01 - The Compass Rose (50 page)

Her body still buzzed. It had felt…delicious when Kallista called the magic. Aisse tingled all over, her senses stretched, balanced on some edge she couldn’t name. She wanted to wake Kallista, ask her to call more magic, but Torchay wouldn’t like it. And Stone would laugh.

She eased closer to Fox, until her breasts pressed against his back. It helped, a little. His breathing stuttered, then fell back into a steady rhythm. Too steady? Aisse stretched closer, until her lips almost touched his ear. “Fox?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

F
ox went still, even his breathing stopped.

“Are you awake?” Aisse knew he was, but she asked anyway.

He rolled to his back, eyes open, his expression asking what she wanted.

Her lips brushed his ear again. “Show me what you learned.” No. That sounded too much like a demand. “If you wish. Please?”

When she drew back, his eyes still stared at the nothing he could see, but his lips were quirked into a tiny smile. His hand rose, covered her breast, and her gasp made him grin.

“Shh,” he breathed, curling round to meld her mouth to his.

Aisse had seen kisses, more of them since coming to Adara and Kallista, but had never done one. Not like this. His lips melted into hers as his hand found the hem of her tunic. He eased it up, insinuating his hand beneath her chemise as well, then stroked his way across her stomach to her breast again, swallowing this new gasp in his kiss.

All of her skin needed touching, needed it so badly it made her squirm, but her breasts somehow needed it more. They needed the heat of Fox’s hand covering them, wanted his fingers on their peaks, wanted—
yes
, that—the flick of his thumb.

She needed to be closer to him. Aisse found the edge of his tunic and pushed both hands inside, running them over his stomach and chest and back. If her skin could touch his skin, would it feel that much better? She shoved his tunic up and rubbed her bare stomach against his.

The hard ridge of Fox’s aroused member throbbed against her and she recoiled. He let her go, pulling his hand from beneath her tunic, stilling his mouth against her lips. Aisse drew back and looked at him.

He looked like any other Warrior, broad and tall, golden-skinned, golden-haired—though his was brighter than most, touched with red. But he didn’t act like any other Warrior.

Aisse hesitated, then brushed her lips across his. They moved, just a little, returning as much kiss as she gave. Still she paused, uncertain, her fingers against his bared stomach.

“I have no caste,” he murmured into her ear. “I will do exactly and only what you wish of me.”

Truly?
In her experience, men became crazed when their members were in the state his was. However, Fox lay still, waiting. For her to decide? He did not
seem
crazed.

Aisse glanced past Fox at Obed standing watch. He stared determinedly away from the sleepers, his hair glinting almost blue in a slash of sunlight. Obed would rescue her if Fox
did
go berserk. But…what
would
Fox do?

A test seemed in order. Slowly, carefully, keeping her eyes on his face, Aisse walked her fingers from his stomach down the front of his trousers. He hissed, almost as if in pain, when she curled her hand over that ridge, but did nothing else. Though his breath came quicker, puffing into her ear and making her shiver. Suddenly curious, she explored, watching his reactions. Strange as it seemed, she’d never actually touched a man’s arousal before. The men she’d known had always wanted to do other things with theirs.

Fox made a strangled sound in her ear, and Aisse pulled her hand back. “Did I hurt you?”

“Goddess, no.” He gasped for air, stroking his cheek along hers, his words softer than whispers. “Let me show you, Aisse. What I know. You know you can trust me. You
know
.”

Feeling shy and peculiar and still tingly, Aisse nodded, keeping her eyes down, until she remembered he couldn’t see what they gave away. Nor could he see her nod. But somehow he knew she had. His lips touched hers again, light and sweet, as his hand slipped back beneath her tunic. He touched her breasts, teasing her nipples into hard peaks. He held back when Aisse wanted to stroke her stomach against his again, but she insisted. She did trust him. And it eased some of the tension throbbing inside her.

His hand left her breasts, sliding down across her stomach to loosen the lacings on her trousers. He slid his other arm beneath her shoulders, holding her in a loose embrace, as if he knew close confinement would disturb her. Then Fox smoothed his hand across the skin below her trousers to touch the tender places between her legs.

