01 - The Compass Rose (27 page)

Damnation
. She should have remembered how he woke at the slightest noise. He’d probably been awake since she entered the room. Since she left Stone.

“I—” she began, then lost every thought that had ever been in her head when Torchay got out of bed and came toward her.

He was naked. As naked as Stone. As naked as she.

He put his arms around her and laid his cheek on the top of her head. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

She shook her head. Physically—her body ached, and it hummed with pleasure. She slid her arms around his waist and moved closer, until she could feel the touch of his skin all along hers, the press of his arousal against her stomach. Her heart ached. Her mind struggled with what she had done. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Perhaps you needed to.” Torchay lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed. He set her in the center and got in with her, pulling her into his embrace again.

Of course, he knew what she was referring to. She’d left the door open. She’d screamed. “Why would I need to? He’s a stranger. I haven’t known him for a week. And I’ve gone longer without. If I needed it that much, I have you.”

His mouth curved into a smile against her forehead. “You’re such a romantic. But that’s not what I meant. I think the marks…make things happen.”

“Isn’t it enough we’re ilian?” She squirmed closer, needing to feel more of him.

He froze motionless a moment before taking a deep breath and resting his chin atop her head. “Perhaps not.”

She shifted position again, settling her bottom between his thighs.

Torchay tightened his hold on her. “Kallista, don’t. Be still.”

“Why?” She looked up at him.

“Because you don’t…” His voice trailed off as he returned her gaze.

“I don’t—what?”

“You don’t want—don’t…” He squeezed his eyes tight shut and let his head fall back. She kissed the tip of his chin, rough with the day’s beard. He jerked away. “Goddess, Kallista, I can’t—”

“You can.” She took his face between her hands and held him in place while she kissed his mouth, sipping him like a delicate wine. He shivered, his fingers twitching faintly where they rested on her shoulder and hip. She kissed him again, deeper, more insistently, and he opened his mouth to admit her tongue. She wanted him, wanted this, wanted something real and true, though she feared the magic still drove her.

Her skin thrummed with the need to be touched, alive to every whisper along it. Had it always been so sensitive? She didn’t know, couldn’t recall.

Torchay’s passive response began to erode. His tongue brushed against hers, flicked past her teeth, slid into her mouth. The kiss deepened yet again. Kallista rose onto her knees as they kissed and kissed. He had to want this too. He couldn’t hide the obvious, didn’t try to, and she was grateful. The magic might ride her, but it didn’t ride him. He
did
want her.

Kallista straddled his lap, wrapping her legs behind his back as she lowered herself onto him. Torchay gasped, breaking the endless kiss. He looked at her, shock and wonder in his face. He didn’t say anything, just watched while she took him inside herself, using her heels against his back to bring him closer. The incredible intimacy of it, staring into his eyes while he filled her clear to her heart, was almost more than she could bear.

“Torchay,” she said. Nothing more. She needed nothing more. Only this. Only him.

With a groan, he curled forward, laying his head on her shoulder, his breath skittering warm down her breast. Kallista shivered and arched her back, offering her breasts up to him. His strong arms moved to support her as he kissed his way down the slope from her shoulders in little soft, moist kisses that made her skin scream for more. The pointed tip of his tongue slipped out for a quick taste and she jerked. He chuckled, wickedly, laying a kiss in the hollow between her breasts.

She swayed, moving him in minute increments inside her. His arms tightened and the kisses stopped for a brief second. Then he rocked back, not actually moving within her, but increasing the pressure against something incredibly sweet. Her hands thrust themselves into his hair, her fingers combed through the waves and moved down across his muscled back. His tongue flicked out again in concert with another rocking motion and she gasped.

Slowly they rocked together, touching and withdrawing, gripping and releasing. Torchay worked his way across her breasts one tiny kiss at a time. Kallista wanted to scream out her frustration at his slow, slow pace, and she wanted him to go on kissing her like that all night, forever. When his tongue finally licked over the peak of her breast, she gave a violent shudder as the long-anticipated delight shot through her. He opened his mouth and drew her in, teasing her nipple with his tongue as he suckled. Her shuddering continued.

