She climbed up into the circle of his arm, then folded her knees under her to raise her face to his again. His kisses slowed, as if tasting her lips, then, startlingly, tasting in truth, his tongue slipping inside her mouth. Odd, but nice, she decided, and earnestly tried to do it back. His hand wound in her hair, undid her ribbon, and let her curls fall down to her shoulders.
How did people get rid of their clothes, at times like these? Sunny had merely lifted her skirts and shoved down her drawers; so had the malice, come to think.
“Sh, now, what dark thought went past just now?” Dag chided. “Be here. With me.”
“How did you know what I thought?” she said, trying not to be unnerved.
“I don’t. I read grounds, not minds, Spark. Sometimes, all groundsense does is give you more to be confused about.” His hand hesitated on the top button of her dress. “May I?”
“Please,” she said, relieved of a procedural worry. Of course Dag would know how to do this. She had only to watch and copy.
He undid a few more fastenings, gently pulled down one sleeve, and kissed her bared shoulder. She gathered her courage and went after the buttons of his shirt. Mutual confidence established, things went faster after that, cloth tumbling to the floor over the side of the bed. The last thing he undid, after a hesitation and a glance at her from under his lashes, was his arm harness, unbuckling the straps around his lower arm and above his elbow, and setting it on the table. His hand rubbed the red marks left by the leather. For him, she realized dimly, it was a greater gesture of vulnerability and trust than removing his trousers had just been.
“Light,” Dag muttered, hesitating. “Light? Farmers are supposed to like it dark, I’ve heard.”
“Leave it on,” Fawn whispered, and he smiled and lay back. When all that height was laid out flat, it stretched a long way. His bed was not as narrow as hers in the next room, but still he filled it from corner to corner. She felt like an explorer facing a mountain range that crossed her whole horizon. “I want to look at you.”
“I’m no rose, Spark.”
“Maybe not. But you make my eyes happy.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled up enchantingly at that, and she had to stretch up and kiss them. Skin slid on skin for the length of her body. His muscles were long and tapering, and the skin of his torso was unevenly tanned where his shirts had been on or off, paler still below his waist along his lean flank.
A
faint dusting of dark hair across his chest narrowed and thickened, going down in a vee below his belly. Her fingers twined in it, brushing with and against the grain. So, with his odd Lakewalker senses, what more of her did he touch?
She swallowed, and dared to say, “You said you could tell.”
“Hm?” His hand spiraled around her breast, and how could such a soft caress make it suddenly ache so sweetly?
“The time of the month a woman can get a child, you said you could tell.” Or wait, no, was that only Lakewalker ladies? “A beautiful pattern in her ground, you said.” Yes, and she’d believed Sunny, hadn’t she, on a piece of bed lore that, if not a mean lie, had turned out to be a costly untruth, and Sunny’s tale had seemed a lot less unlikely than this. A shiver of unease, Am I being stupid again… ? was interrupted when Dag propped himself up on his left elbow and looked at her with a serious smile.
His hand traced her belly, crossing the malice marks there that had turned to thin black scabs. “You’re not at risk tonight, Spark. But I should be right terrified to try to make love to you that way so soon after your injuries.
You’re so dainty, and I’m, um, well, there are other things I’d very much like to show you.”
She risked a peek down, but her eye caught on the parallel black lines beneath his beautiful hand, and a flash of sorrow and guilt shook her. Would she ever be able to lie down with anyone without these cascades of unwelcome memory washing through her? And then she wondered if Dag—with, it seemed, so many more accumulated memories—had a similar problem.
“Sh,” he soothed, and his thumb crossed her lips, though she had not spoken.
“Reach for lightness, bright Spark. You do not betray your sorrow to set it aside for an hour. It’ll be waiting patiently for you to pick it up again on the other side.”
“How long?”
“Time wears grief smooth like a river stone. The weight will always be there, but it’ll stop scraping you raw at the slightest touch. But you have to let the time flow by; you can’t rush it. We wear our hair knotted for a year for our losses, and it is not too long a while.”
She reached up and ran her hand through his dark tousle, petting and winding it through her fingers. Gratified fingers. She gave a lock a little tug. “So what was this supposed to mean?”
“Shaved for head lice?” he offered, breaking the bleakness as she giggled, no doubt his intent.
“Go on, you did not either have head lice!”
“Not lately. They’re another story, but I have better things to do with my lips right now…” He began kissing his way down her body, and she wondered what magic was in his tongue, not just for his kisses and how they seemed to lay trails of cool fire across her skin, but for how, with his words, he seemed to lift stones from her heart.
Her breath caught as his tongue reached the tip of her breast and did exhilarating things there. Sunny had merely pinched her through her dress, and, and blight Sunny for haunting her head like this, now. Dag’s hand drifted up, his thumb caressing her forehead, then he sat up.
“Roll over,” he murmured. “Let give you a back rub. Think I can bring your body and ground into better tune.”
“Do you—if you want—”
“I won’t say, trust me. I will say, try me,” he whispered into her curls.
“Try me.”
For a one-handed man, he did this awfully well, she thought muzzily a few minutes later, her face pressed into the pillow. Memory seemed to melt out of her brain altogether. The bed creaked as he moved off it briefly, and she opened one eye, don’t let him get away, but he returned in a moment. A slight gurgle, a cool splash pooling on the inward curve of her back, the scent of chamomile and clover…
“Oh, you got some of that nice oil.” She thought a moment. “When?”
“Seven days ago.”
She muffled a snicker.
“Hey, a patroller should be prepared for any emergency.”
“Is this an emergency?”
“Just give me a bit more time, Spark, and we’ll see… Besides, it’s good for my hand, which tends to get rough. You don’t want hangnails catching in tender places, trust me on that.”
The oil did change the texture of his touch as he worked his way smoothly down to her toes, turned her over, and started back up.
Hand. Soon supplemented with tongue, in very tender and surprising places indeed. His touch was like silk, there, there, there? ah! She jerked in surprise, but eased back. So, this was making love. It was all very nice, but it seemed a bit one-sided.
“Shouldn’t it be your turn?” she asked anxiously.
“Not yet,” he said, rather muffled. “ ‘M pretty happy where I am. And your ground is flowing almost right, now. Let me, let me just…”
Minutes flew. Something was swirling through her, like some astonishingly sweet emergency. His touch grew firmer, swifter, surer. Her eyes closed, her breath came faster, and her spine began to arch. Then her breath caught, and she went rigid, silent, openmouthed, as the sensation burst from her, climbing up to white out her brain, to rush like a tide to her fingers and toes, and ebb.
Her back eased, and she lay shaking and amazed. “Oh.” When she could, she raised her head and stared down over her body, strange new landscape that it had become. Dag was up on one elbow, watching her in return, eyes black and bright, with a grin on his face bordering on smug.