Читать книгу Drink of Me - Jacquelyn Frank - Страница 8

Strangely enough, that confession was the first thing that made sense about her. It explained why, when he’d been seeking for her, he’d felt nothing but sorrow and pain. It turned out that she knew nothing of who she was or how she’d come to be in that attic. In truth, the only thing they were both certain of was that she knew he was Sánge, and that she seemed to trust him with outrageous simplicity and totality even though she apparently knew little else of the world around her.

Reule supposed she didn’t have much of a choice. He also figured that might be why she felt no revulsion or trepidation concerning his breed. Yet he wasn’t certain. If he was confused, he could only imagine how she must feel.

“My Prime, I’m certain she is warm enough now. You ought to leave her to me and one of the girls to tend her bath and work through that hair of hers,” Pariedes said with a cluck of disapproval at his lingering behavior. “You can save these endless questions for after she has a full belly and a decent dress on!”

The remark reminded Reule of his own intentions, and he gave the naked woman in his arms a sheepish grin.

“I did promise that, didn’t I? I didn’t mean to break my word.” He hadn’t been able to help himself. Her confession that she did not know her name elicited a barrage of questions that he absolutely had to ask. Did she know where she was? What she was? How she’d gotten there? What had brought her to the point at which he’d found her? As he asked each question, she gave a decided no or shake of her head after she gave it a moment’s thought. Determined to do the right thing now, Reule tried to stand, gently explaining to her when she tightened her hold around his neck in refusal.

“These steps are shallow, as is all this side of the pool. You could stand and it would never go above your…chest.” He cleared his throat hastily as he skipped saying “breasts,” as if it would help him deny the feel of them against his chest. “Or you can just sit here and Para will help you to bathe. If—”

“No!” she cried, clinging to him as he gained his feet so that her legs were clamped like a vise around his waist and her arms were back to choking him about the neck. He didn’t have to hear Para’s gasp to be aware of her shocked sensibilities. The poor thing was so flustered, Reule could feel it buzzing all up and down his mind. However, her emotion was nothing compared to the terror coming from the woman wrapped around him. “No, don’t go! I don’t want you to. Reule, please. You can bathe me, can’t you? Why do you want to leave me?”

Reule ignored Para’s horrified squawk and looked into frightened, faceted irises. His hands curved around her waist, her silky skin wonderfully warm now.

“I’m not leaving you,” he said gently, keenly realizing the reasons why she might react in such a way. She was either so disturbed by the idea of being abandoned that she was willing to throw away all propriety, or she came from a culture in which women behaved vastly differently than in theirs. “I wouldn’t abandon you,” he tried to reassure her. “I’m only going across the hall for my own bath. Para will—”

“But you can stay and bathe with me. There’s plenty of room. I won’t bother you. Or I can help you bathe!” she tacked on, clearly delighted to have come up with the inspiration.

Lord and Lady. The images she provoked appeared too quickly and far too vividly before he could head them off. Those small hands…the slippery slide of soap…his body.

Reule sat back down quickly as tight, wet fabric stretched to accommodate his blazing erection and the rush left him light-headed. Reule sucked in a deep breath because he felt as though he wasn’t breathing. He watched her blink at him with innocent candor. She wasn’t bargaining her soul away to keep him there; she simply didn’t see any reason why he should leave. She didn’t understand why they couldn’t share this large bath and bathe one another with practicality, and because she didn’t understand, she wouldn’t believe he wasn’t trying to discard her.

“Okay,” he murmured as he raised a hand to stroke gently along her collarbone. He wasn’t agreeing to anything. Rather, he was merely preparing to be firm as he tried to find the logic that would help her to understand or trust. “Kébé,” he began carefully, “it’s considered improper for men and women in this society to bathe together.”

“But aren’t you bathing with me now?”

“I was only warming you from a bad chill.” That, he realized with an inner wince, was a bit of a lie. Whatever his reasoning, he had indeed been bathing her. “And, as you see, I’m clothed…mostly.”

She sat back, her bottom rocking provocatively against his thighs as she obediently looked down at him. The pulse of heated blood that rushed through him would’ve made a weaker man swoon. He was very nearly that weaker man, Reule thought as his heart thumped with a fury against his breastbone.

