Noonday Suite was designed to house the largest of iliani with its private bedrooms down each side of the long central parlor, seven on one side, five on the other. The center bedroom next to Stone’s was double the size of the other eleven and contained little more than an enormous sleeping platform, in case the entire ilian wanted to sleep all cuddled together. Their ilian had not reached that point, and odds were good that it never would.
Aisse was already closed in her room across the parlor from Kallista’s. Stone and Torchay were waiting together just inside the main door, Torchay’s face as carefully blank as Joh’s had been. Kallista sighed, pulling off her long gloves. She had a good idea what lay behind that expressionless face. Torchay didn’t know who or what she would choose tonight, and Kallista couldn’t reassure him. She didn’t know herself.
“Go to bed.” She kissed Torchay’s cheek, and because Stone was ilias too, she kissed his. “It’s been a long day. I’m sure you’re both tired.” She looped an arm through each of theirs and walked the length of the parlor with them.
“Your day’s been just as long,” Torchay said. “Aren’t you tired?”
“Too tired to sleep.” Her smile flickered and faded. “I’m…restless. Maybe if I pace a while…” Maybe she could decide what she ought to do.
“Don’t pace too far,” Stone said, his first spontaneous remark since the end of the wedding. He obviously didn’t want another seizure tonight.
“I won’t.” She patted his hand as they stopped outside his bedroom door. “That chair, that chaise longue, that table.” She pointed at each in turn. “And no farther.”
Stone nodded and retreated behind his door.
“Torchay—”
“Kallista, I—” They spoke at the same time.
“Go on,” she urged as she walked him to the next room.
He shook his head. “I don’t remember what I wanted to say.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him, but let it go. They stopped at the bedroom door and stood there, awkward together, unable to look each other in the eye. The possibility—the probability of sex had landed between them like an enormous boulder and nothing was the same. All the ease between them was gone. They couldn’t even talk anymore. She had been right all along. Sex ruined everything.
But how could she disappoint him? How could she let him think she didn’t find him attractive, so attractive her mouth went dry just looking at him? Goddess, she didn’t know what to do. So she kissed him. Not quite on the mouth, but almost.
“I’ll be along soon,” she said before he could turn his head, make it a true kiss.
Torchay lifted his hand as if to touch her cheek, but she looked away deliberately and he didn’t. “Kallista—” He paused. “All right. If you go to him, be careful.”
Her eyes snapped to meet his. Was he sending her to Stone or warning her away? “Stone
is
ilias. You heard the Reinine. He swore his vows in truth.”
“I know.” The vivid blue of his eyes seemed to have depths she’d never seen. “But he’s still Tibran. He doesn’t understand yet all that ilian is. Just—be careful.”
“I don’t have any plans to go to any—to do that—to—” Goddess, could she put her foot in it any worse? “With Stone.” There, that should clarify. “Not tonight. Or—” She couldn’t say ever. She didn’t plan to, but plans sometimes changed.
Torchay nodded, carefully not looking at her now. He backed into the bedroom. “I’ll be waiting.” And he shut the door.
Kallista wanted to bang her head against the wall, but that would only bring Torchay back out to see what was wrong. She wanted him. She wanted to pull the lacings from his tunic and lick her tongue across each fraction of skin exposed. She wanted to pull the tunic off and run her hands over every bit of his shoulders and back and chest and stomach, lingering in those spots where he responded with gasps or groans. She wanted to take him deep inside her and ride his strength till they both screamed. And she knew if she did what she wanted she would destroy what she had.
She started pacing along the wall, down to the chair past Stone’s door and back to the table just past her own. Her mind whirled, thinking about everything and nothing, circling again and again past the same contradictory arguments. She could no longer make sense of anything.
Please, Goddess, just let me know what to do
.
Joh paced the confines of the guardroom office where he had been summarily relegated tonight. His mind sorted through what he knew, what he had learned and what he suspected. When he understood, he would know what steps to take.
