He brought his hands down and used them to push himself off the floor, straightening slowly. He did not seem to know what to do with his locked-together hands, finally letting them hover at chest height. He stared straight ahead, as if he could see through the wall into the room they’d shared last night. And he was beautiful, just as he had been in her dreams before he ever walked into the Reinine’s great hall and into her life. But this was no dream. He was here, naked, aroused and under her control.
“Oh, Obed, what am I going to do with you?” Kallista set her hands on his shoulders and rested her forehead against the warm dark skin of his back. “Are you truly abjectly sorry? Do you even know what happened?”
“I—I am
most
abjectly sorry for my faults and I beg that you instruct me.” He stuttered as her arms came around his waist. “I—instruct me.”
“You don’t know, do you?” Her hands pressed flat over the smooth skin of his stomach and he sucked in a sharp breath.
“Instruct me.” His breathing did not even out, became more ragged, though Kallista’s hands did not move. “Correct my flaws. Discipline my weaknesses.
Please
.” The word was a groan. “I would not fail you again.”
She turned her head, resting her cheek against his back, holding him in her arms. “Your discipline is so strong. For fifteen years it has been perfect. What I would teach you is not discipline.”
“Then teach me what you wish me to know.” The words burst from him and he shuddered violently. “Instruct me.”
But how? Kallista could feel the tension humming through him as he trembled in her embrace, as if standing motionless required all the will he possessed. She could sense nothing through the link and doubted she would, as tight as he maintained his control.
She stepped back from him. “Up.” She gave him a little push. “Onto the bed. On your back.”
Another shudder jolted through him as he obeyed. Did he shake with fear or arousal? Perhaps both. Obed raised his hands over his head when she touched his elbow and motioned. On the headboard, she found an opening as if made to hold the
pentivas
cuffs. Had there been so many
di pentivas
mates in those times? Or had the Reinine gathered up all the specially made furniture and sent it here? It didn’t matter. Kallista fastened the cuffs in place and felt Obed’s muscles lock tighter.
“This is not discipline, Obed.” She smoothed her hands down his arms till they came to rest on the tattoos high on either side of his chest. “I am not going to punish you. But I will not allow you to fail me again.”
He turned his face away, flushing a dull red beneath the tattoos on his tanned cheekbones.
Kallista took his face between her hands and brought it back. “Look at me, Obed. Listen to me. You are not solely to blame in this. It is as much my fault for not making you understand. For not trying to understand you. For allowing this to happen.
“I am the naitan. I am the one with mastery over the magic, and it is my task to control it, not yours. This was
my
failure.”
“No.”
A whisper of a word, almost lost in the harshness of his breathing.
“You don’t even know what happened. How could it be your fault?” She smoothed the black tangle of his hair from his face and stood.
“You said backlash happens when magic is interrupted. It was my anger that—” He broke off to stare as Kallista stripped off her tunic and chemise in one awkward motion. Moments later, she was as bare as Obed, and she stretched out onto the bed beside him.
He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, pressing his head back into the pillows, and groaned. “Goddess, save me.”
“I won’t let it happen again.” Kallista held herself back from the need for skin-to-skin contact, keeping a small distance between them. “I will not let you fail. Do you trust me to do this, to keep you from failing?”
“Kallista—” He ground out her name through clenched teeth, twisting away from her, pulling against the cuffs that confined him.
“Look at me, Obed.
Listen
.” She caught his shoulder and pushed him flat on the bed. “You can’t escape me. I won’t let you hide. Do you trust me?”
The struggle went out of him in an instant and he finally met her gaze. Long moments passed as he stared into her eyes, then his eyelids fluttered shut and he took and released a deep breath. “Yes,” he said. “I trust you.”
Kallista let go of the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She could sense Obed through the link again, the faintest awareness of his presence. He did trust her, it seemed.
Finally, she let herself roll against him, her breasts pressed to his side, her knee sliding up over his legs. His whole body went taut.
“I cannot—my control is—” He closed his teeth on the words, hands fisting in the wide gold-and-silver cuffs. His hips rose, thrusting his erection into the air.
