Wilderness Untamed

by Butler, J. M.

  She did rule him. Whether he wanted it or not. Her tears cut him. Her happiness delighted him. Even now, he had wanted to slow down so that he did not miss this time they shared together, but he would have taken it slow if there was no benefit to him just to ensure it wasn't too much for her. And oddly, though he could have been selfish and focused only on his pleasure rather than vestoving and focusing on both their pleasure, he didn't want that. Going slower, showing her tenderness, all of that suddenly seemed so simple, he wasn't sure why he'd ever found it difficult to accept.

  With her, he had often been blind. And that was the hardest part about partial blindness. How did you know when you were seeing accurately? Especially when you thought you could?

  He cupped his hand along her cheek and studied her eyes. Was there still the faint sheen of iridescence? It was hard to tell in the fading light. "You're certain you haven't had any dreams beyond the one you sent me?"

  She stirred. "I can't remember. Maybe that's a sign in and of itself? I always remembered parts of my dreams before. Is there any reason I wouldn't be able to remember now?"

  He narrowed his eyes as he studied hers. That glint wasn't clear enough to confirm or deny. "The Neyeb guarded their secrets and many of their traditions well. Sinara did not explain everything to me, but from what I understand, the deanimated memories may retain some of the incantation used to bind them."

  "So it's an after effect and a protective measure?"

  "More or less. Many Neyeb healing incantations involve reducing the mind's ability to recall things during certain periods. Then when sufficient healing has been reached, they remove the limitation. Sometimes they conclude on their own."

  "So I'm just dreaming over and over about the things that happened, and to protect me, my mind is using some sort of backup spell to remove the memory."

  "More or less."

  "If the Ki Valo Nakar gets free, what then?"

  "If that happens, we handle it at the time."

  She smiled slightly. Her hand slid over his. "You don't know what to do with it."

  Had she concluded that because of the mindreading or simply because she had already learned to read him quite well? It was slightly disconcerting. The Neyeb elders had only spoken with him about the end. And briefly at that. With promises that more would be revealed as the time drew near. Strategies to protect her. To ensure he didn't have to kill her. It was the one thing he was good at. Exceptional even. But—he couldn't see doing that to her. Ever.

  "I've seen your foot," he said. "I know it's getting worse. Does it hurt you?"

  "I haven't really looked at it since before the aura storm, and I don't want to." She knotted her fist against his chest as she tucked her bare foot beneath herself. "There are other things I'd rather focus on." Her eyes still closed, she tried to smile, but it wavered. "You're going to have to cut my foot off, aren't you?"

  "Only if it's necessary. And you'll have it back and whole within a minute." He cradled her as he kissed her lightly along her neck to her forehead. "I know you're afraid."

  She tightened in his arms. Still uneasy about showing weakness, he supposed. Or perhaps struggling to cope with all that had been put upon her.

  "I am," she admitted, the words little more than a whisper. "I don't feel like I've been released from destiny at all. I don't feel like I can choose my own path really. I can't release it, and I can't find where it holds me. And there is something—I felt something similar with the mind shade. It was there and feeding on me. Tormenting me. And I feel better now that it is gone. I am healing. But—" She broke off, biting at her lip as she closed her eyes. "I have forgotten something very important. It's in my dreams. I know it. And I don't think it's just traumatic memories."

  "What makes you think it's more?"

  "Just my gut. I've been wrong about a lot of things, but something feels—it feels compelling, and I don't know how to explain it better."

  He didn't understand it, but he would find a way to resolve it. "If the cave held, we will remain there for a few days and replenish our supplies. Learn what these new beasts and strange scents are. The dragons first and foremost. Perhaps when you sleep, I can remain within your mind and watch your dreams."

  "With the understanding that I have no idea how to do that, that sounds like a good possibility." She sat up and then began climbing.

