But perhaps that was already compromised. If so, would going to his cabin make matters any worse? She wasn’t at risk of having a child, because the bleed-no-more she took every night to make certain she could swim at any time of the month also meant she was at no risk of conceiving. It was her mind and heart she was worried about, not her body.
She looked down and realized she had put the last stitch in the last leaf of a delicate wreath of lilies-of-the-lake. So the handkerchief was for her mother. She didn’t write to her parents, because even if someone else read the letter to them, she wasn’t sure they would either understand or be pleased about her work in Seawatch. And without money to buy gifts of any kind, the most she could do was embroider little things for them, to be sent with Seawatch agents who traveled Denalay on recruiting runs, searching for children with sparks of talent.
Her family was gone. She didn’t resent Seawatch for that, because taking her to Whetstone hadn’t been done out of malice, it had been done so she could defend her homeland. But she wasn’t going to lose anyone else. The connections in her life were so few and so far between that she had to keep them for as long as she could.
Biting off the green thread, she slipped the needle into one of the flannel leaves of her needle-book, then folded the handkerchief and put it away in her sewing pouch. Out of habit she glanced in the mirror and smoothed her hair down, except now she looked a little more closely at her face. That seemed the same as always, so she had no idea what Darok found attractive, what made him behave as none of the Kovirs had done.
Not that they had been inconsiderate or rough. Her mentor had recommended them, after all, and she hadn’t been either regretful or unsatisfied after nights with them. But they had never been carried away, and they had never touched her spontaneously, outside of those specific circumstances. Compared to them, Darok was as predictable and safe as a tropical storm.
And I want him anyway.
She blew out her lamp, closed her door and went to his cabin. Even if he hadn’t told her to come to his quarters if she wanted him, she would have done so, because one of the Whetstone rules about intimate relations was that women always went to the rooms of the men they’d chosen. That way, the women could leave when they pleased, whereas if it was the other way around, it might not be easy to expel men who overstayed their welcome.
She had a feeling, though, that beyond the threshold of Darok’s cabin, she would be finished with the rulebook and done with the chart. Her pulse beating fast, she knocked on the door.
There was no answer. She knocked again, then looked around and put her ear to the door. She couldn’t hear anything.
Maybe he was somewhere else. He would be easy to find on the deck, but the thought crossed her mind that he could be in someone else’s cabin. She wasn’t the only female company he could have on the ship, since one of the carpenter’s apprentices was a tall young woman in a leather apron. If he put her through all that and then went to someone else, she would shove him overboard. After they had dealt with the Turean galleys, of course.
She knocked for a third time, without any hope that the door would be opened, then turned to go back to her cabin. A footstep stopped her, and she glanced back to see Darok on the stairs. What little light there was came from a lantern outside, and it was behind him, but she recognized his silhouette at once.
“Did you want something?” he said.
“No, I…” She stopped. The thought of being in his bed made her mouth go dry, and not just with desire, but after coming so far, she wasn’t going to turn back. “Yes.”
He was at her side in the next moment, grasping her wrist and pushing the door open. She went with him, feeling caught by a riptide too strong to fight. The door closed and he let her go.
She heard him move away. “What are you doing?”
“Lighting a lamp.”
“Don’t.” In the light, he would see all the apprehension she couldn’t keep off her face, and she would see…him. She felt overwhelmed enough by his touch and by the sound of his voice without looking at him on top of it. Blindly, she stretched out a hand and touched the fabric of his sleeve, then curved her fingers as best she could around the hard muscles of his arm.
“Yerena.”
His voice was low and deep, turning the consonants of her name into a purr, and it was the only warning she had before his arm went around her waist, pulling her against him. His fingers were splayed against her hip, but his other hand cupped her face, lifting it. Yerena felt the warmth of his breath on her lips and held on to him for support as her eyes closed involuntarily.
Except it wasn’t like the hungry, unrestrained way he had kissed her before. His mouth barely brushed the corner of hers before settling over her lips, easing them apart as if he had all the night to simply kiss her. Her nervousness melting away, she slid her arms up around his neck and opened her mouth.
His tongue found hers, stroked and teased and tasted until the ship swayed and tilted beneath her feet. It was getting more and more difficult to stay composed, to keep her mind in a secure compartment away from what her body was doing. Dimly, Yerena supposed she could have managed that if he was just kissing her, but even through their clothes she felt the warm strong solidity of his body pressed against hers. Her skin felt as though he was touching her everywhere.
Darok lifted his head and pushed her gently back a pace until something bumped into the backs of her knees. She sat down on his bunk, her arms falling to her sides, and he knelt to slip her shoes off.
The moment’s respite was what she needed to draw in a deep breath and remind herself that she had to remain in control. It was like standing with one foot on the shore and one in the water, enjoying the physical act without wallowing in it, and keeping her thoughts untouched was even more important when she was with Darok. He wasn’t part of Seawatch, so she couldn’t depend on him to be correct and appropriate, but more importantly, she might someday have to sink his ship and watch him go down with it. Maybe later that night. She couldn’t allow herself to get attached to him.
