Shattered (19 page)

“She suits you Nathan,” Trent said.  He wiped his hand on his pants, like touching her somehow soiled him.  “I never thought I’d condone the whores you and Jeremy frequent, but just this once it might be good for you.  I don’t like this new person you’re becoming.”

“I don’t intend to keep her long,” Nathan began, but Trent interrupted him there.

“No, you never do.  Listen to me Nathan, because I’m only going to say this once.  I’ve tolerated your insolence thus far, in private, but if you ever, ever, disrespect me like that in public then being my blood will not be enough. ”

Adara slipped back into the room just as the silence at the end of his threat was starting to grow heavy.  She hugged the peripherals of their sight, staying to the edges of the room as she worked.  Despite that Nathan’s eyes followed her.

“At least pretend you’re listening to me Nathan,” Trent said.

His arms were folded across his chest but he uncoiled them a
s Nathan turned back.  Trent’s eyes looked sunken and the wrinkles at their corners deeper than they’d been.  The rich red of his tunic made his skin seem more pale.  He was only eleven years Nathan’s senior, but he looked so much older standing there now.

“What do you want
me to do about your holdings?” Trent asked.  He sounded tired, looked tired, and Nathan couldn’t help but see his brother and not an enemy.

“How much did Perena send?”

“Four thousand.”

“A little more than half what they owed
…”  And more than what they owed this time last year, but Nathan left that thought unsaid.

Trent looked at him with more respect than he had in years.  Some of his weariness faded and one eyebrow went up in question.

“I was looking over my ledgers when you came in,” Nathan explained.  “Why did we raise the contribution price so drastically in the last two years?”

“Because we need the money,” Trent said, and waved a hand between them, like that was all the answer Nathan needed.  One spark of interest wasn’t enough to banish a decade of inaction.  Nathan had never been involved in the governing of their lands and Trent had no reason to believe he might start now.

“Listen,” Trent went on, “Order your army in and quash whatever dissidence is brewing in Perena.  Make an example out of them, burn down a village or two.  Show them that our price is better than our wrath.  I guarantee you’ll see the rest of their contribution shortly after.  And if you’re thorough enough, you may not even need to send men into the Twin Rivers.  The threat should be enough.”

“Thank you Trent,” Nathan said, and meant it.  Not for the suggestion, but because he finally realized how little he
understood his eldest brother.  “I’ll take care of this.”

Trent seemed satisfied with that, albeit a little suspicious.  He stared at Nathan a second longer before banishing his doubt with a shake of his head and turning on his heels.  Without another word he showed himself out.

Nathan took a deep breath and stared at the door.  He allowed himself to explore the thought he couldn’t complete earlier.  Robin had protected him from Denrick.  She kept him from speaking, from sharing anything of value, so that he might retain his own.  She did it to keep him alive.  And afterwards she let him rest, when she could have filled the days that followed with anguish, and he understood now that she wanted him to live.  Even then, when she had to pretend otherwise, she didn’t enjoy hurting him.

The realization grabbed at his chest and threatened to steal the breath from his lungs.  It was only the addition of a warm hand on his forearm that broke his t
houghts and brought him back.

“You can’t send an army into Perena.  Please Master Nathan.  They’re just fisherman, they’re no threat.”

Nathan blinked a few times to clear the dry sting from his eyes.  He’d been staring too long at the door without even realizing it.  Adara clung to his arm and it took him a few long seconds to piece together the words she’d just spoken.

His voice cracked but he cleared it.  He turned towards her and met the upward gaze of her shimmering blue eyes.

“They owe us money, apparently,” he began, and saw her expression fall.  Her high cheeks and her eyes dropped as she resigned the plea in her expression and looked away.  But Nathan reached up and, with his hand to her cheek, turned her face back to his.  “I have no intentions of sending my army anywhere.”

The rest of his thoughts fell silent.  Never again.  He couldn’t issue the order and sit by ignorant to the destruction it caused.  He had seen, and felt, the pain of those actions.

Adara’s shoulders lifted, and her spirits, and her face brightened all at once.  It was still so strange how she reserved nothing, and every thought and emotion she wore on her like a sign.  Nathan couldn’t help but feel a little of her happiness as his own.

“Why?” He asked.  “Are you from Perena?”

“Oh no,” she said, with a shake of her head and a soft laugh like the question was silly.  “I’m from Miro.  You can’t tell from my accent?  Jeremy says it’s all he can hear whenever I speak.” 

Her expression turned to a mock pout and she held it for a second longer, but then it left her face and her eyes went down.  She bit her lip, then remembered and released it, and all that conflict he could see on her face.  “I mean Master Jeremy…,” she corrected, and peeked up from beneath her bangs.

Nathan just laughed.  “How have you survived here so long?  You’ve managed to slight both my brothers and myself in the span of a few hours.”

“I’m sorry Master Nathan.”

He waved his hand between them and dismissed his remark as nothing, for it was just that.  He didn’t care what she called his brothers, so long as she did it in the privacy of his room.  But to tell her such would be wasted.  She’d be gone by tomorrow.

“I’m going to bed,”
he said instead, before the feelings that followed the thought of her departure could take form or name.  He turned from her, before the pull of her vivacity could tug him any near, entwine him any further.  And when he shut the bedroom door behind him he felt relief and disappointment both.

**

Clara was running from something.  Nathan could see her clearly against the backdrop of black.  Her hair was golden and it contained its own light, for there was none anywhere else.  Yet he could see her eyes darting around in fear, her head turning from side to side.  Her gentle, innocent disposition sundered by terror, tears in her eyes, shadows across her face.

Nathan stood there and did nothing.  He was so near to her that if he just reached out his arm he might save her.  But he didn’t, and she passed him by and disappeared.

