Undying (Valos of Sonhadra Book 7)

by Tiffany Roberts

  It felt good to teach her. He was reminded of the way the hunters taught the younglings in his tribe, of the thrill of the hunt, of the pride of a kill. And Quinn was part of that, now. It did not matter that she was one of a strange species of people from the sky. She was part of his people’s traditions, now, was helping to keep them alive.

  As he dragged the bundle of meat through the woods toward Bahmet, Orishok couldn’t help smiling to himself. This was what his people had searched for, after Kelsharn left. This purpose, this meaning...this simplicity. Quinn had given it to him. Things would never be the same again, could never be the same again, but he could have these tastes of the old while experiencing the new.

  Orishok brought her to another building inside Bahmet that hadn’t seen use in hundreds of years. It had been constructed, he thought, as a place to store and cook food. They took the meat into a side chamber after activating some stones for light. It was cold inside, so the meat would keep for a long while. Quinn did not comment; he could only assume she’d seen something like it to not be surprised. A room like this would have saved his tribe much hardship before they were changed.

  They returned to the main chamber, which was dominated by a variety of strange devices and long tables against the walls. There were several free-standing, waist-high blocks in the middle.

  Quinn wandered by the devices, stopping to examine one. She ran her fingers along its edges. “I wonder how you open these...”

  Orishok looked from one device to another. He understood, if only vaguely, that they all had some purpose related to cooking, but he’d never used them. “It would be easier if we collected wood and made a fire.”

  She turned to him. “Would you prefer that?”

  “I do not know these machines.”

  “Hmm...” Quinn strolled to one of the blocks near the center, leaning to the side as she studied it. As with the other device, she ran her finger along the edges. “This place feels like a kit’shun,” she muttered.

  She stopped her hand on the side of the block. “I think I found something.”

  When she pushed the button, the top of the block changed; grooves opened all along its surface to reveal a pit within. With a soft woosh, low flames ignited inside.

  “It’s a grill!” She grinned at Orishok. “We can put the meat on there.”

  Orishok approached the grill and studied it. After all the things he’d seen, he was still amazed by such wonders. To have fire so readily available was stunning.

  He pushed aside his wonderment by reminding himself that Quinn was hungry. Retrieving a hunk of meat from the freezer with the tip of his spear, he returned to the grill, hesitating as he held the meat over it. “This is okay?” he asked, meeting Quinn’s eyes.

  “Yes.”

  He lay the meat over the grooves. It sizzled, and soon its aroma filled the air. The memories that accompanied the smell were bittersweet, but they did not kill his joy. This was another part of living in a tribe — cooking the kill together, sharing in company and food, knowing that survival depended on everyone and trusting them to do their parts.

  Regardless of their differences, Orishok trusted Quinn as much as he’d trusted anyone. Perhaps more.

  “You look pleased with yourself,” she said.

  Orishok flipped the rockfur meat. “I am pleased with us. With you.”

  “We did make a good team, didn’t we? Me, running for my life, and you, jumping in like a badass and taking that thing down with your bare hands. Or...bare hand blades?”

  “You did more than run. You fought, despite the danger to yourself. I do not like that you were in danger...but you were brave.”

  “Being brave isn’t always a good thing,” she said, dropping her gaze from Orishok to the meat. She lifted a hand and touched the scars around her left eye.

  “It is not always safe,” he said, watching the subtle changes in her expression, “but those who let fear control them are eventually eaten by it. Being brave does not mean feeling no fear. It means you control it. That is what you did.”

  “Thanks, Orishok.” She lowered her hand and smiled at him. “What did you do in your tribe besides hunting?”

  He moved away from the fire to search for more compartments around the room. “Many things. We had to make tools, build and repair our shelters, treat the hides of the beasts we hunted, make baskets and clothing, look for new places where we could survive, and sometimes battle other tribes. Our days were full.”

  After several empty storage areas, he found one filled with bowls and platters. Leaning down, he drew one of the plates from a stack and returned to the grill.

