by Vela Roth
Cassia found she did not want to think of her mother or anyone else in this moment, and she did not want to say any of the sort of words she was used to speaking.
She swallowed. “I…ah…I felt our agreement…broke down at some point.”
She heard him shift in the dark, although he said nothing. His gaze wavered.
“That is, it did not feel like what we planned.”
“No?” he said softly. “What did it feel like?”
She would never, no matter how she tried, find words to answer that question. “I could not possibly describe it. I was too occupied feeling.”
Those blue eyes came swiftly toward her, and the next thing she knew, both his hands cupped her face. “I am more delighted to hear that, from you, than I can possibly say.”
He was touching her again. Standing so close. Her nose filled with his scent, a mixture of plants whose names she did not know. Layers fresh and floral, crisp and woodsy, rich and aromatic.
His hands slid downward. So gentle. Now he touched her neck, and she realized she felt no pain as she would if he had touched torn flesh. The punctures had closed, and all that remained were pinpoints on her skin that were strangely sensitive. Even her hands no longer stung. He had done all that with a single bite.
Only a bite. It was obvious he wanted more. She must leave.
“Before you go,” Lio said, “may I ask you one thing?”
“Yes,” she said in surprise. He wasn’t trying to keep her here?
“Since we seem to have left our agreement behind, may I kiss you? We have yet to know that pleasure, although your blood runs in my veins even now.”
Her pulse throbbed in her cheeks, and she shifted on her feet, tucking her legs together again. They had already gone far beyond a kiss. “I take it Hespera does not object to such activities in her sacred places.”
Lio’s laughter was soft and throaty. “Why would she, when such activities are sacred?”
Cassia reached out into the darkness. Her hands met his chest. She did not think about what lay below. She splayed her hands on his breast and slid them a little. It turned into a caress. She could feel his heart beating. His heart. Full of her blood. Pumping her blood throughout his body. A part of her was inside him.
She tilted her face upward and stepped closer. She couldn’t see his mouth, but she lifted hers for him.
His eyes descended. Down, down. He had no trouble finding her in the dark. The lips that had spent tonight on her throat now touched her own.
His mouth was warm. He began as he had on her neck, with light, gentle touches. She knew what came next. Hesitantly, she parted her lips for him.
He pressed his mouth more firmly against hers. A little rough, so very gentle. He had been telling the truth. It felt even better.
His tongue delved between her lips. Her mouth filled with heat and moisture. She tasted a metallic hint, as if she’d bitten her tongue. Her blood lingered in his mouth. But beneath that, Lio. Now she could taste him.
She tried moving her tongue inside his mouth. He began to move his lips and tongue as well and somehow turned it into a rhythm, inviting her hapless probing into his deliberate motions.
Was this what men’s mouths tasted like? Surely not. Nothing and no one could taste like Lio. He was a wine she could not name, whose flavor transformed the longer she tried it, first sweet, then heady, then so rich she wanted to moan.
His kiss was slow and leisurely and tender. A strange and unexpected warmth came over her. She could not place it. A fine feeling, a safe one… That’s what it was. Contentment.
He pulled his mouth away, and she realized they were both panting again, and she was pressed against him.
“Good night, Cassia.”
He backed away. His eyes dipped, and she realized he had bowed. Then he was gone.
The room felt so empty. He had left so abruptly.
If he hadn’t, they would still be touching. No, it was good he had left.
Cassia crossed the room and sat on the stones again, pressing her hands to her face. She would collect herself, then find her way back. The sound of the snowstorm she had long since forgotten still continued outside, soft and steady. Another good soak must surely clear her head.
Cassia’s Blood
Lio was sure he would never, as long as he lived, taste anything better than Cassia’s blood while she climaxed.
It took every bit of will he had to abandon her there in the ruins. He didn’t bother trying to walk back. He was far past that. He took himself straight to his rooms with one step and dropped his robes on the way to his bed.
He rolled onto the pallet, bracing himself on his arms. His body begged him for relief, but mad as it was, he still fought for control, unwilling to end such a night as this with a solitary release here in this empty bed.
He had tasted her first climax. What a privilege. What a drug.
He could become addicted to that taste. To the thrill of her reaching her completion in his arms, with his teeth in her neck. But Goddess help him, he might not survive it again.
Lio groaned. She had been so wet. He could still smell her arousal. He could still taste her blood.
He could feel her in his blood.
With each pump of his heart, his Gift surged through him anew. Power had become viscous joy in his veins. This was the Feast. This was Cassia.
Cassia, always so controlled, so imprisoned within herself. She had come undone. She had been wild in his arms. How easily he could imagine her here, spread out on his bed, wild beneath him.
Lio gave in and put his own hand to his body where he hungered for her touch. He bared his teeth. Self-discipline be forsaken. He could not lament any pleasure brought on by what she had given him tonight—and the promise of what they would share when next they met.
18
Days Until
SPRING EQUINOX
Touch
“Another day in the kitchens,” said Cassia. “Garlands of king’s wort, no less.”
Knight replied with a sympathetic gaze through the doorway from the shrine’s antechamber. He stretched out more comfortably on his blanket.
