Chapter 33
HIS ARMS TIGHTENED around her. Kye heard the hammering of his heart beneath her ear.
“You cannot change either,” she said when she could speak past the knot in her throat.
“What?”
She pulled back, looked up at him. “You cannot treat me any differently. I am still a warrior, and I won’t be treated as less.”
“Kye—”
“Your word, Drake.”
“Do not use that name. Even here.”
“Fine,” she agreed, but she was not deterred. “I must have your word. I am still your third in command, and I will take what missions I’m suited for, as always.”
“Or?” he said, his voice tight at her ultimatum.
“Or we do not take the next step.”
He went impossibly still. His arms were still around her, and hers around him, but they were as frozen as the winter snow above the Edge.
“The . . . next step?” he finally said.
Uncertainly suddenly bubbled up inside her. “Or perhaps you do not want it? Do not want . . . me?”
She heard him suck in a breath, hard and fast. “Dear Eos, Kye, how could you ever think that?”
“Then why have you not—”
“It was not right,” he said flatly. “To take that step when you did not know. Besides, I knew it was the Raider you wanted. Not . . . me.”
She took a step back. He let her go. “Would you like to know what has driven me mad?”
“I’m not sure.”
“It was the fact that although I loved the Raider, I still loved Drake Davorin. Despite it all, I still loved him, and I could not resolve the conflict, even in my mind.” She heard him suck in a breath. “When I was with the Raider, I felt disloyal to Drake. When with him, I could not understand how I still cared when a man such as the Raider walked Ziem. I felt torn in two, every day.”
“I thought you hated me.”
“Never. I hated what you’d become.” She gave him a wry smile. “What I thought you’d become. A part you played all too well, I might add.”
“The Raider is just as much a façade,” he said, and it sounded like a warning.
“The trappings, yes. But the man behind the creation? No, he is true and real and brave, and the heart of this fight.”
“And you loved him . . . in spite of this.” He gestured at the scars.
“Do they reach your heart, your soul?” she asked. “For it is that I love.”
“Kye—”
“I will wait longer, if I must—” she thought of whatever strategy he was building with her map, thought of the size of it, the likely danger “—though it pains me when every day could be the last for one or both of us.”
“I—”
“And there must be no regrets, either way.”
“I wouldn’t—”
“I understand your hesitation. Truly. So I will have no hinting, no hedging, you must say it straight out. If you want this, want me, or no, you must say so. I must know that much, at least.”
He didn’t say anything. He merely stood there, looking at her. She thought she saw the faintest trace of amusement, tickling at the corners of his mouth. That mouth she wanted to kiss more than she had wanted anything that she could remember.
“Well?” she demanded.
“I was waiting to see if you’d finished this time,” he said mildly. She’d been right about the amusement, and her cheeks heated.
“If it did not matter so much—”
“I know.” It was he who interrupted her this time, but gently. “You are not a chatterer. Thank Eos.”
This time she waited, watching him, her heart hammering, her emotions knotted as if the rest of her life depended on his answer. For it did. Silence spun out for a moment that seemed an eon long to her.
But then, finally, he spoke, in a voice she’d never heard from him before. “I’ve wanted you since that day I caught Petro with you.”
That startled her. “What?”
“When I came around that corner and saw him trying to kiss you, I nearly put him on the ground. If he had not run, I think . . . no, I could not think for my mind screaming, ‘She’s mine!’”
Her pulse leapt just at hearing him say that. And then so many things were tumbling through her mind she could barely sort them out. She hadn’t been blameless that day, and she had chosen badly. At sixteen, she had been in despair that she’d had so little luck with getting the two-years-older Drake to notice her, she had wondered if any boy ever would. Even under the Coalition’s ever-tightening grip, it was the sort of thing a girl wanted to know. Especially when she was infatuated.
But she hadn’t been merely infatuated. The nine years since had proven that. Her love had never wavered.
“I . . . never knew.”
“Brander,” he said simply. “He is my best friend, and he was very protective of you. He was quite clear on what he would do to the next one he caught trying anything.”
“And that . . . kept you away?”
“Only because of our friendship, and the Coalition chaos. And then . . .”
