She wondered if Kirry was as needy of companionship as she was, or if the little grat had only attached herself because of some misplaced belief that Tempest had saved her when the truth was, she owed her life to Kiran—they both did.
Maybe that was all it was with her, she thought abruptly, feeling a spark of reviving hope? Maybe all of the painful, tumultuous emotions that were churning inside her were nothing more than gratitude and the fact that he’d fulfilled needs that had been neglected for so long?
Settling beside the pool, she gathered a handful of pebbles from the rocky soil beside her and began to toss them absently toward the water, vaguely soothed by the sound of the pebbles skimming the surface. She hadn’t felt anything at all for so long because she’d tried so very hard not to face any of the things she hadn’t felt capable of handling, had feared allowing them to surface because she knew there was nothing she could do about it. He’d opened her to feel again the things she’d shut herself off from.
Maybe it was just like … the painful prickling feeling of returning sensation?
Maybe.
When she’d run out of pebbles to throw, she got up and took her clothing off, beating the dust from them and carefully setting them aside. The water was cool on her toes. As tempting as it was to submerge herself, she stopped when the water lapped at her ankles and crouched down at the edge to bathe herself off. The air was gusting off the desert briskly enough to dry the moisture on her skin within moments and by the time she got out she was barely damp.
Her clothing still clung uncomfortably when she’d dressed herself, resurrecting almost forgotten memories of the time before. As many times as she’d heard her parents, and most of the other adults for that matter, complain of the discomfort and inconvenience of their lives, she’d never known anything else until the colony had died. Even at the time, she hadn’t understood. In retrospect, the colony had been heaven compared to the life she’d since that time.
“I’d have that again,” she murmured to herself, allowing her mind to delve the memories she’d shut herself away from, feeling a surge of hopefulness again. The comfort of four walls surrounding her without the constant winds of Niah battering at her. No doubt the particle baths still worked, probably everything. She could cook food without a campfire, preserve it if she needed to.
She’d have the task of disposing of the dead.
She shook that off. It should be done in any case.
Kiran had settled on the bedroll when she returned. She saw that he’d waited for her return, that he’d divided the food between two plates.
“Sorry,” she muttered, settling beside him and taking up her own food.
“You are cold,” he observed after a moment.
She shrugged, smiled faintly. “I’m always cold at night … now.”
He lifted the edge of the blanket and draped it over shoulders. She glanced at him in surprise, but he withdrew as soon as he’d settled it, picking up his plate again. They finished their meal in silence and finally settled on the bedroll as they customarily did, with Tempest nearest the fire and Kiran behind her. He drew her close against him, curling an arm around her waist to hold her there. Sighing as his warmth chased the chill from her, she closed her eyes and tried to empty her mind.
“You are not angry now?” Kiran murmured just as her mind began to drift.
She paused in the downward spiral toward oblivion, searched her mind. “No,” she mumbled finally.
He lifted a hand to her shoulder, pulling on her until she’d rolled onto her back. “I do not understand the way of your mind, Zheri Cha,” he murmured, frustration lacing his voice.
“It’s alright. It doesn’t matter.”
She heard him swallow. Giving up the effort to ignore him finally, she lifted her eyelids to look up at him.
“It matters to me,” he said harshly. “Tell me. Help me to understand.”
“I’m trying to adjust,” she said finally. “Just … Can’t you just leave it alone? It didn’t mean the same thing to me that it did to you. I don’t want to ‘pair’ with you just because you think we should, alright? I’d rather be with someone who just wanted to be with me.”
He caught her face with his hand when she would’ve turned away. “There has not been a time when I have not wanted you, Zheri Cha.”
She felt her throat close with the hurt she’d tried so hard to banish. “You never wanted me along,” she said with an effort.
“Because I wanted you,” he said gruffly. “I did not realize that you were the one. I knew I could not keep myself chaste in mind, body, and spirit if you were with me.”
“I’m not the one!” Tempest said almost angrily.
His gaze flickered over her face. “You are, Zheri Cha. You are the only one,” he murmured huskily, dipping his head to cover her mouth with his own.
Chapter Fifteen
Tempest braced herself … for all the good it did. As hurt and angry as she was, maybe even partly because she was wounded, the warmth of his mouth was like a balm to her soul. Heat flashed between them the instant his mouth melded with hers and he invaded her senses with his taste and touch. Inwardly, she struggled, feeling a fleeting spark of despair, but it vanished beneath the onslaught of pleasurable tension that enveloped her as he stroked his broad palm over her, seeking and finding all the places on her body that reacted with delight at his touch.
Her resolve faltered, failed her completely. She found herself clinging to him, caressing him with feverish need as he broke from her lips and gnawed a row of hungry kisses along her throat and the upper slopes of her breasts. Swirling his tongue around one puckered, swollen tip as he scooped her breasts from her top, he teased the nipple with the flick of his tongue and finally appeased her panted demand and sucked it into his mouth. She arched her back as the scalding tide of pleasure poured through her to center at her core with a throbbing ache.
“Kiran,” she whispered when he lifted his head and moved to tease its mate. “Now … please?’