  "What are you doing?" Why did she have to move now? He'd just found the point of relaxation where he didn't want to even move for at least a little while. Savoring the moment for another five or ten minutes felt almost vital.

  She stretched out on the branch above him and leaned down. "So you decided to make your hair this way." She plucked at a strand.

  He tilted his head back to see her and frowned. What was this? Was she just trying to distract herself? The Ki Valo Nakar unnerved even him to a point. "Is there a reason you're doing this?"

  She lifted up another strand. "WroOth and AaQar keep their hair silky and fine. But you made yours coarse and thick and almost…well, it looks like it tangles easily."

  He slid to the side so that his hair slid from her hand. "Are you asking me to change it?"

  "No. There's nothing wrong with it. I'm just curious." She scooted along the branch to compensate and then scooped up a handful, grinning down at him. "You do everything on purpose it seems. And you said you chose this. So why? Do you want to be distinct from your brothers while maintaining core similarities? Or is this a representation of how you feel about yourself."

  "Not everything has a deeper meaning." He resisted smiling.

  "Hmm. Perhaps so." She studied him, her eyes half shaded and the eyeliner smudged in the creases and partially along her cheek, the wings almost entirely distorted. "But there is something here. I can—I can almost see it actually."

  "Well when you can see it, tell me what it is. It isn't anything more complicated than my choosing a style which was simple."

  "Except it isn't." She cocked her head. "You have to choose to make it that wild, and it requires more effort. Smooth fine hair is simpler because all of the fibers are moving in the same direction. They're all the same texture. AaQar said that anything with varying textures and directions takes greater care and focus or else you would wind up with it being largely uneven. But yours is just uneven enough to look more wild but not unkept. So I think you do it on purpose."

  He narrowed his eyes at her. "Did AaQar tell you to ask about this?"

  "No. He thought it was strange I should notice, but what else am I going to think about?"

  "There are perhaps thirty billion other possibilities on this world alone."

  She unfastened her braid and shook it out. "If I could use shapeshifting to change the texture of my hair, I would. I would change it to something that would not mat or tangle."

  "You could cut it."

  She shook her head, her expression almost coy. "I prefer my hair long. I buzzed it all off though because it was more functional, and…" She lifted her shoulder. "It didn't work out the way I hoped. I felt off-balance. More off-balanced than usual I suppose I should say."

  "I don't think I've ever seen a Neyeb with short hair except in very particular situations. Or Bealorn for that matter. They sometimes cut and shave certain portions and create various styles for different purposes."

  "Does it help with mindreading?"

  "Not precisely mindreading. But perhaps close to it. Awareness and tradition, I suppose. The Bealorns use braids and beads to create a sort of memory trigger and gain added knowledge though I think most of that comes from what is worked into the beads themselves. The Neyeb had similar traditions, similar but far from identical."

  She propped her head up on her hand. "Interesting."

  "Are you going to make me come up there and get you?" The branch was just out of reach.

  "Did you want me to come down?" She cut her eyes at him, the smile that twitched over her lips playful and mischievous. "I was warned that you were going to ravage me all night. We'r
e barely to sunset, and you don't have the strength to climb what? Six feet to reach me?"

  "At the moment, I am in a very pleasant sunbeam." It wasn't that he didn't want her. He did, but he also didn't want to rush this. Soon these moments would pass. They'd be making their way to Darmoste or whatever remained of it, battling whatever terrors came from that place. More crises and more attacks. More and more attacks. Always more attacks. Forever more attacks most likely.

  She dropped down beside him, her skirt catching on the branch. Still smiling, she sat beside him on the broad branch. "You don't want this to end."

  "No. And it will."

  She kissed his cheek. "I like moments like this too."

  He did as well. He pulled her close again. The sun had nearly set. A large gap in the branches provided a window of sorts. It had been a long while since the sky had been ablaze with such vivid colors. Violet and orange with streaks of magenta and turquoise with indigo merging to black. Four stars already shone like silver diamonds, and one star was a delicate but lovely pale fire-blue.

