“Stone would demand at least a kiss.” Kallista forced the words out, trying to keep things light.
Torchay’s smile flickered and vanished. “Likely. So why don’t you?”
It shouldn’t hurt like this. She was a rock, a mountain. She whirled to walk away.
Torchay caught her arm, held her back. “Kallista—”
She turned on him. “You want to know why? Because if I can’t have you, I don’t want them either.”
“Then have me, dammit.” The iron control he kept on his expression shattered and his eyes blazed with passion. He yanked her close, crushing her to him with an arm around her back. His mouth covered hers in a devouring kiss and Kallista responded with equal hunger.
She gripped his face between her hands to prevent his escape, but he showed no sign of wanting one. His tongue plunged deep into her mouth, echoing the motion of his hips as he rocked his rigid erection against her stomach.
Kallista slid her hands up into his hair. Ripping free the cord tying his queue, she combed the braid loose until his waves fell like silk over her skin. She rose onto her toes, needing to bring him closer to the throbbing ache his kiss aroused. Torchay’s hand cupped her bottom, providing support.
“Goddess, Kallista—” He breathed the words against her skin, kissing her cheeks, her lips, her eyes. “I love you so much.”
“What?” She shoved him away, stumbling back to stare at him. “What did you say?” But she’d heard it.
Torchay pulled in the arms that had held her, that still reached for her after she tore herself away, wrapping them around his stomach as if he’d been gutted again. “I—”
“Don’t.” She shook her head. “Don’t say it. Don’t do it. Don’t. I can’t.”
His smile was crooked, tender, tragic. It made her heart ache until she stomped on the feeling, crushed it and swept it away. “I know,” he said. “I never expected you to. I never meant you to know. I won’t say it again. But don’t ask impossible things, Kallista. Don’t ask me to stop. That, I can’t do.”
“Goddess. I can’t do this.” She turned and ran into the forest, hunted by Torchay’s pain. She heard him speak, heard someone come crashing after her, and she ran faster. She couldn’t face any of them. Not now.
Nor could she escape them. Torchay trusted the others to stand bodyguard, reluctantly, but he would not let her go off alone in this place. She stopped and waited for Stone. He stopped a distance away, letting his companion approach alone.
“Aisse.” Kallista acknowledged her. It could be no one else. She was the only other one not linked.
“What happened, naitan?”
Kallista grimaced. She stepped over the fallen log where she’d stopped and sat down, her back to the camp. Aisse wasn’t the only one of her iliasti who had trouble calling her by her name. Fox used it only because she’d told him to and he did exactly what he was told. Obed stumbled over it every time he tried. Even Stone called her “captain” as often as not. It was a symptom of everything wrong with her ilian.
The rest of them seemed comfortable with each other, despite Aisse’s continued refusal to “do sex.” It was only around Kallista they seemed so constrained. But that was the fault of the magic. Wasn’t it?
The magic bound them together, forcing them into a close connection that Kallista fought with everything in her. No one had ever been able to force her to do anything. Adjusting to military discipline had been beyond difficult. She’d settled into it only because she had finally understood the reasons for it. She could remember countless times in childhood when she’d refused to do something she honestly wanted simply because someone told her she
must
do it. Was that what she was doing now? Was this constraint her fault?
Of course it was. If she hadn’t reacted so violently to Torchay’s confession, she would still be with him. Probably naked. And he would be thinking their lovemaking meant more than it did. Or was she the one wanting to believe a lie, that it meant
less?
“Kallista.” Aisse’s touch on her shoulder startled her. “Are you well?”
She shrugged, swiping at her face with the back of her hand. “Well enough.”
“Did he—” Aisse stroked her hand down Kallista’s hair. “Did he hurt you?”
“No. Never. He would never do such a thing.” And now she understood why. She understood his years of devotion, his patience, his concern. It hadn’t been duty. “I hurt him.”
“But I didn’t see you—” Aisse sat on the log beside Kallista, facing the other way.
“Not physically. I hurt him inside, where you can’t see. Where—” She couldn’t explain it, couldn’t care. Shouldn’t. “Go to him, Aisse. You like him, don’t you? Make it right. Make him—make him feel better.” Kallista couldn’t do it.
