Dedication
For Kelly, for Jeannette, for my blammo editor Bethany.
Chapter One
Aru closed his eyes and sank deeper into the wound. Inella’s flesh enclosed him in a shroud of desperately clinging life, her tissues enveloping him like warm bathwater. As his awareness passed through the jagged slash in her abdomen, he pulled its edges together and sang them closed, sealing layers of skin, muscle and membrane behind him.
Under his left hand, Viera’s belly crackled and surged with the energy pouring from her womb. She writhed and squirmed under his touch, but his palm remained unerringly fixed above her pubis, pulling the god-power from her perfect body. Under his right hand lay the torn, pulverized flesh and splintered bone of the woman Inella, his patient, the victim of a building collapse.
Beyond the resonating hum of his healsong, Aru could hear Viera’s increasingly excited cries. Her hands were busy between her legs, vigorously rubbing the hard bud of her clitoris. She had already come more than once. The rhythmic flare and pulse of energy engendered had saved the injured woman’s life, allowing Aru to draw the broken shards of Inella’s skull from the base of her brain and fuse the bone fragments back together, to reattach severed nerves and blood vessels, and disperse the clots that threatened to induce a stroke. The Darjhian healer was now low in the woman’s abdomen, seeking the source of the bleed that would drain her life within the hour if left untended.
Viera’s moans had evolved into a series of mewling whimpers. Aru’s fingers tingled where they brushed the bare skin of her belly. His cock was hard and straining against the wool of his trousers. The half of his mind that existed within the flesh of his patient ignored his aroused state as best he could and redoubled his efforts to find the source of the internal bleeding.
There! A tiny tear in the main artery emerging from the heart, where it branched in twain at the woman’s midsection. It seeped in rhythm with her heartbeat. If Inella had not already lost so much blood, it would be forcefully spurting from the perforation.
At his other side, Viera’s culmination built to the breaking point. Aru could minutely envision every physiological process of her orgasm, the swelling of her labia, the throb of blood and pressure in her hardened clitoris, the firing of bundled synapses as her clenching, inner muscles began to spasm and her channel filled with fluid. A scream tore free of her throat as her climax exploded. Energy hammered into the palm of Aru’s hand.
His cock throbbed, threatening to erupt, but he forced his mind away from it, and from Viera, a temptation he had turned away from so often over the last four months. Altering the pitch of his healsong, he gathered the minute tendrils of tissue at the edges of the arterial tear and began to weave them together. Gods, Viera’s orgasm was so deep and rich, there was power and enough to spare. Done with the tear, he adjusted his pitch and cadence and began, with fleeting strokes of his hand and will, the arduous task of mending the woman’s shattered ribs, a task he had not even intended for this session.
Viera was coming and coming, one climax rolling over into the next, her breath nothing but hiccupping sobs as her fingers endlessly strummed her clit. Understanding how dangerous it was for them both, Aru took everything she gave him and poured it into Inella, his soul humming, vibrating, resonating to the singing frequency of Viera’s pleasure. For a few heartbeats, for just that long, Aru felt powerful—Powerful—felt the voice of his god thundering through his flesh, as if his fall had never happened. As if he was still worthy of immortality.
Viera was screaming now, her sighs of pleasure transformed into shrieks of agony. Aru’s palm was on fire, flames of god-power licking at his now-mortal flesh. With a gasp, he ripped his hand away from her, retreated back from the depths of his patient’s body and returned to himself.
It took a moment to make the transition from spectral to physical. When he did, he immediately regretted it. Every muscle in his body trembled on the hard edge of pain. His left hand was blistered and red where Viera’s power had burned him. His cock was a straining, aching, blood-filled shaft that trickled continuously. He thought it might burst at a single touch.
Aru looked down on Inella, on pristine young features that an hour ago were swollen, mangled and discolored. Her ribcage rose and fell as if her sleep was entirely natural, only a speckling of brown and yellow hinting at the catastrophic fractures that without his intervention would have kept her bedridden for weeks.
