Page 30 of Swordheart #1
That night, Sarkis lay on the thin mattress and brooded.
The attack by footpads did not bother him overmuch. He suspected it would trouble Halla a great deal more. She was not used to having people assault her for no reason except that she had something they wanted.
Odd that she could reach adulthood and still hold such an innocence. Perhaps it was this decadent land, or perhaps she had simply never had anything that anyone wanted before.
He grimaced. He knew that he should hold such softness in contempt, and yet… and yet…
Consulting the maps had been kind. He had not thought to do it. He was used to being displaced in time, over and over. He was used to being thought of as nothing more than a weapon, not a man who might wish to know the fate of his country.
He had almost come to think of himself as such as well. Right now, with the memory of the fight still singing in his blood, he still felt very much like a weapon. And a bit depressed at how much he enjoyed being one, from time to time.
It had taken Halla and her endless questions and inability to take anything at face value to see him as a man again, and then to search out how such a man, isolated in time, might find a marker.
It had been kind. Yes. Kind and soft and damned decent of her to do, when she had her own troubles to worry about.
But he should not have kissed her. That had been a mistake.
He rolled over, restless. Perhaps, but it had been a glorious mistake. He could still feel the way she had pressed against him, her body molding against his. He could easily imagine how much better it would be without armor and cloth between them.
And for all you know, she was squashed up against you because you were pushing her into the wall, he told himself grimly. And if you do not stop these thoughts, you will have to beat your own ass for disrespect.
He had kissed any number of women in his life, and by his own standards, that had been a very chaste, respectful kiss. He did not know why it had felt so shockingly intimate.
She had not wept or broken down over the attack.
He would have held her if she had, and Sarkis did not think that he would have taken advantage of her weakness to kiss her again, but…
well, if hundreds of years in a sword had taught him anything, it was mostly that he was not half the man that, in life, he had thought that he might be.
It would be easier when there was a priest traveling with them. One did not have lustful thoughts around a priest if one could avoid it.
Although they’ll be a priest of one of these decadent southern gods, Sarkis thought glumly. So for all I know, they’ll be as randy as a rooster in a henhouse and call it a sacrament.
That thought would have killed the libido of far stronger men than Sarkis. He rolled over again and wrapped the blankets around himself.
His last thought before falling asleep was that neither he nor Halla had mentioned Rutger’s Howe while they stood in line. How had the footpad known where she was from?
Halla, too, had difficulty sleeping, though for largely different reasons. The bed was very narrow and the fact that she was sharing it with a mostly-sheathed sword did not help.
She reached out and touched the embossed sheath, running her fingers over the pattern. Sleeping with a sword in her bed. Gods, her life had taken quite a turn since she left Rutger’s Howe.
The attempted robbery had been unsettling, but she was not as shaken as she had been after Mina had tried to prey on her. The sword was valuable, someone had overheard that, so they had tried to take it. It did not feel personal the same way.
And if I’m being honest, I only saw a few seconds of it before I ran like a rabbit.
The library had been closing, but the desk clerk had still been there.
If she’d screamed, people would have come running.
She didn’t, because Sarkis had clearly had the situation well in hand, and she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to explain about magic and swords and risk spreading the word to even more potential thieves.
She was not at all concerned that the priests of the White Rat had betrayed them. They didn’t do that sort of thing.
Still, if someone tried to break into the hostel and take the sword, they’d have to get past the guard, past the nuns, find her, then wrestle it out from under the blankets, and all she’d have to do was yank the cords off, sheathe it and draw it again, and Sarkis would appear, large as life and twice as angry.
He had seemed irritated after she’d found him, but probably that was because of the robbery. Of course, he’d seemed irritated after he kissed her, too…
She rolled over, trying to get comfortable. The sword banged against her back.
No one had ever kissed her like that. The miller’s son, who’d courted anything in skirts when Halla was sixteen, only wished that he could kiss that way. Her husband had never even tried, preferring to focus his attention on what lay under her skirt and the quickest way of getting to it.
Sarkis’s kiss had been as fierce as the rest of him.
He’d tilted his head to cover her mouth with his, holding her against him, and…
well, it had been wonderful. Her initial surprise had warmed into something else entirely, as if her veins were full of…
oh, not fire, but something kinder. Melted butter, perhaps.
Yes. She’d felt as if she were melting against him.
But then Sarkis had stopped, which was bad, and apologized, which was even worse.
She must have done something wrong, or more likely, not done the right thing.
There was probably something obvious, something that any other woman would know to do, but she hadn’t, so Sarkis thought she must not be interested.
Which I am. Very much.
She’d felt like her insides were turning to honey. She hadn’t wanted it to stop. If she had her way, they’d still be leaning against the wall of the alley together.
She rolled over again. The sword dug into her hip and she had to move it so she wasn’t lying on top of the damn thing.
Which was the problem, ultimately. The sword was one thing.
If Sarkis had been in her bed, instead of the hunk of steel he was entrapped in, he’d want…
well, what the miller’s son had wanted and hadn’t gotten, and what her husband had performed while staring into the middle distance with an expression of bemused concentration, as if Halla wasn’t there at all.
Halla had a feeling that Sarkis would not be staring into the middle distance while he bedded her. Hell, if the kiss was any indication, she might not be staring into the middle distance herself.
But after bedding came the consequences of bedding. Like pregnancy and childbirth and assuming she lived through that—her family’s history wasn’t great—suddenly the thin shield provided by being a respectable widow would vanish.
She didn’t quite dare.
But oh gods, how she wanted to…