Rhani (Dragons of Kratak Book 3)

by Ruth Anne Scott

  Frieda pursed her lips. So much for that. “Never mind. Would you like to come in?”

  He cast a sidelong glance at her. “I thought you wanted to be alone.”

  She waved her hand. “I did.”

  He shrugged. “All right.” But he didn’t step toward the house. He stepped away from it.

  In front of her eyes, a rippling mirage passed over him. He turned his face upwards into it, and it shimmered down his body to his feet and dissipated into the ground. Where he once stood bare-chested and dirty, he now stood perfectly clean, in a fresh white shirt. Not even a smudge of mud remained on his shoes. His black hair hung neat and clean and orderly down his back. Even the dirt under his fingernails disappeared.

  Frieda scanned him up and down. Then she nodded. At least he wouldn’t track mud on her clean floor. She stood aside, and he stepped into the room. His presence instantly brightened the room. She pulled out her chair for him to sit down, and she sat on the bed across from him.

  He looked around the room. “It’s nice here.”

  Frieda smiled. “I like it, but it needs work.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “What work? It’s fine the way it is.”

  “It looks unlived-in,” she replied. “It looks like no one has lived in it for a long time, and it needs someone to care about it and make it lived-in.”

  He laughed. “Of course it looks like no one has lived in it. No one ever has.”

  “That’s exactly my point,” she told him.

  “So what are you going to do?” he asked.

  “That’s why I asked you about the plants,” she replied. “I wondered if they need extra care, or maybe they need weeding.”

  “They don’t need weeding,” he replied.

  “They need something,” she told him.

  “What?” he asked.

  Frieda waved her hand again. “I don’t know. Maybe they just need to be touched and handled and cared for. They need someone to do something to them. That’s what this whole place needs. It needs someone to care enough to do something—anything.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “Are you talking about the house, or are you talking about the Aqinas?”

  She blushed. “I was talking about the house. I thought the whole Aqinas world was the same way, but I know differently now.”

  “What changed?” he asked. “What made you think differently?”

  “I saw something,” she began. Then she changed her mind. “I haven’t seen enough of this world. That’s the problem. There’s so much I haven’t seen that it looks incomplete. I thought the whole world needed people to care enough to do something to make it lived-in, too. But now I know they are doing something. I just hadn’t seen them doing it.”

  He turned around in the chair and faced her. “Maybe it will be like that between you and me, too.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe.”

  He looked around the room again, but didn’t say anything.

  Frieda shifted in her seat. “I’m sorry I don’t have anything to offer you to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry,” he told her.

  She didn’t know what to say, so she just sat and fidgeted in uncomfortable silence. Whatever else the water could do, it couldn’t do this for her. But she had to say something. She’d invited him into her house. She had to make the visit a pleasant one for him.

  She couldn’t think of anything to say, though, and he got up. Her shoulders slumped. She didn’t blame him for wanting to leave. She wouldn’t stay, either, if she was in his place.

  But he didn’t leave. He sat on the bed next to her. “We’re having a family gathering at our house tomorrow night. I’d like you to come.”

  She brightened up. “Really?”

  He nodded. “And after that, you should come to the convocation.”

  Her smile evaporated. “The convocation?”

  He nodded again. “We always have them after big gatherings. You should come. It will be your first one. You’ll be able to experience the Aqinas fully in the convocation.”

  “What do you mean by that?” she asked. “Haven’t I experienced the Aqinas fully?”

  “Not fully,” he replied. “You’ve experienced a few moments of visions with me, and maybe some others. In the convocation, you’ll share vision with hundreds of Aqinas at once.”

  “What will all those Aqinas do in the convocation?” she asked.

  “We use the convocation to see beyond the ocean,” he replied. “We see the other factions, and we see what’s going on in all the other parts of Angondra. Since we don’t travel onto land, this is our only way of keeping track of what goes on with the rest of the planet.”

  She snorted. “It’s sort of like a psychic satellite feed, isn’t it?”

  He frowned. “What?”

  She stiffened and moved a fraction of an inch away from him. “I won’t go to the convocation. I won’t be party to any spying on the other factions or anything else on Angondra. If you want to see what’s going on, that’s your business. I won’t participate in that.”

  He stared at her. “I don’t understand you.”

  “It isn’t ethical,” she told him. “If you really have to know what goes on with the rest of the planet and you won’t travel on land, there must be some way of sending messages to find out. You don’t have to use the water to spy on them unawares. That’s no better than peeking in on them in their bedrooms.”

  He blinked, but she interrupted him before he could speak. “Don’t tell me. You don’t think anything of peeking in on someone in their bedroom because you share bedrooms in your family homes. You have no concept of privacy or personal space, so you wouldn’t understand how a person could feel violated by you watching them without their knowledge.”

  “You’re right,” he replied. “I wouldn’t understand that. Everyone here can see everyone else at all times.”

  “I’m surprised Sasha hasn’t said something about this,” Frieda remarked.

  “Maybe she said something to Fritz about it,” he replied. “She wouldn’t attend the convocation for months after she first came. But she does now.”

