He pulled back for a moment, his lips curling at the edges. “You knew what you were doing by the time we reached France.” I shared the smile until I felt his hands on the waistband of my jeans. I covered them with mine. “Baltic… I’m sorry. I can’t. It’s… there’s too much up in the air. I’m not comfortable doing this with you until I talk to—” He covered my mouth with his, stopping the words. “I won’t do anything you do not desire, chérie. But you have spoken the words of fealty, and you are now my mate. You must bear the mark of my sept.” I held on to his shoulders as he unzipped my jeans, sliding his hands over to my hips, pushing the material down. “Just where exactly do you intend to put this mark?” He grinned as he cupped me intimately, his thumb rubbing on my pubic bone. “I thought here.” “Well, you can bloody well think again!” I said, squirming against him nonetheless.
“Here?” He touched the crease of my thigh.
“That would hurt like hell. No.”
“How about here?” He pulled me to him, his hands on my butt, giving my cheeks a little squeeze.
“I’m thinking that’s fairly disrespectful, don’t you?” He gave a mock sigh, then whipped off my sweatshirt before I could protest, nuzzling my breasts. “Then it will have to be here.” “Over my heart?” I thought about that for a moment. It pleased me. “All right. Wait — don’t you have one?” “I was the only member of the sept until you accepted me. You will have to give me the mark.” I was about to tell him I hadn’t the slightest clue how to go about doing that when he opened his mouth and breathed fire on me. It hurt like the dickens for about two seconds; then the heat soaked into me, swirling around until it settled in my groin, pooling in places that hadn’t been pooled in for centuries. I looked down to see my bra gone, and Baltic licking my left breast, a strange swirly symbol burned into the flesh. As I watched, the redness of it faded until it was the same color as the mark on my hip — a sort of dark tan.
“Now you have been marked as my mate, although I would appreciate it if you didn’t show people,” he said, kissing my breast. “Your form, although apparently human, pleases me, and I do not wish for others to ogle you.” I thought seriously of throwing everything to the wind — Gareth, my moral values, decency — and just letting Baltic make love to me until the sun rose high above us. “I wish I could make love to you,” I said, gasping when he took my nipple in his mouth. My fingers dug into his shoulders.
“I will if you desire it,” he murmured, rubbing his cheek against my breast.
“I can’t,” I said, pulling his face up to mine. “I shouldn’t even be kissing you. That’s wrong, too.” “Nothing is wrong between us. But if you do not wish for me to do that, then I will not,” he said, sucking my bottom lip.
“I think that would be best,” I said, my fingers caressing the long sweeps of muscles in his shoulders. “Until things are worked out.” “Then I will not pay homage to your magnificent breasts, either,” he mumbled, his mouth kissing a wet, steamy trail down to my chest.
“That would definitely be over the line,” I said, my back arching of its own accord as he swirled his tongue around my nipple, the latter so tight and hard it positively ached with the need for his touch. I groaned again, gripping his shoulders as he tormented first one breast, then the other with long, hot strokes of his tongue.
“Were you to give yourself to me, I would bathe your sublime belly with fire,” he said, pulling me down to the ground.
“But I haven’t, so you won’t,” I said, threading my fingers through the cool silk of his hair.
“Of course not.” Baltic lifted his head from where he was kissing the curve of my hip, and breathed fire on my stomach. It shimmered along my skin until it was absorbed back into his mouth as he laved a path to the other hip.
“The memory of your scent and taste has driven me almost mad with desire,” he murmured into my pelvic bone, his hands gently pushing my underwear down over my hips. “The idea of experiencing it again fills my thoughts.” “That would be far too wrong to do now,” I said, my eyes almost rolling back into my head when his tongue flicked across secret, intimate parts of me, parts that tingled with awareness and a need that I couldn’t allow.
“I will not taste you, then,” he said just before his mouth possessed me in a way that had me clutching the grass, my hips thrusting up against him.
“Thank you for not doing that,” I gasped, almost coming off the ground when he sank a finger into me.
“You are so hot, chérie. Tell me you burn only for me.” “Only for you,” I repeated, mindless with passion and desire now, wanting him like I’d never wanted anything, tears leaking from the corners of my eyes as I struggled with my conscience.
He moved over me, his clothing gone, the hard lines of his body pressing me down, into the earth. I felt him rub against my inner thigh, a hot brand that my body wept for. He framed my face in his hands, kissing me with a long, slow stroke of his tongue against mine.
“Let me love you, Ysolde. Let this happen. Since I was reborn, I have lived every moment in despair because I lost you. Let me worship you now as I’ve longed to do all those years.” I held on to him, sobbing now. “It’s wrong, Baltic. I’m married to another man.” “You don’t even remember marrying him. Perhaps you were forced. Will you remain faithful to a man who would so abuse your trust?” “I don’t know,” I sobbed, wanting to shift my hips and allow him entrance into my body. I wanted him with a fever that threatened to consume me. “I don’t know.” He rolled off me, and I curled up into a ball on the grass, crying for my lost memory, crying for the years that Baltic spent alone. Warmth covered me as he curled himself around me, keeping the cool night air from my naked flesh, comforting me despite his own pain.
“Thank you,” I said when I had managed to bring my emotions back under control. I turned to face him and gently pushed the hair from his cheek. “Thank you for protecting my honor, even when I was willing to forgo it.” “You are my mate. I could never force you to do anything you did not want.” I stroked my hand on his chest, the sensation of the soft black hairs making my fingertips tingle. “When I give myself to you, Baltic, I want it to be all of me. I don’t want my ties to another man to be there between us, tainting it, tainting the beauty of what we will have.” He looked down at me, the light of an almost full moon bathing the planes of his face in harsh shadows, but his eyes glowed with an obsidian inner light. Slowly he nodded, and touched my lower lip with his thumb. “You were always thus. You never did anything halfway — it was with your whole heart, or not at all.” “I sound like I was very annoying,” I said with a little self-conscious grimace as I sat up to retrieve my clothing.
“Not annoying — honorable.” He watched me dress, arrogantly naked, still aroused. “It irritated me at the time, but I learned to live with it.” I couldn’t help but laugh at that as I finished dressing. I eyed him, guilt pricking away at my scruples. “I feel guilty about that,” I said, waving at his penis, which was in no way returning to a more quiescent state.
He pursed his lips as he looked at it. “Why?” “I more or less led you on. There’s a term for that, and I’m appalled that it is applicable to me. Would you… I feel ridiculous even saying this after the big scene I just made, but would you like me to take care of it?” “Yes,” he said so fast I laughed again. I sank to my knees next to him, laying a hand on his thigh. “You would do this for me? It would not violate your sense of duty and honor?” “It does, but not as much as the guilt of what I allowed to happen.” He shook his head, rising up on one elbow and catching my hand as I reached for him. “You did not allow me to touch you, Ysolde; I wished to seduce you. I did everything I could to sway you to that goal.” “And I enjoyed every minute of it,” I said, slipping my hand from his. “Deep down, I knew if I told you to stop and really meant it, you would. And you did. So we are both to blame for how far things got carried, and although I would never do this for another man, although I feel I am still bound to my husband until I can tell him otherwise, you are the man I would choose to be with. For that reason, I wish to repay your kindness to me with a little kindness of my own.” “It is not kindness,” he said as I bent over him, swirling my tongue around the very tip of him. He fell back, his eyes crossing as his hips thrust upward. “It is ecstasy.”