“You don’t need control. I have it. I have you.” She rose to straddle his thighs. “I remember what you said. That when we made love, it would be skin to skin, you inside me.”
“Kallista,
please
.”
The instant she came down over him, he convulsed in climax with a shout, lifting her off the bed in a wild, bucking ride. She opened the link wide, let his climax sweep her into one of her own, taking care in the midst of pleasure to prop the door open so he could not shut her out again.
She was lying bonelessly over him, beginning to assemble a few random thoughts when she realized Obed was speaking. He was repeating that damned apology again, but he kept getting stuck at “I am most abjectly sorry.”
Summoning up the strength to move, Kallista slid her hand up and put it over his mouth to stop the flow of words. Then, as he slipped out of her, she heaved herself up onto an elbow so she could see his face. “What in seven hells are you sorry for now?”
She took her hand from his mouth and he answered, “I have failed you and forsaken—”
She put her hand back. “I do not want to hear that again. Talk sense. How
exactly
have you failed?”
“I did not—I—” He blushed. It was adorable, but Kallista resisted kissing him. With effort. “A man ensures that his—ilias finds her pleasure before taking his own. I was…hasty. My control—”
Kallista slapped his chest, hard. “Damn your control. What do you think you are going to control lying locked to this bed? I am in control, Obed. Not you.
Me
. Besides, what makes you think I didn’t ‘find my pleasure’?”
He blinked at her. “Because I was so…You did?”
“The magic helped. I told you I wouldn’t let you fail. Couldn’t you tell?”
“I—that is—no, I haven’t done this before, so I wasn’t—”
“Wait.” Kallista put her hand over his mouth again. “What do you mean? You haven’t done this—ever?”
He shook his head, his silence reminding her to move her hand so he could answer. “Except for the times you caught me in the magic, this was the first time I have made love to a woman. To anyone.”
“Well…” Kallista struggled for words. “Khralsh’s bloody hells. No wonder the magic got all bollixed up. Why didn’t you tell me? I mean, a year without sex is bad enough, but—you’re what? Thirty-three?”
“Thirty-four.”
“Oh my saints and all the holy sinners.” Kallista couldn’t get her mind around his news. “How?
Why?
”
His lips twitched in a self-mocking smile. “How?
Discipline
. As for why—for twenty years, I was a dedicat champion. One of the holy sinners. We refrain from many things to make up for our necessary sins. After that—I was coming to find you.”
He jerked at the cuffs holding him prisoner. “Will you release me? I want to hold you.”
“Not yet.” Kallista lay back down on top of him, wrapping him in her arms and legs. “I’ll hold you. There really are such things as holy sinners? But how can you be both? No—” She shook her head, before settling it atop one of his chest tattoos. “Never mind. You can tell me later. We need to be sure the magic is sorted now.”
Obed went quiet. She sensed him pulling away from the link and she slapped it back open, but she waited for him to speak.
“Is that why you made love to me?” He wouldn’t meet her eyes again. “For the sake of the magic?”
Kallista sighed. Men were so difficult. “Partly. But
only
partly.”
Through the link she could sense anger, sorrow, seething jealousy, shame. Only honesty could fix this. “I wanted you from the beginning, Obed,” she said, “but it didn’t feel right. Not until I came to love you. Until I admitted to myself that I did. But that was when you started to pull back from me. I thought I ought to give you space to decide what you wanted, and when you were ready, you would let me know. Obviously, I was wrong.”
His eyes flicked up, caught hers. An improvement. “Did you just say—you love me?”
“I should have told you.” She heard his vulnerability, began to hide her own, then didn’t. She couldn’t demand his trust without offering hers. “I said it, but not to you, not this way, between us alone. It gets…diluted when everyone is there. But I wasn’t sure you wanted to hear it.”
“I want to hear it again.”
She laughed, scooted up his chest to kiss him. “I do love you, Obed.”
“And I you,” he breathed. He jerked at the cuffs. “Let me loose.”
