other day in case it looked like your jewel needed to be cleaned.”

He sought the small paper-wrapped amount of salt, found a suitable container in the items they’d gathered from the street, and headed into the bathroom. When he came back he had the best disinfectant he could manage under the circumstances.

“Turn over.” Grabbing a scrap of material, he walked to the bed and sat down on the mattress to examine the skin around the jewel. It was red and infected-looking. “This is going to hurt a little.”

She sighed and turned her face toward him. “Go ahead.”

He dribbled the salt water onto her jewel, using the scrap to catch the dribbles before they hit the mattress. She jerked and her breath hissed out of her. “Stay still.” He poured the rest over the jewel slowly, using it all up. Then he put the container and material aside and blew gently over the wound to dry the water.

He straightened and pulled the blankets over her. “That’s the best I can do right now. We’ll do it again tomorrow if it looks like it needs it.”

“Thank you.” She settled down on her side and looked up at him.

His gaze searched her lovely face—her pretty eyes that seemed to be weighing him every time they lighted on him, the curve of her full mouth, the slant of her cheekbones, the fall of her hair that his fingers itched to stroke.

She smiled as if she knew what he was thinking. Maybe his expression gave him away. “I offered you my body and I know you want me. Why not take me? We’re stuck here all day with nothing to do.”

“And you think that’s an excuse to have sex? It’s just something to kill time?”

She shrugged. “Why not?”

He ground his teeth together. Clearly, although she could now feel, not all of the old Evangeline had washed away.

Sighing, she flopped onto her back. “Tell me about yourself, Anatol, why are you so odd?”

“Odd?”

“You’ve never been like the others at Belai. You’ve always held yourself apart, disappearing at strange times, not attending many of the social functions.”

“I think one could make the argument you never attended
any
of the social functions, Evangeline. Not really. Your emotions have been absent, leaving you an empty shell. An automaton.”

She stared up at him. “Don’t be cruel.”

“I wasn’t trying to be cruel. I’m just trying to make you see the truth.”

She looked away. “Well, don’t. Anyway, no one cared where my emotions were.”

“If you say so.” He’d always cared.

“They cared if I would sleep with them or not, or whether I could do something that would move them upward in our social circles. No one ever cared about
me
.”

That was true, though he’d cared for her. Likely he’d been the only one.

She made a sound of frustration. “You changed the subject. Tell me why you’re odd.”

“Odd.” He gave a small, cold-sounding chuckle. “I was often absent because I escaped Belai whenever I could. At least, the building itself. I practiced swordplay with the Imperial Guard—”

“That explains it.”

“Explains what?”

She shook her head. “Never mind.”

“I practiced swordplay with them, helped them train.”

“So that’s how you fought those three men in the alley.”

He nodded. “Like I said, I trained with the guard when they’d let me. They were usually eager for sparring partners. I also tended horses in the stable and walked the city streets whenever I could. Borrowed books from the depository and read them in the park.”

She propped herself up on an elbow and the blanket fell down, exposing her breasts with their tight red nipples. He looked away. “Why?” She sounded mystified.

“I wanted more from life than what being J’Edaeii offered me. I was searching for that
more
.”

“Did you ever find it?”

He looked down at her. “Yes, but I found it back where I started. Unfortunately, by the time I found her, she was already too damaged to see me clearly.”

“Who?”

“You.” He couldn’t believe he’d said it out loud, yet there it was.

“Me?” She laughed and looked away from him. “You’re insane. Are you saying you’ve been . . . what? . . . admiring me from a distance for years? That’s completely—”

He had her pinned beneath him in a heartbeat, his gaze boring into hers. Her breath caught as she stared up at him with surprise and fear on her face. “True. It’s true, Evangeline.”

Her words and breath seemed to leave her.

He rolled away from her, sitting on the edge of the bed. Damn it, it was too soon for admissions like that. What was he thinking? He’d scare her away.

“Anatol?”

He said nothing.

“Anatol, you’re playing with me. Why?”

“I’m not playing.” To his own ears, he sounded miserable. That’s because he was.

She laid a small, warm hand on his shoulder, her touch making him stiffen. “I don’t know what to say.”

Yes, he didn’t either. That wasn’t something he’d never intended to say to her. Now he was afraid to open his mouth lest something even worse came out.

She slid out from the blankets and came around to face him. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t what she did. Pushing his hands to the side, she straddled him, her cunt coming flush against his cock with only the thin material of his underwear separating them. His cock noticed the heat of her sex so close, the press of her breasts against him, and went to hard, almost painful attention.

“What are you doing?” He gritted his teeth. If she continued this, he would pin her to the bed, part her thighs, and thrust his cock root-deep inside her. It was too soon for that.

“I don’t know,” she answered in a whisper, her voice trembling.

He looked up at her and saw her eyes were glistening. Not in the twenty years he’d known her had he ever seen her cry. Not when she’d slipped and fallen down the stairs at the age of ten and broken her arm. Not when she’d failed her quarterly magick test in front of everyone at the age of fourteen. He’d thought she wasn’t capable of it.