“You want me to do sex with him?”
“No, of course n—” Kallista looked at Aisse. She didn’t sound outraged, the way she usually did when someone mentioned sex. “That is, not unless you
want
to. Do you? It’s perfectly fine either way, just go. I don’t think he should be alone.”
Aisse didn’t move. “You like doing sex, Kallista?”
Oh, good Goddess, now what?
“Yes, I do.”
“So why you don’t—why don’t you? You like Torchay?”
“Yes, I like Torchay.” He was her friend and her ilias. But she didn’t love him.
“You like Obed and the Tibran men?”
Kallista couldn’t help the smile twitching her lips. “Yes, I like Obed and I like Stone and Fox, even if they are Tibran.”
“So why? There must be something you don’t like if you don’t do it.”
“I don’t like being told what to do. The magic pushes me and I won’t be pushed.” That wasn’t the whole of it, but it was all she’d tell Aisse.
“You like sex and you like our men, but since the magic likes them too, you won’t do what you like?” Aisse stood, looking back at Kallista. “That’s stupid.”
The blunt statement made as the other woman walked away startled Kallista into laughter. Aisse was right. Belandra was right. Even the damn magic was right. But she couldn’t just give in, because she was right too. Sex complicated things.
That was obvious just from the struggle she had controlling the links…Control. Was that the key? If she used the magic as Stone wanted, she had to be able to control things better than if she indulged in actual physical sex. Once she got the links under control, maybe she’d know what to do about Torchay. She had to do something. The demon waited. If their ilian was still in this disarray, the demon would win.
Torchay was brushing down one of the horses when Aisse appeared by his side. She didn’t say anything, just stood there watching him. He ducked under the tie-rein to work on the other side. Getting away from her silent scrutiny was a bonus.
Aisse stroked a small hand down the horse’s neck. “Tell me how to make you feel better.”
Despite the hollow ache where his heart belonged and the burning humiliation piled atop it, Torchay couldn’t help smiling. Aisse had as much subtlety as a war hammer. “I’m fine. Why don’t you go make sure Obed isn’t burning our dinner.”
He finished the brushing and moved past Fox who was working on one of the pack mules, to begin on the next animal in line, another mule. He took a step to the left to reach the mule’s rump and almost fell over Aisse. “What are you still doing here?”
Aisse looked up at him, her dark eyes full of confusion. “How can she hurt you if she did not strike you? I can’t see any injuries, but…you’re still injured.”
“Goddess, Aisse, did you never care for anyone?” Torchay glanced over his shoulder at Fox. The man was ilias, but still Torchay didn’t want to bare his soul in front of him. He didn’t want to do it with Aisse, but he could tell she wouldn’t leave it alone. Not until he explained something she could understand. She was relentless that way. He drew her away to the end of the picket line.
She lowered her eyes from his face, inspecting him. “Where does it hurt?”
“Here.” Torchay touched a closed fist to his gut, to the center of the aching blaze.
Aisse moved his fist aside and touched him there, probing through the coarse cotton of his tunic. “But why?” She frowned up at him again. “There is no wound? Why does it hurt?”
He took a deep breath, closing his eyes against the pain. “Because I love her and she doesn’t love me.”
“I don’t think I like love, whatever it is.” Her hand flattened against his chest.
Torchay gave a choked-off bark of laughter. “Nor do I, Tiger aila.”
Slowly, her small hand slid across his chest and around his back, until she held him carefully in her arms, her forehead resting against his shoulder. “I don’t like it when you hurt,” she said. “It makes me hurt too. In my throat and in my chest. Tell me how to make you feel better, Torchay. Right now.”
“Oh, Aisse, it’s not so easy as that.” And yet, her awkward comfort had an effect. He put his arms around her as carefully as she held him. “But this helps.”
She pulled back and met his gaze. “I will do sex with you, if you want.”
He somehow managed to keep from choking. She was offering this gift to
him?
Despite how she felt about it? Dear Goddess, had she fallen in love with him? Or was it pity? Whatever her reasoning, this was not the time.
“No, little ilias.” Torchay brushed her short-cropped hair off her forehead and pressed a kiss to it. He folded her in his arms again, tipping her head against his shoulder. “This is all I want just now.”
