“Show me what you see when you look at me,” she said. “Let me give him that.”
“Right now? I see a freeze-dried rat.”
“I mean, how you think of me in my best light. How you think of me when you imagine us upstairs.”
“Upstairs like that couple? Fucking? You want me to imagine you that way and just hand it over to you?”
Swallowing her embarrassment and anticipation, she swallowed tightly. “Yes.”
“I’ll try,” he said with a dark smile. “But I won’t be doing it to buy a little goodwill from a horny innkeeper. I’ll be doing it to seduce you.”
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Tallis knew there was a practical purpose behind her request. It made sense to gather as little notice as possible in a town that small. These people might never have met a Dragon King, which meant he and Kavya would walk as gods among mortals. In bigger cities with more jaded populations, their kind didn’t stand out so prominently.
They needed a room for the night. Tallis really didn’t want to search the storm for another. This place had the rustic charm of a pub back home, inviting in the sense that anyone could walk in, order a pint, and start a conversation about politics or sports on the telly. Conversations might turn to good-natured fights, but that was part of the appeal. A little roughhousing never hurt anyone, or else he and his brothers wouldn’t have escaped childhood.
He shuddered when he compared his upbringing with the actual terror Kavya must have experienced—or all of the Indranan, for that matter. No roughhousing. Life or death.
Beyond the practical, he was going to make Kavya work for access to his mind. Maybe it was possible if she focused hard enough while he made an effort to let her in. But he’d only just started to differentiate between the real Kavya and some dreamscape figment. He didn’t want to start losing track of the real woman while she rattled around in his thoughts doing Dragon knew what sort of damage.
Her expression said doing damage was the last thing she was considering. Dark, gently widened eyes stared at him as if he’d asked her to disrobe before curious patrons. Some had stopped talking to watch their interplay. But Tallis hadn’t asked her to disrobe. He’d told her the truth. She was the one who wanted to bare his innermost thoughts—fantasies, actually. So he’d give them to her. Any way he could manage.
“Imagine what you like,” she said at last. “If I can get a glimpse of anything, I can use it.”
“Use. That seems to be a common theme for you.”
“Do you think I like this? I’ve never used my gift to manipulate anyone for personal gain.”
“All for your altruism, I suppose.”
She stared up at him with eyes so luminous and pleading that Tallis’s heart jumped. “Yes. The idea of manipulating people for personal reasons . . . repulses me.”
Her shudder was strong enough to affect him physically, adding a touch of nausea to fantasies and strategy.
“And you’re not making it any easier,” she added. She glanced around, nose wrinkled like a rabbit scenting an approaching predator. “They think we’re making a scene. Is that what you want? Just do this, Tallis. We have your seaxes to barter, or we have whatever image you can conjure. Otherwise we’re back out in the snow.”
“And if you’re just as incapable now as before?”
“Do it,” she hissed.
“Fine.” He pulled her aside, to a far wall banked with shadows. Although what appeared to be the innkeeper still eyed them, they had relative privacy. Tallis held Kavya’s wrists in his palms, all of which were just beginning to thaw. He pushed past the white chill memories of the past hour and focused on the soft curve of her luscious lower lip. “You want it? You got it. Try to keep up, goddess.”
He stared into eyes shaded to resemble freshly tilled earth, fertile and ready to welcome the spring, just as her body would welcome his. The pulse at her wrists accelerated along with his heartbeat. Kavya licked the lip he couldn’t ignore—would never forget.
“Show me.” But after breathless minutes, she began to shake. Those inviting eyes pinched shut. “I can’t read a Dragon-damned thing,” she said, her voice jagged with frustration.
Although he shouldn’t have felt anything but relief, Tallis shrugged off a surprising sting of disappointment. His mind was filled with visions and dark fantasies. She couldn’t see any of them. Their closeness was what had her pulse racing, and he should’ve been just fine with that.
Forget it.
