Simone had hoped that Korvel knew more than how to translate the code, but it seemed Cristophe had kept his word. “My father said the scroll was a test of loyalty.” More like a cruel joke.

“Yet you have repeatedly risked your life to protect it. You even asked Gabriel to kill you. And while we were on the ship, you told me that it led to a cross. Just before you said you’d been ordered to kill me.”

“You should hate mortals. We’ve hurt you so much.” She touched the strange green mark on his throat. “My father believed that scars are the reminders of our failures, but you never try to hide yours.”

“It has marked me for centuries,” he admitted. “But I am not ashamed of it. I hung from those gallows for weeks, first fearing that I would die again, and then terrified that I would not. The scar reminds me that whatever is done to me, I can survive it.” He folded her hand in his. “Simone, isn’t it time you told me everything?”

Her heart died a little. “You have the scroll. Your mission is completed.”

“Yours isn’t. Even now, I can feel the tension in you. As if the moment I let go of you, you’ll run out of here.” Before she could reply, he touched his fingertips to her lips. “When you’re ready, you’ll tell me the rest.”

No, she wouldn’t. “Are you leaving tonight for Ireland?”

“That depends on you.” He ran his hand up the length of her arm before he caressed her cheek. “I want you to come back with me. Come and be my kyara. My mortal wife.”

Joy and despair tore at her insides. “I’m not fit to be a wife to any man.”

“Not even the man who has shared your dreams?” He smiled a little. “Do you remember what you told me in the nightlands? About the game you played here in the flat? You could have that life with me.”

“That was a child’s pretense.”

“We could make it real,” he said as he stood up and set her on her feet. “I have just come home from my work.”

“You don’t have any flowers,” she said, feeling a little desperate now.

“The stand closed early.” He leaned back against the door. “I still want a kiss from my lady. Come here.”

Simone caught her bottom lip with the edge of her teeth as she crossed the distance between them and put her hands on his shoulders. “This is foolish.”

“No, love,” he said as he bent his head to hers. “All night I’ve thought of nothing but you. I’ve counted the hours until this moment, when we could be alone together and I could take you in my arms.” He pulled her closer, but held his mouth a whisper away from hers. “I will show you what I have for you, and I think you will like it more than flowers, but you must kiss me first.”

She slid her hand to the side of his neck as she balanced on tiptoe to put her lips against his. An instant later she moved back to separate their mouths.

Korvel kept hold of her. “Why do you stop?”

“I can’t.” She pressed her brow against his chest. I don’t know.…The man in my dreams was never real. He never came home.”

“I’m here. I’m real.” Korvel pulled open his shirt and put her hand against his chest. “Kiss me.”

“I can have sex with you, but I don’t know how to kiss.” She moved her palm until it lay over the slow throb of his heart. “I wasn’t trained to do that.”

He drew back. “Trained?”

She nodded. “When I was old enough, my father sent one of the handlers to my room each night for a week.”

Fury blazed over his features. “He did what?”

“It was part of my training. I didn’t like it,” she admitted, “but the man was not rough, and after the first time it didn’t hurt. Kissing was not demonstrated or required.”

His arms tightened, and he held her close for several moments before he spoke again. “Tell me that your father suffered a vast deal before he died in agony.” He cradled her head with his hand. “Please, God.”

She wouldn’t tell him that her father had been ill only a few weeks, or that he had killed himself the night his steward left the country. “He died knowing I took back my life from him.” She thought of what Nick had told her in the dream. “There is no better revenge than that.”

“You know what this means?” When she glanced up at him, he smiled. “I am the only man who has ever kissed you.”

He sounded inordinately pleased, as if she’d given him a gift. “You’re the only man who ever wanted to.”

“You have been living with nuns.” He smiled as he brought her lips to his, allowing her to feel the barest press of his mouth before he lifted his head. “Live with me, Simone, and I will kiss you every night.”

Simone knew Pájaro had already left Marseilles, and where he had gone, and what she had to do. But now she also understood how wrong her father had been about her. The years of brutal training, the deliberate and systematic destruction of her childhood, her oath of loyalty to the council, even the wretched bargain her father had forced on her, no longer held any power over her. She would keep her word, but out of love for Korvel, and for all that might have been.

