Finding Destiny (32 page)

“You put your ingredients in the middle and chunks of ice in the outer section, and pour salt over them, which lowers the freezing temperature and keeps it cold long enough to freeze the cream,” she told him, cranking the handle and moving the paddles inside the inner bucket. “But you have to keep it moving so it forms very small crystals, which makes it taste smooth and uniform in flavor. It’s a dessert, a big favorite in the summertime. Obviously we couldn’t use ... you know, magic, to freeze the confection. I still use it, even if I do speed up the process a little with a spell or two these days.”

“And all those balls of yarn?” he asked, looking up at the skeins of wool.

“Those are for knitting.
Everyone
knits in Guildara. Or crochets,” she allowed, putting the machine back. At his blank look, Gabria moved over to one of her tunics, touching the soft gray wool. “See this? I knitted it myself. Knitting is done with long needles, and crocheting with a special hook. I can do both. I can even teach you, if you want to learn. It’s very soothing—it gives the hands something to do while relaxing the mind, and a lot of people like to sit and chat while they knit in the evenings. Unless you’re trying for a complicated pattern, of course, then it’s best to pay attention.”

“What about this thing?” Devin asked as she smoothed a wrinkle from the tunic. Glancing over, she caught sight of the silvery shaft in his hand and flushed, face and body growing hot with embarrassment. He lifted one of his brows in return. “I’m very good at observing things ... and I’ve observed that every time you look at this thing, you blush. Now, why would that be?”

“It’s ... it’s personal!” Flustered, Gabria grabbed for it, but he lifted it out of her reach. Since he was a full head taller than her, that lifted the crankman well out of her reach. She tried jumping for it, but that just bumped their bodies together, making him grin and wrap his other arm around her waist. “Devin! Give that back!”

“Not until you tell me what you do with it,” he countered, smirking.

Embarrassed and unwilling to share something so very, very personal just yet, Gabria screwed up her mouth and spat out a word. “
Ziggit!
” The crankman jerked out of his fingers and slapped into her upturned palm. Angry that he’d made her do that, she poked him with it. “
Don’t
make me use my magic again!”

Then she blushed even harder when she realized what she was doing. Turning in his arms, Gabria moved to place it back on the shelf. He grabbed for it, which meant she had to fumble to keep it in her grip—and accidentally thumbed the switch. There probably wasn’t much of a crank-charge left in the workings from its last use, but it promptly buzzed to life anyway, rattling vigorously in her hand.

She was too mortified to retain a firm grip on the shaft. Plucking it from her fingers, Devin released her so that he could examine the throbbing, vaguely phallic device. “What ... ? Ohhh.
Fascinating
. So that’s why you’re blushing.
That’s
what it’s for.”

“Oh, Gods,” Gabria muttered, burying her face in her palms. Unfortunately, no deity was kind enough to open up the floor and swallow her into the ground, not even a demonic one from a Netherhell. Instead, she felt him turn her around by her elbow and found herself backed up against the shelves once again. Summoning her courage, she lowered her fingers just far enough to peek at him over their tips. He was eyeing the buzzing device with a distinct look of cunning calculation. Masculine calculation.

“The question is, where do you apply it?” he murmured. Lowering it to the curve of one breast, he rubbed the buzzing tip against her silk-clad flesh. “Here?”

She
had
applied it there, in the past. But always by herself, in private. Now she knew why some of her fellow females had giggled and insisted that letting their men know of their crankman’s existence hadn’t turned out to be such an embarrassing thing. Pinned by his gleaming brown eyes, knowing she wasn’t the one controlling it, circling it around and around her increasingly tight nipple, was incredibly arousing.

When she didn’t say anything, just swallowed and breathed heavily, he smiled and trailed the buzzing tip over to her other breast. He didn’t tease that one for long, however. Just enough to make her bite her lower lip, before shifting it down her abdomen. The short folds of her
eta
jacket did nothing to stop him from sliding it between her silk-covered thighs, where the vibrations combined with the intensity of his gaze, making her dizzy.

The clattering slowed down, faded, and stopped.
Thank the Gods
, she thought. Her mind sighed with relief, though her body whimpered with disappointment. Pulling the crankman back up into view, Devin frowned and shook it gingerly. “Ah ... did I break it? I didn’t
mean
to ...”

His baffled concern brought a welcome touch of humor into the moment. Still blushing, though not quite as embarrassed, Gabria took the shaft from his unresisting fingers and pushed the switch. “You didn’t break it. It just ran out of energy, is all.”

Turning, she placed it firmly on the shelf. A soft sound and the feel of his fingers plucking something from her shoulder made her turn back around. He had a rose stem in his hand, and a wry look wrinkling his tanned face. “I suppose it’s just as well. We
should
take one more day to get to know each other better. Especially after your little speech. Though I still don’t see how it should apply to Godless pirates.”

“They might not
be
Godless; have you considered that?” Gabria asked, grateful for the change in topic. “Look at Nightfall. They acknowledge no one particular God or Goddess as a specific Patron Deity, yet they’re clearly not Godless. They permit the worship of
all
the known Gods.
And
they’re prosperous. And I’m quite sure they’re an even smaller nation than this Jetta place, if the city of Jetta has been around for four hundred years—learn to see them through
their
eyes, not your own, Seer King,” she urged, nudging Devin out of the dressing room and back into their bedchamber. “Now, you promised me earlier how to play that one game ...
tafl
, you said?”

“
Tafl
, yes. Something nice and cerebral,” he muttered, guiding her over to the small table by one of the windows. “And not the least bit carnal.”

“Or buzzing,” Gabria found herself teasing. She blushed at her temerity, then grinned when
he
blushed. Not that it was easy to see on his naturally tan cheeks, but he did blush. Seating herself at the table, she settled in to listen to the instructions on how to play.