“Your mother.”
“Yes. My life was no longer my own.”
“And then . . . the Raider.”
“Yes. After that, I had no right. I could not ask anyone to share what my life had become.”
“I would have,” she said, reaching up to touch his face. “Without hesitation.”
“I know that now. But you would have been another lever for them to use on me, if they ever found out who I was.”
“But a lever who could fight back,” she pointed out.
Something changed in his gaze then, his eyes narrowed, and a suddenly palpable heat seemed to radiate from him. “Yes. Fight with as much courage and daring and honor as any of the Sentinels, and more cleverly than most. It tore me to pieces to send you on those dangerous missions, yet I was filled with such admiration and respect when you returned successful that it only fed what already hid inside me.” He took a deep, shuddering breath and then said, “I love you, Kye.”
And there it was, the balm to her soul, the dream she’d held for nearly a decade in her trembling hands at last.
“And I you,” she whispered. “Since I was fifteen and saw you try so hard to rescue that injured hedgebeast for Eirlys.”
He looked surprised. He’d probably long forgotten that memory, but it had never left her. She realized that some would find this backward, that she admired the gentleness in him, and he the fight in her, but they each already knew the other had more than enough of both. The Raider a little too much of the fight, perhaps. But then, he thought that of her, as well.
He moved then, almost tentatively, unlike his usual confidence. It was that as much as anything that told her he was about to kiss her. And that knowledge alone had her ready before his lips even came down on hers, so that that first touch was all she needed to go up in flames.
She had once wondered if, when it happened, it would somehow be less than she had always imagined. It was not. It was more. So much more.
They went up like one of Brander’s flares, roiling, hot, churning. His mouth was hot, hard, and she wanted him to devour her even as she tasted her fill. When his tongue swept over her lips, she nearly cried out at the sweet, jolting shock it sent through her. She tasted him back, and the shudder she felt go through him only heightened her own sensations.
She had never allowed herself to think much beyond this moment, but suddenly all she knew, and everything she’d heard or imagined about this act between two people, blasted through her mind. And she wanted him in every one of those ways, and a few more they might have to invent.
When he broke the kiss, she felt bereft, and her fingers clutched at his arms. Was he going to stop, now? Her world fairly reeled at the thought.
“Not here,” he said, his voice oddly thick.
She glanced at his bed, puzzled. While narrow, it was enough, wasn’t it? True, she knew little of it other than the basics hastily explained by her mother and what she remembered from once walking in on her parents as a child, or with animals when the mist thinned as sun-season approached. Not that opportunities for her hadn’t arisen, but she had wanted no one but Drake since she was a child, and then the Coalition had arrived on Ziem and normal life and hopes vanished.
“I must work here, focus, and I would ever be thinking of us,” he said, and she understood.
“Home?” she asked, still uncertain.
He grimaced. “The twins. They hear everything.”
She knew her confusion must show. “But we’ll be quiet—”
He lowered his head then, until his lips were at her ear. “No,” he whispered, “we won’t.”
Her breath caught. At the images his words evoked, a new kind of heat rippled through her, a kind she’d never felt before, that careened around inside her until it seemed to pool somewhere low and deep. Her entire body clenched at the thought of what sounds she might draw from him, and he from her.
“Mine, then?” she suggested, marveling a little at how that that new heat seemed to settle into a hollow ache she somehow knew only one thing, only one man could fill.
“I cannot be that far away just now,” he said, sounding as if he would like nothing more than to have that privacy. He turned, grabbed up the heavy blanket from his bed, then faced her again. “This is not what you deserve, fine linens and an elegant bed—”
“It is not the setting I care about, but the man in it. And,” she added, “waiting no longer.”
She heard him say something under his breath; she wasn’t sure what except that it was heartfelt. And, she realized, his voice had taken on a rough, husky note similar to what he’d put on as the Raider. Only then did she realized she’d missed it, that gravelly sound. Only now it held an undertone that sent a shiver through her, an undertone she’d never heard from him before. And she realized she wasn’t the only one who had unleashed long held-back feelings.