  “Hearing all that makes what I used to do so...pitiful.”

  Orishok jabbed the meat with his spear and lifted it off the grill. Juices dripped from it to hiss in the fire. He set it atop the platter, walked to Quinn, and offered her the food.

  “Thank you,” she said, pressing the button to close the grill.

  He nodded and stepped back. “What did you do?”

  “I skulpt’d. I made things with my hands like...” she glanced toward the door, “like what your people are now. Statues.” She stared at the platter. “I could make these, cups, bowls, and vah’zez, things like that. But I loved to make art.”

  “You...shaped things? Is that what you say?”

  She smirked and let out a little laugh. “Yeah. I used klay and stone to shape things with my hands. It wasn’t a useful job, not when there were factories that produced things faster and cheaper, but I loved it. I...miss it.”

  “What is klay?”

  “It’s a kind of dirt. It sticks together when you get it wet, and you can mold it into different shapes. When heated in a fire, it hardens and will keep its shape.” She tapped the plate. “Like this.”

  “I know what you speak of,” he said. His gaze was on her finger, and his memory slipped back to the last time she’d touched him.

  Quinn set the plate down and picked up the strip of meat. She brought it to her mouth and bit down. She sawed her little teeth together and tugged on the meat, struggling to tear off a piece. Eventually, she succeeded.

  “It’s good,” she said as she chewed. “A little tough, but really good.”

  He laid the spear on the edge of one of the tables, with most of the shaft hanging off, and shaped his hand into a blade.

  “What’re you doing?” she asked.

  Orishok sawed through the shaft, leaving only a short grip beneath the head. He turned it to her, grip-first, and held it out.

  Quinn grinned at him. “You earned yourself some brownie points.” She took the weapon and laid her meat on the plate. The blade sliced through it easily; she cut it into small pieces and slipped one into her mouth.

  “I still do not know what that means,” he said.

  “It means I like you a little more.”

  He ran his gaze over her again; she was dirty from her fall, splattered with dried blood from their work, and her clothing covered little. He took a moment to appreciate her graceful arms, her supple legs, her pale stomach.

  “When you have eaten, we should go to the baths.”

  She paused her chewing. Her eyes trailed down his body before she looked at herself. “We could use a bath.”

  “I will tend to the rockfur’s hide while you finish.”

  “Thank you, Orishok. For all this.”

  He smiled to her. “You should thank yourself, too. It is as much your doing.”

  “I’m learning. And...if you’d teach me, I’d like to learn how to do the other things you used to do.”

  Orishok nodded. “It would be my honor to teach you.”

  Chapter Nine

  THEIR SOFT FOOTSTEPS echoed in the low-ceilinged bathhouse as they approached the pool. Quinn moved past Orishok and glanced at him over her shoulder, gathering her hair and moving it to her front.

  “Could you untie this?”

  Heat thrummed through his heartstone. Since helping her secure the strip of cl
oth around her chest, he’d longed to help her remove it, to feel her soft skin beneath his fingertips. He stepped forward.

  He took the cloth delicately in his fingers. As much as he longed for it, he feared contact with her, too. Even with his heartstone in place, physical sensations — hot and cold, the wind against his skin, the moisture in the air — were muted. He felt them, but always as though from a distance, making them inconsequential, like the pain inflicted by the charging rockfur.

  But when he touched Quinn, he felt it to his core. She brought him to life.

  His fingers brushed over her skin as he untied the cloth. Her heat ran up his arms to infuse his heartstone. The ends of the cloth fell from his fingers, but before he could move away, Quinn turned and caught his wrist.

  He followed her gaze down. Her pale hand was in stark contrast to his dark gray skin. She held him, silent, then placed her other palm upon his forearm, running it up the length of his arm. Her fingers drifted over his shoulder, tracing his collarbone until she settled her hand over his heartstone. The heat was unbearable; it was blissful.

