“Lé,” Raj cried sharply.
“Godsdammit.” With a grunt of frustration, Lejo stood up. “As soon as I get it quiet in my hands, it spills out.”
“Hold still,” Trueblood mouthed, but no sound came out.
“Settle down,” Raj said, holding his brother from behind.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s just who you are. Stop struggling.”
“Why is it taking so long?”
Raj’s chin moved back and forth across Lejo’s crown. “Because between us, you’re the better man.”
Lejo’s face twisted, finally filling with something that wasn’t despair. “Oh, fuck off, Raj,” he said, and all at once, Trueblood’s throat eased up and his chest relaxed. He fell back in the chair cushions, exhaling long.
“There,” he said. “Stay right there.”
“He will.” Raj had his brother in an arm lock. “I love you.”
Lejo’s tear-filled eyes flashed hard as he sucked his teeth and bucked off the circle of arms. “You’re so full of shit, I don’t know how I can love you.”
“Holy horses, you meant that,” Trueblood said, laughing.
“Shut up.”
Trueblood blinked as he swiveled his gaze to the extreme side, where Lejo’s aura now crouched. Glowering, but contained. “You know, anger might be the trick, Lé. I and Raj have to piss you off more.”
“Try it,” Lejo said, stomping through the terrace doors to the balcony.
A polite rattle of knuckles at the open door. “Is this a lovers’ quarrel or may I interrupt?”
The man in the doorway looked to be in his forties. His short hair was an iron mix of gray, white and silver. Beneath dark eyebrows, a mint-green gaze looked Trueblood slowly up and down.
A beat of silence as a sudden shyness trapped Trueblood’s tongue to the roof of his mouth. His preoccupation with Naria rolled its eyes, insisting it was quite busy right now and had no time to wonder why this man was looking at him that way. And hope he wouldn’t stop.
“Gods,” Raj muttered, and stepped into the awkward silence. “I’m Raj Ĝemelos. The lad sulking outside is my brother, Lejo. This piece of sculpture is Kepten Trueblood. Take your pick, but I’m probably your best shot at good conversation.”
“Alas,” the man said, “I’m here for the statue.”
He was tall for a human, the crown of his head on a level with Trueblood’s chin. His long frame packed with muscle and both forearms tattooed from wrist to elbow with feathers.
“I’m called Belmiro,” he said, one eyebrow and his upper lip arching.
Trueblood managed to pry his mouth open and extend a hand. “Pelippé. Village idiot.”
“Queen Naria wishes the idiot’s presence. Have you made a will?”
Trueblood turned to Raj. “I leave everything to you. Lé gets nothing.”
Raj put a hand on his heart and gave a little bow. “I’ll endeavor to keep him from pissing on your tomb but make no promises.”
“I need friends like you two.” Belmiro motioned to the door. “Shall we, Kepten?”
Trueblood hesitated, looking at the balcony where Lejo paced.
“No, don’t say goodbye,” Raj said. “It’ll piss him off even more. Maybe give you an extra hour.” He backhanded Trueblood’s ass. “To your death, sailor.”
“You’re looking well,” Belmiro said as they headed down the long corridor. “Better than when I first saw you.”
“When was that?”
“While you were being carried off the ship.” His head shook slowly. “Pardon my Altynese, but you scared the shit out of us.”
“So I’m told.”
“I’m sorry about your father.”
“Thank you.”
“He was a legend of the world. I still can’t take in he’s gone, so I won’t pretend to know how it must be for you.”
“I’m still fitting a lot of things back together. I don’t really feel I’m where I’m supposed to be. Or that I’m ready for what’s next.”
“If it’s any consolation, it felt like the world was holding its breath while you were recovering. So while you’re doubting yourself, don’t doubt that a lot of people love you, Kepten Trueblood.”
“My friends call me Pé.”
Belmiro smiled. “We just met.”
“And what you said consoled me. So we’re friends.”
