by Grace Draven
Her own hands were busy. She stroked his cheeks once more before tracing the broad width of his shoulders, then his muscular arms, which tightened under her touch. She had seen him in every state of dress and undress, knew the scarred beauty of the body that lay currently hidden under tunic, shirt, and trousers. He smelled of brazier smoke and sweet tobacco.
His hair spilled dark and heavy over his shoulders, and she gathered it in one hand only to let it go in a cascade through her fingers. His locks lent an aspect to his features that only enhanced his appearance. When she first met him, she’d thought him more memorable than striking, with a face too angled and harsh for ideal male beauty like Azarion’s.
She no longer thought that way. There was beauty in severity, in unforgiving lines and hollows. She fell asleep at night with his image painted across the inside of her eyelids and found him breathtaking.
“Such sweet torture,” he said softly, eyes still closed.
Halani loved that he gave her these moments to learn his body without interruption, discover this kingdom of slopes and valleys. But she explored not to tease but to learn. “Do you want me to stop?”
“No.”
The one word might have been a plea or a command. Either way, Halani was glad he hadn’t said yes. She found the hems of his tunic and shirt, lifted them, and slid her hands beneath the fabric to rest them against his midriff. Muscles tensed, tightening even more as she nuzzled aside the tunic’s neckline to reach his collarbone and kiss a path along its prominent line just above his nearly healed wound. A thin trail of soft hair bisected his torso. She stroked it briefly before spreading her fingers on either side to explore the sculpted muscle over his ribs, careful to avoid the place where the second arrow had punctured his body.
Malachus tilted his head back on a gasp when she mapped a route to his groin and the swollen erection hidden behind his trousers’ placket. She cupped him, her own heavy heartbeat a drumming of hot blood and desire to take this man into her body as deeply as she’d taken him into her soul.
A startled squeak escaped her when he suddenly forced her head up from his chest and brought his mouth down on hers. His passive stillness was over.
They kissed until they could no longer breathe, Halani’s tongue chasing his and his hers as she stroked the interior shape of his mouth and savored his taste. He swept the outline of her lips with the tip of his tongue and nibbled the lower one with his teeth. His breathing turned even more labored with every stroke of her hand on the rigid length of his shaft.
She followed his lead when he coaxed her closer to the bed. He grabbed the lamp, hanging it on the hook nearer to the ceiling so that the light spilled warm across them both. “My turn,” he said.
Halani stood still, shivering at intervals from the pleasurable darts his touch sent across her body as he undressed her. At every patch of skin revealed, he paused to worship there with either the brush of his lips or the stroke of his fingers or the flick of his tongue. By the time she stood nude, she was clutching him for support and murmuring his name in prayer.
“I thought you pretty when I first saw you,” he breathed into her ear, drawing her against him so that the rough fabric of his tunic brushed her breasts, lightly abrading her sensitive nipples. “But I was wrong. ‘Pretty’ doesn’t do you justice.”
Such seductive words. Halani pressed herself as close as she could to him, hands busy with unlacing the numerous ties that held his garments closed or up. “It’s still hard to believe you once had trouble wooing women,” she said.
He stroked her back, drawing an invisible line along the length of her spine with his forefinger. She jerked at the ticklish sensation. “You inspire me to give my best effort.” And oh was he succeeding.
“I want to see you as well,” she said, folding back the unlaced collar of his tunic.
“You already have. Several times.” Malachus ignored her insistent tugging on his shirt in favor of stroking her from hips to shoulders and sucking gently on the valley of flesh where her neck met her shoulder.
“That isn’t the same, and you know it.” She rucked the tunic upward, and he laughed, finally giving in to her silent command by shrugging it and the shirt beneath it off. His trousers followed just as quickly, until they both stood, clad only in lamplight and each other’s admiring gazes.
“I don’t think you’ve ever been pretty,” Halani said. “But you’re certainly beautiful.”
He caught her up in a tight embrace. “And you accuse me of possessing a honeyed tongue.”
