Slovia stepped in until her breasts pressed against his chest, soft and heavy through the dress.
The contact was deliberate.
She rolled her shoulders just enough that the full weight of them settled against him, warm and yielding.
Her free hand rose to the side of his neck, fingers sliding into the thick red hair at his nape.
"I can feel how hard you are," she murmured.
"Even with my hand gone. Your body is already answering. Your mind can play at honor all it likes."
Kane’s grip on her wrist tightened.
He could smell her now: clean skin, the faint trace of whatever oil she used at her throat, the deeper, warmer scent of a woman who had not been touched in a long time and who had decided that tonight that would change.
His cock throbbed against the confinement of his trousers, traitorously full, but he did not release her.
"You expected her to die," he said.
"You sent her to me like a sacrifice. And now that she lives, you think you can take what belongs to her?"
Slovia laughed, the sound low in her throat.
"Belongs. Such an improper word. In my court, power is taken, not given. And right now, barbarian, you are the most powerful thing in this keep. I would like to feel that power inside me."
"You don’t know why I am here."
"Maybe. But it must be because you wanted my help."
She pressed closer still.
The soft give of her breasts against his chest was maddening. Her hips shifted, the red of her gown sliding against the hard line of his thigh, and he felt the deliberate grind of her mound against him.
She was not subtle. She did not need to be.
Kane’s free hand came up and settled at her waist, not pulling her closer, not pushing her away.
Simply holding.
The heat of her body soaked through the fabric into his palm.
He could feel the narrowness of her waist above the richer curve of her hips, the soft give of flesh that had never been starved into hardness.
"I’m her husband," he repeated, and this time the words carried the weight of a vow spoken through gritted teeth.
"I will not take her mother while she sleeps three corridors away."
"I’m sure you have many women."
"I do. You and them are not the same."
Slovia’s eyes darkened with something that was not anger.
Interest. Challenge. Hunger carefully banked for decades and now allowed a single, deliberate breath of air.
"Then do not take," she whispered.
"Let me take. Let me kneel. Let me open this gown and put these—" she arched, pressing the heavy weight of her breasts more firmly against him
"—into your hands. Let me show you what a queen’s mouth can do when she decides a barbarian is worth the kneeling."
Her fingers at his nape tightened, nails lightly scraping.
The hand he still held flexed in his grip, not fighting, only reminding him that she could feel the pulse in his wrist as clearly as he could feel the pulse in hers.
Kane’s breath came slower, heavier.
The study was quiet except for the faint crackle of the fire in the hearth and the soft rustle of velvet when she shifted against him.
Outside the door the keep continued its sounds, distant boots, the occasional low voice of a guard, but in this room there was only the two of them and the thick, charged silence between resistance and invitation.
He looked down at her.
At the silver threading her dark hair. At the mature, assessing eyes that had ruled women and men with equal ruthlessness. At the full mouth that had just offered to open for him. At the way her body, busty, soft, unapologetically womanly, pressed into his like it already knew the shape it wanted to take against him.
"You are testing me," he said.
"I am offering," Slovia corrected.
"There is a difference. One is politics. The other is simply what a woman wants when she sees a man who can give it to her."
Kane released her wrist.
For a heartbeat her hand hovered between them, then settled again, this time flat against the hard plane of his stomach, fingers splayed just above the waistband of his trousers.
She did not push lower. Not yet. She only rested there, feeling the heat of his skin through the linen of his shirt, waiting.
He did not step back.
"Misha is my wife," he said, each word deliberate.
"I will not dishonor that. Not here. Not with you."
Slovia’s smile deepened, slow and certain.
"Then leave, barbarian. Walk out of this room with that cock still aching and that honor still intact. Or stay. And discover what it feels like when a queen decides she wants to be fucked by the man who kept her daughter alive."
She rose onto her toes.
The movement brought her mouth close to his ear, her breath warm against the shell of it.
"I can feel how much you want to," she whispered.
"Your body is louder than your principles. And I have all night."
Kane closed his eyes once.
The scent of her, the soft heavy press of her breasts, the deliberate invitation in every line of her mature body, it all pulled at the part of him that had never learned to refuse a woman who looked at him the way she was looking now.
The part that had taken Misha under furs and against stone and in the dark of northern nights without once asking permission from gods or kings.
But the other part, the part that had watched Misha fall asleep trusting him, the part that had kissed Thora and Sira and left them to guard her, held.
He opened his eyes.
"I’m your daughter’s husband," he said a final time, voice rough.
"That is the only answer you will get tonight."
Slovia’s hand on his stomach flexed. Her eyes searched his face for the crack she expected and did not find it.
For a long moment the study held only the sound of the fire and the quiet, measured breathing of two people who had both decided, in different ways, that the night was not yet finished.
Then the queen of an empire of powerful women smiled again, shorter this time, more dangerous.