He held her a long time, taking comfort and giving it, until Fox finished tending all the animals and returned to the campfire. Until Kallista returned from wherever she’d gone, Stone trailing behind. Until the ache in his chest didn’t feel quite so hollow anymore.
Aisse didn’t love him. Torchay was fairly sure she had no idea what love might be. But they could comfort each other. As the only two unmarked in this ilian, it was natural they would gravitate together. Now, if he could only stop loving Kallista, but he knew that would never happen.
Dawn had broken. Everyone was awake, beginning to break camp. Kallista was returning from the primitive necessary among the trees as she passed Obed on the way out. His awareness brushed against her, flaring into hot desire that rushed through the magic conduit into her mind. It sent her staggering into a tree, so powerful was his passion.
Kallista
reached
, snaring his magic and pulling it tight, pushing back at him all the things he’d sent to invade her. The magic roared, breaking loose to run rampaging through their bodies. She gasped, only the tree where she leaned keeping her upright. She held tight to the magic, forcing it to build. Could she, could they do it again?
Her body and Obed’s rode the soaring crest, piling delight upon pleasure upon ecstasy, until finally they broke, spasming in climax. Still she held on, wringing every last tortured drop of release from both bodies, until the magic disintegrated in her hands.
She slumped, clinging to the tree, fighting for breath, unable to move of her own volition.
“Everything all right?” Stone spoke from a few paces away. Fox was with him, but silent.
Kallista considered, then shook her head. She didn’t think her voice would work yet.
“You did it again, didn’t you? Sex by magic.”
She nodded and dragged herself up the tree until her knees were more or less straight. Yes, they would hold.
“Dammit, why is it never me? I want a turn.” Stone’s voice was supposed to sound teasing, Kallista was sure, but she could hear a definite plaintive note in it.
“Talk to me again,” she said through her gasping breath, “tomorrow.”
Obed was coming. She could hear his uneven approach through the forest, could sense anger radiating from him. She waved the other two away. “I have to talk to Obed. Alone.”
Stone and Fox backed away perhaps a step, and Obed was there. His eyes blazed black fire, his nostrils flared with every breath. “Do not ever do that to me again.” His words snarled out between clenched teeth. “If you want sex with me let it be true sex, mouth-to-mouth, skin-to-skin, me inside of you.”
“I wasn’t the one who started this,” she retorted, anger flaring along with the desire his words rekindled.
“I did not touch you.”
“You didn’t have to! Goddess, don’t you understand what being linked like this means? I know exactly where you are and what you are doing every minute. I know what your body feels. When you burned your hand last night, I felt it. When you desire me, I can’t help but feel it. I even know what emotions you’re feeling when they’re strong, like your anger now. Then multiply that times three, because everything I receive from you I receive from Fox and Stone as well.”
She threw her hands up in frustration. “What do you expect me to do when you shove your randy state down my throat? I’m going to shove back, Obed. If you don’t like what happens, I suggest you get your—your passions under control.”
“I did not realize.” Obed raised a hand, noticed it was curled in a fist, and struggled to open it. Then he seemed not to know what to do with it.
His anger was fading, and with it, Kallista’s anger subsided. She took his hand, clasping her fingers around his thumb.
“I will try to do as you ask.” He tightened his grip on her hand. “But know this. I will not again commit the sacrilege of spilling my seed on the ground. I am yours. You know this. I will do anything you ask of me, but please—do not ask this. I do not want it.” Holding her gaze with his, Obed lifted their clasped hands and pressed his lips to the back of her hand. Then he released it and returned to the camp.
Kallista let out a heavy sigh. She really should take the time to explore Obed’s beliefs, learn what things might offend him. But they didn’t have the time now. She trudged up the path to join Fox and Stone, looping her hands through their elbows for the short distance back to camp.
“Obed might not want it,” Stone said quietly. “But I do. How about you, Fox?”
“I want whatever Kallista wants.”
“Liar.” Kallista held on tight when Fox would have pulled away. “Didn’t you hear what I told Obed? I feel what you feel. Do you have any moral or religious objections to sex by magic?”
“I have no objections to anything you want from me.”