“Since they already think that I warm your bed, what does it matter?”
Her reply held an odd tinge of defiance and despair. Tulkhan could not understand why this troubled her. From what he had seen the women of Fair Isle took lovers with impunity. Their men didn’t mind and since the Ghebites despised all women, what did it matter if they thought Imoshen was his bedmate? They might even despise her less. But he wisely chose to keep this observation to himself.
He had yet to find his way with this new Imoshen. He had been finding his way since the first time he confronted her. The memory of that meeting made his body quicken.
“If you’re staying you might as well help me undress.” He waited, watching for her reaction. He wanted her to touch him, wanted to feel her hands on his skin. Any excuse would do. “You’ve dismissed my servants.”
She laughed, then stepped forward. “What barefaced brass! I suppose you are waited on hand and foot while on campaign, a hot bath drawn every night and food served on golden plates?”
He laughed. It felt good to laugh.
As she spoke, her hands moved deftly across his chest, unlacing his vest. She tossed it aside and turned back to him.
He sat and lifted one booted foot imperiously. Her reaction was just what he’d hoped. Amusement and fury mingled in her face as she stepped astride his leg to work his boot off.
It slid over his foot and she dropped it, turning as he lifted the other leg.
She snorted. “I hope you’re enjoying this—”
“Immensely!”
A flash of fire lit her eyes, igniting a surge of dangerous desire in him.
Wordlessly, she stepped astride his other leg and worked his boot off. It fell with a thud.
He rose, standing in nothing but his breeches and undershirt.
She stepped back.
If he hadn’t known better he would have said she was suddenly shy with him. A silence hung between them, heavy with unspoken questions.
“You should know,” she told him. “That yester-eve when I could not be found, without sending out a party to see if I had been thrown from my horse or lost my way, your half-brother had all but declared me a rebel and authorized my execution. I was abducted.” Her fingers indicated the bruise on her forehead. “And I was lucky to escape.”
Tulkhan peeled off his undershirt, aware of how the material stuck to his grimy skin, and tossed the garment aside. Her gaze flew to his breeches and color suffused her pale cheeks. Suddenly she seemed very young and uncertain.
It amused him, but the amusement vanished when he noticed that the flesh around the wound on her forehead was already turning green as though the bruising had happened days ago. She must have been treating herself. A prickle of wariness traveled across his skin. He must not forget she was Dhamfeer—and all that this implied. This hastened healing was all the evidence he needed.
But instead of sensible wariness, he felt a deep anger. It annoyed him to think anyone had raised a hand to Imoshen.
Her eyes widened as he lifted his hand to touch her bruised face. “What did they do to you?”
“My horse bolted and ran into a tree. That was how I escaped the rebels.” Her offhand comment was at odds with the tension in her body.
He wanted to break through her defenses. Some devil prompted him to take her hands in his, guiding them to the laces at his belly. “The bath is going cold. Undress me.”
Startled, her lashes lowered as she glanced down to his breeches and the arousal they could not hide.
Her face was a comic mixture of reluctance and curiosity.
He nodded, unable to speak, his heart hammering in his chest. This battle of wills was more testing than any encounter on the battlefield.
“Very well,” she whispered.
He let her hands drop. She stepped closer and in that instant retrieved the knife he now knew she wore strapped to her upper thigh. Her hand emerged from the slit in her undergown, armed with the naked blade.
His heart missed a beat as the knife’s wicked, polished edge moved close to his loins. He swallowed. She caught the waist of his breeches in one hand and pried the knife blade under the lacing. With a snap, snap, snap the laces gave, falling aside.
“There.” She stepped back, her voice unsteady.
He took a deep breath as if relearning how to breathe and dropped the breeches, stepping out of them. Her eyes widened and he realized that she had not seen him this way before, not in the brightness of a candlelit chamber.
He untied the leather thong which held his hair and stepped forward. Before he could reach for her she darted around the far side of the bath and he had to smile.
