Hunter's Season (Elder Races #4.7)(29)

His hardened lips slid over hers, slick with their moisture. Her heart was pounding so that she thought it might burst from her chest. She was almost lost, almost—

But no. Decades of training asserted itself.

She yanked her mouth away and gasped, “I need to know where those men went.”

He was breathing as heavily as she was, his entire body run through with the finest tremor. He stared at her mouth, his darkened gaze sensual and compulsive. For a moment she thought he would refuse to lift his body weight from hers. Then with a grimace, he pulled back. “All right. We go together.”

She didn’t try to argue anymore—with their last fierce exchange they had catapulted each other into a strange new realm where she didn’t understand the rules. Instead she shrugged out of her harness and tried to hand her sword to him. “Take this. I’ll take the knives.”

He stared down at the sword in her hand without moving to take it. Then he gave her a quirk of a smile. “When I am up to speed, I am a perfectly good swordsman. But I am not at my best, and you have to be one of the finest in the army for Tiago to agree to you becoming one of Niniane’s guards. You keep the sword. I’ll take the knives.”

She scowled, not liking either possibility for how they divided the weapons. But she strapped the harness back on again, while he took her wrist guards with the knives. Then they slipped quietly out of the cottage, into the growing heat of the day.

Sunshine pressed down heavily, the silence broken with the occasional call from birds and the heavy drone of insects. Aubrey gestured for her to lead the way, and she took them in a wide circle that circumvented the cottage. Having found no sign of the men, they moved wider afield until they checked the path where the men had been before. Then finally they moved to the bank of the river. She was studying the bank for footprints when Aubrey nudged her gently and pointed downstream.

She glanced where he pointed. Some distance away the riverbank jutted out in a small promontory that was little more than a tangled mass of tree trunks and debris that had been swept downstream. A small barge had gotten tangled in the debris, and two men, covered in mud, were working to get it loose.

The knot of tension that had tightened her shoulders loosened.

Aubrey slipped an arm around her shoulders from behind, his forearm crossing at her collarbones. He pulled her back against him and said in her ear, “Looks like someone’s livelihood might have slipped its mooring and floated downstream. Satisfied?”

She nodded, letting her head fall back against his shoulder. After a moment, she said, “I’m not sorry for being so paranoid. You really did almost die.”

He heaved a rough sigh. “I know.”

His body felt hot and tense. Her mind was split wide open with incredulity for this blaze of fire that had leapt up between them.

“There is no one else in the world like you. I’m willing to take that wildest chance and stay here with you.”

He cupped her neck with one hand while he kissed the sensitive shell of her ear and whispered, “Let’s go home.”

Home? The sound of that word, coming from him, gave her another thrill of shock. Unable to form words, she nodded. His arm loosened and he let her go.

They made short work of the trip back to the cottage. Once there, she shrugged out of her harness and hung her sword on its hook. Aubrey gazed at her steadily while he yanked open the fastenings on the wrist guards. Her mind hazed with heat. Desire for this man was the sweetest pain she had ever known. That he might grow to want her too was beyond anything she could have dreamed of, extraordinary.

In fact it was hardly believable.

The thought drove her across the room, away from him. She wrapped her arms around her middle, chewing on her lip as she looked guiltily at the box on the fireplace mantle. His slow, measured tread came up behind her; she was so hyperaware of him, she knew to the exact moment when his hands would come down on her shoulders.

“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly.

The question burst out of her. “Do you think the gods can make us do things we wouldn’t otherwise do?”

His thumbs rubbed soothingly at her shoulder blades. “Why do you ask?”

Her body was trembling with the force of her own desire to keep silent, to take what he offered her with his hands and his mouth. But she couldn’t.

She whispered, “When Dr. Telemar—the medusa—couldn’t identify what kind of Power was in those Tarot cards, I started to wonder about those old legends about the gods putting items in the world to enact their will. Inanna’s card keeps surfacing. If the cards are hers—could they be influencing us to act in ways we might not otherwise act?”

He was silent for a long, thoughtful moment. Then he brushed her braid aside and pressed a kiss to the nape of her neck. “The chances of such a thing would be outrageously rare, you know,” he said gently. “And while the good Dr. Telemar is no doubt highly proficient at her job, she is but one physician and the world is filled with many strange and different magics.”

“I know,” she whispered.

He pulled her into his arms. “Even if we were so lucky to have an item of Inanna’s working in our lives, no, I do not believe the gods can or would make us act against our natures or inclinations. Our free will is one of the primal Powers after all. Inanna may give us the opportunity for love, but it’s our choice whether or not we take that opportunity, and love is what we make of it.”