“Thanks.” She turned her back to him, working the soap from her hair. When he’d emptied it, she took the container from him and brought up another bucket of water. Corin, she saw when she glanced around for her soap and washcloth, was stripping down, as well. When she’d lathered the cloth, she handed the soap to him wordlessly and returned her attention to her own bath.
It occurred to her as she finished lathering herself that she hadn’t noticed that Corin had had a washcloth. Turning to him, she held hers out, smiling faintly. “This’ll probably make bathing a little easier if you’d like to use it.”
His face was taut as he glanced down at her hand. Slowly, he lifted his gaze to hers once more and reached for the cloth without even glancing down. Instead of grasping the cloth, however, he caught her hand, giving her arm a jerk that brought her toward him even as he stepped closer, meeting her. She collided with him, her wet, soapy skin sliding along his, creating a friction of slick flesh against flesh that sent a surge of heady desire through her. Even as her head came up in surprise, he caught her hair at the base of her skull, tugging her head back with one hand, slipping his other arm around her and tightening it, bringing her lower body firmly against his.
His engorged cock dug into her belly as he settled his mouth over her slightly parted lips possessively, with full fledged, ravenous hunger. Lana sucked in a breath of surprise as his tongue plowed past the sensitive barrier of her lips, raking across hers in heated demand.
The slight tension of astonishment vanished, replaced almost instantaneously with the drugging fire of passion as he filled her senses with his essence, wrapped her in heated flesh and taut muscle.
Doubt flickered through the clouded turmoil of her mind. He’d objected before to casual sex and moreover she knew very well that intimacy was a very bad idea considering her situation.
She dismissed both warnings, already too caught up in the fervor of desire to pay anything else much heed, comforting herself with the thought that they’d established the boundaries and that she would merely guard herself against the possible threat intimacy could create.
Lifting her arms, she skated her palms over the bulging muscles of his upper arms, along his shoulders and finally looped her arms around his neck. Enthralled by the sensations created by their soap slick bodies skating against each other, clinging, slipping in stimulating contact that brought a flush of heat to her flesh at every point where they touched, Lana moved restlessly against him. Her nipples stood erect, sending shards of pleasure through her as she rubbed them against the hard mound of his male breasts. Scalding fluids bathed the throat of her sex, the muscles rippling as they tightened and released all along the length of her passage as if she could feel his turgid flesh in her grip already.
She rose up on her tiptoes, reaching down to push his cock between her thighs and clamping them around his throbbing member. He ground his hips against hers, sliding his cock along her cleft and gathering the moisture of her desire, sending hot need through her as he massaged her clit. His kiss became more fervent, more desperate with longing.
Skating his hand downward from her hips to her buttock, he clenched it a moment and then leaned down, catching her leg beneath her knee and lifting her thigh. She swayed backwards, coming up against the wall of the well. The chill and roughness of the stone brought forth a dim of awareness of her surroundings. In the next moment, however, it was submerged beneath an onslaught of hot desire as he thrust against her cleft once more.
Reaching down, she caught his cock and angled her hips to receive him, pressing against his thrust until she felt the head of his cock embedded in her flesh. Reaching up, she grasped his shoulders and lifted herself up, wrapping both legs around his waist.
Wrenching his mouth from hers, he caught her buttocks in his hands. Briefly, they struggled with slippery flesh and resistant muscles, heaving against one another until his cock was fully embedded inside of her. She groaned at the pleasure of such intimate contact, at the tremors of pleasing sensation that built tension inside of her as he began thrusting fiercely, driving deeply inside of her.
A faint tremor went through him, growing rapidly to hard shudders as his body swiftly scaled the ladder of passion toward release. His escalating passion built her own until she felt the first gentle quakes of culmination. She groaned, hovering near the edge for several moments. She cried out as she felt herself catapulted abruptly into an intense explosion of rapture that spread outward from their joined bodies through every molecule of her flesh.
A rasping groan escaped him. His arms tightened almost bruisingly around her as his own body began to convulse with release. Swaying slightly as the spasms began to subside, he caught the edge of the well with one hand to brace himself.
Lana lifted away from him, shivering as she felt his expended cock slip from her body. Weakly, she released her grip on his waist and dropped her feet to the ground. Her thighs trembled as she settled her weight on her legs. Leaning against the wall behind her, she released her grip on his neck, bracing her palms behind her on the low wall as she caught her breath.
The air cooled the moisture that remained on her skin, drying the soap bubbles and making her feel sticky. With an effort, she turned away from Corin, wondering if she had enough strength in her arms to lift the bucket and rinse herself. Deciding she didn’t, she scooped water from the bucket and splashed it over her cooling body.
Corin reached around her and lifted the bucket, tilting it and allowing the water to run over her slowly. Grateful for the assistance, she rubbed her hands along her body, sloughing both soap and water from her skin. When he’d emptied it, he dropped the pail down the well once more and Lana moved away from him. Grabbing her towel, she dried herself quickly as Corin rinsed himself off, then tossed the towel to him, gathered her belongings, and headed back to the cabin.
