Her faded gray eyes searched his face. “They said the ritual was cut short. What happened?”
As a bit of hoarseness crept into her voice, he grabbed the cup and pitcher and poured her a glass of water while he tried to think of how to answer. He didn’t want to lie, but he’d given his word to Tas, and it was in everyone’s best interests that he kept it.
“The brother had a dagger beetle, and it bit him instead of me.”
His mama’s eyes widened, and the smile that followed was anything but sweet. “Good. The gods answered my prayers. He probably deserved it.”
He blinked at her. “Mama,” he cried, torn between pleasure at the return of some of her spirit and a desire to defend Tas.
She grinned at him and laughed, but the laugh ended in a fit of coughing, and Girik had to take the cup from her until it passed.
“Are you really all right, or are you faking it to spare your mama?” she asked weakly, gazing up at him through watery eyes from the pile of pillows he settled her into again.
“I’m okay.”
“They said the Hunt is still going forward, though.”
“Yes. The brother seemed to think he had enough to get the job done.”
“But you don’t think he does,” she observed, studying him with shrewd eyes. “What are you going to do, Giri?”
He winced. She knew him too well.
“Whatever I have to, Mama.”
“And, I suppose, your mama telling you you’ve done more than your fair share already will change nothing.” She sighed.
He didn’t answer that. He simply took her frail hands and gave them a light kiss before closing his eyes and holding them to his cheek.
After a short pause in which Girik could hear the air rattle in and out of her thin chest, his mama drew in a deep breath and broke the silence. “Giri, I need you to promise me some things.” Her gaze was clearer and fiercer than he had seen in a long time, and he couldn’t look away. “Promise me you’ll only put yourself in danger if it is absolutely necessary and not a moment before,” she demanded.
Since it was what he planned to do anyway, he had no difficulty answering, “I promise.”
“And promise me you won’t let me be the reason you stay, if you have a chance to leave this place.”
Startled, Girik sat back and frowned. “Why would you think I was going to leave? What put that into your head? I’m not going anywhere.”
She smiled sadly and shook her head. “I have a lot of time to think, sitting useless in this bed all day, mostly about regrets. I was selfish to keep you here as long as I have. I should have taken us somewhere with more opportunities for you long ago, somewhere you could make real friends and be accepted, but I didn’t want to leave the mountains.”
“I have you and Bayor. That’s all I need,” he insisted.
“That’s not true and you know it. You need more than that, and I’m not going to be here much longer, if the gods are kind.” Her last words ended on a whisper, but Girik felt them like a blow.
“Mama,” he pleaded.
“Don’t, Giri. Don’t fret. It’s my time. That’s all. But you need more than me. I can’t be here for you anymore. You know it as well as I do.” She reached for his hand and squeezed with surprising strength, her small, sharp fingernails digging into his flesh. “I don’t want you to be here at the end. I don’t want that to be the image of me you remember. This is bad enough. Don’t make me carry that guilt and pain into the Beyond.”
“Mama, don’t.”
“No. When the end is near, with whatever strength I have left, I’ll tell them to send you away if you try to see me. I’ll do it for both of us. This place is no good for you. You are young and strong. You could thrive anywhere. Any village or town would be grateful to have you, and any man or woman would too. Don’t make me leave this world knowing you have nothing but loneliness awaiting you. Let me dream of you happy and loved somewhere else. Please. Promise me.”
His throat was so tight, he wasn’t sure what he could have said to that, but she started coughing weakly and he simply curled her in his arms and held her. She’d obviously used up what little strength she had making her plea, and he didn’t have the heart to try to argue with her. He’d come and see her after the Hunt. When she’d had time to rest without worry.
“Rest now. Don’t wear yourself out. I’ll be careful and come and see you tomorrow, okay?”
She drew in a painful-sounding breath and nodded. “Tomorrow. Love you.”
“I love you too.”
He shuffled out of the room and stumbled blindly down the stairs. Once outside, he took in a deep, shuddering breath of cool night air and leaned against the gate to give himself a chance to gain his bearings. Bayor trotted to his side and gave him a gentle nudge in greeting, as if sensing his turmoil.
