by Susan Grant
By now the floor under her bare feet had heated up, warming the air even more. She waited until she heard Dake slip into the water before turning around, pulling her bra wrap over her head as she did so, flinging it onto the bench.
Meeting his dark, suddenly keen eyes was a shock. It was clear he didn’t think as little of her taking off that bra as she had. “It’s our way,” she explained quickly.
He snorted. “You won’t find me complaining about your ways.”
The air had become somehow charged. The atmosphere intensified as she walked to the tub, with Dake seeming to take in, and savor, every inch of her. No man had ever looked at her with such undisguised need. Dipping her toes in the tub didn’t help quench the heat. “The water’s nice,” she said, sliding in.
“Aye. Very, very nice…” Dake’s pulse throbbed visibly in his neck. Water lapped at him mid-chest. The rest of his six foot five inches was underwater, outside her line of sight, if not her imagination. He extended a dripping, muscled arm. “Come on, join me. Don’t be shy.”
She tossed her braid and laughed. “I’m not the shy one here.”
“Well, it sure as hells isn’t me.”
“I don’t believe it, Sureblood.” She waded through tendrils of mist toward Dake until she stopped in front of him. Her breasts floated at the water line. “Because you sure got quiet, seeing me naked.”
“You take my breath away, Val. That’s why I got so quiet,” he said, startling her into silence herself. “You’re freepin’ beautiful.” Moisture beaded on his hard, shadowed jaw and desire roughened his voice. “You’re right, too, that I don’t know all your ways—your Blue clan ways. But you look too blasted good for me to be happy keeping my hands to myself. I hope your ways don’t require me to.”
She rose up out of the water and slid her palms up his chest. “They don’t,” she whispered. “I don’t…”
His eyes were dark and hooded as he dragged his callused thumbs over her jaw, curving his fingers around the base of her skull to hold her still like he had in the woods when he first kissed her. Another few beats of her heart and he brought his lips to her throat. The barest touch…a wisp of warm breath. Sighing, she shivered, her eyes closing as his lips moved higher, lightly kissing their way to under her ear. Another sigh slipped out of her.
“From the minute I saw you on that freighter, Val, I was betting you tasted as good as you look.” He pulled back and paused, cradling her upturned face. “Turns out I was right.” Water surged as he hauled her up against his body and kissed her full on the mouth.
Desire scorched through her like a plasma blast. She’d thought she knew something about kissing. She didn’t know squat. She’d never felt anything close to this embrace, like him, hard and raw, holding nothing back and demanding no less from her.
She clung to him, suckling his lips, his tongue, just as hungry, just as reckless as he was. When water sloshed over the tub’s edge, she barely heard it. He carried her to the tub’s deck, falling with her down to the cedar planks. Mist enveloped them, running in rivulets past their locked mouths as he trapped her between his strong body and the floor, their legs writhing and entwined. He bore his weight with his arms, and she felt him then, fully aroused, against her thigh. The strain of that self-control was apparent in the muscles bunching in his back. Why was he holding back? She wanted him like she’d never wanted anyone else. Couldn’t he tell? Then there was hot breath and a voice, deep and gruff, in her ear. “We probably should stop right here if you don’t want things to go any further.”
“Like hells we’re going to stop.” Gasping, she shook her head at him, her lips tingling, her hands greedy. “If you can’t tell I want more, Sureblood… If you can’t tell I want you—”
His mouth silenced her—but not on her lips. He’d suckled a nipple into his mouth, teasing and hot. A sigh slipped out of her, her back arching with the gentle, erotic tugs of his lips, the rasp of his tongue, until he moved lower, tracing a trail of fire all the way to between her legs.
She choked back a moan of surprise as he started pleasuring her. She wasn’t a shy girl, but no one had ever done such a thing to her. Bloody hells. “Dake…” The skill of speech seemed to evaporate. She writhed at his touch, gasping as he found the places of highest sensation. Then suddenly his lips were back on hers, kissing her deeply, while his wicked hand remained at work.
