The Ritual (41 page)

“I was going to take it slow,” he murmured as he began to move his hips. “I wanted to drive you crazy. Gods, I was going to make this last.” He sounded almost desperate, and his thrusts came hard and fast. I met him stroke for stroke, knowing that he was close already.

“I don’t need slow, not right now,” I moaned. “This is perfect. Keep going, please, don’t ever stop.” I didn’t even think about what I was saying – all I knew was him, his body and his desire, mirroring my own. When he locked his gaze to mine I saw his eyes cloud over and I grabbed his head, yanked it down and ran my tongue along his ear.

“Rin, no!” he called. “Too much! I can’t…” He stiffened, then gave one more deep, hard thrust as he cried out again and came deep inside me, and I followed him over the edge.

*   *   *   *   *

It seemed an eternity before we had recovered, an age which we spent in each other’s arms, first twitching and shuddering in the throes of bliss, then with tender caresses and small, nibbling kisses as we caught our breath. Finally Zash rolled off me and snuggled up against my side, his head on the pillow next to mine and his hand playing idly with my breasts.

“How long have we been fucking each other now?” he asked after a while.

I thought about it, drawing circles on his shoulder, then ventured, “About a month and a half?”

“Mmm, sounds about right.” He licked his thumb and grazed my nipple with it, blew a breath over it and watched it pucker into a hard peak before saying thoughtfully, “Six weeks of having you whenever I wanted, and yet every time I touch you or kiss you, you have me on the edge. You make me feel like a green boy, fighting not to spill his seed all over a girl’s thighs before he’s even inside her.”

I chuckled and kissed him, running my fingers across his cheek. “You could have fooled me. But yes, it’s rather… intense, isn’t it?”

“That’s an understatement. Rin, every single time I fuck you is like…” He stopped, struggling for words. “It’s better, more mind-blowing, more satisfying, more overwhelming than it’s ever felt like with anyone else. Is that love?”

I turned to him, tangled my legs with his and whispered, “It must be. It feels the same for me.”

“The very first time I had you was incredible,” he murmured. “At first I thought it was because I hadn’t fucked anyone for a while. I thought it felt so good because you’d been driving me crazy for weeks, and I wanted you so badly…” He kissed me, sliding his tongue into my mouth, and when I rested my hand on his chest I could feel his heart flutter under my palm. He pushed me down onto my back again, letting his hand drift down my stomach until it came to rest between my thighs.

“I’ve never wanted anyone as badly as I wanted you then,” he whispered, dipping his fingers down and stroking my moist folds. “So I thought I’d get it out of my system. I never thought that you would only make me hungry for more.” His thumb began to caress my centre of pleasure as he pushed a finger into me, and I heard myself make a tiny, involuntary sound of need as I clamped my fingers around his shoulder.

“See?” he crooned. “How can I resist that? How could I ever resist you? Rin, I was almost mad with desire when I first took you, but every time since has been just as good or better. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve already had you, or how long ago the last time was. Every time is at least as good as that very first time.”

His fingers were steady, nimble and clever as he worked on me, and when he stopped speaking I realised I was grinding against his hand with abandon, and that he was watching me with a smile on his face. “Please…” I whispered, and he brought his head close and blew into my ear.

“My Little Firelocks,” he breathed, and then his lips were on my ear and I cried out as I came, arching and spasming until I came to rest in his arms, breathing hard.

“I love you,” I finally managed to say, and he kissed me before pushing me to arms’ length.

“You said you lied to me, back at the monastery. That you did love me then.” There was a hint of reproach in his voice, and I suppressed the urge to chuckle.

“I loved you long before that, but it was a convenient excuse just then.”

“Long before that? I remember you saying that you wanted me the moment you first saw me. Surely that wasn’t love?”

I laughed. “No, that was lust. Stronger than I’d ever felt it, but still just lust. And I didn’t like it at all.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t?”

“Gods, no. I thought you were an arrogant, conceited, sarcastic cock.”

His lips curved into his old, familiar, mocking smile. “I
am
an arrogant, conceited, sarcastic cock,” he said, bending down to nibble on my bottom lip.

“You are,” I agreed, “but then I discovered that you are also caring, and generous, and clever, and protective. And when you kissed me I was lost.”

“Hmm? Oh, that kiss,” he said as if he only just remembered about it, and I jabbed a finger into his side, making him squirm. “Ow! Unnecessary!”

“Don’t pretend that it didn’t affect you then,” I reproached him. “It must have done. Why else would you have stopped talking to me? Why did you?”

He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “Rin, I’d just watched some disgusting elf do everything to you that I’d been dreaming about myself, and then I found out that you’d done it to help me. I’d seen how you’d been looking at me, and I simply couldn’t resist kissing you. Just one kiss, I told myself, but you went up like flashfire and took me with you, and I couldn’t handle it. I hadn’t intended on bedding you, even though I wanted to, but after that kiss I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to resist you if it happened again. I had to bring some distance back between us.”

“You should have bedded me instead,” I said. “I wouldn’t have said no.” I began kissing my way down from his collarbone to his stomach, and he stretched lazily.

“What, fuck the person I was intending to let die in my place? That would have been a bit much, even for me.”

“Mior knows you better than you do. He said you couldn’t do it.” I ran a finger along his cock, making it twitch, and he crooned in his throat.

“He was right,” he said breathlessly. “But I wasn’t going to admit that to him, or even to myself, really.”

“Hmm, you’re good at denying things to yourself, aren’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

I chuckled. “Zash, did you really believe me back at the monastery, when I said that I didn’t love you? Back there I could have believed that you loved me. You were so happy to see me when I escaped…”

“I… I suppose I ought to have realised,” he admitted grudgingly. “And maybe I loved you then, but that was another thing I wouldn’t admit to myself. Not until that raid in Nennomar.”

