by Alix Nichols
Areg nodded and paid.
“Can we have breakfast brought to the room?” Etana asked.
The clerk smiled demurely. “Of course, my dame. Shall I send in a maid to run a bath for each of you?”
“Yes, please,” Etana said quickly.
The bathtubs turned out to be positioned next to each other in a large, sunny bathroom. A maid ran them while Areg and Etana swallowed their warm bread rolls and pastries, realizing how famished they were.
As he stepped into the bathroom, a scent of lavender soap filled Areg’s nostrils. After days of makeshift sponge baths in creeks and lake edges, his body longed for soap. His skin craved it.
The maid placed big fluffy towels on the stand between the bathtubs and poured salts into the rising froth.
Areg rushed to brush his teeth.
Ah, what a pleasure to use a real brush, powder, and water! Not that bristled twigs didn’t get the job done, but he preferred the minty power.
Etana entered the bathroom just before the maid bowed and left.
She brushed her teeth, too, and then walked over to one of the bathtubs. “Don’t look until I tell you to.”
Nodding, he turned his back to her and removed his jacket and his pants.
Her skirts rustled as she removed them, and then there was silence. No bare feet padding across the tiles, no water splashing as she sank into her tub.
“Are you all right?” he asked, moving to turn around.
“Don’t!”
He froze.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I started unbraiding my hair and got… distracted.”
“By what?”
She hesitated and then said in one hot breath, “Your backside.”
Dammit, woman.
Was there any wiggle room between “semi-chaste” and “buried deep in her sweet cunny”?
“Is it to your liking?” he asked, his penis growing harder by the second.
“It’s very…” She faltered before whispering, her voice hoarse. “It’s very beautiful.”
He yanked his shirt off. “I’m turning around.”
“Wait!” Then came the padding, the splashing, and the sinking. “You may now.”
He spun around.
She was immersed in the steaming, soapy water up to her chin. Her eyes were cast down.
“Etana, you minx.”
She giggled. “This bath is heavenly.”
But he wasn’t going down without a fight. “Won’t you look at me now, sweet pea?”
She shook her head.
He quirked an eyebrow. “Why? Too embarrassed when I’m facing you?”
She nodded, blushing furiously.
Taking pity on her, he lowered himself into his bathtub, which was so big he could almost straighten his legs. By Aheya, that felt good.
A few moments later, he sat up, letting the thick, soapy foam slide down his shoulders, while the moist, fragrant air filled his lungs.
So. Fucking. Good.
“At home,” she said, blowing a puff of froth away from her face, “We have a sitting bathtub, and the same in the servants’ quarters in the Gokk house. I love being able to stretch out like this.”
“Enjoying your comforts, huh?”
“I really am.”
She stuck out an elegant foot, her skin slightly reddened by the heat, and began to rub it. Her fingers stroked the toes and the spaces between them, her sole, heel, and arch. Then she slid her hands up the delicious shape of her calf to the hollow behind her knee.
Areg stared, his hands itching to replace hers and his shaft rock-hard.
She switched legs, repeating the procedure, then lathered her arms.
He kept watching, aching for her.
“Do you mind looking away for a bit,” she said, “while I soap… the rest?”
It was his turn to go red in the face. Focusing on his own body, he began to rub it with one of the loofas the maid had left for them.
A short time later, he heard her step out of the bathtub. He turned away from her, even though he was dying for a glimpse of her butt, or front, or whichever angle was available. Except, he wasn’t going to just look. With both of them naked and his raging erection, the risk he’d go much further than he intended—that he’d go too far—was too high.
He heard Etana rub herself with a towel.
Then her steps as she padded… toward him. And then she stood before him, the towel wrapped around her hips, her wet hair smoothed back, and her breasts in the air.
He groaned like a famished beast.
“I owe you this, for earlier,” she said.
He stared at her high, rounded breasts, enthralled. They looked exactly the way he’d imagined them—and a thousand times better.
“They’re perfect.”
His voice came out all weird—breathless—and he smiled inwardly at the effect this little woman was having on him, a supposedly experienced man. Except, something must’ve been wrong with those experiences or maybe with the women who’d given them to him. Because he’d never been blown away like this by a female bust—not even when he had sex for the first time or after a long hiatus in the middle of the war.
“Come closer,” he rasped.
She stepped nearer, near enough for him to touch her. As though of their own volition, his hands went to her breasts. She’d just dried them. He made them wet. He rubbed his thumbs against her pink nipples and pinched them lightly between his fingertips. She watched his hand, intent, as her nipples enlarged. He traced the shape of her breasts with his fingertips and kneaded her soft flesh.
Her breathing grew ragged.
Wrapping a hand around her waist he drew her closer still and took her right nipple between his lips. She moaned, tilting her head back. His other hand had stayed on her left breast. He could hear her heart rate pick up. She moistened her lips. His sex responded, throbbing, straining, begging for that silky, pink tongue of hers, for those full lips around it.
Cool down, man.
Etana was a virgin, from a different social circle, raised much more conservatively than the sophisticated ladies he’d frequented. He’d never been with a woman like her before. She might be shocked—she would be shocked—if he admitted to craving a caress like that.
