“Look at me,” he hissed, because curse it, she’d forgotten that, in the heated closeness of his hands — so she instantly obliged, holding her wide, ashamed eyes to his, as she licked and sucked his fingers, feeling how their claws were drawn fully in, their touch warm and indulgent against her lips. And even if she couldn’t quite read his eyes now, it surely wasn’t disappointment, at least, was it?
“And now?” he asked once she’d finished, a distinct challenge in his voice. Dragging Geva’s thoughts back to the lesson, to what he’d told her he liked, and she nodded, licked her lips. And then bent down over his groin again, and slipped his softened, still-slick heft into her mouth. Sucking it slow and gentle, using her tongue to clean off the last sweet smears of seed, to delve beneath his sliding hood, into his slit. And when she slipped off again, he was glossy and clean, looking strangely soft and innocuous against his thatch of thick black curls.
“Good?” she whispered, again licking her swollen-feeling lips, while a tenuous thread of longing seemed to tighten against her chest. She’d done her best, she’d offered what she’d thought was a good performance, and what if he disagreed, what if he hadn’t liked it, if he…
“Good,” he murmured back, with a rueful little smile, a firm pat of his hand against her cheek. “Ach, I am impressed, my sweet. Very good.”
Oh. Well. Geva felt herself swallowing hard, her head slightly ducking, and when his big hands guided her up again, it felt almost too easy, too natural, to rise up over his face, to hold his shimmering eyes. To perhaps lean a little closer, to where his lips were parted, his tongue brushing very brief against them —
But then, he — turned his face away. The movement quick and purposeful, its intention suddenly, staggeringly clear, as his eyes fixed intently on the wall.
He... didn’t want to kiss her. Oh. Right. Because this was just — a job. And Geva felt herself flinching backwards again, squeezing her eyes shut, shaking her head.No true mating between us. Only play-acting…
And Geva knew that, how did she keep forgetting that, and suddenly she couldn’t bear to look at him, or even be in the same bed with him — and she frantically scrabbled away, lunging for her satchel, for her nightclothes. And then she swiftly, shakily changed, and then tied up her hair in her scarf, keeping her back turned firmly toward Rathgarr in the bed. One month, and then the sea…
“Ach, poppet,” came Rathgarr’s low voice behind her. “I could… say more sweet things, should you wish.”
Geva’s hands froze on her scarf, her eyes staring at the room’s dingy wall, and she could hear him shifting on the bed, clearing his throat. “How clever and pretty you are, mayhap?” he continued. “How your hair is that of a sun goddess, mayhap, and your skin like purest shining bronze, new from the forge. How your hunger lights you from within, and shines in your bewitching brown eyes, and —”
“Gods, no,” Geva choked out, frantically flapping her hand, because damn it, hearing him say these things, when he clearly didn’t mean them, was somehow even worse than him not kissing her, worse than him not saying anything at all. “Please, no. Not from you.”
There was a slow, resigned-sounding exhale behind her, the sound of his body shifting on the bed. “Then come,” he said, quiet, “and tell me what you should wish for instead.”
Geva shot a suspicious look over her shoulder toward him, but his eyes were strangely serious, flickering in the candlelight. And he’d even shoved up onto his elbow, his hand patting the empty space he’d made beside him.
And it wasn’t as though there was anywhere else to go, so finally Geva sighed, and stalked over and dropped herself into the bed, twisting to face away from him. But instead of turning away from her in kind, like he had the night before, his big arm pulled her stiff back up against his front, his body far too big and warm against hers.
“Now, what should you wish to speak of,” came his low voice behind her, as his hand reached up — snuffing out the candle — before drawing her close again. “What brings you peace, in the deep of the night.”
Geva’s swallow was audible, her shoulder jerking up. “Well — tales,” she blurted out, before she could say something else she’d surely regret. “My family — we always told tales together at nights.”
Rathgarr’s hand clenched again, his breath seemingly stilled in his chest. “Tales,” he repeated, in a voice Geva couldn’t at all read. “What sort of tales.”
Geva jerked another shrug, but this was something, anything, to focus on, and she drew in a deep breath. “All kinds,” she replied, speaking too quickly. “The book you brought from the Fitzwalds’ was full of them, but they’re usually spoken aloud. In Ezira, each family has different tales they pass down and expand upon, so when we meet, we always have something new to share with each other.”
But gods, even this was painfully twisting in her chest, because yes, her parents had repeatedly taught her this — but would her tales truly be welcome in Ezira? Wouldshebe welcome there? How long would it take to find her parents’ family, to fit in, to make a new home?
Behind her, Rathgarr now felt almost as stiff as she did, his breath still not moving in his chest. “Tell me one,” he said. “One of these tales of yours.”
Oh. Geva briefly thought about refusing, but what was the point, so she sighed, and launched into one of Cecily’s favourites. The tale of the peevish porcupine, who longed for a shell. Like all the tales from Geva’s mother’s side, it was more about the fun than the lesson, reeling from one absurd scenario to the next. Until the hapless porcupine finally set aside his last shell — a heavy hippopotamus skull — and accepted his prickly pointy self.
Rathgarr hadn’t spoken or interrupted throughout, and his silence afterwards stretched so long that Geva thought perhaps he’d fallen asleep. But finally he cleared his throat, and shifted on the bed behind her.
“This was…” he began, and then he cleared his throat again. “Delightful, poppet. It has been a long time since I heard such a well-spun tale. Since I…”
His voice trailed off, his chest filling and emptying. “My brother Kesst,” he said slowly, “oft told tales, also. Great, sprawling tales, so real they came to life behind my eyes. This was… his gift.”
Oh. Truly? And before Geva could muster a coherent reply, Rathgarr drew in another long, shaky-sounding breath. Almost as if… as if he wasweeping?
“And Kesst was so quick and bright and watchful,” he continued thickly, between breaths. “He oft knew if I was vexed or downhearted, even before I did. And he would follow me all about the mountain on his skinny little legs, and spin me these wild, merry tales, and laugh with me until we wept. He was such a great gift to me, and I have never cared for another so deeply, it was as if he was my — my own —”
He broke off there, his breaths shuddering against her, and Geva’s own breaths felt unnaturally laboured, too. “I’m so sorry, Rathgarr,” she whispered back. “You must have missed him so much, all these years.”
Rathgarr didn’t reply this time, but his breaths were coming even heavier than before, and Geva could hear the hard, sustained swallow in his throat. Sounding unmistakably like loss, like grief, like regret. Sixteenyears.
“Although,” she made her wavering voice say, “it seems utterly unfathomable to me that such a lovely person would be related toyou. I mean” — her hand gave a shaky, helpless-feeling wave in midair — “you just gave me more genuine compliments about my silly porcupine story than all my other work for you today, including sucking you offtwice! All of it doneimpeccably, I might add.”
She could feel Rathgarr’s body abruptly sagging behind her, his heavy breaths breaking into a choked, relieved-sounding laugh. “You can call your workimpeccable, poppet,” he replied, far more steadily than before, “when you can swallow a full load each time you suck me, without wasting a single drop.”