“And in your society men and women never bathe one another? Never at all?”

Reule was about to agree, but realized it would be inaccurate. “Well, sometimes if a man and woman are lovers they will share a bath or shower.”

“And that’s not improper?”

“Um…no. What lovers do in private between themselves is acceptable if both desire it.”

“Then send her away”—she jerked her head toward Para—“and we’ll become lovers. Then you’ll have no need to leave.” She gave him a satisfied smile at her own logic. Reule, meanwhile, almost choked up a lung. He’d never heard such outrageous reasoning in all of his life.

“Kébé,” he choked out, “people don’t become lovers just so they can bathe together!”

“Well, why not? They become lovers for far less practical reasons, only to regret it later.” She paused to nod after a moment’s consideration. “I wouldn’t regret it. You’re very handsome and I can tell you desire me very much.” She punctuated the observation by sliding her hand quickly down the front of his body and over the bulge in his breeches. She boldly cupped his balls and cock, outlining her evidence with palm and fingers. “I suspect you’d be an excellent mate. You’re strong and powerful, and quite well-endowed for a male.”

There was a resounding thud as Pariedes hit the floor in a dead faint behind them. Reule hardly had the presence of mind to care. He was strangling, in clothes, in reactions, and in raw heat that far outshined that of the pool. He could feel the difference between that small, small hand and his large, engorged body, and it was devastatingly arousing. He hated himself for feeling that, for wanting that, when he knew this was all so wrong. Even so, he saw her eyes widen as she got a true idea of his measure and he throbbed against her seeking touch in response. She licked her neglected lips slowly and he knew her thoughts, no telepathy necessary.

She was killing him, he thought with a groan.

He was hungry, tired, and honorable, and yet she made him ferocious with the desire to throw it all away and accept her taunting invitation.

“Kébé,” he rasped as he reached for her wrist, “you’ve been through too much to make such choices right now. Especially when you can’t remember if…” If she already has a lover? If she’s been raped? If…? “Besides,” he forced out in cruel reminder for them both as he placed her hand safely at his neck, “you wouldn’t want to be my lover. I am Sánge. Outlanders don’t take Sánge for their lovers. Though I know not which kind, you are most obviously an outlander.”

“Why not?” she asked softly, her frown deeply troubled by the revelation. “What’s wrong with taking Sánge for lovers?”

Tension coiled through Reule instantly, clenching at every muscle in his body. She doesn’t know. This was why she’d been so warm and accepting. Of course she didn’t know. If she’d known, she’d have reacted with disgust just as all the others did. He’d been foolish to expect or think otherwise. But how to explain what she’d said the moment he’d found her? A remnant of memory? Of nightmares? A fevered snatch of recall from a horror story about the Sánge?

“You don’t want to know,” he said sharply, his tone extremely harsh as he got up and stepped out of the water.

“Yes, I do! Tell me, please,” she begged him as she clung as tightly to him as she could.

Tell her? Could he tell her? Impossible. At the moment, he was the only anchor she had in a world torn apart by terror. If he took that trust away, replaced it with fear, who would she have?

And how could he ever explain it so she’d truly understand that the drinking of a lover’s blood wasn’t the horrifying, blasphemous act other cultures thought it was? How to describe that moment, just before climax, when a man sank his teeth into a woman? That instant when the essence of her very life pulsed onto his tongue, slid down his throat, and then spilled through him in the most intensely erotic sensation, so that it made his entire body clench and shudder with pleasure until he came in endless, drenching pulsations of ecstasy? There was no delicate way to explain an act that was so intensely wonderful when he knew none but Sánge could ever really understand; could ever really accept. If he couldn’t explain that, then he couldn’t explain the rest. Acts of body and mind beyond outlander sensibilities. The possessiveness, the ferocity, the sheer intensity of mating with a telepathic Sánge. Especially a telepathic Sánge like him.

In a sudden fit of anger, Reule overpowered her physically to pry her off him and she landed on the bench with a thump and a small sound of pain. Regret twanged through him, but he couldn’t pause to apologize or he’d never leave the room. He had to leave. Now.

