Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(34)

She was glad to close her eyes; she couldn’t get used to the sight of his upside-down smile. The kiss electrified her, as if she had sworn herself to the lightning god. Like her powers, her oaths had been left behind in Canopy.

He had kissed her before, but this time he didn’t stop. Edax lowered himself slowly, sliding down her body like a viper; he kissed her chin and her throat. He unbound her breasts and kissed them, and Unar’s stomach plunged as though she was in free fall, diving, a thing she had been afraid of, once, but now thrilled to do.

Her knees felt weak, but to kneel would be to put herself out of reach of his lips. He slid down further, his tongue leaving imprints down her belly, and without removing her loincloth, he encircled her hips with his arms and pressed his face between her shivering thighs.

Unar looked up and saw the deep cuts he’d made in the branch with his unnatural feet. Without the goddess in him, blood must be rushing to his head as it hadn’t in Ehkis’s realm, but she couldn’t think of that; his clever fingers had found their way inside her final wrappings, found it hot and wet as the rain.

She clung to him to keep from collapsing and pulled some leather binding loose by accident. Were his weapons slipping? She didn’t want him to lose them. Abruptly, there was his manhood, at the level of her eyes, shockingly engorged, at once ridiculous and mesmerising. Had she been afraid of such a thing?

His feet couldn’t hold their combined weight. He lost his grip. They fell into the pool. Unar hadn’t had a chance to take a proper breath and water filled her nose. She remembered not to scream; she had screamed underwater in the moat at the Temple, where Oos’s magic had saved her.

There was no magic here.

Edax hauled her out of the water. Fingers that had probed her private places now cleared her mouth of her own myrtle-leaf-garlanded hair.

“Are you hurt?” he shouted.

“No!” she managed in return.

He kissed her again, the right way up this time.

“And your oaths? Little Gardener, do you wish to keep them?”

“No,” Unar said. She closed her eyes. Not to block the view of his sensuous mouth, when he stood the right way up, but so she could pretend he was Aoun, who would die before breaking those oaths his ignorant child-self had made long ago.





TWENTY-TWO

RAIN, WIND, and thunder still assaulted the Garden upon Unar’s return.

Her fingers slipped on the streaming Gate carvings.

Have you stolen food? the wards whispered. Have you stolen the sovereignty of another’s body? Have you stolen human life?

“No!” Unar gasped as she reached the top of the Garden wall. Her ankle caught on one of the carved fruits, and she tumbled instead of sliding, turning her shoulder to take the impact of the ground—only it wasn’t the ground that she fell on.

It was a shape, warm, white-robed, well-wrapped, and twice the size of her, smelling of eggshell and lantern oil, burnt wick and wet soil. Unar knew she smelled of sex; impulsively she wanted Aoun to smell it on her—taste it, even.

“Gatekeeper,” she said as they struggled to stand, and when he bent to peer into her face, she put her tongue in his mouth.

His body straightened, and he thrust her away, holding her at arm’s length.

“Only another adept could do this to you,” he breathed. “Break your bonds this way. Who was it? I’ll kill them.”

“You did it to me, Aoun. Come closer. Keep doing it.”

He let go of her completely, backing away.

“Iririn woke and saw your hammock left behind in the loquat grove. Everyone else had moved theirs to the monsoon pavilion to stay dry. She was terrified for you. She thought you must have fallen from a bridge or an edge in the storm. It never occurred to her that you might have left the Garden to meet men.”

“Audblayin’s bones, who is Iririn?”

“Your fellow Gardener.”

“The one who shaves her head?” Unar’s fists went to her hips.

“Yes.”

“She should mind her own business.”

“Are you drunk? Injured?”

“No.”

“While Iririn and I searched the Garden for you, we found a slave woman working. Washing clothes in the dark. She said you had given the order. Did you?”

“Of course I did,” Unar started to say, but Aoun had put one of his great bear paws to her throat; his hand was huge enough to almost encircle it. Her eyes went wide, and she began to pry at his fingers, even as some magic-working of his inside her chest distracted her. Time ran backwards for a moment; Aoun was forcing her to relive the emotions of the past night, out of order; a sensuous surge went through her as the working brought strongly back to her what she had done with Edax; and then she was feeling pity for Ylly, warm fingers touching cold as she handed over the seed porridge.

No, they weren’t her own warm fingers she was feeling, but Aoun’s, his hand turning over the soil where her memory-seeds were buried.

“Did you order the slave to wash clothes after dark?”

“No,” Unar said immediately, against her will. “Her name is Ylly. She’s friends with another slave, Hasbabsah, who’s too old to do the work that’s given to her. Ylly and I do Hasbabsah’s work after nightfall so that Servant Eilif won’t throw her down.”