  Frieda turned away. “I will never attend it.”

  Now he would leave for certain. She’d offended their most sacred institution and called it a lot of nasty names. She had no business staying here. That vision she shared with Deek in the meadow was nothing more than wishful thinking, a fantasy like the rest of this dream world.

  She wouldn’t look at him. When he walked out that door, he wouldn’t come back. He wouldn’t try again to welcome her into his family after she snubbed him twice. As soon as he was gone, she would go find Sasha and find out how to go back to the land.

  She waited, but he didn’t move. Then he took her hand. “You don’t have to attend the convocation, Frieda. If you live here the rest of your life and never attend it, no one will care. If you want to join our shared vision of Angondra, you are very welcome. You are very welcome no matter what you do.”

  Her eyes drifted around to his face. “Do you really mean that?”

  He nodded. “No one will require you to do anything you aren’t comfortable with. If you don’t want to join the convocation, you don’t have to. I’d still like you to join me at our family gathering. There will be a lot of my relatives there you haven’t met, and I’d like them to meet you.”

  Her heart fluttered. She couldn’t contain her overflowing emotions. “Really?”

  He frowned. Then he sighed. “I don’t know how to explain to you that you are welcome here—more than welcome. You’re the answer to our prayers.” He pressed her hand between his. “You’re the answer to my prayers.”

  She looked down at his fingers tracing over her skin. “I’m a breeder.”

  “You’re so much more than that,” he murmured. “Do you think I would throw myself at any woman who showed her face here? You’re the woman marked for me by the water. The water brought us together, and we belong together.”

  She shoo
k her head, but she couldn’t look him in the eye. “I can’t accept it that way. I can’t put my reservations aside and accept this world as my own.”

  “No one’s asking you to,” he told her. “You can keep your reservations. Don’t you see? You’re reservations are your greatest asset. I wouldn’t love you the way I do if you didn’t have any reservations. I wouldn’t want you if you blindly gave yourself away to the first man you met.”

  “I have to hold myself back,” she went on. “I want to accept this world as my home. I want to join my life with yours and share a common vision, but I can’t. It isn’t right.”

  “Not yet, it isn’t,” he replied. “And until it is right, you have to stick to your reservations. You have to keep your distance from me and my family. I understand that. Don’t give yourself away to me or anybody. I want you the way you are, with all your resistance and reservations. You wouldn’t be worth waiting for if you didn’t.”

  She lifted her eyes to his face and found him not half an inch from her. In a heartbeat, he caught her in his arms, and she buried herself in his kiss. She laughed and gasped for breath between catching hold of his lips with her mouth and stroking his forehead with her hands.

  He pulled her against him, and they fell over backwards onto the bed. They lay side by side enfolded in endless kisses until the sun traversed the sky and disappeared behind the forest. The light from the ceiling faded, but didn’t go out altogether. Frieda lounged on the bed with her arms draped over Deek’s shoulders and chest, and they intertwined their legs together in fathomless kissing.

  After an eternity of lying on top of the bedding fully clothed, Deek propped himself up on his elbow and regarded Frieda with an inscrutable eye. “It’s getting late.”

  “Are you sure you aren’t hungry?” she asked.

  “No one ever gets hungry here,” he replied. “It’s only people like you and Sasha that need food. You aren’t used to metabolizing the algae’s byproducts.”

  “That’s exactly what Sasha said,” she told him.

  “It’s true,” he exclaimed.

  “Do you have to go home?” she asked. “Will your family wonder where you are?”

  “They know where I am,” he told her.

  “How could they know?” She closed her eyes. “Don’t answer that.”

  He trailed his fingertips down the side of her face to the first button of her shirt. “How does this work?”

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen buttons before,” she shot back.

  “We don’t have them,” he replied. “This piece slips through the hole, I guess.”

  She laughed at him. “It’s pretty straightforward when you look at it up close.”

  He slipped the first button through its hole and moved down to the second. Then he spread the shirt lapels apart. “And what about the rest? Is that pretty straightforward, too?”

  “It’s like any other woman you could meet,” she teased.

  “I’ve never been with a woman before,” he told her.

  Her eyes popped open. “What? Never?”

  “I told you there aren’t enough women to go around,” he replied. “All Aqinas women are already mated. When would I get to see one?”

  “But you’ve seen your relatives at close quarters all your life,” she pointed out.

  “I didn’t examine them.” He popped another button loose. “And I certainly never studied their inner workings well enough to know what to do in a situation like this.”

  He opened her shirt another inch, and she sucked in her breath. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon enough.”

  He watched her nostrils flare and the blood rush to her cheeks. He buried his nose between her shirt lapels and nuzzled at her chest. She arched her back and cradled his head against her chest. He inhaled her scent, and his warm breath sent tingles through her spine.

  He unbuttoned her shirt the rest of the way and laid both pieces aside. She lay on her back before him with her chest exposed. He ran his palm up and down her chest, down to her belly, to the waistband of her pants nestled in a tuft of hair. He discovered the clefts of her armpits and the dimpled pillows of her breasts.

