The Tides of Bára

by Jeffe Kennedy

Her eyes glinted with sensual mischief, but her expression was resolute. “Don’t use that tone with me. You want me. This tells me that.” She stroked him up and down, and his hips helplessly followed. “Am I wrong?”

  “I want you, of course. More than water in the desert.” He gritted his teeth and took her wrist in a firm grip. She held on, her delicate hand astonishingly strong, the squeeze sending bolts of lust up his spine to fog his brain. “Arill, take it—I refuse to hurt you!”

  “You were able to give me pleasure without intercourse,” she crooned, watching his face. “I can do the same for you. Let me do this.”

  He thrust through her hand, already slick with his fluids, unable to stop himself, trying to muster the argument. “Oria,” he breathed, bereft of other words. “Love. I—”

  “Shh. Let me. I want to.” She pushed closer, working his cock in her tenacious grip, sliding her limber leg higher on his hip. With a groan, he gave up and pushed his thigh between hers. The slick heat of her sex shocked him—but not into sense. Instead he lost himself to her, grasping her by her hips and holding her in place to ride his thigh. She moaned, the most enticing of sounds, throwing her head back, face suffused with pleasure, and he was helpless to do anything but drink it in.

  He kissed her, a vague thought of keeping it gentle fleeing before the crashing lust. She opened her mouth as sweetly as her legs, offering him everything and, Arill save him, he took it. Their skin slicked with sweat, gliding together, tongues entwining like their bodies.

  He wouldn’t last long, he was so starved for her, but she was close, too, both thighs clamped around his as he ground against her soft woman’s flesh. She broke their kiss with a cry of pleasure, throwing her head back again as her body convulsed and arched. Her hand tightened almost painfully on his cock with it, but that only worked to send him flying, the power of the orgasm blowing through him and shattering him entirely.

  The sensation of the powerful Destrye warrior coming apart in her grip filled Oria with a heady rush of power. His hard thigh pressed up against her sex drove her wild with pleasure—as much as any of his meticulous techniques when they’d consummated their marriage—but this, this pushing him beyond the brink of control…

  An amazing experience. One that went some way to restoring her sense of herself as a potent woman.

  They lay there for a time, panting, breaths mingling along with sweat. He seemed to need a moment to recover, gently staying her hand from moving any more, making a sound of relief when she stopped. For her part, she wasn’t sure what to do with the sticky emissions coating her palm—and it would be better if he didn’t know that the small exertion had made her a little dizzy, her vision gray at the edges. It had been worth it.

  “I know about it.” Chuffta chided.

  “I thought I told you to go away and give us privacy.”

  “I did.” Her Familiar’s mind-voice carried a distinct tinge of huffy self-righteousness. “But when I felt you getting weak, I thought I’d better check on you. I don’t care what you do with your mate.”

  “At least I’m strong enough to talk to you this way again. That’s a good sign, right?” Her mental tone sounded firm to herself. Much better. Chuffta, however, did not reply, which she took to be a diplomatic denial. Ah, well.

  Lonen laughed breathlessly and opened his eyes, the gray sparkling clear. “That was—” He broke off with a frown. “Arill, take it, your mouth is bleeding.”

  He pulled away from her, sitting up and wiping his own mouth with the back of his hand, observing the smear of blood, then scrutinizing her. “How else did I hurt you?”

  “You didn’t,” she snapped, wiping her own mouth, with her clean hand. She still wasn’t sure what to do about the other, and she didn’t sit up, just in case the dizziness became too obvious. In a moment she’d feel better and go to the water to wash. “I’m fine. I know my stupid lips are cracked and it’s revolting, but I have no blood-borne diseases, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Lonen sighed, frustrated exasperation wafting around her, and scrubbed his hands through his hair. He hadn’t oiled it after they’d bathed the night before, and it stood out in wild curls. “Why would you say such a thing?”

  “You said something very similar to me once.”

  “That was before.”

  “Before what?”

  “This.” He gestured back and forth between them. “And it should be obvious that is not what I’m worried about. You’ve heard my thoughts, for Arill’s sake. Must you always read the worst interpretation into what I say and do?”

