Page 40 of Tusk Love

“You lied to me,” she said as he tossed her rucksack aside, then moved on to divesting her of her cloak. “You told me you were going to buy sandwiches. But I happened to look out the window, and I saw you walk into an alley with your night dove.”

“Night dove?” he echoed, mystified. He threw her cloak on top of the rucksack where it lay on the floor in a sad heap. “Oh, you mean a se—”

Guinevere lurched forward to clap a hand over Oskar’s mouth before he could say the much cruder termsex worker.He rolled his eyes and gave her fingers a sharp little nip. She gasped and tried to draw back, but his hand was suddenly keeping her wrist in place while he soothed the sting with chaste, butterfly-light kisses to the tips of her fingers.

She refused to be swayed. “How dare you kiss my hand after cavorting with another woman!”

Oskar sighed. He lowered her hand away from his mouth. “Thatwoman was one of the mercenaries, and I wasnotcavorting with her—merely seeking information.” He cradled her fingers with his, squeezing reassuringly while he filled her in on what the uniya had told him. “I’m sorry I lied, but I didn’t want to alarm you. And, for what it’s worth, Ididfind a sandwich shop. It might not necessarily be the best in Wildemount, but it’ll do, I think.”

“Why are we talking about sandwiches?” In the last few minutes, Guinevere had experienced a staggering range of emotions, from jealousy to sorrow to lingering childhood trauma to anger. Now she had crashed headlong into panic, and she was reeling from the whiplash. “Oskar, whatever’s in the trunk, it’s valuable, yes, we’ve gathered that—but what do those mercenaries want withme?”

“You mentioned that the trunk is locked and only your father has the key to it. Maybe their plan is to hold you ransom in exchange for that key.” Oskar’s golden eyes flashed. There was a stubborn set to his jaw that she was coming to know all too well. “But they aren’t going to succeed. I won’t let them. And I won’t let you go anywhere without me, either. For as long as there is breath in my body, you will not face this world alone, Guinevere. Do you understand?”

He burned like fire. Rendered mute by his intensity, she could only nod. Far from relaxing, he glowered at her. “Now, let’s discuss this jealousy of yours.”

There was something about the look on his handsome face just then that made her slowly back away—not out of fear, exactly, but from some instinct for self-preservation. Without missing a beat, he padded after her all the way across the room, until the door handle settled into the indents of her spine and she could go no farther. He braced a hand over her head, caging her in with his body.

“I was being silly.” Her voice was unnaturally high. Breathless. “I do admit to some possessiveness where you are concerned, but I realize that it is entirely misplaced.” It hurt to say it, but she owed it to him to be honest about her feelings. Why, then, did he look madder and madder with each word that left her lips? “You are free, of course, to do whatever you wish, with whomever you wish…” Her gaze dartedto his temple. The vein was back, and twitchier than ever before. “After all, there are no promises between us. I don’t know why I do half the things I do, Oskar. You should ignore me.”

“I damn well wish I could,” he shot back.

And then he kissed her.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Guinevere

Kissing Oskar had never been the problem, Guinevere reflected. Her body knew what to do whenever his pressed up against it, their mouths slotting together like jigsaw pieces reunited at long last, falling into a rhythm as old as time.

He was still a little angry with her. She could tell from the roughness of his kisses, the way he formed a fist in her hair and pulled so he could angle her head the way he pleased—not violently, butfirmly.Firm enough for a shivery coil of excitement to snake low through her belly, its warmth dripping down to the place between her legs. She kissed him back with all of the fervor that she could summon, with all of the fever in her veins. She was tugging at his shirt, and somehow they were separating briefly so he could yank it over his head, and then he was slanting his hot mouth over hers again while she ran her hands all over his bare chest and biceps, relearning him, a lesson she would never tire of.

He deepened the kiss with a muffled curse, one of such gravellypleasure that her toes curled, and the large fist in her hair dropped down to join its fellow that had snagged at the fabric of her neckline. She was wholly unprepared for what happened next—there was a sharp tug, and the sound of ripping seams burst like a thunderclap through the room as he ripped open her bodice.