He caught up to her in the cabin. Pulling her pack from her hands, he dropped it to the floor and dragged her into his embrace, kissing her with a hunger that belied their recent appeasement. Lana made a sound of objection in her throat but found as he pushed her back onto the bed and followed her down that her own body was already humming once more with need.
Ignoring her protest for what it was—no more than a token resistance—he familiarized himself with the taste and texture of her skin, lavishing kisses along her neck and the tops of her breasts with his mouth and tongue before moving downward, between her breasts and down the center of her body to her lower belly. By the time he’d worked his way upward once more, grasping a breast in one hand and teasing the nipple with the flick of his thumb as he sucked the nipple of her other breast into his mouth, Lana felt as if she was on fire. She could scarcely catch her breath, could not be still.
Parting her thighs, she positioned herself beneath him, arching her hips upward so that his cock nudged against her clit. He caught her hands, lacing his fingers through hers and pinning her arms to the bed as she tried to reach between them to align their bodies. Before she could protest, he covered her mouth with his own, penetrating the sensitive cavern with his thrusting tongue in an imitation of the mating ritual that teased rather than fulfilled her needs.
Dizzying heat swept through her. She sank more deeply into the chaotic chasm of carnality, unable to focus beyond the need he continued to build inside of her with each stroke of his tongue along her own. She moved feverishly beneath him, arching against him and shuddering as his cock slid tauntingly along her cleft, stirring a craving that demanded appeasement.
When he broke the kiss, she was gasping hoarsely, her heart thundering with anticipation as he shifted above her. Instead of thrusting inside of her, however, he lowered his head and began to tease the sensitive buds of her breasts.
“Damn it, Corin!” she gasped. “Stop teasing me! Give me what I need.”
He lifted his head, his eyes glimmering with heated desire, his lips curled faintly, teasingly. He arched against her so that his cock slipped between her thighs once more, along her c
left and nudged against her opening. “This?”
She looked up at him with a mixture of desperation and dawning anger.
Frowning at the accusation in her gaze, he shook his head slightly, thrusting steadily and sinking more deeply inside of her. She gasped, arching up to meet him as he withdrew and thrust again.
A shudder went through him as he sank to the root of his cock inside of her. He went still, gathering himself, struggling for control. Impatient, Lana clenched and unclenched her vaginal muscles around him, squeezing his cock in a milking motion that drew a hoarse groan from him.
He ground his teeth as he pulled slowly out and thrust again, shaking with the effort to pace himself. When he was buried deep inside of her again, she lifted her legs, locking them around his waist and thrusting up to meet him, fisting the muscles of the walls of her sex around him tightly again.
It pushed him beyond his limits. Shaking, he released her hands at last and shoved his hands beneath her hips, thrusting and retreating in an aggressive rhythm that drew hoarse cries of satisfaction from her as his movements jolted her over the edge and into an explosive release. Her convulsing muscles dragged him over the edge with her.
With obvious effort, he held his weight off her with his arms, his head drooping forward on his shoulders next to hers. Moments passed, finally he lifted slightly away from her. Catching her jaw in his hand, he forced her to look up at him. “I only meant to savor the pleasure a little longer. It was not as you thought.”
Lana studied him through heavy lidded eyes, uncertain of whether she believed him or not. At the moment, she didn’t particularly care one way or the other, however. She felt supremely satisfied, completely devoid of energy, and so drowsy all she really wanted to do was sleep. “The bed’s not big enough for two,” she murmured irritably.
He sighed, settling beside her on his side and staring down at her. After a moment, however, he seemed to come to a decision. Scooping an arm beneath her head, he dragged her halfway across his chest and held her there until oblivion reached up and snatched consciousness away from her.
The darkness of night had only begun to lift when Lana woke. Yawning, she stretched—and rolled off the narrow bed. The jolt of slamming into the floor brought her wide awake. When she managed to turn over and look up, Corin was peering down at her over the edge of the bed, a mixture of wariness and firmly tamped amusement gleaming in his eyes.
She glared at him. “I told you the damn bed wasn’t big enough for two.”
His amusement vanished. “You are an ill tempered female most of the time. In the morning, you are worse.”
“I feel better when I’ve slept,” she pointed out irritably.
“You slept like the dead,” he retorted.
Lana studied him for several moments, thinking it over, and realized with a touch of surprise that he was right. The last thing she remembered was being irritated because he was hell bent and determined to snuggle after they’d had sex. After that—nothing. She frowned thoughtfully, trying to remember the last time she’d slept straight through the night without rousing even once. “You’re right,” she said slowly. “That’s—odd. Must have been all that unaccustomed exercise.”
Shrugging, she got to her feet, gathered her pack, and went out to perform her morning ritual, bathing off quickly again because she felt sticky from the late evening bump ugly mamba.
Her hair was a catastrophe. She hadn’t gotten around to combing it after they’d had that last bout of sex and had gone to sleep with it wet. It took her nearly thirty minutes to rake the tangles out of it. Taming it was an impossibility at this point. Finally, she wet it down and combed it again.
