Searching the Darkness (Erythleh Chronicles Book 2)

by Catherine Johnson

  "If it's a hound you want, wife, you've already got one."

  Elthrinn was laughing along with him, a beautiful musical sound. She was free and happy, and she was his. Maybe she hadn't arrived in his life by her own choice, but she had carved a place there, and she seemed content. He would do anything in his power to keep that niche for her. He was struck with the need to possess her, to claim the physical connection that bonded them.

  He set Elthrinn down and kissed her before she had a chance to recover her wits, or her breath. He kept kissing her as he walked her backwards towards the nearest wall.

  When he eventually had to breathe, and broke the kiss, Elthrinn was flushed and gasping. "What are you doing? What if someone comes?"

  "We won't be disturbed. The house has been empty for a while. I'll prove to you just how far away those neighbours are."

  They stumbled together, then crashed into the thick wooden planks of the wall, right next to the window that looked out over the pine forest. Gorren stepped back, and unfastened Elthrinn's cloak, letting it drop to the floor in a puddle of fabric. He took hold of Elthrinn's shoulders, and turned her around. He caught her hands, and placed her palms on the sill of the window. Her fingers immediately curled around the wooden ledge. He caught her hips, and pulled them back, making her stumble as she bent at the waist to comply with his urging.

  Elthrinn was the one to shift her mass of hair to one side, exposing her neck to him. Gorren bent over her, sucking where the skin became her shoulder, as he reached around her body to untie the fastenings of her trews. Elthrinn jerked, but did not complain when he roughly tugged the material over her backside. He flipped the skirt of the overdress she was wearing up over her back, fully exposing the pale globes of her ass. Then he dropped to his knees, and set about tasting his wife.

  Elthrinn arched and flexed, presenting her core to him, opening herself more fully to his attentions. As he was licking and lapping, she was muttering her delight at the feel of his beard on her skin, which made him smile as he worked. Gorren thought it was entirely possible he could become drunk on the taste of her. She was squirming, and trying desperately not to, which was all the more enticing.

  When Gorren felt Elthrinn begin to shudder, he pulled away and stood, denying her the peak of pleasure that she'd been so close to attaining. She cursed him, which only made him laugh. She tried to turn to berate him more fully, but he signalled his wish for her to stay put with a palm in the centre of her back. As he unfastened his own trews, Gorren licked his lips. He didn't bother to wipe his beard, he wanted the taste of his wife to remain there, for his enjoyment, for the rest of the day.

  As soon as his cock sprang free, Gorren grabbed Elthrinn's hips in his large palms, and sank into her pliant body.

  He'd been careful over the preceding hours, since their wedding night. He hadn't fucked her since the second time on that first night; he hadn't wanted her to become sore. He hadn't wanted to her to become afraid of the pain, to become afraid of the act. It had been hard to resist when she curled against him, when she begged him for more than his fingers, or his tongue, but he had maintained his control. His control was long gone now. They both cried out at the pleasure of the intense bond. She was so damn hot, wet and tight.

  Briefly, Gorren worried about hurting her. He was slamming into her body, unable to stop, unable to moderate his force, but Elthrinn was pushing back against every thrust, meeting him, demanding more. Her whimpers of need became moans of pleasure. Just hearing that confirmation of the sensations that he was wringing from her, knowing what he was doing to her, that he was taking her higher and higher, unleashed his own need, his own pleasure. In a symphony of lust-roughened voices, they both reached their climax.

  Gorren fell over Elthrinn's back. He kept his weight from her by clasping the window sill either side of her shaking arms. After all the noise that they'd been making, the cottage seemed completely, and oddly silent. Eventually the sounds of the world, the cooing birds, the rushing stream, and whispering trees, began to intrude again, but there were no human calls, or shouts.

  "See," Gorren grunted as his cock twitched when he moved to kiss the back of Elthrinn's damp neck, "I told you it was too far away from the other houses."

  Elthrinn gasped as his body moved within hers. "Just far enough, if you ask me."

  ~o0o~

  "He's doing it again," Ornef muttered, as if Gorren couldn't hear him.

  "Yes, yes he is," Jorm responded.

  Gorren was determined to ignore his friends. He concentrated on running the whet stone over the edge of the blade of his dagger. They, and the rest of the army, were making their final preparations before marching out in the morning.

  "People are going to start thinking he's simple-minded," Delban added in a sing-song tone.

  "Always grinning to himself like a fool." Ornef shook his head.

  "No," Jorm sighed. "They always thought he was simple-minded, now they'll assume he's lost what few wits he had."

  "Didn't take much to lose them," Ornef commented.

  "Just a wink from those big green eyes and..."

  Gorren stood, and whirled, and Delban found himself pinned to the wall with a dagger at his throat. "They're hazel," Gorren growled.

  Delban hadn't stopped smiling the entire time. "If you say so. They've still got you at their beck and call. One wink and you're there. She might as well snap her fingers or whistle."

  Gorren shrugged, dropped the blade, and stepped back. "Whistling is so... uncouth."