“Oh, you do,” she insisted, holding him just as close as he lowered her to his bed. “You’ve kissed me. You taste like honey.”
She earned one of those kisses for her compliment, one only interrupted when he rolled them both so that he lay on his back and she sat atop him, mounted to ride.
“You’ll tell me if I hurt you?”
His hands settled on her buttocks, cupping her, and he blew softly on one of her curls that had escaped her braid and bounced across his nose. “Any pain I’m feeling at the moment, Halani, has nothing to do with arrow wounds.” Amused, and breathless with the sensations tumbling through her limbs, she braced her hands on his chest to lift a fraction higher, shifting the position of her pelvis. He groaned at the movement, pushing up against her. Hard, aroused, seeking entrance into her body.
Pink color graced his cheekbones, and his dark eyes reflected the lamp’s flickering light in their depths. “If I immolate us both before this over, Halani, it won’t be because of my curse.”
A subtle shift in his position rubbed a spot between her legs just the right way, and he enhanced the sensation it elicited in her by paying slavish attention to her breasts with his mouth and tongue. Halani gasped, arching into him. If this continued, it might well be she who set them both on fire, and she wasn’t even cursed.
Her hands slipped from his chest to the floor to steady herself. A lift, a tilt, a slow slide down that forced a guttural sound from him, and she seated him within her.
Had she the ability to breathe, she might have moaned with him. Instead, she stayed silent, eyes closed, reveling in the feel of him heavy and thick inside her. He filled every space so fully that she spread her thighs even wider to better accommodate him.
They moved together in a careful choreography, each learning the feel of the other, the scent of mutual arousal, the way their skin felt under each other’s hands, how it tasted on the tongue and the lips, the way their limbs fitted together.
Soon, the measured dance turned frenetic, far more primal, and Halani gripped the sides of Malachus’s narrow hips with her knees to hold on as he bucked beneath her, fingers pressing hard against her backside as he thrust harder, deeper. His mouth worked a tandem magic, and it wasn’t long before Halani gasped out his name, arching her back as the climax he coaxed from her consumed every thought and sensation.
Malachus soon joined her, sitting up to envelop her in an embrace that threatened to bruise her ribs. He buried his face in her neck to mask his moans. Sweat slicked his back and shoulders, every muscle quivering as he shuddered in the throes of orgasm.
They held each other, wordless but unquiet as her numerous gasps matched his and her heartbeat thundered in her chest and her skull. She kissed his damp face, tasting salt. A low purr vibrated in his throat, the sound clinging to his mouth when he captured hers in another drugging kiss that left her faint and with the blood singing through her veins.
They’d managed to twist the bedcovers around them. Malachus flung them off before rolling to his side, taking Halani with him so that they faced each other, legs and arms tangled together.
Content to rest in his arms and calm her racing heart, Halani spent several moments twining a lock of his hair around her finger, letting it slide away only to recapture it in her grasp. Malachus’s indulgent half smile told her he didn’t mind.
He spent the qu
iet, postcoital moments mapping her contours in a leisurely fashion. “I wondered if I’d ever have the privilege of seeing you unclothed. The gods know you’ve seen my bare arse more times than I can count. It’s about time you played fair in that.” He winked.
Halani bit him gently on the top of his shoulder, prompting a gasp from him along with the renewed stirring of his arousal. She stared at him, wide-eyed. “Already?”
Malachus snorted and cupped one of her breasts, fingertips brushing her nipple. She pressed into his palm, craving his touch, even now when she still thrummed from the fading vestiges of release. “If you could see yourself now as I see you, you’d only be surprised that I wasn’t already fully engorged and begging to stay inside you.”
Blunt and to the point, his words were no less beguiling for their lack of flowery sentiment. She kissed the tip of his long nose. “How do you always know what to say to me and make me believe every word of it?”
“Because I mean every word of it.”
The gods would never be so kind as to allow this man to remain with her forever, but they’d granted an unforeseen boon by placing him in her life for now, for these moments. She’d find joy in that and be grateful for what was given instead of bitter for what was not.
