“So do I,” he told her.
He got dressed fully, pulling on a shirt and boots. The day was fine enough again that no jacket was necessary. He tied his hair back with the leather strip, and splashed his face with water from the basin.
She had braided back her hair and gathered a basket of fishing supplies from a bottom shelf. As soon as he gave her a nod, she lifted her sword and harness from the hook by the door, although she did not bother to shrug it on.
He took the basket so it would free one of her hands then he captured it with his own, lacing his fingers through hers. Giving him a gleaming, bright smile, she led him on a pleasant walk to the river.
Their route bisected a large path that was more of a small road that followed the river’s length. Now that he knew where the river was, he knew the path would lead to Adriyel, but he no longer cared to follow it. They settled in the shade of a massive oak tree.
Adriyel was the great river in the Dark Fae land. It poured hundreds of leagues through the heart of the land. The bank on the opposite side was certainly visible, but the details were obscured in the distance. It was treacherous to swim the long length from one side to the other, but every year some fools attempted it. Many were swept downstream and drowned.
Here, down a steep bank from the oak, there was an indentation with a relatively shallow pool. Smiling, she pointed down to it. “This was my favorite place in the heat of the summer, although my father never took his eyes off of me for a moment, for fear I would forget and get too close to the river’s current.”
“This must have been a great place to play as a child,” he said.
“It was. We were happy.” She lifted a shoulder. “I remember us being happy, at any rate. I’m sure he missed my mother, but she died in childbirth with me, so I never knew her. He was my only parent as a child growing up.”
That would have made losing him especially hard for her. Dark Fae could live for a very long time, but there were still accidents, war and certain diseases that could claim lives. Long, long ago, his own parents had been taken in a virulent epidemic that had swept through their home seat in the country.
She sprawled with her long legs crossed at the ankle. He braced himself against the trunk of the oak to go through a round of stretching exercises. She watched closely, and offered some suggestions. Afterward, he lay beside her on the thick, rich grass of the bank, hands laced behind his neck as they talked.
Neither bothered to reach for the fishing basket. They were too focused on each other to care. The sunlight turned the green oak leaves golden, and a fresh cool breeze blew off river. Sexual arousal and affection blanketed them together in warmth and comfort, and imbued him with a sense of wellbeing.
They both heard the voices at the same time.
Male voices, approaching in their direction.
“It must be around here somewhere,” said one. “This is the area they said. Just a bit further, maybe around that bend.”
“Well, we’ve got to continue,” said another. “There’s no going back now.”
Even as Aubrey sat up, Xanthe threw herself on him, one hand clamped over his mouth. She stared into his eyes, her own gaze sharp and steady.
“Don’t make a sound”, she told him telepathically.
He nodded as he clasped her wrist. “I understand.”
“I am going to check where they are.” She rolled off of him and to her feet in one silent, lithe movement, scooping up her sword and harness as she rose. She shrugged it on quickly, her expression as keen as the blade that settled between her shoulders. She glanced down at him and touched a finger to her lips. He nodded again, and she disappeared through the waist high grass that bordered the path.
He rolled to his feet, not nearly as gracefully as she, as his wretched back muscles threatened to seize up again. After a second’s consideration, he snatched up the fishing basket, not because the contents mattered so much as leaving it on the bank would have given away their presence. When he noticed the indentation their bodies had made in the grass, he wiped the area back and forth with one boot until the marks were gone.
By then Xanthe was back. She had drawn her sword. She gestured to him with her free hand. “Come on, we must go this way.”
She led him on a different, more difficult route than they had taken earlier, further upstream for a while before they cut back across the path, and through a tangled, overgrown thicket, until finally they arrived back at the cottage.
As soon as they stepped inside, she grabbed her wrist guards that held throwing knives and began to strap them on.
“I need to follow them and discover what they’re up to,” she said, in a rapid, quiet voice. “It’s possible their presence doesn’t have anything to do with us, but we need to know if they’re hunting you. As soon as I leave, I want you to bolt the door and the windows. Don’t answer if anyone knocks. There are the kitchen knives if you need weapons. I’ll return as fast as I can.”
“Don’t do this,” he said. He grabbed her by the shoulders.
She stared at him as if he were crazy. “I have to.”
“Then I’ll come with you.” He glared around the cottage. “Gods damn it, there’s only one sword.”
“Of course there’s only one sword. You are not yet healed enough to face another fight.”
“No one will refrain from attacking me because I’m not yet healed enough to face it,” he snapped. “I can hold my own if I have to.”
“Aubrey, listen to me.” Her face was fierce. “In this one thing there is no equity between us. There is only one person in the world like you, and there are dozens like me. You are the Chancellor. I am your guard. I swear to you, I will be back.”
Her words struck him like individual blows. He grabbed her and spun her around to face him, his fingers digging into her shoulders.
“No, you listen to me,” he said between his teeth. “I will not let you go out there alone. I will not remain tamely in this cottage and wait for you, without knowing whether or not you are all right, or if you may have been killed. There is no one else in the world like you, and I will not run the risk of losing you just after I found you. We go together or we stay here. Together. Either way, you choose, but that’s the only choice you’re going to get.”
