Page 22 of Tusk Love

Guinevere was wailing. She couldn’t move. She didn’t like this strange stone room with its odd smells of herbs and offal. She didn’t like the scrawny, unkempt figure peering impassively at her over her father’s shoulder. She couldn’t make out the rest of his features—they were muddled by the shadows, by the veil of memory. But even if they hadn’t been, she would scarcely have noticed him. Most of her attention was on her father and the sheer desperation on his face.

“It’s the only way, Master Illiard,” murmured the figure. “Do it now, before Accanfal finds—”

And Illiard brought the blade down over his daughter, and Guinevere was screaming—

“Wake up. Guinevere, you have to wake up.”

A deep, solemn voice pierced the fog in her head. Big hands settled on her shoulders, prompting her to sit up in her bedroll, guiding her out of the darkness. But she would never be free of it, not completely. She was still half-asleep when she opened her eyes, the tears that had been welling up behind them now free to spill down her cheeks.

The night was so vast and the banyans so overgrown that she could barely see Oskar crouched beside her. But she could touch him. Her fingers compulsively traced the ridges and hollows of his face before she snatched them back, the pad of her thumb brushing against the pearly smooth contour of one tusk as she did so.

“You need to go, Oskar,” she told him, still wrapped up in her odd dream, hardly even aware of what she was saying. There was a name, but she lost it swiftly; it slipped from her grasp like a minnow escaping downstream, leaving uneasy ripples in its wake. “I can’t…it’s not safe to be with me. There’s something—something in my blood—” Where had that come from? Was she talking about the wildfire spirit? She was trying to push him away, but he only held her tighter. Their faces were so close together that the tip of her nose nudged against his. He smelled like starlight and autumn wind.

“It was a bad dream,” he said gently, as steady as a rock. “It’s over now. You’re all right.”

“You need to go,” she repeated. Yet she was clinging to him, one hand fisted in his tunic, the other buried in his soft, lovely hair. “Go to Boroftkrah. I’ve taken you out of your way for long enough. I’m spoiled, naïve, and troublesome. I’m sorry.” Her lips shaped each failing against his jaw. “I’m not worth it. I want you to go.”

She made to pull away. Made to release him. But he curved a muscular arm at the small of her back, keeping her pressed against him.

“Youarea little spoiled,” he admitted. But his tone was gravelly and warm. He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Youareincredibly naïve.” His hand drifted lower, sword-calloused fingers wiping away her tears and sliding down the sensitive skin of her neck, along the silver chain. One of them rested in the indent between her collarbones, just above her totem. She shivered. “Youarefar too troublesome.” The warm hand left her skin, and she nearly cried out in protest, but then it was back, this time tipping up her chin.

“You’re all these things. But, Guinevere—” Her name hitched in his throat. Her name was a quiet rasp in this place of shadows and water. “You are also very kind and sweet, and much braver than you give yourself credit for. And you’re so…” He paused, as though struggling to find the right words. “You’re sointerestedin everything,” he whispered at last. “In all that this world has to offer. Your heart is bigger than the Marrow Valley. I don’t think I could leave you if I tried.”

He sounded distressingly pained for someone listing all her goodqualities. Tentative, in a bewildered sort of way. Yet there was nothing tentative about him when he brought his lips down to hers.

And, just like that, Guinevere had her answer to the question of whether his tusks would hurt her. They didn’t. She knew now how their mouths would fit together:Perfectly.

Chapter Fifteen

Guinevere

It was too dark for her to see anything. All she could do wasfeel.

For such a curmudgeonly man, Oskar’s lips were as soft as satin. He kissed her so tenderly at first, like one false move would mean the end of them both, and it was the balm her bruised heart sorely needed. Whatever parts of her had remained trapped in nightmare—he woke them up. He set them free, and then ablaze, with the sweet pressure of his warm mouth, with his hands all over her.

Guinevere felt like purring. Maybe she did. She madeasound, at any rate. One that must have beckoned and encouraged, for Oskar’s kiss turned teasing. He nipped at her bottom lip with teeth somewhat sharper than a full-blooded human’s—shocking, exquisite pinpricks of sensation. He licked at the seam of her mouth and rumbled in approval when she opened for him in obeisance to some primal instinct.

And then his tongue was inside and,oh,the glide of it. The taste of him, mingling with the salt of her tears.

He hauled her into his lap, deepening the kiss. She eagerly followedhis lead, her skirt hiking up as her thighs wrapped around his hips. She’d peeled off the breeches before going to bed, and it was only the flimsy material of her drawers that separated her from the hard protrusion straining against his trousers. Guinevere knew whatthatwas, and her head swam with the dizzying, exciting realization that she could be the cause of that in a man as fine as Oskar. There was a moment when she somehow managed to slide against him just right, and he growled low in his throat, and she moaned into his mouth. A scandalous sound. She didn’t care. She moved, chasing the friction, her breath emerging in gasps that Oskar ruthlessly swallowed without fail. Heat unfurled through her in blazing tendrils, and she was melting all over him, aching, greedy for more.

“We should stop,” he lifted his mouth from hers long enough to grunt.

“We should,” she agreed.

She pulled him down to her and kissed him again.

He was more than just an escape from her dark dreams. He was freedom and adventure, the open road that would lead her to the ocean. She wished there were enough light to see his face, but there wasn’t, so she learned him instead, there in the night, beneath the tangled trees. She learned the racing beat of his warrior’s heart, the cleverness of his hot tongue, the hard length of him against her damp drawers. She learned the kissing rhythm that he liked, the coiling of his powerful muscles, the shakiness of his exhales.

She learned that his hand—the same hand that hunted, that brought down men twice his size—could move as carefully as a lone raindrop trickling down a windowpane. Down her face, down her neck, down to her left breast.

“Is this all right?” he asked against her lips. He sounded like he might die if she said no.

Guinevere didn’t want to say no. But she couldn’t say yes, either, because she’d forgotten how to talk. Counting on her actions to speak louder than words, she arched into his touch, letting her breast fill his palm.

Oskar squeezed and caressed. He broke the kiss and transferred hislips to her neck, nibbling, sucking. He thumbed at her through her bodice until the fabric felt agonizingly tight, stretched over the raised bead of her nipple. Not knowing which sensation to focus on, Guinevere reached for it all—rolling her hips so she could grind against his hardness, rolling her shoulders so she could rub against his palm. Baring her throat to his teeth, baring her jaw to the curve of one menacing tusk that was pressed to it like the flat of a blade.

And why was it that this looming danger didn’t make her want to stop? Why was she tempted to go further, to see how much she could take?

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