“Not yet,” she said again. She found his ear, closed her teeth on his earlobe and spoke while she held it. “Your ears are so small and close to your head at their tops and so big and loose down here. You should wear an earring.”
He shuddered as she bit down a fraction harder. “That is decadent behavior.”
“Be decadent for once. If I give you an earring, will you wear it?”
“Yes.” He turned his head, hunting her lips. Kallista evaded him to pounce on his other ear. “You know I will do anything you ask.”
She pulled back to see him. “But will you do it grudgingly? Or with joy?”
“I—”
“Joy isn’t a sin, Obed. It’s not something you have to deny yourself. I think perhaps you have denied yourself so many things, for so many years, you don’t know how to stop. You don’t know how to let go, how to be happy.”
“Instruct me,” he said. “Correct my flaws. Use me, Kallista. Teach me joy.”
She reached for his magic and this time, it rose to her call. She could feel his body respond as well, both through the link and against her inner thigh. He groaned as he grew thick and firm, his erection lying straight along his stomach.
“I told you,” she whispered. “I will not let you fail me. This magic is inside you. It is part of you, put there for me, and if matters are not right between us, it shows in the magic. Give yourself into my hands. There is nothing here you must control. Nothing you
can
control. Not even your own body. I love you. I will take care of you. Trust me.”
“I do.”
Kallista let the magic slide away. She didn’t want it hurrying anyone along, not this time. Obed’s first experience should be more than a brief explosion.
Her own initiation into the wonders of sex had been so long ago she could scarcely recall it. Behind the protection of magic, Adaran youth were permitted to explore, particularly after the young men went away at sixteen to fulfill their six years of military service. Once an Adaran joined an ilian, however, exploration was limited to the other oath-bound members. Obed deserved his opportunity to explore, to be explored. To be loved.
She began at the top, pressing a kiss to his forehead. She kissed each of his eyes closed, smoothing her thumbs over his heavy eyebrows as she outlined the tattoos on his cheekbones with her tongue.
Obed twisted, stretching toward her. She kept just out of his reach for a moment and a half before she let him kiss her. She taught him the openmouthed dance of tongues, giving what she would take, then left him before he was ready, to finish her journey.
Inch by inch, she discovered her lover’s body, using hands, lips, tongue, sometimes teeth. She found his nipples hidden in the coating of black hair that covered his chest and teased them into hard peaks, then found it needful to have him do the same to her own.
The tattoos on his body called to her, intrigued her. Kallista traced the two high on his chest first with fingertips, then her tongue, following the flowing liquid shapes of Southron writing.
“What do they mean, your tattoos?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
K
allista moved down Obed’s body to the tattoo encircling his navel and began her exploration again.
Obed’s stomach jerked when she touched him. “That one says that my victory comes from the One.”
“Are you victorious, my Obed?”
“Am I not here with you?”
“And that constitutes victory?” She smiled though his words worried her a bit. “Who did you defeat to win this victory?”
“I did not defeat anyone. I surrendered. And I have won everything.”
Perhaps he did understand. By giving himself completely into the hands of the One, just as he gave himself into her hands, he gained everything he wanted. It wasn’t necessarily what he
thought
he wanted—Kallista knew that from her own experience. And from that same source, she knew that what he gained would be a thousand times more than he had ever hoped.
“What of the other marks?” Kallista touched his shoulder and the marking below it as she licked across his navel. “What do they mean?”
Obed paused to catch his breath before speaking. “On my face, the marks show that I am a dedicat, set aside for service to the One. I received those the day I entered the skola.” He choked and had to cough his way clear when Kallista settled herself between his legs.
She kissed his thigh. “Go on.”
“On my hands—” His voice began rusty, then evened out. He lifted his right shoulder to indicate the imprisoned hand. “This one says ‘Duty’ The other says ‘Service.’”
He bent his left knee, running his foot up the back of her leg. “This foot proclaims ‘Faith,’ for I must stand fast in my faith to prevail, and this—” He brought his right foot up, embracing her with his legs. “This mark says ‘Knowledge,’ for without grounding in knowledge, all men are fools.”