Lost Heart: A Celta Novella (Celta HeartMate Series) (7 page)

B
arton felt
Enata clench around him in her orgasm. He gritted his teeth and tried to hold back his own completion, skate on the edge of fabulous pleasure and exquisite need. She gasped, angled her hips, grabbed him around the shoulders, and he was lost.

He'd been semi-erect the whole damn day and he couldn't practice one more instant of patience. He let fierce need blast away his control. He thrust into her once, twice, and climaxed.

Just before he collapsed on his slender new wife, he rolled them to their sides . . . on a too damn small bedsponge. He needed a bigger bed. No,
they
needed a bigger bed, bedroom, house.

A small sigh escaped her, and he studied her, her fine-boned face, the pale, near translucent skin so delicate he could see pale blue veins in her temple. She seemed to consider her body as a housing for her mind.

His body was his best tool, cared for and honed as a matter of security . . . and, yes, pride.

Her eyes had closed and he sensed her drifting to sleep as the busyness of her mind faded into occasional thoughts. She, too, must have been tried by the unexpected events of the day. He frowned, lifted a finger to trace her high cheekbone. She appeared strung too tightly, was too thin, and her mind held a heaviness of coping with recent trauma. What?

He knew too little about her and her of him, but instinctively he drew her into his arms, against him so he could protect her.

She snuggled and gave that last exhale before sleep.

His whole body loosened, and not just because of the most incredible sex he'd ever had.

He'd done it! He'd claimed his woman
right
.

When he'd been left alone with her, with no extraordinary events carrying them along, he'd realized that he must cement their bond. It had started as a tendril spinning between them due to potions and initial attraction. He had to make it solid and real.

Enata's father's earlier derisive comments, barely noticed at the time, had worked on Barton. The Clovers, though a rising Family, were recently ennobled. Only Walker, Barton's half-brother resulting from a fling with a highly Flaired noblewoman, had enough psi power to raise them up, though the younger generations would be more powerful. Especially those of the Clovers who married into other Families with potent Flair. Like Walker. Like their cuz Trif.

Like Barton himself. During the long preparations of that day, he'd been informed that the Licorice Family, and, more importantly, the PublicLibrary the Licorices tended, had been founded within the first half-decade of the colonists’ landing. Over four hundred and fifteen years before.

Barton couldn't match his new lady in Flair. He didn't even have enough power to teleport. She was at the top of her profession.

As he was with his own, but that was due to physical skill and dedicated training.

Yeah, he'd felt that strand stretching between them had been too fragile, since they came from two very different worlds. And he'd wanted her from the moment he'd seen her.
Did
love her from that instant, knew in his gut and the marrow of his bones that she was the right woman for him.

He'd seen her eyes widen, felt pleasure spurt through that tiny bond when he'd quoted poetry, so he damn well kept it up. Would keep it up. A few lines had worked on women before, but the effect on Enata — her heart and spirit opening to him — had been significant. At least in that particular he knew what she liked and he'd make sure he'd give it to her, along with loving.

She needed love, to be surrounded by love. Pretty obvious her Family prized the cool and logical and didn't go in for displays of affection.
His
Family would help with that. As sleep tempted, he fumbled for his mind link with Walker, shot his brother a thought,
My wife needs loving Family
.

We got that
, Walker replied.
My HeartM—, my wife knows Enata. We'll be hands on with Enata
.

Good
, Walker sent back sleepily, smiled. Yeah, his Family was good. Walker had stopped from saying "HeartMate," since Barton had no HeartMate.

He gathered his wonderful, beautiful, amazing wife closer still. And her hand dropped to his sex.

She knew what he liked, and he was sure she'd give it to him.

A
septhour
before dawn they woke, starving. They'd made love several times in the night, more than Enata had ever done, advantages to having a very physical man, though she understood it would be necessary for her to become more physical herself. She definitely needed more stamina and, judging by the way he'd tossed her around earlier, some more mass, too. And muscles.

She'd never have the muscles he did, but she should be able to hold her own more than she had, though she could, of course, counter his muscles with the strength of her Flair.

Their last bout had taken place in the waterfall, one smaller than she thought this master suite should have. She grinned and put a sashay into her short walk to the no-time, hoping Barton couldn't hear her stomach grumbling.

