by Cat Marsters
“It could be gentle, tender sex. Probably still sweaty though. But we could always take a bath together afterward.”
Hadn’t she vowed to try to be more rational? Being mad at Bael for no reason clearly wasn’t rational.
“But if it really hurts,” Bael said, sounding regretful, “then I guess—”
“It’s not that bad,” Kett heard herself saying.
“It isn’t?”
“Uh.” She opened her eyes. He’d turned down the lamp and the room was sultry and dark. The scent of jasmine washed over her again from the blossoms outside. Bael stood by the bed, all big and hard and naked.
“You could try kissing it better,” she whispered, and he grinned and leapt into bed beside her. The mattress bounced and he laughed, and Kett forgot that she was mad and frustrated and laughed with him.
“You’re pretty gorgeous when you laugh,” he told her, wriggling under the covers and pinning her beneath him.
“That’s such a line.”
“No, it’s true,” Bael protested, nuzzling her neck and kissing her jaw. “You’re pretty gorgeous most of the time, actually.”
“Most. Boy, you really know how to compliment a girl,” Kett said. She knew he was flattering her and she didn’t care, because his big, hard body felt really good pressed against her. She wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders, felt the muscles tensing in his back. Yeah, really very good.
“Well, the rest of the time you’re absolutely gorgeous,” Bael said, his stubble scraping against her collarbone.
“You don’t half talk rubbish,” Kett said, and he looked up, surprised.
“No, I mean it!”
“You don’t have to flatter me.”
“It’s not flattery.” He kissed her lightly on the lips. “I like everything about you.”
“Now I know you’re lying.” Time to put his mouth to better uses. “Didn’t you say something about kissing me better?”
Bael didn’t argue with that. He dropped his head and obediently nuzzled her breast, licking the underside of it but not touching her nipple, and she closed her eyes. When he wasn’t talking bollocks, he had a great mouth.
His hand was lightly stroking her leg, lifting it gently to rest against his hip as he kissed the curve of her breast. Kett wanted to tell him to hurry up and get to the good stuff, but then it occurred to her that what he was doing was pretty good. Clearly it had been too long since she’d had sex with anyone who had the faintest clue what they were doing.
His fingers were tracing featherlight patterns on her scarred leg. Some of it she couldn’t feel—the skin was numb in places—but some of it she could, and it felt damn good. When he ran his tongue over her nipple she jolted off the bed a little, and forgot completely about any pain in her leg at all.
Bael laughed softly against her breast and swirled his tongue around her nipple. Wow, Kett thought, if his tongue is this talented why does he waste so much time using it to talk rubbish?
He shifted between her legs, and those wonderful bumpy muscles on his stomach pressed against her crotch. She was still wearing underwear—a rather skimpy number Chance had rustled up for her, far more impractical and revealing than anything she’d have chosen for herself.
Bael seemed impressed with it, however. He was sucking one nipple now, his hand stroking the other, caressing with soft, teasing motions. She found herself wriggling closer to him, enjoying the press of his hard muscles against the hot, needy flesh between her legs.
Actually, damn Chance for finding her underwear! She wanted to be naked. Wanted to rub herself all over Bael’s lovely body, feel his hot skin against her wet pussy lips. The hot skin of his stomach, his fingers, his cock.
She thought about how his cock had felt sliding inside her last night and a wave of heat swamped her.
“Bael,” she said, and it came out as a husky gasp.
“Mmm.” His voice vibrated through her.
“I want you inside me.”
His fingers tightened momentarily on her breast. “‘I want’ doesn’t get,” he said, and ran his tongue in a lazy circle around her nipple. “I promised I’d kiss you better and I mean to stick to that promise.”
“Kiss me better later,” she said desperately.
“No no.” He gave her nipple a little flick with his tongue. “I’m not done yet.” His hand strayed from her thigh down to the strip of fabric over her hip. Well, that was more promising. Kett tried desperately hard not to wriggle and writhe against him, and failed utterly.
