02 - The Barbed Rose (15 page)

Obed groaned, pulling her in tighter to his body with his legs. “Kallista, I will go mad.”

“Not yet, you won’t.” She licked along the soft, vulnerable line between his hip and leg, then blew on it, laughing gently when Obed thrashed and swore. “Finish. What do these mean?”

She slid her hand up his body, stroking across the ivory silk of his skin, noting each scarred imperfection. He had many more scars than the marks on his backside, marks from fighting, from knife and sword and other, stranger, weapons. She touched his left shoulder. “What does this one signify?”

“Sacrifice.”

“And this?” She swept her hand to the other tattoo.

“Purity.” He yanked at the cuffs with sudden violence, fighting hard to get free.

She backed away and let him struggle, trusting the
pentivas
magic to hold him, giving him room so he could let his frustrations go without having to fear hurting her.

He didn’t fight for long, collapsing into the bedding with a shout. “Why do you torment me? Why do you keep me bound? Do you not trust
me?
”

“Shh.” Kallista came back over him, sliding her body along his, the link wide open so she could feel his pleasure as well as her own. “I trust you, my love, but you do not yet trust yourself. You fear failing me. You fear doing the wrong thing. But since the cuffs will not let you do anything, they—I hope—will allow you to let go of these fears. It doesn’t matter what you do. Shout. Fight. Even sulk. You won’t fail because I won’t allow it.”

“Even if I spill myself across the white skin of your belly because you have teased me beyond enduring?”

His words made her whole body draw tight with anticipation. “If the magic can push you to climax, don’t you think it can also hold you back?” Kallista wasn’t any too certain it could. She’d never tried it, but Obed needed certainty from her or he would never relax his defenses.

Even now, with the link between them wide open, he held part of himself back, clinging to his precious control. His hard-won discipline. Kallista
reached
, took hold of his magic, drawing a gasp from him. His body jerked, his penis throbbed against her stomach, but the magic proved her right.

“Let go,” she whispered. “You’re not in this alone. Together, we can fly.” And as she sensed the last bit of Obed’s resistance dissolve, Kallista lifted herself and took him inside.

His shout echoed around the little room and out the open window. Kallista laughed, delighting in his pleasure, letting it add to her own. The magic played between them, binding them closer, mingling the sensations until she scarcely knew which were her own or who it was that needed more, faster, harder.

With one hand, she released the simple latches that held Obed’s cuffs to the bed, then found the catch binding them to each other. As soon as his hands were free, he threw them around her. Kallista twined her legs in his and rolled, bringing Obed on top.

Before he had a chance to think, to worry about “doing it right,” Kallista bit down on one of his fat earlobes. “Now.
More
.”

She licked over his earlobe and sucked it into her mouth a moment. Then she released him and sent the magic crashing through them both.

It swept everything before it as Obed began to drive into her, as if he wanted to come out the other side. Kallista wrapped her legs higher, around his waist, and rose to meet every wild, out-of-control thrust. She was as out of control as he and she loved every frantic instant of it, bodies slamming together, cries forced from two throats, magic careening crazily through them. The magic escaped her and for a brief moment she caught a faint sense of Torchay before climax hit and obliterated everything but screaming, drowning pleasure.

Obed collapsed on top of her. Kallista held him close, kissing whatever part of him lay within reach. His shoulder, she thought, and his neck, his throat. When she believed her voice might work again, she spoke. “If you ask me, control is highly overrated.”

“I felt it,” he said, “felt
you
. I felt your pleasure with my own. That is not…ordinary.”

“Magic.
We
are not ordinary, love.” She let her arms fall to either side, releasing him, and cocked a suspicious eye at him. “That doesn’t break some secret rule of yours, does it? To call magic while we—”

He chuckled, moving off her. “No. You are my only rule now.”

“Oh. Well…good.” Sleep lapped at the edges of her consciousness, but something nagged at her, something she needed to be sure of before she could relax. The bed felt empty.

They were an ilian. They had other mates, and she didn’t think it would be good for Obed to pretend otherwise. She suspected that might have been part of his difficulty before. She wished she knew for certain.

