by Carol A Park
His lips left hers to find her jaw, her neck, her throat, her collarbone, the V of her chest left by the ciuhan blouse she had donned for that day.
A soft rush of air left her lips, and she tilted her head back. Thus encouraged, he pulled back one side of the fabric to continue as far as the cut of the blouse would let him, just until the firmness of bone gave way the soft rise of her breasts.
There, he was stymied. No buttons, no drawstrings—the blouse of a ciuhan was designed to slip on and off over the head, but after their multiple stops and starts, he sure wasn’t going to attempt that without her expressed consent.
So, though he longed to gorge himself on the sight of her, to touch and kiss every part of her, he returned to her lips, and settled for sliding his hand under the neckline of her blouse, along her bare shoulder, and down as far as the neckline of the blouse would let him.
She caught his hand.
He pulled back from her lips enough to meet her eyes. No. Not again! He’d thought it was different this time. He’d been so sure…
It doesn’t matter, he berated himself. If this was it, this was it. He could not, would not, demand more than she was ready for again.
But though she held his hand in place, she didn’t push it away.
No, her eyes were burning, which only made him ache all the more.
“You told me once,” she said, still close enough that he could feel her breath on his own lips, “that we were the perfect lovers because we could enjoy each other without irksome things like attachment and assumptions and hopes.”
“I did say that,” he acknowledged, his heart hammering. He had convinced himself at the time that it had been true.
“Is that what this is?” she asked, reaching up with her other hand to run her thumb along his jaw.
Attachment. Oh, he was far beyond mere attachment. But she wasn’t ready to hear that—and he was nowhere near ready to say it. That made this even more dangerous for him, but right now, he didn’t care.
“If you mean is this more than that, then…” He turned his head to kiss the fingers she had just brushed along his lips, intensifying the ache. “I think you know me well enough to know the answer to that.”
She didn’t reply, but her eyes flicked to his lips again.
“But if you mean is this less than that…” He gave a strangled chuckle. “I am, shall we say, more than ready to indulge your every whim. Tonight. Tomorrow, and for as long as we both want.”
She ran the back of her hand along his cheek again, and then the jaw, and then turned her hand to touch his lips again.
At the last, her fingers trembled against his lips, and when he met her eyes, he saw there a naked vulnerability he hadn’t seen since that night below Gan Barton’s manor, and he remembered once more what she would be giving him. “If…you really do want this,” he said.
She held his eyes. Time slowed as he waited for her response. He could hear her breathing and nothing else, and the eternity held in that moment about killed him. It had been so. Damn. Long.
At last, she cupped his own face in both her hands and drew him close. “I want this,” she breathed against his lips, and then she kissed him again.
It was all he’d needed to hear. Fire burned through him, and all that remained was bare skin against skin, and caresses, and the consummation of his long-arrested desire to know her.
Knowing, all the while, that for him, at least, this was so much more. It was something he hadn’t done since Cheris.
To make love.
Chapter Fifty-Two
The Commander
When Driskell opened his eyes, it was dark. He jerked upright, his heart immediately going into full pattering drum mode.
He hung his head and clenched his fists together.
His first mission, and he had failed. There was no other way to look at it. But that didn’t mean he had to stay here and wait for them to torture him.
He organized his thoughts into a list. Take stock of the surroundings. Identify his situation. Identify likely escape routes. Identify potential resources. Make a plan and follow it.
There was only the faintest bit of light filtering in through the closed tent flap, so it was difficult to see his surroundings.
This wasn’t starting well.
He closed his eyes. He had more than his eyes, after all. His arms had been tied behind his back and around what felt like a wooden stake in the ground. He gingerly stood up.
Yes. Just tall enough that he wouldn’t be able to get his arms over the top, even if he jumped.
He pushed his back into the stake a few times. Solid. Probably no yanking it out or pushing it over, either.
Well, drat.
No one was around that he could see—and he felt as though if someone were hiding in the dark and had seen him wake up, they wouldn’t be letting him test his bonds.
The tent flap opened, and the orange light of a cookfire outside filtered in. There was a hushed conversation, and then Commander Gered stepped into the tent holding a lantern.
He set the lantern carefully on the dirt ground and gave Driskell a onceover. “I see you’ve been surveying your situation,” he said.
Driskell sank back to the ground, silent. I’m a friend? he projected hopefully.
Gered glanced back through the flap, as if checking to be sure no one had followed him in, and then settled down onto the ground himself. “I’m curious, Dal Driskell. Did you know Dal Dax?”
Driskell eyed the man warily. “No, Commander. Not well.”
“Hmm. He, too, came to us—or, rather, my predecessor—as a traitor to his people.”
Driskell really had inadvertently convinced the commander he was here as a turncoat.
There had to be a way to capitalize on that.
“Unfortunately, my predecessor was, among many things, a shortsighted man, and failed to utilize such a resource when it fell into his lap. Instead, after sucking what knowledge he could out of it, he destroyed it out of religious zealotry.” Gered nodded to Driskell’s arm.
