Kismet's Kiss: A Fantasy Romance (Alaia Chronicles) (40 page)

His lips trailed along her jaw, her sensitive neck, and down to her right nipple. His tongue glided over her, eliciting gasps. At the sounds of her pleasure, he took her into his mouth, sucking lightly, and let his teeth graze her upraised flesh.

Head rolling back, she gripped his shoulders and moaned. She felt him smile against her breast, then he shifted to treat her other nipple with the same warm care.
My love, my love.
She trailed her fingernails down his back in sensuous curves.

This is hardly fair
, came a devilish thought.
It’s high time for him to feel
my
mouth.
She drew him to his feet, then pushed him back onto the bed between the wintergreen curtains of the canopy. The velvet swayed as he settled back on the mattress with a hungry sheen in his eyes.

“How bold you’ve become,” he growled. “Don’t ever stop.” A lock of raven hair curled down his forehead, making him look deliciously wicked.

“You recently reminded me of my own courage.” She climbed on the bed, capturing his legs between hers, and stalked toward his erection. He braced himself on his elbows in sensual anticipation.

Hovering over him, she teased his cock with the tip of her tongue. Breath hissed out of him and he splayed his fingers over the silken sheets. The taut ridges of his stomach rippled as her movements made him stir and quiver.

Ruthlessly, she plunged her mouth down his length, forcing a strangled moan from his throat.
Like wet silk
, he thought, before thoughts fled. He arched back, taut as a bowstring as she stroked him in rhythms that teased and tortured. She built the sensations until his knuckles whitened in their grip and he knew he couldn’t take much more of the heaven of her mouth. “Wait,” he gasped.

With a playful glance, she paused with her lips still enfolding him. When he’d uncurled his fingers from the sheets, he sat up. She released him and her mouth rose up to his, tasting, licking, melting.

He grasped her waist and rolled, pinning her beneath him. Kissing her deeply, he lowered his body, reveling in the feeling of his skin against hers, heat to heat and heart to heart.

When he poised his cock above her thighs, her beautiful gaze locked with his and something deep within him shifted and clicked home, as if he would always be whole when he held her in his arms.

Feeling her gaze on his very soul, he sheathed himself inside her. She arched up to meet him. He stroked slowly, savoring the sweet taste of her mouth, the scent of her naked skin, her moans.

Their rhythm quickened, amplified. She wrapped her legs around him, grazed his shoulder with her teeth, raked her lioness claws down his back, driving him ever deeper into her—into the woman he loved. Together they rocked on his bed, in Kuramos’s sanctuary, in the heart of their world.

At last, when their rhythm hastened into a fever of slick heat and sweat, Varene tightened her hands around him, threw her head back and cried out her release. The sound of her joy pushed him into his own oblivion, with the cadence of his surging cock calling
mine…mine…she is mine.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

K
uramos braced himself on his elbow so he could watch the drowsing Varene, who was lovingly spooned in his arms and ethereal in her slumber. She had indeed bewitched him—simply by being herself. And he, the Great Sultan of Kad, had become her willing slave of love. He would gladly be that for the rest of their lives.

He’d already had nearly two centuries of marriages for alliances—business transactions between families, with each understanding the expectations of the bond. That he’d grown to care deeply for each of his wives, and they for him, was a bonus for which he was thankful, but had never expected.

Varene was different.
Love
was different. Incomparable. It felt as if the shackles he wore had loosened and burst away, even as his heart had enlarged to cradle her inside it.

As he looked down upon her ringless hand, curled trustingly in his, he knew that she, too, had changed. She had acknowledged and released her haunted past and accepted at last the incredible bounty Kismet had bestowed upon them.

A bounty she deserved. Varene gave ceaselessly to others—gave her care, her talent and her deep and endless kindness to his children, his wives, to everyone she met, regardless of rank or privilege, or even merit. Her healing knew no bounds. She’d even offered her own would-be killers a chance at redemption. She was a better person than he could ever be.

But she didn’t give enough to herself. She’d allowed her passionate soul to be fettered by her responsibilities, her duty and devotion.

They were alike in many ways, he and his Tegannese lioness.

And that made him determined to help her
live
. He wanted to see her experience her sensual nature and life’s delights as often as possible, in his bed and out of it. She would have precious jewels, the finest clothes, gifts to please and befit this goddess among women.

Yet beneath it all, he knew that none of it, none of those
things
, mattered to her.
He
was what mattered to her—Kuramos, the man. That alone was the greatest gift any woman could offer him.

Varene deserved no less than everything he had to give. Especially after that gutterslime Tharkin had so cruelly abused her love and hopes. And yet…

Gazing down at her, Kuramos propped his cheek on his knuckles. He was still—and would be, for as long as Naaz granted essence to his body—the Great Sultan, leader and protector of the Kaddites. Could he, in good conscience, make a sultana of a woman they considered their enemy? Would they accept a foreign infidel at his side?

It galled him to have to consider the political responsibilities of such a deeply personal matter. Of being in love—the first real love he’d ever known.

But the throne of Kad, the destiny of his bloodline, required no less.

Varene would make a wonderful sultana—astute and valorous. Would his people realize that? Could he convince them? She was an Unbeliever, true, though perhaps over time, their faiths might not seem so divergent. And surely Naaz would accept the woman that Kismet, her own divine son, had brought to Kuramos.