They rounded a sharp corner and nearly collided with Fen il-Kheir.
Because tonight couldn’t be weird enough.
“Héjo,” Belmiro said.
“Salu, Bel. Kepten.”
“Fen.”
A glance went around the trio before Fen said, “Where are you off to?”
Belmiro tilted his head toward Trueblood. “Leading the lamb to the slaughter.”
“I take back the friend thing,” Trueblood said.
Another beat of silence.
“Pardon us?” Belmiro said.
Fen stepped aside. “Enjoy your evening.”
Walking on, Trueblood could feel the kheiron’s hard stare on his shoulder blades. Reproving and…disappointed?
What the hell does he care what I do with my time?
And why did he care if Fen cared?
Out of her armor, bathed and gowned and looking every inch a woman, Naria still retained an edge of danger. This kernel of fear within arousal was a new aspect of gelang for Trueblood. In the handful of nights with Lejo, he’d felt a range of things from delirium to dumb, but he’d never felt unsafe. When the bedroom door closed and Naria wound arms lightly around his waist, Trueblood was instantly hard, yet his insides yapped like a provoked watchdog.
I hardly know her, he thought, as her hand wandered to the open V of his shirt. Her eyebrows furrowed as she studied the strange scar around his heart.
“Can I touch it?” she asked, and when he nodded, she reached a gentle finger. “Strange,” she said, tilting her head this way and that. “Dead-on, it looks like an ordinary burn. But if I look sideways, out the corner of my eye, it almost…sparkles.”
“I noticed that, too.”
“You don’t remember what happened?”
“No.” He relaxed into both her touch and her curiosity.
“It’s silvery,” she said. “Almost like a kheiron’s wing marks.” Now her palm flattened against the thud of his heart. The coil of nerves around his stomach and chest loosened, letting him realize he was only afraid of disappointing her.
“You’re shaking,” she said.
“I’m a little nervous.”
“A little?”
“A lot.”
“Have you ever done this before?”
“I’ve done some of this before. But not with a woman.”
Her chin rose and fell and her fingers slid soft along his neck. “I see.”
He closed his eyes, all of him prickling and clenched, hard and melting. His teeth poised over the shiny, tight skin of an apple.
“I have two questions,” he said.
“I love questions.”
“Can I call you Naria while we’re doing this?”
“Please do.”
“And if I’m terrible at it, you won’t throw me in jail?”
She shook her head. Not a trace of teasing was in her face and for that Trueblood was grateful.
Her hands slipped beneath his shirt, then slid it up over his head. His skin drew up in thousands of pinpoints and he inhaled sharp when the pads of Naria’s thumbs traced each of his nipples. A sound he’d never made in his life fell out of his throat when her tongue followed. He tentatively touched the neckline of her gown. The women he lived with wore shirts and breeches. This kind of clothing was a mystery to him.
“You’ll need to help me with this,” he said, figuring
the truth was best. “And maybe some other things.”
Smiling, Naria turned around, drawing her hair aside. Over her shoulder, she told him what to do with loops and buttons and laces. Naked, she took his hands and showed him what to do with her.
The lush weight of her breasts was a revelation, as was the way her nipples changed shape in his mouth. The geography of her body’s planes and curves invited a lifetime of study. Bolder now, he picked her up, wanting her face-to-face with his height.
“Strong,” she murmured, before her open mouth came into his. Her limbs wound around him like vines. The curves of her bottom melded perfectly to his hands. He couldn’t believe none of the pages in Abrakam’s book talked about the secret, satin skin behind a woman’s knees, or what it felt like when a woman who’d been raised in the saddle got her legs around your waist. Their grip didn’t ease up a minute, not even when he eased their tangled bodies down onto the bed.
“What do you like?” she said.
“Come on top of me.” He wanted to recreate the gelang picture he’d pored over so many hours and see if he was right about it.
