by Vela Roth
She would have scoffed at such words applied to her. She did not consider herself brave, only fond of living to see another day. She made a point not to seem clever and prided herself on her dispassion. She had never attempted nor wanted to be lovely.
But she could not scoff, because this was Lio. Every feature of his face and every line of his body bespoke he was in earnest.
How would she feel if he turned that look upon her while she held him?
“You see something entirely different in me than others do.”
He propped his hands to either side of her and leaned in close, until every part of him was just a finger’s breadth away. “That is because I have seen through your eyes.”
The spell had returned. They had not broken it beyond repair. She gave herself leave to touch him. She had looked at him for so long without touching. Now she placed her hands on his shoulders and felt them. Just as strong and broad as she had imagined. She ran her hands down his arms, and his silk sleeves caressed her in return. At last she let her hands come to rest upon his and traced one of his long fingers with her own.
Such a strange and wonderful sensation, touching this body so different from hers. Not just because he was Hesperine and she human, he male and she female, but because he was another person, and she was touching him. In a way she had never thought she would touch anyone.
He lowered his lips to hers and kissed her slowly. With each motion of his mouth, he deepened the kiss. It was like his bite, a touch so intimate, but only one touch. His lips on hers, and no more. His tongue pushing deep into her mouth, placing him inside her, like his teeth, like the promise of more than that, while he kept his hands unmoving under hers.
She thought he would draw away and stop to breathe, but he didn’t. He didn’t have to. He kissed her, careful and unrelenting. Finally she pulled away to gasp. She heard him draw one breath.
“Where do you want me to touch you?” he asked.
The sensations were everywhere, just as they had been last night. “My breasts.”
“Oh, yes.”
He cupped her face as he had the night before and again slid both hands down her neck. But now he continued. His hands came to rest on the front of her gown. There was so little there, she wondered how he had found them. She didn’t even have enough to put in a breast band. But she wore one, because it made them even flatter, and that made her feel safer.
Lio ran his thumbs down the front slit of her dress and the laces that held it closed. “So tight. We must free you from this.”
“Yes,” she said foolishly, “that would be necessary.”
He smiled. “Allow me.”
His hands did not move. Cassia felt her laces stir against her chest. Before her eyes, the knot at the top simply untied. One hole at a time, her laces came undone until, with a flourish, they fell in her lap.
Without her gown laced tightly to keep it in place, her tunica’s slit front flopped open. Then the length of linen she so assiduously secured about her breasts each day gave way and slid right out of her clothes. She watched her breast band land on the stone beside her.
She tried not to gape. “What affinity is that?”
“Just an essential Hesperine skill.”
Lio’s large hands filled the front of her dress, enveloping her breasts. Awareness burned down through her body. She thought it might be shame, but no. It was too sweet to be shame. He was cupping her breasts in his palms, and she liked it.
He applied gentle pressure as he moved his hands. She fought not to gasp aloud. This was enough to undo her, and it was only the first of many touches that would grow ever more forbidden.
He was watching her face. He smiled softly.
With his palms, he grazed her nipples. They had pressed hard and aching into nothing but clothes last night, but now, into Lio’s hands.
He caught her mouth in a kiss and was soon moving his lips and tongue in coordination with his hands. She tightened her fingers around his arms, trying to brace herself in the wake of the sensations. They threatened to overwhelm her, but just when they became too much, he altered his touch again into something new, and too much became not enough.
He took her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, gently squeezing and tugging, sometimes pausing to thumb the very tips. When had she become so painfully sensitive there? How had her breasts become something that could feel so much?
He broke the kiss, although his hands gave her no reprieve. “Where else, Cassia?”
“This…we can continue with this.”
“But there’s more.”
Yes, she knew there was more. It awaited even now, impossible to ignore. The emptiness between her legs responded to his touches as if waiting to be filled by the very hands that wrought such pleasure elsewhere.
“My belly,” she began.
“Mm. Yes.”
He pulled his hands out of her gown, leaving her chest half-exposed and thoroughly flushed. With slow caresses, he made his way down her ribcage to her stomach. The sensations taunted her even through the fabric. Oh, but she was hopeless.
Lio gave her quick, probing kisses as he traced his thumbs in a line below her navel. He applied pressure, massaging her belly, her womb. That pressure moved downward, inward, and she shifted under his touch.
“More?” he asked.
It could not possibly be more intense than what she had felt last time. It would not break her to feel the rest.
“Yes,” she said.
His smile was wicked now. “Where?”
She swallowed, then cleared her throat. “Lower.”
His fangs flashed in the firelight. “How much lower?”
Her heart was in her throat, but she said it. “Between my legs.”
“Yes, Cassia.” He stroked the tops of her thighs, then reached down for the hem of her gown.
He hardly even lifted her skirts, did not even bare her legs to him. Just slid those graceful hands under and slipped them between her ankles. With his palms and fingers flat against her skin, he took his time moving upward.
By the time he reached her knees, Cassia had arrived at the conclusion that the inside of her legs was an unfairly sensitive place. When his hands slid up her inner thighs, she struggled to breathe.
