“No, I cleaved his head from his body and I ran.” He craned his neck to indicate what appeared to be one of the only inhabitable rooms in the castle. “I left you all to this.”
“And that was a hard time for us.” Rill’s smile was beatific, as if forgiving Tallis of every failing he’d ever heaped on himself. Kavya could only hope he took that offer of forgiveness. “Afterward, an investigation revealed that the priest was corrupt.”
Kavya chose that moment to join Tallis on the narrow settee where he held himself as rigidly as a fence post buried in frozen ground. She didn’t care if his siblings knew what . . . emotion had developed between them. He needed her, and she needed to hold his hand when he did.
“Then why do you still live this way?” he asked.
“Because the findings were kept secret.” Serre’s bitterness was unmistakable. Kavya flinched back from his mind, which was filled with hurt and a sense of having watched a treasured idol laid low. “The Leadership thought it better to unite everyone around their hatred of you, and it worked.”
“Serre, it’s been worth the sacrifice,” Rill said. “We could’ve revealed what we know, but then Tallis’s exile would’ve been for nothing.”
Serre kept his head ducked low and to one side. He nodded, then met Tallis’s gaze head-on. Kavya was surprised to find that a sheen of moisture brightened the young man’s blue eyes—eyes so much like his brother’s, the one he’d thought lost forever. His anger made sense now. It wasn’t the sacrifices of wealth or standing, but that Tallis’s deed had meant Serre grew up having thought two siblings were lost forever.
“It’s been too long, Tallis,” he said roughly.
Tallis made Kavya proud. First he kissed the back of her hand, proclaiming their affection to all of his siblings. Then when he stood. He walked to where Serre sat, back tense and shoulders hunched. Extending his hand, Tallis waited with equal tension—waiting for Serre to welcome him home, too. And maybe to forgive him.
The younger man’s tentative handshake turned fierce as soon as their palms met. Tallis pulled him up and into a ferocious masculine embrace. They were potent in strength, and equally potent in their shared affection. “Yes, brother. It’s been too long. And I’ll never be gone that long again.”
Kavya swallowed back tears, as the rest nodded their approval. By chance she caught Rill’s eye.
“It’s our right and privilege to do what we can for the Pendray,” the woman said. “Everything we do is to protect our clan, and particularly our family.” Rill wasn’t so unabashed in her acceptance of Kavya as she had been with Tallis, but she offered a small, promising smile. “No matter who makes the threat.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
Tallis turned on the single bedside table lamp in the room Rill had made up for him. The kiss he’d bestowed on Kavya’s hand put to rest any need to make up a separate room for her. Not that they had done much to hide their connection in any other way. The very nature of his return to Clannarah was linked with her—with his growing affection for her.
Deeper than affection. He didn’t dare go near what he feared were his true feelings.
He sloughed his pack and duffel on the floor, then removed his seaxes and slid them under the bed within easy reach. Exhausted to his bones, he didn’t realize he was undressing until Kavya began to assist him. She stood behind him while she eased his button-down shirt from his shoulders, petting his skin as she did. She kissed between his shoulder blades. Kissed his biceps. Kissed around until she faced him, touching moist lips to a dozen places across his chest. He inhaled deeply.
“Oh, I like that,” she said. “Do that again.”
Tallis couldn’t help but grin. “Do I impress you, goddess?”
“Yes. Now don’t keep fishing for compliments. Just do as I bid.”
“Bossy, bossy,” he said as a chant against her skin. “I’m my own man and I make my own decisions.”
She angled a secret, mysterious smile upward. Her eyes were hidden by thick lashes. “Then make your decision. Are you going to please me by showing off your gorgeous chest, or are you going to leave me disappointed and your masculine beauty unexploited?”
“I’m going to use that choice against you one day.”
“I’ll look forward to it. My response will likely be dependent on yours right now.”
With an effervescent feeling of relief—at least he could count on Kavya to make him feel better—he sucked in a lungful of air, as if pulling all the troubles of the world into his chest. She kissed him once, right over his heart, before whispering, “Now let it go, Tallis.”
