Bloodstone

by Johannes, Helen C.

  Giggling, he twisted away from the rough tongue. “I knew you’d wait to come until Pumble was asleep. You wouldn’t want to scare him or the old man.” She turned her tongue on his hair, and he let her, enjoying the gentle pulling, like when his mother combed the strands with her fingers. The she-lion smelled of pine and lavender, like fresh-cut logs and the herb his mother laid beside his pillow when he had trouble sleeping. With a yawn, he relaxed between the she-lion’s forelegs. “Mirianna said you saved her too. That was good of you.”

  The lion licked across his forehead, scraping the hair from it. Her action let him see, like a ghostly image, the faint red glow of the banked fire. Sighing, he rubbed the stone between his palms. “I found this today. It has six...seven smooth sides and these rough edges. But I’m careful. I won’t let it cut me.”

  Her tongue washed the back of his neck with long strokes, the sensation so soothing, his head lolled forward onto his chest. His eyes may have drifted shut, but he couldn’t say for sure since that faint glow still played around the edges of his consciousness even as words filled it. The words rose up in his mind like a long-dead memory and tumbled off his lips. He could no more stop them than he could comprehend them, but his mouth seemed to know how to form the strange syllables as over and over they rolled from his tongue:

  “Beggeth beggedon tyrannor mott.

  Ominoth peurinon cauldor keth.

  Beggeth rappanon drakkonnor tor.

  Tyrannoth drakkon ominor et!”

  When the last word faded into the silence, the she-lion lowered herself to a reclining position. Feeling suddenly exhausted, Gareth snuggled into her shoulder. Before he fell asleep, her tongue licked across the fingers still gripping the stone. He had the strangest feeling she was smiling.

  ****

  Durren heard the rattle of pebbles in time to drop out of his float and spin toward the tunnel mouth. Just in time for the impact that plunged him, open mouthed, nearly to the rocks below. Amid a maelstrom of phosphorescent bubbles, he surfaced, coughing and tearing at what enmeshed his limbs.

  Something—a hand maybe—raked his shoulder.

  He kicked free, turned toward thrashing sounds, and seized something loose and flowing.

  “Ow!”

  Kiros! He had her by the hair! Well, that couldn’t be helped. From the gasping and sputtering, the woman was tangled in her garments. He kicked toward the rock ledge, towing her. She came too fast, bumped his chest, and clamped onto him like a leech. They sank together, her skirt enveloping his body. He yanked his legs free, kicked to the surface, and pried with one hand at the shoulder digging into his throat while scraping her hair from his face with the other. “Don’t...choke me!”

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice sounded hoarse, frightened, but her grip on his neck eased.

  He treaded water, trying to orient himself. He knew every inch of the pool, every rock and eddy, yet at this precise moment, he had no idea where the shallow end was.

  Her torso was pressed full length to his. Her legs—Kiros help him!—were locked around his hips with heels digging into his buttocks. For all the protection her clothes afforded her when dry, soaked they clung like skin to every female contour. Her breasts made tantalizing circles of malleable pressure on his chest, the nipples beading just above his own. Her belly was concave, a taut, tight abdomen narrowing to a mound, the contour of which he could trace through her skirt. That mound rode below his navel, and the thought of it, of what lay hidden under the cushion of curls adorning it, made blood rush to his groin. If she meant to ride him, she couldn’t have mounted him better.

  She squeaked. He’d clenched her ribs, so he forced his hold to loosen. Her hands shifted to his shoulders, and her fingers flexed, the tips tentative as they slid across his skin. Her eyes reflected a phosphorescent mass drifting a few feet away. Her skirt, or part of it, he was thinking when one thigh, bare and slick, slipped down his hip and chased all logic from his brain. Dear Koronolan! If he pulled her down, he could have her. His body was stiff and ready. He had only to tear away any remaining fabric and thrust himself home.

  At that moment, she gasped, “You—you’re naked!” Then she catapulted backward.

  When Durren broke the surface again, he heard nothing but the echo of his own gasps and the slapping of waves against the sides of the pool. By Kiros, where was she? A swirl of phosphorescence in the depths caught his eye. Not her skirt; that had snagged on stones in the shallows. Gulping in air, he dove toward the glimmer. It was sinking, slowly, sinuously, into the bottomless hole where the hot water welled up.