Bael gave a soft laugh and kissed her stomach. He found the little round scar by her bellybutton and licked it, and she wrapped her legs around his back, squeezing him tightly enough to get his attention.
“You’re killing me,” she said.
“Can’t have that,” Bael said, and scooted down a little farther to nuzzle the inside of her thigh. He licked, nibbled and made a thoughtful noise. “You know, this does taste somewhat like liniment.”
“You eat liniment a lot?”
“Mmm, no. But it doesn’t taste like the rest of you. Not salty,” he licked higher, where she knew no liniment had gone, “or sweet,” he blew on her wet skin and she shivered, “or delicious in any way. However,” he said, apropos of nothing, and sat up.
“What? However what?” Kett wriggled madly. He wasn’t going to just leave her like this, was he?
But Bael laughed and reached for her underwear again, sliding the lace down her hips. She relaxed a little—but only a little, because her body was wound up tight, needing him to touch her again. To taste her.
“However,” he murmured, dropping the knickers on the floor. “I’m wondering if this might taste better.”
And with that, he put his head between her legs and gave her pussy one long lick. Kett shuddered and nearly came, her legs shaking as she moved them wider apart to give him better access.
Bael parted her with his fingers, stuck his tongue inside her and then she did come, a wave of release crashing over her as her body snapped like a spring wound up too tight.
“Mmm,” he said, and the vibrations made her shudder a little more. “That was delicious.”
“Flatterer,” she said, and was appalled to hear her voice shaking.
“I’m sincere! However can I convince you?” He gave her labia a thoughtful nibble.
By doing that, Kett thought, but couldn’t quite manage to get her voice working enough to say it.
“I’ll just have another taste while I think about it,” Bael decided, and sucked her labia between his lips. She gasped, her hips bucking as his tongue teased her delicate flesh. He stilled her with his hands, dipped his tongue back inside where she was dripping wet then circled her clit.
Kett hadn’t really recovered from her first orgasm yet, and she felt the waves building in her again as he licked and sucked her most sensitive flesh. Her heels dug into his back. Her hands clenched the sheets. Her breath came in gasps.
Bael slipped his finger into her cunt and she came again, tightening around him, loving the feel of it inside her. Wanting more. Wanting something bigger, longer, thicker inside her.
“More,” she gasped, her body twisting as he licked and sucked her relentlessly. “Inside me, more!”
Obligingly, he added another finger. Then another. He twisted them inside her and her hips came right up off the bed. But it still wasn’t what she wanted.
“Fuck me,” she panted. “For the love of the gods, fuck me!”
Bael bit the inside of her thigh. “I think I’ve kissed you better enough for now,” he murmured, his voice just a little ragged, and flipped her over onto her stomach. All Kett really registered was that he wasn’t licking her anymore, that her cunt was empty of his fingers, and she was just about to protest when he pulled her up to her knees and slid that big, hard cock of his deep inside her from behind.
“Oh gods,” she choked, shaking as he pushed home as far as he could go, his balls brushing her clit. Her legs wouldn’t hold her anymore, and she had the f
leeting thought that this was the first time since the accident that it had been pleasure making her muscles ineffective, not pain.
Then Bael withdrew from her, sliding out with wonderful friction, his hands sure on her hips as he pulled out so far the head of his cock slid against her pussy lips and her brain became useless. He plunged back in again, and Kett’s arms collapsed beneath her, her body falling to the mattress. Her legs would surely have given way too, but Bael held tight to her hips as he thrust into her and back out again, in and out until she was completely mindless with pleasure.
She came again, a series of rolling orgasms that nearly made her black out, and only came to when the friction stopped and she realized Bael was no longer moving inside her. He’d rolled her to her side, and although he was still inside her, his penis was soft. Her thighs were sticky with come. She hadn’t even felt it, her orgasms had been so overwhelming.
