Chapter 16: The Night Is Hers

My cottage stood at the end of the orchard path, exactly where I had left it.

Cade's guards had barred the door with a plank across two iron brackets.

Soren took the plank in one hand and snapped it over his knee.

"I'd have asked first," he said, "but you have been looking at that door for an hour."

"Ask me now."

"May I come in, Rhiannon?"

"Yes."

He ducked under the lintel and I shut the door behind him.

The cottage was cold and smelled of dust and old lavender.

My own bed was still made.

I lit one lamp, and when I turned around he was standing in the middle of my floor, too big for the room, waiting.

"This is the first thing that's been mine in five years," I said. "I want it christened."

His eyes went gold.

"Tell me how."

"You're going to stand there," I said. "And I'm going to take your clothes off."

He swallowed.

"I'm not good at slow."

"Then learn."

I undid his coat, and his shirt, and I laid both over my chair.

I put my mouth to the new mark over his heart, and it was warm under my lips, and I felt his heartbeat jump.

"That's mine," I said.

"Yes."

"Say whose you are."

"Yours." His voice was ragged already. "Gods, Rhiannon. Yours."

I opened his trousers and pushed them off his hips, and he stood bare in the lamplight with his hands curled at his sides, not touching me.

He was hard, and he was beautiful, and he was keeping my terms with every muscle in his body.

"You can touch me," I said.

"You said no touch unless you asked."

"I'm asking. I'm asking for all of it."

He had my dress over my head before I finished the sentence.

He lifted me and laid me on my own bed, and the old frame creaked.

He knelt over me and looked down at me for a long moment, his hand flat between my breasts.

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