The first kiss Simone gave to Korvel landed slightly off center, and the edge of her teeth grazed his lower lip. She clasped her hands to his face, moving her mouth against his until his cool breath rushed out and his arms came up around her, pulling her in. With the second she used her tongue, awkwardly, timidly, until she found his, and he used it to draw her in and take it deeper. A frantic heartbeat later she fused their mouths together, no longer testing or tasting but stroking and suckling, as if their mouths were starved and the kiss had become a decadent feast.

She broke away, panting as the heat of the kiss drenched her body in a shivering, aching delight. She felt his hands clenching against her back, saw the hard line of his jaw, and inched closer, the slight curve of her belly pillowing the rigid length of his erection.

I will have this much for myself.

“Do that again,” Korvel said, his voice deep and soft. “A thousand times again.”

Simone drew back. “What if I want to kiss more than your mouth?” She drew her finger down the vault of his chest, tracing the faint depression of his navel through his shirt. “I want to kiss you here. Is that customary?”

His eyelids drooped. “It is now.”

She hid a smile as she bent, unfastening the button at his waist before she pressed her lips to his belly, licking the tight dent.

“Christ Jesus,” he muttered. “Your mouth should be a sin.”

“Hmmmm.” She went down on her knees, clasping his hips with her hands as she rubbed her cheek against the long bulge under his trousers. “Is it still kissing if I do it here?”

“Oh, yes, love.” His hand came up to splay across the back of her head. “That is the one every man wants.”

“You’re the only man I’ve ever kissed,” she reminded him as she slowly unfastened his trousers and worked them down the muscular columns of his legs. As he stepped out of them, she ran her hands from his ankles over his calves, putting her lips to one knee and then the other before she kissed her way up one massive thigh, lingering to taste the smoothness of his cool skin.

“Simone.” His fingers tightened in her hair, urging her higher.

She drew back to admire the heavy thickness of his shaft and the tight bulge at its broad base. Unlike most modern men he had never been circumcised, and his velvety foreskin fascinated her, as did the gleaming knob that had emerged from it. “You are so splendidly made.” She traced one of the veins popping up under his skin with her fingertip before she glanced up at him. “I have to kiss you here.” She watched his face as she put her lips against the flared edge of his glans.

He gripped his shaft in his fist as she kissed the slick head, rubbing it back and forth on her lips. “Will you open your mouth for me?” When she did he lodged himself between her lips and stared down at her. “Damn me, but I love seeing my cock in your mouth.”

She drew back a little. “Then give me more, Korvel.” She parted her lips, letting her breath touch him before she licked a pearl of semen from the tiny slit in his dome.

He pressed in gently, guiding her with a shaking hand, his head falling back and his eyes closing as she rubbed her tongue along the barrel of his shaft. “Yes, love, suck me. Just that way. Oh, God. You’re so beautiful like this.”

Simone took every stroke he gave her, relishing the power that came with the helplessness of her position, and when she found the rhythm she sucked his penis with avid delight, feeling as if she had been given a gift now with this most intimate of kisses. The ache between her thighs swelled, jealous of the pleasure that glided between her lips, and she moaned around him, unwilling to stop, shaking with her own need.

“Simone.” Korvel drew himself from her mouth and then lifted her up into his arms, carrying her into the bedroom and placing her on the coverlet as if she were something precious. His hands blurred as he tore at her clothes, stripping her to her skin before he loomed over her, guiding his penis between her thighs and working it into the clenching folds.

“Korvel.” She clutched at him, lifting her hips as she tried to draw him in. “I need you.”

“I know, love.” He bent down to nuzzle her ear as he pressed in. “Feel me coming into you? Oh, yes. You’re drenching me, you’re so wet. I’ll make it better now, Simone.” He went deeper, working his head along the quivering tissues until she felt him nudge against the soft cup of her cervix. “There we are.”

The first time with him she had felt impaled, invaded; now he filled every desperate space inside her with each heavy thrust. She wrapped her legs around his as he fucked her, her heart pounding and her blood screaming, until he drove her past all thought and reason and the pleasure rocketed through her.