Lazily, he nuzzled the back of her neck, pushing strands of sweaty hair away from her skin. “Better?”
She could hardly breathe, let alone speak. She managed a nod and felt his body shake a little with laughter. “Let me know if it starts hurting again. I’ll be glad to treat it.”
Kett smiled, and then she gave an exhausted laugh. “Sure,” she panted. “I like your kind of…treatment.”
He slid out of her, rolling her in his arms so she was facing him. Kett wasn’t usually much of a snuggler, but when Bael pulled her close she curled into him, liking the lazy way he held her as her heartbeat slowed back down, the heat of his body warming her. He smelled good, clean sweat and hot skin, and when his lips brushed hers, he tasted good too.
“Mmm,” he said. “You taste like Xinjiangese food.”
“That’s interesting,” she said, tucking her head under his chin. “We were eating Nihonese.”
“Were we?”
“Yes. We’re in Nihon, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Er…” Bael began.
She lifted her head. “You hadn’t noticed?”
“Well, Miho was speaking Xinjiangese! Wasn’t she?” he added suspiciously.
“Yes, but then she is Xinjiangese. She just lives in Nihon.”
“Oh,” Bael said, his body slightly tenser than it had been.
“What, don’t you like Nihon?” Kett asked sleepily, snuggling back down.
“Oh no, I like it fine. They just, er, don’t like me much.”
“They don’t?”
“No. Chucked me out a couple of times.”
Kett felt herself mildly amused by this. “Out of the country?”
“Yep.”
“What for?”
He seemed to think about it. “Can’t remember.”
Well, that was kind of adorable. Kett figured it was a sign of her misspent youth that she thought it was cute when a guy couldn’t remember why he’d been deported. It certainly explained much about her taste in men.
“Well, I won’t tell anyone,” she murmured, and closed her eyes, falling asleep in Bael’s arms.
When she woke up, he was gone.
Chapter Four
“Miho says he seduced the Emperor’s daughter,” Chance said as they approached the cave high on the mountainside.
Kett pulled on the reins of her munta. “So they chucked him out?”
“She was supposed to be pure for marriage. It’s considered an act of treason.”
“Isn’t it usually a death sentence for treason?” Dark rumbled.
“Yeah, but he has friends in high places, Miho says.”
Kett gave her a sideways glance. “You don’t believe her?”
“Well…come on, do you? Bael? He looks like he just rolled out of prison.”
“So?”
“So, do jailbirds usually have friends in high—” Chance broke off as Kett raised an eyebrow. Dark hid a smile. “Oh all right. Well, that just means you two are perfect for each other.”
“Oh sure. Apart from the fact that he’s a lunatic.”
“Well, you’re a lunatic.”
Kett opened her mouth to protest, then briefly considered her life history and let it go. “And he buggered off without another word this morning.” The Curse of Kett strikes again.
“Because the proviso on his escaping the death sentence first time around was that they wouldn’t be so lenient if he ever came back.”
Kett made a face and grumbled under her breath. She didn’t know why she was complaining about it. It wasn’t as if she was bothered. Bael had been fun—in the sack, he’d been a lot of fun—but he was a nutball and she just didn’t need that.
It was better this way.
She dismounted outside the cave, which looked entirely unthreatening in the bright sunshine, and moved forward. The entrance was just high enough for a grown man to pass under without concussing himself, and inside the ceiling rose to maybe fifteen or sixteen feet at the highest point.
A broken chain still dangled from a hook wedged into the rock. Directly below it was a perfect circle, etched into the ground by some immense source of heat.
A sound of disgust came from the cave’s entrance, and Kett glanced around to see Dark looking like he could smell something bad. All Kett could smell was the scent of burned meat, but then she didn’t have the refined nose of a lion Nasc.
“Burned flesh,” he said to Kett.
“Human flesh,” Chance clarified. She too was making a face as she poked at the charred remains on the floor. Flakes of ash drifted away on the cool morning breeze.
