Heart Duel (48 page)

“Huh,” Holm said. It sure hadn't helped him, and he'd spent a lot of time walking that damned circular rising path to the rim of the crater.

Lark's lips curved against his chest, and he wanted her to kiss him. In fact, if she moved her head a few centimeters, she could suck his nipple. . . . She sent a twist of cold energy instead, dampening his arousal.

“You aren't going to talk to me. Hmmmm. Let's try questions.”

“Can't we just start walking out of here?”

“Your pulse spiked. You don't want to talk about this.” She stepped back and he hated the cool air that flowed around him, the loss of her touch. She held her palms up and concentrated. Bright gold glowed in her hands. She brought them together and aimed the tips of her fingers at his heart. He saw the large rope of energy then. The bond between them.

“Holm,” she said. “I am your HeartMate. How do you expect to hide anything from me? I knew much of the reason you rejected the HeartBond”—her voice cracked a little—“was that I had so long and consistently rejected you and our connection.” Warmth poured from her to him, tingling through his veins with a gentle caress. “But it was something more, too. You were hiding your perceived faults from me.”

She tilted her head. “Everyone has faults. Everyone makes mistakes.” She laughed. “Lady and Lord knows you've experienced mine. My cowardice. My fear of being hurt again, the ease with which people manipulate me, my old bitterness for Nobles, my—”

Now he stepped forward and placed a hand over her mouth. “Hush. You are wonderful. That's why we didn't know we were HeartMates earlier. Why we didn't sense each other during our Passages. Because I had to grow to match you, my Bélla.”

Lark's surprise flickered through their tie. “Hard to believe.”

Holm grinned. “You flatter me. But it's true. Until Tinne and I went on that trek across the continent, I wasn't 'mature' enough for you.” He avoided thinking of the boghole, what happened, Tinne's explanation the day before.

“Ah-ha! Got it.” Lark rubbed her hands. “That wound surfaced and I've got it.”

He felt a tug inside. It hurt, like a cramped muscle being massaged.

“Sit down,” she said.

Since she continued to draw on the tangled mess of his guilt and failure and it hurt, he folded to the grass. His breath roughened and sweat dotted his forehead as she worked at the gnarled mish-mash of his emotions.

She sweated, too. Her face strained. “I'm hurting you. I'm not a MentalHealer. Perhaps—”

“Do it!”
he snapped. “You have your fingers in it, just do it and let me suffer in peace.”

With raised eyebrows, she turned back to the job. A few moments later the hurt subsided. Her hands seemed to smooth his emotional tangle flat. She stroked the now-straight threads and sent them back for him to absorb. Then she plucked at them, and knew him.

Holm flopped back on the cool ground and closed his eyes. She'd leave him now.

“Don't be a stup,” she said, echoing Tinne's words. “We're HeartMates. Do you think I'd walk away from such a joy? There were times in my apartment that I wanted to scream from the loneliness.” Now she echoed Tab's words.

Tinne and Tab. Both better men than he. Both wiser. As she was.

“Oh, Holm!” She sat beside him, pushed the hair from his forehead. “Perfection. The golden boy. The HollyHeir.”

He winced.

“You thought you always had to be perfect, to live up to the highest standards. You couldn't make mistakes. You couldn't fail. That was not allowed.” She chuckled and he felt offended. “Not such a terrible flaw, lover.”

Her endearment zinged through him, arousing him instantly.

“What a beautiful body you have,” she said, running her hands across his collarbone, measuring the breadth of his chest. Her index finger traced one scar, another, a blaser starburst, and he trembled under her hands. She ignored the blatant thrusting of his sex, but he wanted nothing more than for her to touch him there.

“What are these scars, Holm?” she asked.

He didn't answer.

She lifted her hands from his body. He groaned.

Tilting her head, she smiled down at him. “What are your scars?” she asked again, like a teacher.

He just panted.

“Are they badges of honor?” Her voice held faint censure.

Yes. “Maybe,” he said with a thick tongue.

“Lessons?”

