Chapter 57 #2
I tilted my head backward against his chest, and he straightened. His strong forearm moved across me, covering the arm over my breasts, as he held me there.
Finally, after a few moments, when my heart had calmed slightly and the blush had faded, I took a deep breath and lowered my hand beneath his.
Now his hand rested over my bare breasts, and I was certain he could feel my nipples against his skin.
He could feel my heartbeat too, which had begun racing again beneath his touch all over again.
I gathered my courage and, now wearing only thin underpants that reached my knees, turned toward him.
“Beautiful,” he said, looking directly into my face.
Then, somehow gathering the courage I had only just found, I cocked an eyebrow. “And you, Knight? You undressed your princess, but will you allow her to undress you?” I asked, and his eyes narrowed slightly.
“Doesn't this knight help his princess bathe?” he asked as his finger moved gently across my cheek, leaving a trail of fire in its wake.
Finally, it moved across my lips, his thumb pulling gently at my lower lip. “The princess wants to see her knight.” He kept his thumb there, almost as though he himself were surprised by my boldness.
“As the princess commands,” he whispered, and his hands moved toward the first button.
Before he could undo it, my hands replaced his.
“Allow me, Knight,” I said, and with a deep breath and clumsy fingers, I somehow managed to undo the buttons.
Even though I had seen him shirtless hundreds of times, this was the first time I could touch him like this.
Strong, taut muscles crossed by dozens of thin scars tightened beneath my fingers.
Lysande tilted his head back when my hand moved over his skin and muscles, traveling toward his trousers.
Beneath my fingers, I could feel the veins pumping blood lower down, now rough and visible beneath my touch.
“Princess,” he warned. I only looked at him through my lashes and bit my lip.
Yet when I opened the final two buttons, right beneath his neck, something fell from inside the shirt. A small piece of paper dropped to the floor beside my foot, the writing facing upward.
Even though it was illuminated by only a single lantern, I recognized it immediately.
It was the little piece of paper on which Lysande had written my name for the first time.
Only now, across it, written dozens of times over, with different degrees of neatness and legibility, sometimes with only a single letter or two instead of the whole name, was my name.
'Isolde.'
His cheeks turned red, and his throat moved up and down, but I only rose onto my toes and, with the same speed he had shown a moment earlier, bit his throat while pulling his shirt from his chest at the same time.
He caught my hand and gently guided me onto the stool, then lowered himself onto his knees in front of my spread legs. He pulled the bucket closer and, with a hand now full of tense veins, dipped the cloth into the lukewarm water.
His brown eyes, now holding far more than that familiar warmth, lifted to mine as he raised my arm and ran the wet cloth slowly along my forearm.
I squeezed my legs together, but his strong thighs prevented me from closing them, and he lowered his gaze for only a moment. “My princess likes this?” he asked huskily.
I only bit my lip. A quiet, unsteady breath slipped from me as I tried to steady myself. His hand moved ever so slowly toward my neck, and when he passed over my breasts and the nipples that had been craving attention, wetting them with the warm water, I could no longer endure it.
To hell with the courts, the traditions, and the titles if they were going to try to forbid me from having him, from tasting him.
With all my strength, I threw myself at him and knocked him onto his back. My lips found his, and now greedy hands caught the back of my neck. Mine buried themselves in those curls of his while his tongue slipped into my mouth.
His taste made me even more feral.
I almost groaned like an animal when he pulled me back by my hair and separated our lips.
“Princess.”
His eyes searched mine for something, and I rasped. “I want you, Lysande. I want your body and your soul to belong to me, only me,”
He loosened his hold on my hair and used those same fingers to stroke my cheek.
“Do you think it has ever been any other way, my Isolde, my Sol, my princess?” he asked, toying with the pendant of his necklace around my neck that dangled between us.
Unexpectedly, a single tear slipped from my eye and fell onto his neck.
“I love you, Isolde,” he said with such certainty that I immediately knew there had not been a single moment of doubt in his soul.
I placed my palm against his cheek.
“I love you, my Lys.”
He caught my lips with his again before turning us both over. Now I was beneath him, his arms caging me so I could not move.
“I love you,” he said again. “I love you, even if it kills me.”
Then his strong arms, somehow managing it even from that position, lifted me into his embrace, and he carried me all the way to our bed.
There, as though I were the most precious gold and the most fragile glass, he lowered me onto the blanket.
It wasn't until the first birds started singing and the morning sun touched the meadow that we finally untangled from each other's damp, naked bodies to make our way toward the now icy-cold bucket of water.