by Gail Dayton
Fox remained frozen, bent before her. “Are you afraid of me, Aisse?”
“No.” It was true, she realized. She didn’t fear him. Could she do it, put her hands on a Tibran male without fear? Had the magic—had Kallista given this to her? Aisse touched him again, curious.
He lowered one knee to the ground, holding his position. “I have no caste, Aisse. All I have is this ilian. Just tell me what you want.”
She stroked her hand across his shoulders, tasting the sensations shivering through her, exploring the size and strength of him. Those aspects of a man had always frightened her before. “Would you truly have killed that guard?”
“In a breath.”
“Why?” She untied his queue, let his hair fall loose around his face.
“Because you didn’t want him and he would have stopped for nothing else.” Fox shivered as she traced her fingers along his neck beneath his hair, over his mark. “Because you’re my ilias.”
“What things did you learn when you were a toy in women’s quarters?”
He lifted his head, a smile curving his lips. He captured her hand and brought it to his mouth for a brief kiss. “Would you like me to show you?”
“Maybe.” Aisse reclaimed her hand and picked up one of the packs. She could feel her hips sway as she walked to the door, something she’d never felt the urge to allow before. “I’ll think about it.”
When Stone returned to the hut, Kallista tried to call the veil, to cast it over the canyon. The magic seemed sluggish, reluctant to move, refusing to stretch itself so thin. She had thought the effects of the drugs the Tibrans had given her gone, but maybe they still lingered. Or perhaps the healing had taken more magic than she realized. The healing had been almost complete.
She reached for Obed, out with the animals, calling him inside. She could sense the seething jumble of his emotions, but didn’t attempt to pick them apart. He deserved all the privacy she could give him.
A few moments later, he stomped through the door. “What?”
Kallista hid her smile. She’d only seen his anger the once. Usually, he hid his true self behind smooth courtesy and elegant speech. She found the change refreshing. “I can’t hide the whole canyon. I tried. And I can’t hide its entrance from here. But I think I can hide us so that—if the canyon is searched—we won’t be seen. But we must be close together.”
She could almost see Obed physically summoning his mask. He bowed, accepted the dried meat and bread, the cup of tea from Aisse. “As you will it, Chosen.”
Aisse gasped when Kallista drew magic, shivering where she sat next to Fox. Kallista spared a glance and saw Fox murmuring in the younger woman’s ear. He would ease her way.
Kallista braided the magic together, marveling at the new skein’s richness. Aisse’s magic blended perfectly with the others, supporting, strengthening, giving exactly the element needed. The first time, she had needed to see, and she had seen. Now, she needed to obscure vision, and it was obscured.
She whispered to the magic, drawing it close, wrapping herself in its shimmery cloak. When she was sure it understood what she wanted of it, she exhaled, slowly spreading her arms wide to encompass her ilian. A fine, grayish mist floated out and settled gently over the six of them.
“Goddess,” Torchay breathed. “You’re all fading. I can scarcely see you.”
“Truly?” Kallista looked at the others. “You all seem perfectly normal to me. Can you see me?”
“I can’t.” Fox grinned and ducked as Stone threw a bread crust at him.
“I see everyone clearly.” Obed filled his cup with more tea.
“So can I.” Stone broke off another chunk of bread, to eat this time.
“And I,” Aisse said. “But isn’t Torchay now—”
“The only one of us not marked.” He sounded a bit sour to Kallista’s ears.
“But you can see us.” She pushed him back when he would have sat up.
“Barely.” Torchay looked from one to the other of them. “You’re transparent. Like ghosts. And if you don’t move, you blend in.”
“None of the ghosts I’ve seen were particularly transparent,” Stone muttered.
“So, we know the veil works.” Kallista wanted to jump up and dance in triumph, but refrained.
“I can still see you, even if you’re faded.” Torchay leaned into her, as if to be sure she felt more solid than she appeared.
“But you’re ilias. Without the mark, your link to the rest of us isn’t as strong, but you’re still linked. You’re one of us. So you can see us, if not as clearly as we see you.”