He lifted his head after a moment of delightful torment, studied her face, and finally shifted over her to fit his body to hers. The fit was divine, she thought as she felt the pressure of his entry, felt the welcome friction of his hardened flesh against the walls of her channel. He stroked the throbbing ache that had begun within her, sending quakes of delight through her with each pass and yet building the tension within her until she could hardly catch her breath.
Abruptly, it burst. She came shatteringly, gasping sharply as the quakes tore through her, her channel pulling at him in the throes of ecstasy until he followed her into rapture.
Dragging in a deep sigh of relief as the echoes of her climax slowly died, she snuggled contentedly against him as he cradled her in his arms in the aftermath, drifting toward slumber with far more ease than she’d thought she could manage.
Kiran woke her nuzzling her neck. She smiled without opening her eyes, tilting her head to allow him better access. His lips climbed the column of her neck and then he nipped lightly at the lobe of her ear. “Are you awake, Zheri Cha?” he whispered near her ear.
“Mmm,” she managed.
He chuckled, rolling away from her and slapping her ass with his hand. “Good. We need to go.”
Cracking one eye open as he got up, she glared at him a little sullenly. He missed it, striding from her view. Groaning, she sat up, trying to stretch the kinks from her aching muscles and finally yawned, lifting her arms in an all over stretch that popped joints. Shoving her hair from her eyes, she got up finally and wove a slightly drunken path to the pool. Kiran, who’d obviously already performed his own morning ritual, flicked a spray of droplets at her as she squatted next to him and reached to scoop up a handful of water.
Grinning at the look she sent him, he straightened and left her to her business, returning to the camp to saddle the aquestan. By the time she was alert enough to find her way back, he’d bundled the packs and secured them to the beast. Handing her a fist sized piece of
bread with a piece of cheese and meat tucked inside, he demolished his own in three bites and led the aquestan down the rocky slope of the oasis.
Bemused by his almost cheerful demeanor, Tempest followed a little slowly and managed to finish her own morning meal before she joined him on the desert floor. Catching her waist in both hands, he lifted her onto the front of the saddle and mounted behind her, setting the beast into motion almost before she’d situated herself. She began to drowse again before they’d ridden much more than an hour, leaning more and more heavily against him. His arm tightened around her waist. “Still sleepy, little grat?” he murmured.
She yawned in response. “Someone kept me awake last night,” she muttered a little irritably.
To her surprise, he chuckled. “But you rested well afterward.”
“In between,” she corrected him.
He nuzzled her neck. “Then sleep. I will not allow you to fall off.”
Uttering a long suffering sigh, she shifted around to get as comfortable as she could and then surprised herself by actually dozing off. Drowsing off and on, it wasn’t until the sun reached its zenith and Kiran brought the beast to a halt that she finally woke completely, feeling surprisingly refreshed and alert despite her aches and pains from the uncomfortable position in which she’d slept.
The respite was brief. When they’d eaten, attended their needs, and stretched their legs a bit, they mounted the aquestan and set off again. “You still think we’ll reach the valley by tomorrow?”
Kiran scanned the desert that surrounded them. “Mayhap before dusk,” he responded finally. “The temple itself … mayhap another day beyond that. If we move quickly enough, perhaps sooner.”
Nodding, Tempest lifted her head to scan the sky, wondering how close they were to the time of the alignment.
“Two days,” Kiran said as if he’d read her mind, though that took no great feat all things considered. “It will come to pass when Talore reaches her zenith in the night sky.”
Anxiety wafted through Tempest at that. They’d be cutting it close, far too close. If they had any trouble at all …. She pushed the thought from her mind, unwilling to dwell on the possibility.
Silence fell between them as they focused on their own thoughts and doubts but, unlike the day before, it wasn’t threaded with discomfort, anger, and resentment.
Dusk was already settling around them when Tempest finally saw a darkened shadow ahead of them that indicated a watering hole. The aquestan, which had been plodding slower and slower as the day progressed, apparently caught the scent of water at about the same moment Tempest spied the oasis. It picked up speed, began to jog at a pace that jarred the teeth in Tempest’s head. Kiran tightened his hold on the reins, preventing the beast from breaking into a gallop.
Tempest empathized with the beast. She was more than ready to reach the haven herself. She was so stiff when she finally slipped off its back that a hiss of pain escaped her. Kiran held her to him, rubbing her back soothingly until she’d managed to collect herself.
“We will not build a fire tonight,” he said when she bent down to dig for the making of a fire. “It is late and I am unlikely to catch anything tonight anyway. We’ll eat what is left in the pack.”
Nodding tiredly, Tempest followed him up the rocky slope. Catching the pack when Kiran had untied it, she focused on trying to spread the bedroll while he unsaddled the aquestan and finally led it to the water. Too weary to care whether she ate or not, she settled in the middle of the pallet once she’d smoothed it out.
By the time Kiran had returned, though, her need to bathe some of the grit from the desert off and get something to drink had overcome her reluctance to move. She got up and went to take care of her needs. She almost fell asleep before she could finish her food.
Kiran took the remains of her food from her hand and tossed it to Kirry and then pulled her down onto the pallet.
“Did we make good time today?” she asked sleepily. “Are we close?”