  A soft sigh escaped her full lips.

  He nudged her with his chin. "You like this in particular, don't you?"

  "I've always loved the stars and sunsets. There was a time when I used to think maybe they were Tue-Rahs or perhaps they led the way to the Tue-Rahs, and I wondered if I needed to build a space ship to get back to Reltux."

  "Legends says that there is a new phase of creation that will one day come. New worlds empty of sentient life and imminently stunning. But these will not be available only through the Tue-Rah. Instead they will be reachable through ships that sail the great expanses as well as the Tue-Rah."

  That smile tweaked up a little higher, her eyes brightening. "That was one thing I did want."

  "To fly among the stars?" Somehow he wasn't surprised.

  "I wanted to go to the ends of all the worlds, visit them all. I sometimes wonder if when we pass on whether that is something we can do. There's so much we all miss just because there's only so much that can be put into a single lifetime. It would be incredible if we got to see it all."

  Even with more than a thousand years, he had not seen all there was to be seen. That hunger in her voice to see what lay beyond matched his own. It would be a great tragedy if they never found their way off this world or found a way to restore the Tue-Rahs for many reasons. Not the least of which were all the places he could never show her.

  "I suppose it's for the best I didn't know that star flight was an actual option for reaching worlds. Uncle Joe would have had a far harder time convincing me to become a vet."

  "Do you like that you did?"

  "It was probably one of the best things I did." She chewed on her lower lip, her expression more contemplative. "Uncle Joe insisted, and I thought it was ridiculous at first. Almost a waste of time because, after all, I wasn't going to be staying. But… even so, even with everything, I'm grateful for it."

  "Animals were easier to connect to than people."

  She nodded. "Even the vicious ones. It was just… simple."

  As he continued to caress her arm and her side with languid strokes, he contemplated this. Based on what he had seen, he suspected she found the vicious ones easiest to connect to. Perhaps because she saw herself in them, though he doubted it was so much the shared viciousness as perceived loneliness. "Animals, for good or bad, only have simple reasons. Usually borne out of instinct. It's why Vawtrians must generally avoid simplicity."

  She tilted her head, frowning. "Simplicity is bad?"

  "It's one of the ways we show we are not animals. Even in our centers of influence, there were those who saw us as little more than beasts and worse. So Vawtrians often complicate and then resolve matters to demonstrate that we are not animals."

  "Do you mean that Vawtrians in general feel this way or you feel this way?"

  A hint of a smile reached his lips. "Yes." He glanced at her. "You are surprised."

  "If ever there was a person who didn't care about what others thought, I would have sworn it was you."

  He offered her a shrug similar to the one she had given him many times. "It depends on how that is defined." But he was not and never would be an animal. "How are you feeling?"

  "Good actually. A little stiff maybe. I'd like to take a bath. But if you're asking whether I'm ready to continue vestoving, yes."

  "Are you a mindreader, veskaro?" He tugged her hair lightly. He liked it when she left it down. It framed her face and made her eyes even more hypnotic.

  She laughed. "It's more that I'm aware a certain part of you hasn't relaxed since we started cuddling."

  "It won't for a long while yet unless I reform and redirect the energy."

  "And you won't be rushed."

  "No, I won't."

  She stood. "What about your brothers?"

  "What about them?"

  "We just—you wanted to talk, they left, we vestoved—"

  "Started. We aren't finished yet."

  She gave a conceding nod, that smile tugging higher at one side of her mouth. "Fine. But are they all right?"

  "They've probably settled into some other tree. The ilmas will move on in the morning. We'll meet at the cave." It amused him to hear her worry for his brothers. As if they couldn't care for themselves out in this wilderness. But it was her way of showing love. How long before she was fussing and clucking over everything? Well perhaps not everything. She did like knowing where everyone was and whether they were all right.

  Not that he minded.