  Stung, she did sit up, ruthlessly clamping down on the dizziness. “I don’t do that.”

  “You do it a lot,” he retorted in a dark tone, glaring at her.

  “Well!” She stumbled on the tart reply that hovered on her tongue. “Maybe I do. I’m sorry. I don’t have much experience with having a husband. Before this.” She imitated his gesture.

  His expression immediately shifted as he smiled, the sun breaking through the sandstorm, and he reached out to caress her cheek. “And I have little with a wife or a fearsome sorceress, let alone both at once. I’m sorry, too. There. That’s our quota of apologies for the day.”

  She kept her own smile firmly in place. She’d already dwelled far too much on whether or not she retained any of her abilities. “We’re allowed one each per day now?”

  “It seems practical until we get better at navigating these new trails with each other. But only for current issues. Apologies for the past are still off the table,” he explained cheerfully, stretching his arms and groaning. “I’m stiff as a deer smoked over a ten-day fire.”

  “Ugh.” She grimaced at the image. “Can’t it be stiff as a tree or something?”

  “That will work,” he allowed, standing and flexing, then twisting at his waist and pumping his arms so his chest rippled impressively, filling her with heady warmth. She wanted more of him. Perhaps she could seduce him further. She seemed to be getting better at the skill. “I’m going to take a dip before we head out again,” he said, dashing her hopes.

  “Isn’t it too late in the day for us to journey?”

  He shook his head. “It’s good timing, actually. Better for us to ride at night anyway. Less parching. Want to join me for that dip?”

  “I will soon,” she said, working to contain her disappointment. The blood stained her fingers accusingly. “You go ahead.”

  He stopped his gymnastics and frowned at her. “Are you avoiding telling me you can’t stand?”

  “I can stand.” She hoped. Stowing her pride, she made the effort, figuring it would be better if he was there to catch her, if her own optimism outpaced reality. Fortunately, she managed, though her head swam a little and she popped out in a cold sweat. “I thought I’d visit the trees in privacy,” she told him with as much dignity as she could muster, given she was naked and dizzy.

  “You’re wobbly,” he countered, then held up a hand when she opened her mouth. “But if you say you can do it, I’ll trust you, okay? Just don’t let your Arill-cursed pride get in the way. Call me if you need me. Or send Chuffta.” He gestured at the derkesthai who perched by the fire, surreptitiously poking it with a stick.

  “You say that like someone who isn’t full of pride, too,” she groused, but he only grinned back easily.

  “Of course—that’s how I recognize it at work. After we bathe, we’ll eat and go. Unless you think it will help you if we stay here longer?”

  She nearly said it would, if only because it would be lovely to stay at the oasis. Alone with Lonen and Chuffta, avoiding the challenges that lay ahead. But her magical instincts told her otherwise. That internal gage that seemed to monitor the ebb and flow of sgath indicated that she no longer operated at a loss, but neither would she absorb any more. The magic of the llerna restored her, but otherwise wasn’t there to build up a surplus.

  With those refreshed senses, too, she clearly sensed Lonen’s restlessness to be home, to find out wh
at might be going on in Dru. So much of his hopeful optimism resting on her. They might actually make it there and what then? But she had to try. She’d promised.

  So, she shook her head. “Being here… it’s like a kind of stasis for me. It’s brought me back to baseline at least, but no more than that.”

  Avoiding the concern in Lonen’s too discerning gaze, she walked to the water and rinsed off her hands. Hopefully it wasn’t an insult to his manliness, to rinse away the seed. If so, better to know. And he wasn’t the kind to not say so if he did feel that way. It occurred to her briefly to try to put some inside herself, to see if the seed would take. Becoming pregnant with her Destrye husband’s baby, however, would be an exceedingly bad idea at this juncture, if she even could. From what little she knew of it, pregnancy wreaked havoc on a priestess’s hwil and sgath both. More than one priestess had given up her mask during the difficulties of gestation and sometimes for some time after.