  Frieda struggled to control her breathing and lay still for his examination. He didn’t miss the slightest sign of his effect on her. He moved his hand an inch to the right or left and watched for her reaction before he made his next move.

  Once he explored her chest to his own satisfaction, he moved closer to her so he loomed over her. He kissed her deeply, and then he plunged face first into her neck. He devoured her skin with his ravenous mouth and worked down to her chest.

  Frieda exploded into a frenzy of passion. She clutched at him and gasped in excitement. He consumed her body in ardent appreciation. She pushed her breasts against his face and wrapped her legs around his waist to draw him into her.

  He went as far as her belly before he withdrew, back to her face, leaving her breathless and desperate. He stretched out beside her and kissed her long and deep. Frieda held herself still and swooned in his kiss. He held her on tenterhooks so acute she could barely breathe. Every nerve tingled in quivering anticipation of what he would do next. Would he go further next time, or would he stop here? She couldn’t bear the thought that he would decide to leave her like this, yearning and incomplete.

  He gazed into her eyes with his lips touching hers. “What is it?”

  Her eyes crinkled. “I’m metabolizing the algae’s byproducts.”

  His eyes flashed until he saw the wicked glint in her eye. Then he laughed, and she laughed with him. “Are you getting used to it now?”

  “I think so,” she murmured.

  In answer, he rolled up on top of her, and his knee nudged between her legs. She gripped that knee with every muscle fiber she could marshal and held on for dear life. He let her exhaust herself against him before he proceeded. He kept his eyes locked on her face until she whimpered in desperate agony under him. He waited until she would do anything, submit to anything, if only he would act.

  He hovered over her with the stealthy intent of a hawk over its prey. He judged the direction of the wind, he measured her expressions, her breathing, with masterful accuracy. Then he dropped out of the sky with his talons bared and seized her body, limp and ripe and ready.

  She watched him swoop and her breath stuck in her throat, but she couldn’t resist. Before she knew what happened, she lay bare and open to his insatiable appetite. He filled her with the power of his presence until she couldn’t take another particle. In the end, no watery vision could compare with the complete union of their bodies and minds.

  Frieda dissolved into him, into his body and his spirit. The vision she experienced in the meadow came back to her, and she never wanted anything so much as to be his, like this, the way the vision showed her she could be. If she only stayed there, in his arms, her body wrapped around him, she would never lose that vision, and she would be happy.

  Chapter 7

  Frieda woke up the next morning and found Deek sitting on the edge of her bed. “I didn’t know you were up.”

  He turned around. He had his pants on, but not his boots or shirt. He bent down and kissed her. “I have to go. I’m helping lay the foundation for the new hall today.”

  “You weren’t going to sneak out without saying good-bye, were you?” she asked.

  He took her in his arms. “You looked so peaceful sleeping, I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “I would rather you woke me up before you leave,” she told him. “I wouldn’t want to wake up and find you gone.”

  “Okay,” he told her. “Now I know.”

  “Will you be at the work site all day?” she asked.

  He nodded. “I’ll see you later. You’re coming to the gathering, aren’t you?”

  “I’ll come to the gathering,” she replied, “as long as you understand I won’t be coming to the convocation.”

  “I understand that,” he replied. “I still wish I could convince you....�
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  She cut him off with a shake of her head. “Don’t even try. You got me this far by respecting how I feel about it. Don’t spoil it by trying to convince me.”

  He kissed her again. “Okay.”

  She watched him pull his boots on, and then his shirt. At last, fully clothed, he stretched out next to her again on the bed. She lay under the covers and he lay on top of them with his arms around her. They kissed and cuddled for a long time before he got up again. “I’ll see you later.”

  She nodded and watched his form get smaller in the meadow outside her door. Pretty soon, only the shimmering multi-coloured sunlight rippled over the grass outside.

  Frieda lay in bed for a long time and listened to the wind murmuring over the land. Nothing could soothe her like that sound. Nothing disturbed the everlasting tranquillity of that day. She never had to get out of the bed. She would never get hungry or thirsty.

  Only boredom could drive her out of bed, and in the end, it did. She couldn’t force herself to lie there any longer. Life demanded to be lived, even if you lived under the ocean with a symbiotic algae feeding oxygen into your cells. Not even a fantasy world could take the place of movement, life, purpose.

  She got up and got dressed. She would have to get Deek to explain the secret of how he washed that dirt off himself. She couldn’t exactly take a shower under the sea, could she? Yet her body begged for one to refresh her after last night.

  She worked around her house for the rest of the day until she happened to glance through the door and noticed Trin crossing the meadow in her direction. Trin stopped in front of Frieda’s house. “I’ve come to bring you to the gathering.”

  “You didn’t need to go to the trouble,” Frieda told her. “I can find my way on my own.”

  Trin shook her head. “Guests should be escorted through the door. Call it a tradition.”

  Frieda laughed. “Kind of like the groom carrying the bride over the threshold?”

  Trin frowned. “The.....what?”

  Frieda waved her hand. “Never mind.”

  Trin watched her set the room to rights before she left. “What are you doing?”