He brought her to a climax before he mounted her, before he pressed his stiff, thickness against her and slid inside, possessing her.
Then they rocked together, silent except for little moans and sighs, and once, when he breathed her name against her eyebrow like some kind of promise.
She had only felt him inside her once before, when they’d been on cainlach, and then he’d been a balm to the burning—pleasant mostly because of what scant relief he’d brought her.
This was different.
There was something powerful and ancient and primordial about it, something that made her feel tied to him and tied to the earth and the cycles of the moon and the stars. When she looked at him when they were joined, she felt as if she had already memorized his features, as if his face had been etched on her soul.
It was powerful, the connection.
When he broke it, pulled himself free and spilled against her belly, she felt oddly disappointed, as if she’d been denied something, though she wasn’t sure what.
He lay against her, the sweat on their bodies cooling in the damp air of the room, which still wasn’t warm despite a fire burning in it constantly.
Their lips met, and she liked that this meant they were connected, even if his body wasn’t inside hers anymore. She wrapped her legs around him, and her arms around him. She had this odd feeling of wanting to melt into him, just wanting to dissolve together, become something else, some new thing composed of the both of them.
She kissed him fiercely until his lips began to move more slowly, until his breath grew more and more even.
When he drifted off to sleep, she lay half under him for a while.
But then she wriggled out, disengaging from him, and she pushed herself up to sit against the headboard of the bed.
Well.
In some ways, she thought it should have meant something, because this was sort of the first time. It wasn’t really the first time, but it was the first time not on cainlach, and that should mean something.
It did mean something.
She had felt that the act itself had been huge in some way she’d never truly conceived of. She’d felt close to Haid, part of Haid—Haid part of her…
But now it was over, and he was asleep, and the hugeness was… was…
I am lying to him, she thought. And if he knew, he would never have done this with me.
She should try to sleep, too.
She lay back down and pulled blankets up over both of them and tried to relax and let sleep claim her.
But perhaps because she’d slept strangely that day, sleeping in the morning and the early part of the afternoon, she couldn’t.
She lay down on the pillow and turned this way and that for the better part of an hour, but the smell in here—the dampness, the cold—it was all unbearable.
She sat up in bed and he was lying next to her. She peeled back the blankets to uncover him. He was still wearing his blazing nightshirt, though he was bare from the waist down. She eyed his soft cock, finding it intriguing, remembering touching it when it was soft before.
She also remembered trying to lift his shirt.
She licked her lips and reached out to pick up the hem of it.
She waited.
He didn’t stir.
Slowly, carefully, she began to lift it up, baring his skin beneath. She pulled the shirt all way up to his chest, and then she carefully let go of it.
It was too dark to make much out. She could see hints of his chest and his stomach, but she couldn’t figure out what it was he was hiding.
Seizing a candle from the bedside table, she lit it.
Oh.
It was a scar.
Well, of course it was a scar. What had she thought it was going to be? It was puckered and raised and knotted, an angry bit of tortured flesh, just below his rib cage.
She cringed at the sight of it. It must have been deep.
She leaned forward, bringing the candle with her.
The wax dripped down, onto his skin.
His eyes snapped open.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TRISTANNE FOUND THE woman in her bed.
When she came up for the night, ready to go to sleep, she noticed that the covers were askew, and then the woman sat up, tossing her hair back.
“Gail,” said Tristanne.
Gail wasn’t wearing any clothes, at least it didn’t look like she was. She was holding the blankets up around her chin, but her arms and shoulders were bare.
“How did you get in here?”
“You forget how we learned to climb in and out of windows together?” said Gail. “I thought you were… I would have found you sooner if I had known.”
“What are you talking about?” Tristanne backed away from the bed until she collided with a chair. It was facing the fireplace, so she didn’t sit down, just leaned against it, staring at Gail in the bed.
“Everyone said you’d gone mad,” said Gail. “They said your unnatural desires had driven you out of your head. But I thought it was me.”
“Oh, because you broke my heart and married a man?” said Tristanne. “Well, I didn’t go mad, not exactly, but it wasn’t easy. However, I’m fine now, so thanks for your concern, and can you get dressed and get out of my bed?”
“If I’d known you weren’t out of your head in some facility somewhere, I would have come to you.”
“What?” Tristanne shook her head at her. “You left me. You decided you couldn’t bear it, being with me, that our attraction to each other was evil or something, and you got married. I didn’t end things with us. You did. Why are you saying you would have come to me?”
“I regretted it,” said Gail.
Tristanne folded her arms over her chest.
“I did, and we would have been together again,” she said. “Except you were gone, and I didn’t know that you weren’t out of your head and stark raving mad. I blamed myself for that.”
“Well, I meant you to. I hoped it would hurt. You hurt me.” Tristanne glared at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I would have come to you. We would have been together.”
“You’re married.”
