Capture of a Heart (7 page)

“No, Shoraya. You are free. You are no more in my debt than a bird with a broken wing. You owe me nothing but the pleasure of watching you fly.”

While she understood the beauty of his metaphor, she couldn’t help the urge to wish that he admitted to more, to a hint of something possessive. The notion was certainly stirring in her, despite attempts to tamp it down. “I roam.”

“Okay. Roam. If I may ask to where you intend to roam, when you are well?”

Looking out at the lake, she recalled her original plan. “South. I have always wanted to see the Pusharak desert; I hear that there are great scorpions that dance, large worms that ride through the sands like water, and plants that walk. They say it is a wondrous place full of beauty and magic.” Not unlike Gavenas’s forest, she thought with a bittersweet sigh.

He finished unfurling one side of her hair and began on the other before he replied. “It is all true. There are dunes as tall as mountains and a variety of uniquely adapted creatures. There are also many dangers. However, I shall outfit you well for your journey. Enchantments, spells, antitoxins…”

“You’ve been?” She attempted to turn around, but he gently corrected her with his knees.

“I have seen the desert,” he said.

She noted he didn’t exactly answer her question. “Is that some mystical faeyanin term? Like you’ve seen it but never been?”

“You could say that.”

She wondered why, resisting the urge to turn again. She detected something in his tone but couldn’t tell if it was sadness or nonchalance. “Are you bound to this forest, Gavenas?”

He worked free the last of her strands and began to comb through her tresses with his fingertips. “I am in a way. It is my home, and I am its guardian.”

Shoraya mulled over his admission, and while she had never felt as loyal to the place that she considered her home, she understood the responsibility that Gavenas mentioned, even if just in the several visitors she had witnessed him receive. It was so easy to think of a life spent full of marvelous, wild friends, not just studying but becoming one, an expert in an environ, for surely Gavenas was. She had never considered mastery, only tutelage, but just being around the faeyanin stirred her interest.

She felt a drizzle of a silken, creamy substance with a hint of grit penetrating to her scalp. The elixir smelled of mint and tingled. Sure that he had retrieved the vial from one of the many pouches in his robes, Shoraya closed her eyes and praised Gavenas for his potion. The cleansing salve felt heavenly, ridding her roots of all the oil and sweat that had accumulated. Using the tips of his fingers, Gavenas began a massage that had her quivering. “What’s that?”

“A cleansing potion. It’s very light. Do you like it?”

She did, but she liked his fingers on her scalp, on her body, even more. She had never been one to believe in luck. Her encounters with not one but several contingents of warriors and her poisoning had been proof enough, but meeting someone as remarkable as Gavenas was too good to be true. Surely there was something fate had not revealed to her, some flaw that she was missing about him. Perhaps she hadn’t been the first female he had encountered. Maybe he had had many.

The thought was sour in her head, but she couldn’t shake the notion of Gavenas’s fingers in some other female’s tresses. She tried to soothe her mind by watching the wind make ripples over the lake, eyeing tiny fish as they rose to the surface to snap up insects that dared fly too close, but jealousy wasn’t an emotion she had ever known how to deal with, had never wanted to before. “Do you have many visitors?”

“I have plenty neighbors.”

Again with the roundabout replies… It was as if he was loosely trying to evade her questions, begging her to be more direct. “I didn’t ask about neighbors, Gavenas. Villagers surely pass through, people?”

He had begun to section her hair down the middle. “Yes. But they stay on the paths. This wood is enchanted, and they know it. They fear it.”

It was an answer. It was not the one she wanted, but then she doubted that he would admit to allowing a throng of nubile young women through his forest anyway. Sulking, she gave up on her plot to discern his carnal habits. It wasn’t as if he belonged to her solely. She had to be mad to even consider it, and yet she did. “Well. I’m not afraid. What if
I
wanted to visit you?” she asked as his fingers established a tight grip on the roots of her hair.

“You are welcome anytime you wish to come, Shoraya. Just as you may stay as long as you wish. It is exceedingly rare that I have visitors.” Beginning the first of what would be several twists, Gavenas paused. He leaned down close enough to warm her cheek with his breath. “And I do so enjoy having your company.”