So when he straightened up and kissed her again, she responded as her fingers went to the buttons of his shirt, but her mind felt locked away, detached from everything. She slipped her hand inside his shirt and drew her fingertips over his bare chest, eliciting a shudder. Odd how he seemed to be so excited by that when she might as well have been touching a well-sculpted statue that had been warmed in the sun.
“You smell so good,” he said as he opened the collar of her blouse. Yerena knew she was breathing harder, but she couldn’t smell him at all. She might as well have been back in the black room. Then again, why would she need to smell anyone, least of all a man who had been on a ship at sea for several weeks? That would probably be very unarousing.
Let’s get our clothes off, she thought and slipped off the bunk. The ship was perfectly unmoving beneath her bare feet, becalmed, as she drew her blouse over her head and dropped it beside her.
Still kneeling, Darok spanned her waist in his hands, then unlaced her skirt so it fell around her ankles. Beneath her clothes she wore a thin sleeveless shift, and she shrugged that off her shoulders as well before she loosened the knotted drawstring at her waist. Her drawers slid down her legs with a soft rustle of linen.
Thank the Unity it’s dark. That did remind her a lot of the black room, which was lightless and featureless except for a mattress. Its walls were soundproof, and the air flowing in through hidden vents was filtered so it had no smell. She’d spent hours or days in there, learning to separate her mind from her senses, to detach from the physical, and to retain her sanity through the entire ordeal.
So it wasn’t difficult to compartmentalize her thoughts. She hoped Darok would stand up so she could take his clothes off as well, and then they could satisfy their needs, and then she could go back to her cabin to get an hour or two of sleep before she was needed.
His fingers trailed slowly from her hips to her knees, tracing the outline of her shape,
and as if from a short distance, she heard him draw in his breath. Then he was on his feet, pushing her down on the bunk and lying on top of her, fully clothed though he was. He kissed her throat, teeth grazing her skin, and the flesh between her legs ached with a need that went no deeper. It was as though she stood beside the bunk, watching herself writhe on it.
She felt a backwash of pleasure as a strong rough-skinned hand cupped her breast as gently as if it were a bird, but the sensation might as well have been filtered through someone else’s consciousness before it reached her. When his head moved lower and his tongue found her nipple, what she felt in consequence was muted, making her wet without being any threat to her composure. It was all proceeding just as she had anticipated, more or less.
She slid her arms around his back and spread her legs to accommodate his body, noting absently that he hadn’t taken off his trousers yet. Well, that was only to be expected. If I wasn’t in control of myself, I wouldn’t be able to do anything in a quick and orderly fashion either.
Darok blew softly on her nipple before he kissed the hollow of her shoulder and nibbled his way to her ear. “Yerena,” he whispered, “I want you so much.”
Yerena went still. Was she supposed to answer that? If so, what to say? Thank you came to mind right away, but that probably wouldn’t be appropriate. I want you too? But surely he could tell she wanted him; she wasn’t in his cabin to do his laundry. Maybe that was what lovers told each other outside of Whetstone, a reassurance of some sort. It seemed very pointing-out-the-obvious, but if it was what she had to say to move the process along, there was no harm in obliging.
“I want you too,” she said.
As soon as she heard her own voice, she knew she had made a mistake. She sounded polite and reserved rather than overcome by desire, and the pause before she replied hadn’t helped either. Darok’s body went completely rigid before he pulled away. In the dark, she couldn’t see his expression, but his silence told her everything she needed to know.
“Get dressed,” he said finally. He might have been giving orders to a very junior member of the crew who was known for insubordination. “Then go back to your cabin.”
Yerena pushed herself up on one elbow, the disassociation ended. Abruptly both mind and flesh shared the same vessel, and neither of them seemed to know how to react. “Darok, I—”
“Don’t waste your breath. If you have to force yourself to be with me, I’m not interested.”
“I wasn’t forcing myself.” Yerena drew her knees up, feeling cold. He wasn’t going to like this, no matter what she said. “I was just being careful. It’s no different from having just one glass of rum rather than guzzling the whole bottle down.”
“Which is presumably what I was doing?” There was a thud as his boots touched the floor, and he got off the bunk. “So you didn’t want to leave your shell. I suppose I should have expected that.”
“Don’t start that crab talk again.”
“Then stop acting like one. I don’t want to make love to your body while your mind is elsewhere. I want a whole person.”
“You don’t understand.” Yerena reached for the blanket and pulled it over her body, wondering in the back of her mind why she wasn’t seizing the quickest way out and getting dressed. “What you’re talking about is overindulgent and excessive. It’s different when you separate your mind from the act—then it’s something you have control over.”
“Yes,” Darok said. “Then it’s something safe and calm and emotionless. And no matter what I do, you’d prefer it to being with me.”
There was a raw undertone to his voice, something Yerena had never heard before—because, she realized, no one had spoken to her with such a depth of passion. She’d had occasional disagreements, never so intense as to be arguments, with other Kovirs and Yerenas, and the relatives of the Tureans whom she had killed would have hated and despised her if they had known who she was. But until that night, no one had treated her as though she had hurt them.
“Sit down,” she said.
He didn’t say anything but she heard a soft rasp as he turned.
