In his voice was a smile. “And what is your man’s name? Say my name. You know how it makes my prick hard and my heart warm.”
“Caleb,” she sighed, her hands gripping the step above where her lower half rested. “Caleb.Caleb.”
The echo of her cries of his name snapped me out of my daze at this sight and I whirled, running back down the stairwell, hoping the multiple layers of tanned leather that coated the bottom of my winter boots did not hit the stone steps with much sound. I went as fast as I dared without crashing downward. I was steps away from the next landing, but could still hear everything.
“Say my name again.”
“Say— Saymyname,” Helena panted.
I clapped a hand over my mouth. I did not know my genteel, proper friend, my ladylike sister could speak in this way.
Thatcher gave a shout of rowdy laughter that resounded down the stairwell. “Lusty dove. Do you want me to say it now or when I am spilling into you?”
“Both,” she rasped out. “Say it now and say it then.”
He laughed again with joy, but his voice was hungry as he began to say her name. Helena, over and over. Helena. Helena.
I regained my bearings and kept running, down one step and another. I was close to what I guessed was the third or fourth landing, when I heard a voice from below over those from above. Rounding the turn, I saw Alric, walking up from the descending turret step up onto the landing I had been racing towards.
“Edith?”
“Quiet!” I hissed, barreling into him, propelled from my flight, my hands flying over his mouth. I tried to catch my breath as he stared at me over my hands. Realizing my body was flush up against his and that through his undershirt and tunic with his leather breeches I could feel him, possibly even more intimately than when I had bathed him, I pulled away, my hands leaving his lips last. I took a step back and pointed upward.
We stood, eyes on each other, as a rhythmic thump, her cries and his repetition of her name all floated down towards us, amplified by the bluff rock.
“Bloody Thatcher,” said Alric, sighing and putting his hands on his hips.
I smiled and whispered, “I was running away as fast as I could without them hearing.”
“He has an officer’s rooms with a door that locks.”
“Some enjoy the possibility of being discovered,” I ventured, feeling an acute affection at his response, so sensible my husband.
He shook his head. “He and Perch both. So loud when they swive.”
“Ah, you have not slept through Perch and Mischa either.”
“No, I have only pretended. I thoughtyouwere asleep.” He was making that Alric smile that was, on any other face, no smile at all.
Gods, what this man was to me, his scent, his manner, his gait. And he did not know. He thought he was my unlikely friend. He did not know that I lay beside him in that spacious bed, aching, melancholy with want of him. He did not know the restraint I had exacted in washing off the training yard mud from his sinewy frame. He knew none of it.
“I have half a mind to go up there, if it were not for the lady,” he muttered.
“Please do not.”
“I won’t. If it were some… some slattern. But it is his intended and I’ve respect for her.”
His guilt over her rape on the Nyossa road hung in the air between us and because I now knew his expressions, I wanted to stop any self-recrimination. Perhaps emboldened by Helena, I drew closer and put my hands on his chest. “While they may not have sought privacy, I think they thought they had found it.” I gave him a push. “We should go.”
Any excuse to touch him I would take. Had I no shame?
He did not move, surprised at my hands on him. He drew breath.
I luxuriated in touching his chest, expanding and depressing beneath my palms. Was he offended? Had I been too forward?
Then he put his rough hands over mine and drew them down between us. “You are always right, Edith. I was looking for you anyway.”
“And why is that?”