FIVE

“
S
o,” Devin murmured as soon as the door shut behind the last of their servants. His brown gaze swept down the length of her body, clad in a pale-green-and-silver
etamana
robe-and-sash set. “How many flowers have you lost, today?”

Gabria blushed, remembering their prolonged lunch in the fuchsia pavilion. A brief rainstorm had driven the servants farther away, giving them enough privacy to kiss and caress. When the shower had passed, they had struggled to smooth out the rumpled folds of their clothes, but it hadn’t been easy. Nor could she exactly hide the stems that had fallen from her braid, or the way the ribbons now confined her ash blond hair only down to her nape, instead of a couple finger-lengths from the waist-long ends. “Three roses and an orchid. But ... we did have our hands almost everywhere.”

He smirked. “Hm. I shall have to do better than that. What sort of a husband am I, if you lost only four of your blossoms during lunch?”

Her brows lifted. “What kind of a
husband
?” She might have been a virgin to actual intercourse, but she wasn’t entirely an innocent. Gabria lifted her chin a little, hands going to her hips. “If
your
hair were braided with flowers, maybe
I’d
have removed
five.
”

That made him laugh. Strolling across the distance between them, he grinned, teeth white against the tan of his lips and the dark line of his mustache. “You do realize that at least
two
of those flowers fell from your hair because of where
your
hands were located?”

Her face heated again, but Gabria didn’t back down. “A pity I couldn’t lose any more of them during dinner. But it was still a very good conversation. Mage-Captain Ellett is a good man. Very loyal to his king, and very knowledgeable about spells and such.”

“And Lady Lianna?” Devin asked, stopping just sort of kissing distance.

“I don’t think she likes me very much. Or at least, doesn’t respect me, deep down,” Gabria told him. “It’s nothing I can pin down, just a subtle sort of attitude. I think probably because I’m an adult, yet I don’t know as much as she and Captain Ellett know.”

“Then we will find you teachers in the art of magic,” Devin promised, cupping her upper arms in his palms. “Have you considered what you would like to do, as Royal Wife?”

Gabria blinked. “... Do?”

“Yes, do. The Royal Wife often takes up certain causes, using her station and influence to bring awareness to certain needs around the kingdom. My mother was and is a proponent of good agricultural practices, particularly when guarding against bad practices which could lead to erosion and floods—her parents died in a flood, so it was a cause close to her heart. My grandmother, who was an architect, insisted on preserving and upgrading our older public buildings, the temples and market shelters, town halls, and so forth. My great-grandmother focused her efforts on our textile industry, and my great-great-grandmother invested her energies in upgrading our roadways.”

“Maybe I should invest my energies in education, then,” Gabria quipped, slipping her hands around his waist. “Though I should also invest some effort in bringing Aurul and Guildara closer together. That’s what I originally thought I was supposed to do, in coming here.”

“You can still do that to some extent,” Devin murmured, sliding his fingers along her arms, then around her back. “Though your envoy does a good job.”

She snorted and leaned back, eyeing the Seer King in her arms. “You mean, now that you’re deigning to
talk
with him?”

He chuckled. “We listened, every single time. When nothing important in his message changed, we knew both he and your fellow Guildarans were sincere.”

As much as part of her knew this was a good opening for influencing his opinion further about her people ... she couldn’t bring herself to do it. “As much as I like talking with you about everything under the sun,” Gabria stated, giving him an earnest look, “I don’t think I’d care to mix politics with pleasure ... and this
is
the end of the Three Days of Grace, isn’t it? Shouldn’t we be thinking of other things right now?”

He smiled and lowered his mouth to hers, murmuring, “It is, and I agree.”

Gabria didn’t argue. There really wasn’t need for further debate, unless it was the kind shaped by lips and tongues, by palms and fingertips. Somewhere in there, she lost her sash, but then so did he. She also lost two or three blooms. Devin murmured something about the bed being a good place for this, so they disengaged long enough to retreat from the parlor.

After arguing that morning with her would-be dressers, she had only two layers of
etamana
to remove, though she did have the corset and trousers beneath the garments and sash. In contrast, he wore a full four layers, though at least the innermost layer was discreetly stitched with runes for comfort, since that much silk could get rather warm after a while.

As much as a part of her wanted to examine the stitching spells, they were nothing more than an extra bit of texture against her fingers, an obstacle to get past. Beneath that layer, his bare chest and the crisp hairs scattered across it deserved far more of her attention right now. Gabria all but buried her face in his chest, inhaling the scents of sandalwood, a hint of her rose attar from their earlier interactions, and pure male.

It was that lattermost scent she wanted to smell; it reached into her sinuses and entwined itself down her spine, touching places mere scent alone shouldn’t touch. But it did, and it augmented the path of his hands as he removed her corset, trousers, and suede slippers, until he tipped her down onto the bed to aid his efforts.

Wanting to divest him of his own remaining clothes, Gabria tried to sit up, pulling the increasingly ragged remainder of her braid out from under her back, but he licked the insides of her knees. Squirming at the ticklish sensation, she giggled and collapsed onto the soft bedding, hair flopping and tangling around her shoulders and face. Devin held her legs open and rapidly licked his way up the soft skin of her thighs, making her squirm and laugh and squeak the closer he came to their crux.

Just as the level of intimacy started to alarm her, he retreated suddenly, leaving her stewing in a mixture of both relief and disappointment. With a few quick movements, he removed his trousers, slippers, and underclothes, leaving him bare of everything but the black ribbon wrapped around the tail of his braid. Anticipating more of the same, Gabria parted her thighs a little wider; she’d heard from Marta and other female friends how much fun it was to have a man kiss a maiden at their apex.