Telepathy as seduction? Never again. He was Pendray—a man of the earth, of base things, of sexual appetites that surpassed those of the other clans. Besides, he’d had enough of temptation that began and ended in dream.
“Then we’ll do it the old-fashioned way,” he said.
“Here?” The word was a quick squeak.
He touched his mouth to her neck in a kiss meant to torment as much as arouse. She had him caught in tangles and brambles, and he wanted her just as trapped. “No, with words. I’ll start. Do you feel my breath on your skin, Kavya?’
“Yes,” she whispered.
“I’ll tell you my thoughts here against your neck, and you can give whatever you like to our unsuspecting, soon-to-be innkeeper.”
“You’ll tell me what you want?” Her voice was quiet as the softest snowfall, not like the fire raging between them as fiercely as the blizzard they’d escaped.
“I’m lying on a bed, completely naked. Vulnerable. You’re bare, straddling my hips, both of us bathed in light. My cock stands away from my body, aching for you. I’m cupping your breasts, exploring your sensitive nipples. You beg for more. You sound so desperate—until you demand more. My hands tighter. My touch rougher. You say you want me thrusting deep, but you never sink down. You never give me the release you promised time and again. No, you only want me violent and mindless, and you tease the fuck out of me until I’m the desperate one.”
He swallowed tightly, breathing in ragged gulps. That particular dream left him furious and feeling violated all over again. He’d tried to remain distanced from the recitation, but he couldn’t help drawing new passion from Kavya’s reactions. She was panting against his temple, then against his neck when he straightened. He forced her chin up. Her eyes were wide, dilated, filled with delicious cravings.
“Now give him what you think of yourself.” His voice was gruff, still affected by his agitated bitterness.
“I’m no enticement,” she said quietly.
They’d only washed that morning, but they were both haggard from the most recent leg of their journey. Tallis would’ve given a good ten years of his life to kiss clean, pure skin and for her to kiss his scrubbed skin in return. Instead he closed his eyes and enjoyed the primitive scent of woman, mud, snow, even blood and the tang of fear. Beneath the brutal notes of that fragrance was Kavya, and she was aroused. Pheromones might as well have been 80-proof liquor.
She had the power to ease the sting of having opened himself so completely, so foolishly to a manipulative figment.
“Forget reality.” He was so near to her cheek that the damp warmth of his words petted back against his lips. “Show him how you’d like to appear for me.”
By the downturned lashes framing her eyes, he didn’t need to be a telepath to read Kavya’s embarrassment. “I know the facts. I’ve seen details in others’ minds—too many, really—out of my own curiosity. But for myself? I wouldn’t know where to begin.” She shuddered and gripped his waist, as if the wind threatened to knock her down. “I’ve never had a lover.”
Tallis wouldn’t have heard her soft words had he been any farther from her neck, her jaw, her mouth. As it was, that lone sentenced rocketed through his body and pooled where his erection was losing patience.
“A virgin?” he breathed.
“Yes.”
Old images of having been left continuously unfulfilled by a skillful, seductive dreamtime version of the Sun finally cleaved truth from fiction. Whatever entity had invaded his dr
eams, whatever had made him wild with the need to take, whatever had left him howling his frustration come morning—it hadn’t been Kavya. She couldn’t meet his eyes, let alone force erotic fantasies into his unconscious mind.
Outrage surged back to the fore. He’d been played the fool so often. Kavya wasn’t to blame, but she was all he had. She was his only link to discovering the real culprit.
“Then give it your best shot,” he said tersely, pushing her back against the wall. “Use what I told you, if that’s all you have. We stay here or we don’t. We sleep upstairs or we find a corner by the fireplace. I don’t care. I’m done playing toy to an Indranan woman.”
Kavya jerked her chin to level. Her expression was . . . agonized. “Do you have any idea what it’s like trying to say something so personal out loud? We don’t have to. Ever. Fantasies are whispers and glimpses at the back of a willing mind. Then when I actually speak a secret I’ve kept close for years, you ridicule my honesty? How is that fair?”