He did. One long, gusting exhalation. It felt marvelous.
He wrapped her in his embrace. Their kisses were more familiar now, but that opened new avenues of intimacy. He knew more of what she liked, the depth, the speed, the leashed violence. She tasted of the mead Rill had brought out during the evening-long discussion. Kavya had sipped hers, her eyes all over the scene of family and uneasy welcomes home. Old tales. New revelations.
And forgiveness—that most unexpected wonder.
Kavya had been beside him the entire time.
Yes, he counted on her to make him feel better. When had that happened? And when had that assumption deepened, that it wasn’t just his physical comfort she attended?
Did it matter anymore? The timing, the circumstances, even the future . . . He wanted Kavya for the rest of his life. The realization should’ve stolen the strength from his knees, but he’d never felt more powerful.
“You’re a strange, remarkable woman, Kavya,” he whispered against her temple.
“I like remarkable. Strange, not so much.”
“Strange that you’re here with me.”
“We’ve already established that I find you inescapably handsome, especially your body.”
“Ah,” he said, beginning to undress her. “So it’s just my body. I understand how it is.”
She took hold of his wrists. “I don’t think I want to joke about this anymore.”
Tallis moved to finish the decadent task of revealing Kavya’s body. Although not as exotic as her sari, her sweater and jeans fell away to reveal sexy matching bra and panties, all decked in lace and satin.
He pulled her toward the bed, where he removed the last of his clothes, save his briefs. She joined him, wearing her beautiful new undergarments. “At least we have a place to bed down,” he said.
“They’ll let us do more than stay.” She curled beside him under the quilts. Sleek and lithe, she drew up her knee so that it rested against his navel. Her slender thigh hugged his side, and her calf trailed between his legs. “In fact, they’ll do everything they can to help.”
“How do you know that?”
She reached up and tapped his temple. “They don’t have whatever it is you have. I can read each and every one of them.”
Tallis flinched. “You can,” he said evenly, not a question.
“You don’t trust me to respect their privacy?”
“I . . .” He sighed. “I don’t know. It’s not an issue we’ve come up against before. Boundaries weren’t our primary concern in getting here.”
“But with your family, it’s different.”
“Exactly.”
“I told you about the boxes in our minds. I have a new one now. Tallis’s family. They’re secrets I don’t want, and ones I won’t share with anyone, not even you.”
“What do you mean about not wanting the secrets?”
She shifted so that she lay flat atop him. She crossed her hands on his chest and rested her chin there. “Your people are so . . . Just open. Like your expressions. Down there, I was bombarded by imagery and thoughts. Their minds tell stories as quickly as their mouths. It was all I could do to focus on you, keeping their enthusiasm for life from overwhelming me. Nothing was held back. I’ve never felt its like.”
Tallis pushed hair back from her face, so that he could admire her beauty and study amber eyes clouded by s
wirling thoughts. “Not exactly the Indranan way, is it?”
“Not at all.” She looked away, then set her mouth at an angle that suggested she’d made a decision. “I tried not to, but I envy you.”
“Me?”
“Why not? In this sad old castle are five family members who’d kneel before a chopping block if it meant taking your place. The way Serre hugged you—”
Her voice cracked. She tucked her face against his chest, between her hands. A sob shook her body. She swallowed it down as quickly as it came.
“I’ve been waiting for that hug for twenty years,” he said, “never knowing if it would happen. The trouble with loving anyone is that when they’re no longer in your life, it’s harder to bear the absence. It isn’t just a hole—a vacant thing. It’s a burning sore.”
“Here?” She kissed the skin above his heart once again.
“Yes.”
Their gazes caught. Tallis could have seduced her at that moment, with his cock growing impatient beneath the slight weight of her body. But something held him back. As Kavya had said, this was no longer something to joke about. Nor was it something to avoid by relying on easy pleasures that conspired in their own way to reveal, even create, deeper feelings.
