I lay there staring up at the blue sky, green willow branches dappling me with shade. Bottom, relieved of my presence, stopped and began cropping the grass. I wondered how long it would take Gregory’s slower horse to reach us. I wondered if Mabel could even canter, so broad in the beam was she.
Overhead, a few bits of gauzy clouds gathered and formed into a shape that was vaguely horselike.
“Three minutes and change,” I said aloud when Gregory’s face blocked out my view of the sky. “I had only reached one hundred and ninety-two Mississippi.”
He tickled my nose with a pink flower, and lay down beside me. “You think I’m nice?”
Trust him to focus on that first. “Any other man, a man of honor and consideration, a man who claims to have superb manners, would have asked me if I was hurt before pandering to his ego.”
“But you do think I’m nice?” A high breeze made the clouds shift their shape into that of a petaled flower.
“Yes,” I said, wanting to laugh and run away at the same time.
“Excellent. I like you a great deal, too. Enough that I looked you over to make sure you weren’t hurt before I spoke.”
The wispy white clouds overhead drifted lazily into the shape of a heart. “I’m not hurt. Moss is very forgiving. Bottom shied at bunnies.”
“He appears to be an extremely high-strung horse. Do you really wish for me to be gone out of your life despite all my niceness?”
The clouds melted into the blue sky. I rolled over onto my side to study Gregory. “That depends. Can you promise me that you won’t arrest my mothers?”
His eye crinkles smoothed out. “No, I can’t.”
I rolled onto my back again. There was nary a wisp of cloud in the sky, and yet I felt as if I was standing in the middle of the biggest, blackest thunderstorm ever. “Thank you for being honest.”
“I will always be honest with you, Gwen, even when it is something that I know you do not want to hear.”
Despite the words, the sincerity in his voice touched something inside me. I wanted so badly to throw caution to the wind and just give in to the urges my body was making. I wanted to forget there was a world outside of Anwyn. I wanted to remove the fear for my mothers that had been my constant companion for the last half of my life.
I wanted desperately to be in love with Gregory, and to let him cherish me as instinct told me he would.
Tears stung behind my eyes. “It isn’t fair,” escaped my lips, and the second it did, I was ashamed of how juvenile it sounded.
“No, it isn’t,” Gregory said, and brushed my cheek with the flower. “I’ve found that life seldom is. Gwen, if I—”
“No.” I rolled over to put my fingers across his mouth. He kissed them. “This isn’t your problem, Gregory. You are what you are. You have a job to do, and I am not going to ask you to shirk your duty just so we can be together.”
“You make it all so black and white,” he said against my fingertips, opening his lips to suck one inside. The swirl of his tongue against the pad of my finger made my entire body tingle. “As if it came down to having you or having my job.”
“Doesn’t it?” It took a great deal of mental strength to speak, but I managed to get the two words out, and I was proud of that fact.
“No. There are shades in between that you don’t seem to see.”
I pulled my fingers away, suddenly chilled and tingle-less. “Because I’m not one of your people, you mean?”
“That is a very minor shade of gray, and not one that concerns me.”
“But it is still there.” I took the flower he held and tucked it behind his ear. “Tell me, what if I changed my mind and wanted to have a relationship with you? What if I wanted the whole nine yards, marriage, kids, eternity spent together. What would your family say to that?”
He smiled, making the eye crinkles return. “A few months ago my grandmother would have had the biggest fit you had ever in your life seen. She would have banned me from the family, named us both mahrime, and forbidden anyone to ever mention either us or our children again. She would have notified all the other Traveller families of this exile and demanded that they honor it. We would have, in effect, ceased to exist for every living Traveller.”
“What’s changed in the last few months that would alter that?”
“Many things, but mostly me.”
I thought about what he said. “And you consider the annihilation of your heritage not of concern?”
“It wouldn’t happen. Not only am I my grandmother’s favorite out of all my cousins, but Peter has done much to soften her previous view on marriage to outsiders. She might raise a fuss, but she’d soon come about. She did so with Peter, and although things are not overly affectionate between them, she has named him as family before the annual gathering of Travellers.”
I bit back the urge to say “Bully for her,” and instead contented myself with a simple “It proves my point, however. We aren’t meant to be together, Gregory.”
He reached out and put a hand on my breast. I stared down at it in shock for a second or two. I couldn’t believe he just stuck out his hand and copped a grope! Then the tingling started again, and I watched in amazement as he lifted his hand about half an inch from my breast. Little snakes of blue-white light snapped and twisted like miniature lightning.
“That . . . that’s not just static electricity, is it?” I asked, wondering why a shock to my boob wasn’t hurting me. On the contrary, the sensation of his hand above my breast just made it feel warm and tingly, and very, very sensitized.
“In a way, yes.” His hand slid down my breastbone to my stomach, still not actually touching me but leaving a trail of electricity that sent out tendrils of pleasure all over my body. “Travellers can harness lightning, which is basically just a very large static charge that explodes with a tremendous amount of energy. This is a very personalized version of that.”