Shoraya smiled, giddy at his confession. She imagined returning to him in spring or summer, regaling him with tales of her trip and with gifts from her journeys…finding her way back into his bed after being on the road. “I will remember that.”

“Please do. Now be still so that I may finish my work.” He kissed her on the cheek and drew back, resuming the twisting of her hair.

She did as commanded, studying the lake even as the sun began its descent in a burning sky. There was much she could learn from in Gavenas’s forest, from the large carnivorous beasts that gave them a wide berth as they came to and from the water’s edge. Listening to the song of the night, filled with mating calls, Shoraya sat between Gavenas’s legs, moving only when he urged her and yet impatient for him to be done. He seemed to take so much pleasure in tending to her that she longed for the opportunity to take care of him.

Her only curiosity was how…outside of worshiping every inch of his body with her tongue.

Chapter Ten

A routine had formed for Gavenas, and it wasn’t one that allowed for much sustenance. Not that the draught of sweat, the suckling of flesh, and the greedy intake of air was not sufficient to motivate him, but he was beginning to feel the exhaustion of limited meals. For many days as well as nights, he subsisted only upon desire. Sometimes it only took a glance; others it required but a brush of skin and his hunger for Shoraya surged.

He did not forgo his obligations. When one of his forest companions arrived in front of his den, he went out to help them. He still went out to forage, to place his blessings upon the great trees, the waters, and the springs, but he did not linger. He returned to the lake where Shoraya had taken to her sword practice or back to his den, where she rested with eagerness demanded by his blood and the beat of his heart.

Thoughts of her inevitable departure had ceased to plague him, as the pattern of finding her so receptive and eager for his touch burned away all of his fear to be replaced with the bliss of being able to take shelter between her thighs.

Whereas before she had gotten well, he had had plenty of time to ponder their nutrition and prepare rich meals; now that she was well, he barely had enough forethought to arrange meals complete with nutritious components.

He imagined that Shoraya must have come to the same conclusion as he while walking back to the den that night. He could smell the hearty fragrance of meat wafting from the vent openings in his home, root vegetables cooking in a steamy broth, and his stomach lurched excitedly.

He brushed aside the curtain and stepped inside to discover Shoraya seated beside the hearth. Her head was down with her chin resting upon her chest. She was leaning slightly forward. A stirring spoon lay across her thighs, upon her open palm, and she seemed to be asleep, but as Gavenas took a step toward her, she sat up to stare at him with wild, dilated pupils.

Gavenas went rigid with panic, wondering if she had had a relapse, if some measure of her poisoning had not been addressed, or worse—his care of her had fallen short in some way. “Are you okay?”

She shook her head, the action stimulating her whole body to wobble before she ceased. “I don’t think so,” she whispered, almost as if imparting a secret. “I was trying to make iron stew, a mountain staple. But I… The broth tastes funny.”

Gavenas hurried over to the broth and glared down into the pot with its contents simmering nicely. There were hunks of meat and vegetables floating within a thick, brown stock, herbs…and mushrooms. The fungi were what drew Gavenas’s attention right away with their white stems and pinkish tops. Blinking back his disbelief, he turned to face Shoraya’s narrowed gaze suspiciously directed at the pot. “You added these pink mushrooms?”

She gave one nod only before she rolled her head back as if the exertion of that sole movement was too exhausting for her.

It probably was, Gavenas realized as he discerned her inebriated state for what it was. He failed to keep the laughter from his voice. “These are pixie mushrooms, Shoraya. They are not for cooking.”

“I just wanted to make
you
dinner for a change, and they looked like pebble shrooms, and I thought they tasted really firm and meaty, and—are they poisonous?” she asked suddenly with a look of shock.

Gavenas moved to sit at her side, his sides aching from containing the full roar of laughter he didn’t release. Reaching into the folds of his robe, he found the stays that connected his flask and undid them. “They are not, but, well…have some water.” He offered the water skin to Shoraya.