  The priests sometimes joked that no one lost hwil faster than a priestess with a newborn. For their part, the priestesses in question did not find such remarks amusing and those priests found themselves decidedly lacking in free priestesses willing to feed them sgath.

  Lonen did not say anything, but the silence thickened. Deliberately opening more of her awareness, she felt for his change of mood. Desire, thick and sweet. She rose from her crouch—carefully, so she wouldn’t wobble—and turned to face him.

  He hadn’t moved, but still stood there watching her, the concern in his expression replaced by the intensity of lust. And his cock had thickened again, rising to point at her, as if indicating the direction of his thoughts. A little embarrassed, though Lonen clearly wasn’t, she cast a glance at Chuffta—who had apparently abandoned all subterfuge and was enthusiastically building the campfire into a blazing inferno.

  “You’re a beautiful woman, Oria,” Lonen said, as if that explained anything. Which, she supposed, it must for him.

  “Maybe we should stay here another day or two,” she offered, hopeful that he could be tempted, hesitant to face another rejection. “Until I’m physically stronger, too, and so we can have actual sex.”

  “We have had actual sex, Oria,” he replied gently. “We just did. It’s not as if some kinds count and others don’t.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I suspect I do. Which is why I’m going to keep on this point. What we’ve done together, what we will do—it’s all good by me. Never feel like I need more than that.”

  Uncomfortable with the intensity of his gaze, and quite certain that, as much as he might wish to mean that, he wouldn’t always, she looked down at her knotted fingers. “That’s not what you said before.”

  “That was before I understood your … how it is for you.”

  What word had he been about to use? Fragility. Limitations. Devastating weakness. It all came down to the same, in the end. “Still. You had more than that with Natly.”

  To his credit, he looked puzzled. “Natly? What does she have to do with any of this?”

  “Lonen.” Exasperated she spread her hands. “If we make it to Dru—”

  “When we make it to Dru,” he interrupted.

  “Natly will be there.”

  “Yes, because she lives there,” he replied in that tone of infinite patience.

  “She’s your fiancée!”

  “Was. I’m married to someone else now.”

  Oria stamped her bare foot at his deliberate obtuseness, then felt ridiculous. “She doesn’t know that! For all you know she’s been planning your royal wedding in Arill’s Temple, waiting only to slip you into the groom’s robes, and then to be crowned queen. Have you considered at all what it will be like to arrive with me in tow, a foreign queen you can’t even bed, much less get heirs on?” One who might even lack the magic he’d sacrificed a normal marriage to gain advantage for his people.

  “That’s our business and no one else’s.” He came to her and gathered her close, with infinite tenderness, hands roaming over her skin. It helped reassure her, as annoying as it was to need to be reassured. “And it’s a joy to be able to touch you as Arill intended, but none of that is what’s most important. Our marriage is consummated. No one will question it. Leave Natly to me. I’ll worry about her—she’s not your problem.”

  Oria let out a long breath. “I’m not worried about her. I just think this won’t be as easy as you seem to believe.”

  He was quiet a moment. “None of this has been easy. It’s all just versions of what’s more or less difficult. All I know is, I couldn’t remain here any longer than absolutely necessary not knowing what’s going on in Dru. At best, they’re fighting the approach of winter, trying to stock enough food and water to get us through until spring. At worst…”

  He trailed off, so she said it for him. “At worst Yar has sent the Trom after them. You’re right. I only meant—”

  He kissed her, stopping the words in the loveliest way, a nurturing, soothing sort of kiss. They wouldn’t have that again, once they left this place. Breaking away, he gave her a tender smile that made her heart turn over. “I know what you meant and I want that, too. You once pointed out to me, however, that we are more than just ourselves. We have our responsibilities. I can’t stay here in paradise with you while the Destrye suffer. I simply… can’t.”

  “I know.” She returned the smile so he wouldn’t think her feelings were hurt, because of course it wasn’t about that. He desired her, yes, but nothing compared to his love of his people. Which was as it should be. If she still had people, she’d feel the same way. And she’d lost that through no fault of Lonen’s. They’d married out of political expediency—part of her grand plan that had seemed like such a good one at the time—and that must continue to reign supreme for them both. Regardless of how it turned out for her.