He hadn’t been ready for that conversation. There was a finality to it that hit him harder than any blow a pain priest could have delivered. With everything else on his mind, he couldn’t deal with the emotional landslide his mother had just dumped on him, so he shoved it aside, much as he’d been doing with any thought of her coming death for a long time.
They would talk tomorrow. After the Hunt—if there was an after—he’d sit in the quiet of his cabin and wrestle through everything spinning in his head yet again. Thank the gods he had plenty to distract him in the meantime.
Remembering at the last second that he was supposed to be injured, he limped his way back in the direction he’d come until he reached the tree line. The three-quarter moon shed enough light that anyone truly determined would have been able to see him change course, and he wasn’t taking any chances despite the tumult inside him.
Bayor followed silently in his wake, but once they hit the trees, he bounced around Girik playfully, making him smile.
“Come on, boy. We still have work to do. If I wouldn’t let Tas wallow in his misery, then it hardly seems fair to do it myself. There will be time for wallowing later, probably far too much of it… or maybe not.”
He squared his shoulders and loped back toward the village by another route, with Bayor on his heels. Even in the dark, the house he sought was easy to find. It was the largest in the village, and the elderman had enough wealth that nearly every window glowed with a lamp or candlelight. The problem was which of those rooms held his objective.
Being as big as he was definitely had its disadvantages sometimes. If anyone saw even his shadow, they’d know instantly who it was, and then he’d have to explain why he was prowling in the dark instead of recuperating in his bed. But this was worth the risk, so he’d best get to it.
“Stay,” he whispered to Bayor in the shadow of an outbuilding.
Bayor let out a tiny whine at being left out, yet again, but the dog did as he was commanded.
Climbing to the roof of the house as silently as possible turned out to be more strenuous than Girik had hoped, and his skin was damp with sweat by the time he managed it. He crawled along the sloped roof at a snail’s pace, queasy with the thought of falling off and half-afraid he’d come crashing through the wood shingles at any moment. He found his goal in the third window he peeked down into. Now all he had to do was figure out how to get inside. Grabbing the edge of the roof in a white-knuckled grip, he leaned down as far as he could and tapped on the thick bubbled glass with his free hand.
Chapter Nine
TAS WAS wound so tightly after his dressing-down by Brother Saldus an hour earlier, he nearly jumped out of his skin at the tap on his window. He tried to tell himself it was just an insect attracted by the lamp, but then the tapping came again, more insistently. Grabbing the lamp, he moved to the window and had to stifle a yelp when a blurred, ghostly face appeared beyond the rippled glass.
“Girik?”
The man in question hung upside down, his golden hair creating an almost comical halo around his head. Girik put a finger to his lips and pointed to the window. Tas quickly set the lamp aside and opened it.
&
nbsp; “What are you doing here?” Tas hissed, frantically searching the ground below for any witnesses.
“I need to talk to you.”
“And I need to rest and prepare for tomorrow.”
“That’s why I need to talk to you. Step back.”
Tas frowned at the man, but when Girik swung around and hung from the roof by his hands alone, Tas had no choice but to make room for him to come inside before he fell or was seen. Tas tried not to be impressed with the amount of strength it must have taken for a man that size to lower himself silently to the floor using only his fingertips, but he was pretty sure he failed.
He glared at Girik. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I told you. I need to talk to you.”
“What if someone saw you?”
“I was careful.”
Tas folded his arms over his chest and huffed. “Fine. What was so important?”
“I think you lied to me. It can take me a little while to catch up sometimes, but I do get there eventually. I don’t think you have anywhere near what you need to go on the Hunt tomorrow.”
The words were pretty much identical to what Brother Saldus had thrown at him only a short time ago—although Brother Saldus had seemed more irritated at the failure than concerned for Tas or the village’s welfare.
