Page 7
His words melted the uncertainty clinging to her, and she pushed off the bed and stood facing him. “You first.”
One corner of his mouth curled into a half smile as he gazed down at her, his eyes a pure, deep, molten green. “Race you?”
She laughed, delighted by the challenge. “We did that the first time.”
“Whatever works.”
“Slower,” she said, even as her fingers traced the hidden closures of his tunic, deftly unfastening each one in turn. When the two halves draped free, she slid her hands inside and scraped her fingernails gently down the hard plane of his abdomen over his black skinsuit.
He shuddered, though his hands remained where they were, one at his side, the other languidly stroking his erection. “That doesn’t feel slow.”
“Slower than before.” She peered at him through lowered lashes, her own mouth curved into a coy smile, and slid one hand down to cover his. “I liked it.”
A long breath shuddered out of him. His hand flipped out from under hers and pressed her fingers around his hardness, and he backed her into the bed and followed her down, then he slid into her again, and it was like coming home after months away. Years, even, she thought dimly as his weight pressed her into the bed and his mouth found hers. They arched into each other again and again, tender now, slow and easy and so achingly beautiful, she gasped his name into his mouth as he clasped her hands in his and pushed her high, and they shattered together in a sweet, primal, dizzying rush.
And in the aftermath, before her heart settled and the gentle savagery of his touch faded, she knew down to her bones, just knew, that she’d never be the same again.
He took her again before tearing himself away from the seductive temptation of her body. Of her , Jos corrected, even as they settled into the bed, naked now, and Tyelu draped herself across his sweat-slicked body. Her fingertips traced a light trail across his chest, stirring a contentment so deep, he was tempted to dive in and live there forever.
Had he ever felt this way about a woman? Had one ever moved him the way his princess did?
She scraped her fingernails lightly across his abdomen, eliciting from him a smile and a reflexive throb of desire.
“Careful,” he murmured.
She dug her nails in lightly, and he felt her smile against his chest. “Too rough for the tough little merc?”
“Never.”
Her roaming hand paused, then drifted below his waist, and she laughed huskily. “I see.”
“Vixen,” he growled.
“You expected less?”
No, he thought. He hadn’t. This right here, her draped across him, teasing him, pushing every boundary she could find? That’s exactly what he’d wanted from her.
And he wanted more.
Her hand rested now on his chest, over the slow thud of his heartbeat. He captured it, kissed her fingertips, brushed another across the top of her head.
“We need to talk, princess.”
She stiffened. “Bored already?”
The question startled him enough that when she tugged on her hand, he let it slip away. “Where did that come from?”
Instead of replying, she rolled away from him and sat on the edge of the bed, her spine rigid. He took the briefest moment to admire the curve of her back, the soft swell of her ass, then pushed upright and knelt behind her, with her between his thighs and his hands on her shoulders. Her skin was soft, velvety, and so tempting he had to quash an impulse to bury his face against her throat.
Doing that would probably get his head removed from his body.
He dropped a kiss to her shoulder, hiding a grin the windows might reflect to her. Feisty little vixen.
“My dal is being pulled from babysitting duty for another recon of the system. Don’t know how long it’ll take, but after, I want to see you again.”
She half turned toward him, giving him the barest glimpse of her downturned profile. “Truly?”
Was that a thread of uncertainty in her voice? Did she really not understand how much he wanted her, what he’d do to have her again?
Something loosened in his chest. Incredibly, his body reacted, growing hard against her back, and suddenly, he realized he didn’t know what she’d say, whether she’d agree to meet him again or turn him away.
“Say you want that, too,” he said, his voice colder, more savage, than he’d meant.
She hesitated long enough for his fingers to tighten on her shoulders. “My father has requested that I sit in on the next Thing.” At his questioning look, she added, “A local court slash province business meeting.”
“When?”
“Upon my return to Abyw.” Another hesitation, then she twisted her face toward his and gazed up at him, her face set carefully in an inscrutable expression. “He wishes my aid in hearing the grievances brought before him as kafh.”
