Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (28 page)

“And you? Who waits for you?”
Kiss
her
.

Surprise widened her eyes. “No one waits for
me. I am not for any man,” she said as if the fact was self-evident
and inviolate.

“What of Morgan ab Kynan?” The question was
hard to ask, but he would know.

“Morgan?” Her eyes widened even further, and
so help him God, he saw her ears twitch. “What sayeth you of
Morgan?” The angels themselves had never sounded so innocent.

He was not fooled. “I say if you think to
look for him in the time weir, ’tis death you’ll find, not
love.”

Her face paled in the golden light curving
down the tower wall. “You know naught of what you speak.”

“I know more than you think and would have
you hear me out,” he said, growing earnest. He mounted a stair
between them, bringing them on a level, face-to-face. “The path is
not easily trod, Llynya. The light blinds your eyes and skitters
across your skin. Ofttimes it sears in a screaming bolt. Thunder
roars in the Weir Gate, and the air is so heavy, it near bursts
your lungs to breathe it. Even if you can bear all of that, there
are still the winds to contend with—fierce and sudden, coming at
crosscurrents from all quarters, a destroying tempest that could
rip a man in two. Verily, I tell you, all of love is not worth such
a journey.”

“I am stronger than you think,” she said, but
in truth sounded no more convinced than he.

“Even if you survived the descent, there is
no surety of what you would find.” Frustration edged his voice.
“The weir changes all. Naught goes in that comes out the same.”

“The stripe in your hair?”

“Aye, and this.” He lifted his arm and pulled
his sleeve up to reveal the pinkish bronze skin that ran along the
inside of his forearm. He had not planned to show her the scars,
but the loss of vanity was a small price to pay if it dissuaded her
from her course.

Delicate fingers smoothed across the welted
skin. “Does it hurt?”

“No longer, except when—” He stopped himself,
and her gaze rose to meet his.

“Except when?” she prompted.

He shrugged and gave a negligible shake of
his head.

She returned her attention to his arm, her
fingers sliding off the scar to unmarked skin and back again. “
’Tis warmer,” she said, looking up again, a question in her
voice.

“The heat of its making returns
sometimes.”

“Like last night?”

He hesitated only a moment before admitting
the truth. “Aye.”

She pushed his sleeve farther up, past his
elbow to the curve of his bicep. The scar continued. “How far does
it reach?”

“From my skull to the soles of my feet.”

In disbelief she lifted her gaze to his, then
without preamble pushed aside the torn corner of his tunic. The
scar arced across his shoulder. With hands gentler than he
remembered, she followed the faintly metallic trail up his neck and
behind his ear to where it aligned itself with the copper strands
in his hair. When she reached for the hem of his tunic, though, he
restrained her by grasping her wrist. Vanity might have fallen, but
he would still have his pride. Her exploration, however gentle, had
its consequences, and he would not have her know that her slightest
touch was enough to rouse him.

“You’ll not find the love you had, Llynya.”
His voice was rough as he felt himself teetering on the edge of an
abyss, made vulnerable by her scent and her touch and the sight of
her close enough to kiss.

Her gaze slid away from him. “ ’Twas not love
I lost when Morgan fell, but honor.”

Honor? Confused, he let his hand fall back to
his side. With the release, she turned up the stairs, taking the
steps two at a time.

When the curve of the tower took her from
sight, he scrambled after her. “Honor? You would die for honor?”
Any joy he’d felt at knowing she was not pining away for love had
been shocked out of him by the rest of her admission.

“There is worse than death to fear,” she
retorted.

He swore, a crude word she should not know,
though the startled look she cast over her shoulder told him she
did. ’Twas true what she said about death. He knew it well enough,
but she should not. He should have kissed her when the thought had
come to him, for now all he wanted to do was shake her.

They made the first landing with its open
door spilling light into the shadows and kept on up the stairs.
Moira’s drying room was on the top floor. He’d been there a few
times when the older woman had sent him to fetch something for her.
The second landing was dark, the door to the topmost solar closed.
Someone had strewn hyssop on the floor, and the pale scent of
oranges rose up from their footsteps as they crossed to the door.
Llynya reached for the latch, but he covered her hand with his,
keeping the door closed.

