"I don't know, but I saw a very expensive vintage of springreen wine. Your brother and Family value you, to give that to you for your own personal use."
"Ah." He picked up a wedge of dark yellow cheese and munched, staring at her. "My brother's very happy with recent events." One side of his mouth lifted in an ironic smile.
She scanned his body, head to toe, and sent him a sultry look. She knew how important this after-sex . . . after loving time was, but the man stirred her. "Because you dated so many women?" She could see that, a handsome, very virile man like him.
He laughed shortly. "No. Just the opposite." Now he grimaced. "Maybe I did when younger. Lately I've cared for nothing except my work." Shaking his head, he continued, "Recently I've been determined to track down a couple of cuzes." His mouth flattened. "We failed them and they left, are lost."
That twanged some sorrowful chord inside her and she frowned, trying to pinpoint why.
And while she focused inwardly, he pounced.
She let him roll her to her back, then, with a Word, removed the food and platter from the bed to a nightstand. Then she used Flair to toss himself and her back over so she straddled him, enjoying his startled expression. As she kissed his cheek, she decided that she wanted to taste several particular parts of him, returning the favor of his delightful exploration in the night.
Her body flushed at the thought.
A quick tussle later, a fabulous out-of-time sensual experience like no other, and he'd collapsed into sleep beside her. She lay awake, surprise at herself holding off sleep.
She'd have liked to have blamed the wild sex and the tenderness and the intense, intimate connection on the potion they'd taken the previous day. But she raised to her elbow and studied him, this incredible man who'd exhausted her, and whom she'd exhausted — and all she could feel was that basic, instinctive attraction. Mate. Perhaps not a HeartMate, but more elemental, like she recognized him in the cells of her body, the marrow of her bones.
Such a gorgeous man, as if he'd been plucked from her mind and her ideal embodied: tall, large, muscular, not at all a scholarly build. Dark hair and deep blue eyes that made her shiver with desire. A face more rugged than handsome, showing character. So much sexier than Glyssa's man— stop that thought, no comparisons. To compare the men was beneath Enata. And no more judgments. She'd have to work on that. But there was no sexier man in the world than Barton Clover.
She'd won this man, or he'd won her.
* * *
Enata slept fitfully. The man in her bed, radiating heat, snoring softly, was luscious. The bedsponge was too soft. And the window seemed to be in the wrong direction. For a few minutes she listened to the quiet of the house, of the courtyards of the Clover Compound beyond. Nothing stirred, and if she was lonely she couldn't raise her voice and speak to an intelligent Residence. Not that she'd done that often, but the possibility had gotten her through some dark winter nights.
As if the loneliness had pulsed from her to him, Barton awoke and reached for her and this time the loving proceeded slowly, with an intimacy the dark engendered, with exchanged tender, lingering touches that pleased them both. Quietly, wordlessly, they joined and rocked to completion.
The next time she woke, Barton had left the bed and she was alone, though she heard the sound of a nearby flowing waterfall.
Slipping from the bed, she donned a light silkeen robe of pale green.
She didn't know if she liked the idea of only living with one person, no matter how beloved. Yet he'd moved from his family home to be alone in this narrow house. That demonstrated a disparate mind-set between them. Then, as the door slammed open and no fewer than ten women flowed in, she reconsidered.
Chapter 9
"Welcome to the Clover Family, to the circle of Clover women," trilled a pregnant woman younger than Enata. She didn't recall meeting the cheerful girl who gave her a hearty hug. "I'm Xanthia Clover, the last one marrying into the Family before you."
"Welcome!" the others chorused, gathering around her. One smoothed the robe over her shoulders, another patted her head and she felt her curly disarrayed hair fall into place. "We're so glad to have you as part of the Family," someone else said.
"Let's give you a lovely breakfast!" said an older woman.
"I—" Enata started. What happened to staying in bed all day? "Barton?"
"We told him telepathically that breakfast is ready. He'll join us as soon as he's done with a waterfall."