  He plunged toward the trail of bubbles, grabbed at it, found something solid and pulled. She came limply, a tangle of clothing and limbs. He seized her torso, kicked upward, and kicked and kicked until he exploded into air. Panting, he dragged her head out of the water and ripped apart the garment plastered over her face. Then he towed her to the shallows, bent her over his arm, and thumped her between the shoulder blades.

  After she coughed and gasped, Durren let out the breath he’d been holding. His head spun, and a shower of red and green stars erupted behind his eyes. When darkness returned and his heartbeat slowed, he hauled her onto the ledge and rolled her to her side while she coughed out the rest of the water she’d swallowed. Despite the heat, he shivered, but not from cold. His muscles always shook after such intense exertion, after they’d responded to a demand for immediate action. This had nothing to do with fear, with the possibility she might’ve drowned and he would’ve lost her.

  ****

  After the coughing spasms eased, Mirianna tried to breathe in through her nose and out her mouth. Maybe that way she could keep her insides—stomach, lungs, whatever else felt lodged in her throat—from heaving out of her body. But the stink wasn’t helping. No matter how she breathed, the air reeked of rotten eggs. She coughed again and tried to push over onto her back.

  “Easy,” said a voice, at once familiar and yet not. Hands gripped her shoulders and lowered her gently. “You almost drowned. You may have injured yourself on the rocks, too.”

  Mirianna frowned while those hands, their touch equally familiar yet oddly not so, glided across her face, the fingertips pushing aside soggy strings of her hair. They moved, business-like, over her shoulders, and then followed each arm to the hand, working the wrist and fingers together and singly. Her limbs lay like lead weights in those exploring hands, pliant but completely without strength. When the hands touched her ribs, her senses awoke with a rush. She sucked in a gasp, and the fingers stilled.

  “Does that hurt?”

  Hurt? Her heart rattled against her ribcage. How could the sweet, wild thrill triggered by the touch of fingertips—naked fingertips!—on her bare flesh be could considered painful? If that were the case, she ached all over for more of the same! She sucked in another breath, head spinning with ecstasy. Somehow, she’d navigated that tunnel in total darkness and found him! Only he’d been—a flush swept her from head to toe—he’d been naked and she’d nearly drowned them. And now—her flush intensified—she’d lost her clothing, at least part of it. And he—he was still—!

  “Am I hurting you?” he repeated, fingertips pushing ever so gently on rib after rib.

  Despite the water she’d swallowed, her mouth lost all moisture. Her pulse throbbed at her throat, making her ears resound with it. The fingertips, ten points of delicious pressure, shot fire along her veins. “I—no.”

  If she didn’t discourage him, didn’t move a muscle, those wonderful fingers would glide on down her torso. She bit her lip, wondering how long she could endure the incredible torture of his touch without crying out. Did he realize he was touching bare skin? How much of her flesh was exposed? The air was so thick and hot, she could be wearing nothing but the sodden garments clinging to her arms and not know the difference.

  Yet none of that mattered. What mattered was he was touching her, like in her dream, and the sweet pain of the contact coursed through her body, setting off spasms in her woma
nly core, drawing her hands into fists while his palms grazed her hip bones.

  And stopped.

  Heartbeats later, he transferred his palms to her knees, and she remembered to breathe. Disappointment stabbed at her. She resented those hands, so impersonal as they avoided her hips and thighs and instead slid down each shin, lifted each foot in succession and pulled off the boot. Water sloshed out of each boot, a spatter of droplets neither hot nor cold but thick, and wetting her skin.

  Like blood.

  What in the name of the Dragon made her think her foot was bleeding? Just because her pulse hammered there like a smithy was no reason to—to—!

  Her mouth opened to gasp, but her lungs seemed paralyzed, unable to draw breath to sustain the sudden wild thunder of her heart. Dots cavorted before her eyes, bright colors illuminating the darkness, but she saw none of them. Every particle of her focus concentrated on the ankle still enclosed by his fingers, on the tiny patch of skin under which her lifeblood drummed against his thumb.

