Once we were back inside thevoliki, I saw our evening meal had been delivered but for once, I wasn’t all that hungry. I’d eaten a large afternoon meal but I would happily graze as I watched Wrune eat the majority of it.
A bath had been filled too, though the water looked cool. I watched Wrune go to the fire basin and take one of the heated rocks there. He dropped it into the bath, along with a few others, until steam curled and danced across the water.
Then he came to me and my lips parted when he began to unclasp the dress I wore at the shoulders. The slip slid down me like silk, pooling at my feet, leaving me naked before him.
“You want to bathe before you eat?” I asked.
“Lysi,” he murmured, his eyes running over me as he got undressed himself. His movements were slow and methodical and my gaze was rapt on every bit of skin he uncovered, making a low chuckle rise from his throat. “Ravenous.”
When he was nude, he led me over to the bathing tub and helped me climb inside. I sighed in contentment as I kneeled, the hot water making me want to moan in delight. Wrune slid behind me but then he turned me so that I straddled his hips.
“I want to look at you,” he explained to me when I cast him a speculative look and then he smoothed hot water over the tops of my shoulders. My spine tingled at his touch. Whenever we bathed together, it always ended with water soaking the carpets. Usually from me frantically rocking against him as his fingers lazily rolled and pressed against my clit.
When I looked at him, I could see the tension in the lines of his expression, in the stiffness of his shoulders. I wondered if it had been his encounter with Besik, but even before tonight, I’d begun to notice it.
My hands came to rest on his chest but he caught my wrist and pressed his lips to myMorakkarimarkings. Warmth bloomed in my chest, sudden and fierce. It was one thing when he kissed and touched me in front of his horde because a part of me assumed it was for…performance. I assumed it was another of Wrune’s ‘messages.’
It was another thing entirely when we were alone.
To distract myself from that feeling, I asked, breathless, “What were you speaking to thedarukkarabout?”
He continued to press kisses to my wrist, his lips lingering over the vein on the inside of it. However, I felt the way the muscles in his chest tightened underneath my other palm despite his apparent nonchalance.
I knew he would tell me. Every question I’d asked of him in the past week, he’d given me his answer freely.
“I know he’s Junira’spattar,” I told him. “Yes?”
“Lysi,” Wrune replied. “He said a lot of things throughout the horde after ourtassimara. I simply found the time to make my feelings about it known.”
“What things?” I asked, though I feared I knew.
“About me. About you,” he said.
“He didn’t look happy with the conversation,” I noted, thinking about the tension that had thrummed through the both of them.
“He is one of my bestdarukkars. He knows this. And he uses it to his advantage, thinking he has more free will than the others. This evening, I told him that he would be one of the warriors I took to the Dead Mountain and he refused.”
I straightened in his lap. “He refused you?” I repeated quietly.
“Lysi,” Wrune said, his hands sliding down my arms, his gaze flickering to my breasts which just sat on the surface of the water, ripples of it lapping at my nipples. “And so I accepted his refusal but told him that after this season, I expected him to return toDothik.”
“W-what?” I whispered, wide-eyed, even as Wrune cupped my breasts, lifting them. They were heavy in his palms.
He leaned forward and suckled lazily at one of my nipples, making my breath hitch.
“Wrune,” I murmured, pushing him back a little so I could meet his eyes. “I don’t want to be the reason any of your horde members are sent away.”
His eyes narrowed. His hands fell away from my breasts and he settled more deeply against the back of the bathing tub, his arms resting on the edges. The ends of his dark hair dipped underneath the water. His chest was wet and shimmering and just the sight of him like this was making it hard to think.
“It isyourhorde too,” he commented.
“What?” I asked, blinking.
“Are you notMorakkariof this horde? Do you not have more power and influence now than even my ownpujerak?”
Oh.
“As such, any slight against you is a slight against me. Besik made his choice. He knew what he was doing in refusing my order and I called him on his bluff. I don’t tolerate games like that. Not in my own horde. Not when lives are at stake. He has served me well since the beginning days but in the last weeks, he has shown me I cannot trust him. If I cannot trust him, I cannot rely on him. He is not loyal to Rath Rowin, to the horde. He is only loyal to his own interests. He will findDothika fitting place to live, if he does not choose to return to the outpost where he was born.”
