The Farthest Shore (Eden Series Book 3) (31 page)

If she looks like you, she should consider herself fortunate
, Alyster thought. The sky was white gold in the east, and the first light filled the dining room. Unlike when he and Miri had made love before, he could see her fully now. Her dark hair framed her face and tumbled in soft waves over her shoulders, while the warm brown eyes were just as he’d remembered them when he’d lain in bed alone night after night. Only the slash on her face stood out.

“Didn’t Reveka think that needed bandaging?” he said.

“I don’t want my head wrapped up like I have a toothache. It’s all right, Alyster—she cleaned it and said it doesn’t need anything more. She won’t need to sew me into a sheet any time soon.”

“Good. We’re out of sheets.”

She laughed but sobered again quickly, looking straight at him. “Thank you for telling everyone. I know it would have been easier to say I was bluffing.”

Alyster was well aware there would be times in the future when he would do what was most expedient, but when the chief engineer had spoken about her as though she wasn’t even in the room, he hadn’t needed to think about his response. Besides, if anyone ever talked about her half-salt heritage, it would remind him of the steady way she had faced down a pirate who’d held a knife to his throat.

“It was about time,” he said. “I still don’t think anyone’s entitled to know about that, but I’m even less in favor of you having to hide and lie. If the truth is good enough for you, it’s good enough for the rest of us—and after you had the spine to admit it in public to save all our lives, the least I could do was back you up.”

“That wasn’t the least.” Miri seemed to notice her cup was empty and looked around as if searching for the tray to set it down on. “That meant a lot to me.”

Alyster plucked the cup out of her hands and set it aside, then turned back to her. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted as though she had been about to speak and thought better of it—but she hadn’t left. And now they were only inches apart, so close the air between them sparked hot as an engine room.

“If you’re going to leave,” he said, “do it now.” He wanted to make slow love to her on a whispersoft feather bed as much as he wanted to take her against the nearest wall, but after everything that had happened, he had to be sure she wanted it too.

Her gaze dropped to his arm. “Alyster, you’re injured.”

He raised a hand and cupped the uncut side of her face, feeling her cheek press into his palm. At that moment he didn’t care how badly either of them was hurt, only that he’d come close to losing her—and still might, because he had no idea what would happen once they returned home. If he only had the duration of the race to be with her, he didn’t want it ever to end.

“So are you,” he said. “Do you still want me?”

A shiver went through her body. He felt it pass through his skin as well, and then she took a step forward, into his arms. Her eyelids drifted shut, and he covered her mouth with his.

Thirsty though he was, the kiss was as careful as if it were the first she had ever had, as delicate as if she were made of glass. His tongue barely touched hers, but when she kissed him back, he shuddered and tightened his grip on her waist, melding her body against his. Heat flickered through him, raw and deep, blotting out everything else. Pain and loss and weariness were gone, and there was only Miri. Only her fingers closing in his hair, only her mouth sweeter than water open for him, only her heartbeat against his chest.

Waves crashed as the paddlewheel began to turn, and with the windows open, the sound was louder than ever. The ship lurched, and Miri rocked against him as her balance shifted. Alyster caught her, but if he had any breath left after that kiss, he would have lost it in a laugh; everything finally felt normal again. The whistle shrilled as he picked her up and carried her to the bedroom. He lowered her to the bed and she reached for his wrist, tugging him gently down to her.

The rumble of machinery in movement vibrated gently up through the floorboards and the bed, as the initial jolt smoothed itself out into
Checkmate
’s normal smooth progress. Alyster turned just enough to take his weight on his good arm, and Miri ended up with her knees on either side of his hips.

She pulled his shirt free from the waistband of his trousers and drew the fabric up over his chest in a quick impatient movement. He wanted nothing more than to lie there and feast his eyes on her—did she know the linen of her shirt was so well-washed that sunlight shone through it and showed him she was wearing nothing beneath?—but she flattened her palms against his chest and moved them in slow grazing circles over his nipples before her nails skimmed down to his belly.