And then he took her arm and led her to the back of his quarters, toward the screen that blocked the view of the back corner. She realized now this was where he donned the guise of the Raider, out of view. But she hadn’t realized until now it also masked the entrance to the tunnel, the passage in from the wooded side of The Sentinel. A few knew he had some second way in that brought him directly to his quarters—she thought he’d chosen that room for his quarters just for that reason—but few knew exactly what it was or where it came out.
She’d grown used to the need for primitive torch lights here, to save what power they had for charging weapons, yet moving down the narrow passage carved into the mountain itself with only the dancing light of the flame to show the way seemed more elemental at this moment. Perhaps because she was feeling that way.
When he stopped, and fastened the torch in a holder on the wall, she realized they were in, not a room, but a small alcove cut out of one side of the tunnel. There were a few weapons and other supplies here that she stared at for a moment. Her tactical mind had been buried by the avalanche of need she had at last unleashed, and the rush of sensation he had sent sweeping over her, so it took her a moment to realize this was a fallback position, with enough here to fight with, or bring down the tunnel if he had to.
“Tell me, Raider,” she said softly, “do you ever tire of thinking ten steps ahead of anyone else?”
He turned to her then. “Yes.”
She ached at the simple answer, one word that said so very much. She reached up and cupped his cheek, her fingertips on his skin around the scars. “Then just for now, do not.”
“Yes,” he repeated. “I want to think only of each moment, savor it, taste it, drown in it . . .”
His words, spoken again in that voice she’d never heard before this night, made her knees tremble. He kissed her again, and the flame from the torch seemed to flare, or else it was her body providing more heat than she would have thought possible.
And then they were somehow down on the floor of the alcove, the thick blanket beneath them as cushion, and she wasn’t sure at all how it had happened. Nor did she care; she cared only that he was with her, and that she at last could touch him as she had been aching to do for so, so long.
They shed clothing quickly, the urgency of limited time hovering over them. As, in fact, it always did, in more ways than just this moment. There was nothing of shyness in her for this, for she wanted to learn every inch of him, and for her that meant offering the same to him.
It was both familiar and strange. Familiar, because she knew Drake, knew him with an artist’s eye, knew the way he moved, the way his hair grew in a wave over his brow, the shape of his hands and the length of his fingers, all the things that should have made her realize long before she had. Strange because he was also the Raider, with the genuine scars he’d acquired in the fight, a new, wire-strung tension that fairly shivered through the body that was leaner, tauter than she had ever realized, and a driven spirit that had made him the leader his father could never have been.
He was a finely tuned warrior.
And then he touched her, his hands sliding over her skin, leaving trails of fiery sensation in their wake. And she could think of nothing else but the feel of him, drank in the sight of him as if he were to be the last thing she ever saw. And if that were true, it would be enough.
She felt as if her body were singing, as joyfully as one of his sister’s birds. Every nerve seemed to be interconnected, and when he touched her skin, tasted her mouth, she felt it everywhere. And then he lowered his head to her bared breast, teased the peak with his tongue, and she cried out in shock and amazement at the sensation that blasted through her.
“But we’ll be quiet.”
“No, we won’t.”
And suddenly she wanted nothing more than to wring such a sound from him as well, and her hands began to move. She traced the long, lean lines of him, the powerful muscle, the places here and there that marked him as that warrior. She lingered there, to show him that scars, real or fake, meant less than nothing to her. It was that spirit, the essence of the man, she loved, and made love to now.
He suckled her, teaching her for the first time there was a direct connection between that nipple and the deep, hidden place inside her. It was aching now, desperate for something, and she couldn’t stop herself from moaning as she twisted beneath his touch. She slid her hands over him, wanting, needing, and it didn’t matter that she didn’t know exactly what.
She heard a gasp break from him as her fingers brushed the silken skin of his distended shaft. Yes. Yes, this was what she wanted to hear from him, and her fingers curled around him, stroked him.
“Kye.”
It broke from him as if against his will, wrenching, guttural. And it heightened every sensation that was already driving her to madness. She squeezed gently, rubbed, her fingers memorizing the length and breadth of him. A little shiver went through her at the thought of what was to come—it didn’t seem possible.