Chasing the image away, he focused on her right nipple, tonguing it to his heart’s content. When he felt satisfied with her increased moaning and how her heart raced, he repeated the caress with the other breast.
He loved every moment of it.
And then, suddenly, it wasn’t enough. He needed to claim her lips, taste her sweet tongue again, drink her in. His chest, his whole body ached to press against hers, so he could reel in her yielding softness, in her scent, in the warm silkiness of her skin.
Letting go of her, he grabbed a towel and stood. While Etana shifted from one foot to the other, unsure what to do, he tapped himself quickly, wrapped the towel around his hips and stepped out of the bathtub. He walked toward her.
She backed away.
But she didn’t look panicky or intimidated. She looked giddy with excitement. When her back met the wall, he planted his hands on either side of her head, trapping her with his body. And then he found her mouth, teased her lips apart with his tongue, and kissed her the way he’d wanted to. Her eyes drifted shut and she moaned into his mouth. Her hands roamed his damp back, his shoulders, his nape, delved into his wet hair.
“Areg,” she murmured as she broke the kiss to catch her breath.
Her gaze was hot, dark with desire.
Losing control, he reached around her and hitched up her towel. His hard-on against her belly, he palmed her pert, round backside and pressed both of them into the wall.
She stiffened.
Dammit!
Now, he’d gone too far. He’d taken too much, too soon. Forget too soon—he wasn’t going to touch her below the waist, not now, not later, not at night. Quite possibly, not ever.
“I’m sorry, sweet pea,” he said, drawing back. “
I’m really sorry.”
Hopefully when they did this again at night—and he’d make sure the room was pitch-dark, so he wouldn’t see her—he’d be able to control himself better than this.
Aheya help me.
22
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.” Etana cupped his cheek, smiling. “That last thing you did, it was just—”
“Too randy.”
“I was going to say ‘a little unexpected.’ ”
He searched her face. “Do you still trust me to keep it together?”
She nodded without hesitation.
His muscles relaxed somewhat. “Fancy a walk in town?”
“No.”
His eyebrows shot up.
“I was really enjoying myself,” she said without artifice. “Can we pick up where we left off?”
The last trace of tension left him when he shook his head. “I need that walk, sweet pea. We’ll continue tonight, all right? After we’ve had a quick walk and a long nap, which we both need.”
They got dressed, facing away from each other in their corners.
Areg donned his brand-new tunic and a beret emblazoned with the merchant guild logo.
While Etana pat-dried, brushed and braided her hair, he trimmed his beard, aiming for the same shape and length as the portrait on his ID.
“Close enough?” He stood in front of her, holding the card next to his face.
She nodded, then adjusted his beret, took a step back and fanned herself. “Oh my, Sir Oka, you’re one dashing merchant.”
“Can’t look like a bum next to my bride,” he teased, his warm gaze a caress.
My bride, he’d said.
Not “wife,” which according to their fake papers Dame Oka was to him. Not “sweet pea,” the endearment he murmured when he kissed her, or “lady,” like he’d called her in Auntie’s Attic. Could that mean…? Was that how he thought of her? How he felt about her?
Etana’s heart surged with the heady thrill of that realization, before she told herself it might’ve been just a clumsy turn of phrase. “My fake wife” was what he’d meant. She was being silly, reading too much into a little word.
Areg shoved the commlet, money and their ID cards into his pockets and stuck his gun into his belt, pulling his emblazoned jacket over it.
“You don’t trust the hotel staff?” Etana asked, donning her pretty new cape.
He smirked. “I’m not in a position to trust anyone.”
When they stepped out of the hotel, Cherry Hill had been transformed from a sleepy little town they’d walked through at daybreak into a festive hub.
It was market day. A band of musicians played somewhere close, brightly dressed jugglers and palm readers made their way between rows of stalls loaded with colorful produce.
“Last strawberries of the season, my dame,” a vendor called to her, pointing to the juicy berries on his stand. “A drinar for a basket!”
“Want some?” Areg asked, smiling.
She shook her head. “Too sweet. I’m a tart berry girl.”
“Let’s find you some currants, then.”
They ambled forward, taking in the joyful cacophony of sounds, smells and sights that was the Cherry Hill market.
Etana kept stealing glances at Areg.
He looked like he enjoyed the walk, the atmosphere of the market, and just the normalcy of it all. But he also had dark circles under his eyes. Small surprise, she thought. The man hadn’t slept at all last night and very little throughout the week while he’d trekked from Plum Orchard to Mount Crog. Even someone as strong and resilient as him needed to rest every now and then.
She pictured him drifting off in her arms, and her heart swelled with tenderness.
While Areg paid for a basket of blueberries at a fruit stall close the edge of the market, a man looked at him oddly.
Etana tensed.
The man leaned toward his companion and whispered something in his ear. The other man gave Areg a furtive glance, then tilted his head and peered.
Areg grabbed her hand. “We’re going to walk through the crowd to where the market ends, and then we’ll run. Yes?”