He accessed the Q’s databanks through his implant and scrolled through their intelligence on Abyw’s leadership. Gared ab Einif enig Alna, Tyelu’s father, was the governor, of sorts, of an Abyewian province and a trusted member of Tyrl Sigun’s court. He had the tyrl’s ear, which should make Jos’s family happy. As Ambassador Bilal had pointed out repeatedly, Q had been looking for a way to ally with the Pruxn?. She, at least, would see Jos’s relationship with Tyelu as god-sent.
But they were only at the beginning now. It was much too early to place such a heavy burden on him or Tyelu.
“How long will that take?” he said.
“A few days, perhaps. Then he’ll attend the Council of Kafhs.”
“And he wants you with him.”
“Yes.”
So her father was grooming his only daughter for a leadership position. Layne would find that interesting. Not that he’d tell her. She had her own spies. Let them do their jobs.
Meanwhile, he still had to convince Tyelu to see him again.
She turned away again and relaxed into him. “Kodh claims I’d make a terrible kafh.”
“Kodh?”
“My cousin, the son of my father’s eldest brother. He’s here as a member of Sigun’s honor guard. Tall, brooding, condescending?”
Ah, yes, Jos thought. The arrogant ass his dal had done their level best to avoid.
“And he thinks he’d make a better leader?” he said.
Her shoulders twitched under his hands, then she said, softly, “I’d like to think I’d be the better choice.”
“Then why the hesitation?”
In the silence that followed, her fingers crept to his hands and pulled one around her upper chest. She rested her head in the crook of his arm and sighed. “My mother committed me to service in the Queen’s Guard before my birth, when she and my father first met. I was young when she sent me to Zinod alone the first time, no more than a handful of standard years. It felt as if a part of me had been severed.”
His heart cracked at the undercurrent of pain in her voice, and he reacted unthinkingly, drawing her closer to him, soothing her with a soft kiss and the skim of one hand up and down her arm. An odd familiarity filled him, reminding him of the day his father had left him at the Academy the first time. He couldn’t have been much older that day than she was when she began her own military training.
Part of him insisted that it was different for the Q. They knew from birth what price they’d pay for the stability and success of their people. Had Tyelu’s parents instilled her with that same sense of duty, or had she been torn between her mother’s world and her father’s, the world into which she’d been born?
“In my second year,” she continued, “an assassin made it into the queen’s own chambers. Her guard stopped him. Creti Flenig, the captain of the Queen’s Guard at that time. You may remember meeting her at one of the receptions.”
“I do,” he murmured. The Lady Warrior had reminded him of Tyelu. Not in looks, no; the two women were as different as the sun is from the sky. But in their manner? The tilt of their heads, the canny calculation hiding behind polite smiles. Yes, there they bore a startling resemblance.
“When the assassin was brought before the queen to hear his sentence, we were there. All of the trainees.” She pressed her mouth to his arm, then said, “Do you know much of Banam’s customs?”
“Enough,” he replied. “He was sentenced to death?”
“And executed on the spot. Creti beheaded him with her own sword. I will never forget the spray of blood, the hot reek of death. Some of the girls vomited, right there in the throne room.”
Her voice had gone quiet, distant with memory, as if she were reliving what must have been a horrifying moment for a young child. Even the Q did not force death upon their cadets at such a young age.
“Not you,” he guessed.
“No. I felt nothing at all,” she said quietly, and for some inexplicable reason, she trembled. “Not nothing. I was glad Creti had killed him, glad the traitor was dead.”
“That’s not unusual. You were a child in service to the queen.”
“No! You don’t understand.” She pulled away and stood with her back to him, beautifully outlined by the light of Domor’s moons shining through the windows in front of her. Her hands clenched into fists, then relaxed, and she shuddered again. “I wished it had been me wielding the sword, me shedding his blood and feeding it to the gods as an atonement for his sins. Me, a child who could barely lift a dagger in her own defense! I hated his family for breeding a traitor, for allowing a viper to grow in their midst, and I vowed then that I would never allow such treason to take root in my presence.
“His sister was one of my classmates. We shared a dorm room. All of our training class did.”
His gut tightened. “What did you do?”
“She was cleared of all wrongdoing.”
“Tyelu,” he growled.