"The no-time—"
The older woman snorted. "It doesn't have special wedding morning omelettes." She gave a decided nod. "Made to order, whatever you like in it. The food storage unit doesn’t contain enough porcine strips for you and Barton. That man can eat. And he needs to keep his strength up."
Rollicking laughter and a nudge of an elbow. Along with the noise of the women and the grumbling of her stomach came the sense of new connections with these women. Enough to daze her.
The Clover Family connections grew every second she spent with Barton's relatives, began to thread through her, spurred by the ritual the night before and the vows Enata had made.
They swept her in a tide of femininity down the stairs of Barton's house, she only kept from falling by the press of bodies, then outside — in only her robe! More eyes, women and men, stared at her from the large rectangular courtyard, and from people at windows facing the yard. Just having their stares focused on her seemed to stimulate more links.
She gasped for breath.
"Come along, Enata," said a woman who Enata thought was the head female elder. Though she'd been introduced last night, Enata didn't recall her name. Barton's bond with that woman showed huge and thick and surged to hit Enata. She swayed.
Where was Barton? She sensed he still soaped in the waterfall. Another irritation that she stood here in the courtyard in her robe, no matter how warm the summer morning, and he didn't stand with her. Toes curling into a crack in the flagstones, she stopped to look back at his house, saw nothing but a brown brick building with no remarkable features.
Two women took her arms, helping her to walk to the horizontal wing at the end of the courtyard, though she didn't know that she cared to go with them anymore.
She saw Walker Clover's HeartMate, Sedwy Grove Clover, near the other end of the courtyard. Enata knew Sedwy, had helped the woman with her research and career in anthropology. "Sedwy!" she called, but other voices drowned out her cry, people exiting their houses to shout greetings to Enata, comment on the wedding the night before.
Barton, please request your ladies don't crowd me.
She felt his laugh through her bond. Just tell them to back off.
All right. "Stop this!" she shouted. "Give me a little room, please!"
They didn't seem to hear her, kept conversations going among themselves, talking around her, exclaiming at the bonds they began to feel to her, and through her to the Licorice Family.
She muttered a mind-clearing spell. It would deplete her Flair, but she wanted coherent thought. Barton, please call off your ladies. She kept her mental voice crisp. Before I do something to alienate them. As they had alienated her? Was this some kind of test? Perhaps.
She could become an integral member of this large Family.
With that conclusion, the stirring threads of the Clovers' links to her through Barton tugged at Enata's insides, a nauseating wave. Yes, she was bonding with all the Clovers. They milled around her. As they moved it seemed those threads turned into a shroud, wrapping around her, binding her arms, crossing over her mouth so she couldn't speak.
So she sent a mental call, Barton, can you come?
In a minute, babe, he replied, a little absently. She blinked. Obviously she was no longer his sole focus, perhaps not his primary one. She understood that, but it hurt.
Panting, she held out for a minute, two, as people propelled her into a large kitchen area that held two long tables. Her mind did slow swoops and her balance tilted. Two women yet framed her.
Why were they doing this?
She thought she sent the pointed question to them, along with her discomfort, and a tidal wave of affection struck her.
Too much! Too many people and minds and emotions!
Doubling over, she concentrated on the plank flooring to steady herself, then glanced up. People were talking to her, their mouths moving, loud buzzing in her ears.
Somewhere, in the back of her mind, in the back of her skull, throbbed a need to return to the PublicLibrary vaults. To the coolness and the quiet, the emptiness with no press of bodies.
She was so tired of feeling ill. It seemed like she'd struggled with sickness the whole month.
Barton? This time she could barely hear her own thought. Could he?
No answer. No, she couldn't stay.
"Let me go, please," she shrieked, and silence fell over the room filled with Clovers of all ages.
She tottered.
Then she did the desperate and cowardly thing and teleported away to the place she knew best, her bedroom.