Still fuming from his dressing-down, Tas held on to his temper by a thread. “Who do you think you are, questioning a member of the Thirty-Six? You have no idea what you’re talking about. Now leave before anyone sees you!”
He wasn’t sure what he hoped would happen next, but he was surprised when Girik simply folded his arms over his chest and waited—no angry words fired back, no hurt in his expression. The man just stood there like a big blank wall of bone and muscle.
“What are you doing? Get out!” Tas hissed as loudly as he dared.
“No.”
How Girik could have imbued one word with not only implacability and firmness, but understanding and sympathy at the same time, Tas would never know. But he did it, and Tas’s anger collapsed under the weight of it. He suddenly felt a hundred years old and like a petulant child all rolled into one.
“What do you want from me?” Tas asked tiredly as he moved away from the man and slumped onto the edge of the mattress.
Girik followed and lowered himself to his knees in front of Tas. “I want the truth. You don’t have what you need for the Hunt tomorrow, do you?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll get the job done. I have to.”
“How?”
“Any way I can.”
“Not good enough.”
Some of Tas’s anger returned and he lifted his head to glare at the man in front of him, but Girik’s expression wasn’t challenging or judgmental. His blue eyes were soft with concern and kindness.
“Can’t you just take my word for it?” Tas asked with a weak smile.
“We’re not at that point in our relationship yet.”
Tas blinked. “We have a relationship?”
“It’s a bit unorthodox, but I’m not sure what else you’d call it…. Let me help you.”
“How?”
“We try the ritual again, here, now.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. It can’t hurt, right? And every little bit helps, doesn’t it?”
Tas couldn’t hold Girik’s earnest, hopeful gaze. His cheeks heated as he looked anywhere but at the man kneeling so close to him. Once or twice in the hours since he’d awoken—when Brother Saldus hadn’t been trying to flay him with his barbed tongue—Tas had actually fantasized about a moment like this. He hadn’t allowed himself to dwell on the fantasy, but it had cropped up just the same. This was temptation. This was the reason such congress was forbidden. It distracted a brother from his duty.
Still, an opportunity like this would never come again, and Tas needed every scrap of energy he could glean before the Hunt. Girik was right about that.
Why in the seven hells not? I’ve come this far. What difference will a little more blasphemy make?
Before Tas said a word, Girik must have read the surrender in his face, because the man grinned.
“We’ll have to be quiet,” Tas warned, trying to regain some control of the situation.
Girik nodded before reaching down and tugging his patched linen shirt over his head. His skin was bare underneath, despite the cold coming down from the mountains, and Tas suddenly had difficulty breathing.
“I don’t know how I’m going to manage to concentrate outside the ritual chamber. It was hard enough inside,” he worried aloud.
Girik cupped his jaw and smiled tenderly at him. “I’ve been thinking about that.”
“You have?”
“Oh yes.” He chuckled. “That and a great many other things. I might have an idea, if you’ll let me.”
The way Girik looked at him made Tas suddenly nervous. He swallowed against a dry throat before asking, “And what idea is that?”
Girik scooted forward until Tas’s knees pressed to the man’s stomach. He gripped Tas’s thighs and pushed until Tas parted them. “I thought maybe, if we got a few things out of the way first, you wouldn’t be as distracted,” Girik murmured. He gave Tas a sly smile before dipping his head to nuzzle behind Tas’s ear.
Breathless now, Tas had to swallow a few more times before he asked, “What things?”
Girik pulled back enough to look Tas in the eye. “If I take care of you first, not only will it help, uh, settle you a bit, but it will definitely build that rapport you’re so fond of. We’ll get your pleasure out of the way, and then you can concentrate on mine for the ritual part.”
The entire time he spoke, Girik’s hands moved in sensual caresses along Tas’s flanks and down his thighs. Tas’s whole body tingled now, and he would have had a hard time spelling his own name, let alone performing any kind of rite.
“That shouldn’t be necessary. I should be able to control myself enough to perform a rite,” Tas objected guiltily, but his voice was breathy and hitched on the last word, making the protest weak at best.
