“Are you alright?” she demanded hoarsely, forgetting her vow of silence, forgetting everything but the sheer, burning fact that he was alive, that he was conscious. “Cato?”
He sat up a little, propping himself up on his elbows and reaching one hand cautiously up to the back of his head. Then he seemed to remember himself, and those gray eyes darted back to her face, a look of shock and triumph replacing the bleary confusion. The smuggest grin she’d ever seen spread across his face. “Iknewyou couldn’t resist talking to me for much longer.”
She wanted nothing more than to hit him with the hilt of her sword again, this time right in his smug face. His unharmed, alive, smug face. But at the angle she was sitting, it would take her a few precious seconds to get the sword out of its scabbard. Seconds she didn’t have to spare. So she grabbed him by the collar of his robes instead, yanking him towards her roughly enough to startle the smirk off his face. Hit him, she thought incoherently. She should hit him. Or pull his hair. Or headbutt him, that would shut him up.
What wasn’t on the list of options was to kiss him so hard she almost split her own lip. Judging by the way Cato seemed to freeze solid, it hadn’t been on his list of possibilities, either. Her hands tightened harder around the fistfuls of the robe she had in her grip and she drew him in closer with a little shake, a wordless demand for a response. What was he, stupid? Did she need to draw him a picture? All the fury in her seemed to be building, intensified by that white-hot point of contact between them, the heat of their lips, the far too slow way he was finally beginning to kiss her back. Too cautiously. Like he was frightened of her.
Damnrighthe was frightened of her. She shoved him back against the bed, following after him without breaking the kiss or releasing her grip on the collar of his robes. She had to keep him pinned down. She straddled him, her sword clanking against her armor and making her scowl, and with one hand flat against his chest, she reached down with the other to unbuckle her belt and toss it and her sword to the ground beside them. She felt Cato’s hands grasp her shoulders as he kissed her with less trepidation, his breath coming quicker as his body responded to hers. He sat up a little, his hand sliding up the nape of her neck and into her hair, and she growled a low warning as she pushed him firmly down onto the bed. She was reluctant to break the kiss, worried that if she looked into his gray eyes she might realize what a terrible mistake she was making. Then she’d have to stop.
And she didn’t want to.
The armor was a problem. She was working at the buckles on her bracers when she felt Cato’s hands move to undo her pauldrons, too, and the flare of suspicion in her only made her kiss him harder. He was probably taking this opportunity to identify the weaknesses in her armor. Well, let him try. He was hopelessly outmatched, it would only be sporting to give him what advantage she could. The armor clattered as she tossed it from the bed to join the growing pile with her sword, relieved by how light she felt without it, only her undershirt remaining between her body and Cato’s. Her undershirt, and his robes. Indignation rose in her. How dare he lay there fully clothed, pulling off pieces of her armor? She curled her fingers around the collar of his robes and pulled, hearing stitches give in the fabric to no avail.
“Let me—” Cato struggled upright, stronger than she’d given him credit for as he reached for whatever fastenings lay within the folds of his robes. She sat back, breathing hard, her face flushed and her body alive and tingling in a way she couldn’t ever remember feeling before. The closest sensation she could think of was the first time she’d left the cavern, her wings bearing her up towards the round disc of sunlight above. The rush she’d felt when she’d cleared that rocky passageway for the first time, and seen the whole world spread out below her… the freedom of her wings, the absolute joy of flight… it was something like that that was burning in her now as she tore Cato’s robes from his body and flattened both hands against his chest to hold him still. Those tattoos. Finally, she let her eyes roam across them at length, though she’d be lying if she said her interest was not drawn more powerfully by the body that bore them. He was muscular for someone who fought with magic, not weaponry. This was a body built for moving gracefully, quietly, quickly. This was the body of a thief.
And Acantha was taken aback by the way her body burned as she ran her hands across it.
Cato’s mouth opened, and Acantha narrowed her eyes as she realized he was about to talk again. How many times did she have to tell him to shut up before he’d finally get the message? She pounced, cutting off whatever half-uttered syllable he’d been mouthing with her lips and her tongue, felt him respond with an immediacy that thrilled her. His hands were skimming across her back, gentle, almost too polite—erring on the side of caution. Probably wise, but not what she wanted right now. Growling her impatience, she yanked the undershirt over her head and tossed it into the pile with the armor, turning back to reclaim Cato’s lips in another scorching kiss.