“Sit down.” She spoke as she would have spoken to the shark, with a quiet authority that did not need to be stressed because it was built on an unshakeable confidence, and she got off the bunk to make room for him.
Ignoring her nakedness, she felt her way to the table, struck a spark and lit the oil lamp. There was a hook driven into the wall nearer to the bed, and she hung the lamp over that before she looked back at Darok.
He sat on the bunk, boots braced apart on the floor, eyes watchful and intent on her face. He was deliberately avoiding looking at her body, she realized, but his hands clenched against the blanket gave him away. She crossed the floor to him, knelt and lifted his foot, propping it on her knee so she could draw his boot off. Then she did the same for his other boot before she rose to her feet.
He was breathing faster when she had finished—his chest rose and fell within the open shirt—but he still said nothing. Yerena smiled inwardly. So there was something to be said for self-control after all.
“Stand up,” she said, and he did so. She found it rather pleasant to give orders and have them so quickly obeyed; she hadn’t done that with any of the Kovirs she had bedded. They had satisfied their needs together, and they might even have made love, but they had never been either vulnerable or playful.
She unbuckled Darok’s sword-belt and set it aside, then pulled his shirt from the waistband of his trousers. His chest was broad and hard-muscled, but the ridge of a scar twisted its way from his left shoulder to his hip. That could have killed him. She almost wished he was the kind of man who commanded from the rear rather than rushing headfirst into danger.
Without touching his skin, she skimmed the soft, well-worn linen off his shoulders and let it glide down his arms. He was so close to her that the tips of her nipples almost touched his chest, but keeping him at a finger’s length of distance made her want him all the more. She had never tried prolonging the anticipation before, especially not in that leisurely way of undressing him. For the first time in her life, she understood what it meant to seduce a man.
Holding his gaze with her own, she lowered her hands to his trousers and began to undo the buttons.
Darok’s eyes closed. His lips parted as he drew in a sharp breath, and Yerena was glad she was looking at him instead of what was just beneath her fingers. With her senses fully in play, even through coarse roughspun, she felt the heat and hardness of his erection. She thought of having it inside her, and the wave of dizziness that swept over her only faded when she sank her teeth into her lower lip and forced herself to concentrate on her task. He was trembling, his whole body taut, as she freed the last button.
“Step out of those.” She drew her hands back. “Then lie down.”
He did as she said, and Yerena allowed herself to look at him. She’d seen men naked before, but now she savored the experience. His eyes were dark as coffee dashed with spices, and at the smoldering look in them, her blood ignited as if she had drunk something much hotter. The muscles along his angular jawline were taut. She let her eyes wander from the sheen of sweat on his chest to the flat belly where a trail of hair led to his groin. His erection was hard, swollen and ready for her.
And although he wasn’t moving, Darok wasn’t exactly still either. He explored her body with his eyes, and she thought that even if she had been wearing all her clothes, it wouldn’t have made a difference. He would have known what she looked like anyway, and that searching gaze would have gone far deeper than just the surface of her skin.
She put one knee on the bunk—it was narrower than her bed in Whetstone, so she had to be next to him if she didn’t want to fall off—and swung her other leg over his hips to sit astride him. He closed his eyes as she drew her fingernails down his chest, not gently but not hard enough to leave scratches on his skin. Not yet, anyway.
She licked the pad of her thumb and rubbed his nipple. His eyes o
pened at once, and her smile was no longer secret as she reached down. She wrapped her hand around the throbbing length of his shaft, and he groaned.
“This is how much I want you,” she said, and rose up on her knees just enough to guide him into her.
The first touch of iron heat against the wet folds of her sex made her jolt as if the ship had struck a sandbank, but she recovered and began to impale herself slowly. She wanted him in her, wanted them joined so deeply that nothing would be able to tear them apart…at least for that night.
Darok’s hands went to her hips, gripping tightly as she lowered herself, taking him inch by inch. “Yerena!” He threw his head back. “Are—are you close—”
“No.” The muscles in her thighs were trembling, the soft inner walls of her channel stretched as he filled her completely. “Make me.”
His eyes were darker, dilated with passion. The lamplight gave his damp skin a coppery sheen, and each time she breathed she took in the raw masculine scent of him—sweat and smoke and leather. It made her hungrier, as if she could watch and smell a feast laid out before her but wasn’t able to eat any of it yet.
Then his hands moved to her upper arms, closing around them, and he pulled her forward. Yerena gasped. The flesh between her thighs was so sensitized that any movement affected her, but Darok ignored that as he released one arm, only to cup her breast and guide the nipple to his waiting mouth.
That time he wasn’t teasing when he sucked. Yerena clamped her mouth shut on a sob. His mouth was merciless, scraping the edges of his teeth lightly over the nipple. It stiffened at once, hard as a pearl against the wet rough surface of his tongue, and he laved it in long slow strokes that turned to a deep thirsty tugging on her flesh. A hot shudder rippled through her body, all the way down to the heavy fullness inside her, and she knew he had felt it too. Her head fell forward and she rocked against him, moaning in reaction.
The Deepest Ocean (Eden Series) Page 11