  She needed to give up this longing to have more of him. It sprang from the loneliness of exile and nothing more. She’d been clinging to him like a rock in the rushing tides of events and that was unfair of her.

  She simply had to endure. If she could make it to Dru, then she’d find out if she could do anything to help the Destrye. She’d hoard every last bit of magic the oasis had restored to her and use it if she could to strike a last blow at Yar, a final revenge for condemning her to this banishment.

  It might cost her remaining health, probably her life, but she had no use for either anymore. She refused to be the anchor that dragged Lonen down. Her story would reach its fated end, the one she’d been moving toward all along with relentless momentum. She’d enter the tales after this, be one of those sorceresses stolen away from the desert cities, to languish and fade away with the Destrye. The irony would be that she hadn’t been carried off as a prize, to be used for sex as she had imagined in her lurid fantasies. Why else take them? Lonen had said.

  Why indeed.

  “Oria?” Lonen reached for her, but she nipped out of his grasp. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I need to visit the trees. Then I’ll be ready to go.”

  ~ 11 ~

  Oria remained subdued. Too much so for someone of her typically bright and restless nature, but Lonen supposed he should be glad to have her conscious, if not exactly talkative. His efforts to draw her into conversation were met with the explanation that she needed to concentrate on keeping her portals closed—both to screen out the wild magic and conserve the magic she’d acquired at the oasis.

  Fair enough, except he didn’t quite believe her. One thing about Natly—she’d always made it abundantly clear when she’d taken offense, no matter how slight, and never failed to detail exactly what he needed to do to make it up to her, which usually cost dearly. He’d developed some skill at seeing the storm on the horizon and taking appropriate steps to dodge the worst of it.

  Not so with Oria. He’d done or said something wrong, that was certain, but instead of dressing him down as Natly would have, she’d withdrawn. She drew that regal pride around her as securely
as the enveloping robes that swaddled her from chin to toe. She’d even drawn a flap of the silk over her hair—which she’d braided into a single rope—and tucked her hands within.

  He missed the gloriously naked woman who’d unselfconsciously knelt at the water’s edge, her hair sliding in streams of copper that parted to reveal her exquisitely fair skin. She rode astride behind him, nearly in physical contact—though she held onto his belt rather than wrapping her arms around him as he’d have liked—and she’d gone as distant as the brilliant stars in the sky overhead. Chuffta winged in from time to time, flying in from the darkness like a white ghost from stories to ride on her shoulder, which meant they likely conversed.

  Not that it bothered him. Well, not that it should.

  He didn’t exactly resent her relationship with her Familiar, but without the derkesthai, Oria would be forced to deal with him, if only out of loneliness. Of course, she’d spent most of her life in a tower, so she was the queen of being alone. Probably she didn’t even feel the sting of it. Not like he did, so long accustomed to being surrounded by his boisterous brothers and then also crammed in with so many refugee Destrye in the impromptu city that had grown around Arill’s temple like the shelves of fungus that burgeoned on the shady side of trees.

  The silence as they rode through the desert night left him too much alone with his thoughts, which circled endlessly and inevitably back to Oria. All thoughts led to the sorceress just as all roads led to Arill’s temple.

  Oria had wanted to stay at the oasis. Maybe for more reasons than her health, which would be a potent one. Of course, she hadn’t wanted to leave Bára or its environs, either.

  Nothing to be done for any of it. If he could get her to Dru, he would marshal Arill’s best healers to help Oria, Báran physiology or not. He’d been thinking, too—Oria had said sgath came from all living things and the forests of Dru were a massive living thing, both the individual trees and the collective. Arill knew he’d sensed the vitality of the forest innumerable times. It felt more magical to him than any of Bára’s stones ever had. If the wedding ceremony had connected Oria and him enough to allow her to use her magic to aid the Destrye, then it should give her a similar conduit to the forest’s vitality. She hadn’t been to a forest, so she didn’t know.