“Why can we see him clearly?” Obed asked. “If his link is not so strong.”
Kallista shrugged. “Magic.” She had no other answer.
“We need to set a watch,” Torchay said. “I’ll take last—”
“You’ll take none at all,” Kallista countermanded. “You were nearly gutted again, and while all the holes are mostly closed now, you weren’t given back all the blood you lost. You’ll spend the day resting.”
He scowled at her a moment before he pulled her face down to inspect her eyes. He set his hand over her stomach then, sliding it from place to place until she felt the baby flutter under it. “All right,” he said. “I’ll rest if you will.”
“Agreed.” She could wait until he slept, then take care of what needed doing.
But Torchay looked past her shoulder in Obed’s direction. “Make sure she does it, ilias.”
Obed inclined his head. “It shall be so.”
Kallista made a face, but gave in. She had no other choice. She lay down on the bedroll beside Torchay. “No one leaves the hut. The magic is set, I don’t have to stay awake to control it, but don’t leave the hut.”
“Sleep,” Obed addressed the others. “I will wake you when it is time.”
Stone came to lie beside Kallista, Aisse next to Torchay. But Fox curled up on the other side of Aisse without drawing protest. Kallista, lying close enough to brush Torchay’s nose with her own, met his gaze and raised an eyebrow at Fox’s action—and Aisse’s lack of it. He lifted his shoulder in an infinitesimal shrug.
Kallista snuggled closer, tucking her face into the hollow of his neck. Torchay put his arm around her and they slept.
Sunlight lay over Aisse’s eyes, seeping through her lashes, turning the world red. She shifted, moving forward, away from the sun’s rays, and her nose bumped into warm, male flesh. Fox murmured, backed to give her a fraction more room. Aisse followed.
When did she grow to like the way a man smelled? Fox smelled different from Torchay who smelled different from Obed and from Stone. But she liked it. All of it, of them.
Her body still buzzed. It had felt…delicious when Kallista called the magic. Aisse tingled all over, her senses stretched, balanced on some edge she couldn’t name. She wanted to wake Kallista, ask her to call more magic, but Torchay wouldn’t like it. And Stone would laugh.
She eased closer to Fox, until her breasts pressed against his back. It helped, a little. His breathing stuttered, then fell back into a steady rhythm. Too steady? Aisse stretched closer, until her lips almost touched his ear. “Fox?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Fox went still, even his breathing stopped.
“Are you awake?” Aisse knew he was, but she asked anyway.
He rolled to his back, eyes open, his expression asking what she wanted.
Her lips brushed his ear again. “Show me what you learned.” No. That sounded too much like a demand. “If you wish. Please?”
When she drew back, his eyes still stared at the nothing he could see, but his lips were quirked into a tiny smile. His hand rose, covered her breast, and her gasp made him grin.
“Shh,” he breathed, curling round to meld her mouth to his.
Aisse had seen kisses, more of them since coming to Adara and Kallista, but had never done one. Not like this. His lips melted into hers as his hand found the hem of her tunic. He eased it up, insinuating
his hand beneath her chemise as well, then stroked his way across her stomach to her breast again, swallowing this new gasp in his kiss.
All of her skin needed touching, needed it so badly it made her squirm, but her breasts somehow needed it more. They needed the heat of Fox’s hand covering them, wanted his fingers on their peaks, wanted—yes, that—the flick of his thumb.
She needed to be closer to him. Aisse found the edge of his tunic and pushed both hands inside, running them over his stomach and chest and back. If her skin could touch his skin, would it feel that much better? She shoved his tunic up and rubbed her bare stomach against his.
The hard ridge of Fox’s aroused member throbbed against her and she recoiled. He let her go, pulling his hand from beneath her tunic, stilling his mouth against her lips. Aisse drew back and looked at him.
He looked like any other Warrior, broad and tall, golden-skinned, golden-haired—though his was brighter than most, touched with red. But he didn’t act like any other Warrior.