He moved to the other breast and his hand came up to console the abandoned one. Kallista wrapped her arms around his head, cradling it to her, and bent down to press her lips against his hair. It was too much, more than she could bear, and she whispered his name. “Torchay.”

She let him go when he pulled back, until his gaze met hers and held it, without ever ceasing his slow, seductive rocking inside her. “I’m here,” he said. “Always. You know that.”

She couldn’t answer, unable to trust her voice. She just lost herself in the intimacy of his lightning-touched gaze and the passion he built inside her with everything he did.

This was worlds apart from the frenzied violence of the episode with Stone. The only magic here was the sort created between two people who knew each other well and liked what they knew. The pleasure wasn’t any less. In a way, it was more because it was real. True.

Her lips curved in a smile and after a moment, he answered with one of his own.

“Kallista,” he said. “Ilias. I—”

But whatever he intended to say was lost in the sudden onrush of her climax. It rose out of nowhere, sweeping over her in a flash, forcing a faint cry from her as she throbbed around him. Torchay cried out, his arms whipping around to hold her tight, and his climax answered her own.

For a brief moment, as his seed pulsed into her, Kallista regretted her contraceptive spell. A child—her child—was one of the dreams she’d put behind her when she found herself sentenced to the military. She was old now, thirty-four, and past dreaming. She had to give Torchay—and the others—their chance at freedom once this mysterious quest was ended.

She didn’t want to think about it now. She had to move her legs from behind Torchay as he lay back, still holding her tight against him. “Sleep,” he said, refusing to release her when she would have moved off him to one side. “It’s been a long day.”

Daylight shining through the high open window woke her. That and the weight of Torchay’s leg across her middle making it hard to breathe. He stirred when she slipped out from beneath it. “No, stay,” she murmured, setting her hand on his shoulder. “Sleep. I’m only visiting the necessary.”

He mumbled something and pushed his face back into the pillow, taking her at her word. Grateful for the respite, Kallista collected fresh clothing and escaped. When she returned to the parlor, washed, dressed and feeling wrung out, she still had it to herself. Hopeday had passed. Could she summon Belandra again?

Kallista looked down at the ring on her ungloved finger and idly pulled a thread of magic from the air, weaving it into her desire to speak to the ghost woman.

“I’m here, I’m here. You can stop.” Belandra seemed to walk through a door of nothingness into the parlor. “What is it this time?”

She hadn’t prepared any questions beforehand, Kallista realized. “I’m not sure how to phrase my question to get the answers I want.”

“Why didn’t you do that before you called me?” Belandra looked the younger woman up and down. “You look like—” She seemed to have second thoughts and broke off. “As if you had a rough night,” she said instead. “What do you want to know?”

“I got married yesterday.”

“Obviously. Should I congratulate you?” Belandra raised an eyebrow in question.

Kallista took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I think so. It’s difficult to tell. Have the godmarked always married? Is it necessary?”

“What do they teach children these days? Don’t you know anything? Iliani began a thousand years before my time with the first godstruck naitan. Powlas married her three marked companions. Why do you think an ilian always has at least four iliasti?” Belandra paused. “How can you have half an ilias?”

“There are four of us.” Kallista shook her bracelets at Belandra. “But I want to know about the necessity of it.”

Belandra counted off her own bracelets, five on each wrist. “Your bracelets say otherwise.”

“Aisse.” Kallista lifted her right arm, showing the band her female ilias had given her, then lifted her left. “Torchay. Stone. Three iliasti.”

“They give you only one band?”

“That’s the custom. About necessity…” She had to work to keep from asking the question again. She didn’t want Belandra—or whoever was counting—to count the same question twice.

“My iliasti gave me a pair each.” Belandra made them chime against each other.

“Twelve bracelets on each arm get heavy. And expensive.” Kallista ground the words out between her teeth, stifling the urge to scream. She did not want to wake the others. “You have not answered my question.”

“I don’t know if it’s precisely
necessary
for the marked ones to marry,” Belandra said. A quirk of her lips told Kallista she’d been avoiding the question for her own amusement. Could one strike a ghost?