Driskell looked down. There was a tiny prick there. A prick with a single, silver dot.
His cursed blood went cold in his veins. They had tested him while he’d been out. They knew.
The danger he was in went far beyond torture.
“Don’t worry. I have no love for Banebringers, but I’m also a pragmatic man. Dax was burning with hatred, for all of us not like him; I sense something more subtle out of you.” He paused, as if giving Driskell a chance to confirm.
Yes. Subtle. That’s right. Um… How much did Gered know about Banebringers? Did he understand or know anything at all about the different profiles? Would he want to know what powers he had, use them for his own purposes? Or was he like most of the masses, who had no real idea what Banebringers could do, aside from wild bedtime tales used to scare children?
His mind whirled furiously, trying to come up with some suitable response. What would a man like Gered respond to? He was practical if he didn’t care that Driskell was a Banebringer—or, at least, he wasn’t a religious zealot. Driskell reached out with his aether, trying to understand the man better, but right now, all he sensed was vague curiosity.
I’m a friend, Driskell projected again. It couldn’t hurt to keep reinforcing it. “I’m afraid,” Driskell said. “I-I respect Tanuac, but I think he’s gone too far. He shouldn’t have broken away from Setana. I had hoped that you might give him leniency, give Marakyn leniency. When we realized you planned to use bloodbane…I despaired. I knew I had to do something. You weren’t supposed to find out about…about me.”
There. That was believable, Driskell thought. It even included elements that were true. His fear. His respect for Tanuac. His despair. With a little encouragement from the aether bubble he had now expanded around the two of them…
Gered nodded. “A perfectly reasonable response, son,” he said. “But what do you have to offer me in return for this leniency? Information on a peaceful way to take th
e city, an offer to open Marakyn’s defenses at the right time? Further plans of Tanuac’s we can thwart and use against him? A better target?”
“I…” Driskell hesitated. He did the only thing he could think of. He projected his own despair and genuine confusion. Gered seemed to think him a young, naïve person who might still be of use to him.
Let him continue to think that.
Gered’s face softened. “You remind me a bit of my own son,” he said. “Not Donian, of course.”
“Commander,” Driskell said, trying a different tactic. “If you don’t care that I’m a Banebringer, why are you working for the Conclave? You don’t seem to share their vision for Setana.” I’m a friend. You can trust me. I’m like your son, after all… he added for good measure.
Gered chuckled. “So earnest, so naïve. My prediction is that the Conclave will burn itself out in a bid for control of the land. And when they do, someone needs to be there to step into the void of power left behind, yes?” He clenched his fist in the air. “What better person than a commander currying their favor and therefore close by when the fall occurs, concerned only for the stability of the land, and the strength of mind and body to give it?” He gave that telltale hesitation, no doubt unsure as to why he was sharing so much with this unknown “traitor.”
I’m a friend. I’m like your son.
Gered’s face relaxed. “I’ll give you some time to think on it,” he said, standing up. “If you think of some way in which you can be useful to me, call for a guard.” He glanced down at Driskell. “I like you, Driskell, though I can’t put my finger on why. But my patience is limited. If you can’t be useful to me, I will have no choice but to neutralize you.” He nodded, as if agreeing with his own statement, and left.
Driskell sank back against the wooden stake. Gods have mercy. What had he gotten himself into?
Chapter Fifty-Three
Echoes of Silence
Ivana lay against Vaughn’s chest, her eyes closed. To look at her, one might think she was simply contentedly soaking in the residue of consummated desire that still clung to her.
Really, she was hoping that if she didn’t open her eyes, she wouldn’t have to confront the churning frenzy of emotions within her.
Vaughn’s heart was beating normally now, but she knew he wasn’t asleep, because he was tracing light circles on her shoulder blade with the hand that cradled her against him.
It was…so…tender. Despite the strength of his passion, he had been a gentle lover, as eager to please her as to slake his own lust. Perhaps even more eager to please her than to slake his own lust—though certainly there had been plenty of that as well.
He splayed his hand against her skin and his chest rose and fell in a quiet sigh. He shifted so he could see her face, and she tilted her head back to look at him. He was smiling at her, that same gentle smile…
Her throat tightened. He studied her, and then the smile faded. “You’re…not having regrets, are you?”
She blinked, startled. “No—no, not at all.”
His brow furrowed.
“I just…I need to process. This is…” She closed her eyes, and then turned over so her back was to him. She couldn’t explain it to him. He had slept with so many women for pleasure over the years that, even though their own agreement wasn’t exactly the same, he couldn’t possibly understand what this had been for her. How much she had had to give, and give up, to give herself to him.
He had touched her in ways that no man had touched her—that she had allowed no man to touch her—for almost fifteen years.
Despite her manifold experience, none of it had been like this. None of it had mattered. It had all been a means to an end—at best, tolerable, at worst, unpleasant.
None of it had ever made her feel this way inside.
Not even Airell.
She hadn’t expected the raw vulnerability she had felt. She hadn’t expected how that tearing away of every layer to simply be would be at once so satisfying…and so painful.