“What would I have done if Perita hadn’t gone out tonight and I couldn’t get away?” Cassia gave her small fire a gentle blow, stoking the little blaze with a spare branch. A handful of sparks and flame leapt up, and shadows played on the broken stones scattered about the Ritual Sanctuary. “There now. I can only hope Hespera does not object to me bringing this mortal element into her house.”
“We too once kept sacred flames burning in her temples, before fire turned on us. But sympathetic hands have lit this one tonight.”
Cassia heard him, felt him even before she glanced up to see Lio kneeling beside her. Very close beside her.
“I didn’t get the impression you were cold last night,” he said.
She smiled, blushing. “No. I just thought I might like to see you better this time.”
“My spell light was not enough?”
“It went out. It seems you were somewhat distracted.”
His gaze warmed with amusement and a great deal more she was not so used to seeing there. “Afraid there might be monsters in the dark?”
“Ha!”
He grinned, and it struck her again how much of an effort he had once made not to give her a real smile.
“I am not afraid of those fangs,” she informed him.
“I’m very, very glad to hear that.” He leaned forward, and his lips were on hers for the second time.
The kiss was swift and gentle and unstudied. An impulse. Cassia put out a hand to steady herself. It came to rest on his shoulder. His lips were firm, their motions soft, his tongue slick and warm sliding over hers. Four sizable canines pressed against her mouth. One scraped her tongue, then her lip.
Tilting her head, she adjusted her mouth on his, the better to feel his teeth. Two long, thick canines on top, two smaller ones on the bottom that were no less sharp. She ran her tongue over his top left fang, s
tudying its shape.
Lio made a startled sound in his throat. Almost a moan. Did that feel good to him? Cassia probed his top right canine with her tongue. He parted his lips wider, leaning into their kiss. Yes, he definitely liked that.
Carefully she licked his fangs, exploring each one up and down, under and behind. She felt them lengthen. The base of his fangs emerged from his gums, and it seemed his teeth grew thicker. She dared to draw her tongue over the tip of one. She felt a sharp, teasing pain and tasted blood.
Lio drew back, flushed and smiling even more.
Cassia stared. Had she done that to his fangs?
Did that mean the same thing as what happened to a male’s other parts?
His tongue darted over the fang tipped with her blood, and he swallowed. “Not afraid at all, I see.”
She looked down at her fire and applied herself to its tending again.
He cupped her face in his hand, inviting her to keep looking at him. “I take it no kiss is forbidden this time?”
She let him turn her head. “As we discussed, our agreement has rather…”
“What agreement?”
“Yes, just so.”
He kissed her again, and she sat very still, all her focus on the sensation of his lips on hers. A moment later he pulled back and eyed her fingers as if dessert had just arrived on the table ahead of dinner. She realized she had let her free hand wander down his chest.
“I take it touch is not forbidden this time, either?”
Cassia dropped her gaze, and it landed on one of his hands, which he braced on the stone beside her thigh. “It is as if you have already touched me.”
“I have.” With two fingers, he traced the curve of her neck and shoulder.
“No, I don’t mean there.” She struggled to explain. Did this even make sense to him, what she was trying to describe? She sighed and prodded the fire again.
“Cassia, you can speak freely with me. That is what we do.” He wrapped his hand around hers where she held the stick.
At his coaxing touch, she loosened her grip and let her makeshift poker fall. “I felt as if…”
He drew her hand to him. “You felt. Tell me. I would love nothing better than to hear. For what I felt was…unlike anything else I have ever experienced.”
She frowned. She would usually dismiss such words as flowery flattery. But she could tell when Lio was teasing her and when his words were heartfelt. “It was…unexpected…for you as well?”
“I knew it would be good. I had no idea how good. Was it so for you?”
“I suspect you already know the answer to that question.”
“I still treasure your words.”
She studied his face in the firelight. Treasure indeed. Secret treasure. “I felt as if you touched me in places where you didn’t.” She whispered, “I felt pleasure there.”
His eyelids dipped, and his smile changed. “Did it disturb you?”
She scowled at him. “Yes. I had no intention of feeling pleasure there.”
“But once you did, did you enjoy it?”
“Pleasure is, by definition, enjoyable, is it not?”
His laughter was warm and rich…and kind. “I found it enjoyable too. Goddess bless, how I enjoyed it.” He brushed Cassia’s hair back from her neck. “I tasted every instant of your first pleasure.”
A tremble went through her, as if she were soaked to the skin like she had been last night. Treacherous body.
She wiped a hand on her skirt. Wasn’t there a trace of soot there? “It is as if you have already touched me. So I have no objection to you actually doing so.”
He caught both her hands. “Not objecting is not the same thing as wanting.”
She sat with her hands in his. Again, he would not do anything unless she invited him. Unless she spoke. He would make her say it.
No. He made her do nothing. He always waited for her to ask. To want.
“Lio.” She did not recognize her own voice. “I want you to touch me.”
Despite the fire, the blue of his eyes had shrunk to a rim around the shining black of his pupils. She recalled the way he had looked at her in the garden when her hand had been bleeding. She could no longer deny she had longed for him to put not his handkerchief, but his mouth to the cut.