Bright sunlight painted a large yellow square on her spread. The scent of the frankincense candles she'd lit for blessings the day before wafted to her nose.
"Residence?" Her voice sounded weak and thin.
"I am here, Enata," it soothed in a male voice. Not Barton's. The Residence waited and quiet wrapped around her.
"Hungry," she muttered. She hadn't eaten much the day before, nothing in the night, a little cheese in the dawn. And she'd participated in a major ritual, danced, made enthusiastic love, barely slept.
She'd failed the Clovers' test, and she didn't care. She didn't know when she could force herself to return to the Compound, all those busy minds and emotions, that still impinged on her. She crumpled.
* * *
Enata was gone!
Barton jerked his attention away from his guards' scry report and the futile inquiry about Savi and Balansa. Walked away from the scry panel.
She'd left him. After one night of extraordinary passion, the minute he stepped away from her, she'd abandoned him. Misery.
Total shock.
As he ran downstairs he shouted to her telepathically. Enata!
No answer. Scowling, he listened hard, opened the bond between them — that had narrowed on her side — and found only deep dreams with a dark tinge.
I love you, he sent, and he thought the tension in her dreams eased.
But he didn't know what to do. Whether to go after her or not.
Whether the intelligent Residence would even let him past the threshold. He had too much pride to scry her parents at the PublicLibrary, and her leaving him hurt, dammit.
He stormed into the courtyard, trusting his clothes to soak up the remaining damp from the waterfall, through the too-many-people-hanging-around-for-a-regular-workday and to the kitchen where high babble came from. The cluster of women, including Pink's wife who ran the compound, Aunt Pratty, didn't meet his eyes. Forget the clothes helping rid him of the wet, it could steam off him. The fact that he'd dismissed Enata's concerns just made him angrier — at himself.
"Weren't you all supposed to be loving and supportive?" As was he. He'd noted a darkness of trauma in her, and forgotten about it. He sucked in a deep breath, saw the women had lined up in a semi-circle before him.
"All we wanted to do was, uh, feed her breakfast and, uh, maybe figure out what kind of woman she was." But Pratty continued to avoid eye contact. "We didn't have any time to learn her, like we have others."
He loosened his jaw so his teeth didn't clamp together, sank a few centimeters into his balance.
"She seemed snooty," one of his cuzes said.
"What? From the wedding where you saw her? Who else said so? Sedwy knows her, Trif knows of her. Did you ask them?"
"They are busy."
His voice chilled. "You thought it so important that I wed that you near nagged me senseless, chivvied me into an appointment with the best matchmaker of Celta, then you don't accept his recommendation? Don't give my wife the respect she deserves?"
Shuffling began. Those closest to the doors faded away.
"We did try to help. We brought her here for good food. And we all sent her lots of good feelings! Especially when she asked."
He stared at the remaining people in the room. At least twenty-three. More filled the courtyard. "You saw her Family last night. She has both parents, a sister, and a sister's HeartMate. Five people."
"I guess we overwhelmed her," one of his guards taking the afternoon shift mumbled.
"I guess we did," Barton said. He couldn't stand still, couldn't stay in this room that had once been comforting, with what should be equally comforting smells of cooking food.
He'd been abandoned. Rejected by his bride the morning after his wedding. No, he wouldn't go to her. She would have to come to him.
Raising his voice and spearing it into the minds of all his guards, he shouted: All guards currently off duty, report for sparring practice in the training room. Mental groans came his way, but he didn't care, he needed to act.
Barton spent a good septhour and a half sparring with his men, working off his frustration. Each bout he wondered whether Enata would come back. He sensed when she rose, ate, took a waterfall. And when she cracked the link between them open wider, he couldn't stop the anger and hurt from surging to her, just as he knocked a sloppy guard down. That shocked Enata. Good.
Yeah, maybe in the upset of the moment when she'd left, he thought about going after her. Now his pride had risen. No way.
He moved on to train with two more guards.