  He was shaking.

  Tremor after minute tremor vibrated from his hands to the ankle suspended within them. His breathing had intensified too. She heard the rasp of it over the pulse pounding in her ears. A thrill ran through her, a jolt of feminine power. Touching her, skin to skin, had done this to him. She reveled in the thought, in knowing he was as affected by the contact as she.

  She licked dry lips while his thumb traced feather-light circles over her ankle bone. Although her eyes searched for him in the absolute dark, following the whisper of his breathing, she could detect nothing but a faint glow, like a banked fire, that vanished when she stared at it.

  “Mirianna,” he said, lowering her foot gently to the ground, “you seem to be uninjured.” His fingers loosened on her ankle.

  “Don’t—!”

  He stilled. “Does that hurt?”

  “No—I mean, don’t stop.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t stop touching me...Durren.” There, she’d spoken it. Named him for herself. Chosen the identity, the entity she trusted.

  “Mirianna...” His voice was hoarse, a plea.

  She understood he might be afraid. It had been a long time since he’d been the man he once was. She had to help him remember how to be that man. That required her courage, all of the courage trembling inside where she’d gathered it to speak what needed to be spoken. “I want you to...touch me.”

  He drew back with the hiss of an indrawn breath, and his fingers left her ankle. “If this is about that promise...”

  The separation, the latent prints of his fingers, stung her flesh like a burn. She flinched with a hiss of her own, then summoned her courage again. “It is...but it isn’t.” The promise had bound her to him, had brought her on this journey she would otherwise never have taken, but that was the extent of its power. Obligation couldn’t compel her to act. To take the steps she meant to take required something else entirely. “I know who you are now.”

  He groaned. “A shadow. A hollow creature. A failure.”

  His misery cut at her. She sat up, intent on her purpose, intent on easing his pain. “You’re Durren Drakkonwehr and you’re the man in my dream.”

  “Illusion, Mirianna. Nothing but damned illusion! You only see what you want to see. I learned that a long time ago.”

  She heard the muffling of his voice, sensed that inches from her, a hand-span or so, ran the curve of the back he’d turned toward her. She imagined that curve running uninterrupted from the crown of his head down the full length of his spine. When she clung to him in the water, she’d been thinking only of survival, but the musculature of that naked torso had imprinted itself on her arms, palms, thighs, breasts. Those places sizzled now with the memory.

  She cleared her throat. “I don’t see any illusions. I don’t see anything at all. But that’s not important. What’s important is the dream. Our dream.”

  He shifted, the movement ghosting air across her cheek, and his breathing altered, but when he spoke, his voice was flat, dull. “Dreams are illusions, too.”

  “Illusions are meant to deceive.” Startled by the words springing from her lips, she took a breath. She knew nothing of magic, of spells, yet she knew this as truth. He’d forgotten that somehow, or lost faith, and she had to convince him, make him believe again.

  “Dreams are...shared dreams like ours are foretellings. Premonitions. They tell us the future. We don’t always understand them, not at first. When my dream showed me a shadow of a man, a figure outlined against the light, I thought—I thought that when I met the right man...”

  She trailed off, face aflame. Said aloud, her girlish dream of a lover, her childhood conviction the man in her dream was her destiny sounded so foolish. People fell in and out of love all around her in Nolar, madly passionate one year and yelling curses at each other the next. Why did she think she was different? Was it because in her meager twenty winters, she hadn’t seen a single man who even in some small way matched the man in her dreams? Or was it because when this one man spoke to her, when his voice echoed out of those Wehrland trees, her heart leaped? It knew him. It had always known him, his true nature, even while her mind refused to believe.

  She ran her tongue over dry lips, inhaled deeply, and leaned toward him, toward where her heart tracked the great, tender, aching thing that beat within his breast. It drew her, always, like iron to a magnet. “I thought when I met the right man, his face would appear on my dream-lover, but I was wrong. What I didn’t understand then is I’ve always seen you, Durren, just as you are...inside. It’s not your face that matters; it’s your heart, your touch. No one can ever touch me as you do.” She reached out and laid a hand on that lovely curving spine.

