“Nrg?”
She grabbed his hands. “Like we were so passionate you ripped it open last night.” Her eyes sparkled as she put his hands on her chest, clearly loving the game.
The second night they’d actually tried to make love, Kip had nervously deferred to Tisis to lead things. She’d said she was only technically a virgin, so Kip figured even that made her way more experienced than he was. She’d gone quickly from tearing off clothes to attempting penetration, and after that hadn’t happened and she’d been left fuming and trying to blame him, it had seemed like too much to ask to say, ‘Hey, do you mind if I just play with your body a bit? I like it.’
On the fourth night of their marriage, with the addition of olive oil and a singular focus on breaching the Jade Gate lest their marriage be annulled and they start a war that no one could win and that would kill tens of thousands of innocents and be remembered ignominiously for all time, Kip hadn’t gotten a chance for his playfully wandering hands to wander much at all, playfully or any other way.
“Kip?”
“Mmm?”
“The camisole?”
“Mm-hmm?” he said, lost in the gloriousness under his hands. “Oh!”
He cleared his throat and tugged gently on the deep neckline of her camisole, trying to ignore that a camisole of this material, with this much lace, and dyed this color, might cost more than all the villagers in Rekton would have seen in a year. Inside, Kip was still the poor boy, and he wondered if he always would be.
“Oh, for Orholam’s…” She grabbed his hands in hers and helped him tear the neckline down to her navel, but then she held his hands there. They both hesitated. She did some kind of undulating feline movement into him that did all sorts of wonderful things. “I never did take care of you, did I?” she asked.
“It wouldn’t take long, I promise,” Kip said.
She looked at the door and grimaced. “Verity’ll be here any—”
Kip slid his hand from silk to silken skin, and she stopped speaking.
She looked up at him with suddenly fiery eyes, as if she were furious. She threw a leg up on his hip and grabbed his face in both hands. “Why, Kip? Why? Why do I want to be naughty with you when I can’t, but when it’s perfectly acceptable and I have all night, then I can’t? Dammit!” She ground her hips against him angrily, kissed him, and bit his bottom lip. Then she pushed away from him.
Never breaking eye contact, she shimmied out of her underthings and peeled off her camisole, throwing each to a separate corner of the room. She tousled her long blonde hair. She scooted into the narrow bed and pulled the covers only over her legs, as if she were totally comfortable being nude in front of her husband. Which, of course, was what Verity needed to believe.
“Ah! Idea!” Tisis said. “Love bites. We’ll have to do that tomorrow. Tunic, Kip. Off. Then get over here and give me some whisker burn on my neck. Quickly.”
Kip’s mother had once said that if he pulled a funny face for too long it would get stuck. Could the same happen if your horn was up for too long? What if it got stuck? Orholam, let it not be so. The Blackguard blacks that the Mighty had been allowed to take were a nice camouflaging black, but they were also tight.
There was a knock at the door, and Kip realized suddenly that somehow the plan had always been that he answer the door naked. And then he had to pretend to be comfortable with that. Like he was the kind of man who would answer the door naked because wow, after a night like last night, who could think about clothes?
That hadn’t been his addition to the plan, he was sure of it. Even if Kip were slow-cooked in a stew of sexual satiety until he fell to pieces, he didn’t think he’d ever not want to cover himself.
“My lady, my lord? Breakfast,” Verity said from outside.
“My lord husband, would you get the door, please, and then come right back to bed. It’s so cold without you,” Tisis said loudly. She grinned at him.
Kip shucked off his tunic, acutely aware of Tisis’s eyes on him. Part of him knew that his modesty was ridiculous at this point. Though he’d kept his tunic on during their abortive attempts at intercourse, she knew how he looked by now. Still, it was one thing to know he was fat, another to see it.
He held his tunic in front of him in one hand casually, covering as much of belly and groin as possible, and popped the door open. Even with that, beyond Verity, he saw a sailor try to get a glimpse beyond Kip at the nymph they all knew lay within.
Kip just gave the man a self-satisfied smile, and closed the door after Verity came in, balancing a silver tray in one hand and a steaming bucket of water in her other.
Verity was a gnarled oak stump of a woman, wider than she was short, with silver hair that had once been blonde, holding far stronger ideas of how lords and ladies should behave than any lord or lady Kip had ever met.
“Oh, is it time for breakfast already?” Tisis said. She yawned and stretched luxuriously, uncovered.
Kip forgot about the plan. He dropped his tunic from nerveless fingers.
He snatched it off the floor, almost colliding with the slave through his sudden lurch in the tiny cabin.
“Perhaps milady would prefer to bathe and dress first?” Verity asked.
Kip tried to slip around behind her just as she bent over suddenly to put down the bucket. His groin brushed against a bottom so large and wide that Ferkudi would faint.
Mercifully, his fist and the wadded tunic ran interference in the split second before Kip could twist, taking the contact on his hip rather than his horn. He made it past her, but his motion jostled her as she set down the bucket, slopping water on the floor.
Verity stood slowly, leaving the bucket on the floor. With the air of one extremely put out, she sighed, looking at the mess. Then she glared judgment at Kip, naked as he was. Kip swallowed.
“Does my lord need something?” Verity asked.
Kip had picked up on the very subtle cues that Verity didn’t approve of Tisis’s marrying without her sister Eirene’s consent. She had extended that disapproval to Kip himself.
“Sorry,” Kip said.
She sniffed and turned to Tisis, muttering none too quietly, “A proper lord would know not to apologize to slaves.” She raised and brightened her voice: “Milady?”
“Only a sponge bath?” Tisis asked, disappointed.
“I fought the captain long and hard, milady. He avers fresh water is too precious on a voyage to be used for bathing.”
Verity took a folding screen and set it up to block Tisis from view, though the logic of that escaped Kip. Verity spoke aloud, too, as if the screen were a real barrier. “I see that your lord husband has mussed your braids. I suppose we shall have to set aside a few hours to fix them this morning. I think you should also speak to him about procuring a room slave.”
“What?” Kip interrupted. “Why would I need a room slave? We have you.”
“I’m not that kind of room slave, my lord. You’ll need to get your own for that.”
Tisis started laughing immediately, but Kip didn’t understand.
“My lord doesn’t need that kind of room slave, Verity,” Tisis said. “I’m keeping him quite contented.”
“Many a lord tells his wife that while seeking additional pleasures on the side. But a lord who strays must have the decency to do so safely, so as not to bring disease and dishonor to his house.”
“Verity!” Tisis said. “I’ll not have you speak so.”
Kip caught up only slowly. First, he wanted to laugh incredulously. Verity was worried he wanted to take her to bed? And then all the rest crystallized as dirty whispers, not quite directed at him, but definitely directed at him.