He groaned and she heard the flop of him as he fell from sitting to the bedsponge. "Don't tempt me, woman! I need food before we celebrate our marriage again!"

Stopping at the low no-time, she glanced over her shoulder, found him staring avidly at her and appearing more interested in another round of sex than his words indicated. "Is it a celebration, this marriage?" She sounded more doubtful than she wanted.

"Absolutely, yes," he answered immediately. He sat back up with impressive ease.

"Good," she said, examining the contents of the no-time for food easy to eat naked, nothing too hot, cold or needing a lot of utensils. She settled on a large fruit and cheese platter and bent down to take out the plate.

Barton moaned again. "Foood . . .maybe. Maybe sex—"

"Food," she stated, throwing a cover over him and sitting next to him, ready to share a meal. Neither of them had touched the large wedding banquet. They’d danced instead. "What sounds best, fruit or cheese?"

"Fruit," he said. She popped a dark grape into his mouth.

"The selection of cheeses is wonderful!" she said. Before she spoke the last word, he plunked a cube of nutty-flavored cheese in her mouth. She swiped his finger with her tongue, pleased when he shuddered.

"I'm glad," she said, actually speaking before she thought, just letting a feeling out.

"About what?" he mumbled around a slice of fruit. He swallowed. "Specifically."

She found herself grinning. "Right now that we're eating a meal together."

He grunted. "Another good activity for couples." He put his hand under her chin and nudged her to kiss him. "I have sweetness on my mouth and want a taste of my tart lady."

Leaning toward him she slid the tip of her tongue between his lips. "And I want to taste my sweet, sweet man."

He scowled at her, but she trailed her tongue across his mouth and the juice from fruit mixed with the savory of the cheeses she'd sampled, exploding in flavor. With a gasp, she pulled back, realized she'd closed her eyes and couldn't see his face, and raised her lashes. She caught a look of tenderness that made her ache with happiness. Refusing to censor herself, she said, "With you I experience the true richness of every sensation."

He jerked back, took her hands in his own, ignoring her sticky fingers. "I am glad." He opened his mouth as if to say something, closed it and looked out the window, a lighter gray rectangle against the wall, then back at her. "It's been a magical day and night. I don't want it to end." A slow smile curved his lips. "They'll let us stay here, in my house — our house — in our bed all day." He jiggled his eyebrows in question.

Oh, yes, she wished for more sensational moments. Giddy irresponsibility flowed through her, along with the equally devil-may-care feeling shooting along their bond from Barton, accompanied by a look that touched her heart.

"Lets!" she agreed.

"All right, we'll continue this celebration. Is there any chilled fizz-wine in there?" He nodded to the no-time.

"I don't know, but I saw a very expensive vintage of springreen wine. Your brother and Family value you, to give that to you for your own personal use."

"Ah." He picked up a wedge of dark yellow cheese and munched, staring at her. "My brother's very happy with recent events." One side of his mouth lifted in an ironic smile.

She scanned his body, head to toe, and sent him a sultry look. She knew how important this after-sex . . . after
loving
time was, but the man stirred her. "Because you dated so many women?" She could see that, a handsome, very virile man like him.

He laughed shortly. "No. Just the opposite." Now he grimaced. "Maybe I did when younger. Lately I've cared for nothing except my work." Shaking his head, he continued, "Recently I've been determined to track down a couple of cuzes." His mouth flattened. "We failed them and they left, are lost."

That twanged some sorrowful chord inside her and she frowned, trying to pinpoint why.

And while she focused inwardly, he pounced.

She let him roll her to her back, then, with a Word, removed the food and platter from the bed to a nightstand. Then she used Flair to toss himself and her back over so she straddled him, enjoying his startled expression. As she kissed his cheek, she decided that she wanted to taste several particular parts of him, returning the favor of his delightful exploration in the night.

Her body flushed at the thought.

A quick tussle later, a fabulous out-of-time sensual experience like no other, and he'd collapsed into sleep beside her. She lay awake, surprise at herself holding off sleep.