He kept at it until her body went taut and convulsed, and she moaned his name into his mouth.
Only then did he break off the kiss to grin down at her. “It seemed you quite liked that, Blue girl.”
“Aye, a little.”
“Only a little, eh?”
“A lot. Oh, gods.” She let her head fall back as she laughed breathlessly, throbbing with aftershocks of pleasure.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” he said. “I know something else you’re gonna like.” He rolled onto his back, pulling her with him. Then, without missing a beat, he was inside her.
Pleasure coursed through her body, head to toe, as he thrust deep. Words were soon forgotten as he set his mind to making ever-so-sweet love to her. Before she knew it, that breathless feeling came over her yet again. Their hands clasped, fingers squeezing tight, they rocked together there by the side of the tub until at long last their passion was finally spent.
Their sated bodies melted together as one. Not wanting to let him go, Val closed her fists in his wet hair. His braids were as thick as ropes in her hands. The thigh she’d thrown over his hips trembled as she lay there marveling at what just happened.
With Ayl, it all had been over so quickly. She’d secretly wondered if it was her fault he’d run off to Despa’s bed. She wouldn’t wonder anymore. It wasn’t her; it was him.
“What was that about?” Dake asked, lifting his head. “You tensed up. What are you thinking about?”
She levered up on an elbow, her chin propped on her palm as she gazed down at him. “My first lover. And my only, until you.”
“Hmmph. A lover shouldn’t be on your mind when you’re with me.” Dark brows lowered over his eyes like storm clouds over the sea in August.
“Don’t worry. He compares mightily unfavorably. He was nothing like you. Not then, not now. Not ever.”
He wrapped the end of her dangling braid around his finger, bringing it to his lips, pausing to kiss her hair, then her mouth, before pulling away. “Ayl,” he said. “The one whose thoughts you say are different from the truth.”
“We’re not engaged, but he wants to be, and not because he loves me. He’s extremely ambitious. He knows my brother Sethen is weak. He sees me as a stepping stone to power in the clan.” She bit off the rest, wondering if she should be revealing the intimacies of clan politics to a Sureblood.
“I know about social climbers, Val. Any woman who comes around lately brings dreams of being the clan captain’s wife.”
“Are any of them raiders like me?” Despite hardly knowing Dake, and certainly having no claims on him, she couldn’t help feeling a twinge of jealousy envisioning him with other women.
“None of them are anything like you.” He drew the end of her braid across his upper lip, inhaling her scent. “They’re just camp girls.”
“Ayl thinks I’d transform into one somehow, if we married. But a clan captain’s wife is supposed to be content staying home by the hearth fires, tending to his babes. Not me. I’m a raider. I won’t be tied down like that.”
“Until the day comes that you have no choice.”
She peered down at his sudden seriousness. “There’s always a choice.”
“I used to think the same thing myself. There was a time I hadn’t a care in the world.” His tone turned wistful. “I’d go out a-raiding every chance I got, taking my pleasure wherever I could find it. Having the best bloody time of my life—like you are, Val. Then one day my father, Tomark, didn’t return.”
Everything changed that day; she could see it in those eyes that suddenly belonged to someone much older than D
ake’s actual years. Someone who saw her as still very innocent about life.
“But you do what you have to do, Val. You shoulder the responsibility. My life didn’t turn out how I expected, but I’d never walk away from it. My people depend on me.”
Sympathy swelled in her heart for the tragedy of Tomark’s death. “I can’t imagine going through what you have,” she whispered.
He shrugged. “All I’m saying is that I never wanted to be tied down either, and it happened. You never know what life’s going to hand out.”
“A dark thought,” she murmured.
“Not necessarily. Life hands out the good as well as the bad.” His expression grew soft then. “No one says you can’t end up happy even if life didn’t give you what you expected. I sure never expected you, Blue girl.”
“Or I you, Sureblood,” she said, her smile just as tender.
