Silent Warrior (11 page)

11

N
one of the Five Clans were what human beings would call magicians, but Hark was weaving a spell over her mind, body, heart. He was right. She’d spent mere minutes among his deepest thoughts. The experience was a cruel tease. Dark corners and erotic flashes and hopeful dreams he would never, ever speak aloud—she’d caught glimpses, as if offered a sip of the headiest wine only to have the bottle jerked away from her lips.

He caressed her thigh and up to her ribs. Then down again. The touch was arousing but no longer overtly sexual. Tension vibrated beneath his skin. She knew that moment was the most charged, the most exposed she’d ever been. Hark’s restlessness gave him away, too. They could be partners for the rest of their days, but at that moment, they were scared when standing on a precipice with no hand to hold.

She wanted
his
hand to hold.

“We don’t have the thorns,” she said, breathless, waiting for the moment when he’d grin and reveal this as one big joke.

He grinned, but it wasn’t malicious. It was
eager
.

“Guess what I found in an old Abyssinian temple about six years ago?”

“Found?”

“Yes,
found
. I wasn’t looking for it because I was too busy trying to steal a headdress one of my great-great-whatevers used to wear when she beheaded servants. We really come from a long line of bitches and bastards, don’t we? Anyway . . .”

After sitting up, he twisted toward the floor. Silence was treated to a sexy view of his torso. The flex of his back defined by muscles, the pull of his ligaments, and the subtle give of the ribs that supported his upper body. He was supple and strong, canny and maddening, morally dubious and oddly caring.

In other words, he was more of a man than she’d ever imagined having in her life. She had rarely imagined
any
man. There were simply too many obstacles to finding the right match. Maybe she’d found the right match in a barroom brawling tournament.

She caught sight of the curling blond hair at his nape. His bare throat.

To stay with her, he would need to wear a collar.
Not forever
. She knew that like she knew the weight of his thigh pressing between hers. Such certainty was not quantifiable like meters and ounces and pennies. It was real to her nonetheless.

Living gold.

The Chasm isn’t fixed.

Silence was wrapped in something far bigger than herself. Was it fair to involve Hark when she didn’t understand it herself? Or was he meant to join her? She didn’t care. Maybe he wouldn’t either. He was always damning the Dragon to do its worst, and she was being greedy and, yes, behaving more impetuously than had any Sath.

That was part of the appeal.

“See?” He twisted back into bed, propped on one elbow. “Thorns. Straight from our Motherland, no less.”

Silence frowned as he pushed a small sachet into her hands. She undid the silken tie. Out fell two silver-gray needles in the shape of crescents. One end of each crescent was slender and pointed. The other was topped with a tiny ball of the same silver-gray metal, as well as a ruby almost too small to see.

She peered closer, not yet ready to touch them. “Is that galena?”

“Yeah. Mined by the Red Sea, apparently. I had them appraised once—just in case I needed to make a quick exchange. High silver content. But the iron ore would’ve been good for grinding down into kohl. The composition, I mean, would’ve been . . . obviously there isn’t enough here to . . . I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

“You finally noticed it yourself.” Fingers trembling, Silence picked up one of the thorns. “The pain of the world,” she whispered. “I’d never thought I’d see one, let alone hold one or actually consider . . .”

“We do it or we don’t, Orla.”

She took a deep breath, sat up, and encouraged him to do the same. Cringing past the pain of her healing injury, she crossed her legs under the sheet and laid a blanket between their bodies. They faced each other. Only the blanket, the small sachet, and the thorns lay between them. “We do it.”

The sun had angled into the room in such a way as to illuminate their small, private altar. The Sath had never required witnesses because the thorns spoke for themselves. Silence liked that. She would never need to explain to any Dragon King that she belonged to another. They would see the matching thorn in Hark’s arm and know he was her man.

“I wish I had some
golish
,” she said. “To take the edge off.”

“You don’t need that.” His grin was huge. Wide. Stupidly, happily assured. As sunny as their morning. “Recklessness is our intoxicant of choice.”

She held out her arm, wrist up. “Hark, you have a difficult gift to give me.”

Silence could feel the energy between them, like a Tigony’s static charge ready to strike. His hands didn’t shake. He smoothed blond curls back from his forehead and chuckled a little as he picked up one half-inch crescent. “I never really thought about it. Did you? The trust involved? You, holding your arm out to me. Me, with a really sharp needle and no idea how to use it. Too shallow and it won’t stay. Too deep and it won’t show. And if I hurt you—”

“That’s the point.”

“Don’t start giving me fodder for puns.
My
point is that then I get to see what you can manage in return. Same unknowns. Same trust.”

“You have a difficult gift to give me,” she said, more exasperated. She took his chin in her free hand and gave it a tug. “I want it.”

He grinned again, then sobered. She’d seen him intense and ready for battle. She’d seen him fight off Jawahar’s mental hold. She’d seen him given over to the abandon of sexual release. This was different. She relaxed as she learned that Hark of Sath could make a promise with the solemnity required of any man.

Cradling the back of her wrist, he selected a spot halfway up the inside of her forearm. She had no scars there. Dragon Kings didn’t scar easily, but she had a few. It was a rare Cage warrior who could claim otherwise. So when he placed the tip of the crescent against her skin, she inhaled—for courage, not just in receiving the wound but in being able to follow through with all it represented.

He met her gaze, his blue eyes stormy. “This thorn is the pain of the world,” he said softly. “When I cannot protect you from it, I will comfort your body and calm your thoughts. Until the grief of my passing, I vow this is the last time I will cause you pain.”

