The waterwascold, which helped Darya in one sense, and also made her bath speedy: duck herself and the clothes, scrub until both were as clean as mere friction could make them, wring the clothes out and lay them on rocks, then pour water over the cuts on her chest a few times. They were already starting to close up and healing clean—almost all Sentinels’ wounds did, though intentional poison would trouble anyone but her.
Still, she touched the last of the lignath to them when she got out of the water—and then made a face, not only at the sting but because certain logistics had just announced themselves. Namely: bandaging her wounds would be a good idea, both for their healing and so that she’d smell less like blood to anything around, but doing that would go better with another pair of hands.
She sighed. “I’m going to have to ask a favor.”
Chapter 21
Half-naked, from behind, Darya brought to mind birch trees—the same straight slenderness, the same pallor crossed by scars—if a man was trying to keep his mind vaguely elevated. Amris was doing his best.
He unwound a strip of bandage across her back and passed it under one raised arm so she could take it with her free hand, the one not holding the other pad of cloth against her cuts. The inevitable moments in the process when the back of his hand brushed against the side of her breast were moments he fought hard to ignore, as he was fighting hard to ignore the curve of her neck up toward her jaw and the firm roundness of her backside in wet trousers, so close that he needed only to shift his weight forward to make contact.
Hardwas both an appropriate and an unfortunate word.
The years had taught Amris discipline. War had taught him to bear with physical discomfort. His first lover had been many years ago; a woman’s body was no less familiar to him than a man’s. He tried to let his experience make him jaded and to concentrate on the process: wrap close to the body, keep the bandage flat, hand off promptly, take it again without hesitation, and finally tie a good, solid knot in the back.
Then he tucked the ends of the bandage into the top. His fingers brushed over a long scar, a jagged dip surrounded by smooth skin, and he heard Darya’s breath catch.
“Not too tight, I hope,” he said, because it seemed vitally important just then to saysomething, as though words would be a shield.
She shook her head, and a strand of her hair fell against his withdrawing hand.
The soft contact froze Amris where he stood. Not knowing that, Darya turned.
Facts burned themselves into his mind very quickly. He knew that her face was full of high color, and her lips parted. He knew that her breasts rose uncovered below the bandage: small, soft, and curving upward, with nipples the color of cherries against her pale skin. He knew that she began to speak, and stopped before she could get more than a syllable out of her mouth. And he knew that no more than a hand’s breadth divided her bare skin from his.
He didn’t know which of them closed the distance.
* * *
Desire swept all thought out from under her.
Darya forgot what she’d been going to say. It might have been a joke, a reminder about the need to get back on the road, or just a word of thanks. It had washed completely out of her mind, and she didn’t care.
Amris’s hands bracketed her waist, low enough that his smallest fingers skimmed the top of her arse. The calluses rubbed against her skin with every slight movement, sending shivers of sensation in all directions: down through her arse and legs and up to where her hard nipples grazed the thick hair on Amris’s chest, where one expanding spiral of feeling met another and fed into it.
The ground was rocky under her bare feet, and the pressure of her chest against Amris’s made her cuts ache in a not-so-pleasant way, but those small pains were distant. Darya could ignore them. She couldn’t—or wouldn’t—ignore the hoarse sounds from Amris’s throat, or the hard muscle of his shoulder, tense beneath one of her palms as she wound her other hand through his hair and brought his mouth harder against hers.
His hands tightened, pulling her closer, and the truly impressive length of his cock did more than nudge against her thigh: it strained toward her through Amris’s wet trousers, rubbing tantalizingly close to her aching sex. Starting to rock her hips in response was as natural and as inevitable as the tides.
Everythingfelt more instinctive than Darya remembered from past lovers. It wasn’t just that Amris gave and took with equal adeptness, kissing her with the same deft force she remembered from seeing him fight but responding eagerly when she took the lead. He seemed to sense just the time to slide his hands downward and cup her bottom, just as she knew that dragging her nails down the back of his neck would make him groan and shudder, and the precise force to use.
It was the rush of new energy that came with an unfamiliar lover, but the expertise in one person’s preferences that even the most skilled courtesan couldn’t manage without knowing their partner well. It was feeling a shadow of Amris’s pleasure when she touched him, and knowing what he most wanted next because an echo in her body wanted it too.
It was the spell.
Gerant.
Shit.
The spelldidn’textend to mind reading, but they could both draw conclusions. Even as Darya swore silently, Amris dropped his hands and stumbled backward, shaking his head.
“I—” he began, and then stopped, breathing hard.
“Yeah,” said Darya, looking at her feet so that she wouldn’t notice the flush on his face, or the bulge in his trousers. “I’d better get my shirt.”
* * *
While Darya dressed, Amris stared at the pool. He could have retrieved his own shirt then, but their clothing was laid out close together, and it was best not to take any chances, best to stare at the spring, each rivulet and rock imprinting itself into his vision, until his lust and the throbbing manifestation of it subsided.