She aligned her knuckles in that peculiar way, pushed past him with a backward glance, and went to speak with the man behind the bar.
Tallis was left chastened. Nothing much about his time in India made sense. He couldn’t imagine communicating as she described, but that didn’t make him a complete idiot. She had given him something special—a confidence that didn’t seem to be common knowledge. He’d fallen back on the familiar anger she didn’t deserve, which meant he’d given her no reason to trust him with another secret in the future.
But what a secret. He pushed the heels of his hands against gritty eye sockets, where erotic visions changed. Making love to her would have nothing in common with being tempted and teased by the Sun. Instead he would lie over Kavya, lavishing her tense body with attention until she relaxed. Until she gasped, writhed, opened. For him.
A virgin.
As if she needed to be more intriguing, more compelling. He was an idiot with a mission. Suddenly that mission wasn’t nearly as important as making sure no one but Tallis ever touched Kavya of Indranan.
—
While speaking with the innkeeper, Kavya felt the moment when he gave in to her request. It was the same moment her thoughts flashed back to Tallis’s description, as hot as a red-tipped branding iron. Almost against her will, she gave the innkeeper the story she would never forget—the erotic story Tallis had tersely whispered against her throat. His apparent anger hadn’t lessened Kavya’s arousal. Instead she was intrigued by the potential for a pleasurable sort of brutality. He had her turned inside out with wanting and curiosity.
She gave that curiosity to the heavyset man with stiff black hair that stood on end. Knowing she shared something so intensely personal and new as a means of barter made her ill. Her stomach crushed into a pebble filled with bile and acid.
“Your anklets,” he said simply, although his eyes were voracious and his mind begging for more. He crossed from behind the bar, pushing into her space. “I’ll take them.”
Tallis placed a hand on her shoulder. She jumped, then turned toward the thick shelter of his chest. “Your anklets aren’t much to part with. One night’s boarding and a meal for us each?”
The innkeeper’s greedy gaze flipped between them both. Maybe erotic thoughts and a bauble of jewelry was the right mix, because the innkeeper nodded. His heavy jowls nodded after him. He was human, and ready to make concessions she wouldn’t have thought possible.
Soon she and Tallis carried plates of rice and palak paneer up to a room with a single bed and a washbasin. Stark, cold, with one window, it was the closest thing to sleeping outdoors in the flash blizzard. But the food was warm and smelled delicious, and they were safe for the night.
As if the conversation about sex and Kavya’s virginity hadn’t taken place, Tallis shed his weapons and his pack. He kept the filthy leather coat on. Kavya shivered all the more for remembering how that coat had felt when wrapped around their bodies. He’d held her and carried her and made her feel small, sheltered, cared for.
The smallness didn’t offend her, despite that irrationality. Had she needed to portray Tallis by telepathy, she would’ve used her gift to transform him into a living god. One touch handsome man. One touch skilled warrior. One touch raging beast with a pulse-pounding undercurrent of violence.
A protector.
But Tallis only sat cross-legged on the bare wooden floor and started eating.
“Not going to wash up?” she asked.
He cocked an eyebrow while inhaling another bite. His throat tightened over a swallow. So many new responses to how he behaved, and she didn’t understand any of them—not truly, not physically, not in person. The perceptions she’d collected through the years were like a child’s primer. The basics. Tallis could teach her so much more.
“Your food will get cold,” he said. “Then when you’re ready, there’s a change of clothes for you in my pack.”
“How . . .?”
He grinned. “Don’t ask. Kullu’s a big city and we walked a lot of streets. We’re not going to Karachi or wherever with you standing out like a vagrant at a wedding. Or me, for that matter. But eat something first. You look ready to blow away.”
Her stomach agreed with a loud rumble. She dragged a thin blanket off the bed and sat beside him, her legs outstretched. Both of their backs were against the wall, with a clear view of the door. The room was small and spare, but taking up that position seemed automatic for Tallis—with his eyes trained where an enemy might invade. Kavya’s caution came from how she thought about the world, constantly tripping from mind to mind in search of hostility.