Hark slid the tip beneath her skin.

Silence gasped. The surprise of it. The closeness. She watched in fascination as he continued to curve the thorn into her flesh until only the round, ruby-tipped head remained. The rest of the thorn was perfectly placed, recognizable only in the way it lifted her skin in that distinctive shape. The wound would scar. The thorn would remain a part of her forever.

He lifted her arm to his mouth and licked away the teardrop of blood that slid from where he’d penetrated her so intimately. His gaze was fire and fear and desire and . . . oh, so much deeper. He looked at her as if the entirety of his broken world had just been made whole.

He looked at her as if he loved her.

“Orla?”

She blinked. “Yes?”

“You have a difficult gift to give me.”

With only a nod, she picked up the second thorn. Hark extended his arm so that it rested against her thigh. Her own arm stung, but she was proud to see that her hands didn’t tremble. Too much trembling was weakness, and in this case, she would’ve interpreted weakness as doubt.

That time was past. If she wore his mark, he was definitely going to wear hers.

The galena sparkled in the light, where flecks of silver shone in the shiny gray metal. The ruby caught a sunbeam. She traced a thumb over the swath of skin she chose. The tip looked so insignificant and unimposing after the weapons they wielded and challenged.

Symbols could hold more meaning than any weapon.

“This thorn is the pain of the world.” She leaned over and kissed one cheek, then the other. “When I cannot protect you from it, I will comfort your body and calm your thoughts. Until the grief of my passing, I vow this is the last time I will cause you pain.”

She didn’t take as much time as Hark had. Perhaps he’d tried to be gentle. Silence wanted only efficiency and what would come after. The tip of the thorn curled into him as she pushed. He exhaled roughly, saying her real name like a man at prayer. When lodged all the way to its ruby head, his thorn matched hers, with raised crescents of skin to mark the path where they’d submitted to one another.

After kissing him once more, on the mouth this time, she leaned over and licked the place where she’d laid claim. The inside of his forearm was warm and smooth, but the ridge beneath his skin was undeniable and permanent. Like a barb on a fishhook, to remove it now would be destructive. Every Sath—no, every Dragon King—would recognize when a Sath couple had separated.

She tasted blood, traced her tongue over the ruby, and lifted her head to receive a fierce, rough kiss. Hark pushed her back on the bed. The blanket flew to the floor. He yanked the sheets back to reveal them both to the sunlight, like the gods their people had once been. That was millennia ago. Silence felt immortal. The man kneeling above her was virile and blazing with the heat of possession.

“I want to be gentle,” he rasped.

“We have all day for that. And all night.”

“Your leg.”

“Feels fine.”

She wasn’t back to full strength, but that didn’t matter. She held out her arms and scratched blunt nails down the lines of muscle arrowing toward his thick erection. He tilted his face toward the ceiling. She wouldn’t see his throat like that again for a long time, so she soaked up the sight of his corded strength and supple length. His Adam’s apple lifted and lowered. At his sides, Hark had tightened his hands into fists. That tension made the muscles of his forearms bulge. The crescent stood out in relief, and another drop of blood seeped from the delicate wound. Silence swiped it away and sucked her finger.

Hark made a savage noise. He levered over her and yanked the finger from her mouth. He sucked, moaning. Then he was inside her—one smooth thrust that stretched her wide, deep, completely vulnerable to his power. They kissed with abandon, even as his hips kept a measured, tense pace. Eyes, cheeks, lips, jaw, up and down one another’s torsos. She couldn’t get enough of his taste and all the new textures. Hers to explore.

Hers.

He lifted her hands above her head and pinned her wrists. Thrusting harder now, he brushed his lips over her thorn. They both groaned. It was too powerful. They’d purposefully hurt each other. They’d made vows older than recorded history. Now they were offering their bodies as sacrifices to another sort of eternity. Man and woman. Want. Need.
Taking
.

She should’ve felt trapped by his muscled weight and the inescapable way he grasped her wrists. Instead, Silence surrendered to the release of being pleasured. No one else would ever do this for her. To no one else would she award this much trust and vulnerability. The thought was humbling.

Then there were no thoughts. Hark tucked his mouth against her temple, lifted slightly on his elbows, and put all of his strength behind each thrust. The mattress told tales of wicked, straining bodies. So did their matched breathing. Gasping for air. Struggling toward release. Silence wrapped her legs around his lower back and urged him with thrusts of her own. They met halfway, until his body overwhelmed hers. Hips trapped hips. Thighs trapped thighs. His mouth crashed down over hers, plundering, sharing her groan. He penetrated her again, again, again.

Light brighter than white closed over her vision as she came. Rockets and starships and the sun reflecting off endless miles of desert. She bit his shoulder as she cried out, grinding, wanting more sensation even as she helped him achieve his release. Hark grunted in time with the drive of his lean hips until he stiffened and shuddered.

Their release was total, as was their collapse. Hark rolled slightly to one side, although they still clung to one another.

He couldn’t even wait until his breathing returned to normal before talking again. Of course not. “See, that wasn’t so earth-shatteringly incredible and terrifying, was it?”

Silence turned so that she could cross her arms over his chest. She licked the sweat between his pecs. “Yes, it was. I give you thirty minutes to start again.”

“You think it’ll take that long? Dragon be, woman, you don’t know your husband very well.”

“No,” she said with a sly smile. “Not yet. But I will.”

Keep reading for
the captivating introduction to THE DRAGON KINGS series by

Lindsey Piper

CAGED WARRIOR

Coming July 2013 from Pocket Books