Kallista rolled away from him when he would have gathered her close. “Come.” She took his hand and pulled him from the bed. “I’m tired. Our sleep last night was interrupted too many times, but I can’t sleep without all our iliasti around us.”

She led him naked through the parlor into the big room next door. Torchay roused briefly when she shoved him over to make room for two more.

A knocking at the door to the suite roused Torchay who stumbled out to see what in blazing hells the interlopers wanted. He returned rubbing sleep out of his eyes and hair out of his face, staring at the piece of unfolded parchment in his hand. “How awake are you, Kallista?”

She rolled her head onto Obed’s naked back and opened one eye. “Why? How awake do I have to be?”

“More awake than I am.” He yawned and handed her the paper.

With a heavy sigh, she opened her other eye and crawled higher to prop her elbows on Obed. Then she looked at the parchment. The note was written in an unfamiliar scrawl. Kallista frowned, trying to focus her eyes well enough to decipher it.

“What is it?” Obed asked from his position beneath her, lying on his face.

She moved the note closer to her eyes, then farther away. Neither one seemed to help. She’d seldom seen handwriting so bad. “It’s either an order to extricate swollen monkeys from beer barrels in the attics at midnight, or it’s an invitation to dine with the Reinine and her ilian in their chambers tonight. I think.” She handed the note back to Torchay.

“On the whole,” he said, peering at it with one eye closed, “I think I’d rather deal with the monkeys.”

“As would I,” Obed agreed.

“You’ll get no argument from me.” Kallista stretched, rolling onto her back. “However—”

“Aye.” Torchay sounded as disappointed as she felt. The monkeys might have been fun.

“What time is it?” She peered out the distant window, but couldn’t see any of the tower clocks.

“Time to start getting ready.” Torchay opened the massive wardrobe that contained their pitifully small collection of clothing.

“What is Joh going to wear?” Kallista sat up, a yawn popping her jaw. “We don’t have his dress uniform.”

“I’m not a lieutenant.” The chain fastening Joh to the wall rattled as he sat up on his cot. “I couldn’t wear it even if you had one.”

“You can wear my green.” Torchay pulled the garment from its hook and crossed the room, searching in his waistpocket for the key. “And I wish you’d stop fastening yourself to the wall every time I blink. It’s getting damned tedious to keep
un
fastening you.”

“I am still a convicted felon.” Joh caught the tunic Torchay threw at him. “I am required to be confined.”

“You are confined. You can’t get twenty paces from her without falling down in a fit.” Torchay unlocked the chain. Joh began looping it around the ankle band again.

Kallista made a mental note to ask the Reinine for another favor during the meal. She heard Obed rustling behind her and managed not to startle when he kissed her bare shoulder. She didn’t need to be skittish of him now, not when she’d finally got him past his skittishness. She reached over her shoulder to touch his cheek, let him know his kiss was welcomed. It seemed to satisfy him.

“I’ll need the armbands back.” Joh crossed to pour more water into the basin Torchay had just emptied.

“I don’t think so.” Kallista shook her head. “I think Obed needs to wear them a while yet.”

Torchay slanted her a quick glance as his head appeared through the top of his dress uniform tunic. He’d brought the sleeveless summer uniform, though time to change from the long-sleeved winter ones hadn’t yet arrived. It doubtless would before they got home again. “That will look a bit peculiar, won’t it?” he said. “With one ilias in the ankle chains and the other in the cuffs.”

“Everyone thinks we’re peculiar already.” Kallista shrugged. “This won’t make much difference.”

“I don’t mind.” Obed tucked his arm around her waist and pulled her back into his still-naked body.

Kallista tilted her head to give him better access to her neck for more of the kisses he was laying there. Her dress tunic hit her in the face, followed quickly by her chemise.

“Get yourself dressed, woman,” Torchay said, voice bland. “Or you’ll have the rest of us joining you and we’ll be late. You don’t keep the Reinine of all Adara waiting because you’re too distracting naked.”

With a quick kiss on Obed’s bristled cheek, Kallista escaped the bed’s temptations and scrambled into her chemise. “It’s you three who are too distracting. You know how mindless I get around handsome men. Given our ilian, it’s a wonder I have any sense left me at all.”