Viera lay curled on her side, sobbing raggedly, her arms wrapped around her middle, her dark hair sticking to her sweat-drenched back. Aru’s stomach twisted unpleasantly. He might have killed her if he hadn’t stopped when he did. Even having stopped, the damage could easily be irreparable. He wrenched his gaze away, clambered unsteadily to his feet. Gods, what was happening to him? Was it his time already? This hunger he had for this particular woman, was it just his mortality rearing up at last to demand its due?
He thought of Viera, so generous and kind, a whore with a resilient core of compassion and an unbreakable innocence. Thought of her soul passing through him, rejuvenating him, replenishing his life-spark. Imagined himself as a mantis devouring its own mate, reducing her living flesh to mere nourishment for his continued existence.
His gorge rose to the back of his throat, and he staggered from the room.
Viera came back to herself by excruciating increments. Her limbs quivered, hovering on the verge of spasm. Her breasts were tender and sore, and between her legs she still burned, though the sensation gradually eased to a throbbing ache not unlike desire. It was a few moments before she realized she was alone with the patient.
Ignoring the protesting of her muscles, she pushed herself to her feet between the two beds and settled her robe on her shoulders. Hands shaking, she tried to fasten the buttons, but her fingers were too stiff and numb. With a muttered curse she gave up, clutching the sides together at her midriff with one hand. The woman in the other bed slept. Viera pulled the blankets up over her and settled her limbs more comfortably. Then she went to find Aru.
He stood in the little-used salon off the modified dining room that served as his new infirmary, staring out the window at the tiny, shaded courtyard. A few beams of sunlight poked in through the foliage of the laurel in the yard to form a bright halo of dust motes against his golden hair. The entire length of his lean form was infused with tension. Viera’s stomach knotted as she approached his back, as if she faced a wild creature that might at any moment turn and tear her to pieces.
“Aru?” she whispered, her voice rough from the lingering effects of the session.
He gave no indication that he had heard, that he was even aware of her presence. She circled around him, giving him plenty of space, until she could see his profile. He had that detached mien she was growing accustomed to, as if his body and his mind were in different places. But his chest rose and fell as if from exertion and there were tears on his cheeks. When she looked down she saw that his member stretched the fabric of his trousers, and a tiny patch of wetness betrayed where fluid welled from the tip.
She swallowed, her heart hammering. She knew he became aroused when healing—who would not?—but that arousal always faded soon after. And from the very beginning of their odd partnership he had made it clear that their interactions must be based solely on the work they did together. That despite her attraction to him—and his to her—he was resigned to a life of celibate fidelity to his absent wife.
Viera had agreed, not only because of the shivering pleasure she experienced each time they healed a patient together, but also because she liked the idea that there was something positive she could do in this world. That she might be a whore, but the qualities that made her a good person still existed somewhere beneath the face paint and gaudy dresse
s.
Aru’s hands were at his sides, clenching and unclenching. His left, she saw with shock, was raw and beginning to drip blood.
Her eyes filling with tears, she reached for it. As her fingers made contact, he jerked his hand away, rounding on her. His gold eye was like a glowing ember, his gray one flinty and hard. “Don’t touch me!” he hissed, raising his uninjured hand as if he would hit her.
“You’re hurt!” she choked, reaching again.
He glared at her and took a step back. “It’s nothing.”
“But—”
“Leave me, Viera,” he said in a voice like a razor blade. His gaze raked her, from her hand where it clutched the panels of her thin robe together, to her exposed thigh where the silk parted and fell away.
Her belly coiled, half fear half excitement. Her eyes flitted down to his groin, to the shape of him clearly outlined against the damp wool of his trousers. She wondered what his cock looked like. Was it blue-veined and ridged and purple at the tip, like an Andun’s, or as pale and smoothly unblemished as the rest of him? She wondered what his come tasted like, how his shaft would feel embedded deep inside her. Would sex with him be as arousing as when he drew her energy to heal a patient? Would it be even better?