“It was like that when I got here,” Kett said, which made her cousin smile.
“What are these?” Dark asked, examining the symbols burned into the wall. Now that the sunlight was filtering in, Kett could see the walls of the entire cavern were covered with them. “It looks like a language, but not one I recognize.”
“Thought you spoke everything going?” Kett asked.
“Exactly,” he said, frowning.
Chance moved closer to investigate but could offer no more clues. “It looks almost like kelfish, but…not,” she said.
“Helpful, thanks.”
Chance rolled her eyes and took out a notebook and pencil. “Here. Maybe someone at Koskwim will know.”
Kett pictured the vast library of the Order and nodded. If the answer was anywhere, it would be there.
She copied down as many of the symbols, in the correct order, as she could, and the three of them left the macabre place, riding down the mountain and turning north toward the Bridge compound near Tonshi. Chance handed Kett a few folded sheets of paper bearing the king of Peneggan’s signature and personal seal. Emergency travel documents.
Kett gave her cousin a sidelong look.
“He’s your uncle, not mine,” Chance said.
“Step-uncle,” Kett muttered. “How did you know I’d need them?”
“Darling, you always need them.”
The Wall shimmered before them, violet and beautiful. Mesmerizing, never still, and beautiful.
Beautiful and deadly.
Rather like a lot of people she knew.
The Bridge official waved them forward to be enchanted, and Kett prepared herself as she had a hundred times before. A grown human could pass through the Wall only under heavy enchantment. Children, animals and kelfs couldn’t pass through at all.
When she thought about it, the idea of being broken down into thousands of tiny pieces and reassembled on the other side made Kett feel vaguely sick. No wonder she was surrounded by green-faced travelers when she materialized on the Peneggan side of the Wall.
Dark came next, looking a little pale but otherwise healthy. Chance flowed into existence after him, looking no rockier than if she’d just stepped from a luxurious carriage ride.
“And yet we’re related,” Kett muttered in disgust, her hand on her queasy stomach. She followed her cousin out of the heavily fortified Bridge compound and up the hill, stepping around scorched areas of grass and breathing in deeply of the smoky air.
�
�Home scary home,” Chance said as they crested the rise, passed through a small wood and paused, looking down on the home of the Order.
“Really, I’m not sure I’m flattered that you keep bringing me here,” Dark said.
“I grew up here,” Chance protested mildly. “Most of the people here are lovely.”
“Darling, most of them could invent five new ways to kill a man before breakfast.”
“Only five? You haven’t been paying attention.”
Kett said nothing, looking down at the twisted red pillars of stone, the gleaming white tower, the glint of sunshine on the courtyard’s fountains. She could see small figures leaping and playing in the water, younger students not yet burdened with the full understanding of what they’d come to learn from the Order.
Thirty years ago…
Unlike everyone else in the Realm of Peneggan, Kett had never heard the rumor that the Wallside island of Koskwim was inhabited by dangerous dragons.
Unlike everyone else on the island itself, she hadn’t therefore laughed when she discovered the truth.
Dragons did roam the island, making their nests among the weird volcanic columns of rock, flying screeching overhead, terrifying the inhabitants of the mainland city of Port Jaret, just across the water.
But they weren’t the dangerous ones.
Hidden from the Bridge compound by trees and belief, a tall white tower gleamed in the sunlight. Seamless, the pale marble seemed to have grown out of the earth. And the Dragons who lived in it were indeed deadly. They just didn’t have wings.
At least, very few of them did.
On being brought to the island, Kett was tattooed with a number. Eight years later, her training completed, a pair of crossed swords was added to the design. They denoted that she, like all the other graduates of the Order’s elite training program, had attained the rank of Dragon Knight.
While the other kids had been learning to change their sword hand, Kett had been learning to change her shape. While they learned to pilot the carefully trained dragons, she’d been turning herself into one. While they learned the main languages of the other four Realms, she taught herself to speak.
She’d had to teach herself a lot of things.