That means of defense was so draining. She was exhausted.
Finding no present threat, she finally ate. No, she savored.
And she pushed her thigh against his.
Tallis shifted his shoulder so he could face her. She expected to see sardonic mockery, and in that, he didn’t disappoint. “Hello there.”
“It’s for practical reasons.”
His grin was cheeky, daring her to make thigh-to-thigh touching into something practical. “Do tell.”
“Remember how you kept me disguised from those gathered in the encampment?”
“I liked that part. The rest of the day not so much. But those few hours in my tent are well worth remembering.”
“You kept my mind occupied.”
“I did.”
“So . . .” She ate another bite, chewed, hesitated, procrastinated, and finally swallowed. “So do it again. Keep touching me. My mind will stay with you. Pashkah won’t be able to find me if I’m disguised that way.”
He affected a contemplative look. “You’re telling me that the best means of keeping you safe is to have my way with you, until you can’t think of anything else? Just complete focus on the man who wants to seduce you?”
Kavya forced calm into her next deep breath. “Yes. Keep me distracted. But I need to know I can trust you.”
“I can do that.” He set his plate aside. “Just remember you’re the one who mentioned touching. But I won’t need to if distraction is the goal.”
Kavya stared into his ocean-blue eyes and tried to imagine what tricks he intended. He was a Reaper but he had a great deal in common with the Tricksters of Clan Tigony. He was smooth, cultured in the ways of human beings, and had no sharp edges. Everything about him said, Calm down. Trust me. I can make this happen.
Only, she knew the difference between his slick exterior and the monster that lurked beneath. She knew the difference, and she liked it.
“Very well,” she said. “How would you distract me without touching me?”
“We could always talk. Stay concentrated on my accent, which I’ve been told is marvelous for lulling women out of their knickers and into my bed.”
“Arrogant isn’t a strong enough word for you.”
“We could fight,” he said, grinning. “That worked well last time, too.”
“That’s a given, not an option. It’ll happen no matter what you do.�
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“True, that.”
He stood and left the room. Kavya waited, finishing up the palak paneer that was, indeed, growing colder by the second. Only a sliver of heat remained under the deep center of the rice. The whole time, she watched the door. Waiting. He wouldn’t leave—not when he had hooked her with intrigue and attraction. Maybe this was part of his intention. He was distracting her by causing her to wonder where he’d gone and what he was doing.
After finishing her food, she used water from the basin—water that may as well have been ice cubes—to wash up. True to his word, Tallis had stashed a modest maroon sari in his pack. She felt almost feminine again when she wrapped the intricate folds around her chilled body, and used the comb Chandrani had procured to untangle her hair.
She was sitting on the bed, impatient, huddled with a blanket around her shoulders, when Tallis returned. He held a steaming cauldron of water, with his hands protected by two mitts. He took one look at Kavya and laughed. “Impatient, were you? Too bad. But for me, ice baths are only for those intending to get rid of one’s arousal. I want to stoke mine.” He set the cauldron on the floor and dunked a washrag. “Kavya of Indranan, I’m going to strip for you.”
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Yes, taking Kavya of Indranan by surprise was quickly becoming the highlight of Tallis’s time in the Himalayan foothills. Using the word strip before an admitted virgin elicited the surprise he’d sought.
Then again, she’d stolen his breath by transforming from a bedraggled traveler into a stunning, freshly scrubbed woman. She wore the sari he’d snatched from an unsuspecting merchant. Tallis had meant to be quick, grabbing the first he found, but the sari complemented her coloring to perfection. She was painted in shades of gold, bronze, and carnelian red, like sunrise over dark granite streaked with clay. With wet hair and her shoulders swathed in a rough wool blanket, she was the most exciting blend of innocence and sensuality Tallis had ever seen.
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