Her eyes darkened and her mouth softened. She licked her lower lip, which was what Tallis desperately wanted to do.
She stopped him with five words. “Why did you stop believing?”
“Believing . . .?”
“The visions in your dreams. No matter who put those thoughts in your head, it was for the benefit of the Pendray. I can definitely relate to how you sacrificed yourself for the good of your clan.”
“My family, too,” he said. “And they weren’t given a choice.”
“Considering the weapons used against your subconscious, I don’t think you were either.”
“I’d love to take the easy way out and go with that. I just don’t think I can.”
Kavya sat up and unhooked her bra. It fell away, taking Tallis’s breath with it. “So, the rest of it. When did it change? When did it become revenge against . . . well, against a semblance of me?”
Tallis stared at her, absorbed her, adored her with every shift of his eyes. She was a vision made flesh. “When that semblance of you knelt above me, much as you’re doing now, and told me to help abduct my niece.”
Mouth open, Kavya shook her head softly. “I . . .”
“Her name is Nynn of Tigony. She’s the Giva’s cousin and my niece. I had one more brother, Vallen. He married the Giva’s aunt, who became despised by her clan. Bearing a child by a Pendray? From what I understand, Nynn was only accepted because of Malnefoley’s influence. He is the Giva. Who of his clan would contradict him to his face?”
“You said had one more brother.”
Tallis tried to calm his heartbeat, but that wasn’t happening anytime soon. He’d be lucky if he slept before dawn, no matter his exhaustion. “Vallen was killed sometime after Nynn’s birth. Our best guess is that some angered Tigony did the deed. Nynn crippled her mother by accident, with the first manifestation of her gift. Malnefoley swung the sword to end the woman’s misery.”
“Such a powerful gift? By the Dragon, that must have been terrifying.”
“Nynn is . . . special. Crossbred. She was banished because of those exceptional powers. She married a human and bore a son.”
“So the rumors are true? That’s her?”
“Yes. Jack is the first natural-born Dragon King in decades. My brother Serre must’ve been among the last born to our generation, as conception became harder and harder to achieve.”
His chest ached. More of that void, when loved ones were far away. Serre was far away in spirit, and Tallis had no idea where Nynn and her Cage warrior, Leto, had disappeared to. He’d only just found his niece again, before leaving, before being able to apologize.
“The last vision I believed came to me the night she commanded me to help the Aster cartel find Nynn. Just for questioning, she’d said. Everyone was curious about her son. I balked at first, with more strength than I’d ever used to resist. She seduced me. No, it was cruder than that. Remember the story I told you at the inn, when she’d straddled me but refused to join our bodies? She’d never taken me so far, only to leave me begging. It was . . . Dragon damn, Kavya, it was like being raped in my mind.”
“Lonayíp witch.”
Kavya crossed her arms over her bare breasts and turned so that her hair created a curtain separating her expression from Tallis’s gaze.
“Kavya, I didn’t know the difference before, but I bloody well do now.” He took her hands and placed them flat against his chest. “That . . . thing drove me to madness, making me promises for months. One last assignment. One more deed in her honor. Then she would disappear while riding an incarnation of the Dragon—one I’ve never seen. Some mix of all Five Clans’ interpretations.”
Kavya frowned. Her eyes glittered with unshed tears. “She even invoked the Dragon? That’s unholy.”
Tallis arched his chin toward the ceiling and blew out a ragged breath. “Yes. The same pattern each time. That’s how she was able to brainwash me and keep me servile for two decades. Or maybe I wanted to believe it was her fault. Because I led members of the Aster cartel to my niece’s house. Nynn and her son were kidnapped by force, and her human husband was murdered. It took me a year to find out where she was being held, and a little longer than that to convince the Giva to help me free her.”
“But it was too late, wasn’t it? For your niece . . . the damage had already been done. By you.”
—
Tallis flinched beneath her.
