22 Nights (25 page)

Merin spread her legs and stroked her, and she felt herself grow wet and even more ready than before. The ache became more intense, more centered, until she almost could not breathe. He hovered above her, blocking her view of the moon with a mass of dark curls and a face she could not see well.

And then he filled her, slowly and carefully, and Bela found a new bliss. It took a moment, it took great care, but yes, he gave and she accepted, and he fit quite well inside her.
Quite
well. He moved slowly and carefully, in and out. She gasped and grabbed at his shoulders, startled at the sensations he aroused. Her hips lifted off the ground to bring him deeper, more fully inside her.

His movements were careful and steady, thrusting and withdrawing, stroking her inner muscles until she thought she would scream. Soon his movements quickened and so did hers, and then she broke, and a scream was torn from her throat.

Pleasure; heat; passion; love. She had it all. Merin found his own release, and she felt it. She felt his shudder, and deep inside she felt the spurting release of his seed. Would it catch so soon? She did not know and did not care. Tonight there was only pleasure and love and a future of endless possibilities.

“So,” she said dreamily. “We are truly man and wife now.”

“We are,” Merin responded, his voice as strained as hers. Strained in a lovely way.

“I will take your name, I suppose,” she said, wrapping her arms around his sated, bare body. “Belavalari Merin. Bela Merin. Mrs. General Merin. I suppose I should call you Tearlach, in that case.”

“You may call me anything you wish.”

“You’re very agreeable at the moment,” she teased.

“I am.”

“So, which of us will cut this cord which binds us?” She reached for her knife, which lay with her clothes not so far away.

Merin lifted his head and looked down at her as he clamped his hand over her wrist. It was too dark for her to see his expression well, as the fire had died down considerably, but she could see that he did not smile, and Bela suffered a moment’s horror. Now that his body was satisfied, did Merin no longer want her? Did he wish the undoing of their marriage to continue? If there was no child, then the marriage could still be dissolved.

“We both gave our word that we would not cut this rope while away from the village,” he said, sounding annoyingly sensible.

“But everything has changed since we made that promise,” she argued.

“Tired of having me so close?”

Bela sighed before answering. “No, of course not.”

“We will cut the cord together,” Merin said in a firm voice, “and we will do it in front of your family so they know there was no deception this time. There will be no whispers among the clan, no speculations on how the cutting came about or which of us did the deed.”

It was true that if they descended from the mountain unbound, some would say she’d done the cutting herself in order to get what she wanted. Again. Or they’d say that there had been an accident, and poor General Merin was only making the best of a sad situation. People would talk. They always did. “I don’t care what people say.”

“I do,” Merin whispered. “I care very much.”

He did love her. In years to come he would love her more. She’d make it be so.

He didn’t move away from her, nor did he reach for their clothes. He did pull the blanket over them to catch and hold their heat. In a little while he began to kiss her again, to run his tongue along her sensitive nipples and to kiss her throat and her mouth. His tongue was lovely. His hands were bold and certain. They made love again, more slowly this time, and again Bela’s scream of pleasure shook the mountain.

 

MERIN
slept so deeply, he did not dream. He did not wake constantly to look at the woman beside him. The sky was gray with creeping morning light when he woke to find Bela’s hands on his body. Soon she was atop him, wrapped around him, riding him slowly and with an open and joyous passion that only made him love her more. There was no other woman on the earth like this one. She did not rush impatiently to the end, but rode him slowly and with an unexpected languidness, as if she did not want this to end. The day came alive, and she closed her eyes against the light. Her rhythm did not change, but remained slow and sensuous. Was she truly as flawless as he believed her to be, or did he see her through love-clouded eyes?

Soon he forgot everything but her body and his, her need and his. He closed his eyes, too, and gave everything he was over to physical sensation, to his pleasure and hers.

Bela’s wide smile, as she dropped onto him sated and happy, was catching. Merin found himself smiling as he ran his fingers through her hair, as he possessively caressed her bare hip. She did not lie there long, however, but soon jumped from him and reached for their clothes. When she ran across a piece of his clothing which had been mixed with her own, she tossed it to him.

Dressing while attached to another person wasn’t easy, but they had learned how to make it work. In a matter of moments they were fully clad, shirts to boots.

Clothed and ready to meet the day, they turned toward the small cave. They left their packs at the rugged campsite, piled atop their blankets, as they did not intend to remain in the small crevice very long and there was nothing among their supplies they were likely to need. Still, since yesterday’s attack Merin did not want to be too far from his weapon. He strapped his sword onto his back, and Bela carried Kitty.

Kitty’s grip began to glow as they neared the cave, as if the sword was anxious, as if there was something here. Something important.

Merin knelt down and peeked inside the cave, shifting his body aside so the light could enter and he could see more clearly. The cave was low, and it was impossible to tell how deep it might be, as it was shadowed at this time of day. Early afternoon would be the best time to see deep into the cave, he imagined. That was when the sunlight would shine directly inside.

But they did not need the sun. They had Kitty.

Merin moved forward on his belly. Bela and Kitty were right behind him. Just when he was certain he had reached the far end of the crevice, another segment was revealed. The small cave was much deeper than he’d thought was possible. They continued to scoot forward. Farther back, the cave actually got larger, higher, and a bit wider.

“I think this might be the wrong cave,” Bela said nervously. “The one where Clyn found Kitty was not this deep, I’m sure of it.”

Who could be sure of anything where Kitty was concerned?