She'd have liked to have blamed the wild sex and the tenderness and the intense, intimate connection on the potion they'd taken the previous day. But she raised to her elbow and studied him, this incredible man who'd exhausted her, and whom she'd exhausted — and all she could feel was that basic, instinctive attraction.
Mate
. Perhaps not a HeartMate, but more elemental, like she recognized him in the cells of her body, the marrow of her bones.

Such a gorgeous man, as if he'd been plucked from her mind and her ideal embodied: tall, large, muscular, not at all a scholarly build. Dark hair and deep blue eyes that made her shiver with desire. A face more rugged than handsome, showing character. So much sexier than Glyssa's man— stop that thought, no comparisons. To compare the men was beneath Enata. And no more judgments. She'd have to work on that. But there was no sexier man in the world than Barton Clover.

She'd won this man, or he'd won her.

E
nata slept fitfully
. The man in her bed, radiating heat, snoring softly, was luscious. The bedsponge was too soft. And the window seemed to be in the wrong direction. For a few minutes she listened to the quiet of the house, of the courtyards of the Clover Compound beyond. Nothing stirred, and if she was lonely she couldn't raise her voice and speak to an intelligent Residence. Not that she'd done that often, but the possibility had gotten her through some dark winter nights.

As if the loneliness had pulsed from her to him, Barton awoke and reached for her and this time the loving proceeded slowly, with an intimacy the dark engendered, with exchanged tender, lingering touches that pleased them both. Quietly, wordlessly, they joined and rocked to completion.

The next time she woke, Barton had left the bed and she was alone, though she heard the sound of a nearby flowing waterfall.

Slipping from the bed, she donned a light silkeen robe of pale green.

She didn't know if she liked the idea of only living with one person, no matter how beloved. Yet he'd moved from his family home to be alone in this narrow house. That demonstrated a disparate mind-set between them. Then, as the door slammed open and no fewer than ten women flowed in, she reconsidered.

"
W
elcome to the Clover Family
, to the circle of Clover women," trilled a pregnant woman younger than Enata. She didn't recall meeting the cheerful girl who gave her a hearty hug. "I'm Xanthia Clover, the last one marrying into the Family before you."

"Welcome!" the others chorused, gathering around her. One smoothed the robe over her shoulders, another patted her head and she felt her curly disarrayed hair fall into place. "We're so glad to have you as part of the Family," someone else said.

"Let's give you a lovely breakfast!" said an older woman.

"I—" Enata started. What happened to staying in bed all day? "Barton?"

"We told him telepathically that breakfast is ready. He'll join us as soon as he's done with a waterfall."

"The no-time—"

The older woman snorted. "It doesn't have special wedding morning omelettes." She gave a decided nod. "Made to order, whatever you like in it. The food storage unit doesn’t contain enough porcine strips for you and Barton. That man can eat. And he needs to keep his strength up."

Rollicking laughter and a nudge of an elbow. Along with the noise of the women and the grumbling of her stomach came the sense of new connections with these women. Enough to daze her.

The Clover Family connections grew every second she spent with Barton's relatives, began to thread through her, spurred by the ritual the night before and the vows Enata had made.

They swept her in a tide of femininity down the stairs of Barton's house, she only kept from falling by the press of bodies, then outside — in only her robe! More eyes, women and men, stared at her from the large rectangular courtyard, and from people at windows facing the yard. Just having their stares focused on her seemed to stimulate more links.

She gasped for breath.

"Come along, Enata," said a woman who Enata thought was the head female elder. Though she'd been introduced last night, Enata didn't recall her name. Barton's bond with that woman showed huge and thick and surged to hit Enata. She swayed.

Where was Barton? She sensed he still soaped in the waterfall. Another irritation that she stood here in the courtyard in her robe, no matter how warm the summer morning, and he didn't stand with her. Toes curling into a crack in the flagstones, she stopped to look back at his house, saw nothing but a brown brick building with no remarkable features.

Two women took her arms, helping her to walk to the horizontal wing at the end of the courtyard, though she didn't know that she cared to go with them anymore.

She saw Walker Clover's HeartMate, Sedwy Grove Clover, near the other end of the courtyard. Enata knew Sedwy, had helped the woman with her research and career in anthropology. "Sedwy!" she called, but other voices drowned out her cry, people exiting their houses to shout greetings to Enata, comment on the wedding the night before.