When he’d lain awake shivering in the snow, waiting for the rebels to spring from their hideout and slaughter them all, he’d thought of Imoshen, imagining her in his arms, pliant and willing. But when had she ever been like that? She was a firebrand, deadly one minute, sweetly unsure the next and he wanted her desperately. But for now he was willing to enjoy the chase.
At fifteen he’d wooed and tamed one of the wild ponies of his homeland. He knew when to feign disinterest. So he sank into the tub and reached for the soaping sand. It was scented with sandalwood and something else he didn’t recognize.
“Did you mean what you said about Reothe and the powers of the deep woods or was it just a ploy to divert my half-brother’s thoughts?” he asked.
She didn’t answer, but he sensed her coming closer and hid a smile when she knelt behind him. Lifting the ladle she poured warm water over his neck and shoulders.
He could see the fingers of her other hand. The knuckles whitened as she gripped the rim of the bath. “You risked death in the woods.”
He laughed softly. “I’ve risked death every day since I was seventeen—”
“Don’t you know what Reothe is?” she demanded abruptly.
Startled by her intensity, Tulkhan twisted to study Imoshen’s face. “He’s Dhamfeer, like you.”
She rolled her eyes. “You don’t know what that means. I didn’t either, not until ...”
Seeming to recollect herself, she didn’t finish what she’d been about to say but lifted her hand to indicate he should pass the bath scrub.
He gave it to her, watching as she rolled up her sleeves, then worked up a lather. His skin tingled in anticipation. “Explain what you mean about Reothe.”
On her knees she moved around the side of the tub next to him. “You can’t defeat him in the woods. And you can’t trust your half-brother at your back.”
He gave a grunt of amusement. “And I can trust you?”
“Yes,” she hissed.
“Why should I believe that? You surrendered the Stronghold, but you’ve made it clear you never surrendered to me.” He waited. What did he want from her, some admission of commitment? Ridiculous, she wasn’t even one of the True-people. Yet . . .
“I want to survive,” she said with simple sincerity. “I don’t want to see Fair Isle reduced to years of civil war. You can trust me because I’d rather deal with you than your half-brother and that Vaygharian. At least you listen to reason and see beyond your own immediate goals.”
“What of Reothe?” He had to know. Her reasoning was logical, exactly the path he would have taken in her position. Sometimes an enemy you could trust was better than a friend who might betray you. But where did that leave the man she’d been betrothed to?
She looked down.
“He was your betrothed, the last prince of the T’En,” Tulkhan pressed. “And now you know he still lives ...”
She sighed and he thought she was going to lie to him. Instead, she stroked the lather along his shoulders consideringly. Her fingers massaged his tense shoulders, manipulating the slabs of muscle, working wonders. When she moved behind him to run her fingers up the nape of his neck he did not object. No one had ever pampered him like this.
He felt the knots of tension and tiredness seep from his weary body. When her fingers worked through his scalp, lathering hi
s long hair, every sensation was somehow intensified. Her fingers were magic, he could lose himself in her caress.
“You are a wonderful witch,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.
“If I am a witch then Reothe is a warlock.”
There was a tremor in her voice. It chilled him despite the warm bathwater. He tried to twist his head so he could see her face, but she wound her fingers through his wet, soapy hair so tightly it was almost painful.
“Listen, General!” Her breath tickled his ear, making the little hairs on the back of his neck rise. He sensed her whispered words were torn from her at great personal cost. “Reothe has powerful T’En gifts, things I am only just discovering. He ... he nearly trapped me out in the woods and if he had I would not have been able to fight him.”
She was afraid of one of her own kind? “I don’t—”
Abruptly, she tipped a ladle of water over his head, indicating the conversation was over. Warm water cascaded over his shoulders, bringing with it the scent of the soap.
So Reothe was a sore point with her. Biding his time, Tulkhan let Imoshen rinse out the soap. When she’d finished he rubbed the water from his face and caught his long hair to wring the excess from it.