The magic he had seen—the strange connection between his Tibran prisoner and the naitan—was disturbing enough in itself. The Reinine had hinted that this magic could be of the West. It certainly possessed enough mystery for this to be true, but he did not know it for fact.
The Tibran had been joined to the other three by the ancient rites
di pentivas
. That was a fact. Joh’s reaction to it was pure emotion.
It made him angry. Ragingly, blindingly furious. He wanted to smash something. Men had fought for many years for the right to choose, to be treated as individuals, as persons worthy of equal respect. A man was not a piece of property to be handed off to any woman who could keep him. Joh did not know what the captain had said to have the Tibran given to her, but whatever it was, it was not reason enough. The man was an enemy, yes, a prisoner. But he was still a man like any other.
The captain seemed sincere in her claims, that she would treat him as any other ilias. But as long as Stone wore the bracelets and the chain-looped anklets of
di pentivas
, he was not like other iliasti. Still, perhaps she did mean it. Joh decided to reserve judgment for another few days. Until he knew from which direction this new magic came.
Already Joh had received a terse note inquiring when a report might be expected. Joh sat down at the desk, squeezed between the cot and the weapons rack, to write down what he had learned. Best to be ready when his decision was made.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
K
allista found herself standing at the edge of a bed, staring down at the man sleeping in it, without knowing how she came to be there. She didn’t much care, and in a far distant corner of her mind, she wondered why she didn’t. But the corner was far, far distant, and the man was right here before her. His cotton-soft hair, almost silver in the moonlight, lay spread on the pillow beneath him. The urge to touch it became more than she could bear and she crawled onto the bed.
“Stone.” She breathed the word out, quieter than a whisper, fingers stroking across the softness of his hair, moving toward his face.
The sandpaper roughness of his cheeks fascinated her and she cupped them in her hands, sinking into him. The magic stirred, welcoming her, flowing into her body and curling round like a cat stropping itself across her senses. She shuddered.
Stone’s eyes opened. “Captain?”
“Kallista,” she corrected. She stroked her hands down his neck and across his shoulders, shaping her hands to their strength. He was bare-chested. Was he perhaps bare all over?
At that thought, the magic flared, searing her senses and leaving them both awake and quivering. The brush of silk was too much against her skin and she sat up to rid herself of her tunic. Stone sat up with her, yanking away her chemise beneath so he could wrap his arms around her and bring her bare breasts against his naked chest. He rubbed himself against her too-sensitive skin and she cried out with the pleasure of it.
The magic had her in its grip now, driving her. That distant part of her held an awareness that this wasn’t right, that she shouldn’t use him so, that she hadn’t intended this, but the passion rode her, refusing to let her go. Almost frenzied, she pushed him back down on the bed and dragged the coverlet off him. He was naked beneath it.
For a moment, Kallista paused to look her fill. Stone was beautiful in the moonlight, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped. The disks of his nipples were dark against his hairless chest. A line of hair began below the dip of his navel and ran down to join the brown nest from which his erection rose, thick and powerful. Kallista’s whole body tightened. She wrapped her hand around the base of his shaft and his hips bucked.
He tried to roll, to bring her beneath him, but the magic helped her push him back. She fought against the surge of power, wanting to draw the pleasure out, to linger over her fine dish of Stone, but the magic was so strong. It wanted completion.
Kallista relaxed her muscles, collapsing on top of him. She could hear, could feel the thunder of his heart against her jaw. If she tipped her head just a little, her tongue could touch his nipple, so she did it. Stone jerked beneath her.
“For the god’s sake, Captain, put me out of my agony.” He groaned the words out, his body writhing. “I want—I need—”
“Shh.” She covered his mouth with hers, kissing away his power of speech. Stone conveyed his want and need in his openmouthed kiss instead, drinking her in, giving back what he took.
Kallista wanted. She needed, and with every touch of his mouth, hands, body against hers, the power of that desire increased, like lightning bouncing between her hands. She would not be able to control it much longer.
“Say it.” She tore herself gasping from the kiss to press her cheek tight to his, her lips brushing his ear. “We are ilian together. I am your ilias. I want to hear you say it.”