Naria rose up, planting a knee on either side of him. Her hands pressed down on his collarbones and as he guessed, all her weight on him didn’t hurt. His hardness slid like magic into her body and he was right about that, too.
As for the soft, wet, squeezing heat, no wonder the books had nothing to say about it. No words existed.
“Good?” she whispered.
He nodded, caught up tight in the pages of this story.
“You can go harder,” she said, curving over him and licking his neck. “Come on. Let me feel you.”
He went harder, holding her damp waist and moving her on him. One moment he craned to watch, not wanting to miss a second of this miraculous dance, the next he was limp in the pillows, eyes rolling in his head.
“Pé,” she whispered above him. “Pé, don’t stop.”
His name in her gasp was astonishing. The curtain of her hair swung side to side, then flew back as her throat arched to the ceiling. She slid along the slick length of him, her nails bit into his skin and she kept sing-songing, “Don’t stop.”
The encouragement socked him straight in his tender ego. He got harder. Hotter. He rolled over, crushed her under him and Gods, when a woman had you wrapped in her arms, the secrets of the universe were yours for the taking. When her legs were over your elbows, when her hair was in your fingers, when her mouth sucked on your tongue, when her eyes flashed wanton and wicked as she whispered you were terrible at this and she’d jail your ass if you dared stop…
This, he thought. This is gelang.
Sparkles at his periphery when he came into the queen, rocking hard in the cradle of her thighs and pouring like a river into her bucking, heaving body. Her nails in his shoulders, her heels in his back, she squeezed him empty, wrung him out dry. Noises he’d never made before came out of his chest and throat. They dissolved into laughing gasps as he fell off his elbows and smothered the last moans in the pillows.
“Holy Helos, you suck,” Naria said when their limbs stopped shaking.
He rolled off her, laughing through heaving breaths. “That was awful.”
“Gods, I love when I’m right.”
She went almost immediately to sleep and Trueblood wasn’t far behind, giving some last fleeting thoughts to the business of gelang before slipping into the twinkling peace behind his eyelids. He woke soon after, his heart aching and the watchdog snarling in his gut. An overwhelming sense of his spiritual supply lines being stretched.
He moved over on the mattress and put a hand on the back of Naria’s neck.
“I have to go,” he whispered when she stirred. “The twins need me.”
He expected protest but her hand rose and the fingers gave a brief flutter. “‘Night, Pé,” she said, and was asleep again.
He collected his clothes from the floor, dressed and found his way through the dark, quiet corridors to his room.
“I’m sorry,” Lejo said as Trueblood slipped into bed. “I held out as long as I could.”
“It’s all right.” He nestled his back against Raj and gathered Lejo’s head to his scarred chest.
“Have a good time?” Lejo said.
“Mmhm.”
“What was she like?”
Trueblood’s fingertips closed Lejo’s eyelids. “She’d jail me if I told you.”
Most kheirons shift into humos to sleep and sleep in a bed. It’s far more practical and comfortable than bedding down on a floor pallet as a horse. Especially if a kheiron has overnight company.
Fen il-Kheir had no bed in his chamber. His pallet was wide, soft and sumptuous, and he never shared it.
He lay in the dark, open-eyed and staring at nothing, his fingertips playing with the moonstone that pierced his eyebrow. Such a little unassuming rock with so much power. He had no idea what he was doing when he put the tiny stone into Belmiro’s hand. Belmiro had no idea what he was doing when he kept it.
They were young.
They were in love.
I’ll wait for you.
Fen supposed it was a lingering trace of youthful nostalgia that kept his ears and eyes open to Belmiro’s whereabouts. He didn’t want Bel in his life, but it didn’t mean he hated the man.
Piecing together gossip with his own inquiries, Fen followed Bel as he worked his way from the pleasure houses in Alondra to private clients in Valtourel. Somehow he caught Naria Nyland’s attention at a time when she needed a strong male figure in her life.