  "You planned all this?" She gave him an incredulous look. "Is this something else that you all put together in a plan long before it was needed?"

  "Not exactly. But it makes the most sense." He tilted his head. "Why are you walking away from me again, veskaro?"

  She walked out on the branch, hands clasped behind her back. There was a lilting confidence about her now. He'd seen glimpses of it when they flirted. Especially when she'd asked him her two questions. She'd assumed it was the questions themselves that flustered him, but she could have asked him any two questions and they would have had the same effect so long as she had asked them that way.

  She was mesmerizing.

  "Amelia." She was going to make him move from this spot. Finding a comfortable spot on a tree branch was challenging in the best of times, and the last rays of sunlight still provided enough warmth to allow for decent basking.

  She looked at him over her shoulder. "I'm thinking."

  Dangerous. "Dare I ask about what?"

  The fading gold light accentuated the lines of her face, the curve of her cheekbones, and the shape of her lips. That brightness had returned to her eyes. "That I love you."

  Those words cut deep, but in the best way. His breath sharpened. Far more powerful though was the look in her eye and the fact that her presence had softened around him even if she'd moved, meaning she was remaining connected. Probably didn't even realize that she was.

  She took a few more paces and stared out through the branches. "And that I can't believe we're having sex in a tree and that I actually feel more relaxed than I have in—maybe ever. Unless you count when I had a concussion and a couple comminuted fractures and some really bad burns and Uncle Joe gave me valium. I think that's what it was." She sighed. "And really I don't know that I want to count that."

  "I wouldn't."

  For a long moment, she stood there, her arms down at her sides and her face turned from him. She'd gone incredibly still once more. When she did that, were her thoughts going faster or did they slow as well?

  Abruptly she crossed back and crouched in front of him. "For not going how either of us planned, this hasn't been terrible." She straddled his lap but did not let her full weight rest on him, using her knees to support herself.

  "Do you think this is too much?" She cupped her hand against his jaw, her elmis pressed to his neck. "Because we can slow down. I know you want to savor this."

  "I shouldn't be surprised that you're a v
icious tease." He swatted her hip.

  Her brows lifted up as if she hadn't expected that response. "Oh?" She lifted herself higher so that she was barely on his lap at all. "What exactly was that supposed to make me do?"

  She was still sorting out whether she liked it. The narrowing of her eyes was difficult to interpret, but the tilting of her mouth pushed toward her being either amused or at least neutral.

  He met her gaze. "You need to do something or I'll be resuming my own itinerary."

  "Resuming what? Sitting here? That isn't so terrible." She arched her brow further. "I don't think you know as much about all of this as you say."

  "Based on what you're doing, you don't know a thing. You could at least bounce."

  "I know that it is fun to tease you."

  "And you think I can't tease you? You're playing a very dangerous game, veskaro," he growled. "Especially since we haven't even begun to explore your elmis."

  "Really? They seem fairly straight forward." She held up her wrists. The edges of her elmis were flushed, orange and red tinged along the sides. "I can feel you much more clearly. Who you are as a whole. It's intimate, and I love it. But let's not pretend it's sensual."

  "Those weren't the elmis I was thinking of." He grinned and then thrust his hands against the elmis on her lower back.

  63

  Euphoria

  The moment she saw that grin, it occurred to her that she had made a mistake. The moment he touched the outer edges of her elmis, she went rigid. Every nerve felt as if it had turned itself into a beacon of awareness, all sensation now intensified.

  He worked his hands along the small of her back, always keeping at least two fingers on her elmis. "What about this, veskaro? Is this sensual?"

  She struggled to regain her composure, but it was hard with all of these sensations now demanding her attention and urging her to collapse against him and let him do whatever he wanted. "It's… interesting." It took all her strength just to let those words out.

  He smirked. "Interesting? That's the word you choose."

  "Mmmhmm." She closed her eyes, her breaths coming faster despite her best efforts. "Interesting."