And then his fingers were there, stroking near the entrance to that hollow, aching place. She vaguely registered surprise that his fingers slid easily, that she was slick, wet.
Ready. It hit her then, that her body had readied itself for this, that it didn’t matter what she did or didn’t know, her body knew that it was this man it had been waiting for.
She stroked him again, and he went rigid in her arms.
“You’re certain?” His breath was hot, stirring against her ear. “For in ten seconds there may be no turning back.”
“I’ve been waiting,” she said, “for ten years.”
He traced the curve of her ear with his tongue, sending a new kind of shiver through her. She could not be still as he moved down her body, wanted to scream at him to hurry, could he not see that she was going to die if he did not ease this ache? And then he was there, his erect flesh sliding into her with startling ease. Too soon, he stopped, and she shifted beneath him, wordlessly begging for more.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he ground out, his voice a tight, tense thing.
She’d nearly forgotten that, and cared nothing. A bit of pain seemed little enough to pay for the easing of this impossible need. She slid her hands down to this hips, used his own body as leverage to lift herself sharply upward.
A sharp groan broke from him as the barrier within her gave. The pain was sharp, tearing, but quick. He hesitated even then, until she whispered, “Please.”
He drove forward. Her breath left her in a rush at the sensation of being stretched, filled. It felt so right that she cried out again. And then he was moving, his every stroke pushing, driving, until she was clutching at him desperately. She hovered on the edge of something, some wondrous thing that she somehow knew would make everything, simply everything vividly clear, why she was here, in this place and time, in this moment. Why she was alive.
He drove hard and deep, and growled out an oath she rarely heard from him, as if it were too much to hold back.
And then he said her name, in a cry that sounded as desperate as she felt. The sound of it was like a new, unexpected kind of caress, and sent her soaring over the edge in an explosion that she thought would consume them both, and she didn’t care. Cared about nothing but having him at last, and having lived long enough to experience this.
“WE’LL BE MISSED,” she whispered.
He let out a long breath, as close to a sigh as the Raider would allow. For he knew she was right, and these stolen moments were ticking away too quickly.
“Yes.”
“Do you care? If they know?”
“Only in that it might hurt those who are separated from those they love, some forever.”
“I would have expected no less,” she said softly.
She snuggled up against him. He had pulled a layer of the blanket over them, for this passage never truly got warm. But between them, they had generated enough heat to sear him to the core.
He had known, in those rare moments when his guard was down enough to allow the thoughts to creep in, that mating with Kye would be something beyond anything he’d ever experienced.
He hadn’t known it would change him, would shift not just his thoughts but his very core. That he would become a different man, simply because now he knew he’d been missing a part of himself that only she could give him.
He knew he had made his life more difficult, that he had added yet another layer of strain and worry. But what he had gained so surpassed all that that it was barely worth thinking about. He would be afraid for her, yes, but this joy that she was finally and ever his overwhelmed even that.
Her hand slipped downward over his chest, to the raised scar that ran along his ribs. That was a souvenir of the first raid, before Brander had fashioned the lightweight, flexible armor they used now. He had no doubts now that she had meant what she’d said, that the scars, be they genuine or assumed, did not repel her. Had she not caressed every one of them, both with her fingers and later her mouth?
A shudder went through him at the memory.
“Mmm,” she murmured, and slid her hand lower.
He sucked in a breath, his belly tightening in response as his body surged to readiness with a swiftness that made the next breath near to impossible. Her fingers curled around him, her thumb creeping up to rub over the swollen tip, and what air he had left shot out of him in a gasp.
“It does not seem possible that we fit,” she whispered.
He could tell her a thing or two about how well they fit, what it felt like to be buried in her tight, welcoming flesh, but he lacked the air to do it.
Her hand slid lower yet, cupping him, and his hips jerked involuntarily, pressing himself into her palm. “Kye.” It came out through clenched teeth.
“Yes.”
It was both acknowledgment and answer and assent in one, and he surrendered all efforts at control. Soon enough, he would have to don the garb and the weight of command once more, but for now, in this moment, he would steal one more time the glorious wonder they had found.