“Get out,” he said. His eyes, slanted and cat-like, narrowed on her face. “Before I do something I can’t take back.”
She wet her lips. “Like what?”
His face was so clenched and angry she thought it might crumble to pieces, and he held himself so still he might have turned to stone. His eyes were fastened on her lips, and she nervously ran her tongue over them once more.
Her heart thudded against her ribcage, until its heavy beats seemed to drive the breath from her lungs. Between her legs, she was melting, her tissues swelling and tingling in anticipation. She wanted to wrap herself around him. Wanted to climb up his body and mount herself on the thick, hard shaft she could see outlined so distinctly behind the wool of his trousers. But at the same time, she was scared to touch him, scared of what might happen if she tried.
His voice shook when he finally spoke. “I have already broken my covenant with the god. Please. Don’t make me break my vow to my wife as well.”
Desire instantly transformed within Viera. “What has your wife ever done for you?” she shouted at his stricken face. “What has she sacrificed? Did she leave paradise to share in your exile? Of course not! That would mean giving up the comforts of the Deathless Land! And now that you’re stuck here for good, where is she? Where? Enjoying the good life in the garden of delight while you languish for want of human contact!”
He only stared at her, his gaze filled with a despair as wailing and empty as the void between worlds. He was silent but for the ragged wheeze of his breath, and gradually the opportunity to make any kind of reply seeped away into the ether. The space between them, less than an arm’s length, seemed to stretch to forever.
Scrubbing at the wetness on her face, Viera turned and left him standing there, and went to get dressed.
Aru stood by the window for a long time, then went upstairs to his bedroom. Checking to make sure she hadn’t followed, he shut the door and locked it.
With a muffled oath, he freed himself from his trousers and sank to his knees. Gods, his cock still throbbed, so intensely he thought it might split down its length. Encircling its thickness with his hand, he closed his eyes and let his mind conjure an image of the woman downstairs. The whore, Viera, whose well of sensuality seemed to have no bottom. A steady trickle of thin semen slicked the skin along his shaft as his hand worked it, but it was a poor surrogate for what he really wanted.
Viera. Whore. Angel.
Her kisses, her cries, her cunt enfolding him, pulling him deep inside. Her wet, pink tongue leaving tracks of moist heat across his skin, her heavy breasts pressed flat against the unyielding plane of his chest. He wanted every inch of her body, imagined running his hands through the spun silk of her hair, smoothing them over creamy pale skin flushed with desire. He could picture her honey-brown eyes darkened to mahogany as she opened her thighs for him, her sex hot and wet and close as he slammed his eager cock into her over and over.
His palm slid hard and fast up and down the length of his prick, and as his muscles began to tense, he fell forward onto his free hand. The scarred planks of the floor blurred as his eyes poured tears, because even as he envisioned her perfect, rounded, Anduni body straining beneath him, he understood that he must send her away.
The loss ripped through him, wrenching a sob from his tight throat. She was a whore, he told himself, a mortal-born whore, a woman to be used and then put down again. It was beneath a Darjhan to notice her beauty, her kindness, her wit. It was beneath a Darjhan to desire such as her.
But he wasn’t a Darjhan anymore, was he? He was Omahru-azhi, as mortal as she was. And with each healing they’d shared, their bond had grown stronger, until now her face was all he saw when he closed his eyes.
He hardly recognized the sounds coming from his mouth—anguish and ecstasy intertwined. As his come exploded from the end of his swelling, bucking cock, he choked back a sob and just let all his lust and grief for her pour out of him.
Flecks of stark white spattered to the floorboards to mingle with his tears, and he shook with the heaviness of his guilt. Because it was Viera’s face and body that filled his entire awareness like a sun in darkness as he came, and not Zharina’s. Not his wife’s.
Viera sat on the edge of the infirmary bed and tried to control her weeping. Swiping irritably at her tears, she cursed under her breath. Eight hundred years. Eight hundred years. That’s how long it was since Aru had last laid eyes on that unfeeling bitch who claimed to be his wife. Eight hundred years since his exile had begun, an exile she had not cared to share with him.
