“There is nothing with which I don’t trust you.” His breath was hot on my neck and ear as he nibbled a spot that he knew turned me to mush in his arms.
“Did Thala know about Fiat’s threat to kill Brom and me?” I slid my hands under his shirt, stroking the muscles of his back, breathing in the scent of him. It was a heady experience, leaving me simmering with desire.
“Yes. Do you remember the time we were in Venice and you thought to hide behind a mask and test me?”
I stopped unbuckling his belt, prodding hard at the big black chunks of my memory. “No. A mask? Hmm.”
“It was during a festival. You pretended to be a woman of no morals who desired my body, and tried to test my fidelity to you.”
“Still not ringing any bells. Why don’t you do whatever you did to prompt a vision before, so I can relive it?”
He unzipped my jeans, sliding his hands over my hips as he pushed them down, tossing them onto a chair along with my underwear and sandals. “I would prefer not to.”
“Why not?” I shucked my shirt and bra at the same time I tackled his belt, suddenly frantic to get him out of his clothes so I could rub myself all over him.
“You did not believe me when I told you that I knew it was you from the moment you neared me.”
Buttons went flying as I yanked his shirt off while he was trying to take off his pants.
“Does that mean that you let me seduce you, then told me you knew it was me?” I moaned softly as I stroked the heavy muscles of his chest, waiting impatiently for him to get his shoes off. The second he stood up, I flung myself on him, biting his shoulder as I wiggled against him, relishing the sensation of hot, satiny flesh covering steely muscles.
“Yes. You could not wait for me to take you to our bed. You demanded that I make love to you on the balcony of the villa we’d taken.”
“Balcony, eh?” I stopped licking his neck long enough to look speculatively around the room.
“On a table.” His voice was rich with the promise of fulfilling the intention so obvious in his beautiful onyx eyes. “Like the one behind you.”
Cold wood met my behind as he picked me up and set me on the small writing desk, sweeping the accoutrements onto the floor as he took both my breasts in his hands.
“Oooh. New position. Kinky,” I said, squirming as he gently tormented my breasts. I dug my fingers into his hips, sliding them around to his behind as his mouth claimed mine, his fire sweeping through me.
“You particularly enjoyed it when I did this,” he said, dropping to his knees.
I swear my eyes rolled back in my head when he blew dragon fire along my thighs, following it with the even hotter sensation of his mouth as he kissed a serpentine path up toward the source of so much pleasure.
“I bet I did,” I said in between pants. His mouth closed on me, licking and gently biting, and doing wonderful little swirly things with his tongue that had me grasping the edges of the desk. “By the rood, Baltic, your tongue ought to be outlawed, doing things like that. Do that again! No, the other thing!”
He chuckled at my demand, his fingers curled up inside me as his tongue did a particularly effective dance against hidden parts of me, causing me to fall back on the desk, my muscles tightening painfully around him in a spasm of purest rapture. “You were always easy to please, mate. I am glad that has not changed about you.”
I lifted my head to glare at him. “You did that to me and didn’t tell me you knew it was me all along? No wonder I was pissed!”
He made a face. “It was three weeks before I convinced you that I knew it was you all along.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You don’t mean to say that I didn’t reciprocate?”
We both looked at his penis, clearly waiting for its turn.
“You did. But you were angry. I could tell.”
I allowed him to pull me into a sitting position. “Friends don’t let friends give angry oral sex, Baltic. If I made sure you were happy, I wasn’t angry.”
“You were.” Without any further ado, he wrapped my legs around his hips and slid into my body. “You used your teeth more than was seemly.”
I was in the middle of a groan of ecstasy when he spoke, making me hiccup in a few giggles, which in turn caused him to frown down at me as he stroked in and out with long, smooth moves.
“Honestly, Baltic, you’re the only man I know who can frown during sex. Kiss me—my mouth misses yours.”
He obliged, sharing his dragon fire with me, murmuring something in my ear about withholding it until I could access my own, but I was too busy being aroused all over again to pay much mind to his threat. The table protested his increased vigor with a rhythmic squeak that I prayed wasn’t audible outside the room. By the time I flexed my muscles around him, squeezing a nonstop stream of groans from his lips as his hips moved in a way that damn near brought me to tears, I was on the edge of another orgasm, just waiting for him to push me over.
The muffled sound of the front door, situated next to the small room, as it slammed shut had me grasping Baltic’s hips with desperation.
“She’s back,” I moaned, sucking hard on his tongue. “Hurry!”
“You must go first,” he panted, his mouth hot and sweet and endlessly fascinating.
“I had my turn. You go, and that’ll do it for me, too,” I said, my own breath ragged and irregular.
“You . . . first . . .”
I knew that Thala would see lights on and come to investigate, so I didn’t waste time arguing. I simply tightened every muscle I had around the hot invasion of his penis, gripping him with a fierceness that had his eyes opening wide for a moment before he roared his pleasure into my mouth. Like I predicted, that was all I needed, as well, as his last few convulsive thrusts sent me flying.
“Baltic, did you find someone to locate the sepulcher? If you cannot find someone with the appropriate tracking skills, we might think about hiring a blue dragon—” The door to the hallway opened, revealing Thala. Baltic spun around, screening me from sight, but I wasn’t any too happy about the fact that she was getting an eyeful. I snatched up my shirt from the floor, and still behind him, held it in front of his groin, all the while peering around his shoulder to send a potent glare at the intruder.
“I might have known you would be here,” she growled, seeing me. Her gaze went back to Baltic. “Did you at least accomplish what we discussed before your woman distracted you?”
“I grow weary of telling you to treat Ysolde with respect,” he replied, his arms crossed. “She is my mate. You will refer to her as such.”
“Did you?” she prompted, ignoring his demand.
His lips tightened, but after a moment he answered. “Not yet. I will locate one tomorrow.”
“We need someone at the sepulcher as soon as possible, not whenever you get around to it.” She took a deep breath. “You seem to be more concerned about your mate than you are my mother’s sword!”
“Ysolde is everything to me,” he said simply, which just made me melt all over his back. I licked his shoulder blade. “I will regain the sword, do not fear. But I will do it in a manner I choose. Kostich is more powerful than you credit him, and I will not risk Ysolde’s well-being to regain the sword.”
“He would not harm her,” Thala argued. “You said she was his apprentice.”
“Kostich has used her to obtain his ends before, and he may do so again,” he answered. “The sword is mine, but I will claim it in a way that will not allow him to threaten her. I will find a tracker in the morning to locate the sepulcher.”
“A tracker?” I asked, having managed to slip into my jeans and bra while he and Thala were arguing. I picked up his pants and moved in front of him, blocking Thala’s view. “You mean someone who’s good at finding hidden things?”