  For a moment, they could have been statues—living, breathless statues. Then, in a faint reddish blur that registered only after the motion, he caught her hand, shifted his grip, and held her away by the wrist. “Mirianna!” His anguish reverberated from the chamber walls. “You can’t just...touch me! I’m not—”

  His flesh was warm, the fingertips separate and defined as his grip encompassed the fine bones of her wrist. Her pulse beat against the pressure, sending a drumbeat of echoes along her nerves. Along his, too, or the words wouldn’t have died in his throat. The contact linked them, communicating the tension of sinew and muscle, the heat of blood, the imprint of flesh on flesh. And this—this was the certainty.

  “I have touched you, Durren. More than once.” Quiet and sure, her voice filled the chamber without echoing. “I know you’re not empty, not a hollow specter sheathed in black. In the water, I felt your skin. And the pulse at your throat. Your fingers have nails. Your limbs have muscles, bones, flesh to cover them. You’re substance, not shadow, Durren. And I want to touch you again. I’ve always wanted to touch you.”

  “Do you know what you’re asking?” he said on a ragged breath.

  “Oh yes.” This time, she knew exactly what she was asking. It was the thing she was most sure of. “Make love to me. Please.”

  He groaned and his hand captured her head, fingers snagging wet strands of her hair. She gasped—into his mouth. At first there was nothing but the overwhelming tang of sulfur and a sensation of pressure, wetness, and heat. Then he breathed, and the taste of him filled her mouth with rapture. Her lips awoke beneath his, opening to the invitation of his tongue sliding along her teeth. She fisted her hand in his hair, long, thick hair that wrapped around her wrist and slid like wet silk between her fingers.

  He broke the kiss, their gulping breath echoing in the chamber as he pulled her full length against his body. “Mirianna ...sweet, sweet Mirianna...” whispered along her throat while his mouth trailed wetly down its curve. “You don’t know how long I’ve dreamed of this. Of you...like this.” His hand brushed her breast, the contact expelling air from her lungs. His hand returned, trembling, while their gasps mingled. “Dear Koronolan, I want you so badly...but not here.”

  Panicked, she clutched at his neck when he pulled
away. “Don’t...stop, please.”

  His breath rushed over her face. His hand returned to her breast, cupping it, exploring its fullness and limits before stroking a fingertip over the nipple. She convulsed and cried out. His fingers dug into her flesh. “I’m not...stopping, sweet. But not here, not on these rocks. There’s a better place, and you can lie on my clothes.”

  Then he was lifting her and she was pressed to his chest, to the wide expanse of skin and muscle rippling under her palm and fingertips. He kissed her while he walked, and she lost herself in the taste and texture of his lips, teeth, tongue, so beguiled she noticed nothing until he drew back and she saw his head and shoulders outlined in a faint red glow, like a stenciled silhouette, before he bent and closed his lips over her breast.

  With a cry, she arched upward, raking her fingers across his shoulders. He suckled, pulling at the nipple, taking a mouthful of her breast between his teeth until she whimpered and bucked in his grasp. When he shifted his mouth to her other breast, she seized his hair, convinced she’d die of the pleasure. Somehow, what remained of her garments disappeared. She knew they were gone when he lifted his mouth from her breast and trailed scorching kisses down her belly.

  “Open for me, sweet,” he murmured, sliding a hand up her thigh. When it grazed her mound, lightning shot through her nerves and exploded stars behind her eyelids.

  “What—what did you do?” she panted.

  “Did you like that?” He trailed his tongue along the soft inner side of her thigh. She shivered, and gooseflesh ran along her skin, but she wasn’t cold. Her skin burned, and the heat of his mouth intensified the fire. While she panted, he stroked down her abdomen, increasing the pressure as he approached her mound.

  “What—what are you doing now?”

  “I’m going to touch you. Here.” His palm slid over her mound and cupped it. She jumped, but he pressed her down, holding her body captive as his finger touched her. She sucked in a breath. Her body hummed with tension, all her attention focused on one tiny spot that waited for a single fingertip to touch it again and slay her with its magic. Pain, pleasure, agony—and then he was touching her, sliding his finger, slick with her own wetness, between the folds, probing the tight inner space where no man had entered.