“Dake,” he corrected.
“Or, as some call you, the cocky upstart bastard.”
He laughed. “I’m surprised I’m not called worse.”
“Sometimes you are. But maybe you’re the man who can finally stir things up enough to change them. For good. You and my father. The way it is between the clans isn’t good. We need a change.”
“Well, we’re here, aren’t we? Making love. That’s a good start, and definitely a change.”
Here, and not there—the village. She was playing in the baths only because she wasn’t patrolling the perimeter on guard duty. Was her father asleep by now, or still out carousing? “I should go back,” she said, suddenly guilty. “To check on things.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
VAL JOLTED AWAKE FROM an unintentional doze and found herself spooned by Dake’s body. They lay curled up on their clothes they had used for a mattress. What woke her? Instinct or a sound?
Never argue with your gut. When skill can’t carry you and your luck runs out, your gut keeps you alive.
She lay still, ears straining in the darkness trying to hear music or drunken laughter or even the barking and yipping of camp dogs. There was only the soft drumming of the rain and the steady sound of Dake’s breathing.
He came half-awake and drew her to his chest. “Don’t go yet,” he murmured into her hair that held the scent of him and what they’d done. She cuddled closer, not wanting to leave the shelter of his arms.
Then—a shout, and the answering bark of the dogs. She flew upright. Dake jolted up next to her. Another shout, more voices. The dogs barked steadily and excitedly now.
“Something’s wrong,” she said and jumped to her feet, pulling on her clothes.
Dake threw open the door to the bathhouse to listen. Stark naked, his hair thrown around his neck and shoulders, his powerful muscles tensed into battle stance as he peered into the night. A woman’s cry rang out. It was the kind of wail that signified someone had died.
Val swung her focus to Dake as dread chilled her to the core. For the fraction of a second that their gazes connected, she knew she’d transmitted her sense of urgency.
“I’ll get dressed,” he said simply.
Then they were off, racing along the same path on which they’d enjoyed a romantic stroll hours earlier. Val’s braid streamed behind her as their boots splashed through the mud. The sky had gone soft: not yet dawn and yet not still night.
The camp dogs were howling now. People were yelling.
Dake’s raiders intercepted him. With one last frantic glance between them, Val ran on ahead, alone.
Ayl found her first. He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Sethen’s dead.”
“What?”
“There was an accident in the Channels. He didn’t make it out. The ship is a total loss.”
“No…no…”
He gripped her shoulders. “It’s been confirmed.”
Shock, disbelief, then frozen acceptance. Many of her clansmen surrounded them. They looked horrified for the clan, and for her. “Where’s Conn?” she gritted out. “Where’s Sashya?”
“Conn’s taken ill.”
She wrenched out of Ayl’s grip and ran home. Reeking of moonshine, Grizz met her at the door. “It’s not lookin’ too good, girl.”
“Is he injured? Is it his heart?” Conn had dismissed the symptoms for so long, refusing medical advice.
“The doctors are trying to figure it out. We haven’t told him about Sethen yet. Let him think all’s well.”
“He’ll be angry when he finds out.”
“Aye, then let him,” Grizz said. “I volunteer to be kicked from one end of this village to the other, as long as he gets out of bed to do it.”
Val ran to her father’s bedside. He lay prone on his back, red-faced and shaking, surrounded by his senior raiders and Artoom’s doctors. Sashya sat on the edge of the mattress, rocking as she sobbed quietly, grasping Conn’s hand in hers.
“Mama, oh, Mama,” Val whispered, not knowing how to console her about Sethen when Conn lay in such a state.
Sashya turned. Val felt her heart clench when she met her mother’s glazed, pleading eyes. She’d lost her son. Would she now lose the love of her life?
Val stood as Grizz came closer. “We’d all passed out by the fire,” Grizz said, quiet in her ear, briefing her as if she were in charge. “Reeve found him on the ground near the toilets. Looks like he went off to take a leak and fell ill. He must have been lying there for some time.”
