Then her lips parted slightly and she inhaled, drawing his heart from his chest, out his captive lips, and into her lungs. It was in that moment that he lost his grip on denial and plummeted into the warm abyss of acceptance.
The hands he’d never withdrawn from her face shifted, his fingers curling against her skull, holding her to him, and his lips began a frenzied game of seek and find, his tongue following the path of his soul, the soul she’d extracted with her indrawn breath. She welcomed him with thoughtless ardor, matching the press of his lips and the heat of his mouth with jubilance, arms clinging to his back, her body vibrating like a bow string.
Wrapped around each other, their mouths melded and mated, only to retreat and reclaim, colliding over and over again. He would not be able to let her go, he thought. He would never be free of her. The knowledge flitted past the black of his closed lids, a shooting star fierce and fleeting, only to be absorbed into his wonderment.
***
He kissed her like a starving man only to push her away like he’d had his fill. He hadn’t. He was still ravenous, still empty. She gazed at him with swollen lips and a million questions, and he felt the wildness in his eyes, in his heart, and in his head.
He strode to the door, changed his mind, and marched back toward her, deciding hunger was preferable to thirst. Being near her quenched something in him, and his chamber was a desert. “I don’t want to leave.” He folded his arms defensively, as if she would demand that he go. “I will stay . . . but I won’t . . . partake. I won’t touch you. And you won’t touch me.”
She nodded eagerly, clearly not as famished as he, and immediately pulled a thick fur from the bed and made herself a place on the floor.
“Sasha,” he barked. “You are not my servant. You are not my slave. That is your bed. You will sleep there.”
She instantly obeyed, but a smile played around her lips. She was laughing at him. He was a bloody fool. But still . . . he could not make himself leave.
He stayed with her, but he kept his word. He didn’t touch her again. Instead he stretched out on the floor, a pillow beneath his head, waiting for her to go to sleep so he wouldn’t be tempted to keep her awake.
“Do you want me to tell you a tale?” she whispered into the darkness.
“No,” he rasped. Her voice would destroy him. Shred him. He could only lay in silence, listening to her breathe.
“Will you ever kiss me again, Kjell?”
“No, Sasha,” he bit out, his palms pressing into his eyes.
“Never?” Her voice was so doubtful he wanted to laugh—damned fool—and he wondered if she saw kisses in their future. The thought drew him up short.
“Not tonight, Sasha,” he amended, and he knew he’d already begun to slip.
“Why?” she asked, and the word twisted in his belly like a sword. He thought he might bleed to death on her floor, confused and wounded, desperate to understand himself and be understood.
“Because I have loved and hated all the wrong people,” he admitted.
“And you don’t know whether to love or hate me?” she asked, her voice almost tender.
“No,” he confessed.
“I have been hated before. But I don’t know if I’ve been loved. I think . . . once . . . I must have been, because I know how to love.”
“Do you know how to hate?” he asked, his voice sharp, ricocheting through the chamber. “If you don’t know how to hate, how could you possibly know how to love?”
“I don’t have to know how to die to know how to live,’ she said simply, and he found he had no response.
“Tell me who it was that you were so wrong about,” she pressed.
He considered feigning sleep, but felt like a coward.
“I hated Queen Lark. Despised her. And I was cruel to her,” he answered.
“Why?”
“Because I loved my brother, and I was afraid she would betray him.”
“But she didn’t?”
“No. She . . . saved him.” Sasha waited silently for him to continue. “I hated Lark—who deserved none of my dislike. But I loved my father.” The sword kept turning.
“Of course you did. I love mine, and I can’t even remember him.”
Kjell half laughed, half moaned, grateful for her sweetness even as he raged against it, but her next words had him writhing again.
“And you loved a woman who loved herself above all else.”
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. And then her voice grew faint, as if she’d suddenly become drowsy but wanted to finish her thought.
“She was very beautiful. But she didn’t want to be just a woman. She wanted to be everything. She changed into a silky black cat and wrapped herself around your legs. You tried to pick her up, but she rent your clothes with her claws and made you bleed. She turned into a bird, and you tried to stay with her, but she flew too high and too fast. When you were about to give up, she called to you, and lured you closer, and you joined her on the edge of the sea. She walked into the water and became a creature from the deep, a shark with layers of teeth, and you followed her across the waters, begging her to change. She became a beautiful white horse and swam to the shores. She convinced you to climb upon her back. She said she’d carry you. But instead she changed beneath you and you were thrown to the ground.”
“I thought you didn’t see the past.” He wondered which of his men had seen fit to share their captain’s history.
“Maybe she is not the past,” she suggested, so softly he barely heard the words.
The humiliation and rage that always filled him when he thought of Ariel of Firi scalded his throat and made his heart race like he was being pursued.
“I do not love her anymore,” he whispered.
Sasha was quiet so long he thought she must have fallen asleep. He closed his eyes as well, knowing he should leave, knowing he wouldn’t. He’d spent too many nights sleeping close to her; now he didn’t want to sleep apart.
“I have seen her, Kjell,” she sighed.
He gasped and rose from the floor, approaching the bed so he could stare down at her. Her hands were curled beneath her chin, the covers pulled around her shoulders. Fiery hair spilled across the pillows and brushed her face. Her eyes were closed and she breathed deeply, lost in sleep or in visions, he couldn’t be sure.
“Where, Sasha?” he asked.
But she didn’t answer.
They left Enoch before the sun was high. Kjell’s men were bright-eyed and straight in their saddles, faking good spirits, a full night’s sleep, and strict abstinence. They knew if they wanted a repeat of the kind of freedom they’d experienced during the last two days, they would need to be convincing. Still, Kjell caught more than one man looking back at the bustling city; no one was especially eager to leave her behind.
Between the city of Enoch—named after the larger province—and the borders of Janda, there was little to see and less to do. Kjell had acquired another horse where he boarded his stallion, a pretty, brown mare with a strong back and a pleasant disposition. The horse had nuzzled his neck and eaten from his hand, and when he’d saddled and mounted her, she’d accepted his weight and direction with a docile patience he was sure would suit Sasha.
Sasha needed her own mount if he was to survive her company.
The mare didn’t cost him much—the stable master seemed eager to be rid of her—and he haggled with the stable master’s wife to fetch two riding gowns for him as part of the deal. She procured three, and he’d returned to the inn, shoved them at Sasha, and demanded that she change.
For once, he’d risen before her—he’d never actually slept—and left her chamber so he wouldn’t have to greet her when she woke.