His mind functioned again. He lifted and dropped a hand. “Some, probably.”

“Mistakes?”

He winced. He didn't want to talk. Especially not about perfection or problems or nightporting. “Yes, a couple are mistakes.” He hunched a shoulder. “You train, you make mistakes, you get scars. Marks. That's all scars are, marks.”

“They don't make you less of a fighter? Sometimes you even learn from them?”

He sighed, seeing where the exercise was going. “No and yes.”

Lark played with the hair on his head. He'd rather she played with it lower, much lower.

“Just like life, Holm. Everyone makes mistakes and sometimes they leave marks. But that's all they are, marks. Are you terribly afraid of getting more scars on your body?”

Holm stared at her. “Only if it will displease you.”

She smiled, one unlike any he'd seen. The black cloud of the feud that had shrouded them had vanished. They'd lost relatives, they'd both changed. Life would never be the same, but it could be good.

“Your body is beautiful, despite the marks. So is your character despite any of your perceived failures. Why should you be afraid of making mistakes?”

Disappointing his father. Not living up to the standard of a Noble FirstFamilies GreatHouse Heir. But those reasons were gone. And they weren't the reasons of a mature man. But they were reasons that had been tied up in his identity.

Lark bent down and licked the lovebite on his neck. His body roused to attention.

“I adore you. Look how you survived the blows of yesterday. Now that you've shown your true inner strength, I admire you more than ever before.”

“Yes,” he said, “lick me. Feel free to demonstrate your admiration.”

She laughed, then pressed her open mouth to his, and their tongues dueled, probing, thrusting, until her skin heated and her breath came ragged and he knew she desired him.

Lark drew back, her eyes dilated with passion. She cupped her hands around his face. “I love you
just as you are.
”

He lifted her over him, and she brought him inside her. They both moaned with delight.

She set the pace, riding him, her mind and emotions open, moving on him to maximize their pleasure. And as they climbed, as their bodies plunged together and she demanded his passion, she demanded something else.

She leaned close until their lips met, her breasts sliding against his chest.
You don't need to be perfect,
she sent the mind-whisper to him.
I want to hear you say and KNOW unto your bones that YOU DON'T NEED TO BE PERFECT!

His heart thundered.

Her words breathed into him. They infused his blood, settled in his marrow, pulsed at the base of his shaft, tingled in his every nerve, twined around sinew and muscle, then throbbed with every beat of his heart until he believed, truly believed as she did.
I don't have to be perfect.

He knew when all her thoughts dimmed, when all she focused on was the friction between their bodies, the ecstasy of having him pump into her, caress her on the inside, the length and breadth and strength of his shaft and how he gave her pleasure.

She threw out the lightning-white HeartBond, and he caught it and brought it close. She was his, mind, body, soul, her entire being open to him to her very core. “I love you,” she breathed.

He groaned, clutched her, blending the surface of their thoughts and emotions, brushed the HeartBond tenderly aside and before she could understand or protest, brought them to the peak to shatter together.

Holm kept the bond between them wide and open and Lark tucked next to his body. He could not bear to hurt her, and himself, again.

Her sharp intelligence returned faster than any other woman's he'd known, faster than his own, he thought ruefully. Though she was puzzled by his action of refusing the HeartBond, his physical, mental, and emotional intimacy reassured her.

When he could speak, he said, “The guilt and failure problems aren't all. There's more.”

She just cuddled closer and the back of his eyes prickled. He cleared his throat. “I had a problem with nightporting when I was a child. I'm close to my cuz, Straif Blackthorn, and was worried about his Family when they caught that virus. They all died except Straif.”

Lark shivered a little. “All the Healers know of the Blackthorns and their faulty Earth gene that makes them so susceptible to a common Celtan virus.”

“I nightported then first.” He adjusted their positions so he could stroke her smooth, elegant back. “When Tinne and I journeyed back to Druida from the 241 Range, we fell in the Great Washington Boghole. We nearly died. I tried to reach him, but couldn't. He ended up saving both of us.”

“Hard for a big brother, the golden boy of the Hollys, to accept, eh?”