“The marks draw you together,” Belandra went on. “They bind you into an ilian whether you go through a ceremony or not. It’s more that the ceremony recognizes what already exists.”

“Two of my iliasti aren’t marked.”

Belandra shrugged. “There’s no rule you have to marry only your marked companions.”

Kallista recalled her most important question. “You said we’ve been marked because the One has a task for us. How will I know what it is?”

“You will be shown.”

This time the frustration got out, strangled down to an odd noise. “Dammit, Belandra, stop trying to be so mysterious and obscure. Just tell me.”

“Some things you must learn for yourself, naitan.” Belandra snapped the words out. “You will be shown your task. In visions. You will see the problem.”

“I’ve already saved people from a collapsing wall that I saw in a vision.”

Belandra shook her head. “Too small. Not enough for the kind of power you’ve mentioned. Is that your only vision?”

Kallista went still, remembering the horror. “I saw my ilias injured, bleeding his life away and no healer to stop it.” Then she recalled the other vision, the one that had preceded it. “And I saw men talking. Tibran Rulers. And a…a thing sitting on the shoulders of the man wearing the gold coronet on his head.”

“A thing? What sort of thing?”

“Darkness. Just…shapeless darkness at first, with eyes. But as I watched, it took on form and shape. It…looked at me. It saw me. In the vision.”

“Goddess.”
Belandra wiped both hands down her face, wiping away her horrified expression. “Could it be?”

This seemed worth a question. “What?”

“Demons were described thus. But they were locked away during the Demon Wars long before Powlas was ever chosen.”

Kallista counted her questions. She had two left. How best to apportion them? “It seems then that defeating the demon would be my—
our
assigned task.”

Belandra pushed off the back of the sofa where she’d been leaning to pace, worry in every line of her body. “It would be reasonable to assume. Tibrans are the ones you killed? The enemy facing Adara? Yes, you said that. And if the demon is behind this attack…”

She stopped her pacing and met Kallista’s gaze. “Very few records survived to my time from before Powlas. Scraps of stories that told of the demons’ defeat, but not how it was done. I wish I could tell you more. But I will tell you this—Do not go after this demon until you have gathered all of your marked companions.

“They are—every one of them—necessary to succeed in your quest. You must have what each one carries.”

“Goddess.” Kallista slumped against the wall. “How many more? I can barely deal with the ones I have now. I had not expected ever to marry.”

“At least one. Possibly—
probably
one more beyond that. At the very least. A demon—Four of the marked does not seem enough. There were six of us and we had mere humans to deal with. I would honestly expect you to need more than that.” Belandra frowned. “What do you mean, you can barely deal with them?”

“It’s complicated. By more than just magic. And it’s personal.”

“I am the only other godstruck person you can discuss it with. Who else is there? What do you mean, complicated?”

Kallista shook her head. “I don’t want to talk ab—” And yet Belandra was right. Who else would understand? “I just—I think I made a huge mistake last night. Two of them. I…Can the magic push me into having sex when I don’t want to? It seemed—” She broke off at a noise behind her.

The awful clutching feeling in her gut told her it was bad. Worse than bad. Kallista turned and saw Torchay standing fully dressed in the open doorway of the bedroom they shared, his face completely blank. The clutching twisted into knots.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll not be forced into any mistakes again. Not by me.” He stalked the length of the parlor toward the double doors.

“Oops.” Belandra actually looked sympathetic. Amused, but sympathetic.

“Oh, Goddess,” Kallista groaned. She’d hurt him and she didn’t know how to fix it. Because she did believe that she should never have given into the temptation last night. This morning’s fiasco proved it. Sex ruined perfectly good relationships. But she had to do something.

She started after Torchay, then remembered Belandra was still there and turned back.

The copper-haired woman laughed. “I’m sorry. It’s cruel of me, but to watch you dance between me and your ilias—I can’t help laughing. And if you fight it, the magic will fight back. I find it very difficult to believe that you didn’t want to make love to a man such as that. Or the blonde. Did—you said
two
mistakes. Both of them? At once?”