Marrec grabbed the rhythm of his own innate Song, loosened his knees and centered his gravity. Bastien let go and Marrec stood alone, with Calli leaning a little against him.
Gently pulling Calli’s fingers from the doorknob, Luthan unlocked the door and pushed it inward. The scent of more, fresh herbs, expensive herbs, wafted out. Luthan appeared pale. When he spoke, his lips didn’t move much. “Follow me.”
Walk? Marrec took a tentative step. Calli lurched against him. He bent their arms behind her back to stabilize them. Looking down at her, he said, “We walk together.”
She stared at him for a few seconds, then nodded. Marrec put his left foot out in a step. She did the same, then looked up at him as if for approval. He smiled. Slowly they walked into the narrow hallway, barely wide enough for them, went to the door Luthan held open, to a tiny space and another door, then sidled one by one into the bedroom.
The lights came on as they entered.
“Ohh,” Calli sighed.
It was the most elegant room he’d ever seen, intimidating with its luxury.
They fell onto the bed, him on the bottom.
16
He opened his mouth to Calli’s passionate kiss. Her tongue dueled with his and she moaned. Her free hand continued to pet his chest. Then she spread her legs on the other side of his and straightened, wriggling until her sweet sex was atop his. He thought she was wet, he knew she was hot.
He was hard.
With her free hand, she snapped the shoulders of her gown open. The slinky material slipped down her torso, leaving her gorgeous breasts free, creamy tipped with red nipples. He gasped.
Magic, she whispered in her mind, but he heard Power. She flung her head back, a laugh rippling from her that rang like chimes in her Song. A delightful, harmonizing tinkle of notes that should have reminded him of sprites and fairies, but instead brought a surge of possessiveness. This woman was his.
He watched his own hand tremble as he reached up to shape her right breast and wished desperately that his other hand was free so he could cherish her flesh the way he wanted. He brushed his thumb across her small, tight nipple and she arched against him and his sex swelled longer and thicker. His hips bucked, and his length slipped against her hot softness. He swore.
Breeches off! Their arms tied together hadn’t seemed too awkward until now.
She blinked, pressed her hand over his on her breast. He trembled, fought for control. Any more rubbing against his cock and he’d embarrass himself. His breath came harsh to his ears. Sweat tickled his temple.
Concentrate on her. On Calli. But just looking at her made him dizzy with passion, her breast, smooth and pale in his hand, his skin several shades darker—different, except where scars showed white. Her mouth was slightly open, her lips the same color as her nipples and he thought he’d go mad seeing her so lost in her own desire.
“Please,” he rasped.
Her lips curved, she looked down at him from under her lashes. You please me.
“Inside you!” He’d never begged. He’d never been so blunt.
She stared down at him. Hot.
Oh, yes, he was hot.
She took his hand from her breast and trailed it down her body. Her skin was smooth. He took as much pleasure in the feathery touch as she did. Their hands slid down and he ached to touch her, but she wore some piece of underwear covering her that rose up to her hips.
High-cut panties. The phrase made no sense. He slid a finger around the edge at her waist, but she didn’t want that. She pouted. Too many clothes.
He agreed.
She lifted, slithered out of the dress and the undergarment. They crossed his body with slick caresses that sent his mind away. Then her fingers were on the buttons of his leathers, opening the fly. She stopped, head tilted, and stared and he wanted to whimper. Hesitantly her fingers touched him through his loincloth and piercing desire racked him. His own Song went rough, uneven, primal. With a twist and a wrench of cloth he freed himself.
Calli made a purring noise from the depth of her throat. Her hand swept to him. He caught her seeking fingers. His lips felt swollen, his tongue thick. “Sex. Now!” He pushed both arms behind her back, pulled her toward him and her moist folds slid over him.
“Yes!” she cried, rising, freeing her hand, impaling herself upon him.
And she rode him.
Their Songs merged, their blood pounded from one to another, they strove to completion. They reached the peak and fell, and Sang.