He pulled me up, locking my gaze with his. “That was the longest day of my life, Rin. To be forced to sit there and wait for you, not knowing what had happened to you, where you were, whether you were safe… I realised then that I couldn’t do without you anymore. That I wanted you to stay alive, and stay with me. But I still couldn’t think of what to do about Azerev, so to keep you alive was the second best choice. And then you went and took that choice away from me,” he added, his expression hardening.

“I said it then and I’ll say it now, Zash, you don’t need me as much as I need you,” I said, refusing to feel guilty. “You’re a thief through and through, you’d find enough satisfaction in that. You’d be fine.”

The flash of fury in his eyes was as sudden as it was unexpected. He surged upright and grabbed my wrists, turning us over and pinning me down onto the bed. “Fuck you, Chiarin!” he exclaimed. “You have no right to make that judgement, no right to decide that your need is greater than mine!” He let himself drop down on top of me, then kissed me with a ferocity that had fire leaping through my body. I thrust my tongue into his mouth and clamped onto him, my hand fisting into his hair. He made a low sound of need in the back of his throat, and when I wrapped my legs around his waist he shifted until he could thrust his cock into me deeply, making us both cry out in unison.

For several heartbeats I met his need, met him stroke for stroke. He was pounding into me furiously, and I wallowed in the bliss of him, of his hot skin against mine and the feel of him filling me. Then I grasped his hips and held him still, meeting his angry gaze steadily when he raised his head. “I have every right to decide what to do with my own life, whether you like it or not,” I said. “Maybe if you had trusted me we could have figured out something together, rather than working past each other.”

His eyes softened. “I wanted to. But I was so afraid that you would just run away… I’d been misleading you, so why would you have stayed to help me if I had confessed it to you? Besides, you didn’t trust me either. You could have confronted me when you worked out what was going on.”

I shifted my hips and he began moving again, slowly but steadily. I caressed his shoulders as I admitted, “Yes, I could have, and I was afraid to as well. Maybe we’ll just have to agree to trust each other from now on. To agree on something together before we do it.”

“If that stops us both from doing these idiotic things, I can do that,” he murmured, and kissed me tenderly. Then he dropped his forehead onto mine and cupped his hand around my face. “Gods, Rin, do you have any idea what I went through this morning? When Azerev’s compulsion finally fell away I thought I’d find you dead, I thought he’d been stupid enough to keep his end of the bargain and take that mark away. We came back to kill him, or die trying.”

“I think he just forgot about you,” I said, stroking his back with long, smooth movements. “He was so absorbed in his ritual that he forgot to hold you back.”

He nodded. “The relief when I saw that your eyes were open, and when you spoke to me… That made it clear like nothing else could. I do need you with me, Rin. Wherever I go, always.”

“Always?”

“Always,” he repeated, closing his hand around my breast and speeding up his thrusts. “Wherever you go, so will
I. I’m never letting you go again. You’re stuck with me, whether you like it or not.”

“Oh, I like it,” I breathed. “I like it very much.” I pulled his head down and kissed him, and neither of us spoke again until we’d driven each other over the edge once more.

“So what do we do next?” I asked afterwards, twining a lock of his hair around my fingers.

“Lay low for a few days, then check out what’s going on in Arlis,” he replied, drawing lazy circles on my stomach.

“And then?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. That depends on what’s happened, I suppose.”

“Does it though? What were you planning on doing after you’d finished this job?”

He was quiet for a few moments, then said, “I hadn’t dared to think about it, to tell you the truth. But I suppose we’d just have gone on to do what we’ve always done – travel around, burgle places, steal things on commission if we can find someone who needs something. Stay alive.”

“So nothing’s changed then, right? There’s just four of us now rather than two.”

“No, I suppose you’re right,” he said with a smile. He turned and brushed my cheek with his nose. “How about we go south? We can go to Innamar, or maybe even Danzar. By the time we get there it’ll be winter, and it won’t be so cold down there.”

“That sounds wonderful. But for now we lay low, right?”

“Yes. We’ll have to keep ourselves occupied here for a few days.”

“Gosh,” I murmured. “Whatever will we do?”

He gave me a lazy smile. “I’ve got a few suggestions…”

*   *   *   *   *

The aftermath of the events in Arlis was nothing like we had expected. We had imagined a retaliatory raid on half-elves, or several days of civil unrest while everyone accused everyone else of conspiring against the king, but when Shani and Mior went into the city after three days they returned with news that Sovander’s daughter Timaniel had claimed the throne, and had quelled any unrest firmly, though with a good dose of diplomacy as well. She was still establishing herself, and did face opposition – especially from the more traditionalist among her father’s advisors, who were against the idea of a woman on the throne – but she was the only child of Sovander, who had himself also been an only child, so her claim to the throne was beyond a doubt.

What astonished us more, however, was the fact that she had pardoned and released all half-elves who had been caught to fight in the Midsummer Magnificence, and had publicly announced that her father’s death had resulted from the actions of one lonely, dissident, dissatisfied elf. No further investigation or prosecution would follow Sovander’s murder.

It was enough for Zash to decide that it was safe to go out on the road again, and we left for Fennar that same day. About halfway there we were overtaken by four mounted royal guards, which caused us a few moments of panic, but although we  were in full view, they never looked at us twice and even took care to give us a wide berth rather than nearly riding us down. It puzzled us no end, for their behaviour was uncharacteristic of royal guards.

Upon reaching Fennar it became apparent what their mission had been. There was a notice from the new queen pinned up on all public notice boards, announcing that with immediate effect all brothels would come under royal control. There would be strict checks on whether the workers – she used that very word – were employed voluntarily, and there would be regular medical checks to ensure the continued health of the employees.