A year into her reign, Naria was negotiating the annexation of Sanpago from Minosaros. The war-torn, patriarchal culture narrowed its eyes at the independent, outspoken and unmarried queen of Nyland. Astute and ever-practical, Naria made Belmiro her official consort. A role somewhere between bodyguard and fiancé.
Whether or not sex was involved, Belmiro played his part to perfection. After the treaties were signed, he became a permanent fixture in Naria’s retinue. When she was in residence at Valtourel, Belmiro lived at the palace, in a suite of rooms reserved for him. When the queen was abroad, Belmiro lived and worked in the city, the latter with the utmost discretion.
He was thirty-six now. The dark, unruly hair of his youth was short, smart and invaded with gray and silver. An air of unpredictable danger in his tall, fit and tattooed physique. Mystery in his estrangement from the kheiron herd. Unquestionably easy on the eyes of Valtourel, which followed wherever he went. Society snubbed him, even as it wanted him.
I don’t want you anymore, Fen thought, rubbing his moonstone between thumb and forefinger. But I remember you.
You’re one of the few things I remember from the time of Tehvan.
Back when things were simple.
Gods, how simple. How utterly guileless and transparent first love was. He and Belmiro were so innocent and trusting in their feelings, they declared them at once.
“Come stay in my room,” Bel said, the night before the legions left. “Sleep with me in my bed. I want to wake up and see you before I leave.”
Behind locked doors and dimmed lamps, they shifted into humos and lay down together as men. So fearless in their heated need of each other, it was hard to say if they had no idea what they were doing, or if they knew exactly what they were doing.
If equos was the most honest form a kheiron can take, then humos was the most vulnerable. Succumbing to human desire left you open to attack. Making human love brought the dual drives of pleasure and procreation together, exposed between two legs that couldn’t outrun danger as fast as four. Passion in humos was a hundred times more intense than kheiros because the arousal was rooted in fear. A fear that could make some kheirons go a happy lifetime without knowledge of humos intimacy.
Cocooned under the bedclothes with Belmiro, Tehvan il-Kheir realized he was doing something his own father never
had dared. Holding Belmiro’s naked, two-legged trust, he understood what it meant to be at someone’s mercy. In their power.
“I love you, don’t be afraid,” Bel whispered, though his teeth were chattering.
Shaking just as badly, Fen whispered back, “Don’t be afraid, I love you.”
Humos tangled with humos, they went at it all night, with the inexhaustible desire of youth. Piling brick on top of stone on top of wood, making love into a ramshackle, slap-dash fortress that would make an architect faint, yet it had its own kind of immutable beauty. It was theirs.
“Wait for me,” Belmiro said in the morning. “My humos belongs to you. Promise me yours.”
“I promise.”
Bel rolled onto him, sliding and rubbing and rutting them into one last frenzy. “Wait for me, Tehvan. Don’t do this with anyone else while I’m gone.”
He was fierce and wild and dire and Tehvan ate it up. He promised to wait. But he failed. He was young, greedy and impatiently in love, and he followed the legions to Sudenlo. Belmiro was horrified, then livid. He insisted Tehvan go immediately home. Tehvan had to be dramatic about it, so he gave Belmiro his moonstone and said, “I’ll wait for you on two legs.” Then he left the compound and walked straight into an ambush.
He spent the next two years in humos, doing this with more anyone elses than he could count.
Fen il-Kheir let go his moonstone and sighed. The brief, tragic affair was long ago. It belonged to another life and another name.
But I remember it.
I remember the weight of your trust in my hands.
I remember being in the circle of your arms and wanting for nothing.
It was the last good thing I felt before everything changed.
You were the last great friend of my life. I never let anyone that close to me again.
He got up and went to the windows. On the other side of the courtyard, the palace slept. Fen couldn’t see Naria’s balcony, but he could imagine her tangled up with Trueblood. Their hands full. Their needs non-existent.
The Voyages of Trueblood Cay Page 16