  "I think it's sweet... in a 'she's got you leashed' kind of way." Jorm was smirking

  Gorren shrugged again. It wasn't the first time that his friends had made fun of him for his devotion to Elthrinn. It was obvious, even to the most inattentive dolt, that he was crazy about his wife. Even most of the townsfolk had stopped looking at her sideways, mostly because Gorren kept scowling at anyone who did. He didn't think that anyone had particularly gotten over their prejudice of a non-shifter, but at least they were hiding it better.

  "And he's got his own kennel, too," Delban crooned.

  "You say that like you haven't enjoyed the time you've spent there," Gorren said as he settled down to continue sharpening his weapon.

  His friends had become frequent visitors to his new home with Elthrinn. He'd made the purchase as quickly as he was able. His father had been disgusted with the idea, but short of decreeing, on threat of actual punishment, that Gorren had to stay in Cranak Hall, there had been little his father could do. Imprisoning a son for wanting a home of his own with the bride that his father had chosen for him was too petty an action even for King Dorll, apparently, so Gorren and Elthrinn had been left to make their home in their own fashion. As Gorren had predicted, his mother rarely let a day pass that she didn't see Elthrinn to at least ask after her night's sleep.

  "What's Elf cooking tonight?" Ornef asked.

  "And who knew she'd be such a good cook?" Delban added.

  "You're so racist," Jorm sighed. "Just because she doesn't have fur doesn't mean she can't cook."

  "I hope she's doing that pigeon stew. That's delicious, with a nice loaf of bread to go with it... I'm slavering at the thought." Delban licked his lips with an exaggerated smacking sound.

  "You're not invited tonight." Gorren tried, and failed, to keep the rumble of the growl from his voice.

  "You'd bar the door to us on our last night in Dorvek?" Delban asked, dramatically.

  "Especially on our last night in Dorvek," Gorren confirmed.

  For the past moon, Elthrinn and he had been able to makebelieve that they were the same as any other married couple in Dorvek. Elthrinn took care of the house, and the few animals that they now owned, and had been preparing a garden at the back of the house to grow herbs and vegetables. Gorren undertook his duties with the army each day, and came home to the loving arms of his wife each night. But they'd come to the time now that the Dorvern army needed to march out to meet the Felthissian army at the Forest of Thorak. Th
ey'd come to the time that he and Elthrinn would be parted. So no, his friends were not welcome on their last night alone together.

  As much as Gorren didn't want the day to end, because ending would mean leaving, he was impatient for the sun to cross the sky to the point at which he could see his wife again.

  ~o0o~

  The pigeon stew had indeed been delicious; so had the freshly baked bread that Elthrinn had served with it.

  Gorren relaxed back in his rocking chair, before the hearth. Elthrinn was seated in her own rocker, sewing something, a new coat perhaps. He watched the flames as they danced over the logs, crackling and hissing. Every time part of a log snapped or collapsed, a shower of sparks burst forth. It was a picture of domesticity that Gorren had never believed he would have, and that he never wanted to leave.

  But he had no choice; he was going to have to leave. Though he would not waste his final hours watching Elthrinn push a needle through cloth. That was not to say that he wouldn't spend a few more moments watching the way that she nibbled on her lip as she concentrated on the stitches.

  She pricked her finger, and lifted it to her lips to suck at the drop of blood, rather than let it stain the fabric.

  "Let me." Gorren barely recognised his own voice, roughened with disuse, and lust.

  Elthrinn looked up with her fingertip still between her lips. She watched him, without moving, as he pushed out of his chair, and walked towards her. He dropped to his knees on the rug that she'd crafted from sacking and strips of coloured rags. He curled his fingers around her wrist, and tugged gently, until she let him pull her hand towards his face, until she let him slip the wounded finger into his own mouth. There was barely any blood, a mere taste, just enough to stir his wolven instincts.

  Elthrinn simply watched, her eyes avid, as he laved her finger with his tongue. Then she tossed her needlework to the floor.

  He pulled her off the chair, onto his lap. They fumbled together, searching, fingers made clumsy by need and haste, until they were naked. The flickering firelight danced with shadows over their skin. To Gorren's mind, with her dark hair, her eyes alive with arousal, and her skin lit with streaks of golden heat, Elthrinn seemed to have become something mystical, something intangible that might disappear as easily as the morning mists.

  Gorren gripped her hips, not to guide her, simply to find an anchor, as she rose up, and lowered herself onto his aching cock. She kept her palms flat against his chest, her eyes intent on his. Only when he was fully sheathed in her body did she lean forward. Gorren, impatient now, wrapped his palm around the nape of her neck, and pulled her close, capturing her lips in a brutal kiss, a paltry effort to communicate his desire, his need, his love.

  As Elthrinn moved, the two silver rings around her neck caught against each other. They clinked and glimmered in the firelight. The blush that coloured her skin, the sound of those rings and her breathless gasps, the love in her eyes, were the things he would dream of while they were parted.

  ~o0o~

  "You have your dagger?"