Pulling her tunic on for an extra layer of safety, Kallista pounced on Torchay to claim a kiss, and laughing, he gave it. “Have a care with the magic,” he murmured in her ear, pretending to nuzzle. “You caught me in it for a moment there.”

“Not necessarily a bad thing,” Kallista murmured back. She took the leggings he shoved into her hands and wriggled into them before crossing to Joh, dressed now in Torchay’s best, darkest-green tunic.

She caught his arm, turned him to face her and he stiffened, drawing himself straight, away from her. Then he seemed to catch himself, or perhaps it was that their gazes tangled. He was still filled with tension, every chiseled muscle taut, but all of that tension was focused on her. “You have a kiss for me?”

“Are you not ilias?” The words slid out on a breath and when they were gone, she touched her mouth to his.

The magic inside him shuddered and his mouth opened, his hands gripped her arms, his tongue thrust past hers. Then the magic quieted when she did not command it. Joh seemed to suddenly recognize his actions and stifled his demands, offering only acceptance.

It made it possible for Kallista to end the kiss. “I prefer your aggression,” she said to him alone. “It lets me know I am wanted, rather than merely endured.”

“Doesn’t the magic tell you everything?” He spoke just as quietly.

Her smile was crooked. “I cannot read your mind. Cannot always tell emotions—especially if you hide them. You are still only yourself alone inside your head.” She nudged him toward a chair. “Sit. I’ll repair your queue for you.”

His startlement showed in his eyes. “Yes. Thank you.”

In the end, Kallista braided the queues of her iliasti who wore them, and Obed—who always wore his hair loose to his shoulders—braided hers. It wasn’t as tight as Torchay could get it, but Obed offered first.

They were a fine-looking group, Kallista thought rather smugly as they paraded through the palace to the tower the Reinine had appropriated for her quarters this summer. Torchay positively glittered in the candlelight reflecting off the gold threads in the shield of his home prinsipality embroidered on his tunic. The red-and-gold stag almost leaped to life. Light flashed from the layered honors dangling from his chain belt, chinking against each other as he walked. Kallista’s belt made as much noise and together they nearly drowned out the sound of Joh’s chains.

Joh looked strange to her, wearing the plain-cut, unadorned tunic of a civilian, but the green suited him almost as well as it suited Torchay. Even Obed glittered tonight. The black of his so Southron ankle-length overrobe was thick with silver embroidery over his shoulders and at the hems of the sleeves. The ilian caught the attention of everyone they passed. It worried Kallista a bit. Last year, attention had brought gossip and gossip had brought trouble. She hoped this year would be different.

Starlight Tower was slightly farther from Daybright than the tower the Reinine had used last year. They had to walk through more of the crowded palace corridors to reach it. Unlike most other Reinines in Adara’s history, Serysta Reinine chose new chambers with every move from summer to winter and back again. She was said to claim it kept her from boredom. Kallista didn’t know the truth of it. She hadn’t asked. She and the Reinine weren’t chums. They were ruler and captain.

Kallista used the longer walk to keep her eyes and ears open, hoping to pick up a sense of the city’s mood. Or at least, of the palace’s mood, and its attitude toward her and hers. She saw Courier Viyelle Torvyll Prinsipella in her grays, lounging near the stairs leading up into Starlight Tower, as she gossiped with a cluster of bright-plumaged courtiers, most wearing the short-cropped hairstyle of the young, reckless bravos.

As Kallista passed with her men, Viyelle gave no sign of noticing them, until she lowered one eyelid in a slow, hidden wink. Did that mean the rumor-mongering went well?

Surely it did. Kallista had not noticed any of the sudden silences or hissing whispers they’d been surrounded with last year. She handed the note to the guard at the foot of the stairwell. He looked at it and gestured them up. Now, Kallista could feel the envious stares stabbing between her shoulders. Nothing good could come of this favoritism showed by the Reinine. She hoped nothing too awfully bad would result.

The door to the Reinine’s private suite was opened by a woman in a dress uniform identical to Torchay’s—bodyguard’s black, trimmed with blue, save where Torchay’s bore a stag, hers was embroidered with a triad of scallop shells in silver and white. Kallista could not remember which prinsipality claimed that shield, except that it was somewhere on the long northern coast. The bracelets on both her wrists were silver to match.