Page 92 of Ironling
Such thoughts were far from her mind tonight, though. After a long day of meetings with guild-masters, negotiating and writing contracts, a bath with her blacksmith was a luxury she couldn’t help indulging in.
“Have I told you today how beautiful you are,vinya?” His lips whispered across her cheek, scrawling the words on her damp skin.
Aislinn blushed. “You haven’t.”
“An unforgivable oversight. You are more beautiful than the moon in the night sky. More beautiful than the purple mountains at dawn. More beautiful than every pearl in the sea and all the jewels in the ground.”
Her grin was wide listening to his praise. His Eirean vocabulary had certainly improved leaps and bounds.
“Every single one?”
“Every. Single. One.” He punctuated each word with a kissalong her shoulder, and his questing fingers made looping patterns down her back.
She hummed in pleasure, reaching back to trace the inhuman point of his ear. “Why do you call mevinya?”
“Because it’s what you are to me. My rose.”
Her eyes opened, staring up at the stone ceiling of baths. The stalactites had been smoothed, minerals glittering along the conical slopes.
“I’m like a rose?”
“Vinya,yes.”
It took her a long moment to push out her next words, and she nearly let herself be distracted by the slow, warm kisses he lavished down her neck.
“So I’m delicate and fussy?” She tried to make it a joke, but she heard how her voice caught on the words. She couldn’t help thinking of her mother’s roses, so easily out of control without careful pruning, their stems riddled with hidden thorns for protection.
Without stopping his ministrations, he purred his answer in her ear.
“Vinyaaren’t your garden roses. They are the mountain roses that bloom along the slopes of Kaldebrak. They defy the mountain, clinging to the rocks.” His hands slid up her body to cradle her breasts, his fingertips sinking into the plush flesh. “They are hearty, determined. They weather every storm, only to bloom brighter after the rain. That is why you arevinya—you are all this and so much more.”
Aislinn’s lips parted in surprise, her heartthump-thumpingheavily in her chest.
Flipping over to face him, she found him gazing at her with such softness, such affection.
She didn’t have the words to…did he understand how beautiful…could he really think…?
Throwing her arms around his neck and her legs around his thick waist, Aislinn molded their bodies together. Her mouth sought his, and she held his strong jaw in her hand, keeping his head still to receive her fervent kisses.
Fates, no one had ever said such things about her.
His purr deepened into a lusty growl as her hand traced down his body to take hold of his cock. She guided him into her body, and with a smooth stroke, he slid deep inside her.
Sealing their mouths together again, Aislinn kissed him greedily, swirling her tongue along his short tusks and nipping his lower lip. She kissed him with a frantic sort of need, a counterpoint to the unhurried rhythm of their hips.
The water lapped gently at them, hardly disturbed as she held his face in her hands and he held her hips in his, guiding their lovemaking. When climax finally came, it was no less devastating for its gentleness. Aislinn clutched him to her in every way she could, holding on as she came apart in every way imaginable.
Cracked open, he put her back together with his kisses and his care.
“Vinya, vinya,” he chanted to her, as if she were a goddess of old to be prayed to.
With his cock pulsing inside her and her love for him growing in her heart, she felt divine then. A woman who could do anything, one who had everything she could ever want.
Him. I just want him.
Hakon was quickly learning that his mate liked games. The thrill of a challenge was always sure to get her blood running hot and her cunt dripping slick.
He was the luckiest of males.
