Howis he so patient when I feel like I’m dying? My breasts, squeezed between us, add an extra layer of sensation. A flush builds over me, a wash of pleasure that grows with each exquisite, unhurried contact. It’s impossibly good. He can’t be feeling greedy like me or he wouldn’t have such restraint.
When I flutter my inner walls around him, a quiet, low sound tears from his throat, his fingers tightening a little. He’s just as ravenous as I am, I realize. He just doesn’t want to cause me any more pain. He’s giving me this slow, sweet lovemaking at a great cost to himself. We’re both spending everything we have to havethis.
Finally, there’s no space between us, and he stills inside me, lodged somewhere near my soul, pulsing so deep it might be my heart beating.
Then he lets me go. Lets me move, lets me rock on him. Every touch from him feels erotic, even the simplest support as he anticipates when I’ll need help.
It’s like a dance with a perfect partner, but I can’t keep a rhythm. So I let my movement be a melody instead, rising and falling, winding around itself, repeating in variation until my whole body sings instead of my voice.
Oljin quakes beneath me, and I feel the hot pressure of his release just after mine. Oh, I’m glad to give him that. Glad we could share it. He pulls me down to cover my face in kisses, and I choke on my happiness, this moment of blissful connection after being lost for so long.
I’m a puddle on top of him, literally and figuratively. I wish I could soak into him, become inextricable so no one can separate us. I’m also so physically exhausted that I can’t move a muscle, so I just lie there and enjoy whatever moments we have left.
His come drips out of me as he idly plays with my hair. With his other hand he plucks something from the grass and brushes my cheek with it, releasing a burst of honeyed fragrance.
A flower. A tiny, yellow-and-white smudge in my blurry vision.
“Efala,” he says, holding it up.
Panic bursts through me, enough to clap my hand over his mouth. I feel him smile against my palm before he pulls it away. Between gestures and a few words I understand, he makes it clear he can hear that the danger is gone.
Gone!
I can hardly believe it. I’m safe in his arms. We’re still together.
I take the flower from him, gingerly touching the fragile bloom to learn its shape. It has rays of petals like a daisy, but a whorled center like a rose. Like my name. “Did you know Rose means ‘efala’?” I ask him, exhaustion tugging at my eyelids. “In my language, they mean the same thing. Close to it, anyway. They’re both flowers.”
“Efala,” he says again, tracing around the curve of my ear and down to the place on my neck where he bit me with the same care I gave the blossom, as though he fears bruising me. “Beautiful efala.”
Chapter 10
Oljin
Icarry my sleeping Alara back to the valith. Though she’s light and delicate as the flowers we left behind, I feel the heaviness of what comes next.
“Who was it?” I ask a grim-faced Saana after laying Rose on her pallet.
“You know who it was,” she says sharply, anger blotching her skin as she chops herbs to make more healing tincture. “I’m sure you heard us, since I could hearyou.”
I bend my neck to her, ashamed that I ran away like a coward. “I’m sorry to bring trouble to your door. I should have stayed to face my own enemies.”
She points her cooking knife at me, her pigment fading somewhat in the face of my apology. “You did the right thing, hiding her. But I can smell you all over her. You shouldn’t have claimed her in the field like a rutting braxa. Not yet. She’s still healing.”
I rub my forearm where the shallow grass cuts have begun to itch, ashamed of my lack of control. “I know. But she told me to do it. If you knew the strain of the bond, you’d understand why I can’t refuse her anything. Alioth knows, I was as gentle as I could be.”
She suppresses a smile. “I don’t need to know the details. Just be more cautious with her. Your queen needs care, not a tumble in the dirt.”
I nod, my guilt growing faster than grass. I won’t put either of them in danger again. “I’ll return to Gren’Irra today. It’s time I tell them I found my queen.”
She shakes her head, her pigment going gray and troubled. “She’s not ready. Bruises barely healed.”
“I agree. I’ll go alone. Make some arrangements and return. It will take time to prepare for our joining, anyway.”
“It could make her worse if you leave,” she warns. “She’s healing for you, Oljin. You are her reason to fight. Don’t take that from her. Not yet.”
I watched my mother lose her reason, saw what it did to her. The last thing I want to do is take my queen’s away from her. “Rose is my reason, too. I won’t be gone long. Distract her and she won’t have time to miss me.”
“I don’t think I can distract her as well as you,” Saana says wryly. She scoops her pile of chopped herbs into the stone mortar and begins grinding them vigorously. “Medicine and language lessons can’t compare to the arms of your mate. I would know.”