“Honor?” he asked. “What honor?” Then a
thought struck him, and his hand tightened on hers. “Did Morgan
dishonor you? Is it vengeance you seek?” He would go after the
Thief himself if that was the truth.

“Nay. He kissed me, true, but there was no
dishonor in it, only a certain . . . ah, I don’t know . . .
sweetness.”

Jealousy, as pure and galling as anything
he’d ever felt, pierced his heart. Morgan had kissed her.

“Then where was honor lost?”

“Morgan was in my keeping, twice by
Rhuddlan’s orders. I should have been by his side to block the
Boar’s final blow.”

“You did well to survive,” he told her
vehemently. “No one holds you responsible for what happened to
Morgan.”

“I need no one to tell me where my
responsibility lies.” Her chin lifted. “I am Yr Is-ddwfn. What
passes for Quicken-tree honor will not suffice for me.”

Arrogant, stubborn wench. “Does Rhuddlan know
the high regard in which you hold him?” he asked, straining to hold
his own anger at bay. “Or the lengths to which you’ll let your
foolishness lead you?”

“Nay, and if he did, he would banish me from
Merioneth, which suits neither my purpose nor yours.”

His purpose. Had she divined it then?
Impossible, unless she meant his purpose with her. Aye, and she did
aright. He could tell by the color suffusing her face. She knew he
wanted her—and she was not running in the opposite direction.

Nay, she was not like the other girls in
Merioneth. She was not afraid to be alone with him, yet of them
all, she had more reason to be afraid. For that alone her
banishment would not suit him, to have her exiled from the land
where he was held by visions of war and dragons. He feared his days
would be devoid of all light if there was not even a chance of
coming across her in the bailey.

The realization brought him no pleasure. Had
he truly become so besotted in less than a sennight? Morgan had
kissed her, and she’d thought the Thief’s kiss sweet. Now she dared
him, Mychael, to have her banished if he would, and lose whatever
chance he might have for a kiss himself.

Was she so sure he wouldn’t do it? Was he so
easily read?

Aye, he probably was, and that thought gave
him no pleasure either. Only one thing could give him pleasure.

Damn. He stood before her, and his
frustration grew until there was no help for it. He bent his head
and pressed his mouth to hers, and a sorrier excuse for a kiss he
couldn’t have imagined: lips chilled by the dank cold of the tower,
an unyielding body, harsh words lingering in the air. It was a
hopeless kiss—yet she did not pull away. She took his clumsy kiss
and by the sheer grace of her acceptance turned it into more than
it was. Her sweet breath blew against his skin, softly, so softly,
and the tension ebbed out of him. He stepped closer, so her body
brushed against his, and sighed at the relief given him by the
light pressure. She opened her mouth, and he fell headlong into
desire.

Shadana
. . .
shadana
. . .
Llynya had wondered about his kiss since Crai Force, and now she
knew. ’Twas a thing of heat and power. The change in his body
temperature had been almost instantaneous with the touching of
their mouths. The muscles in his arms, at first relaxed, were
tightening beneath her hands, gathering strength as he moved
closer. With his last step, she felt the hard warmth of his body
pressed fully against her. ’Twas unlike anything she’d ever
known.

And the taste of him. Gods. She’d opened her
mouth and been flooded with a tidal wave of sensations. His tongue
had swept across hers and she’d been drenched with an aching
sweetness. He was all instinct and no finesse, devouring where she
would savor, filling her with an overwhelming number of scents,
each of them telling of a need beyond her understanding. Yet she
felt it too, the inexpressible longing inherent in his body’s
movements. The difference between them, she quickly discovered, was
in the level of daring. Where she would have balked, he pressed
forward, inexorably pushing her farther than even an ounce of
common sense would have allowed her to go. His hands slid from one
forbidden caress to the next, with her own deflecting moves a half
step behind, until she’d been touched everywhere. Or so she
thought.

When his hand slid under her overtunic and
above her hose to bare leg, the kiss changed. His groan echoed in
her mouth, and ’twas all she could do to keep her feet beneath her.
His hand, so warm on top of her clothes, was like a brand beneath
them.