“Yes.” He wondered if her own big brother, Huathe, ever cared for her as much as he'd cared for Tinne. Someday the pain would fade and he could ask. He curved his hands around her butt. He liked the shape. He considered another round of loving but knew he had to do something else first. “So I suppressed the memory as much as I could, and the guilt, and the failure.”

“And they worked on you.” Her mouth was close to his collarbone. She traced it with her tongue and he lost his train of thought. He ran his fingers through her fine, thick hair.

“I started nightporting to the Great Labyrinth at the end of spring. All summer, irregularly.” He grimaced. “Finally, when Mamá was wounded, I wore a DepressFlair armband at night.”

“Oh, Holm,” she sighed.

“But you've straightened me out. It won't happen again.”

She wiggled back and looked up at him; her eyes were deep, serious purple pools. “We're HeartMates. You helped me, too. You gave me so much when we first met. Caring, affection—just your holding me Healed something in me.” She stroked his cheekbone with the pad of her thumb. “The night after we'd gone to the beach . . .”

“Yes?”

“The Heathers gave me a mental-emotional test. I wouldn't have passed it without the time I'd spent with you. Then I would have had to live at T'Hawthorn Residence or T'Heather's. Everything would have been different.”

He brought the palm of her hand to his lips and kissed it. “We're HeartMates. We would have managed to find each other and a way to stay together. Just as we have.”

They lapsed into silence for a minute. Lark traced his eyebrows. “So, tell me of this other huge fault you have. It must be terrible if it is so obvious,” she teased.

“I can't tap my inner core.”

“What?”

“You know the deep link to your essential self?”

“Yes, of course. I use it when I Heal.”

That often, and he couldn't even find his. “I don't have a connection with my true self, the rock-solid balance of knowing my inner core.”

She looked thoughtful. “Since you always thought of yourself in terms of HollyHeir, your core could have evaded you. Especially since deep thought, meditation, and self-analysis aren't what a person thinks of as Holly Family traits.”

He squeezed her bottom. “Wretch.”

“But a truthful wretch. Lover—”

Holm stopped her mouth with a kiss, then reluctantly pulled away. “Don't call me that unless you want me inside you. I knew I had to tell you of my lack. Especially since you would have noticed it when we walked the labyrinth.”

“True, but Holm, this is an easy thing to correct.”

He scowled at her, thinking of all the time he'd spent here, all the time in T'Holly HouseHeart. “Ha!”

She placed his hand on her breast and his irritation vanished. “It is,” she said. “We're HeartMates. I can open myself completely. Through our bond you can follow me as I connect with my inner core, settle into my calm center. With that example you can find your own.”

He hated that it sounded so simple and logical. He stood and pulled her up. “Let's do it.”

Lark linked her fingers with his. The bond between them was open and clear. As she breathed deeply, he matched her breaths. Soon their hearts beat in time.

Holm led her to the start of the labyrinth path that led up and out of the crater. Lark smiled at him and his heart warmed, but his mind doubted.

“Ready?” she asked.

He braced himself. “Yes.”

“Don't.”

“Don't what?”

“Don't tense up. Relax, let your mind rest, your thoughts ebb and flow.” She used her voice like a Healer, calming.

“Ready,” he said.

They began walking. It was magical, treading the path. Especially linked physically and mentally with his HeartMate. Instead of thinking of his problems, or his schedule, or observing the Noble shrines each House had provided to decorate the labyrinth, he strolled. The soft night air caressed him, the bright bond between himself and Lark filled him with joy as he trod the pattern. Soon he sensed her sinking deep into herself, into a meditative trance state. She was completely open to him, so he followed her, and listened to her inner mantra that reflected her essential self.

The pattern of the labyrinth, the curving path and the switch-back turns, lulled him. He found himself following mental paths he'd never experienced before. He came to a door he vaguely recognized from infrequent dreams. He'd always dreaded opening that door and had retreated. Now the knob turned in his hand and he flung it open. Light encased him. Grounded him. He stopped. And discovered himself.