Page 65 of A Monsoon Rising

“Just curious,” he said, with a lightness that he didn’t feel, as they descended the stairs. “How will you get through the next few sennights without me to harp on? I’d hate to deprive you of your favorite pastime.”

Talasyn colored. “You certainly think highly of—excuse me—”

Alaric had quickened his pace so that he wouldn’t have to look at those blushing cheeks and think about how much he wanted to kiss them. Talasyn stomped after him, but her skirt slowed her down. He reached the landing first and she grabbed his arm, forcing him to look back at her, at her irate gaze and her put-upon pout, and his restraint dwindled to nothing in an instant.

One month.It consumed all of the space in his head. A number of days abstract yet acute.One month away from you.

He seized the small hand that was digging into his arm and dragged her to a corner room, which—he discovered upon wrenching open the door—wasnota room, but a supply closet stocked with cleaning equipment. He knocked over a mop as he hurriedly shut Talasyn and himself inside and flicked on the fire lamp, its soft glow painting her bewildered expression in splotches of gold out of the darkness.

He backed her up against the wall, concealing the tremor in his hand by flattening it over her head, leaning in. He was too big in this enclosed place, too clumsy, too desperate. But he didn’t know how else to be.

“What”—Talasyn swallowed—“what are you doing?”

Alaric watched the gilded skin of her throat ripple. Wondered if her mouth had gone dry, too.

“I want a kiss for the road,” he said hoarsely. “Should you deign to give it.”

He captured her lips in a bruising kiss. She melted at once, swaying against him as he ran his black-gauntleted hands down her body, each caress a memory he could hold up to the lonely nights that lay ahead.

But Talasyn would always be Talasyn, no matter the situation, and she wasted no time in laying into him once he lifted his mouth from hers. “Everyone’s waiting for us, you dolt,” she snapped, although the effect was rather diminished by the way she was gripping his collar, pulling him ever nearer.

“Let them wait,” Alaric growled, nibbling at her jaw, fidgeting with the pearlescent front clasps of her bodice until they gave way and his hand disappeared beneath the molten silk.

Talasyn scrabbled at the shoulders of his black tunic, then hiked up her skirt so that she could wrap one slim leg around his waist. Her response was even more enthusiastic than usual. Urged on by a sneaking suspicion, Alaric scraped the rough seam of his gauntlet over her breast, and something in his soul caught fire when she shuddered and canted her hips.

At least he wasn’t wearing the clawed ones that constituted part of his battle armor that day. He had no wish to hurt her. And yet some dark intrigue blossomed within him at the thought ofthat, and he wondered if she’d be able to take it.

Talasyn yanked him toward her for another kiss, during which he thumbed at the fastenings of his trousers, driven only by the basest of instincts. Just once, before he left. Her fingers, wrapped around his hard length, were so warm they were almost burning, as though her magic was roaring out of her to devour him whole.

Alaric’s head fell into the crook of Talasyn’s neck. In his haste to close the distance, he accidentally kicked over a pile of the coconut husks that the Nenavarene used to polish their floors. As they clattered to the floor, he groaned into her skin, thrusting sloppily into her palm. It felt so good that he forgotabout everything else—at least, until she huffed in his ear, “Well, I’m gladyou’rehaving fun.”

He couldn’t help chuckling at that. Neither could he help the rush of affection that made him finally,finallypress his lips to her cheek. “I am honestly impressed by your ability to keep on mouthing off, Your Grace. Even when you have me in hand, even when I’m doing this—” The flowing fabric of her skirt was crushed between their bodies, and he slid a hand up her thigh.

“Oh.” She gave a start as his fingers curled around her, as he worked one in. “The leather feels different—”

“My gauntlet is going to smell like you.” There was an undercurrent of anger in his tone even as he twitched in her palm at the debauched, forbidden thrill of it, and perhaps hewasangry, at that. Angry that he couldn’t stay away from her.

But his words had a fascinating effect on his wife. Her eyes narrowing in annoyance, her hips rolling a little bit more insistently toward his hand, she responded, “Don’t say things like that.”

“Why not, darling?” he asked, just to be contrary.

She tapped her fist against his shoulder in a halfhearted ghost of a punch. “Don’t call me that, either.”

“So many instructions,” he grumbled, withdrawing his hand to arrange her other leg around his waist, the black gauntlet slick with her wetness digging into the flesh of her thigh. “I can hardly keep up.”

He thumbed her undergarments aside and slid into her. The breathless cry that she let out, the way she stretched around him—it all combined to make him groan again, against her temple.

Shelves of pails and feather dusters and rags rattled around them as Alaric started thrusting in earnest, Talasyn’s skirts bunched up between their bodies. She was louder than she’dbeen the first time, perhaps, he thought, because of the frenzied, illicit nature of the act: they were in a storage closet, still fully clothed, urging each other higher, stifling moans with each other’s mouths, breathing expletives into skin. For him the specter of separation loomed like Dead Season, and he could only hope that some part of her felt the same.

The sobering reminder caused him to pick up the pace, in a burning need for her to feel him between her legs long after he was gone. “Look at you, Lachis’ka,” he said, his voice gravelly and darkly teasing, the words conjured as usual from a heady mixture of bravado and sheer want. “Always scolding your husband, but you’re still going to come all over him. You’re still going to march out there—in front ofeveryone—and bid me goodbye while I’m dripping down your thighs.”

“Bastard,” Talasyn panted, her face buried in the side of his neck. Her nails raked through his hair as she unraveled around him. As she raised her head slightly and he saw the flare of golden magic in her eyes when she reached her peak. “Alaric.”

His knees nearly buckled at the sound of his name in her voice. By some miracle, he managed to keep standing, managed to keep pinning her to the wall until his own orgasm barreled through him, glorious and perfect.

He would have stayed inside her forever, if he could, but her right leg slipped to the floor and he made a growl of frustration as the movement eased him out of her. He wasn’t done spending yet, and Talasyn solved his problem for him. She shifted the leg that was still around his hips higher and aimed him at the inside of her thigh. He hunched over her, the animal in his blood howling with the anticipation of marking her like this, while the more human part could scarcely believe that she would actuallylethim.

She had freckles there as well, a small cluster like a spiralconstellation. He spilled all over those burnished little stars with a harsh exhale.

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