* * *
Enata awoke much later, weak with hunger and slightly sick. Even before she sat up, she opened her link with Barton, winced at the hard anger coming from him, felt actual physical violence, before he snapped that connection shut.
She swallowed. She had her parents — until they died, and then they'd pass on to the Wheel of Stars within a year of each other, as HeartMates did. But her sister Glyssa would be spending most of her life on the Eastern frontier at the excavation of Lugh's Spear. Someday Enata would be alone . . . if she didn't mend the rift with her husband.
Husband. A wonderful word, and Barton was a wonderful man, but they would both need to establish boundaries with each other and their Families, individually and as a unit. Create a Family themselves.
Enata believed that in a true marriage, each partner put the other first, before anyone else. Certainly her parents did that, and Enata had already noted the change in Glyssa since she'd returned from the excavation. Jace was now her most important person after herself. Enata didn't know how to do that yet, with Barton.
* * *
It took Walker Clover negotiating with T'Licorice and pressure from both Families on Enata and Barton for them to meet that afternoon at a neutral location -- Landing Park outside the starship Nuada's Sword.
She mounted the steps of the white pavilion, then set all openings to privacy shields, made an invisible door in the front that would stop anyone except Barton.
When she felt him arrive at the par, she opened her bond fully. Her stomach tightened with anxiety but a warmth bloomed at the idea of being with him again.
Seeing him stride swiftly across the lawn made her heart nearly beat out of her chest. Before she could discern his features, she identified him by the way he moved, efficiently and with vitality. He leapt up the three wide steps to the pavilion, landing inside with hardly a thump of his large body.
Her arms flung out naturally, leaving the core of her body vulnerable. "I apologize for leaving."
"Leaving me." He slapped his chest and his mouth thinned.
She swallowed. "Leaving you."
"Don't do it again. If you need me, yell." One pace brought him to her. He caught her hands, kept them spread and took another step until his solid body brushed hers. "Look at me."
She angled her head up, met his dark blue gaze.
"I will be here for you, always." His voice matched his st
are, dead serious. "I don't ever abandon my people."
That resonated through them both, a plucked chord with meaning in the deep dark of her and some vibration she'd understand soon inside him.
"And you will listen to me when I call," she stated.
He nodded. "I screwed up, too," he admitted.
Chapter 10
His fingers unlinked from hers and he ran his hands from her wrists to her shoulders, and he set them there. "Walker told me you were having problems with all the bonds of our Family."
"Yes, he helped me mute and slow the connections."
"Walker, as the head of the household, and I, as Chief of Security, have stronger links with the other members of our Family than most." Barton cleared his throat. "Previously, when we met and during the wedding ritual, I, uh, sensed you, uh, wanted Family."
"I do!"
"So I told the others, but none of us anticipated what happened."
"I understand. I told that to Walker earlier when he came to talk to me and my father."
Barton inched a little closer, his body pressing into hers. His body was ready for sex. She responded to that knowledge with knee weakening of her own, desire blossoming. His eyes narrowed and a gleam of satisfaction came into his gaze. When he spoke again, his voice was low and rough. "So we were both at fault. But we are wed now, with vows between us."
Vows! She hadn't thought of those when overwhelmed and weary, but she had given promises to Barton and a Licorice did not break promises. Lifting her chin, she said, "I'll say I'm sorry again that I left and hurt you."
"I'll say I'm sorry again that I didn't listen and support you. So. There." He smiled. "If we admit our mutual faults when we argue, it will go much better for us."
She slanted him a look and said precisely, "That is supposing that each of us will be at fault in our arguments, which is not necessarily true."
"There's that tartness I cherish." He grinned.
Since his grin riled her a little she put her fingers on his lips. Immediately he swept his tongue across them and she shivered with sensuality, her sex heating. More, her emotional center, so echoing and frigid this morning after she'd left him — filled and warmed.
Lost Heart: A Celta Novella (Celta HeartMate Series) Page 7