There, in the cold and rain. There, because Val wasn’t.
Yes, her father had been surrounded by his top raiders, men who’d protect him with their very lives, but when they got to partying, well, their good intentions wandered. She knew that, and should have been watching as another set of eyes. But no, she was too busy playing in the bathhouse with the captain of their rival clan.
If she’d been in Reeve’s place, she’d have prevented this from happening and her father would be complaining to Sashya about a hangover instead of fighting for his life. Guilt wrenched her gut, making her almost queasy.
Val stood over the bed as the doctors fussed over him and Sashya wept, the entire scene ringed by Conn’s senior raiders. The more junior raiders and the villagers looked on from the outer room and outside. Conn was sweating profusely. His clothes and hair were drenched. He was flushed bright red. His muscles twitched continuously, every single one in his body from the tiniest facial tic to the heaving bulges in his arms and legs. His skin looked like a horse’s hide kicking off flies.
“He’s having an allergic reaction to something he ate or drank,” the doctor said. “Or smoked.” She said it in a way that reminded Val she didn’t approve of Conn’s addiction. She leaned over the man, taking his vital signs. “Pulse weakening.”
“Give him something then!”
“I have. He’s not responding. I hesitate to give him more meds but…” She hesitated, then injected a serum into a swollen vein in Conn’s arm.
His appearance didn’t change. Alarm coiled inside Val, a chilly worm of dread working its way up her spine. She dropped to her knees and slid her hand over Conn’s cheek. He was burning up with fever that was surely outpacing the liquids they were pumping in him intravenously. Sashya continued to weep. Val felt numb, seeing her two parents in such a terrible state.
“Papa,” she said. “This time I’m giving you orders. You blasted well listen. You’re not going anywhere. You’re not dying, so don’t even think of it.” Live, please. He’d been the center of all their lives for so long. Of her life. She couldn’t imagine his being gone. “Do you hear me, Papa?”
He groaned and his eyelids fluttered, showing only the whites as he rolled his head toward her voice. His pupils tracked past her, then disappeared. But he saw her; she saw the flare of recognition. He knew she was there. His parched lips trembled as he tried to mumble something. His fingers squeezed hers.
Joyful, she gripped their clasped hands. Then he stiffened, wheezing out a groan and convulsed into stillness.
“No pulse!” The doctor pushed her out of the way. A hollown
ess of the magnitude Val never felt before swallowed her whole.
She stood, turned her back to the doctors swarming around Conn Blue, using their equipment to jolt his heart back to a normal rhythm. Trying again when the first and then the second attempts didn’t work.
Somehow, she knew the way it would end. Within a few moments, all was silent. Then her mother’s wail filled the room, an unearthly howl of utter despair.
“Mama. Mama, please.” Val tried to calm her to no avail. Sashya’s sobbing and crying were uncontrollable, and tore at Val’s aching heart. “Help her, please,” she told two nearby clanswomen, and they took the woman from her embrace.
Conn was gone. Gone. Disbelief boiled up. Allergic reaction? Hells. To what? Val turned to the doctor. “I want a blood test.” She barked out the order. Her father was dead, her brother was dead and her grieving mother was all but useless. Val had to step into the void.
“You think it’s foul play?” Grizz whispered, low and rumbling.
“He had a bad heart, aye. He had a lot to drink, aye. But did you see him? The way he was sweating? Shaking? That’s not normal.”
Was it poison? No one dared ask the question, but she knew they were all thinking it.
The doctor returned. “His blood tests positive for extremely high levels of alcohol, squatter’s weed…and sharken.”
“Sharken?” It didn’t make sense. “Why the hells would my father be needing rocket booster?”
“It ain’t only used for passion,” Grizz reminded her. “It gives you energy to stay awake longer. To be able to drink more.”
“Too much sharken mixed with too much squatter’s weed can cause a severe autoimmune reaction,” the doctor said.
