"Hold me closer…please. I want you to."
The words were no more than a whisper in her mother's tongue, words her mother would never have said. She thought he might not have heard them, but he did. She knew by the sudden tightening in his body, the unexpectedly clumsy movement of his hand.
Her eyes sought his so that she caught the surprise before he could bide it, and then it was followed by something else, something so fierce, so predatory that it sent a jolt through her veins. And then she could not see because he was holding her. Far too tightly. Small tingling gouts of fear surfaced in her mind. But she could not let him see her fear, for so many reasons, more than she could explain, even to herself.
She put her arms around him, even though that meant she could feel all the harshness of moving muscle and the roughness of his breathing. He held her the way you held something you would never let escape. Her breath choked in her throat and then it was all right because he was holding her just the way he had touched her before, with such lightness, all the strength underneath hidden.
But they both knew it was there.
She was afraid to see what was in his eyes now, so she buried her head in his neck. Because then she could breathe in his scent. The brightness of his hair blurred the edges of her vision and she could feel the tangled softness of it where it threaded over his skin.
It was he who had the beauty, feral and wild-edged.
It was part of her fear, but also of her longing. Her mind was already dizzied with it before his hands moved over her body, brushing aside the fullness of her skirts, finding her flesh.
She was so sensitized to his touch that her skin shivered and the tightness inside her would kill her unless he…what? She did not know. And then she did. His hand touched her again where it had before. When— She would not let memories,
any
memories, intrude. Otherwise he would reject her and she could not bear that again. She—
He whispered her name. "Alina."
Her eyes opened, startled. She did not want to see him. She did not want— His eyes were pure light. He smiled at her.
He should not have done that. She could not cope with it. There was all she had wished and all she had ever dreamed of in that smile: reassurance and the tenderness that had been in his touch and the bright traces of the wildness that found its frightening echo coiled somewhere deep inside her. And behind all that lay his strength.
She could not move. Her breath hurt her throat. She wondered if he could see all the confusion that lived in her eyes, the fear. And…the desire. Because all the time her body burned and her blood pulsed like a madwoman's.
"Rest your head against my shoulder the way you did before. That is all you have to do."
She let him draw her to him, half sitting, leaning against the bank, so that the scent of crushed grass and the sound of the clear water touched her. Her head rested against the golden threads of his hair and her heart beat and her blood raced and she ached, ached where he touched her. She did not want him to stop. Some instinct told her she had gone past the point where she herself could stop.
"What will you do?" Her breath came in small snatches, not enough for the wild beating of her heart. "Will you—"
"No. I promised you the pleasure. That is all there will be. It is all I can give you."
Her throat tightened and she wanted to hold him the way she had before but she could not. He was not hers. She could see his hand, covering her, broad, deep bronze against the whiteness of her thigh. She could feel the warm weight of it.
"What must I do?"
"Trust me. Trust what I will do."
The brightness of his eyes was more than she could bear. She had broken every possibility of trust. She turned her head away, her lashes hiding her shame.
She felt his breath against her skin. It was very warm. It was full of life and the strength grounded in the fierce virile body that touched her, in his mind. Yet what she felt seemed overlain by despair. The noise of the running water seemed suddenly too loud and she had to strain to catch his words when he spoke, even though his mouth was against her hair.
"Then if there is naught else, trust only this moment,
Alina. It is all that exists now. The past and the future have their own claims but they cannot touch this moment."
"No…" But the noise of the stream cut off her words as though it had its own voice, as though she should be able to understand what it said, but she could not. Her need was too great and his hand was moving against her flesh.
It was like nothing she had ever experienced. His touch brought to life with a blinding intensity all the fierce, tightly coiled expectation he had made her feel, heightening the arousal of her senses, making her body pulse and dizzy with the rush of blood through her veins.
He could make her burn. The fire that lived in him had taken its place inside her. The touch of his hand was like a brand on her skin. The broad tips of his fingers slid across her swollen flesh, scorched inside her, not deep this time, but tasting her heat, the aching unexpected moistness inside her. Touching and withdrawing in a rhythm that was calculated to send her mad. Frantic.
The fingers withdrew and she was mad then, not from fear of him or the mysterious power he might take away from her, but from the possibility of the loss of him.
His arm tightened round her, holding her still because she was clawing at him, and his fingers found some part of her that must hold the secret of all that he did, the secret of all that she had not known. Be-cause as his fingers, slick and heated with her own moistness, glided across her skin every sensation that she had, every maddening sense that he had aroused in her, became centred on that smooth touch.
Her body moved in a rhythm that matched his in a wild and primitive surge. She was lost, beyond thought or fear or any constraint, beyond any control that she had. But he knew; he knew just how to touch her so that all the sensations gathered together and then disintegrated in light. And the shock was that she felt joy, deep and abiding and totally bound up in him, and all the fierce, shining pleasure it was possible to believe in.
She was crying. The sound of it cut through him. Her dark head was buried in his shoulder. He could see the rapid rise and fall of her side.
The last thing he could take was her tears.
"Alina—"
"Do not let me go." That was all she said, just as before. So he held her while his heart beat as it did in the rush of battle and the blood still ran like unslaked fire in his veins. He fought to master his own breath, to control muscle and sinew and the desire in his mind that was one step from utter madness.
All he knew was that he could not place that burden on her. It was not fit, the depths of what he felt for her. There was too much pain in it and it was too absolute. It was not what she could want, not what he had wished to show her. He wanted her to see only the light.
