The Conqueror

Her head fell back on the cushions, tears pressing hungrily against her nose. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. No one understood.

“Talk to me, Raven.”

And so she did. She talked because the night was dark and she didn’t know where she was. She talked because she needed a reprieve, however brief and however gained, from the yawning Ache, and in this man was the only place she’d ever found it, mad as that was.

She talked because he needed her to, and to succor his ache was a taste she’d never sipped on before.

And these storm-tossed revelations were nothing like what she’d told him before, when they’d ridden in the woods. Those things had told something of her, but they swam on the surface of her life, bobbing on daily events, the things that could have mattered, but did not.

The things she told him in the storm-veiled darkness were sunk so deep inside she felt like she was mining her very soul.

She told him about Windstalker and their midnight rides. About how she used to walk the ramparts in thunderstorms when everyone else was abed. About how she struggled alone against the force of the loneliness and sometimes thought herself losing. She talked about the difficulty of running her castle, of being hen-mother and war-lord, of how she’d stared into the abyss of her life and batted her eyes, how she almost succumbed to despair when her father had died.

She never mentioned her castle’s name, and she never told him hers, but she told him everything that made her who she was, everything from five years of age until just a moment ago: the aloneness, the lost mother, the misting nights, the wishing-it-could-be-other moments, the Ache.

Good God, she wasn’t speaking of that, was she?

“I understand.”

Chapter Eighteen

Griffyn spoke from where he sat in the dark corner of the room, but he felt light, buoyant, snared. The image of this woman walking on a deserted battlement, dark hair flying, as lightning streaked across the sky, was simply too beguiling. She had passed her breath over the room and it was transformed. He didn’t know it was dark, he didn’t know he was captured. He only knew her.

She looked through the shadows at him. Time slowed to the pace of the tears spilling down her cheeks. The bench felt solid beneath him, yet it was as if he were floating.

“Raven.”

A gulp of watery laughter bounced across the room. “That is a poorly given name. If I could have—” she said, choking softly on the emotion, “I would have flown away so many times. You’ve no idea.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Only because I’ve no wings.”

“You didn’t, and you wouldn’t have.”

She nodded, collecting herself with little tearful gasps, her breath coming in short, jerky inhalations. “I love my home so much it hurts,” she said, clutching her fist to her chest. “But all those things I did…” Her voice trailed off, then lifted again on a hush. “All the things I’ve ever done in my life, were wishing for only this one thing.”

A hammering started in Griffyn’s chest. “What?”

“This thing right now…with you.”

As if in a dream, he rose. “And I, you, Guinevere.” Kneeling beside the bed, he took her hand and lifted it to his mouth.

For a brief second Gwyn held to herself, exquisitely aware. Her choice was to move away or step forward. Embrace it or squander the hope it held.

God forbid. How long had she been waiting for some such alchemy as this man was?

Her whole life.

She reached out and touched his cheek. “I don’t care what your name is or what you’ve done. The world is far away right now, and I would that it kept its distance for this one night.”

It was nothing for him to crush her to him, to bend his head and lay claim with a raw, enveloping kiss that left her witless. Putting a knee on the bed, he pushed the furs away, and bent low over her, his dark head intent, moving with breathtaking skill down her body she’d barely known existed, until his long, carved body was stretched out above her, hot and hard and wanting her. She was hyperventilating, the room spinning around. A wet pulse began deep in her womb. Right where the Ache pulsed.

She would follow this man into Hades.

Later, she would deny the blasphemous thought. At the moment, though, she put her arm around his neck and drew him down. His mouth closed over hers, claiming her, his tongue hunting in the recesses of her mouth for the breathy gasps and moans that shuddered free. He was sweeping her senseless, making her arch her head back, press her breasts into his chest, cling to his neck.

He slid a wicked hand under her waist and lifted her hips into his. Hot, sizzling spurts of fire burgeoned in her womb. More. She wanted more.