He looked across the bath to where she now knelt opposite him, watching him warily. Imoshen was not telling him everything. He knew he should pursue it, yet he was so weary he found it hard to concentrate. The only thing he could think of was how beautiful she looked despite the bruise over her troubled eyes.
He indicated the puckered skin. “You’ll have a scar.”
“I’d rather be interesting than pretty.”
He laughed. “You are nothing like the women of my homeland.”
She looked at him as if she didn’t know what to make of his comment. The damp heat of the bath had made the short elf locks around her face tighten into ringlets. Even her eyes looked bruised. Fear gave them a shimmering quality. He wanted to erase that fear, to know that she trusted him for himself, not because she had no choice.
The thought of someone striking her face so hard that it split the skin and drew blood was physically distressing to him. Was this wound the reason she feared the male Dhamfeer?
“Did Reothe hit you?”
She made an impatient gesture. “I told you. I was trying to ride a bolting horse with my hands tied behind my back. No, if only it were that simple. Since ...”
She looked down to lather her hands once again. Shifting to the side of the tub beside the fire she prepared to soap his chest. He sensed she wanted to speak but couldn’t.
Tentatively, he touched her arm. “If we are to be allies, you must trust me.”
Her eyes met his. Then her pale hands began to work their magic again, slowly circling the skin across the broad planes of his chest, working deeper and deeper. The sensation was so intense he had trouble concentrating on what she was saying.
“You call me Dhamfeer, we call ourselves the T’En,” she whispered. “Six hundred years ago there were several hundred of us. We were blown off course far across an ocean thought to be too broad to traverse, so my namesake claimed this island for the T’En. She took it by force, but in the end the island has taken us.
“Reothe and I are the last of our kind, Throwbacks born because of inbreeding in the royal line. There is no one to teach me how to use the gifts the T’En knew.
“Since that night with you something has wakened in me. It stirred to life, quickened by our joining.”
The glance she cast him was swift and unsure. It stirred something deep and primal within him. He caught her hands before they moved lower on their self-appointed task. Her touch was too intoxicating, confusing. He wanted a clear head.
“Is that . . . normal?”
She shrugged. “The Aayel is dead. I don’t know. I know only that certain things happened the night of our joining which frightened me—”
“The scrying, the bedding bursting into flames?”
She ducked her head and nodded as though ashamed to admit a weakness, which he supposed it was from her point of view.
“I don’t know how to control what has woken so I’ve chosen not to use it, even when I felt it stir like a restless beast in the dark caverns of my mind.
“But yester-eve when they captured me I was frightened. They said Reothe was nearby. I knew once he had me in his power . . .” She glanced quickly at Tulkhan. “I don’t know how it is with your people. But Reothe and I were betrothed. There was a bond formed that day. And he uses it to draw me to him.”
“I don’t understand.” Tulkhan was afraid he did and he didn’t like what he suspected she meant.
She rinsed the lather from her hands and straightened. “Hold out your hand and close your eyes.”
It was a strange request, yet Tulkhan complied without question. He realized it was a measure of how far he had come since taking the Stronghold. He felt her fingers lace through his. Her hands were soft, still damp from the bathwater. He wondered what it would be like to taste her skin, to run his tongue up between her breasts, inhale her subtle feminine perfume. He wanted to see her eyes darken with desire, hear her gasp of appreciation.
“Well?”
“Well, what?” he asked, hoarsely.
“What were you thinking of?”
This time he felt his face grow hot. “Nothing. Why, what was I supposed to think of?”
She looked closely at him. Her fingers went to the laces which held her overdress tightly cinched beneath her breasts. With deft fingers she undid the lacing, letting the stiff material drop away to the floor.
His mouth went dry and his breath seemed to falter in his throat. Next her fingers tugged on the string which held the neck gathering of her underdress. His blood drummed in his ears as she loosened the material, letting it fall from her shoulders to reveal her perfect small breasts, the nipples puckered.