“Mychael,” she gasped, pulling her mouth from
his.

He did naught but take the opportunity to
kiss her cheek, and her jaw, and her brow, murmuring her name while
his other hand was busy at her waist. Her belt slid clattering to
the floor, and she knew she was lost.

In a trice, his hand was under her shirt, his
palm cupping her breast. Her clothes pushed up, her laces coming
undone, she was falling at breakneck speed into uncharted
territory.

Into heaven. Mychael was awash in wonder.
He’d never in his life held anything as delicate and alive as the
woman in his arms. The taste of lavender filled his mouth and
infused his senses. Her skin was soft, so soft he feared the
roughness of his hands would mark her somehow. Thus he was careful,
molding her breast with a gentle palm, feeling the slight weight
and falling deeper in love just for having touched her.

She smelled of flowers, hot flowers, like a
riot of them blooming under a fiery summer sun. The perfumed
redolence rose from her skin; he could taste it on her. Elusive
violets and gillyflowers, sweet woodruff and peonies, lavender and
lilies mingling together in an intoxicating scent. It went to his
head like wine, swirling through reason and longing and mixing one
with the other until he knew not where the first left off and the
other began. Her heart raced beneath his hand, echoing his pulse
where his wrist lay against her skin. He’d never been close enough
to feel another’s heartbeat, yet he was not nearly close enough to
her.

Not nearly.

He pressed himself against her, his chest to
her breast, and felt her melt into him, the soft giving way of a
woman to a man. He pressed lower, a slow thrust of his hips; she
gasped, and liquid fire ran into his loins. The scent of flowers
deepened around him, making it harder to think beyond the fierce,
running edge of desire. He thrust again and heard her breath catch
in her throat. Again, and her fingers clutched at his
shoulders.

He slid his hand farther up her leg, pulling
her tighter against him, reveling in the silky slide of her skin,
until he reached the apex of her thighs and felt her braies. Softer
than Quicken-tree cloth they were, yet not as soft as what lay
beneath, verily at his fingertips.

The intimate awareness washed through him,
dragging a rutting heat in its wake. He was burned by it and worked
feverishly at his own belt and braies to free himself. She moved to
stop him, another protest of “No” on her lips, and in the confusion
of hands and rough linen, her fingers found him—and did not pull
away.

’Twas enough.

With no more movement on her part, he was
stripped of all vanity and pride, his life’s seed spurting out of
him in equal measures of ecstasy and shame. The last left him, and
she slipped from his embrace with a shocked expulsion of breath.
Snatching her belt up from the floor, she disappeared down the
tower stairs on silent, soft-booted feet. Naught but the sound of
his own ragged breath echoed back from the surrounding stone.

Groaning, he leaned against the door, his
head held in his hands. Humiliation seeped into his every pore even
as his body pulsed with the exquisite aftermath of being brought to
climax by her hand. Gods! The crudeness of what he’d done appalled
him, as well as his total lack of control. She’d touched him and a
floodgate had opened, releasing every pent-up longing he’d ever
had. He had not known it could happen so suddenly, so intensely, or
be triggered by no more than a single touch.

Her touch.

He swore through gritted teeth and hit the
door. He’d made an utter fool of himself and had probably horrified
her beyond all forgiveness. Mayhaps his luck would improve on the
journey to Lanbarrdein and one of Tabor’s ponies would mortally
wound him. A quiet death in the caves was no more than he
deserved.

Yet for all his humiliation, the release
she’d given him had been sweet, so very sweet. And for all that
she’d gone, she’d not left him until the deed was over.

N
ia smelled the
desert long before she felt the heat of it winding down into the
caves. Her nerves were on edge, her strength and her courage
faltering from the long, hard march. She’d done her time in the
deep dark, but the Sha-shakrieg had done naught but descend from
the damson shaft, and by the third day of her capture they’d gone
deeper than she would have thought it possible to go and still
live. Even now, after two days of climbing, she was not sure if she
would survive the lingering malaise that had beset her on the steep
descent—or the memory of what she’d seen, and felt, and heard in
those far depths.