Page 122 of Traitor Son

Remin panted, his head between her breasts as shudders rippled through his body like aftershocks. Even though her own body felt so distant and disconnected from her that they seemed like someone else’s hands, she lifted them, caressing the back of his neck, running her fingers through his black hair.

Against her skin, she felt his lips curve into a smile.

“I love you,” he murmured, and moved over her to kiss her. “Wife. Ophele. I love you.”

“I love you,” she whispered back, tracing his cheek with a fingertip, and felt that her heart would burst with happiness as he nuzzled his face into her palm.

* * *

There would be no sleep that night.

It was impossible. It wasn’t just his desire for her, though Remin barely managed to restrain himself long enough to let her catch her breath before he wanted her again. He wasalive.He was alive, when he had expected to die. He was alive, and she loved him, and she had consented to lie with him, and all those things he had dreamed about a home and their children and making a garden of this valley might really come to pass…

It was too much. He had never really believed that those things would actually happen. It was too painful to contemplate such happiness.

He knew how to suffer. He knew that endurance was a question of scale. He had been able to survive years of war. Months of scorchingsummer heat. Weeks of hunger in the winter, when the supply trains were stretched thin, and blizzards delayed them in deep snow. Days of pain from healing wounds. Hours of torment as Genon stitched him back together. And minutes and seconds of agony when he had been shot or stabbed or poisoned, sometimes thinking only of the next breath when it hurt too much to contemplate anything further. He knew how to hurt.

Now, he was having to apply this harsh lesson to a joy so great, he couldn’t even grasp the outlines of it yet.

Instead, he thought of Ophele, real and tangible, his joy made flesh. Wrapped in sheets and blankets that smelled sweetly of her, naked together in the dark, there were no walls between them. There was barely the barrier of skin. He had never known it was possible to talk to someone else like he was talking to his own soul.

“I think it started in Granholme,” he said, brushing her hair back from her face. He had already made love to her twice and thought he might have taken the worst of the edge off. Now he felt only a dreamy lassitude, wrapped in the warmth and dark as if they could drift together in this small space forever. “I liked you that day. I think that was the first day I ever heard you reallytalk.And that night, I didn’t want to leave your bed. I don’t sleep anywhere without guards, you know. Miche or Tounot usually take turns guarding when we’re traveling. But then when that assassin came…”

Her fingers grasped his as she listened.

“I felt stupid,” he admitted. “I know now you didn’t have anything to do with it. But you’d talked to so many people that day, and the lock on the shutter was broken. That’s not proof. But if it had been you…I couldn’t stand that thought. It happened before. Someday I’ll tell you about it.”

Not tonight. He didn’t want to ruin this night with such a tale.

“You mean Merrienne,” she said unexpectedly, making him stiffen at the name. “It’s all right, Sir Miche told me. You don’t have to say it. Unless you want to.”

Remin’s lips tightened and his brows drew together, but he supposed he could forgive it, this once. She knew, and he didn’t have to talk about it.

“Well, that was why,” he said, shrugging as if that would push that long-dead girl out of his mind once and for all. “I tried not to love you.I think I knew almost from the beginning that I would. You even knew my House’s words, the day we married.”

“I read them in a book,” she said, which no longer surprised him. Her fingers played in his dark hair. “But…you love me now?”

“More than anything.” How strange it was that saying it could make him feel so light. The words had sat in his chest like a stone for so long, a secret he had hidden, probably even from himself.

“Even if the Emperor does do something again, though, you won’t…” she said hesitantly, and suddenly he remembered how she had looked, that night in Granholme, and her red and swollen eyes the next morning.

He could really be appallingly stupid.

“No. No, I won’t,” he said firmly, pulling her against his body, his hands rough with apology. “I believe you. I’m sorry. I will believe you always. But if anything happens, if anyone tries to threaten you or blackmail you, tell me. No matter what, I won’t be angry. I gave you my heart,” he added, lifting her chin to look her in the eyes. “That means my life is yours to take, if ever you have to. Never forget that I chose your life tonight.”

Her lips trembled and she buried her face in his chest, filling him with regret. There had been so many misunderstandings. And so many refusals to understand on his part, so many times when she had offered a hand and he had chased her away. Gently, he stroked her hair and waited. He had made his apologies. He would not keep saying words. He would show her.

“Well, that’s too bad.” She said, muffled. Sniffling, she lifted her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Because I chose your life. And I threw my pardon in the fire.”

The corner of his mouth twitched.

“Then we’ll have to talk to each other about it, if it happens,” he said, resting his forehead against hers. Stars, how he loved her. He loved her eyes. He loved her lips. He loved her little snub nose and he kissed that too, and her feathery eyebrows, soft arches. He loved her breasts very much indeed, and lavished them with such attention that her breath turned shallow and panting and she arched against him, clearly as hungry for him as he was for her.

There was so much to learn. He was discovering what made her writhe. He played at giving pleasure and then withholding it, teasing his shy wife, and was delighted every time she surprised him.

“What do you want?” he asked, his voice rumbling the question as he licked and tormented her nipples until she was squirming underneath him. But he was utterly defeated when she looked at him through her thick eyelashes and touched the rigid length of his manhood, her fingers stroking the swollen, throbbing head.

“That,” she whispered, meeting his gaze with a mixture of shyness and shamelessness that made his desire claw its way to a mountaintop andhowl.

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