Unable to look away, he watched her fingers circle those tight nipples. “This is what you were thinking.”
His mouth went dry with fear, not desire.
“How?” One word escaped him.
“Good. I haven’t tried that before.”
“Damn!” He sprang to his feet, dragging her upright.
Bathwater slopped over the rim onto the floor. On contact with his damp body the material of her underdress clung to her body. Her bare breasts brushed the dark matted hair of his chest as he held her. He could feel her warm flesh, as good as naked next to his.
Anger and desire warred within him. “Keep out of my head!”
“How do you think I feel?” She jerked as if to escape him, but he wouldn’t release her, not while there was still breath in his body.
Pain traveled across her face, shadowing her eyes with fear. “I hated it when Reothe invaded my mind. At least I admitted it to you. He played with me, manipulating my senses without thought for my feelings! How do you think I feel knowing he can do that?”
“Reothe manipulates you?”
She nodded, and stepped back as he released her. Tulkhan hated to acknowledge the terrible feeling of foreboding stealing over him. The rebel leader had stood and laughed mockingly as Tulkhan’s sword sliced through insubstantial mist. Reothe vowed he would be the Ghebite General’s death, had even called him a dead man who walked and talked.
Somehow the Dhamfeer rebel leader had evaded Tulkhan’s army in the highlands, yet killed or wounded half his men. And then there was the inexplicable death of the commander.
Reothe had arranged for Imoshen to be plucked from the land around her Stronghold in broad daylight and nearly succeeded in abducting her.
What manner of man was T’Reothe?
Dhamfeer. Other and dangerous.
If so, then so was Imoshen. The knowledge that she had invaded his mind still rankled Tulkhan.
He caught her shoulders, drawing her near to search her face.
“You were betrothed to him, destined to be his bedmate.” The thought of another man planting images of seduction in Imo
shen’s mind incensed Tulkhan. He wanted to strike out. Imoshen had freely given her vow to Reothe, while Tulkhan had to admit he had laid claim to her body through trickery. He had no real hold on her. His throat closed with bitterness, choking his voice. “What does it matter if he seduces you with mind tricks, surely it is his right?”
He watched her eyes widen, knew he’d hurt her and cursed himself because suddenly he didn’t want to cause her pain.
“You don’t understand!” she hissed, pulling away from him as if she had been stung. If he hadn’t been standing in the bath Tulkhan suspected she would have kicked him. “I’m afraid he’ll seduce my mind. If joining with you that once gives me this much access to your thoughts, can you imagine what joining with Reothe would do? He wants to use me to regain Fair Isle!”
“And I want to use you to hold Fair Isle,” Tulkhan ground out. “What is the difference?”
She stiffened, her face beautiful and masklike in its stillness. She was shocked beyond pain.
He had pushed her till she reacted but this resistance was a hollow victory.
“Choice!” The word fell from her lips, startling him with its force. “I choose to ally myself with you.”
“But you were betrothed to him, promised—”
“In another time, before the old empire fell!” Her voice was low and intense. “You must understand, for all our sakes. Reothe tried to use the betrothal as a lever on me and I refused him. Now he has tried force. If he gets me in his power I will have no defenses against him. I don’t know how to use the T’En gifts and he does!” The confession was torn from her. “How do you think I feel, knowing he can manipulate my mind?”
“How do you think I feel knowing you can do the same to me?” Tulkhan demanded raggedly.
She blinked, and he could have sworn she was surprised.
“But I’m not going to hurt you.” Her sincerity was obvious.
He almost laughed. “As long as I’m useful to you, as long as there are other threats like my half-brother and his lover, or your once-betrothed, Reothe.”
Tulkhan could hear the mockery in his own voice. He didn’t want to stand here arguing with her. Suddenly nothing mattered but his desire for her, his need.
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