At once exhilarating and terrifying.
She had no words to describe that. She was afraid to even try.
After a few moments, Vaughn slid his hand over her waist and across her abdomen and drew her close to him again. “I know,” he said softly.
His simple statement startled her. He did?
This was…not the same man she had almost given herself to once before.
Far from reassuring her, that realization only added to the frothing whirlpool within her.
She leaned against him, her back to his chest, and tried to simply rest in the warmth of his body against hers. Tried to push away everything else and just be again.
It wasn’t working. She opened her eyes to look across the room at the discarded clothing, evidence of their liaison. Her dagger in its belted sheath lay on top of the blouse and skirt of her ciuhan. He had discovered it underneath her skirt, belted to her thigh as usual, and undid it himself. It had felt like he’d stripped away an entire layer with that one action.
His own shirt and trousers were in another pile, also ornamented—with the chain that held the key to Airell’s cell.
She frowned and closed her eyes again. She did not want to think about that bastard right now. So instead, she replayed every moment of the past hour in her mind until she fell asleep.
Ivana bolted upright with a gasp and in a cold sweat. She shook her head, trying to fling away the vestiges of the nightmare, but it didn’t work. Her heart was still pounding, her stomach still clenched in revulsion and terror.
She could still see Airell’s face in her mind, hovering over her, tearing at her clothes and demanding that she give him what he wanted.
Taking it—forcefully.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing deeply, in and out, until her heart had stopped thrashing about in her chest.
She looked over at Vaughn’s sleeping form to try to center herself, to remind herself of the pleasurable evening she had just enjoyed.
Instead, she saw the lines of Airell’s face in his brother’s profile.
Bile rose in her throat and she stumbled out of the bed, afraid she would vomit. She landed on trembling hands and knees and choked it back. Tears stung at her eyes from the effort, and panic closed her throat once the vomit was back where it belonged.
Stop it! she screamed at herself, and her panic turned to rage, rage that she was unable to control this, rage that Airell still haunted her and could ruin this peaceful night.
Even in her dreams, he was a bastard.
She looked down and saw where she had landed.
Vaughn’s clothes lay beneath her, the key to Airell’s cell glimmering in a shaft of moonlight that peeked through a crack in the closed curtain.
She stared at the key, her mind churning.
No, a tiny voice said inside. No, Ivana.
But it was too late. Whatever doors to her inner self had been opened that night slammed shut, one by one, the sounds echoing inside as though down an empty hallway. The voice chased the doors, growing both more insistent and less influential, but the heat of her rage turned cold, and she scorned the voice, daring it to stop her, until finally the last door closed, and she heard nothing but silence.
The cold, spiteful silence of a trained killer.
She closed her hand over the key.
Vaughn was startled awake by…something not immediately apparent.
He groaned and rolled over to go back to sleep.
But something was wrong. He frowned. He was facing Ivana’s side of the bed, and she wasn’t in it.
He sighed. Apparently, she wasn’t ready to stay with him all night. It didn’t surprise him, even if it was disappointing. He had hoped to wake up with her by his side.
All the same, he shifted over to bury his face in her pillow and breathe in her smell. He then rested his cheek there and closed his eyes, preparing to go back to sleep.
And then his eyes sprung back open.
He was st
aring at his pile of clothes in the dark.
He sat up. Hadn’t he left the chain with the key to the dungeon sitting on top of his trousers?
He scooted out of bed and pulled back on his undergarments before rooting around in the pile. He picked up his shirt and shook it out, and then his trousers. Nothing fell on the ground.
He felt in the pockets. Nothing.
He turned to the bedside table. Maybe he had put it there.
Nothing.
His frown deepening, he lit the lamp on the table. He opened the drawer to the bedside table, but it was empty. He looked behind it, but there was nothing there.
He shook out his clothes one more time, and still nothing.
Where in the abyss could it have gone?
He got down on his hands and knees and looked under the bed. Still nothing.
He sat back down on the bed and ran a hand through his hair. Ivana’s clothes were gone, obviously. Maybe it had somehow stuck to her skirt and—
He froze. Or had she taken it?
No.
His chest tightened.
No!
He had to be wrong. He had to be. He would go to her room and find her, prove himself wrong.
He threw his clothes back on, left his room, and hurried down the hall to Ivana’s room.
He banged on the door. There was no response. He glanced down the hall. It was dark and empty, of course—given the time of night. He banged again, and still there was no response. He tried the door handle, and it opened.
He pushed it open and peeked his head inside.
It was only one large room: a sitting area, a fireplace, and a bed, and Ivana wasn’t in it.
Aleena. She must have gone to stay with Aleena.
He strode to the next room over and knocked.
After a few moments, the door opened. Aleena stood there, groggy and rumpled in a robe she had obviously hurriedly thrown on over her nightshift. She blinked at him. “Vaughn? What in the abyss? It’s the middle of the night!”
“Is Ivana with you?” he asked.
“What? No. Why would she be with me? Isn’t she in her room?”