And flew. Together.
Long moments passed before Marrec became aware of himself as individual from the universe, mind separate but still touching Calli’s sleeping one. She lay atop him, her breath tickling his throat. Images of her life still flitted before his vision—a lovely summer day riding bareback, her spirit lifted by the freedom, a dark room that held emotional tones of fear and anguish.
For the first time he wondered what memories passed from him to her. If he hadn’t been so boneless from flattening sex, he’d have tensed, but he didn’t think he could move a muscle. His memories. He didn’t like to recall some himself, let alone burden a rare and wonderful woman like Calli with them. Probably no way to stop them, those few terrible remnants of memory of the slaughter of his village by horrors.
He still wasn’t sure how he’d escaped the bloodbath, except he’d been angry with his brothers and parents and had taken an old blanket and curled up in a corner under the bed. When the door had crashed open in their cottage and renders and slayers tumbled through he’d frozen in horror. They’d dragged his family from their beds. The horrors had shrieked with glee as his parents and brothers screamed in terror, the monsters’ hideous Songs engorging on the fear, as if it fueled them. Slashing, ripping. Two minutes and it was over and the horrors were gone, leaving the red shreds of blood, white shards of bone of Marrec’s family behind them. He didn’t know how long he huddled there, until the night fell silent, until he had to see what happened to the rest.
Calli mewled, shook her head, tears trickling down from under her closed eyes to land on his neck. His free arm wrapped around her. What was he doing, sending what he recalled to her? He hadn’t thought of that day for years…but he wasn’t sure how the coeurdechain worked, hadn’t paid much attention to the snippets of discussion he’d heard. That cost him now. But if they were bonded like this for a full twenty-four hours, most of what they remembered, emotions included, would cycle, he supposed.
She had no memories of the horrors. He had plenty, from that day that shattered his life, to following the trail of them, seeing the brief battle between Chevaliers and the horrors, sidling up to a young volaran with an injured wing, Dark Lance, standing next to its fallen partner. Calli shouldn’t have to know of, experience what he had, of the monsters.
Except now that she was bound to him, she’d be fighting them.
His jaw clenched. He didn’t want that. Didn’t want her with him in battle. Didn’t want her harmed. Didn’t want her bright spirit tarnished.
Too late, wasn’t it? What would happen if he tore off the strips binding them together, refused the full coeurdechain? His chest constricted.
They had already taken vows. The Powerful ritual had already been completed. This bloodbonding was important, but it was only part of the coeurdechain. When he thought of the oaths they’d exchanged, the words sounded like a stream of silver bell tones in his mind. The Powerful Song of the ceremony itself, their Songs intertwined with the vows, made a bond that couldn’t be broken without deep cost to them both.
Their lives had changed forever.
She was in a strange land, hardly anything like what she’d previously known. Horses and ranching, that was all, he figured, but that was enough for commonality between them. So most everything here in Lladrana would be different. He promised himself to help her settle in every way he could.
So she wouldn’t leave with the Snap.
Immediate anxiety spiraled through him. No. She couldn’t leave.
Could she?
He didn’t know. He ground his teeth. He’d been too damn focused on his own life, his old plans, to listen to others chat about the coeurdechain, to look at the Lorebooks of Bonding left on the study tables in the library at Horseshoe Hall. Merde, he’d been a fool!
But he’d never thought he’d win this golden woman. Now, he’d learn everything he could. He’d read, dammit, until he understood, while they worked together.
That was the most important thing that had changed in his own life. He had a Pairling now, and they would fight as a Pair. Her Shield to his Sword, he was sure. Calli was too soft to be a Sword like Alexa, wasn’t she? He reached for her memories, the fiercest ones, and found her riding fast and hard around barrels. Racing. Competing. He marveled at the speed and grace of others she watched, of the feel of her body when she…barrel raced. Yes, she’d been intense and fought in that arena and he probed a little deeper for the why.