“So this is something you do often?” I asked, watching with concern as his hand moved lower and hovered over my pubic bone. I was half braced to move away if the mini-lightning touched sensitive parts, but just as it did elsewhere, the electricity that came from his hand triggered only an arousing sensation that buzzed up and down my skin. “Oooh,” I said in a long breath as his hand circled my crotch before moving on down one leg.
“No. I’ve never been able to manufacture porraimos with another woman. My cousin and I were speaking of this just the other day. He said he can with his wife, but I’ve always heard that it’s a rare phenomenon.” He waggled his fingers over the tip of my shoe, and inside it my toes wiggled in happiness. Then he moved to the other leg and started up it. My crotch was extremely happy at the thought of a return visit.
“Porraimos? That’s the word for . . . er . . . personal lightning?”
“The word itself means many things. One definition is ‘devouring.’ Another is ‘opening,’ and that is what it means to Travellers—it means to open oneself up to another person, and to the elements, and to all that is or will ever be. That it happens at all proves just how wrong you are.”
I clutched handfuls of grass as he swirled lightning over my groin, belly, and breasts. The sensation of tingling moved into heat, making me feel as if I was burning from the inside out. “In what way?” I managed to gasp out, my back arching as he held both hands about an inch above my breasts.
“Porraimos only happens when the two people share an inalienable bond.” He leaned down, his mouth claiming mine at the same time his hands closed on my needy breasts. Even through my shirt and the mail, his touch made the fire inside me roar to an inferno of desire. I pulled his body down onto mine, kissing him for all I was worth, sliding my hands under his shirt in order to stroke the smooth swoops and valleys of muscles that made up his back. Carefully, I twined my tongue around his, careful to avoid the spot where his tooth was missing even though I knew the wound had long since healed.
His words echoed in my head, going around and around until they became
a chant. We were meant for each other. We had a rare bond, one that few people experienced. It would be the sheerest folly to discard such a gift, wouldn’t it?
It would. I gave myself up to the feelings that his touch had triggered, feelings that whipped through me until I felt like I was caught in an whirlwind of passion, desire, and heat so great I thought it would surely consume me.
“Gwen, tell me now if you really do not want me,” he said against my lips, his hand pulling the mail up my body. “Because I won’t be able to stop if I kiss you just one more time.”
I said nothing, but wrapped one leg around him and kissed him with the power of all my tangled emotions. I knew what I was doing wasn’t smart, wasn’t the least bit wise, and certainly was going to mean a world of trouble not only for myself and my mothers but for my heart, but at that moment nothing really mattered but Gregory.
And then suddenly he was gone, having leaped up off me with a strangled oath. I sat up, bereft, my body still humming its happy little song of anticipation. Gregory stood twisted to the side, trying to see behind him.
“Your damned horse bit my ass!” His face was filled with outrage as he turned to show me the tear in his pants.
I collapsed laughing when he charged over to where Bottom was standing, an innocent expression on his horsey face while Gregory threatened him with all sorts of dire punishments. I was well aware that I’d just had a very, very narrow escape.
The question was whether I would be so lucky the next time.
NINE
“How’s your behind?”
Gregory pulled his thoughts from the dark place they’d gone ever since the scene some hours earlier, and experimentally flexed a butt cheek. “It’s better. No thanks to that carnivore you’ve been riding.”
Gwen stifled a giggle, but he heard it nonetheless, and he managed to share a sour look between both her and the horse she led, all the while adopting a martyred air.
“Sorry,” she said with contriteness that didn’t for one minute fool him. “I know that being on the receiving end of those teeth isn’t funny, but if you could have seen the look on your face when he did it . . .”
Her words trailed away again, leaving her throat working as she fought to keep from laughing out loud.
He thinned his lips and looked straight ahead. They were walking the horses in order to let them have a break from constant riding, and he had found the exercise beneficial to his thoughts. If nothing else, marching across the landscape made it hard for one to be aroused. “It’s not the bite I object to so much as it is the interruption. I can now attest to the fact that it’s impossible to seduce a sweetly ripe maiden when one’s ass has been manhandled. Or in this case, horsehandled.”
Gwen lost her fight and whooped with laughter.
“Sorry,” she said, dabbing at her eyes. “‘Horsehandled’ pushed me over the edge.”
“Delighted to provide amusement.” He tried to preserve his injured mien, but failed. Even if his posterior was the one that had suffered the abuse, it had been a very funny—if wholly frustrating—moment.
“Ugh.” Gwen pulled her mail shirt out from her plump, tempting breasts and tried to generate a breeze. “Not to be gross, but I’m just a giant ball of sweat in this mail. I don’t suppose there’s an afterlife hotel around here where I can take a shower?”
“I doubt that any such facility exists. However . . .” He squinted into the distance. “Yes, the woman at the stables said we should let the horses have a rest at a small lake. We are more than halfway to the camp, assuming that water ahead is the lake she mentioned.”
“A lake.” She made a face that turned into a shrug. “It’s no hot shower, but if there aren’t leeches or water moccasins or anything icky like that, it sounds like heaven. Ha. Afterlife. Heaven.”
He looked at her.