The mage, it seemed, had other ideas. With a speed that surprised her, he snaked an arm around her waist, pulling her down onto the bed beside him and tangling their legs to impede any attempts to regain her position. Her rage at his impertinence was quickly short-circuited by the sensation of his lips against her throat, the heat of his breath skimming against skin that she’d always known was vulnerable, but never realized was so sensitive… it seemed to send lightning crackling through her whole body, pooling in her gut, where an urgency she’d never felt before had awoken and begun to make demands. His hands, less shy now, were roaming across her body, skimming down her sides, and he made an appreciative sound as his fingers traced the musculature at the side of her waist. For some reason, that suffused her with a new kind of thrill, an oddly self-conscious feeling. As long as she’d lived, her body had been a weapon, but she’d never felt someone touch her with such admiration, such reverence, such respect…
And so he should, she thought dizzily, arching her back against him in wordless encouragement—it was all the urging he needed for his hands to continue to roam. She shivered when he touched her breasts despite the warmth of his hands—there was so much sensation as his fingers brushed the hard peaks of her nipples, and she gasped with shock when he bent his head to flick one with the tip of his tongue.
Impertinent, she thought faintly as he began to tease at the other nipple with his fingertips. She really ought to put a stop to whatever it was he thought he was doing. She certainly would, in just a moment, once she knew where exactly he thought that clever hand of his was going… warmth pooled in her belly as his touch slid slowly down her hip. Why was she struggling to catch her breath? Ever so slowly, she felt his hand curve around the muscle of her thigh, another shiver running up her spine as his fingers began to creep towards the join of her legs, almost tickling her as her thighs seemed to ease their way apart without her permission…
He kissed her throat softly as his fingertips began to explore her sex, and she felt her head drop back against the soft bed as a moan slipped out from her lips. The wet heat of his breath against her throat seemed to mirror the heat of her body as his fingers explored her well-lubricated folds, pressing deeper with every helpless shift of her hips that urged him greedily onwards. Any moment now, she thought as sensation crackled through her like wildfire. Any moment now she’d pull away and reprimand him for his insolence… just as soon as she’d found out where the inevitable swell of pleasure in her body was leading her… it wasn’t long before his fingers were deep inside her and she was grinding her hips hopelessly against his hand, kissing his lips hard enough to bruise because it was the only way to stop herself from moaning. It wasn’t enough—none of it was enough—all she knew, through the haze of growing arousal, was that she wanted more.
And finally, she reached out with one hand, and knew when his whole body stiffened against her that she’d found what it was she wanted. His manhood jerked in her curious grip, rock hard, and now it was Cato groaning againstherlips as she stroked him. Oh, this was much more like it.Thiswas how he ought to be… helpless, desperate, begging wordlessly for more with every touch of her fingers.
But the ache of her own body wasn’t to be forgotten. Thoroughly distracted by her touch, his fingers had slipped free of her sex and he was holding helplessly onto the side of her hip as he twitched and writhed under her hands. Scorn mingled with her desire. Of course he was incapable of doing more than one thing at once. Well, lucky for him, she had an idea that would please them both… and when she shifted her body to draw the tip of his cock closer, his eyes shot open and arrested hers. She’d never seen him like this—face wild, lips parted as he gasped for breath, his eyes dark with a burning need that she could feel mirrored in her own expression. He was—
He was groaning her name as he slid himself inside her, and her breath seized in her throat as she felt the unbelievable pressure of his manhood delving into her, her body stretching deliciously to accommodate and envelop him, inch by inch. If the feelings he’d drawn from her with his fingertips hadn’t been enough to eradicate all conscious thought from her mind, this certainly was. Long gone were her frustrations with him, her petty grievances over his smugness, all those fundamentally meaningless power games… right here, with their bodies locked together and their ragged breathing mingling in the heated air between them, there was no past beyond their touch, and no future beyond the climax they were both surging towards with every frantic second that passed.