Barton, please request your ladies don't crowd me
.

She felt his laugh through her bond.
Just tell them to back off
.

All right. "Stop this!" she shouted. "Give me a little room, please!"

They didn't seem to hear her, kept conversations going among themselves, talking around her, exclaiming at the bonds they began to feel to her, and through her to the Licorice Family.

She muttered a mind-clearing spell. It would deplete her Flair, but she wanted coherent thought.
Barton, please call off your ladies
. She kept her mental voice crisp.
Before I do something to alienate them
. As they had alienated her? Was this some kind of test? Perhaps.

She
could
become an integral member of this large Family.

With that conclusion, the stirring threads of the Clovers' links to her through Barton tugged at Enata's insides, a nauseating wave. Yes, she was bonding with all the Clovers. They milled around her. As they moved it seemed those threads turned into a shroud, wrapping around her, binding her arms, crossing over her mouth so she couldn't speak.

So she sent a mental call,
Barton, can you come
?

In a minute, babe
, he replied, a little absently. She blinked. Obviously she was no longer his sole focus, perhaps not his primary one. She understood that, but it hurt.

Panting, she held out for a minute, two, as people propelled her into a large kitchen area that held two long tables. Her mind did slow swoops and her balance tilted. Two women yet framed her.

Why were they doing this?

She thought she sent the pointed question to them, along with her discomfort, and a tidal wave of affection struck her.

Too much! Too many people and minds and emotions!

Doubling over, she concentrated on the plank flooring to steady herself, then glanced up. People were talking to her, their mouths moving, loud buzzing in her ears.

Somewhere, in the back of her mind, in the back of her skull, throbbed a
need
to return to the PublicLibrary vaults. To the coolness and the quiet, the emptiness with no press of bodies.

She was so
tired
of feeling ill. It seemed like she'd struggled with sickness the whole month.

Barton?
This time she could barely hear her own thought. Could he?

No answer. No, she couldn't stay.

"Let me go, please," she shrieked, and silence fell over the room filled with Clovers of all ages.

She tottered.

Then she did the desperate and cowardly thing and teleported away to the place she knew best, her bedroom.

Bright sunlight painted a large yellow square on her spread. The scent of the frankincense candles she'd lit for blessings the day before wafted to her nose.

"Residence?" Her voice sounded weak and thin.

"I am here, Enata," it soothed in a male voice. Not Barton's. The Residence waited and quiet wrapped around her.

"Hungry," she muttered. She hadn't eaten much the day before, nothing in the night, a little cheese in the dawn. And she'd participated in a major ritual, danced, made enthusiastic love, barely slept.

She'd failed the Clovers' test, and she didn't care. She didn't know when she could force herself to return to the Compound, all those busy minds and emotions, that still impinged on her. She crumpled.

E
nata was gone
!

Barton jerked his attention away from his guards' scry report and the futile inquiry about Savi and Balansa. Walked away from the scry panel.

She'd left him. After one night of extraordinary passion, the minute he stepped away from her, she'd abandoned him. Misery.

Total shock.

As he ran downstairs he shouted to her telepathically.
Enata
!

No answer. Scowling, he listened hard, opened the bond between them — that had narrowed on her side — and found only deep dreams with a dark tinge.

I love you
, he sent, and he thought the tension in her dreams eased.

But he didn't know what to do. Whether to go after her or not.

Whether the intelligent Residence would even let him past the threshold. He had too much pride to scry her parents at the PublicLibrary, and her leaving him hurt, dammit.

He stormed into the courtyard, trusting his clothes to soak up the remaining damp from the waterfall, through the too-many-people-hanging-around-for-a-regular-workday and to the kitchen where high babble came from. The cluster of women, including Pink's wife who ran the compound, Aunt Pratty, didn't meet his eyes. Forget the clothes helping rid him of the wet, it could steam off him. The fact that he'd dismissed Enata's concerns just made him angrier — at himself.

"Weren't you all supposed to be loving and supportive?" As was he. He'd noted a darkness of trauma in her, and forgotten about it. He sucked in a deep breath, saw the women had lined up in a semi-circle before him.