Reule reached down to Para and lightly smacked his fingers against her cheek until she opened her eyes with a flutter. “Wake, lioness,” he called to her gently. “Your cub needs you. Are you well?” She blushed and nodded vigorously and he felt her embarrassment over her display.

Reule surged up to his full imposing height, unable to find it within himself to reassure her just then. His tone was clipped as he instructed the servant. “Bathe her, dress her, and feed her. Install her in the north wing.” In his current temper, he wanted to forbid her from staying on the same floor as he. But her innocence didn’t deserve punishment. He was the only one she trusted, whether she should or not, and it would be wrong to exile her to a lonely place in a strange world. “Across the hall from my suite will do. No one is to approach her save yourself and another girl to help you. She’s frightened enough.”

It was all the instruction he could give. He turned on his heel and marched out of the bath. He didn’t have to look back to see the beseeching hand that tried to grab for him or to hear the panicked gasp of fear as he completed the act that terrified her from sense to soul.

He abandoned her.

But he felt it all quite plainly as that tidal wave of sorrow burst forth in full majesty once more.

As promised, Reule didn’t go far. Apparently he was something of a masochist, he thought grimly as he sat in a private bath across the hall and washed away the grime from his body, if not the spreading stain on his soul. He could feel her like a sharply rising and falling aria, painfully honest as her emotional expression expanded from mere sorrow to fear and a raw sense of betrayal and rejection.

Lord. Reule rubbed his fingers against his temple as his head began to throb painfully. He despised knowing that he’d provided those newer emotions to her mostly blank canvas of feelings and thoughts. But what was he to do? It was the only choice. If she knew the depth and truth of what was seen as Sánge savagery…

Sánge, bautor mo.

The phrase she had spoken rushed into his mind like a flatland wind scour, an infamous windstorm that scrubbed away everything along its path. People, animals, every blade of grass, all would be swept away.

Sánge, bautor mo.

Sánge, drink of me.

Reule shuddered at the erotic rush that remembering the words sent through him. If she didn’t know, why would she say that? It kept coming back to that single, crucial command. It wasn’t an accident she’d said it that way. It couldn’t be. It was ritualistic, that phrase. It was what a Sánge bride said to her husband on the night of her marriage, the first time she stepped into his arms and prepared to make love.

Reule reached below the water and wrapped a fist around his savagely aroused penis, closing his eyes as another shudder rocked through him. He shouldn’t be feeling this. He shouldn’t be reacting like an untried boy getting hard at every thought of a woman. It wasn’t who he was. It never really had been, even as a youth. He’d been born in war and the desolation of starvation and persecution. He’d learned to flee before he’d learned to walk. He’d been heir to devastating responsibility, taking on the mantle of it when he was only sixteen years old. Too young to become responsible for the lives of a tribe numbering in the thousands; old enough to understand his parents had been murdered simply for being what they were.

Sánge.

With a curse, Reule released himself and ran wet hands through his hair in furious frustration. He hadn’t thought about these things in so very long. Why now? Why were these memories invading his peace and the safety he had found in the stone walls of his valley fortress?

Reule couldn’t say he was surprised when a sharp knock sounded on the door a short time later. With a long sigh, he relaxed back in the wide, sunken tub and spread his arms along the ceramic-tiled edges before bidding his visitor come in.

Darcio entered, shutting the door quickly to keep the warmth in. Reule watched warily as his companion turned to face him. His hair was wet from his own bath and his clothing neat and fresh. Reule’s Shadow was even freshly shaved, which was more than he could say for himself. Then again, Darcio hadn’t been tending to…

Reule shoved the thought aside. He’d probably been emanating far too much emotion as it was already. Darcio’s presence was proof of that. He didn’t need to rehash his conflicts while his friend was staring at him so intently.

“What is it?” Reule asked, unable to keep the irritable bite from his voice.

“Now, that’s strange,” Darcio mused. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

Darcio ignored the steam and the wetness coating everything in the room and moved to sit back casually on a bench as he regarded his Prime. The smaller private baths like this one were plumbed and tiled, rather than naturally replenishing like the Prime’s Bath. In comparison, the oval tub was rather small…if a tub big enough to hold four people could be called small. Still, it gave Reule little room to escape Darcio’s scrutiny.