Aisse shivered, wanting to push him away and wanting to clutch him closer. She was afraid, but his fingers had found the edge where she was balanced. She gripped his forearm, nails digging in. Fox went still.

“Shall I stop?” He nuzzled her ear, his breath warm as one of his kisses.

“No.”
She couldn’t stay bound up like this. But she was still afraid. “Be soft.”

“Trust me.” His tongue licked out over her earlobe and she shivered. In the next instant, his fingers probed her folds and brushed over something that lashed her whole body with sparks of pleasure.

Fox caught her cry in another kiss, this one hot and demanding, his tongue stroking along hers the same way his fingers stroked her below. She burned, writhing under his touch. More. She wanted more of this. The tension built until she strained toward him, her tongue plunging deeper into his mouth than his did into hers. Then it burst and she shuddered with glorious delight.

But it wasn’t enough. She felt…empty. She pulled her mouth from his. “More.”

“Shh.” He kissed her, his fingers moving again. But that wasn’t right, wasn’t what she wanted, needed.

She pushed at his hand. “No,
more
. I need…more.”

Fox tried to soothe her, but she wouldn’t be soothed. She twisted against him, angry without knowing why. He brought her over him to his other side, away from their sleeping iliasti. “What
more
do you want?”

He settled his weight partly over her, brushing his lips over her eyes, cheeks, nose, as if he used them to see her. Maybe he did. Aisse grabbed his face, matching her mouth to his, lifting into him. That was when she realized it. She wasn’t afraid.

Before, when a man had held her down like this, his weight pinning her, the fear had overwhelmed her, blinding her, stopping her breath. But now—she liked his weight, liked having resistance to push against.
“More,”
she growled, gripping him by the hair.

“Do you want me inside you?” His voice a mere breath, Fox slid his leg over hers, between hers, putting pressure where she needed it.

“No. Yes—Will—Is it more?” She arced her body into him. “I need someth—I’m empty. Fill me up.”

With one quick yank, Fox had her trousers down below her knees. His laces took another moment to loosen, then he was lying over her, his knees between hers. Aisse didn’t have time for fear to rise before he was inside her in one smooth, deep plunge, filling her as she’d demanded. It felt like…exactly what she needed. Nothing like any sex she’d ever done before.

Fox glided in and out of her on a cushion of liquid passion. No pain. The complete opposite, in fact. Nothing had ever felt so good. She shoved her hands in his hair and held on tight, meeting each of his thrusts with one of her own, until she shuddered again, and Fox went with her.

Aisse lay under him, breathless, weighed down, and utterly content. She ran her hands over his shoulders, wishing she touched skin rather than tunic. They could do it with fewer clothes next time.

Next time?
Aisse smiled to herself. Yes. Most definitely.

Kallista let out a long slow breath and tried to will herself back to sleep. Fox and Aisse might not have awakened her with the faint impressions coming through their magic links if she hadn’t been on edge already. After everything that had happened, from the attack at the inn until this moment, Kallista ought to be tired enough to sleep for a week.

And she was. But all of it had her unsettled, easy to wake. Aisse had accepted a mark tonight. Hugely important, deserving of more recognition than an offhand comment: “How nice, you’ve been godmarked…” But Kallista didn’t know how or what more should be done. The new marking was only a small part of what disturbed her.

Something else had happened tonight, something beyond the bare events, more momentous than Aisse’s marking or Torchay’s healing. It had a bit to do with the comfort Fox and Aisse had just found in each other. It had even more to do with Kallista’s sheer terror at the thought of Torchay’s death. But mostly, it was about the escape from City Center.

Two of them had been in trouble and the other four had worked together to rescue them. If that was not the behavior of a true ilian, then none existed anywhere. It didn’t matter how they had begun or what had brought them together. Kallista was tired of fighting the truth. This wasn’t just some quasi-military troop assembled for fighting demons. This was her family and she loved them.

The thought still terrified her. So many times the love she’d offered others had been turned aside as insufficient or flawed that she’d stopped offering it. Or tried to. Maybe she’d just labeled it something else, like familiarity. Or friendship.