"All we wanted to do was, uh, feed her breakfast and, uh, maybe figure out what kind of woman she was." But Pratty continued to avoid eye contact. "We didn't have any time to learn her, like we have others."

He loosened his jaw so his teeth didn't clamp together, sank a few centimeters into his balance.

"She seemed snooty," one of his cuzes said.

"What? From the wedding where you saw her? Who else said so? Sedwy knows her, Trif knows of her. Did you ask them?"

"They are busy."

His voice chilled. "You thought it so important that I wed that you near nagged me senseless, chivvied me into an appointment with the best matchmaker of Celta, then you don't accept his recommendation? Don't give
my wife
the respect she deserves?"

Shuffling began. Those closest to the doors faded away.

"We did try to help. We brought her here for good food. And we all sent her lots of good feelings! Especially when she asked."

He stared at the remaining people in the room. At least twenty-three. More filled the courtyard. "You saw her Family last night. She has both parents, a sister, and a sister's HeartMate. Five people."

"I guess we overwhelmed her," one of his guards taking the afternoon shift mumbled.

"I guess we did," Barton said. He couldn't stand still, couldn't stay in this room that had once been comforting, with what should be equally comforting smells of cooking food.

He'd been abandoned. Rejected by his bride the morning after his wedding. No, he wouldn't go to her. She would have to come to him.

Raising his voice and spearing it into the minds of all his guards, he shouted:
All guards currently off duty, report for sparring practice in the training room.
Mental groans came his way, but he didn't care, he needed to
act
.

Barton spent a good septhour and a half sparring with his men, working off his frustration. Each bout he wondered whether Enata would come back. He sensed when she rose, ate, took a waterfall. And when she cracked the link between them open wider, he couldn't stop the anger and hurt from surging to her, just as he knocked a sloppy guard down. That shocked
Enata
. Good.

Yeah, maybe in the upset of the moment when she'd left, he thought about going after her. Now his pride had risen. No way.

He moved on to train with two more guards.

E
nata awoke much later
, weak with hunger and slightly sick. Even before she sat up, she opened her link with Barton, winced at the hard anger coming from him, felt actual physical violence, before he snapped that connection shut.

She swallowed. She had her parents — until they died, and then they'd pass on to the Wheel of Stars within a year of each other, as HeartMates did. But her sister Glyssa would be spending most of her life on the Eastern frontier at the excavation of
Lugh's Spear
. Someday Enata would be alone . . . if she didn't mend the rift with her husband.

Husband
. A wonderful word, and Barton was a wonderful man, but they would both need to establish boundaries with each other and their Families, individually and as a unit. Create a Family themselves.

Enata believed that in a true marriage, each partner put the other first, before anyone else. Certainly her parents did that, and Enata had already noted the change in Glyssa since she'd returned from the excavation. Jace was now her most important person after herself. Enata didn't know how to do that yet, with Barton.

I
t took
Walker Clover negotiating with T'Licorice and pressure from both Families on Enata and Barton for them to meet that afternoon at a neutral location -- Landing Park outside the starship
Nuada's Sword
.

She mounted the steps of the white pavilion, then set all openings to privacy shields, made an invisible door in the front that would stop anyone except Barton.

When she felt him arrive at the par, she opened her bond fully. Her stomach tightened with anxiety but a warmth bloomed at the idea of being with him again.

Seeing him stride swiftly across the lawn made her heart nearly beat out of her chest. Before she could discern his features, she identified him by the way he moved, efficiently and with vitality. He leapt up the three wide steps to the pavilion, landing inside with hardly a thump of his large body.

Her arms flung out naturally, leaving the core of her body vulnerable. "I apologize for leaving."

"Leaving
me
." He slapped his chest and his mouth thinned.

She swallowed. "Leaving you."

"Don't do it again. If you need me, yell." One pace brought him to her. He caught her hands, kept them spread and took another step until his solid body brushed hers. "Look at me."

She angled her head up, met his dark blue gaze.

"I will be here for you, always." His voice matched his stare, dead serious. "I don't ever abandon my people."

That resonated through them both, a plucked chord with meaning in the deep dark of her and some vibration she'd understand soon inside him.

"And you will listen to me when I call," she stated.

He nodded. "I screwed up, too," he admitted.