“Now, I know I’m not as easygoing as Rye, nor as powerful, for that matter, but I imagine I’m as good to talk to as anyone else,” Darcio speculated.

“Of course you are,” Reule snapped, hating it when Darcio denigrated himself like that. It was as if Darcio, whom Reule couldn’t imagine living without, didn’t feel himself worthy of his role as advisor and protector. Reule believed it was his inhibition about his low-level telepathy that made him so, but Darcio had skill and ability that made him powerful in other ways. Reule just wished he’d acknowledge that to himself from time to time. “I just don’t want to talk,” Reule mumbled irritably.

“Well, I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

“Why?” Reule barked, his darkened hazel eyes flashing furiously.

Darcio shrugged, a slight lifting of a single shoulder that belied the intense focus of his carefully assessing gray eyes. “Because I know how fastidious you are, and how determined to shield others from your emotional emanations. You rarely lose control. However, every upper-level ’path in the castle has been getting a slideshow of their Prime’s moods ever since you crossed beneath the portcullis. My suggestion to you is to vent this emotional pollution you’re swimming in and gain your privacy back.”

Reule had little to say in argument, so he didn’t bother. He turned his head aside for several minutes as he struggled to draw his tattered thoughts together.

“I have to ask you something first,” he said carefully, knowing Darcio’s reaction could be potentially volatile. “It’s a favor to me, but one you won’t like.”

“I rarely like doing favors for anyone but you, Reule,” he said, dropping all formality in light of the request. “Ask your favor.”

“I need to know if she was raped,” Reule said quickly, meeting his friend’s eyes in time to see them widen.

“Shit,” Darcio hissed, leaning forward to place elbows against knees and running thick fingers through dark blond hair. Reule wasn’t fooled. He saw the shudder that his Shadow tried to hide with the gesture. “Can’t the apothecary tell you that?”

“She won’t let him near her, I promise you that. She regards even Para with nothing but suspicion and fear. Pariedes, who everyone makes fast friends with.”

“You should wait for her to tell you in her own time.”

“I would, but she can’t even remember her name, never mind how she got mapped with bruises and half the skin on her back scoured off. Friction burned off,” Reule added, menace creeping thickly into his tone.

“Shit.” Darcio’s voice shook as he uttered the curse.

“I wouldn’t ask you—”

“I know,” Darcio cut him off hastily. “Why do you need to know so badly, Reule? If she can’t remember, shouldn’t you leave it at that? What will you say if you know the truth and she doesn’t? Don’t put yourself in that position.”

“You don’t need to know my reasons,” Reule said carefully. “The task won’t be any less difficult for you if you do. Let me worry about my motivations and the results. But if it helps you, I’ll at least be able to tell the apothecary, and he’ll be able to act accordingly without putting her through the trauma of an examination.”

Reule could tell by the weight of his sigh that Darcio would agree. He didn’t need to be a telepath, only a longtime friend, to know it. The method was simple, even if it was unique and potentially traumatic for Darcio. The Prime Shadow had been born with a gift as exclusive and powerful as Reule’s ability to emanate. But like that gift, it was hard to control and not always a pleasant thing to have at one’s disposal. Reule’s mother and his granddame had both had the gift of emanation, so it had come with a name and a measure of training. Darcio was the first of his kind to exhibit his particular power and so he’d named it himself, calling it “the Curse.”

Darcio had the ability to sort through the physical trauma of the living and the deceased, the conscious and the comatose, in order to find out what had happened to them. Since it was a mapping of the body and not of the psyche, the victim could be brain-dead or just plain dead and Darcio could still gather history. It wasn’t a pleasant gift, and Reule didn’t blame his Shadow for his reluctance to use it. Especially when Darcio had once explained it to him as “traumatic empathy.” He didn’t merely read the memory, he was overcome by it, reliving the disturbance in his mind as if he were in the actual moment, suffering the abuse, or the death. It took him days, sometimes months to shake the experiences. There were even those that never let go. Perhaps if he’d practiced the power more, he’d learn how to release them. Understandably, he refused to use it unless necessary. To his mind, practice was utterly out of the question.