His breath caught, and he closed a hand around her wrist before she could go any farther. He’d been hard just from kissing her, just from looking at her as she straddled him, so a touch would be torture. He tried not to think of what else she might do that would go well beyond that. Pulling her hand up to his face, he pressed a kiss into her palm.

She tensed, but the spark of eager anticipation left her eyes. The fingers of her free hand curled in on themselves.

“What’s wrong?” He searched her face. “Did I hurt you?”

“No, it’s just that…” She twitched a shoulder in a shrug. “My hands aren’t very pretty now.”

Alyster frowned. Her skin might have been roughened from work, and she didn’t have the well-kept nails of a woman of leisure, but she had strong slender hands that had scrubbed the deck of his ship, cooked his meals and touched him. He wanted them as much as he wanted the rest of her.

He didn’t say a word. Only mouthed her fingers slowly, one after another, then kissed her knuckles. He took her forefinger between his lips and sucked. She was trembling by then, her breath audible over the churning water. As meticulously as if tuning an instrument, he kissed the inside of her wrist, tracing a light pattern with the tip of his tongue before he blew softly on her wet skin. She gasped, and her hips moved, pushing forward against his groin.

Alyster let go of her hand as if he’d been burned. “Your turn,” he managed to say.

He never knew how she wriggled out of her trousers so quickly, but she didn’t bother with the buttons of her shirt, only pulled it off over her head. If she had done that when she had been in his cabin the last time, before he had put out the candle, he didn’t think they would ever have reached his bunk. Then his gaze dropped from her breasts, with their tips already taut and puckered, to the bandage on her stomach, and he wished it was dark again.

“No,” Miri said. She couldn’t quite lean down to kiss him with that injury, he realized, but she touched his face, fingertips sliding down his jaw and over the pulse in his throat before she paused at the slight ridge of the healing wound beneath. “We lived. We survived everything, and that’s all that matters to me.”

Not to me
. He would have given anything to keep her safe, but the older scar on her arm was a vivid reminder that it might not be possible. He wondered how much more she could sustain.

As much as she needed to, he realized. He’d known she was tough from the time they had met, determined as hell, but until the last few days, he hadn’t known how deep that strength ran. She could take whatever came in the future, and the scars were marks of survival, not as pretty but just as much a part of her.

Without looking away from her eyes, he flattened his hand over her belly, covering the bandage, then slid his palm higher to fondle her breast. She shuddered, her back arching as his thumb circled the nipple, then rubbed it gently. Her fingers shook as she unbuckled his belt, and when she worked on the buttons of his trousers, he had to move his hands away, gripping the sheet so tightly he was surprised it didn’t tear.

He started to tell her where the sheaths were, but she pulled his trousers open, freed his rigid cock and closed her hand around it. The words stopped. His body bucked, his eyes shut against the intensity of his need for her. If she had teased him any further, he didn’t know what he would have done, but she only repositioned herself on him, her bare thighs gripping his hips, and lowered herself slowly.

Hot slick flesh enveloped him. He groaned, a guttural sound that was all he was capable of making—he’d never been bare before, with nothing at all between them.
So good
. And she was still sliding down, taking him deeper into her soft tight depths, a sob caught in her throat.

Fully seated in her, he propped himself up on an elbow. He couldn’t use his other arm, but she leaned forward just enough to meet him halfway and cupped her breast, guiding the nipple to him. He drew it into his mouth, hard as a pearl against his tongue, and sucked until her hips pushed against him insistently. The wet heat began to tighten.

Not yet
, he thought and released her. She whimpered in protest but he fell back to the bed and gripped her hips.

“Ride me, Miri,” he whispered, and she lifted herself above him. The slick slide of his naked flesh against hers made him set his teeth, and when he pushed back into her, it felt even better. She braced her hands against his chest, rising and falling again and again, meeting his thrusts in a rhythm that was steadily growing faster, more out of control.