  The old rites drifted up from his memory again; once more, he told himself she did not know them. It did not lessen his anticipation.

  “Quinn?” he whispered.

  Her eyes met his. “It’s so strange. I know it’s there, but I can’t feel it.” She let the cloth drop from her chest and guided his hand to rest between her breasts. “Not like this.”

  The thump of her heartbeat pulsed through his palm. He hadn’t felt anything like it since before he was made, and it was another reminder of all he’d lost — and all he might have again. Should he tell her of the rite of joining? Could he? “The hearts of my people played such music, too.”

  “Does your heartstone make music?” She covered his hand with her own.

  Orishok brought up his free hand and pressed hers more firmly against his chest. The energy pulsing through his heartstone was greater than anything he’d ever felt, and he wondered if there were limits to what it could bear. He was sure she’d be the one to push him past those limits.

  “I think I feel it,” she said, a soft smile on her lips. The hand over his lifted and she reached for his face. She cupped his jaw, brushing her thumb over his cheek, over the ridges of bone at cheekbone and brow, exploring him. Learning him. “Does it make music, now?”

  He stared down at her, unable to form words. Her chest was bare, and her breasts were almost near enough to brush against his abdomen; gone was her mah dustee. His skin tingled beneath her touch. “Quinn...”

  She leaned closer, her eyes searching his. The tips of her hard nipples brushed his chest. There was no more holding it back; the fires of desire flooded him.

  Quinn hooked a hand behind his neck and tugged him down so their faces were close.

  “What about now?” she asked, and then pressed her mouth against his.

  Her lips were softer, smoother, warmer than he ever imagined, shaping themselves to his as though they were one. Orishok had never experienced such a thing; he had no name for it, no way of knowing its meaning or its purpose. He knew only that it was a taste of paradise.

  She wrapped her other arm around his neck, locking her hands together as she pressed her body against his. Quinn’s heat radiated into him, filled him, overwhelmed his senses. He slipped his arms around her and pulled her closer, lifting her off her feet. She encircled his waist with her legs and pulled her mouth away, only to tilt her head and bring their lips together at a different angle.

  Surprise and excitement swept through him as her tongue slid over the seam of his mouth. He opened it to her readily, and it slipped between his lips.

  They were mating with their mouths.

  And he loved it.

  He dropped his hands to the backs of her thighs and slid his palms up to grip the soft flesh of her rear. Her skirt had ridden up, eliminating the barrier between them; he squeezed her ass and drew her pelvis against his middle, relishing in the direct heat of her core.

  Quinn moaned and pressed her knees against his sides. Lifting her head, she opened her eyes. They were dark and half-lidded, framed by thick lashes.

  “Kiss me back, Orishok.”

  Kiss. A simple word for something so complex, so powerful, but now he knew what to call it. He cupped the back of her head, slipping his fingers into her hair, and brought their lips together again.

  Orishok kissed her with the same ferocity as she’d kissed him, and soon it wasn’t just a meeting of lips, but a duel of tongues and nipping teeth. His heartstone vibrated with the beat of her heart and burned with her heat. Had he blood, it would be ablaze; had he veins, they would run with liquid fire. He had never wanted anything so much as he wanted Quinn in that moment.

  He was not a thing to her, not a weapon, not a tool, not a slave. He was a man. She tasted him like he was flesh and blood, desired him as though he’d never been changed. And Orishok yearned to make her his.

  Only his loincloth separated them. It would be so simple to sweep it aside and enter her. So simple to connect their bodies and know the truth and depth of her heat.

  Quinn broke the kiss and pressed her forehead against his. Her warm, ragged breath tickled his lips, but they were already cooled by the loss of hers.

  “We should stop,” she whispered. “We should.” Her fingers brushed over the back of his head.

  “Why?” He had never felt so alive.

  She laughed. “I don’t really want to stop...”

  “We do not have to stop,” he moved his hand to her chin and tilted her face up, “but we can move slowly. I want to know you, Quinn.”

