Forty-One

 

Bianca stared after Kun, barely believing her eyes. Then Vasco's arms snaked around her waist, and she could think of no one else but her husband. She turned around. "Kiss me again, just like the first time."

The moment his lips touched hers, desire ignited her whole body once more, and she was surprised to hear her own voice moaning in pleasure.

He broke for breath and grinned at her. "You taste of paradise, princess. But you are wearing too many clothes for my liking." He tugged at the lacing of her gown, which had somehow come undone as they kissed.

She glanced around. "We should go inside for that."

He laughed. "Why? It would be a shame not to use Mistress Kun's wedding gift. And for that, you must be naked."

The hot spring. How had she forgotten?

Vasco stripped off his own clothes, laying them on a rock, then stepped into the pool. Just as she remembered it, his body was all muscle. Once again, she couldn't help staring.

"You may come and touch me instead of just looking if you take your clothes off," he teased.

Her mouth suddenly seemed dry as she fumbled to finish unlacing her gown. She laid it beside his clothes and stood before him only in her shift. "But what if someone sees us? Out here, naked like this?" she asked.

He laughed. "Then you will use your magic to make us invisible. Or I will tell them to go away. This is our estate now, and I am the lord here."

Lord Vasco. She liked the sound of it. Bianca dropped a curtsey, flaring out the hem of her shift. "My lord," she said, pulling the shift off entirely.

Now she found Vasco's eyes on her, devouring her like a starving man might with his first meal. Yet in his eyes, such hunger only inflamed her own.

She stepped cautiously into the water, which now reached just past her knees.

Vasco settled on a natural stone ledge that seemed a perfectly formed seat for two. He patted the place beside him. "Come sit with me, princess. I want you close enough to kiss."

But Bianca wanted more than a kiss. For a girl who'd lived in a harem all her life, she'd never actually touched a naked man, and she wanted to. She took a deep breath as she crossed the pool, then climbed into his lap and kissed him.

Bianca gasped as she felt him hardening between her thighs. In the harem, the women whispered that if you rode a man just right, he could make your soul take flight. More than anything, she wanted to know what that felt like. She'd tried it on one of the statues in the palace once, but all she'd experienced was pain as she left a smear of blood on the statue's nethers. She hadn't wanted to try again, but with a living, breathing man between her thighs who could turn her whole body to flame with a kiss, she knew it would be different.

She rocked against him, and Vasco groaned. Perhaps they could fly together. She reached down and guided him inside her as she rocked again.

One moment she was empty and aching for him, and the next she was so full of the hard heat of him that she could scarcely breathe. All she knew was she did not want to stop. "More," she gasped.

"Bianca...Bee..." he groaned. "I do not wish to hurt you. This is your first time. Perhaps we should..."

"You're not hurting me. I want more," she insisted. When still he hesitated, she opened her thighs wider, sliding down his shaft until her knees touched the stone beneath him. She cried out as he filled her completely, revelling in the sheer pleasure of having him inside her as she rode him to heights of pleasure she had only dreamed of before.

All at once, he shuddered into stillness, her name on his lips until she kissed him. Then there was silence, except for their shared breathing and the bubbling of the spring around them. The water had reached her breasts, buoying them up before her.

Vasco stared at her in wonderment. "I feel like a king. No man could ask for more."

Bianca laughed. "Ah, but I am just a princess. As long as you are my husband, I will always want more."

"And I shall always give you what you desire, though perhaps not right away." Vasco kissed her again, long and lovingly, setting the pattern for the first of many nights in their long lives together.