Finally, Merin saw the end of the cave. Kitty’s grip glowed brightly, and when her illumination hit the rear wall, Merin caught a glimpse of what looked to be a crude drawing. No, not a drawing, he decided as he slipped forward and looked more closely. A carving, one that appeared to be very old.

“There’s something here,” he said as he scooted closer. Bela was right behind him; necessarily so, as they remained tied together. Not for long, perhaps, but still physically bound. “I’d like a closer look.” He moved up onto his knees. His body occasionally blocked the light, and without the light from Kitty’s grip the images that had caught his attention disappeared completely. “Did you see these the last time you were here?” he asked, turning about to look at Bela.

“No,” she whispered. “I don’t think this is the right cave. Maybe I remembered wrong.”

“I doubt that,” Merin muttered.

Bela craned her neck to look around him. “What is it, exactly? ”

“I can’t tell.” It was frustrating. The closer he moved, the more he blocked the light. Just when he was about to make sense of the cave drawing, it disappeared. He was close enough to touch the back wall now, and yet he could see nothing. He rubbed his hand against the wall and felt nothing: no indentions in the rock, no crevices in the stone, even though he knew they were there.

Suddenly the cave was filled with brilliant light. The burst of illumination came from Kitty’s crystal, he knew, but he did not have time to dwell upon the why for long, as he became lost in the image before him.

The people in the carving were crudely drawn. There was a man with curling hair, and a woman dressed in men’s clothing. They were connected by a string from one waist to the other, and by a sword which hovered in the air between them. Merin studied the carving closely. There was discoloration around the cuts in the stone, and the carving had been dulled and softened by time. Lots of time, if his estimation was correct.

And yet . . .

“That’s
us
,” Bela said.

“I believe it is.”

“How is that possible?”

“It’s not,” he whispered.

The cave was ominously silent, as was all of Forbidden Mountain, and Merin suddenly realized how far he and Bela had traveled into the mountain to find this impossible carving. Backing out, which was their only choice, would take some time. He’d thought the situation could get no worse when Kitty’s light went out, the mountain rumbled ominously, and pebbles began to fall all around them.

SAVYN
knew it was morning because the warmth of the sun touched his face as he felt his way to the door of the hut where Trinity had attacked and blinded him. Sunlight came through the fallen side of the shelter, as well as through the door. The room was warm, and would be warmer late in the day, after the sun had been shining on the roof for many hours.

He knew Lady Leyla was here because he could smell her sweet scent, he could hear the soft swish of her skirt as she moved.

In their days here he had memorized the dimensions of and obstacles in the very small hut enough so that he no longer tripped and fell with every other step. He could make his way from their improvised bed to the door in four steps. His hand found the rusted door handle. He had to pull hard to make the ill-fitting door move, and when he did so, he felt the wash of warm spring air on his face. There was no hint of light, however. He wished every morning for that light to be there, he prayed for a sign that he would heal and recover his sight.

Every morning he was disappointed.

His head hurt all the time, sometimes sharply, at other times dully. He always felt as if his skull was not large enough to contain what was inside it. The blow to his head had done more than draw blood and leave him senseless for a while. It had damaged him deeply, in places he could not see or even imagine. When the pain left, would his sight return? Would the pain ever leave?

In their days here Leyla had kept herself busy making the place habitable and taking care of him. She’d even shaved his face with the razor she’d found in Trinity’s supplies. They had several days’ worth of food still, thanks to the assassin’s saddlebags, so that was not a worry. Not yet. There was a creek a short walk from the hut, just inside the forest on the other side of the road, so they had water for cleaning and for drinking. He was sorry—deeply sorry—that Lady Leyla had to be the one to fetch that water, day after day.

Savyn felt as if he were caught in a vicious cycle he did not quite understand. This was not home, and yet it felt as if it could be. His sight was gone, and he kept hoping that Leyla was right and it would soon return, but so far he had been disappointed in that respect.

At night he and Leyla shared a bed of blankets—blankets taken from Trinity’s supplies—on a rough floor. The blankets were laid out in the part of the hut that was built into the hill, where the occasional rains that came at night could not touch them. The accommodations were much more common and rough than a lady of her station was accustomed to, and yet Leyla seemed to sleep well enough. He did not. It wasn’t just the pain that kept him awake. When he slept, he was plagued with dreams he should not have. Even in his waking hours, his mind went to places it should not go.

Savyn heard Leyla approaching long before she placed her soft hand on his back. “I have been thinking,” she said softly. “If someone sent Trinity to kill me, as he said, then I am not safe. I can’t return to Childers. Someone might be waiting for me there.”

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

“I’m not.” Her hand felt so comfortable against his back, so right and comforting. “That place was never home for me. Well, I won’t say never, but rarely. I was only occasionally happy there.”

“Yours was not a marriage of love,” he said, somehow knowing the words were true.

“No, it was not,” she said flatly. “I was sold to the highest bidder, bargained for as one might bargain for a fine horse.”

The wrongness of it cut to Savyn’s heart. “I did not know.”

“No one did, until now.”

His own mother had not been perfect, God rest her soul, but she would never have allowed such an offense. “Surely your family objected to such an arrangement. Your mother and father, were they living when this injustice occurred? ”

“Who do you think did the selling?” Leyla asked sharply. Then her hand rubbed against his spine, her fingers tracing and dancing there. “I’m sorry. I did not mean to lose my temper and get into a subject best left to lie. How did we get to this conversation? Oh, yes, I do not want to return to Childers.” Again her hand settled against the small of his back, where it remained still and wonderfully soft. “I could change my name and settle elsewhere, anywhere. No one there would ever have to know of my gift, and I could make my way . . . somehow.”