Because she had an ambition to train horses. Because she wanted to make her ranch a center of training. Because she yearned to please her father.
A hoarse sound tore from him. An angry noise. He despised her father for treating her like a person of little import, for not recognizing her value and loving her. The man was worthless.
So Calli had fought for her father, for her vocation and if she’d stayed on Exotique Terre, she’d have battled her father for the land. But she was on Lladrana and here she’d fly into battle against monsters.
Marrec wasn’t sure what Alexa had been in a former life, but thought that she might have been some sort of warrior. Calli was horse trainer, a homemaker. Yes, she’d be Shield to his Sword, and that was a relief. She’d be out of most of the action. If he was clever he could work with Alexa and Bastien on the field, have Calli fly near Bastien, another Shield who was one of the best fighters Marrec knew. Though Alexa and Bastien were Marshalls, part of that elite team.
Marrec could become a Marshall now, if he wanted. The notion appealed, then he realized he was stroking Calli’s soft hair and knew she wouldn’t want to do that. She wanted a ranch, she wanted to train horses, she wanted to enhance the partnership between volaran and human. He could help her with all those goals.
Calli woke and found Marrec looking at her. Her new husband. She sat up straight, then froze.
She’d learned some of the planes of his body—the ones she could reach with her right hand—and how interesting it was that he was a southpaw—he’d been inside her. But now she wasn’t drugged.
Now was the time to face the music.
The music was awesome. Her Song flowed through her like the tide and she heard much of it. She suspected others, he, heard more, nuances she didn’t recognize in herself. But she heard his, the beating of his heart, now picking up pace as they locked gazes. The melody of him ran in her head and her blood, and was now a part of her.
This stranger.
What had she done?
“Shh,” he said, expression serious. He reached out and smoothed her hair. She bit her lip. Her hair must be a wreck, her body…she glanced down and saw the bruises from the day before, the scars from the operations on Earth.
“Beautiful,” he said, and there was a tone in his voice she’d never heard from any man, from anyone. She understood the language. Alexa and Marian had told her she would, but she hadn’t really believed it. Maybe she hadn’t really believed anything and now she was married! Was there any way to go on disbelieving? The steadiness of the man’s eyes made her think not.
She licked her lips. “Marrec.” Memories called up by that name flooded her, not her own. His mother saying it in a fretful tone, his father impatiently, his brothers teasingly. Seeva. Yan. People who she’d never met but somehow knew through him. And those she knew, Lady Hallard, Alexa, Bastien.
He inclined his head. “Callista Mae Torcher.” Now his eyes shadowed as if he saw her memories.
Calli flopped back onto the bed, staring at the inside of the canopy. “What next?” she said and was surprised to hear her voice speaking Lladranan. That was really strange, too.
“Our arms are bound together until this evening. I need to pee.”
Well, that was down to earth enough, and now that he mentioned it…She sat up, didn’t look at him. “If this suite is arranged the same way as Alexa’s, the bathroom is to my right.” Meeting his gaze in a fleeting glance, she saw he still wore a sober expression, realized she’d never seen him smile.
“I smile,” he said.
She looked at him. He wasn’t.
“When appropriate,” he said.
That made her smile.
His lips slightly curved.
This was her husband. She stared at him…rectangular face with a few lines around the eyes, respectably wide silver at both temples that denoted Power…
“These were narrow until your healing. I wasn’t very Powerful until then.” He touched the side of his head.
“No?” she whispered.
“No. You should understand from your memories that you Pairbonded with a penniless Chevalier, average in Power.” He swept the covers off himself, turned them both until they faced the curved wall of the tower and the sectioned-off wedge of wall that held the bathroom.
Lifting her chin, she said, “I do not Pairbond with average men. I chose you. You have Power. You have courage. Furthermore, you speak Equine with your volaran. He respects you. All that means you are exceptional.”
“Does it?”
“Yes.”