“So are you.”
Well, Tristanne supposed she had a point. “I heard you have children.”
“I thought…” Gail gestured with one hand. “I thought I must try to work it out of me, my attraction to women. I thought, if I really gave it a go with my husband, then maybe I’d feel something for him. And then I thought, maybe if I had his children, I’d feel something. But none of it worked. You’re the only person I’ve felt anything for, and now I’ve found you, and you’re… you’ve moved on to that woman who’s pretending to be you.”
Tristanne furrowed her brow. “What are you talking about?”
“She’s living with my brother and dressing like you, and it’s all part of some ruse. I don’t know what, but—”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Tristanne, pushing off the chair.
“Mairli Utherain.” She threw down the name like a gauntlet.
“Mairli?” said Tristanne, clenching her hands into fists.
“Yes,” said Gail.
“Pretending to be me?” said Tristanne. “But why?”
“I don’t know,” said Gail. “They wouldn’t explain it to me. She’s not there at your bidding? Because she knows you, and I can tell you know her, and I know that there’s something between you. All this time, I’ve been pining over you, and you’re out here finding someone new? How could that be?”
Tristanne turned to face the fireplace, resting her hands on the back of the chair. “Why would she go to him? She knows how I feel about Gaheris.”
“Tristanne, we are fated to be together, written in the stars. It hurts me to think that you could be with another woman besides me, but I know that I let you go, and that you must have despaired of ever having me back again. But now that I am back, you and I will be together, and you’ll get rid of that
Mairli woman.”
“She did it to hurt me. She did it as revenge. She’s spiteful and hateful, and I—” She rounded on Gail. “You’ll have to leave.”
“Leave?” said Gail. “This is our reunion. You’re happy to see me. You missed me.”
“I… I haven’t thought of you in a long time, to be honest.”
“What?” Gail let go of the covers and there were her breasts.
Tristanne tilted her head to one side, surveying them. Bigger now that Gail had given birth. Less perky, but… breasts were breasts, after all.
“I thought you would have been faithful to my memory,” said Gail. “That awful Mairli woman must have used horrible trickery on you or something.”
“Faithful to your… Gail, you haven’t been faithful to me.”
“I have!”
“You just got done talking about how much sex you had with your husband.”
“But I haven’t been with another woman.”
Tristanne sighed. “All right, well, I suppose in your mind that means something, but let me be clear. I cannot count the number of women’s legs I have spread since I left your bed. There’s nothing special about Mairli. She’s just another of my spurned conquests.” She spied a pile of clothing in one corner. “Ah! Here’s your dress.” She started for it.
“You… you’re serious.” There was something different in Gail’s tone now.
Tristanne knelt next to the pile of clothes. There was Gail’s reticule, and a piece of paper was sticking out of it, addressed to one of the gossip rags that published rumors in town. She pulled it out and unfolded it. It wasn’t sealed.
“Tristanne?” said Gail. “You really don’t care about me?”
“I did,” said Tristanne, scanning the letter and folding it back up. She shoved it back into Gail’s reticule. “But I learned a lot from that encounter. I suppose I should thank you for it. I’m not so pathetic anymore. I no longer allow people to leave me or devastate me. I keep my heart safe.” She stood up, picking up the dress. She turned around and tossed it to Gail. “Get dressed. Get out.”
Gail’s lower lip was trembling. “I thought what we had was something rare, Tristanne.”
“I never even knew you,” said Tristanne. “You don’t know what loyalty is.” The letter proved it. Gail would be happy enough to destroy her own brother. Of course, if she sent that to a gossip rag, it would also destroy Mairli.
Mairli’s precious reputation.
Well.
Mairli had obviously dug herself this pit. Let her fall in in it and let her reputation fall in is well.
Tristanne didn’t give a blaze about any of it.
SEFONI PULLED BACK, taking the candle with her. She tried to find the breath to stammer out some kind of apology, but she couldn’t seem to remember how to draw air into her lungs, let alone how to make her lips move.
Haid lifted his chin, his face twisting. “Well. Is it everything you expected?”
She still couldn’t speak. She managed to shake her head a little, back and forth.
“Get a good look, then.” He pulled his shirt up higher, baring his chest to her, and she couldn’t help but gape at him, at the swells of his muscle, at the black curls that gathered on his pectoral muscles, at his dark, beautiful skin. He nearly glistened in the candlelight. He was breathtaking.
Maybe that was why she couldn’t speak.
The scar marred him, but it didn’t take away from the effect of him.
“This is what you wanted to see, right?” said Haid, his voice like steel. “Look.”
“Did your father—”
“No,” he said with a sneer, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “I accidentally ran myself through with a sharpened spear.”
She flinched.
His voice dropped to a lethal whisper. “Of course my father did it. How do you think it happened?”
“So when you ran, you were… this—”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Sefoni, flames take you!” His voice rose in a way she’d never heard it rise.