He caressed her there, resting his forehead against hers. “Here?”
“Yes.”
“Where else?”
“My…that is…” The heat on her cheeks grew uncomfortable, and her body tensed again. Oh, she couldn’t say it aloud. She simply could not speak the word sheath in front of Lio while he was touching her like this, much less the other, blunter names for that part of her body.
His thumbs traced little circles on the insides of her thighs, and he traded breaths with her. “Do you not like the word your people use? Are all those warlike metaphors distasteful to you? If so, perhaps you would prefer Hespera’s word instead.”
“I don’t know it.”
“Krana,” Lio murmured against her mouth.
“Krana,” Cassia repeated, naming her body with a new word. One in the Divine Tongue, but one she had never heard in the temple. “Yes.”
At the gentle rubbing of his hands in invitation, she shifted, easing her legs farther apart to let him in. The linen around her loins surrendered its hold on her just as her breast band had and made way for Lio’s hands.
At the touch of his fingers on the hair that guarded her, she tensed. He traced her boundaries. So gently. The teasing touch did not feel strange. No, far from it. He firmed his touch then, rubbing her, and the abrasion felt very right indeed.
“How high shall I go?”
She gripped his shoulders. “Inside.”
“Let me hold you.”
“Very well,” she whispered.
He moved one hand behind her to rest, warm and supportive, on her buttock. His other hand covered her curls, giving her one last caress there. Then his fingers dipped inside.
Her heartbeat leapt and pounded. His finger
s were inside her. There. It should have felt foreign to have another’s hand there in her most secret place. A male’s hand. Lio’s hand. But her body responded as if it were the most natural thing in the world. His fingers slid easily into the wetness.
Smoothly and gently, he explored her. He pressed equally gentle kisses to her lips, and slowly, she slid her hands up his shoulders and wrapped her arms around his neck.
He drew one of his fingers upward, toward the top of her cleft, where her flesh was so swollen. He touched one fingertip there.
She gasped into his mouth, tightening her arms around him. He made a sound low in his throat, like one might over a delicious meal. And touched her again.
She scooted her hips backward, and his hand was there to hold her steady. He braced her behind with one hand and with his other, teased that pinpoint of sensation. She felt the compulsion to squeeze her legs together, to escape the onslaught of feeling. But that was a coward’s way out.
And that would make it stop.
She held onto him and eased her legs farther apart.
He broke his mouth from hers, even as he took her invitation to caress her further. “Oh yes, Cassia.”
He kissed his way down her jaw and began to suckle her neck with his lips and tongue. His attentions at her throat and between her legs blurred into one deluge of sensation. When his teeth opened over her skin, she knew what he would do. She felt no hesitation this time.
His teeth sank into her just as he gave her the most exquisite caress upon her most sensitive place. Her toes curled in her slippers, and little shudders made her move her hips. That pushed her closer to the pleasure. Her body clearly knew what to do. She obeyed her instincts and, as she had the night before only against their clothes, began to tilt her hips, forward and back, forward and back.
Oh. Oh. It was wondrously different to do this with him touching her.
His teeth tightened on her throat. His hand tormented her, sometimes rubbing, sometimes flicking the barest touches over that minute spot that now seemed the center of her entire body. She clung to him, legs splayed, and moved with his touches.
The ferocious pleasure seemed to last only a moment before her insides tightened, then convulsed. Deep, deep down. Far, far without. Everywhere he had touched her. Everywhere she had not known she could feel. Her whole body shuddered in his hands, anchored on his fangs.
As the spell of ecstasy drained away and her awareness of the shrine returned, his teeth withdrew, and she felt adrift. But he wrapped his arms around her and held her. She rested her forehead on his shoulder. Harbor. She tucked her face against his neck, her cheeks burning with awareness of what they had just done, of how close she wished to hold him afterward.
She realized she still sat there with her legs spread, her skirts puckered at her knees where his body pressed near. He must be lusting as hard tonight…perhaps harder…than last time, although she could not tell from this position.
She had never wanted to think about another’s body between her legs. The idea of hard flesh thrusting into her had never given her pleasure. But Lio was unlike anyone she had imagined before.
Was he going to ask? Was she going to ask?
He untangled himself from her and retreated to the other side of her fire. His eyes were wide, his pupils still dilated. The color ran high in his cheeks, thanks to her. But there was no trace of blood on his teeth. All she saw on his beautiful mouth was the redness and swelling brought on by her kisses.
Her own voice emerged husky and thick, the unrecognizable, sultry tones of a temptress. “You have not satisfied your desire.”
“I want you to be satisfied as to yours, before you must think of mine.”
He disappeared, leaving her hands empty and reaching after him.
17
Days Until
SPRING EQUINOX
Lio’s Mission
Lio would never have gotten through the king’s victory dinner if not for Cassia. The whole boar who had been the victim of the prince’s temple day had been enough to try the limits of any Hesperine’s endurance. Tonight the main dish was venison. To avoid wondering if he’d known the deer, Lio focused all his senses on Cassia.