She hugged him harder, drawing closer until there was no space between their bodies. “You are a gift, Malachus,” she whispered.
“And you’re a blessing, Halani of the Lightning.”
They made love again, a slow coupling as intense as the first one and just as breath stealing. Afterward, her thighs slick with Malachus’s seed and her body languorous and heavy from his attentions, she lay with her back to his chest, spooned against him. Outside, the camp had grown quiet, and the scent of brazier smoke no longer permeated the air as it had earlier. Except for those assigned to night’s watch to guard the livestock, the rest of the free traders had sought their beds for the night, some to sleep, a few to wait until the moon was old and the night was older. Slowly, slowly, Malachus’s body pressed heavier against her, his breathing slowing as he slipped from a light doze into deeper sleep. Next to him, Halani stared at the wall, wide-awake, counting each breath and trying not to weep.
She waited another half hour, pretending to sleep as well, before gently easing out of his hold to gather her clothes and creep out of the wagon. She dressed outside while the camp slumbered under the haloed moon, and if any watched her dress, they chose to enjoy the view without commenting or making their presence known. Halani shrugged away the concern. A body was a body, and hers was just one slight variation of every other woman’s body in the caravan, and not something no one else had ever seen before. She didn’t have the luxury of indulging in false or useless modesty.
Once in her wagon, she took a hurried sponge bath from her washbasin, rebraided her hair, and waited for Seydom to fetch her, wishing with all her soul she was back in the provender wagon in Malachus’s embrace instead of waiting to slog through mud and water for the chance to rob the dead.
The expected taps on her wagon wall came just as she doused her lamp. Outside, Seydom waited by her steps, a faceless silhouette cloaked in shadow. “Kursak wasn’t sure you’d be in your wagon, or alone in it at least.”
Halani frowned. If that wasn’t fishing for information, she wasn’t sure what was. “As you can see, I’m in the wagon. Alone.” She folded up the steps and hooked them under her threshold. “Do you have a lamp? We’ll need one to see into the barrow.” At his nod, she strode past him. “Let’s get on with it, then.”
Kursak and Tursom were already at the front of the caravan. “Where’s Malachus?” he asked Halani.
“I assume in the provender wagon, asleep.” At least he was when she had reluctantly left him.
The wagon master eyed her for a moment but didn’t question her further. “We’re all here. Let’s go.
They left their shoes on the road, the men rolling up their trouser legs while Halani tied her skirt between her legs so the fabric made a makeshift pair of trousers. She grimaced at the slimy mud oozing between her toes as they waded toward the barrow.
“We’ll probably be covered in leeches once we get out,” Tursom said, the disgust in his voice making Halani grin.
“If we are, save the ones you pluck off you,” she said. “All the ones I had are dead. I need to resupply.” Founder in their horses and oxen was an ever-present risk, and Halani always tried to keep leeches on hand in case the farrier needed them to apply to a lame animal’s coronet.
The mound was an old one, its entrance collapsed and sunken, one side raised higher than the other so that it took on a lopsided appearance. Not only constructed in a poorly chosen location but also poorly constructed, period. Barrows were laborious to build, reserved for wealthy families who could afford the labor and material to erect one and pay for a rogue necromancer to raise a wight as its guardian. Whoever had this barrow built had ambitions of wealth and status but not the means to ensure a well-made tomb or a coveted location for it. Then again, a barrow in the middle of a fen discouraged all but the most determined grave robber from visiting.
Tursom held up the single lamp they’d brought for a better view. “We slogged through that soup for this?”
Seydom was even less impressed. He took the lamp from Tursom, venturing close to the barrow’s half-collapsed entrance for a look inside. “We’ll be lucky if there’s a broken spoon or a rotten shoe in there. So much for putting a barrow out in a fen. Looks like other raiders got here first. A long time ago.”
Kursak and Halani ignored them, she to concentrate on the varying pitches and tone of soggy earth supporting the barrow, he to watch her. “Anything?” he said.