“I-I’m sorry,” she said. Now, apparently, she could stammer that apology. “Of course I’m—”
He seized her hand, and her voice stopped. He pulled her fingers over and pressed them into the scar tissue.
She let out a little gasp at the feel of it—too smooth and slick. Her fingers slid over the knotted skin.
“That’s what you wanted,” he said. “So, now you enjoy it. Touch it, look at it. You—”
“Stop,” she said. Her voice was guttural. She was going to cry.
“How does it feel? You like your hand there?”
She realized his cock was stirring, and her eyes widened as she gaped at it.
“You want me to like it?” He gritted his teeth at her, making an awful face.
She tried to yank her hand away, but he held her fast.
“Tell me to like it,” he said, and now his voice was guttural.
“Let go of me.” Tears spilled out of her eyes.
“No, you wanted this. You had to see it, so now you’ll—”
“I lied to you. I’m not pregnant.” The words ripped out of her.
He let go of her. He was out of breath.
She sucked in a trembling breath and then let it out, and it was a sob.
“What do you mean?” He was whispering, and he was pulling on his shirt, covering himself, covering his chest, his scar, his cock, which was more than half-hard now, something that disturbed her worse than the idea of losing her virtue on cainlach. “You haven’t bled.”
“I have. Right after you left with Tristanne.”
“But the servants—”
“I hid it.”
“You…”
“I didn’t want you to know. I lied to you.” She shoved aside the blankets and got out of bed.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why would you do that?”
She went to the wardrobe, where Maisses Yeine had insisted on hanging clothes, unpacking her trunk, even though Sefoni said she didn’t need to worry with such trifles. She yanked out a nightdress.
“Sefoni.” His voice was hoarse. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
She pulled the nightdress over her head and started for the door.
“Are you going somewhere?”
She didn’t answer. She just walked.
“Where are you going to go?” he called after her. “You insisted we share a bed, so it’s not as if there’s another one made up for you somewhere.”
She walked more quickly.
“You can’t just tell me that and then run off,” he said.
She was at the door. She flung it open.
“I’m sorry about the scar, but you caught me by surprise, and I don’t let anyone look at me there, and if I frightened you, I didn’t mean it.”
Now, he was apologizing to her? Why?
“Don’t walk away from me.”
She did.
She wandered in the hallways, worried he’d come after her, and she didn’t want to face him, not then.
But he didn’t.
She found the room that had been made up for Pairce, but the bed was empty and Pairce was nowhere to be found.
Sefoni didn’t think she’d sleep, but maybe she’d lie down here for a bit, just until Pairce came up.
The moment she sank into the bed, she felt sleep come for her. Perhaps she was tireder than she’d thought.
CHAPTER TWELVE
PAIRCE WOKE UP in the circle of Cadon’s arms.
He was chuckling. “Ah, now you’re awake.”
She yawned. “Have you been watching me sleep?”
“Can’t watch you sleep if I can’t see.”
“True.” She laughed, stretching.
His palm smoothed over her hip and up her rib cage.
She sighed. “Are we going to do it this morning, then?”
His breath caught a little, and when he spoke his voice was affected. “Do you want to?”
“
Of course,” she said. “And so do you. That’s never been the problem, has it, what we want from each other?”
He sighed.
“I remember the way you felt inside me, Cadon,” she breathed. “Of course I want that again.”
They were kissing.
They were both naked, and their bodies were pressed together in the darkness, in the warmth of the bed, and she knew it would be nothing to give in.
She broke away. “It’s supposed to be slow between us.”
“We’ve failed utterly at that,” he said. “It won’t matter. The intimacies you’re allowing me, it’s as if we’re doing it, anyway.”
“No, it’s not,” she said softly. “Or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Is it because of…” He drew back. “Blazes, I spent in you before, but we never discussed the possibility of your being with child—”
“I take precautions.”
“Of course.” He settled back down.
“That displeases you, doesn’t it? Reminders of what I am? You are, even now, thinking of how skilled I am, to have gotten in your head, made you volunteer to pleasure me with your mouth—”
“I’m not thinking that.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“No, I trust you. So, let’s do it. It’ll be a declaration.”
She sat up. “The longer we talk like this, the less and less I want to do it.”
“I suppose it’s not the most arousing foreplay, this conversation,” he muttered.
“I’ll just go,” she said. “I need to wash and get new clothes and make sure someone will send down breakfast to you. We’ll walk again tomorrow night, and if you want me in your bed again… well, maybe it will just happen sort of naturally.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Do you really trust me?”
“I do.”
A pause.
He spoke again. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Listen, I don’t want you to say things like that again, because you have taken pains to say to me that it isn’t true.”
She was confused. “What are you talking about?”
“You said something about, ‘what I am,’ meaning that you were a strumpet, and you’re not.”
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