She watched him from her seat in the back corner of the hall, and her fragrance told him where her thoughts drifted. He need only dwell on the fare that awaited him when at last they could escape to the shrine.
The doors of the great hall opened again, and in came a draft from the corridor, along with more guests. Cassia’s scent sharpened with wariness, and Lio frowned. The enemy she dreaded most, tonight’s celebrant, sat at the head of the hall for all to see. Which of the court’s numerous lesser threats had just put her on guard? Lio sorted through the newcomers’ scents. Four bored, oily ladies ambled in, and with them swaggered five unwashed males bearing freshly cleaned steel. The odd man out must be one of Cassia’s self-styled suitors.
Well, Lio would not allow anyone to make this event worse for Cassia than it already was.
At last the humans’ orgy of death over their dinner plates came to an end, and an army of servants arrived to clean up the battlefield. Lio and the other members of the embassy retreated to their post at the periphery of the milling crowd of humans, while the king’s household hefted the tables and removed them to allow for dancing.
Lio’s uncle leaned close. “Don’t feel obligated to stay any longer.”
Standing on Uncle Argyros’s other side, Aunt Lyta wore a fixed, benevolent smile that would only fool the mortals. “By all means, Lio. Take your opportunity.”
“I find my appetite has deserted me,” Lio answered. “I’m not in the mood for deer.”
Through the Blood Union, they shared a covert wince.
“Just don’t wait too long,” Uncle Argyros cautioned.
“I’ll be all right for a while yet.” It was no dissimulation. Two nights on Cassia’s blood, and Lio felt he could take a run all the way to the Empire and back, and not even the ocean could stand in his way. He couldn’t ever remember feeling so exhilarated, so at home in his own body. His Gift had never felt so potent in his veins. Was this how it felt when real desire and thirst aligned and were satisfied? Lio glanced through the crowd, trying to spot her. “I stand by my earlier intention. I still want to go through with my plan to mingle.”
“‘Mingle’?” Basir joined the conversation.
“Lio…” Uncle Argyros still sounded dubious, despite the time they had spent in the fortress debating this subject.
Lio reiterated his case. “They invited us to the banquet and dance. They offered us dinner, although we refused it. Is not the dancing an open offer as well?”
Uncle Argyros’s brows had descended over his eyes. Basir and Kumeta subjected Lio to their direst glares.
“I know you still have your doubts, Uncle, but consider. We are here to promote understanding between our two peoples. What does it accomplish if we remain distant and aloof throughout our stay? The humans think we’ll taint them if we so much as occupy the same air. Should we not venture out of quarantine and—gently, tactfully—challenge those assumptions, in the hope of disproving their fears?”
“Who better to represent us,” Arkadia put in, “than a handsome, nonthreatening young fellow who is unattached?”
“My dearest,” Javed said, “did you just refer to Apollon’s son as nonthreatening?”
“He should take it as a compliment.” Kadi’s eyes twinkled with mischief.
Lio gave everyone his most nonthreatening grin. “I am determined to rectify our image as maniacal seducers of innocent maidens. How am I doing?”
“Keep your lips shut over those teeth,” Aunt Lyta advised.
Lio rubbed a hand over his mouth, then pulled it away to reveal tightly closed lips and his most solemn expression. He managed to coax a chuckle out of his aunt.
Their jesting belied the seriousness of their situation. With the specter of failure looming over them, they needed all the humor they could muster, gallo
ws humor though it might be.
“This has been a thoroughly depressing journey,” Kadi declared. “Shall we not enjoy watching the shrinking violets dance with Lio?”
Aunt Lyta exchanged a bemused glance with her daughter. “I see no harm in it. The free lords could not possibly become more hostile to the Oath than they already are, even if Lio crumpled every one of their ladies’ petals.”
“I will strive to be gentle.” Lio smiled to himself. If only they knew it was not the flowers, but the gardener he had in mind. She never wilted.
“There is more at stake than the sensibilities of a few blushing maidens,” Kumeta protested.
Uncle Argyros spread his hands. “We are outvoted.”
“There are only three of them,” Basir intoned without a trace of humor.
“Four,” Javed said. “I think it would do Lio good.”
Javed had no idea what an effective prescription he had just issued. Lio shot him a grateful glance. “Physician’s orders. I must dance.”
His uncle met his gaze. “Do not interpret this as a lack of confidence in your good manners, however…”
Lio nodded. “Don’t overestimate their tolerance. And be careful.”
“Never forget the precise amount of space human dances maintain between male and female partners. An invitation to a young, unmarried woman would be considered a favor to her under normal circumstances, but not in your case. Best to avoid eligible ladies until you prove yourself to their mothers. A dance with an older lady is a favor to you, so take it as the great compliment it is.”
“They’re all younger than Lio,” Kadi pointed out.
Her father pressed on. “If she is married, request her husband’s permission before applying to her. If she is not, approach her father first. You may not ask the same lady to dance more than once, and certain dances are only open to those of a precise status—”