“Yes,” he said without looking away. Either he was the most insensitive man on the planet, or he’d spent countless, endless nights learning how to find peace with his mistakes. She knew he wasn’t the former, and the latter was still a work in progress. “The damage had been done. To Nynn, personally. I felt the need to atone for her loss, to save her and her son. But in that year, she became one of the most powerful Dragon Kings I’ve ever met. Part Pendray, part Tigony. She wields lightning with a berserker’s intensity. She’d fallen in love again, too. Leto was a Cage warrior—part Garnis, part Indranan.”
“Garnis and Indranan? How?”
“Dr. Aster had fulfilled his promise to Leto’s father, who won some ridiculous number of Cage bouts and annual Grievances to earn conception. Three children, including Leto. Only, his mother and father were both Garnis, and Leto’s powers were clearly a mixture. He and Nynn are out there now, trying to find out why he’s half Indranan, and to learn the secret of Dr. Aster’s methods.”
He seemed to blink away the past, while Kavya held on to the present by an unraveling thread. “It could be as easy as . . . crossbreeding?”
“I don’t think anyone would call it easy.” Tallis shook his head against the pillow, tangling the silver-tipped hair she adored. “Just that it makes some sense. Rifts have split your people. Centuries of raids have been to gather breed stock from other tribes of Indranan, yes? Like Pashkah was gathering there in the valley?”
“Yes. Three thousand years ago, it was easier on all our populations. We reproduced without worry. Except the Indranan split according to geography. Some in the Himalayas, believing themselves closer to the Dragon, and some down by the seas—even sailing to Australia. We remained one clan, but births dropped off over a few centuries. During the original severance, six hundred men died. Can you imagine the extravagance of that much waste? These days it would likely level half the Dragon Kings on the planet. They died in battles to protect their women. Raiding parties. Mass rapes. The selfish gene—is that what the humans call it?”
“Perhaps. The Indranan method of mass abductions isn’t the way to go, but there might be merit in the thinking. We’ve become so fractured.” Tallis held her hands and kissed her knuckles, the backs of her hands, up her forearms, until he pulled her down for a kiss on the mouth. “What did we truly know about one another
’s people before spending this time together?”
“Rumors and misconceptions, or missing knowledge no one bothered to fill in.” She touched the back of her neck. “Bonding rituals, for example.”
Tallis lay back, with his hands behind his head. She loved that pose. So utterly, confidently masculine. The muscles of his torso stretched in long lines, while those of his arms bunched in strong, potent relief. That his prick was a hot rod beneath her bottom only added to the sudden flush of her need.
“You keep coming back to that subject, Kavya. Makes me wonder what you have on your mind.”
“I’d show it to you if I could.”
“Old-fashioned way and you know it. And no jokes, remember?”
Rather than answer, she stripped her underwear and his, then returned to her straddling position. It was a simple thing to lift her hips, position his shaft, and sink onto it with one long, moaning, melting move.
Tallis hissed. “Bathatéi.”
“What?”
“You sinking down on me. No pleading or bargains or nauseating anger. You’re what I never knew I truly needed. It’s a miracle, Kavya.”
“No,” she said, rocking her pelvis. “It’s just real.”
He arched off the mattress, pushing deep. Kavya set their pace. Although Tallis massaged and toyed with her breasts, wearing an equally stunned, bemused look, she used his chest to more purpose: for balance as she lifted and lowered at the command of instinct. She would come quickly this way. The angle suited her body. The speed of it was a complete surprise. Another four or five quick bursts of her hips against his and she cried out, arching into his tight hands.
“Dragon damn.” Tallis gathered her close. He whispered near her ear, lips tucked in her hair. “Do you know what you do to me?”
“Tell me,” she said, dazed and gasping.
He was still achingly hard within her. She would only need another few rolls of her hips to come again. She moved. Tallis cursed. He smacked his hands against her ass and held on with a fierce grip as she writhed, using him, grinding down, over, around his cock. The second orgasm blacked out her mind and snapped through her body with even more potency. Something was building in her, and she didn’t know . . . didn’t know . . .
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