When
it had happened was as unimportant as why or how. It was. She loved. It made no difference in anything or anyone but Kallista, inside herself, and there the changes were profound and unmistakable. It didn’t matter if they loved her back, though she knew they did, each in his or her own way. Accepting the truth, ceasing to fight against herself, made Kallista stronger. The love made them all stronger. It bound them tighter together into a whole and maybe, because of it, they would all survive this quest.

Sometime during her musing Kallista slid into sleep. There didn’t seem to be any demarcation between waking and sleeping. She lay snuggled between Torchay and Stone, thinking about love and what it meant, while around her the dreamscape began to flow and glitter.

After a time, she sensed the demon, still at a distance, but less of one. They were closing on it. Torchay mumbled something, twitched in his own dreaming, and Kallista soothed him, kissed him quiet. She’d nearly lost him tonight, would have if not for Aisse. She needed them, her iliasti, far more than they needed her. Thank heaven she had not driven them off with her hand-wringing and self-pity.

The demon skipped through the colored glow of dreamfog, spinning itself wide in its search for her. Kallista wondered idly what it thought it would do if it ever found her. What
could
it do, here in the dreamworld?

The twisted wrongness that was the demon shivered past again. When it was gone, looking in another direction, Kallista wriggled free of her men and tucked the fog close about them again, hiding their sleeping forms from view. Then she stepped out into the swirling mists.

“Hey!” she shouted. “You! Looking for me?”

It took a moment for the demon to notice her, or perhaps it had to gather its scattered parts before it arrowed back to loom before her. “You dare?” Its voice boomed through her, vibrating her bones. “Bow before me, puny mortal. Quake in awe at my mighty powers.”

“What powers might those be?” Kallista wondered a moment at her lack of fear before she understood. “The One who travels with me is greater than all.”

“I will destroy you!” it screamed, so enraged that bits of shadow flew off around its edges to float for a moment before melting back into the whole.

“Possibly.” The idea didn’t disturb her as much as she thought it should—perhaps because this was a dream. “But possibly I will destroy you. I am coming, Tchyrizel. I am coming for you.”

The demon Tchyrizel recoiled when she called it by name. She could only assume the source of her knowledge, but had no doubt it was the demon’s true name. It gathered itself, growing smaller, denser, and abruptly a dozen spikes thrust from the demonshadow to stab straight through Kallista’s dreamself.

She screamed with the agony of the piercing and opened her eyes with a gasp to sunlight filtering through leaves into the half-roofed way house. Slowing her breathing, Kallista touched one of the places where the demon had pierced her, afraid of what she might find.

“Chosen?” Obed spoke from his post by the window. “Are you well?”

“Yes.” She was. Her body showed no consequences of the dream encounter, and she had apparently not screamed aloud or Obed would be more alarmed. “A dream. Nothing more.” She frowned. “Isn’t it time for Stone to take the watch?”

“Not yet. I’ll wake him soon.”

Kallista was asleep again before she could figure out what seemed wrong with Obed’s words.

Obed woke them all near dusk. Kallista watched him, tasted him through the link. She could feel his weariness. He’d been awake all day, never calling anyone to stand watch in his place. Awake all day and all the night before.

She paused by his side as they were preparing to mount up and leave the canyon, caught his arm. “Don’t do that again,” she murmured. “Don’t lie to me and don’t take all the watches. You need sleep as much as the rest of us.”

He wouldn’t meet her eyes, staring off at the cliffs just past her head. “As you will it, Chosen.”

Goddess
. She wanted to pound her fists on him until his masks shattered and the man inside came out.
“Kallista,”
she said, her voice low and hard. “My name is Kallista. Not Chosen. Not Captain, not even Naitan. Would it wound your dignity so much to call me by my name?”

Obed looked at her now, his eyes wide, startled. “I did not mean to offend, Chos—Kallista.”

“Of course not.” She sighed, her hand rising to give his cheek a friendly pat. It lingered for a caress. “Take care of yourself, Obed. I need you.”

With a last caress of his tattooed cheek, she turned away to mount her horse. Carefully, she drew off just a trickle of magic from the other three and fed it to Obed, hoping none of them noticed, hoping this wasn’t something else that would offend her Southron iliasti’s sensibilities. But he needed the strength. She wished she could do it for Torchay.