She nodded, forcing herself to appear calm.
As they headed to the market’s end, the men followed them, keeping their distance.
“Plainclothes cops?” Etana whispered, her hands starting to shake.
“Nah—bounty hunters.” Areg gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “I’ll shoot them if it comes down to it.”
The moment they were out of the crowd they ran toward the wooded creek. Etana glanced over her shoulder. One of the men pulled out a small object that looked like the toy gun Rhori used to play with when they were kids and began to shoot at them. The weapon made no sound, no visible sign that it was spitting out liquid fire, bullets, or darts.
Is that a bad joke?
A sound and a flash came from her side, followed by three or four more. Areg had fired his blaster.
One after the other, the men fell to the ground, clutching at the gaping holes in their shoulders, and screaming in pain.
Areg tugged at her hand. “Come on.”
Etana raced the rest of the distance to the creek without stopping to catch her breath or looking back.
“We need to keep running,” Areg said when they paused briefly among lush willow trees that grew along the river.
She nodded. “I’ll go on until I can’t breathe anymore.”
“I’ll carry you then,” he said. “You’re featherlight. We’ll make it.”
The next two hours were a flurry of running, panting, tripping over tree roots, being pulled up, and running again. When her body refused to go on, Areg hauled her up and ran with her. He didn’t stop until they were deep into the woods that covered the gentle slope of Mount Crog.
Lowering her against a tree trunk, he knelt beside her, leaned forward with his hands flat on the ground, and wheezed. When his breathing grew less pained, she gave him a questioning look.
“We have a head start,” he said. “It will take Ultek some time to get all his men to Cherry Hill and start combing the area. But we shouldn’t linger.”
She nodded and leaned back on the trunk. “I just need a moment.”
And then she blacked out.
Etana woke up to the smell of decaying leaves and fresh grass.
With difficulty, she lifted her head and looked around. She was inside a small cave. Soft light poured in through its narrow mouth, and a stream chuckled nearby. Etana leaned up on an elbow and took a closer look at her immediate surroundings. She lay on a makeshift bed of branches and spongy moss. Her cape was under her, and Areg’s jacket was thrown over her as a blanket.
How had she gotten to this place? And—oh, goodness—where was Areg?
Cold sweat broke on her forehead. She tried to lever herself up some more, but her body refused to comply. Her back was so weak and her legs so cottony, she couldn’t even sit, let alone stand.
Areg’s voice came from outside the cave. He spoke to someone quietly.
Etana called out to him but her dried throat and mouth produced no sound. She tried again, failed again. Exhausted from that small effort, she lowered herself back on her nice-smelling pallet and dropped off.
It was dark when she came to again. She shifted.
Immediately, two strong arms wrapped around her. “Sweet pea! You woke up. Thank Aheya, you woke up!” Areg was breathless with relief.
“What happened to me?” Etana asked, her voice shaky and hoarse but audible. “Where are we?”
“You passed out in the creek. I brought you here. Found a needle in your back.”
“From the bounty hunter’s toy gun?”
He smiled. “It was a needle gun. The needle was caught in your cape for a while but when we sat down to rest and you leaned against the trunk, it went in.”
“Was it poisoned?”
Areg shook his head. “That’s what I’d feared, but it was just a sedative. The dose was huge though,
much too powerful for you. It had been meant to knock a big fellow out.”
“How do you know what it was?”
“I pinged Aynu. As luck would have it, she was with Reverend Goyyem who’s arguably Eia’s best healer. The reverend explained how to determine what the needle contained. Once we knew it was a sedative and not poison, I was told to keep checking your vitals and arm myself with patience.”
“I’m sorry,” Etana said.
“For what?” Areg knit his brows. “It’s me who should be sorry. That needle was meant for me.”
“For being a burden.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It was selfish of me to insist on spending some time with you.” Etana swallowed. “I make you vulnerable.”
He touched his fingertips to her mouth. “You’re a ray of sunlight in my life, Etana. The only one these days.” He hesitated before adding, “You’re the reason I carry on.”
Covering his hand with hers, she pressed it to her mouth and kissed his fingers, the ball of his palm, the hollow. And she knew. She wasn’t falling for Areg Sebi. Not anymore. The falling was done. That warm, beautiful thing she used to feel in her chest was everywhere in her body now, was a part of her.
She loved him. She loved him more than anything or anyone in her life. More than life itself.
“I’ll go back as soon as I can walk,” she said. “You’ll have a better chance without me slowing you down.”
He kissed the top of her head. “You do need to leave as soon as you can walk. You’ll be safer away from me.”
“Where will you go?”
“The Iltaqa highland is my best bet for now. It has caves, dense vegetation, and pure water. It’s as good a hideout as it gets in Eia.” He pulled a comically upset face. “I hate it that I’m so recognizable, even in a merchant’s beret!”
“It’s not your fault—you’re too handsome to blend into the masses. And that beret made you stand out even more.”
He gave her an apologetic look.
“While you’re in the Iltaqa region,” Etana said, “Rhori and I can get you food, and anything you need, whenever you need it.”