She gave him a wry smile that made his stomach turn over. “Sorry. My jokes are suffering the effect of the heat, too.”
“I find you nothing but delightful.”
“Yes, but that’s because you want to get into my pants.”
“That is highly offensive.” He frowned, wondering if he had given her that impression by his actions or if she just held misguided notions about men. Perhaps it was both. “If I have led you to believe that I desire you simply for your ample, lush person, then allow me to disabuse you of that notion right now. I believe I’ve mentioned the fact that my cousin’s wife claims I could be a model. Whether or not that’s true, the fact remains that women have always been available to me. Women of all hues, sizes, and shapes, I would add.”
Gwen looked furious. For some reason, that pleased him. Could it be she was jealous of the other women who’d been in his life, even though they had little meaning to him now that she occupied his attention? “Oh, really,” she said in a drawl that was meant to grate on him, and it succeeded admirably. “No doubt you’re going to detail all of your relationships for me, so I can see just how available they’ve been for you.”
She sounded like she was grinding rocks between her teeth.
“No,” he said thoughtfully. She was definitely jealous. On the whole, he felt that was a good sign. Too much jealousy could become problematic, though, and would require steps on his part to assure her that he was not a man who believed in multiple partners at any given moment. But a little jealousy, an awareness that he had favored her above all other women, was, on the whole, not a bad thing. “I don’t see that such a discussion has any benefit to us.”
“Good. Because if we had to go into a mutual dissection of our past relationships, I was going to have a hissy fit. The reason my ex-boyfriends are ex is because I don’t want to think about them anymore.”
“Just so,” he agreed amiably.
He stopped suddenly, a horrible, vile, reprehensible thought striking him with the impact of a meteor on the moon.
Gwen had ex-boyfriends. Men she had been intimate with. Worse, men she had probably loved, men to whom she had given her heart and soul and splendid, incredibly sexy body. Who knew how many of them there were out there, smugly living their lives secure in the knowledge that they had once engaged her in a way that was by right his. The fact that she shared porraimos with him proved that they were fated to be together, and yet great big herds of men roamed the earth who had dared to usurp his position.
“Are you growling?” Gwen asked, giving her horse a wide berth in order to come around the front to look at him. “Is something wrong?”
“I am not a vindictive man,” Gregory informed her. “I am calm and sensible and with the exception of that which concerns you, always weigh my options before acting. With that in mind, you will furnish me with the names, locations, birth dates, mothers’ maiden names, and dates concerning all of these former boyfriends. A spreadsheet with pertinent links to related Google Earth and social media entries is preferable, but if necessary I will take notes while you dictate the information to me.”
She stared at him in disbelief for a moment, then began laughing so loudly that her devil horse, laying back his ears, danced an agitated circle around her, the various bundles and baskets attached to the saddle making clanking noises. She held on to his bridle, wiping her eyes once she was able to bring her hilarity into check. “Oh, Gregory, I can’t thank you enough for that laugh. It totally distracted me from how miserably hot I am. A spreadsheet with Google Earth links.” She chuckled to herself as she led the horse forward.
He hesitated, wondering if he should inform her that he wasn’t actually joking, but decided after a moment’s introspection that he would hold off that discussion for a later date.
They walked for approximately two hours, sometimes talking about the sights they saw (mostly deer, sheep, and cows) and sometimes enjoying a companionable silence, each deep in his or her own thoughts. Gwen seemed disinclined to discuss any of the weighty issues that occupied his mind, and he wordlessly agreed to the truce, content to simply enjoy being in her company.
He volunteere
d to water the horses while she went to cool off in the lake. That accomplished, he hobbled the horses as instructed, doled out their supplemental feed, pointed out the ample grass to be had for the savvy horse who knew his way around the concept of grazing, and returned to their little camp to lay out the food contained in the picnic basket before shaking out the two bedrolls that had been attached to the saddles. Once all was arranged to his satisfaction, he went to tell Gwen that their supper was ready.
She was naked. Naked and wet, her dark hair slicked back like a seal while she swam lazily near the shore, a look of abstract pleasure on her face. He imagined the cool water caressing her flesh. He imagined how it would turn her already satiny skin into that which resembled oiled silk. He envisioned the way the water would lap gently at her breasts and woman’s parts, and all those wonderful other bits and pieces that made up the enticing whole.
It took him all of three seconds to uncleave his tongue from the roof of his mouth and strip himself before plunging into the lake with much splashing. The noise caught her attention and she stopped swimming to stare at him, her eyes widening as the water closed over his (rampantly erect) penis. Not even the chill of the water could quell his aroused state. Once the water was waist-high, he dove, heading straight for the two long legs that sang such a sweet siren song.
“Glorious heavens,” she gasped as he broke the surface of the water. He pulled her to him, reveling in the feel of her body sliding against his. The water reached to about the middle of his chest, allowing him to stand in the soft mud of the lake and hold her tight. The sensation was almost as good as her mouth, which he tasted again and again until they were both out of breath.
“It’s not heaven yet,” he promised with a knowing look, taking a gulp of air. “But give me a couple of minutes, and it will be.”
The Art of Stealing Time t-2 Page 16