Reule had only asked this favor twice before. Once to discover who’d murdered his parents. Darcio was seven years his senior, and at the time he had never once told a soul about his ability, which he considered horrifying. Upon learning of the terrible deaths of the Prime and Prima of their Sánge tribe, Shadow had had a knee-jerk thought impulse and the already powerful Reule had caught it like a brass ring. That time, he’d forced Darcio’s compliance, and it had taken three years for him to earn his forgiveness. The second time was the day they’d come upon a wagon train torn asunder by Jakals, where men had been tortured, women and children raped for the pleasure of their emotions. Reule had hardly needed to ask. Darcio had been black with fury, whipping his power out with a ready vengeance.

Shadow didn’t do that now as he sat up straight and closed his eyes. He would tread more carefully, protecting himself and as much of the privacy of his target as could be preserved under the circumstances. Reule quietly watched him. It was a testament to how Darcio’s power had grown that he didn’t have to be in the same room as his subject in order to read her. Last Reule had known, Shadow needed physical contact with his target.

Darcio sought for basics first, body memories of the most recent hours, which would orient him and then allow him to backtrack in a steady, chronological fashion, keeping him from getting confused once he lost familiar reference points. He would know enough of her past hours to catch the rhythm of her body cycle.

The first memory was always forcefully intense. It flashed into Darcio’s consciousness like a percussive explosion, abruptly striking up a discordant symphony. Lights flashed, noise blared, sensations were magnified…and this time was no different.

Oddly enough, it was a memory of Reule that came to Darcio. Shadow hadn’t considered that Reule’s recent upset might be rooted squarely in the outlander girl. She hadn’t even been conscious when Reule had brought her down. Darcio had thought this request to use his Curse had been Reule’s way of dodging his inquisition about his emotional well-being. In truth, Shadow realized, this was Reule’s way of answering without answering. Reule knew Darcio’s ability would allow the Prime Shadow to have a front-row seat to the memory of his disturbance.

Five seconds later, Darcio became intimate with what had disturbed Reule so deeply. He recalled everything the nameless girl had experienced in that pool; every wave of heat and every touch of Reule’s ministrations. She hadn’t been awake, but her body remembered, and therefore Darcio remembered.

Shadow knew that his Prime was sharing the experience, using his telepathy to observe as he read the outlander. Had it been any of the rest of the Pack, Darcio might have been embarrassed, witnessing acts that were by turns tender and seductive. However, Reule and he had walked as Prime and Prime’s Shadow together for eighty-five years now. They’d trained and warred, aged and whored, and seen many things, both good and evil, in the world. At ninety-one and ninety-eight years old, they were in the prime of a Sánge’s life cycle. Darcio anticipated that, though they were no longer wild with youth, he and Reule would experience much more of life together before all was done.

While learning of Reule’s sexual interest didn’t make him blush, it did worry him. He’d withhold judgment until after he completed his scan, but even so, outlanders didn’t welcome Sánge, and Sánge didn’t welcome outlanders. Reule would be a fool to think otherwise, no matter how unusual her attachment to him was. It seemed to Darcio that she was merely clinging to her rescuer in the wake of a great trauma and…

…and then the trauma itself began to burn into life, searing across his mind and body until he felt as though he were on fire. He threw back his head and gasped in a harsh breath as agony pummeled him from head to toe. He swallowed, gritting his teeth at the confusing and brutal abuse, tears pricking behind his lids as he tried to hold on. If she can endure this, so can I, he commanded himself.

Within his mind, he was far from the bath and Reule, yet he knew his Prime was now physically by his side, watching him steadily, ready to end the pain he’d asked his friend to suffer if necessary.

Mildew, must, and terrible cold. Every inch of his skin was throbbing and burning with open, fresh, and barely healed wounds. There was something strange about what he felt, even as sadness overwhelmed him again and again, a despair that tightened his lungs, forcing tears to fall even when he was too thirsty, too hungry, and too tired to weep. There was sleep in short, taunting snatches, but always the cold. Then that strange vibration again, humming the length and breadth of his—her—body. Weak, but growing stronger as time continued to reverse her condition.

