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while bathing. Scar tissue welted the curvature of bone around the empty socket in a corona of pale, jagged lines.
    Ildiko slid her thumb along the grouping below his collapsed eyelid. “I know you’ve said they don’t hurt, but it’s hard to imagine you no longer feel the pain.”
    Brishen captured her hand and brought her thumb to his lips for a brief kiss. “They would only hurt if you thought me hideous because of them.”
    “That will never happen,” she vowed.
    “Then they will never hurt.”
    She spread her fingers across his soft mouth. “Come to bed. I’ll massage you, then take advantage of your body while you’re too relaxed to protest.”
    His eyebrows shot up. “Threat or a promise?” he murmured under her hand.
    Ildiko gave him a coy smile. “Does it matter?”
    He grabbed her hand and tugged her toward the big bed where the sheets were turned down. “Not at all.”
    The towel dropped, abandoned by the bedside. Brishen sprawled face down and naked across the bed, feet hanging over the edge, arms hidden under a pillow he tucked under his cheek. He closed his eye and gave a deep sigh when Ildiko seated herself on his lower back, knees and thighs pressed against his narrow hips. A drawn out moan followed the sigh when she began kneading his shoulders and upper back with hands slippery with scented oil.
    Tight muscle loosened under her ministration, his smooth skin made even more supple by the warm oil. Ildiko rubbed and kneaded him from shoulder to calf, shifting position so she could reach the various spots on his body and still avoid the painful looking bruise on the back of his leg.
    His breathing slowed, and he settled deeper into the mattress. Ildiko assumed he’d fallen asleep until he spoke in a somnolent voice. “Are your hands tired?”
    She heard the thread of hope in his voice that her answer would be “no.”  She lifted her weight and balanced on her knees. “Not yet.”  She shed her robe, giving a small shiver as a cold draft coursed over her skin. The hearth was doing its job of warming the room, but the air remained frigid. Brishen, on the other hand, lay hot beneath her. She bent, pressing her breasts to his back, and nuzzled his ear. “Turn over,” she whispered.
    He rolled to his back under her, his hands settling on her hips. He was fully erect, the head of his cock tapping against the folds of her night rail as his pelvis shifted. A bluish flush highlighted his cheekbones and washed over his neck and clavicles. “How long will you deny me, wife?”
    The light scrape of her forefingers over his dark nipples made him gasp and arch his back. “How am I denying you?”  She knew the answer; they played this game each time he returned to her, but she wanted to hear him say it.
    His right eye had paled from vibrant yellow to glowing alabaster, and he replied in staccato breaths, broken each time she stroked his nipples. “You haven’t kissed me yet. Not once since my return.”
    Of the many things they both had to adapt to in this marriage, a simple kiss had been the one Ildiko was certain had carried the most thought and planning. The Kai typically kissed each other with closed mouths and affectionate nuzzling of the nose and cheeks. Even in the heat of passion, they didn’t kiss with open mouths and tongues—a bloody business considering the sharpness of their teeth.
    Ildiko had taught Brishen to kiss her in the way that was human but not so dangerous. A careful dance of lips and tongues, his stroking hers in the hot space of her mouth, her licking and sucking on his lower lip. Neither fully human nor fully Kai, the kiss was solely theirs, altered to please each other, and made of pure magic. Ildiko delighted in kissing her husband and quickly learned that Brishen craved it, demanding she bestow that particular display of affection on him at every opportunity.
    She stretched across his torso, his cock long between their bellies. “You’re impatient, love,” she said