Chapter Seven
Love
She stared up at him, mesmerized by the taut emotion that transformed his expression and clenched his long body. His hands felt hard as iron as his fingers dug into her shoulders, but she paid no attention to the discomfort. All she could do was hear the echo of his words resounding in her head.
“There is no one else in the world like you.”
“I will not run the risk of losing you just after I found you.”
He sounded—he sounded like he might—
By sheer force of will, she yanked herself back to the only thing that was relevant. She hissed, “I will not let anyone hurt you again, ever.”
He said, “You said yourself their presence probably doesn’t have anything to do with us. And if they are hunting for us, they will find the cottage soon enough.”
“Not if I find them first.” She raised her hands and tried to knock away his hold, but she refused to strike him hard, and he refused to let go of her. “If they are hunting for you—if they find the cottage, they can pin us in here.”
He shook her, not hard but tightly enough to snap her attention back to his face. “Stop reacting and think,” he said, still in that harsh-edged voice. “Nobody knows I’m here, just you, Tiago and Niniane and they would never breathe a word to anyone, yes?”
Her breath came hard. After a moment, she said, “Yes.”
Although his features had calmed somewhat, the tension had not left his body. He pushed her backward until she came up against the wall. He said softly, “So the only way anyone could possibly think to look here is through the wildest chance that either Tiago or Niniane let slip some very specific information. Yes?”
She didn’t know where
he was going with this, but she was pretty sure she didn’t like it. She snapped, “Yes.”
He pushed his body against hers and rested his forearms on the wall on either side of her head, pinning her. Then he put his forehead to hers.
If he had been an enemy, she knew exactly what she would do to get away. A knee to the groin and a hard clip over the head with both hands locked together. That would buy her enough space and time to draw her sword.
But he wasn’t the enemy. He was the dearest thing in the world to her. Even the thought of doing violence to him caused her to feel slightly queasy.
“I’m willing to take that wildest chance and stay here with you,” he said. “I am not willing to take that wildest chance and let you go alone into a situation that might be deadly for you.”
Somehow her arms ended up around his waist. She held him in a clinch. “I cannot stay safe and guard you at the same time.”
“You’re fired,” he said immediately. He lowered his head and nuzzled her.
She felt like she was nearly leaping out of her skin with so many conflicting impulses. “You can’t fire me.” Her voice was all over the place, wildly unsteady. “I don’t work for you.”
“I am close friends with your employers. You’re fired as soon as they come back.” His lips brushed her cheek. “Xanthe, stay with me.”
She took fistfuls of his shirt, feeling the broad, tight muscles underneath. “I am not willing to take the wildest chance on your safety and wellbeing either.”
“I know, darling.” He kissed the indentation at the corner of her mouth. “Everything you have done for days has been for my best good.” He lifted his head slightly. His expression had turned tender. “No one has ever cared for me like you have.”
“No one ever will.” The words escaped her; they just escaped her, barely audible and yet laying her soul wide open.
He tilted his head and covered her mouth hard with his, a strong, confident taking that pushed her head back against the wall. Her legs shook; she felt drenched with erotic shock as he deepened the kiss, pushing into her mouth with his tongue. She could barely breathe and couldn’t think. Her body’s instincts took over and she kissed him back wildly.
His hardened lips slid over hers, slick with their moisture. Her heart was pounding so that she thought it might burst from her chest. She was almost lost, almost—
But no. Decades of training asserted itself.
She yanked her mouth away and gasped, “I need to know where those men went.”
He was breathing as heavily as she was, his entire body run through with the finest tremor. He stared at her mouth, his darkened gaze sensual and compulsive. For a moment she thought he would refuse to lift his body weight from hers. Then with a grimace, he pulled back. “All right. We go together.”
She didn’t try to argue anymore—with their last fierce exchange they had catapulted each other into a strange new realm where she didn’t understand the rules. Instead she shrugged out of her harness and tried to hand her sword to him. “Take this. I’ll take the knives.”
He stared down at the sword in her hand without moving to take it. Then he gave her a quirk of a smile. “When I am up to speed, I am a perfectly good swordsman. But I am not at my best, and you have to be one of the finest in the army for Tiago to agree to you becoming one of Niniane’s guards. You keep the sword. I’ll take the knives.”
She scowled, not liking either possibility for how they divided the weapons. But she strapped the harness back on again, while he took her wrist guards with the knives. Then they slipped quietly out of the cottage, into the growing heat of the day.
Sunshine pressed down heavily, the silence broken with the occasional call from birds and the heavy drone of insects. Aubrey gestured for her to lead the way, and she took them in a wide circle that circumvented the cottage. Having found no sign of the men, they moved wider afield until they checked the path where the men had been before. Then finally they moved to the bank of the river. She was studying the bank for footprints when Aubrey nudged her gently and pointed downstream.
She glanced where he pointed. Some distance away the riverbank jutted out in a small promontory that was little more than a tangled mass of tree trunks and debris that had been swept downstream. A small barge had gotten tangled in the debris, and two men, covered in mud, were working to get it loose.