He took the lead in getting off the bed. She admired his build, the width of his shoulders, his muscularity, though he looked a bit too thin. He stood, waiting. She took a big breath and shoved the covers aside and wished she could be more casual about nudity.
“Beautiful woman,” he said and lifted their joined arms to kiss her fingers. “Beautiful Calli.” Naturally the way he said it, with his Lladranan accent, had her trembling inside, but her pleasure at the compliment rose in a hum around them. She stood still.
“Disconcerting,” he said. “To hear Songs, our Songs, so strongly and with the ears and not only the mind.”
“Yes,” she said.
The next few minutes in the bathroom as they relieved themselves and washed their hands were horribly embarrassing to Calli, but Marrec was matter-of-fact about it.
He glanced at the wooden shower cabinet. “I prefer bathing.”
She sighed. “I prefer showering.”
His brows dipped. “I don’t know what facilities we have in our suite at Horseshoe Hall. Probably only a shower, but the baths on the lowest level of the hall are the best in the Castle.”
“Your culture bathes together, men and women.”
“That’s right.” He paused. “I have heard that both Alexa and Marian hesitate to do this.”
“We usually bathe alone in our culture. Or with lovers. Upon rare occasions we might bathe with others of our own sex.” Once or twice when she’d been in Denver during the National Western Stockshow she’d gone to a bathhouse during Ladies’ Day. Nudity had been no big deal there. On the other hand, there had also been a mixture of races. She was only one of three white females here in Lladrana.
“What next?”
He met her eyes. “I’m hungry. We’ll probably eat with the Marshalls this morning.” He frowned. “Though everyone may expect us to stay in.” His gaze traveled down her and now he did smile. “We could stay in. Order breakfast in.”
Her mind skittered. What would be running away? Staying here with this new man who knew a lot about her now, and intimately, and hiding from the rest of the almost-strangers she’d known for two days? Or not facing all that personal flow of emotions, memories from her to him and vice versa by distracting herself with food?
He stroked her hair. “Or we could go bathe and choose land for our descendants.”
Her eyes showed dread. One of her memories cycled between them again and again. Her in a bed of white sheets, a man in a white coat. A medica. She couldn’t have chil
dren anymore. Her fall and infection and surgeries had made that impossible.
His gasp was one of pain. The emotional blow was bitter. Stupid! Before last night he’d had only vague dreams of children, since he could only support himself and Dark Lance. But in the misty recesses of his mind, he’d wanted children. A boy. A girl. A family.
She got as far away from him as possible. Didn’t look at him, and he finally noticed her grief. She’d wanted children, too. More, she’d had concrete plans for them, had ideas to change her home and her business for them. She’d thought out how to care for them and had hoped her children would love the land and horse training—and her father—as much as she. She’d painted a rosy picture of herself and her children and her father as a happy family, with her husband as an indistinct but loving figure. Yet, she’d intended her children would be her greatest comfort in life.
And now she only had him. Definitely a husband. Not indistinct, not too loving. He swallowed the bitterness. He was good at dealing with reality. “We can talk about this later.”
Not looking at him, she shook her head. “I think we should discuss it now.”
He gritted his teeth. He’d have liked a little time. He shrugged. “All right.”
“I still want a family,” she whispered, head averted. “Can’t we adopt?”
The idea spun in his head like a pair of thrown dice in a game of high stakes. “Adopt?”
“On Exotique Terre there are unwanted children. Isn’t that true, here?”
He’d been a refugee, tolerated as part of the staff of a large, noble estate, a lost child. He and Calli could do better in raising lost children.
“The Song,” he forced the words from his mouth. He should be so grateful this morning, dreams coming true. “The Song would not have paired me with you if I couldn’t accept you with all your…all of you.” He needed to believe that.
She glanced up at him now, wariness in her eyes. “With all my flaws.” Her fingers brushed his cheek and he felt the Power of them surge straight to his groin, deeper, sink into his bones. She was his.
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