“Oskar!” Guinevere shrieked. Although she could probably stand to sound a tad more dismayed. “You made me leave six dresses behind in Druvenlode, you can’t just go around tearing what Ididbring—”

“Think of it as a charitable endeavor. Poor Pudding’s overloaded enough as it is.” Oskar shoved the torn bodice to Guinevere’s hips, his topaz eyes glittering as they fixed, hawklike, on her bare breasts. “Gods, princess,” he breathed out, all quiet reverence. “How can you think that I’d evenlookat any other woman?”

She preened at that. She couldn’t help it. Oh, she was vain. And easily ruined, too—that could never have been more clear than when he bent his head and took her left nipple into his mouth. Suddenly she was the most wanton woman to ever walk the earth, arching into his lips, clawing at his muscular shoulders, chanting his name. Every swirl of his tongue over her taut bud felt like a river of light across her skin. And when he sealed his lips around her andsucked—she could die from the sheer pleasure of it. Her world narrowed down to the sweet pulsing of his mouth and the curve of his tusks against her sensitive flesh. She tugged at his soft midnight hair and whimpered and begged, climbing toward her little death but never reaching it. Teinidh was fluttering along with her, spinning and swaying, trailing bright flames through darkest chasms.

By the time both her breasts were slick and flushed from Oskar’s attentions, there were overwhelmed tears in Guinevere’s eyes. He huffed when he saw them, his finger lightly dashing them away from the corners of her lashes. “You cry too easily.”

“It’s your fault, this time,” she sniffled.

She was so dizzy with want that she could do nothing but rest her head on his shoulder when he swept her into his arms and carried her, as one would a bride, to the sole bed shoved up against the wall. He laid her down over the sheets and took her boots off for her beforeremoving his own, a task greatly hindered by the fact that he couldn’t seem to look away from her exposed chest for too long.

She laughed through her tears and held her arms out to him, and his lips quirked in a wry half smile as he crawled on top of her. He plied her with one heated kiss after another, over and over until she was melting into the mattress, drunk off the taste of him. Time spiraled on in wave upon decadent wave, and at some point in that blur of glorious sensation, her torn dress was stripped away and his trousers were rolled down and the wearing of undergarments was consigned to the dustbins of the past, but she was only vaguely aware of any of it. She was floating in her dream of Oskar and all that lovely wilderness brought forth by his kisses, his caresses.

Thus, she was more than a little disgruntled when he propped himself up on his elbows, lifting his mouth from hers with no indication of putting it back where it belonged anytime soon. Before she could voice her annoyance, though, he peered down at her with a solemn tenderness that stole her heart.

“Gwen,” Oskar rasped, “are you sure? We don’t have to, if you’re not sure.”

He was hot and hard against the inside of her thigh. It wasn’t lost on her that what happened next would be a point of no return.

Guinevere swallowed, searching for the right words. She reached up to trace the line of Oskar’s jaw. It clenched into the curve of her palm.

“So much of my life consists of choices made by other people,” she whispered. “This is the one thing I get to decide. And even if it wasn’t—even if my straits were less dire and I was as free as the leaves blowing across the Amber Road—I would still want it to be you.”

He closed his eyes. “I don’t deserve you, sweetheart,” he mumbled. She turned pink with delight at the endearment, her fingers scaling the ladder of his ribs while his lips trailed an ardent path from her temple to her cheek, then down her neck to the hollow at the base of her throat. His lean hips slotted fully between her spread legs, and the blunt head of his erection nudged at her entrance. A fresh surge of arousal swept through her, mingled with some apprehension. Hefelt…thick.Surely all that wasn’t expected to go inside her? But she knew Oskar well enough by now—knew that, if she showed even the slightest trace of hesitation, his mulish sense of honor would cause him to put a stop to the whole affair.

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