Caged Warrior

She smiled, almost relieved that his confusion came from something so simple. Although none of this felt simple. “Yes, we are.”

She pulled him down as she lifted up, that same dance of compromise, as they balanced each other. Dovetailed one another. His mouth tasted of her body, which was both shocking and amazingly intimate. Soon that taste was licked and kissed away until she found only Leto. His heat and the sharp sweetness of his tongue swished over hers. Rough breaths puffed between them in a quiet, tender duel.

Nynn was restless. The place he’d filled with such care, with only two of his blunt fingers, needed more. She needed the heavy erection jutting out from the body he held rigid.

She touched one of his unsteady biceps. “This from my warrior? Shaking?”

“You take everything from me.” He positioned himself at her slick opening and pulsed inside. No quick thrust. Not even a tease—just the gentleness she’d asked for. Hard, thick, almost asking permission. “Just as you give everything to me.”

“Give me everything now.”

He shook his head. “We’re making love. Those are the right words for what we’re doing. Because I am not a beast.”

“No. You’re not.”

“And I’m not just your warrior.”

Tears burned beneath her lids. She couldn’t breathe except in pained little gulps. She lifted her hand and touched the collar she’d always hated. Now she had so many more reasons to despise the things.

She’d asked him once, and she asked him again. “What would you be without this?”

His answer . . .

Oh, Dragon be. Please.

With eyes as dark as midnight, as expressive as dance, he pushed his full, throbbing length into her waiting body. Nynn opened her mouth but made no sound. Only shuddered at the rightness of their joining.

He leaned down, cradling the back of her head. She clung to him, wrapped her legs around him, moved with him.

Against her temple he whispered, “I’d be a better man.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Leto wanted to close his eyes and bask in softness. This was what softness felt like—not just Nynn’s body, which welcomed his with trust, warmth, and an intimacy so fierce that it stung each nerve. This was the softness of letting down his guard. He gave in to her keeping. So often he’d believed he was the one to keep her safe, but that protection traveled in two directions.

He needed this moment as much as he needed victory.

No, that’s wasn’t true. He needed this more than victory, because he’d lost in the Cage. Although his pride had been damaged, he had not dried into dust. Unmanned. Ashamed. No, he still breathed. He breathed the scent of the woman who was teaching him different ways of seeing the world. The world he knew was small, tight, dark.

If he shut his eyes, glorying in unfamiliar sensations, he’d be back in the darkness. He stayed with Nynn, with her clear blue eyes that shimmered silver in the pale light. He stayed with the way her moist lips parted. Every deliberate slide into her slick, tight pussy drew forth a gasp or a sigh or a little cry. He moved slowly, giving himself a brief moment to wonder which sound would come next. He liked changing the angle of his thrusts just enough to catch her by surprise.

She clutched his flanks with edgy fingers, urging him with restless pulses. Her nails were blunt, but that didn’t mean her sharp journey from his hip to the top of his spine was any less potent. He shivered under the weight of his vulnerability and released his confusion with a trio of sharp thrusts. Nynn’s heavy breathing ratcheted down to a moan. Oh yes. More sounds to find. More softness edged with the passion and strength they both possessed.

While crossing his arm beneath her back, he turned her to lie fully along the bed. He’d thought of taking her again, in the interminable days after they’d fought. He’d imagined that she would ride him, so as not to aggravate her tattoo and the wounds on her back. Two months on, she was healed. Reality meant he could lever his body over hers and claim her. One day she would straddle his torso and set the pace, but not this night.

He braced his weight on his elbows. Despite the hazy desire in her eyes, she was completely fixed on him, as if he was the answer to every question she’d ever asked.

Him. Leto of Garnis. She believed he could be better than he was. More than believed; she expected it.

While drawing out the agonizing pleasure of their joining, he almost shared her belief. Warriors fought and bled and fucked. They didn’t make love in a way that put a partner’s satisfaction above their own. Leto felt that way now. No matter how urgently he wanted to thrust—hard, deep, unrelenting—he held back. That resistance tapped into long years of training. He was strong enough to be patient. He basked in the moments of soft splendor, waiting for the moment when Nynn would need him to be anything but.

He bowed over her body while she explored his. Hands and fingers and even her heels found rough crevices and made them smooth. She calmed him in ways he’d never thought possible. So very aroused yet somehow lethargic. He dropped his forehead to hers.

“I’ve never had this.” The admission made his rhythm falter, along with his heartbeat. He hadn’t meant to say anything so personal, even as they shared such a personal act.

She cupped the side of his face in the way that made him shudder with a sense of belonging. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Leto pushed away his body’s needs and lifted from hers. “Bathatei.”

“What?” On her elbows, Nynn’s confusion was written across her brow.

“You have felt this . . . this . . . Dragon damn, Nynn, it’s beautiful. And they took that from you. Your husband . . .”

He’d never felt more humiliated by his inability to make a point.

Nynn’s face had paled, so distinctive in her pain or fear. The golden tone of her skin drained away and left behind the pattern of freckles he had memorized.

She didn’t shy away or stop touching him. He’d expected both. When faced with a reminder of that loss, how could she not? Just the opposite happened. She touched him with more assurance and more vigor.

Leto swallowed to quell the monster in his blood. “Because you remember it all now, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

Guilt overwhelmed him. She was in possession of memories they hadn’t discussed. That meant she had her husband back—the life they’d shared, the life that had been ripped away from her.

Nynn stroked where his inner thigh met his groin. He flinched. She caressed him again, until the flinches eased into calm. “Breathe,” she whispered.

Now he closed his eyes. She changed position on the bed so that she knelt at his side. Leto was enveloped by softness once again, this time nestled between her breasts. He breathed just to soak up her scent.

“Caleb was taken from me.” Her halting words feathered across the buzzed hair and the crown of his head. “And yes, I ache with the knowledge of what we could’ve shared. We’ll never have that.”

“I was as brainwashed as you first said. I was part of the system that made your family suffer.”

“You were a boy raised to be a man with no choice as to how that happened. Do you yearn to kill and maim, Leto? I don’t believe you do. You’ve never hinted at enjoying the blood for blood’s sake. It’s all been for your sisters.”

“And for glory,” he said wearily. “You’ve felt it. We both know how intense it can be.”

“Just like we both know the unfairness of it all. And who really caused it. I’ll dig their graves with bare hands if I have to, because the Asters will not escape the punishment they deserve.”

“You’ll have help digging those graves, if they deserve such a courtesy.” The cadence of her touches was so soothing. Leto crisscrossed his arms behind her back and held tight. “I can’t replace your husband.”