Aisse hesitated, then brushed her lips across his. They moved, just a little, returning as much kiss as she gave. Still she paused, uncertain, her fingers against his bared stomach.
“I have no caste,” he murmured into her ear. “I will do exactly and only what you wish of me.”
Truly? In her experience, men became crazed when their members were in the state his was. However, Fox lay still, waiting. For her to decide? He did not seem crazed.
Aisse glanced past Fox at Obed standing watch. He stared determinedly away from the sleepers, his hair glinting almost blue in a slash of sunlight. Obed would rescue her if Fox did go berserk. But…what would Fox do?
A test seemed in order. Slowly, carefully, keeping her eyes on his face, Aisse walked her fingers from his stomach down the front of his trousers. He hissed, almost as if in pain, when she curled her hand over that ridge, but did nothing else. Though his breath came quicker, puffing into her ear and making her shiver. Suddenly curious, she explored, watching his reactions. Strange as it seemed, she’d never actually touched a man’s arousal before. The men she’d known had always wanted to do other things with theirs.
Fox made a strangled sound in her ear, and Aisse pulled her hand back. “Did I hurt you?”
“Goddess, no.” He gasped for air, stroking his cheek along hers, his words softer than whispers. “Let me show you, Aisse. What I know. You know you can trust me. You know.”
Feeling shy and peculiar and still tingly, Aisse nodded, keeping her eyes down, until she remembered he couldn’t see what they gave away. Nor could he see her nod. But somehow he knew she had. His lips touched hers again, light and sweet, as his hand slipped back beneath her tunic. He touched her breasts, teasing her nipples into hard peaks. He held back when Aisse wanted to stroke her stomach against his again, but she insisted. She did trust him. And it eased some of the tension throbbing inside her.
His hand left her breasts, sliding down across her stomach to loosen the lacings on her trousers. He slid his other arm beneath her shoulders, holding her in a loose embrace, as if he knew close confinement would disturb her. Then Fox smoothed his hand across the skin below her trousers to touch the tender places between her legs.
Aisse shivered, wanting to push him away and wanting to clutch him closer. She was afraid, but his fingers had found the edge where she was balanced. She gripped his forearm, nails digging in. Fox went still.
“Shall I stop?” He nuzzled her ear, his breath warm as one of his kisses.
“No.” She couldn’t stay bound up like this. But she was still afraid. “Be soft.”
“Trust me.” His tongue licked out over her earlobe and she shivered. In the next instant, his fingers probed her folds and brushed over something that lashed her whole body with sparks of pleasure.
Fox caught her cry in another kiss, this one hot and demanding, his tongue stroking along hers the same way his fingers stroked her below. She burned, writhing under his touch. More. She wanted more of this. The tension built until she strained toward him, her tongue plunging deeper into his mouth than his did into hers. Then it burst and she shuddered with glorious delight.
But it wasn’t enough. She felt…empty. She pulled her mouth from his. “More.”
“Shh.” He kissed her, his fingers moving again. But that wasn’t right, wasn’t what she wanted, needed.
She pushed at his hand. “No, more. I need…more.”
Fox tried to soothe her, but she wouldn’t be soothed. She twisted against him, angry without knowing why. He brought her over him to his other side, away from their sleeping iliasti. “What more do you want?”
He settled his weight partly over her, brushing his lips over her eyes, cheeks, nose, as if he used them to see her. Maybe he did. Aisse grabbed his face, matching her mouth to his, lifting into him. That was when she realized it. She wasn’t afraid.
Before, when a man had held her down like this, his weight pinning her, the fear had overwhelmed her, blinding her, stopping her breath. But now—she liked his weight, liked having resistance to push against. “More,” she growled, gripping him by the hair.
“Do you want me inside you?” His voice a mere breath, Fox slid his leg over hers, between hers, putting pressure where she needed it.
“No. Yes—Will—Is it more?” She arced her body into him. “I need someth—I’m empty. Fill me up.”