Lio bent his head and opened his mouth on her palm, just like she had imagined. He kissed her there, tasting her skin with his tongue, and in a moment gave her other hand the same treatment. She felt it everywhere she had felt his bite.
“I want you to touch me.” She swallowed. “Where I felt as if you had.”
He lifted his head. “Only tell me where that was.”
Heat flushed her face. She listened to people praise and curse their own bodies and each other’s, and occasionally denigrate hers. She avoided a healer’s probing at all costs. She did not speak of such things. She, always listening, never speaking. What fascination could it possibly hold for Lio to hear her talk about her body aloud? What purpose could it serve for her to draw attention to her form, which was surely not what allured him?
“I suspect you would be more entertained by talk of my blood than the rest of me.”
He drew back. “I thought you knew better than that by now.”
Silence fell between them. The spell that had enfolded her receded and left her cold.
“I am not lily-livered about it, Lio. I know your thirst is what draws you to me. I have no objection to that.”
“Is that what you think?”
“Men have many reasons to be interested in me. Never has it been any particular feature of my body. It’s usually my royal blood. But that’s not what you want. You want just…my blood. There is a great difference.”
Confusion warred with comprehension on his face. “Cassia, if you’re trying to say I care nothing about your parentage or politics, only about you, then you are right.”
Had she? She had been thinking he was a Hesperine in an unwelcoming kingdom and thirsty for more than deer, and she was perhaps the only woman in Tenebra mad enough to regard his bite as a pleasure. But perhaps she had been feeling and trying to say something else entirely.
Now he had said it. And he meant it.
He drew close again. “I want you. If you think that means your blood is somehow more important to me than the rest of you, then you are very mistaken.”
“You’re saying what happened last night was not just the Thirst. That was the Hunger.”
“There is a difference, a very clear difference for us.” He ran his thumb down her cheek. “For us, I wish for more than the Drink. I want us to enjoy the Feast together.”
“So…you want both. To drink my blood, and to lie with me.”
“To share your blood while we make love.”
The way he said it in his magic voice, with his hand doing magic things at her temple, made it sound like some secret, marvelous ritual she had never heard of. But she knew all it amounted to, blood or no blood. “If that’s what you wanted, why did you leave last night after only drinking from me?”
“Because you have not said that’s what you want.”
But he was a male, far from home and recently unattached, and she was the only female within reach. She frowned. “When you left so quickly, I thought there must be some reason why we shouldn’t. Or can’t.”
“I think it’s a little late to worry about violating the terms of the Summit, don’t you?” He nibbled the inside of her wrist, where her pulse beat.
Her pulse quickened. Far too late, indeed. “I don’t mean political reasons.”
Lio sat back, the image of patience, holding her hands in his. “What’s worrying you?”
“I confess to having some questions about…Hesperine-human relations…we have yet to discuss.”
“I left something out when we talked about Hesperine mating rituals? Do allow me to clarify.”
“When you healed my cut, you said your power wouldn’t draw Amachos’s attention unless I touched him with my hand.
Does the same hold true if we…”
“Make love? Yes.” Lio appeared to be trying not to smile. “Even more than the Drink, the Feast invites a Hesperine’s essence into a mortal. The infusion remains for several hours, until the human’s body fully synthesizes the rejuvenating magic. But that magic is a trace of innate Hesperine power, rather than an active working. Only extraordinary physical proximity would give a mage on Amachos’s level any inkling there is something amiss.”
“Well, he doesn’t want to tarnish himself standing too close to me, so we needn’t worry on that score. But there is something else…”
“Allow me to reassure you.”
“Well, of course I dismiss the notion that such activities with a Hesperine are fatal to a mortal—”
Lio made a choking sound.
“—but in other cases, it is more difficult to separate rumor from fact.” Cassia cleared her throat. “Surely it is also untrue the deed turns a human into one of you.”
Lio rubbed the bridge of his nose. “First of all, no, what’s in my underlinens is not an instrument of certain death. You’ll also be glad to know the Gift isn’t something you can catch like a disease. The transformation will only occur if a mortal drinks a Hesperine’s blood, and in considerable quantity.”
“I see.”
“As a matter of fact, we carry no diseases at all and cannot conceive children. We’re rather popular with Imperials, you know.”
No doubt. She watched the light and shadows vie on his exquisite face. “Why do you want more than my blood, Lio?”
As soon as she asked, she thought how useless the question was. She had already told herself the answer. He was male, his bed was empty, and she was here.
But she wasn’t satisfied with that answer.
Again, the new feeling took hold of her. She wanted more than she was accustomed to expect.
If anyone would give her answers that defied her expectations, it was Lio.
He pressed a kiss to the back of her hand. “Because I admire you.”
“That’s a very strange reason to lust after someone.”
His laugh sounded neither surprised nor daunted. “You think it strange I am drawn to your bravery and intelligence? That I am foolish with desire for someone as passionate as you? Think how I would feel if you turned that gaze of boldness and resolve upon me while I held you. Who would not count himself fortunate to be your choice, when all your choices are so carefully made?” His gaze swept over her with all the power of a physical touch. “To say nothing of your lovely form that holds all this within.”