And yet the fool could not bring himself to set her aside. His pointless devotion had been like a sharp pebble in Viera’s shoe since the day she’d learned of it—irksome at first, then venturing into the realm of genuine pain, until finally, after their months together, it was like a persistent knot of agony. It offended her as much as a slap in the face from a friend, and part of her couldn’t understand why. How had she allowed herself to become so invested in this—in him? How had she allowed an unusual professional arrangement to evolve into…this hideous mess?
But the truth was, in the months they had worked together she’d allowed an affection to develop between them, an attraction, and a depth of emotional attachment she’d long believed impossible for her. She didn’t even know what to call it anymore. The ache bloomed in a place she thought had died the day her parents cast her out of their house.
And now he was going to dismiss her. She’d seen it in his face. She had pushed him right to the limit of his self-restraint, and there was no way he could let that stand. He would put her as far away from himself as possible, and go back to his safe, pathetic, solitary penance.
He was fallen, after all. Omahru-azhi. Walking dead. Such creatures did not deserve happiness. Neither did whores.
Lifting the hem of her robe, Viera dried her eyes and willed her tears to stop. Pity, self-directed or otherwise, was an indulgence she couldn’t afford. She had always done what needed to be done, and never let herself shed a tear over the inevitable. The path she navigated through life might not be an easy one, but it allowed for some small contentment. She enjoyed her work, not just here in the infirmary, but also in the alleys and taverns of the city. Even if Aru decided she was no longer necessary to him, there was money to be made, fun to be had.
She sighed and forced herself to see that for the lie it was. More and more these last months, she had concentrated her time and attention here with Aru and his patients. She hadn’t had occasion to provide her more sordid services to a customer in more than a month. She hadn’t, come to think of it, even set foot in her own apartment in nearly a week. Damn it, but it was comfortable here.
Dangerously comfortable. Maybe it was just as well that Aru w
as about to send her packing.
In the other bed, the injured woman stirred, moaning hoarsely.
Viera’s hand went self-consciously to her disheveled hair, then she crossed to the bed and sat gingerly on the edge of the mattress. Gently taking the woman’s hand, she waited for her to regain consciousness.
Blonde eyelashes fluttered against pale, pink-freckled cheeks. Eyes of an incongruous dark green fought to focus on Viera’s face.
“Where?” Inella croaked.
Viera smiled down at her. “You’re safe.”
Inella swallowed with difficulty. Viera knew by now that with the blood she had lost, the woman would be very thirsty. A cup of cool water sat on a narrow table in the sliver of space between the beds. Sliding one arm beneath the woman’s shoulders, she held Inella up and put the cup to her lips so she could drink. As Viera settled her back down on the pillow, the woman frowned at her.
“What happened?”
“I only know what I was told. Your house collapsed. It fell in on you.”
The woman’s eyes widened. She looked around the room and began to panic when she found it empty. “My children? My mother?”
“They were hurt, but not badly. Your daughter has a broken arm, and they will all need some stitches, but they’re otherwise all right. Master Aru sent them on to the Kurgan hospital.”
The young woman’s eyes glistened and her chin quivered. “Kurgan?”
Viera patted her hand. “Don’t worry, ma’am. They’re scary, I know, but there are no better healers than the Kurgae’in. Well…” she smiled, “there is one better, but he was busy. With you.”
Inella tried to sit up, then winced and clapped a hand to her side.
Viera helped ease her back down. “Here, let me look.” Lifting the edge of the blanket, she took in the mottled bruising over the woman’s ribs. “Can you breathe without pain?”
“Yes.”
“Your ribs were broken. Aru will have mended the bones, but the muscles around them will still be tender. You’re no longer in danger, but you do need rest.” Tucking the blanket back around her, she squeezed the woman’s hand and started to rise. “I’ll go and get you something to eat—not too much, just a bit of broth for now. And I’ll send around to the hospital that you’re awake. I’m sure your children will want to see you’re safe and sound.”
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