The ground of his dream crumbled from beneath his feet.  He came awake in an instant and adrenaline pumped through his body.

It was dark outside his window, night still, and the candles that tossed dim shadows across his bed had barely progressed.  He couldn’t have been asleep for more than an hour and now he was wide awake.  Nightmares had been puncturing his sleep since his return, but normally it was Robin that haunted him, not Clara.

“Clara’s safe,” Nathan whispered to the room, but his words wouldn’t calm his heart so easily.  It raged in his chest and banished the prospect of sleeping again, at least for the moment.

Nathan kicked the sweat tangled sheets from around his legs and sat up on the edge of the bed.  He wiped more sweat from his brow and sighed.

He knew both girls were safe.  They’d been away when he returned, out in the country, away from the turmoil a missing prince was apt to cause.  And he wrote them that same day and sent the message by crow that night and Clara’s reply was everything he’d hoped.  They were vacationing with their nurse, seeing the land that would be theirs when they came of age, with no less than
one hundred sworn soldiers accompanying them everywhere.

Clara wrote of the people and how wonderful everyone was, and all her childlike naivety shone through in every pen stroke. 
They would be returning any day now, and perhaps that’s what caused her to visit his dreams this night.  He had to protect them, he just didn’t know from what.

He needed to get some air, clear his head, cool down. 

The door was silent on its hinges and Nathan made it two steps from the bedroom before a muffled whimper caused him to freeze.  It came from the couch, beneath the rustling of sheets and the heavier sound of Adara’s breath.  Even barely audible he knew that sound.  The nights he spent on Robin’s floor had taught him a great many things.

It was
no wonder really, Adara couldn’t have found any pleasure in what he’d done to her this afternoon.  She was entitled to it now and he wondered if he couldn’t retreat back to his bedroom before she knew he was there.

Instead his feet propelled him forward, like they had some mind of their own, and his disharmony with that decision lasted only until Adara sat upright.  H
er cheeks were flushed, even in the low light of the room. Her dress sat hiked up above her hips, her blanket shoved off into the crevice of the couch.  Guilt and alarm flashed across her face, like she’d just been caught stealing.

“Master Nathan, I was
just…why are you…”

He could see the disorganization of her thoughts as he crouched in front of her.  She shut her mouth, then opened it again, but he pressed a finger to her lips and shook his head to still
the flight of words.

Nathan slid an arm beneath her bent knees, another behind her back, and he lifted her from the co
uch as he stood.  She let out a little squeak and wrapped her arms around his neck, as if he might drop her to the floor.  But she weighed nothing and her grasp relaxed to an embrace by the time they were within his bedroom.

He put her down on the bed and lifted beneath her legs until she was on her back, her hips at the edge.  And she looked ready to accept this until
, instead of climbing atop her, he dropped to his knees.

She tried to shut her legs but his body was already between them.  He felt her squeeze around his shoulders and then relax a little.  No doubt the latter action was conscious.  She would k
now better than to fight him but he could sense her confusion now in how still she lay.

Nathan pushed back the part of her sheer gown that had fallen between her thighs.  Her pale skin enveloped the pinker flesh of her sex and all of it smooth.  In his haste earlier he hadn’t even noticed she was shaved.  He was disappointed in himself, but this wasn’t about him, and he put all of his attention back to her.

He could smell what she’d begun, what he’d interrupted, and it became the space between them.  He ran his hand over the top of her smoothed mound and her thighs seize up around him again.  It took a deep breath before she was able to relax once more.

With one finger only he traced the beauty of her sex,
his touch so light he hardly felt the flow of her skin beneath him at all.  For as many women as he’d had he never really appreciated how exquisite their arousal could be.  He wanted to explore it, he was curious.  He wanted to know how he might make her respond with only a touch, or with his lips, how she might feel tight around his fingers.

Adara let out a little whimpered as he teased the outline of her
pussy lips, as he drew an arch up and back down with his finger.  The folds of her inner layers peaked out from within.  It was no wonder they called this a flower, he thought, for it had petals that bloomed with color with the deepest at its center.

Her thighs relaxed as his fingers continued to make soft circles around her, and only when she opened herself to his touch did he go deeper.  He dipped his thumb between her parted outer lips and ran it up over her clit.  Her hips rose to chase his hand, to steal a second more of his t
ouch.  Her moan was frustrated when his fingers finally came off her, but she brought her hand to her mouth to stifle it.

He ran his thumb over her clit a second time, but this time he kept it there, changing the straight line into a slow circle.  His other fingers sprayed over her mound.  Beneath them her pulse fluttered.

She fell into the rhythm his thumb traced, elevating her hips up at the zenith of each circle, falling back against the bed at its nadir.  She hummed a little on every exhale, a hushed moan she disguised beneath her breath, and around his body she was beginning to warm.

He kissed her thigh, trailed his lips along her skin towards her center, and when he reached it he went deeper. 
He slid his tongue up between those perfect pink petals and tasted the bead of wetness within their folds.  In one long, slow stroke he traversed from the base of her opening to the tip of his thumb.  And when he lifted his thumb and replaced it with his lips she let out a whispered gasp, desperate in its need and involuntary in its birth.

Nathan pressed on her abdomen with his palm to hold her still and flat against
the bed.  He flicked the tip of her clit with his tongue and she struggle to rise up into his hand, but he pressed down, gave her something to fight against, to expel some of the more sudden pleasures into his strength until she could find a rhythm and ease into them.

He alternated between licking with the tip of his tongue only, pressing it hard into her and rolling her clit about beneath it, where she was caught half way between wanting more and trying to squirm out from beneath him, to letting long flat strokes sooth out the sharpness of too sensitive a touch.  Robin had shown him what it was to drown in a pleasure that promised no release,
how that could be a torture of its own, and he wouldn’t leave Adara on that precipice long.