When she’d dried off, she dressed in the last uniform she’d packed and pulled her thigh high boots on. She was either going to have to spare the time to clean her clothes, go back for more, or start wearing the not-so-clean outfits she’d brought with her. None of the possibilities particularly appealed to her, however.
To her surprise, when she returned to the cabin, Corin was gone. She stood in the middle of the room for several moments, looking around. Finally, she shrugged, dug a food bar from her pack then shouldered it and headed out. Corin was standing in the middle of the cart track, waiting for her.
She stopped when she saw him. It occurred to her after a moment, however, that he was a quick learner. He knew she would’ve gone on without him if he hadn’t been ready to go when she was. Amusement touched her at the thought. His wary expression when she strode toward him only made it deepen.
She offered him the bar in her hand. “I brought extras, and I didn’t get around to eating last night.”
He shook his head firmly and pulled a bread-like substance from his own pack.
Shrugging, Lana turned and gestured toward the cabin. “This is the second one of these little cabins I’ve located. Any idea why there would be two one room cabins in this area—both abandoned?”
“They are fifen.”
Lana’s brows rose. “Sorry. That doesn’t really tell me anything.”
He frowned. “The royal guard. If they have not taken a woman, and have no offspring, when they reach an age where they are no longer able to fight—if they reach that age—they are given fifen—twenty parsects of the Rex Pimetrius’ lands and a cabin.”
“That is … so generous,” Lana said, trying without much success to keep her voice neutral. She supposed it was a fairly generous retirement, but it was hideously depressing to imagine being ‘sent to pasture’ with twenty parsects of wild wood lands, whatever amount of land that was, and a one room cabin to die in--alone.
Corin said nothing. His face was impassive, so it was impossible to figure out how he felt about it.
She wasn’t about to ask.
“Are there more of these—abandoned, I mean?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps twenty in this forest. Some abandoned. Some occupied.”
A sense of excitement began to flow through her. “Do you know which are empty?”
He nodded.
Lana pulled her map from her pack and moved to stand next to him. “Show them to me on the map.”
He studied the map for several moments. “Tine died last winter, so his cabin is empty now,” he said pointing to the position. “This one and this one, also.”
A sudden thought occurred to Lana. “Wait.” She punched up the old map. On it, each fifen was clearly marked—and very likely Sadin was using the old map. When Corin had pointed out the cabins he knew to be empty, Lana studied them, trying to think which one Sadin would be most likely to head for. “This one,” she said finally. “I believe he’ll head here.”
Corin frowned. “Lianal lives there.”
“Sadin won’t know which are occupied and which are empty. And this is just the sort of thing he would do—swing around and head in the other direction.
“I know he went to the one here. I didn’t go, but the locator picked up his signature. He would probably have seen this one when he passed this way—which could lead him to believe they’d all been abandoned. This one, though,” she said, pointing to the cabin she’d picked, “it’s just the sort of thing to appeal to him. If we cut through the forest here we might be able to reach it before he does.”
Chapter Five
It was cooler under the trees. The walk was rougher, though. As focused as Lana was on getting to the cabin as quickly as they could, it was still impossible not to notice that the forest was a beautiful place. It looked like an ancient forest and was virtually untouched—most likely because most of it belonged to Rex Pimetrius.
She wondered if the family she’d seen was the family of a former royal guard. The old guy had looked big enough and mean enough to have been a soldier. Without the paint, the armor, and the hair cut, he hadn’t looked anything like the warriors she’d seen and it hadn’t occurred to her at the time, but she supposed he must be retired military.
He’d had a pretty nice place, but then he’d had plenty of help, too, in building
it into a farm.
The other one—maybe, maybe not. If he’d been a warrior, it certainly hadn’t helped him or his wife.
She had to wonder how long they were expected to serve the king. How old was considered too old to be a royal guard anymore?
She surveyed Corin speculatively. He’d washed the war paint off the night before when they’d bathed and hadn’t bothered to reapply it since, but she still couldn’t pinpoint his age with any degree of certainty. From the information she’d gathered on her way to Ata Prime, she knew the life expectancy of the average male was roughly the same as a human male. It was probably somewhat shorter for the warriors, but that was because of their trade—like being a ranger.
She finally decided Corin must be somewhere between thirty and forty. There wasn’t a trace of ‘boyish’ about him—his face looked young but definitely mature—and she figured, no matter how good he was, it would still take some time to work his way up to captain of the royal guard. It was a position of authority second only to Rex, himself, and not one that would be handed over lightly.
It also occurred to her to wonder if he had a wife, or maybe more than one, somewhere, and a pack of curtain climbers. She supposed she should have thought about that before she’d had sex with him, but she’d never considered policing other people’s relationships were part of her job. She certainly wouldn’t even consider casual sex if she knew a man had a significant other, but in her line of work most of her encounters were flybys. She didn’t have a lot of time to invest in ‘getting to know’ and she didn’t want to since she couldn’t afford to get deeply involved anyway. Besides, she figured if Corin had had a prior commitment and it meant anything at all to him, he should have at least been hesitant when she’d initiated intimacy.
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