Stone’s hips bucked, his tip just nudging her entrance, and they both hissed with the feel of it. “What? What do you want me to say? That we are ilian?”
“My name, ilias. Say my name.” She couldn’t keep from rubbing herself against his slick broad tip, but she wouldn’t let him inside. Not yet. She had that much control. For this instant. Who knew what the next would hold?
“Say mine.” His hips rose off the bed, lifting her with them as he sought entry. He was making this a competition, a challenge to see who would win and who would lose. He didn’t understand that in an ilian, no one lost.
She bit his earlobe, licked her tongue over it and murmured, “Stone, Warrior vo’Tsekrish. Ilias. Now, Stone, you.”
He fought against it, turning his face away, pressing his lips tight. He raised his hands overhead and clutched at his pillows as if he could resist more easily if he didn’t touch her. Kallista knew better. She sat up, fitting his length in the slick heat of her channel, his tip against her sensitive bud, and rocked. He cried out.
“I’m not your enemy, Stone. Not anymore.” Kallista teased him, rocking again and again until her eyes threatened to cross.
Magic rushed between them, blocking her senses from everything but where they touched. She felt him thick inside her and realized what the magic had pushed her into doing: exactly what she wanted. It was impossible to stop, to back away. Her body wouldn’t let her. The magic wouldn’t let her.
“Kallista—” He moaned her name as she came fully down over him and ground her hips against his. Once more he lifted her in the air, straining against her.
“Again,” she whispered. “Say it again.” She set her hands on his chest, her fingers over his nipples, rising off him to plunge back down.
“Kallista!” he cried.
They strove together without rhythm or pace, slick and sweating, crying out the other’s name at every beat. They rolled and slid, clutching at each other until Stone lay over her, the force of his thrusts threatening to drive her across the bed. He would have if not for the equal force of her hips lunging to meet him.
“Stone, Stone, Stone—” She could scarcely breathe, the pleasure had dragged her so deep into its grip.
“Kallista, Kallista—” He echoed her, giving a little extra twist of his hips at the end of each thrust that made her squeak.
Magic and passion mingled together, dancing through them both until Kallista scarce knew which skin she wore, building higher and tighter until it burst. She screamed again and again until Stone shouted and plunged shuddering into her one last time. The magic exploded in a fiery shower that would have blinded them both had it been visible to the eye.
She didn’t know how much time had passed before she came to herself once more. The round disk of the moon was visible through the west-facing window, so it had to have been hours. She thought. Kallista sat up, pushing her hair out of her eyes. Blessed One, what had she done here?
She looked down at the man beside her. Stone. He sprawled naked on his back, his body marked by her hands and—dear Goddess—her teeth. Her own body shuddered with remembered pleasure.
Horrified, she scrambled off the bed so fast she landed on her backside on the floor. She didn’t know how this had happened. Well, she knew
that
, the mechanics involved. But how she’d decided on it, what had brought her into his room—she couldn’t…Even the first touch was a blur in her memory. Nothing was clear until she was naked in his arms and after that, everything was colored with the haze of passion.
What had happened?
Kallista scrambled for the door, rising to her feet only when she reached it. She had to get out, get away. The door stood ajar—when had she come through it? Had she left it open? Why couldn’t she remember? She wouldn’t have left a door open during such an intimate encounter. Would she? It creaked when she opened it wider to slip through.
“K’lista?” Stone mumbled her name.
“Go back to sleep,” she said gently. It wasn’t his fault she’d done what she had. But she needn’t have spoken. He slept again before she did.
How could she face him in the light of day? What would he expect from her? Sweet words? Kisses and cuddles? More of the same? She wasn’t the cuddling sort and more would only compound the error. Dear Goddess, how had this happened?
She was inside her bedroom halfway to the bed when she realized where she had come and why. Not to her room for privacy, but to Torchay for…for comfort. She couldn’t cry on one man over mistakenly giving in to sex with another. Even she knew that wasn’t wise. Kallista turned to leave.
Torchay sat up in the bed. “Kallista? Where are you going?”