She batted a hand weakly in his direction before snatching the skin from him. Instead of drinking, however, she laid the container upon her thigh. “I don’t want water. I wanted to make you a meal. You make me food all the time, and I sit like a pampered cave cat, getting fat and lazy on milk. Which is not bad, but I wasn’t raised that way,” she insisted vehemently. “I mean, I don’t mind having my belly rubbed, or my pussy—because you are such a masterful lover. I don’t think I’m bad in the sack either, but a woman should be able to take some care of her male’s belly, and I can do that too!”

The meaning of her words struck Gavenas with a sudden fever. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry tears of joy. While her words had to spring from the mushrooms’ capacity to lower inhibitions, the heat of pride was searing his emotions to ash. She thought of him as her male. She wanted to take care of him. Her confession was the mirror of his own, and her determination…it was all in the sincerity of her pout as she looked toward him.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and brought her close. With her head upon his chest, she wouldn’t be able to see the war of emotions coursing through his features that he was certain that he could not hide. “Of course you can. You just need to be familiarized with my larder, with my stores, is all.”

She agreed before going silent.

Gavenas thought that she may have drifted off to sleep after several minutes passed with her lax against him, but then she stirred, pulling away from his embrace and swiftly springing up.

Shocked by the swiftness of her movements, Gavenas found himself staring up at a woman swaying upon her feet.

Shoraya waggled a finger at no one in particular before doing a slow scan of the den. “This is all a little weird. You know some of those vines are alive, I think. I tried to grab one vial, and this one vine slapped me. I got the point and left it alone.”

He wanted to reach up and bring her back down to the floor, skeptical of her equilibrium and missing her warmth in his arms already. “It was enchanted to protect something poisonous. It is my fault; I should have shown you, explained to you my various ingredients.”

She balled her hands into fists and placed them upon her hips. With a furrowed brow that failed to convey real anger, she replied, “You should have. I arranged your rocks from your gems from your minerals. I explained those to you. I even helped you with your salts… Hmph.” She leaned down and snatched the ladle off the floor, and to Gavenas’s surprise, she returned to the edge of the hearth.

Before he realized what she intended to do, Shoraya had dipped the spoon back into the stew. She raised a helping and sniffed at the steam rising from it. “Well, at least it’s seasoned nicely.”

He reached out, with the intention of taking the spoon away. “Shoraya, I don’t think—”

She blew upon the spoon to cool its contents and then devoured the helping before Gavenas’s eyes. She then dipped the spoon back in the pot and offered a serving to him. “It’s not a bad soup…stew. You wanna try some?”

Gavenas took only a moment to debate the positive and negative aspects of pixie mushrooms and ingesting them. There was most certainly the danger of him confessing how he had become so used to Shoraya’s company, how he adored waking up and going to sleep in her arms. The threat of him confessing his love was hovering like a warning in the back of his mind, and even still his fear about her leaving could surface. However, as Shoraya was not faeyanin, her memory of the time spent under the drug’s influence would be impaired. There was a great possibility even that should he confess to the suspicion that they were fated for each other, she would not recall it the next day.

“I suppose so,” he said, making his decision based on the risks. He leaned forward and parted his lips so that he could accept the spoon.

Chapter Eleven

Shoraya’s cheeks ached from grinning. The night before had been so surreal. She only remembered flashes of the event, but those bits were bright in her mind. Never had she been as intoxicated or felt as free as she did after sharing that wicked broth with Gavenas.

She might not have even stirred from the bed if Gavenas hadn’t been summoned by a family of rambunctious wood walkers. With no courtesy whatsoever, the tiny tree-dwelling humanoids, no taller than Shoraya’s waist, sprang into the den to loudly express the demand for Gavenas’s services. As he suffered the loss of the pallet’s warmth, she decided to as well, pushing the thick spread off her form.

Both of them groggy and aching, Gavenas had gone deep into the woods with his companions, and Shoraya had taken up her sword and hiked to the lake. Her intention was to study and practice. There was a breed of crustacean, the Grave Pincer, which bore four front claws much larger than its six locomotive limbs. It had a way of brandishing its weaponry high above its head whenever a predator was near. Like a shield protecting attacks from above, their weapons served dual purposes.