  "Yes," Elthrinn replied. To her credit, she allowed only a touch of exasperation to colour her tone. She was being tolerant; he'd asked the question more than once since they'd woken.

  "And the one I gave you?"

  "Yes."

  "And you remember what I taught you?"

  "Yes. I remember it all. You shouldn't worry, no one likes me very much, but I don't think they'll outright attack me."

  Gorren suspected she was right, but the thought of a day, weeks, months, years away from Elthrinn, unable to see her, unable to touch her, unable to know with any certainty that she was safe, was like a burn on his soul. "No I don't think they will, but I'd be a foolish soldier if I didn't leave you prepared."

  "I'll miss you."

  He could see that she was trying not to cry, trying to be brave, trying not to make the parting harder than it already was.

  "I'll miss you, too." He pulled her into an embrace, although the attempt at closeness was hampered by his armour, cloak, and the weapons and pack that he carried.

  When Elthrinn tipped her head up to be able to see his face, he saw that she'd given up all pretence of trying not to cry, or perhaps she hadn't realised that she was, but tears were flowing in two silvery streaks down her cheeks. "Come back to me. I love you. Please, come back to me."

  He stared into those swirling eyes, and made his foolish promise. "I will, I swear it. I'll come back to you."

  He kissed her deeply in the darkness before the dawn. For the first time he was torn between his duty to his friends, his comrades, his country, and his home. When his father had first informed him of this marriage, Gorren had only hoped that his future would be a tolerable one, that he would at least find companionship, if nothing else. He had never expected, had never hoped to find love. He couldn't believe that the Grey Wolf would bless him so with a wife such as Elthrinn. If anyone wanted him dead, they need not strike a blade through him or shoot arrows at him, they had only to take Elthrinn.

  Eventually he had to relinquish his hold on her. He headed out to the barracks to meet the rest of the army. Hundreds of boots tramped out of the town, flattening the frost-brittle grass before the sun had even had a chance to begin to peek over the horizon. With every step Gorren's very being grew heavier with the knowledge that he'd left his heart and soul in a small cottage in his hometown.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The past seven nights had felt like a lifetime of loss. Elthrinn continued to breathe, to live, but she wasn't sure how she was going to make it to the next moon, or the moon after that, or the moon after that, or the potentially many, many, many moons that might pass until Vuthron was defeated, or, Doohr forbid, until she received word that Gorren would break his promise to her.

  Her existence - she couldn't call it a life without Gorren there - was very like that which she'd known in Senthirr. The household chores were the same, the routine of keeping the animals was the same, and the needs of her little garden were the same, but everything was conducted in a much cooler climate. In Senthirr, although there had been a lay season in which the crops had not grown, the land had been workable and tillable. Now, she was having to rush to make her preparations in the garden, because the frosts were already freezing the ground solid, and the snows were due.

  Elthrinn had been used to a cold, unheated little cell in the temple of Doohr, but the cottage without Gorren was infinitely worse. The hearth, insulated roof and well-constructed walls were no match for the echoing emptiness left by his absence. The home they had been building was now nothing but a shell. Elthrinn found herself shivering in their bed at night; all the blankets were no substitute for the arms of her husband.

  The chill that was seeping into her bones with the onset of the coldest season was beginning to seep into her soul, too. After Erkas had coerced her into the marriage, during the journey to Dorvek, Elthrinn had broken her cynicism, and prayed to the goddess that her new husband would be someone that she could at least build a mutual respect with. Friendship might have been too much to ask for, but she had hoped for a peaceful coexistence. She had never expected to find the ease that she had immediately shared with Gorren, certainly not the trust, the humour, the passion, the love...

  But nothing ever lasted...

  As Gorren had suspected, his mother was a frequent visitor to the cottage. She and Elthrinn had never actually had the discussion, but by mutual agreement it seemed to have been assumed that Elthrinn would not visit the hall without Gorren. A small part of Elthrinn felt torn. There was no subterfuge in Rehan's visits, and she seemed content enough to make the short journey each day, but Elthrinn felt the one-sidedness of the relationship, and wished that she didn't feel so completely uncomfortable in the company of Dorll and Noridan, so that Rehan should feel that she had no option but to leave her home each day.

  Elthrinn was feeding scraps to the goats, and trying to avoid stepping on the chickens who were impatient for their corn, when Rehan arriv
ed. The queen waved for Elthrinn to continue, and stood with her elbows resting on the upper planks of the pen that Gorren had built to keep the animals from wandering off into the forest, or into the village. Sometimes, Elthrinn took her little herd, which included a waddling, rust-furred sow, into the forest to forage. The sow and the chickens could be counted on to follow her home; the two goats could not.

  There wasn't really a hope of Elthrinn being able to complete her task. Rehan had brought with her the bag of scraps from the hall's kitchen, an act that had become something of a custom. The pig and the goats, all sensing a variation in their diet, trotted over to the fence, leaving Elthrinn to get her toes pecked. At least Dorvek was cold enough for her to be wearing thick boots which could withstand the insistent assault of the hens.