  A slow smile spread over her lips. “Okay.”

  Orishok walked toward the water, dropping his hand to her thigh. He moved his palm up, beneath her skirt, sliced the fabric open, and tossed it aside.

  “You have no idea how sekzee that was.”

  As he descended the steps and water rose around his calves, he unraveled his loincloth and threw it to join her garment. He didn’t look away from her expressive, mismatched eyes. He carried her deeper into the pool and stopped at her collection of soaps and oils. Her body slid along his when he released her.

  She lowered her legs to stand, and her hands skimmed down his shoulders to rest upon his chest. His cock ached against her soft belly.

  Slowly.

  Involuntarily, his grip on her upper arms tightened. He stepped back and broke their contact. Water rushed in to fill the new space between them, as cold as winter snow compared to Quinn’s heat. She lowered her hands to her side as they studied one another; Orishok ran his gaze from her entrancing eyes to her elegant neck, over her delicate collar bone to the swell of her breasts, where her nipples were beaded in the open air, and lower still to the flare of her hips just beneath the pool’s surface.

  He would learn all of her — not only by sight, but by smell, by hearing, taste, and touch.

  Orishok cupped his hands and dipped them into the water. When he raised them again, he stepped closer to her. He poured water over her chest, watching as it cascaded down her breasts. He repeated the process for her shoulders, arms, and back, until her skin was glistening and most of the rockfur’s blood had been rinsed away.

  She brought her hands to her head, sweeping her hair out of her face. He held her up with one hand as she leaned back, and with the other he smoothed her hair into the water, carefully combing his fingers through it. It felt unlike any fur he’d ever touched; this was soft and smooth, but far stronger than it appeared.

  Quinn smiled up at him as she stood. Orishok plucked one of the bottles from the edge of the pool and opened it, pouring soap into his palm. She gave him her back, gathering her hair and pulling it forward, and he massaged the soap over her shoulders. Her skin was warm and supple under his fingers; it responded to his touch, changing color and texture. She shivered as he ran his hands down her back.

  He slid his palms around her narrow waist to her stomach and trailed them up. They glide
d over her skin, passage eased by the lather, until his fingers brushed the underside of her breasts. She gasped, flinching, and placed her hands over his, but she did not stop him as he covered her breasts and caressed their yielding flesh.

  When Orishok stroked her hard nipples, she moaned and leaned her head on his chest, closing her eyes. Gentle sounds and panting breaths escaped her parted lips. Her reaction to his touch sent a thrill through him; it crackled like lighting just beneath the surface of his skin.

  Quinn shuddered and looked up at him. Slowly, she guided his hand back down over the flat of her stomach, her eyes glittering with want.

  Orishok bent his leg and lifted it, setting her over his thigh and spreading her legs. His palm brushed over her smooth pelvis. She spread her legs wider as she lay back against him, pushing his fingers down into the folds of her sex.

  “Here,” she said. “Touch me here.”

  “As you say, Quinn.” The skin within was softer, warmer; it radiated her inner heat. He pressed the tip of his finger over the place she said, a tiny bud of flesh raised from the rest. Quinn gasped and arched into his touch.

  “Yes,” she moaned, eyes fluttering closed.

  She was of an alien people, and much about their ways was strange to him. He did not know why that spot affected her so. But what was there to question? When the mere touch of his finger could coax such a reaction from her, he didn’t need to know why; he needed only give her more.

  Increasing the pressure slightly, he slid his finger over and around the nub. Quinn’s entire body shook and she released a stuttering breath. Her hips rocked against his hand, and her sounds became more frequent, more desperate. The heat from her core intensified; the heat in his core did the same.

  A new scent overpowered the spring water and soap — the perfume of her arousal. It poured fire into him. He had tasted her sweetness when they kissed; could he taste that part of her, too?

  Orishok slid his hands to her hips and turned her to face him. Her eyes flew open.