Girik cupped his jaw again and ran a callused thumb over his lips. “But this is all new, and you haven’t had time to adjust yet. Why don’t we try it my way, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll do whatever you say.”
The man was obviously trying to soothe Tas’s wounded pride, but with the warmth radiating off his skin, the tenderness of his touches, and the deep rumble of his voice all washing over him, Tas couldn’t find any reason to call Girik out on the subject. Perhaps it was weakness, but Tas was tired of fighting himself and everyone else. He might be walking to his death tomorrow. Couldn’t the gods forgive him just one more little indiscretion?
“All right,” Tas whispered.
Girik didn’t give him a chance to change his mind. The man’s lips descended on Tas’s the second the words were out of his mouth. Tas felt a tug at the neck of his sleeping shirt as Girik fumbled with the ties, but the sensation of hot firm lips teasing his own was too much of a distraction.
Girik had kissed him before, but it had been only a gentle press of lips, ended all too soon. This was worlds away from that. Tas thought he might finally understand what all the fuss was about, and he surrendered to it greedily.
My pleasure first, then I do my duty, he promised himself.
Girik’s tongue slid over his lips and teased the seam, and Tas instinctively opened his mouth. Nerves made him a bit awkward, but Girik was patient and encouraging. He acted like they had all the time in the world, even though he had to know that wasn’t true.
Now that Tas had stopped fighting and given himself permission, he hardened almost instantly, his heart thrummed behind his ribs, and his skin felt as if it were on fire, as if each slight caress was amplified a hundredfold. He eagerly accepted every touch and taste Girik gave him. The only time he hesitated was when Girik grabbed the hem of his nightshirt and began to draw it up his body.
Tas had never had any reason to be concer
ned with the way his body looked. As long as he was healthy enough to perform his duty, that was all that mattered. Now he had a slight twinge, wondering if Girik would like what he saw. Would he think Tas was too skinny? He certainly didn’t compare to a man like Girik in terms of bulk.
It shouldn’t matter. They weren’t lovers in the traditional sense. They were both performing a necessary task. But Girik had called him beautiful before, and that had flattered Tas’s vanity, despite anything Tas might have said to the contrary.
Half-afraid, Tas forced himself to watch the man’s expression after he lifted his ass off the mattress and allowed his nightshirt to be tugged over his head and tossed aside. Girik’s gaze drifted over Tas’s body, and when it returned, the heat in those blue eyes hadn’t waned.
Girik smiled as he wrapped a fist around Tas’s hard cock. “I wish I could watch you at the same time that I do this. I’d love to see your face. I’ll just have to content myself with hearing you instead. I know we have to be quiet, but let me hear you a little, all right? For rapport purposes only, of course.”
Girik’s fist on his cock made Tas a little slow to catch up. When the words sank in, Tas frowned in confusion. Why couldn’t Girik see him if he wanted to? Then Girik bent his head and engulfed Tas’s cock in the hot wetness of his mouth, and Tas barely remembered to swallow his yelp of surprise.
Girik’s mouth was like magic. Tas shivered with the intensity of the sensations surging through his body. He’d expected to be taken in hand, as Tas had done for Girik. He knew what that felt like. It wasn’t expressly forbidden in the sacred texts, so he’d done it to himself often enough over the years. But this was something on an entirely different plane from anything he’d experienced before.
Tas clamped his mouth shut and moaned. He couldn’t surrender completely to the moment. He couldn’t allow anyone to hear them, and he needed to remain alert to the sound of footsteps in the hall, but it wasn’t going to be easy. Without conscious thought, he threaded his fingers through Girik’s thick wheat-colored hair and cupped the back of the man’s skull as Girik’s mouth performed miracles on his cock. Tas had nothing to compare it to, but he was certain Girik had skill any master would envy. He closed his eyes, fisted his free hand in the blankets, and panted. He wanted this to last forever, but the ringing in his ears and pressure between his legs warned him the end was near. He recognized the sensation even if it had never been this intense before.
The Priest Page 8