Kiran tugged at her until her back was snugly against him and wrapped the blanket tightly around her. “Yes, Zheri Cha,” he murmured, his face against her neck.
A shiver skated through her when he kissed her there. A mixture of tentative warmth and reluctance followed it. When he merely lay back and tightened his arm around her, though, disappointment touched her.
“We reached the valley.”
Surprise flickered through her since she hadn’t seen anything that looked even vaguely like a valley … or a mountain range. “Really?”
“You will see tomorrow,” he murmured, lifting his hand to squeeze her shoulder.
She nodded, wondering when he nuzzled his face along her neck again and placed a few nibbling kisses there if he meant to initiate sex. She was still wondering when she dozed off.
Tempest was far more refreshed when she woke the following morning than she had been the morning before, but she wasn’t altogether certain she was happy about it. She supposed, since Kiran had wakened her twice the night before for sex—after the nightcap that had sent her off to dreamland with a smile on her face to start with—that maybe he’d just had enough sex to be satisfied for a while. She had barely gotten stirred up the night before when he’d kissed her neck. All the same, it worried her.
They were nearing the end of their journey, for one thing. She knew the chances were that whatever it was that they were about to do was dangerous. She knew there was a chance neither of them would survive what would happen even though it was difficult to think of death in terms of herself or Kiran and, if that was the case, then she didn’t want to waste a moment of whatever time they might have left.
Even assuming all went well, they were looking at journey’s end. When they’d completed their task it seemed likely they would go their separate ways.
She’d toyed with the idea of accepting Kiran’s offer, even though it pained her to think of it in the terms of his offer and wounded her pride, if it came to that, but as much as she knew it would hurt to leave him, she was resolved to so. He might come to look upon her with affection anyway if they lived together … and he might not. Whatever he said now, and whatever his reasons for feeling that way, he hadn’t welcomed her company when she’d followed him off. He hadn’t even been particularly gracious about letting her tag along—not in the beginning. It seemed to her that there was a strong possibility, considering the way they’d begun, that he might come to resent pairing with her only because his sense of honor demanded it.
She supposed he deserved to pay for his mistakes like everyone else, he seemed to think so, but she didn’t want to be anyone’s mistake. She didn’t want to pay for it with him, especially when, by her own customs, she had no reason to.
Maybe she didn’t really love him and, in the end, it would be easier on her than she thought it would be. She hadn’t had any experience with loving a man, or even seeing one socially, so she had nothing to compare her feelings with.
She didn’t think that was the case, but she could hope and, regardless, she knew she’d be better off to leave him than to stay when she cared and he didn’t.
She was a glutton for punishment, she supposed. She still wanted to enjoy what she could of the time they were together. It was bittersweet to feel as if she was making love to him and know he didn’t see it in the same light, that he obviously considered that he was fucking a woman of no virtue, but it fed her hunger for his touch and that was all she cared about at the moment. Life was just too short to decline anything that was good or sweet about it. She meant to enjoy it while she could.
They had been riding for several hours when Tempest finally noticed that the landscape had begun to change. The rocky oasis where they’d spent the night, unlike those she’d been used to seeing, seemed to be a part of a continuous spine of rock jutting from the sand of the desert. So gradually that it was barely noticeable at first, the ridge reached higher into the sky. Scanning the distant horizon, she saw another dark line that she realized was a se
cond mountain ridge, or perhaps the opposite end of the one they were near?
By the time they stopped to eat at midday, the craggy outcropping of rocks had become a full-fledged mountain, albeit a squat one. Lifting a hand to shield her eyes from the bright sun, Tempest studied the landscape in the direction they had traveled and discovered that that, too, had changed so gradually that she hadn’t been aware of it. They were in a valley, the valley.
Turning after a moment, she followed the mountain ridge above them with her gaze. “Kiran!” she said a little breathlessly after a moment. “I see … I think I see the twin peaks!”
She discovered when she looked at him excitedly that he was studying her, not the mountain. She couldn’t tell what thoughts were running through his mind, but it wasn’t the jubilation she felt. “You don’t think that’s it?” she asked, feeling abruptly deflated.
He turned then and looked in the direction she’d been staring. “I am certain you are right,” he said finally, his voice as neutral as his expression.
Tempest studied him, trying to think why he wasn’t excited. “Is it … is it still too far away for us to reach it today?” she asked uneasily.
He glanced at her. “We will reach it.” Getting up, he moved to the aquestan and looped the strap of the water skin over the pommel of the saddle. “Possibly by nightfall.”
Tempest felt her stomach tighten. Glancing away from him again, she climbed the mountain with her gaze, trying to decide how far up the side of it the temple might be—near the peak, she was certain—but it was hard to tell how long it might take them to reach the summit once they’d reached that area. Joining him again, she looked up at his face anxiously. “We’ll make it,” she said finally, knowing that was still in doubt but wanting to banish the look on his face that worried her.
He lifted a hand to her cheek, stroking it lightly with his thumb. Then, without a word, he dropped his hands to her waist and lifted her onto the back of the aquestan. She glanced back at him when he’d settled behind her, but she still couldn’t quite decipher the look in his eyes.
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