Jakals. He sensed them, was aware of them, but she could hide herself from the Jakals dancing gleefully right beneath her. Then he (she) felt her arms and legs exploding in horrible agony.

Darcio leaped forward, roaring in pain as he fell before the bench onto his knees, Reule’s hands guiding him and now holding him as he yelled and shook. Alone, but not? Alone, but being tortured? No marks, only the pain of it. Driving, driving deep. And still they didn’t know of her, even though she wept and shuddered with the emotions the Jakals so desired to devour. Days rotated further into the past, hunger easing so it was sharp but not agonizing, as did thirst, the presence of the Jakals fading within forty-eight hours until she was alone in truth.

Splinters rammed under skin disappeared, mildew and mold rashes faded, cold gave way to warmth as her body slid to the third floor, the second…the first. Slow, the trip taking most of a day to make because she’d crawled up while in ferocious agony. There was the burn, the raw scorching along her hips, spine, and shoulders. Hair tangled, scalp torn and bloodied. Every inch bruised, bones even broken. Some twice over.

Since the scenario was running backward, Darcio was confused. Three days ago she’d had broken bones, today she didn’t. How was that possible? He wasn’t required to seek the answer. Reule had only wanted to know if the Jakals had raped her. They hadn’t. They hadn’t even realized she was there, though he knew not how. Still, what trauma had left her alone in such a state? A fight? Had she been attacked after all, only by a different assailant?

Confusion swept through him as his body ached and throbbed in sympathy with the plight and pain of a small woman who turned out to have the stamina and fortitude of the most seasoned warrior. Experiencing the trauma she’d undergone secondhand, Darcio wasn’t so sure he would’ve been so persistent or resourceful. Then again, she wasn’t Sánge, and his natural defenses would’ve made this a much altered experience for him.

“Darc, stay focused,” he heard Reule encourage him gently, his Prime’s voice concerned but firm.

So it continued. Dampness and the stench of the swamps and bogs of the damplands. Earth. Grass. Beneath his hands and knees. Crawling inch by inch over changing terrain, every movement exquisite agony, yet the only thing keeping him warm in the pre-winter chill. A fall, brutal, snapped his arm in two. Then soreness between his legs, hard aches in his thighs.

Shadow felt Reule tense next to him, but his Prime mistook the cause of the discomfort. Darcio had been an accomplished horseman for far too long not to recognize a saddle-sore backside. The fall had been from a horse. She’d broken her arm falling from a high-set saddle. She’d fallen from pure exhaustion.

Then there was riding, the speed breakneck. He could tell by the windburn on his face, the whipping of hair that pulled at a scalp already beaten raw. How? How had it come to be, the battering that caused pain to worsen as time drew nearer to the origination? He was close to the cause. Darcio could feel it, and he dreaded it. He dreaded it because he knew it would be worse than all the other pain he felt through her body’s memory.

He had braced for it, yet still was blindsided. There was screaming oblivion and then vicious nausea. Blood from his mouth, his nose…everywhere. Shadow lurched forward and vomited violently.

“Enough! Darcio, it’s enough!”

Reule’s command was followed by the feel of his Prime’s hands gripping his shoulders. Shadow was sick again, caught up in the cycle of body memory and suddenly unable to let go.

But as always, Reule was there for him. He felt the instant his ruler unleashed his own power. Reule used it to seize control of Darcio’s thoughts and emotions, jerking him into the present, into the steam and heat of the private bath.

Forgive me, old friend. I asked too much. Reule’s regret weighed heavily in the telepathic sentence, but Darcio waved it off as he focused on his Packleader. Reule had pulled on a robe after leaving the tub, he realized, and the small detail centered him, pulling him even further away from the horrifying memories of what a small female body had endured these past few days.

“I didn’t find out how she was originally injured,” he said apologetically. “I fear that was only half the hell she’s been through.”

“You did enough.” Reule frowned darkly, lines of disturbed emotion etching into his forehead. “I’m sorry I even asked. Now I’m left with still more questions.”

Darcio nodded, his body aching with the ghosts of pain and brutalization.

Reule had one answer that he’d not had at the start of this, however.

He now knew why she felt such sorrow.