Azarion raised his head to meet her eyes. “Are you afraid? I’ll stop.”
She was anxious, but only because no lover had done this to her before. She wasn’t afraid, not of this man’s attentions or the exquisite way he played her body until every nerve thrummed and sizzled under her skin.
“I’m not afraid,” she said. “Just unversed in this.”
He smiled, his irises as dark as his pupils. “What I’m about to do doesn’t require your skill, Gilene, only mine. This is for you to enjoy and for me to enjoy with you.”
With that, he set to proving his words, his mouth and tongue a sweet torture that had Gilene lifting her hips and gripping Azarion’s head as she panted his name on shallow breaths while she begged him to stop and then begged him to continue. The knot ofpleasure fanning hot and bright in her belly spooled out with each caress like a thread from a ball of string, growing ever more taut until it snapped. Gilene’s back arched under the force of her climax, and the guttural noises she made didn’t sound human in her ears. Her knees clapped hard against Azarion’s shoulders as she rode him through a tide of sensation that turned the stars blurry.
Azarion rose above her, a long, broad shadow that blocked out the sky. “Gilene.”
Her name, only that, uttered in the tones of a temple worshipper. Gilene curved her legs over his back and twined her arms around his neck. “You are mine,” she said in a ragged voice. “I am yours.”
He sank into her with a sigh, his thrust deep. She gasped at the feel of him slowly filling her, his body heavy as hers stretched to accommodate his girth. Every muscle, inside and out, clenched against his partial withdrawal, and he shuddered in her arms.
Gilene didn’t count the number of thrusts this time or turn her mind away from the moment. Instead, she reveled in it and willingly gave up her body and her heart to the man who made love to her under the open sky of the Stara Dragana.
He came inside her with a harsh moan and a shiver that racked him from head to foot. Gilene held him close, savoring the heat of his orgasm, the way his muscles flexed and his back went rigid before he settled on her, skin slippery with sweat, breath hard and uneven in her ear.
They lay entwined, with the blankets twisted around them, binding them close. Azarion hooked an arm under Gilene’s hip and rolled them both to their sides. His mouth looked lush in the moonlight, swollen from her enthusiastic kisses and his pleasuring of her body. Satisfaction warred with anticipation in his gaze.“Unless you say otherwise, there’ll be no sleep for either of us tonight,” he said.
She grinned and traced a meandering line across his collarbones, stopping for a moment to paint an invisible swirl in the hollow of his throat. “Is that a promise or a threat?” she teased.
“What do you want it to be?”
Gilene pretended to consider the options for a moment. “You always keep your promises, so a promise then.”
A shadow passed through the depths of his eyes. “There are promises I wish I’d never made.” His voice was as grim as his expression had suddenly grown.
She knew to what he alluded. He had promised he’d return her to Beroe, and her belief in him, slow to grow, didn’t waver now. Her own sense of loyalty, however, did, and that scared her. He had offered his heart to her, and Gilene knew Azarion well enough by now to understand he didn’t make such a momentous declaration as a platitude. It was a gift beyond price, one she would hold close when she returned to the capital in the spring. One that tested her resolve to return at all.
His cheek was warm under her hand, the unwelcome tears heavy in her throat. “I can’t say it,” she said. “No matter that I want to. If I do, I will falter, and I can’t falter.”
He captured her hand to plant a quick kiss on her palm and pressed his own hand to her chest. “It’s all right, Gilene. You say it here.”
Grateful that he didn’t try to further persuade her from her chosen course, Gilene hugged him, allowing a few tears to trickle down her face before she blinked the rest away. In little time, her sadness was forgotten as Azarion made good on his promise and showed her that not all Pit gladiators were simply butchers or rutting beasts.
He made love to her through the remainder of the night, pausing for short stretches of time to rest but never sleep. They talked or simply caressed each other in silence while the moon above them made its slow descent. When the sun crested the horizon in a blade of fiery light, and the sky slowly lightened from black to indigo to lavender, Gilene sighed and gazed at Azarion’s peaceful features, hoping to memorize each line.
“Do you trust Masad to accompany me home to Beroe?” It was a question she’d considered when Azarion had first outlined his plan for returning her to her village.
He nodded. “Yes. He might not agree with a decision or a plan, but he serves theatamanfaithfully. He’ll do as I instruct, even if it means taking anagacinaway from the Sky Below.”
Azarion had surprised her with the details. Masad would cross the steppe and Nunari territory at its narrowest passage to deliver her to Beroe. Once Azarion and his subchiefs completed negotiations with Clan Eagle, he’d return home to the Clan Kestrel encampment. His trusted captain,however, would sneak away in the small hours with the outlanderagacinand guide her back to Kraelian lands. She spun a lock of his hair around her finger. “Part of me wishes it were you who will take me back to Beroe. The other part is glad it won’t be.”
The rising sun gilded the lower half of his body, turning the blankets and pelts that covered him a deep shade of gold. In that moment, he seemed both man and statue. He sighed, a hollow sound. “It’s better that Masad deliver you instead of me. I might well break my promise. He won’t.”
It was one of the many things Gilene respected about Azarion, the self-awareness of his nature and his willingness to accept it and act according to those traits both weak and strong. She watched the sunlight creep up the blankets, a relentless timekeeper that showedno mercy to those who tried to capture moments and hold them still. “We have to meet with Erakes soon, don’t we?”
“Yes.” Azarion stroked her back. “There’s no guarantee he’ll agree to my plan, especially when it’s one in which the Savatar start a war with the Empire.” His gaze turned piercing. “If he does agree to it, I will do all in my power to see that Beroe is spared any attack from the Savatar who may pass it by on their way to Kraelag.”
The sun had topped the horizon by the time they rose, dressed, and rolled up their belongings to return to their borrowedqara. Someone had entered earlier, leaving behind a tray of food and a basin of still-warm wash water.
Azarion gathered the subchiefs who accompanied him outside the entrance to Erakes’sqara. He acknowledged each man with a quick nod.
Theataman’sqarawas nearly full once again when they entered. Erakes sat on an elevated pallet, a tall backrest draped in white fur behind him, reminding Gilene of a monarch’s throne. A coterie of subchiefs and a pair ofagacinsstood in clutches close by. Gilene nodded to her sisters of the Flame, who nodded back but didn’t invite her to stand with them.
Azarion stood before Erakes, his subchiefs in a half circle behind him. Gilene took up a place at its periphery, close enough to hear the exchange between the twoatamansbut far enough away to remain out of the discussion itself.