His arms tightened around her as he passed the point of no return, and Acantha buried her scream in his neck as the same ecstasy blasted through her, both of them clinging to each other as they reached the peak and seemed to soar out into empty space beyond it. She could no sooner have held herself back than she could have cut down a mountain with her sword—and there was no question of resisting the warm cocoon of sleep that reached up to encircle them both like a blanket, either.
Her last thought before her consciousness blinked out like a light was that it was going to be a lot more difficult to give Cato the silent treatment now.
Chapter 14 - Cato
That was quite a dream, Cato told himself in the strange, half-lit trance that usually came over him in the moments between waking and opening his eyes. It had been a while since he’d had such a vividly erotic dream, and he could feel from the drowsy, contented warmth in his limbs that the effects had been physical as well as psychological. An unexpected dream, but not an unwelcome one. Maybe his subconscious had sensed he needed a bit of stress relief after everything that was going on with—
Acantha. Terror shot through him, dispelling the comfortable glow. She would have been standing in the corner of his room like a sentinel all night, right? What if he’d moved in his sleep, given away what kind of a dream he was having? He’d definitely been moaning her name in the dream at least—what if he’d been doing that out loud? There didn’t seem to be a sword sticking through his body, so there was some hope at least that he hadn’t…
But nothing could have prepared him for what he saw when he opened his eyes. No sign of the armored figure standing like a vengeful ghost by the door to his room—that space was empty. But his bed wasn’t. There, curled up in his arms with her dark red hair across her face… Cato froze, convinced for a moment that he was hallucinating. Was he somehow still in the dream? He felt very awake, especially with the adrenalin still blasting through him. He began to run through all the different magical artifacts that could generate an illusion this convincing. And then Acantha stirred a little in his arms, and he found himself forced to confront the possibility that this was actually real.
She was going to kill him, he thought faintly, running back through the memories with mounting horror. She was going to straight-up murder him. It didn’t matter that she was unarmed—he’d gotten a glimpse of her strength earlier, when she’d pinned him down. Acantha wouldn’t need her sword to tear him limb from limb.
Her eyes fluttered open, and it didn’t even occur to Cato to pretend that he hadn’t been watching her sleep. She blinked those green eyes a few times, and despite his conviction that he was about to die, he couldn’t help but smile a little to see this side of her. She seemed—not small, exactly. He had a feeling that nothing would make this woman seem small. But there was a softness to her, a kind of vulnerability that took his breath away to witness. Something told him this was a rare privilege.
Then she looked straight at him, and for the first time in his life, Cato couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
It could have been seconds or hours later that she finally turned and slid out of bed, extricating herself from his embrace with a gentleness that surprised him. The soft, ever-present light that emanated from the stones glowed against her body, and he caught his breath at the sight of her in all her glory. A warrior queen, he thought faintly, not sure whether she’d kill him if she caught her staring at him like this and unable to bring himself to care. He’d die happy, if the last thing he saw was this absolute spectacle of a woman driving a sword through his heart.
But she didn’t decapitate him. Instead, she dressed herself in silence, buckling each piece of armor carefully back into place before she lifted her sword and restored it to its place at her hip. Was this really the same woman who’d moaned against his lips as they both came? Was he really looking at the wild creature who’d drawn more passion out of him than he’d previously thought possible? He still couldn’t bring himself to speak. There weren’t words for what had transpired between them.
So instead, he got up and dressed himself again. It took a little longer to restore himself to decency—a few of his braids had come loose and needed to be redone, and he could feel her gaze burning into him as his fingers quickly flew. The intensity of that gaze—he suppressed a shiver at the memory of how she’d looked at him in the moment before she’d kissed him. It wasn’t going to be easy to look at her without thinking about that.
He felt a strange urge to laugh when he realized it was almost time for dinner. Nothing was further from his mind than his belly, but he had absolutely no idea what else to do right now, so he headed for his favorite of the Palace’s many dining rooms. He was acutely aware that neither of them had said a word since they’d woken. The weight of that silence was getting heavier and heavier. How could he break it now? What could he possibly say to her?