“Now—” The muscles of her face tightened too, her eyes closing as she surrounded him and withdrew, relentless as the tide. Her thighs were trembling against his hips, squeezing them, as she impaled herself completely. “Alyster—”

Yes
, Alyster thought and thrust up as hard as he could. It was enough. Her head went back. She cried out wildly as she jerked against him with shock after clenching shock, and it pushed him over the edge. He shuddered in a climax so intense it all but wrenched him apart, and heat spilled from him deep into her as his release drained him dry.

She lowered herself to lie across him, warm and sated and unmoving except for the last shivers of pleasure thrumming through her body. He felt those because he was still inside her. He didn’t have the strength to move yet and wouldn’t have wanted to if he did, though he was aware he hadn’t taken off so much as a boot, let alone any of his clothes. A few minutes, and he’d be ready to undress, he decided. Turning his head to rest against her hair, he closed his eyes.

He woke hours later, which he realized at once since the rugs of sunlight had moved across the floor of the dining room, and the only reason he’d woken at all was because Miri had stirred. “I need to be in the galley,” she said, swinging her legs off the bunk.

Stopping her with a hand on her waist, he kissed her again until she leaned into him and took his tongue into her mouth. “Go on,” he said, when he finally lifted his head.

Miri struggled into her clothes. “Not fair, taking advantage of an injured cook.”

“I was hoping you’d accept that in lieu of a salary, actually,” Alyster said, and she rolled her eyes before she left the cabin. He put his uniform back in order and went to the engine room to see what their fuel status was like.

“We can burn wood, can’t we?” he said when he saw what remained of their coal stocks. “Furniture, crates, casks, any part of the ship that can be spared.” The remains of his kithar too, now that he came to think about it.

The chief engineer looked dubious. “We could and we will, but weight for weight, coal produces more heat. I can’t promise we’re going to reach Snakestone, sir.”

Alyster kept the unpleasant possibility of failure to himself, because he knew only the prospect of the prize spurred his exhausted crew on.
Checkmate
didn’t require as much work on the deck as a sailing ship did, but he needed someone at the helm and stokers in the engine room, feeding the combustion chamber that could not be allowed to fall cold and silent again. The officers took turns at it, and he pressed Kovir and the Turean into service as well—it might go easier for the Turean if he did his part to help them win.

The Merman’s Palisade was far behind them by then. He brought a map topside that evening—even Phane had apparently been reluctant to destroy maps—and spread it on the deck in lieu of a table. The sound of the engine and the paddlewheel couldn’t drown out the crack of axes into wood from below.

“We’ll have to go around Arrowhead,” Thomal said.

Alyster nodded. Arrowhead was a long island projecting into the ocean to block their path, and while sailing between it and the Dagran mainland would have taken much less time, two rivers met there in the Embrace, an estuary made up of treacherous sandbars. He might have risked it if he had a very accurate map of the region—or better yet, a trustworthy Dagran guide—but there were stories of ships which, once embraced, were never released again.

“That was the route I’d originally planned,” he said. “Six days at full steam will do it.”

No one seemed confident about full steam lasting that long, and two days later Miri told him the water supply was giving out too. “We have enough for two more days,” she said. “Three at most. Kaig and I have been drinking seawater but that won’t work for anyone else.”

Alyster had been afraid of that and had hoped for downpours of rain. Naturally, the sun rose into a cloudless sky each day. He had heard about shipwrecked sailors who went mad after drinking some of the water which stretched out around them for miles on end—the deep blue desert of thirst, it was called—but he had something else in mind.

“Add seawater to our water supply,” he said. “One part in three. That should dilute it enough that no one’s likely to either die or go thirsty. Just don’t tell anyone you’re doing it and if they ask about the taste, blame the boilers.”

Miri smiled, but it was a tired smile. They were all worn out by that point, as the initial relief of being safe on their ship again gave way to grim reality and an unending struggle to keep
Checkmate
moving. Since his steward had left with the rest of the crew, Alyster shared his cabin with Miri, but all they did was sleep together, when they had time to sleep. He took the helm and monitored their course late into the night, and when Miri was done with her other duties, she put his cabin back in order before collapsing exhausted into the bunk beside him.