“Not so far.” The hymn here was blunted, as if earth sang to her through a thick layer of drying cloths. Suddenly, the sweet chime of a single bell rose from the murk, and she froze. “Wait.”
The men fell silent as she listened, eyes closed, to the rising peal of one bell, then two, then several. Drawn by the sound, she stepped over a small hill of stone rubble held together by rooted sedge, using the partially fallen lintel to aid her balance. The ethereal music chimed in her mind, its vibrations pulsing up her arm to flood her body with an unmistakable resonance and familiarity.
As impossible as it seemed, this barrow held gold inside its collapsing interior. Gold or silver. Whichever it was, the precious metal beckoned with the shivering sound of bells.
“What?” Kursak demanded. “What do you hear?”
“Gold or silver.” She shushed him. “I need to listen.” Excitement surged through her. Gold. Definitely gold. She closed her eyes, concentrating on the alluring sound, searching for its source, her palm gliding across the barrow’s lichen-covered surface as she shuffled around the perimeter.
Nothing else mattered, not the midges swarming around her head or the way she sank ankle-deep, then calf-deep, into muddy water. Even the heavy drag of her tied skirt didn’t trouble her nor the strain in her leg muscles as she trudged through mud. Only the chimes mattered, their music so bright and beautiful that when she opened her eyes once more, all she saw was a wash of gold light filling her vision.
“Halani, watch your step, you’re drifting from the mound back to the water.” Kursak’s warning was a distant birdcall, easy to ignore.
The chimes grew louder, still beautiful beyond description, just like the golden light hazing her vision. Hip-deep in the water now, she felt something brush her legs, like the hesitant, curious touch of a new lover. The sharp blade of a whistle sliced through the chime’s ballad and split the curtain of golden light shrouding her vision.
Halani blinked, disoriented by the view in front of her. She no longer faced the mound. Instead she’d turned away from it, toward the fen’s watery expanse. Behind her, Kursak called her name. In front of her, to her horror, Malachus slogged toward her, his expression a combination of fury and fear. It was he who’
d split the air with his whistle and ended whatever sorcery had beguiled her.
Kursak called her name again. Halani turned so she could answer him, when something cuffed her leg in a bony clasp. She tried to jerk away, and the cuff tightened into an unyielding grip that yanked her off her feet. She fell as whatever monstrosity had hold of her tried to drag her farther into the water.
Mud embedded under her nails and oozed between her fingers as she clawed for purchase and struggled to kick free of the thing pulling on her. She screamed when the feel of bony talons crawled up her calf, sinking into her skin for a better grip on her leg.
Her companions fell to their knees around her, clutching her to pull her free from the fen creature’s relentless grip. All three slid toward the water as Halani sank deeper.
“Malachus!” Kursak bellowed. “Hurry!”
Halani echoed his cry in her head, over and over, a chant to keep mindless terror at bay as whatever had hold of her dragged her farther into the water.
Splashing sounded behind her, followed by the lap of a shallow wave that purled over her back and shoulders. This time a pair of hands, blessedly human, brushed hard against her legs. Suddenly, whatever held her in its unyielding grip let go. With no more resistance, the three men holding her upper body pitched backward, pulling her out of the water as they fell.
Behind her, Malachus slogged onto the firmer shore and hauled her to her feet. Halani found herself staring into the hard face of a stranger. His hands patted her down before bunching her wet skirt in his hand so he could inspect her legs.
“Luckily just scratches, but you’ll have bruises tomorrow,” he said in a voice cold enough to freeze a river. He met her wide-eyed stare with a distant one of his own. “Are you hurt?” She shook her head, throat closed far too tight to speak. “Good. Let’s get you back to the road.”
He turned his attentions to the others, who’d gained their feet and stood behind Halani in a protective half circle. “Had I known you planned to spend the evening doing a little grave robbing, I would have warned you about the risks of navigating fens like this one. There are things more feral than snakes and frogs lurking among the sedge.”