The knot of tension that had tightened her shoulders loosened.
Aubrey slipped an arm around her shoulders from behind, his forearm crossing at her collarbones. He pulled her back against him and said in her ear, “Looks like someone’s livelihood might have slipped its mooring and floated downstream. Satisfied?”
She nodded, letting her head fall back against his shoulder. After a moment, she said, “I’m not sorry for being so paranoid. You really did almost die.”
He heaved a rough sigh. “I know.”
His body felt hot and tense. Her mind was split wide open with incredulity for this blaze of fire that had leapt up between them.
“There is no one else in the world like you. I’m willing to take that wildest chance and stay here with you.”
He cupped her neck with one hand while he kissed the sensitive shell of her ear and whispered, “Let’s go home.”
Home? The sound of that word, coming from him, gave her another thrill of shock. Unable to form words, she nodded. His arm loosened and he let her go.
They made short work of the trip back to the cottage. Once there, she shrugged out of her harness and hung her sword on its hook. Aubrey gazed at her steadily while he yanked open the fastenings on the wrist guards. Her mind hazed with heat. Desire for this man was the sweetest pain she had ever known. That he might grow to want her too was beyond anything she could have dreamed of, extraordinary.
In fact it was hardly believable.
The thought drove her across the room, away from him. She wrapped her arms around her middle, chewing on her lip as she looked guiltily at the box on the fireplace mantle. His slow, measured tread came up behind her; she was so hyperaware of him, she knew to the exact moment when his hands would come down on her shoulders.
“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly.
The question burst out of her. “Do you think the gods can make us do things we wouldn’t otherwise do?”
His thumbs rubbed soothingly at her shoulder blades. “Why do you ask?”
Her body was trembling with the force of her own desire to keep silent, to take what he offered her with his hands and his mouth. But she couldn’t.
She whispered, “When Dr. Telemar—the medusa—couldn’t identify what kind of Power was in those Tarot cards, I started to wonder about those old legends about the gods putting items in the world to enact their will. Inanna’s card keeps surfacing. If the cards are hers—could they be influencing us to act in ways we might not otherwise act?”
He was silent for a long, thoughtful moment. Then he brushed her braid aside and pressed a kiss to the nape of her neck. “The chances of such a thing would be outrageously rare, you know,” he said gently. “And while the good Dr. Telemar is no doubt highly proficient at her job, she is but one physician and the world is filled with many strange and different magics.”
“I know,” she whispered.
He pulled her into his arms. “Even if we were so lucky to have an item of Inanna’s working in our lives, no, I do not believe the gods can or would make us act against our natures or inclinations. Our free will is one of the primal Powers after all. Inanna may give us the opportunity for love, but it’s our choice whether or not we take that opportunity, and love is what we make of it.”
She said in a low voice, “I just find it hard to believe that you might—you might want me.”
He turned her around and stared into her eyes. “Xanthe, you are the most beautiful surprise in my life. I hardly noticed you at first. You carry the quiet of a river with a still surface that runs very deep. I found that the more I looked at you, the more I saw—and now
the more I see of you, the more beautiful you become and the more I want you.” He paused then said deeply, “I’ve never wanted anyone the way I have grown to want you.”
Her trembling deepened as she listened to him. Overcome, she laid her hand against his lean cheek. “Me neither.”
He smiled at her, slow and intimate, as his hands drifted gently, gently to the front of her shirt. He gave her plenty of time to say something, to object or pull away, as he teased open the top button, then a second one. Her breathing quickened as she watched his long, clever fingers work the material open. When she glanced up at him, she saw that his breathing had quickened also.
Her shirt came unfastened and he pulled the edges open, gazing down at her breasts. She was slim everywhere, muscles sleek and strong under pale, smooth skin. Her breasts were high and slight, the pale pink nipples pebbling in the open air.
He touched the swelling, velvet soft skin of her breast with shaking, gentle hands, and brushed the extremely sensitive jut of one nipple with the back of his fingers. Sensation and emotion coursed through her, the small pleasure brought to an extreme by the awareness that he was the one who touched her with such care.
She looked up at his dear face, both noble and kind, and surprised an expression of vulnerability. He said, very low, “I have not been with anyone since my wife died. I felt dead inside for so long.”
Compassion wrenched her. She circled his wrists loosely with her hands. “We don’t have to do this, Aubrey, if you’re not ready.”
“Yes, we do.” His eyes blazed. “She took so much from me. I will not lose any more of my life to her. For a long time, I didn’t see how I could learn to trust someone again. Until you.”
Tears burned at the back of her eyes. “I would never hurt you. Never. I’ll kill anyone who tries.”
His clenched expression softened into a tender smile. He cupped her face and whispered, “I believe you.”
She pulled his hair loose from the tie that held it back, and the long raven strands fell about his lean face as he bent his head to kiss her. Starting out light and tender, the caress rapidly escalated until he gripped the back of her head and dug, groaning, into her open, inviting mouth.
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