“Yet, someone had to have let the assassin in. The matter was never mentioned again among the lower training classes, but despite our trainers’ insistence that she had done nothing wrong, I was convinced she had. So, I sabotaged her. Not at first, no. At first it was just…besting her at tests, outmaneuvering her on the mat, quietly separating her from any friends she managed to make. I made a study of her. Eventually, I came to know her better than even her own traitorous rot of a family did.”
A chill slid down his spine. He stood and walked to her, and wrapped his arms around her, his front to her back. That fine tremor still ran through her body. She stiffened again and tried to break his hold, and he held on, knowing deep in his gut that she hadn’t yet reached the worst of it.
“I broke her,” she said on a bitter laugh, “Systematically, over years, I took an innocent little girl and beat her down, and I did it by playing inside the rules, until our final test. And then I used everything I’d ever learned about her, every skill I possessed, and I made kraden sure she didn’t walk off the mat on her own, that she would never be in a position to threaten the queen again. Afterward, I thrilled in the victory, certain I had destroyed the seed that could one day bear fruit to another traitor.
“It’s not unusual for such things to occur. The training to become a Queen’s Guard is brutal. No one questioned what happened, and she withdrew her candidacy, likely knowing she’d never be accepted into the elite units.”
“But?”
Tyelu inhaled slowly and exhaled on a string of words. “After I became a Lady Warrior, I was assigned to the Archives for a Zinod year. And I discovered that she truly had been innocent. Another had allied with the traitor, a trusted cook who’d been part of the queen’s staff since she was a girl herself. We trainees had not been privy to the cook’s demise. I don’t know why. If I had known, perhaps I would’ve made peace with the girl instead of hounding her until she bled.
“When Creti retired the captaincy, the queen offered me the spot. I declined. A leader who lacks compassion and mercy quickly becomes a tyrant, and I could not besmirch my family’s reputation that way.”
“You let her live,” he pointed out.
“Only because killing her would have meant my expulsion, and possibly my own death.” Tyelu shook her head, and when she spoke again, her voice held enough bitter regret to make him flinch. “No, I am unsuited to leadership. Better Kodh as a soft tyrant than a woman who wields malice as casually as I.”
He blew out a rude epithet. “You forget that I’ve met Kodh.”
“So?”
“Do you kick helpless animals and scream at young children?”
She tilted her head back against his arm until their eyes met and arched a nearly white eyebrow. “Does he?”
“The point,” he said patiently, “is that you don’t, which proves you have more compassion than you believe.”
She scoffed and shifted restlessly against him.
Jos skimmed his teeth lightly down her neck, a mild, teasing rebuke. “Your father knows you better or he wouldn’t have chosen you as his successor.”
“Now you know my father’s will?” she said lightly.
“You’d try the patience of the gods, princess.”
“I’d give it a shot anyway.” She turned in his embrace, still holding his gaze, a faint flicker of some unnamed emotion lighting her blue eyes. “You think I should allow my father to groom me for the kafh.”
“I think you have a good heart,” he corrected gently. “And that you shouldn’t turn down an opportunity to lead your people because of one mistake you made as a child.”
“A horrible—”
He cut her off with a hard kiss. When she softened against him, he drew back long enough to add, “A mistake you made for the right reasons. Your heart is pure, Tyelu, your instincts sound. Trust yourself. I know you’ll do the right thing.”
She stared up at him for a long moment, her expression yet again the mask of the warrior she’d been for so long, the warrior still living in her heart and spirit. Finally, she said, “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”
He growled and picked her up, then tossed her onto the bed and followed her down, ignoring her outraged squawk as he covered her body with his, holding her right where he wanted her. “Say you’ll meet me again.”
She tilted her chin at a challenging angle. “Why should I?”
“Because you want me.” He smiled and slid his erection along her wetness. “Say it so I can please you again before duty calls me away.”
Her mouth curved into a mischievous, knowing smile. “The sex is that good?”
He captured her chin with one hand. “You know it’s not just sex.”
To his surprise, she clasped his hand in hers and pressed a light kiss to his palm. “Love me before you leave.”
She hadn’t meant to say it like that. He could see that much in her expression. But she had said it, and in the saying had rendered him helpless.
“As you wish,” he murmured, then he made love to her until Domor’s moons set and he could no longer ignore the summons recalling his dal back to duty.