She moved, stirring against his overheated body. Her finely curved softness brushed against engorged hardened flesh, sending a jolt of desire through him that was barbaric. He stilled her body, stopping her maddening inadvertent touching. Control, with her, was a matchless trial. Yet he still kept his arms around her because it was the only thing she had asked of him.
Her slight weight moved again, curving round him in a movement as blatantly sensual as it was naive. She had not the slightest consciousness of what she did. She was so easy to wound and yet so dangerously set in purpose. He still could not think on what she had done after she had left him and what might have happened to her.
She was moving against him with small sounds of desperation and he gave in and held that delicate slender body as it was meant to be held. And then because that was no longer enough he took her again with his hands and his mouth until she shuddered against him and cried out for the release his skill could give her. All that he had…
"Let me know you in the same way."
The words came out of the fever dream of her nearness and her wild secret heat and the searing touch of her body.
"Nay, that is not what—"
She moved herself against him, just as she had before, taking control past bearing, and this time it was not inadvertence. She knew what she did.
But yet she did not.
He trapped her gaze. Her eyes held his. But their directness was an act of will. He could see it because he could read anyone's eyes before battle and weigh the exact measure of their determination. And the exact measure of their fear.
"No. There is no need. That was not part of our bargain."
"Yes. It was. Always. Together."
"
No
." The word was violent. Beyond what was permissible. But he could not help that Because the long-dead bargain she referred to was beyond even the limits of pain.
He saw the finely held balance in her eyes change, darkening their deep brown depths to blackness, and the regret for that burned with all the other regrets. Too many to count.
"Leave it, Alina. Let me take you back now. Let us keep at least what we have."
'Wo." Her word was equally strong and he realized that the balance had turned the other way. That what he saw in the darkness of her eyes was not fear, but the determination that had sent her four hundred miles south into a land she did not know.
"Please." She hated saying that. She would not unless constrained. Yet the fear that lapped at the edges of the impossible determination in her eyes seemed not of him, but of being bereft. Of being alone if he left her. Her hands clutched at him in a wrenching mixture of her determination and her fears.
"I will always keep what I have. What you have shown me that I did not know. Your gift. But I need the other half of it. I need to know that— Will you give me that much?"
She asked something impossible. If she had not mattered to him, there would have been no more than he had promised for her: naught but the pleasure.
But she was the measure of all that his life had been and all that it would be. She asked more than he could give.
He sought for the words. Her hand touched the heavy gilded buckle at his hips. He saw that her fingers were unsteady. He saw that the fear still held equal measure with her determination. He knew the shadows that lay at the back of her mind. Because he could see so much, his mind made the only choice there was.
She could not get the buckle undone, so that he had to do it for her. His hands brushed hers aside, unfastened the jewelled clasp, removed all that he wore, quite slowly because he could remember the look in her eyes when she had tried to prepare a bath for him. She watched him. Every move that he made.
He could have killed that dangerous self-absorbed braggart, her father, for the look in her eyes.
He glanced away before she saw the anger, but the low sunlight reflecting off the water dazzled him. The muscles of his sword arm tightened, trained reflex mirroring instinct, as though in response to danger, as though the blade with the elk-sedge rune were in his hand and the power of death in it. His skin shivered like a presage of the future. But the future had no existence in this glade. He would not allow it.
He held out his hand to Alina. She took it without hesitation and then she laid her head against his shoulder as she had before, which made the breath choke off in his throat because he could not bear the full measure of her trust.
She did no more, as though she needed time to gather her courage. Her fingers tangled in the thin band of linen strapped round his chest.
"I could kill you for doing that to me. For letting me think that the arrow had found its mark."
That was so like Alina, confounding him with her words, unexpected, yet always so very much to the point. He could feel the laughter wake inside him and the echo of the joy that had been there when he had first known her. If only that joy could have survived. If it could lighten her heart now.
"The arrow did find its mark," he said. "You should see the size of the dent it made between my shoulders." He pitched his voice deep with indignation so that for a moment she was caught by it. But only for a moment. Her head assumed its most infuriating tilt and her hair spread in night waves across the heat of his skin.
"Empty boaster. You mean the dent in the meshed steel you were wearing."
"Steel? That was a mere token. You did not see what really saved my hide."
"What?"
"Over there." He raised her head so she could see the dark shape beside his corselet. His hands slid deep in her hair, feeling the hidden silk warmth other neck.
"That?" she said dubiously. "I thought it was leaf mould."
"Leaf mould? That is Duda's leather jerkin." He surveyed the dark mound. "I have his word on it."
"And you wore it?"
"It was a gift."
"A rare gift."
The weight of that kind of gift pressed.
"Aye." Nothing showed in his voice. For this moment, there would only be the light. He shrugged, as though that would push the weight aside. The searing heat of Alina's body moved with him.
"Duda assured me it was fail proof. Or was that foolproof? It was one or the other."
She considered this while her arm slid round his rib cage for balance and she must have been able to feel the parched unevenness of his breath.
"Then I must be persuaded by Duda's superior knowledge. How many patches does it have?"
"One less than it needs right now. But he says there is a lot of wear left in it. Providing people have the wit to look after it properly." The feel of her against his bared skin, the knowledge of the discreetly full curves he had just loved were enough to drive him out of his senses. "It might be repairable. Were you keen on sewing?"
The maddening tilt of her head intensified. So that the heat in his blood would take all. He could not let it.
"Only gold work."
"Shame. I cannot really see Duda in gold thread."
The suppressed laughter vibrated through her body, through his. Except it was more than laughter. He saw her eyes. Just as her hand moved. It landed in the hollow of his neck, in the wild mess of his hair where it meshed with the smoothness of hers.