The jasmine in Varene’s hair scented his nostrils. He felt the deep and even rhythm of her slumbering breaths beneath his hand, and thought about having her here for the rest of their lives. Having their children climb into this very bed, giggling. Watching his large family, already so dear to him, grow and receive new joy. And perhaps, though it may take years and travails, leading his realm to a new understanding of magic, and of tolerance.

With Varene by his side, anything was possible.

He would have to make his people realize that, too.

It wouldn’t be easy. But what of value ever was?

Varene sighed and her flaxen lashes parted. As if sensing his gaze, she rolled her head up and a smile curved her cheeks. “You enjoyed watching me nap?”

He nuzzled her ear, purring deep. “How could I not, after remembering what tired you out?”

Her laughter tugged a grin to his lips. This was the right time, surely… Unexpected nerves made his heart give a double thump.

He reached for her hand and held it up so they could both see. “After all those years, we removed that ring of horrors from your finger.”

Slowly, he traced the bare spot on her littlest finger, then moved his touch to the one beside it—the marriage finger. “Would you do me the honor of wearing my ring of love?”

Her body grew rigid beneath his arm.

He cleared his throat.
I am the sultan. I fear nothing under Naaz’s sun.
“Marry me, Varene.”

Two heartbeats later, she drew away and turned to face him, her expression too mixed to decipher. “Marry you?”

A queerness in her voice unsettled him. He relinquished her hand and smoothed back a lock of her golden hair. “I love you, Varene. Be my wife.”

Her lips parted as confusion reigned in her eyes. “What about Sulya? And Rajvi, and Zahlia—”

He tilted his head. “What of them? They’re my wives, of course, and they each wed the sultan of Kad. But last night…I realized I love you. Deeply. Irrevocably. It was Kismet. The god has pushed us together for a reason.”

As he trailed his fingers down her arm, she drew her head back and spoke. “Do you still love your wives?”

He frowned, blinking. “I respect them. Honor them. And yes, I love them. Though our bonds began as political alliances, my wives have been with me for years, joined their destinies with mine and bore my children; how could I not? But,” he said, squeezing her hand, “though I have grown to love them, I am
in
love with you. Only you—now, ever, and always.” He raised her fingertips to his lips. “Please. Marry me.”

V
arene’s hand tightened over his and she watched him, stunned.

The man she loved had just asked her to be his wife.
One
of his wives.

He was asking her to be part of his life, but only one-seventh of it. To share him with other women; to be one of a crowd. She wouldn’t be his partner—she’d be a beggar for the crumbs of his attention.

They had no future together. How could he not see it?

A silent wail quivered in her rib cage. She shook her head. “I told you, it can’t work between us. You have to realize that.”

“Did you not hear what I’ve said?” He raised himself up on the pillows. “Damn it, don’t pull away from me again.”

“You’re married to six women already. I can’t relinquish what matrimony should be about—the love between two people. How could I be one of your many wives?”

“Why wouldn’t you?” His brows drew together. “It is the way of my culture. Six strong women have wed me and they have found a way to peacefully coexist. Can’t you? For us?”

She laid her hands flat on her thighs. “It’s not in me to coexist like that. I want you to myself. All to myself.”

“Listen to me,” he said softly, gazing into her eyes. “I love you. I am
in
love with you. With no one else, Varene. Only you. Nothing I have felt for my wives can begin to compare with what’s been forged between us in these short days. My palace, my bed, everything I have, everything I
am
will be yours. Just try to understand that for Kaddites—”

“I have tried. I understand things now so much better than I did before I came here. But your ways of marriage are not mine. Which is my point. To me, nuptials should be between two people, not eight.”

His head swung from side to side. “I don’t understand this. All my other wives have learned to share me with each other.”

“They’ve learned?” she snapped. “Kuramos, you cannot simply
train
me to be your wife.”

He drew up taller. “And I can’t change my past.” His jaw clenched and released. “Things that happened, agreements that were made long before you and I met. But you…you have a chance now to
live
. It may not seem as safe as going back to Teganne, but the rewards are infinitely greater.”

“
Safe?
”

“Sohad told me of your man in Teganne. The man death won.”

Her jaw firmed and she thrust her chin out. “Sohad divulged our conversations?”

“I ordered him to. I had to know all I could about you. To his credit, he refused—at first. But I’m still his sultan.”

With fury rising inside her, she crossed her arms over her breasts and wished she were dressed. Especially since Kuramos looked heedless of his utter nakedness. “Just what is it you think you know?”

“That you loved Findar for decades, or thought you did, but never told him. It was safer that way, yes? After what Tharkin had done. So you took the easy route, kept your feelings to yourself, didn’t grab this man by the tunic and tell him what he meant to you. Didn’t take the chance you could be together. But now,
here I am
. I’m alive, Varene. I’m here with you right now, and I am in love with you.” His eyes flashed.

The truth of his words shivered into her, then fanned her ire. She pushed off the bed and stood, forcing more distance between them. “So though you talk of my courage, in this matter you think I’m a coward. After I escaped Fallorm, made a new future for myself, and did it well? After I came here to aid your family and grapple with a deadly illness that could have killed me, too? In a realm so hostile, by the way, that I was condemned as a sorceress and nearly burned at the stake.
And yet I stayed.
” Righteous anger scorched her throat. “I risk my life for my patients, I battle
death
for them!”