With one quick yank, Fox had her trousers down below her knees. His laces took another moment to loosen, then he was lying over her, his knees between hers. Aisse didn’t have time for fear to rise before he was inside her in one smooth, deep plunge, filling her as she’d demanded. It felt like…exactly what she needed. Nothing like any sex she’d ever done before.
Fox glided in and out of her on a cushion of liquid passion. No pain. The complete opposite, in fact. Nothing had ever felt so good. She shoved her hands in his hair and held on tight, meeting each of his thrusts with one of her own, until she shuddered again, and Fox went with her.
Aisse lay under him, breathless, weighed down, and utterly content. She ran her hands over his shoulders, wishing she touched skin rather than tunic. They could do it with fewer clothes next time.
Next time? Aisse smiled to herself. Yes. Most definitely.
Kallista let out a long slow breath and tried to will herself back to sleep. Fox and Aisse might not have awakened her with the faint impressions coming through their magic links if she hadn’t been on edge already. After everything that had happened, from the attack at the inn until this moment, Kallista ought to be tired enough to sleep for a week.
And she was. But all of it had her unsettled, easy to wake. Aisse had accepted a mark tonight. Hugely important, deserving of more recognition than an offhand comment: “How nice, you’ve been godmarked…” But Kallista didn’t know how or what more should be done. The new marking was only a small part of what disturbed her.
Something else had happened tonight, something beyond the bare events, more momentous than Aisse’s marking or Torchay’s healing. It had a bit to do with the comfort Fox and Aisse had just found in each other. It had even more to do with Kallista’s sheer terror at the thought of Torchay’s death. But mostly, it was about the escape from City Center.
Two of them had been in trouble and the other four had worked together to rescue them. If that was not the behavior of a true ilian, then none existed anywhere. It didn’t matter how they had begun or what had brought them together. Kallista was tired of fighting the truth. This wasn’t just some quasi-military troop assembled for fighting demons. This was her family and she loved them.
The thought still terrified her. So many times the love she’d offered others had been turned aside as insufficient or flawed that she’d stopped offering it. Or tried to. Maybe she’d just labeled it something else, like familiarity. Or friendship.
When it had happened was as unimportant as why or how. It was. She loved. It made no difference in anything or anyone but Kallista, inside herself, and there the changes we
re profound and unmistakable. It didn’t matter if they loved her back, though she knew they did, each in his or her own way. Accepting the truth, ceasing to fight against herself, made Kallista stronger. The love made them all stronger. It bound them tighter together into a whole and maybe, because of it, they would all survive this quest.
Sometime during her musing Kallista slid into sleep. There didn’t seem to be any demarcation between waking and sleeping. She lay snuggled between Torchay and Stone, thinking about love and what it meant, while around her the dreamscape began to flow and glitter.
After a time, she sensed the demon, still at a distance, but less of one. They were closing on it. Torchay mumbled something, twitched in his own dreaming, and Kallista soothed him, kissed him quiet. She’d nearly lost him tonight, would have if not for Aisse. She needed them, her iliasti, far more than they needed her. Thank heaven she had not driven them off with her hand-wringing and self-pity.
The demon skipped through the colored glow of dreamfog, spinning itself wide in its search for her. Kallista wondered idly what it thought it would do if it ever found her. What could it do, here in the dreamworld?
The twisted wrongness that was the demon shivered past again. When it was gone, looking in another direction, Kallista wriggled free of her men and tucked the fog close about them again, hiding their sleeping forms from view. Then she stepped out into the swirling mists.
“Hey!” she shouted. “You! Looking for me?”
It took a moment for the demon to notice her, or perhaps it had to gather its scattered parts before it arrowed back to loom before her. “You dare?” Its voice boomed through her, vibrating her bones. “Bow before me, puny mortal. Quake in awe at my mighty powers.”
“What powers might those be?” Kallista wondered a moment at her lack of fear before she understood. “The One who travels with me is greater than all.”
“I will destroy you!” it screamed, so enraged that bits of shadow flew off around its edges to float for a moment before melting back into the whole.