Her fingers dip below the surface of the bath, and my cock strains toward them. She bites her lip, leaning into me.
“No, Rose.” Abruptly, I stand, lifting her out of the water with me. I wrap her in a grasscloth sheet and carry her back to the valith, pigment pounding through me.
“You’re dripping on my floor,” Saana complains when we enter, but she immediately softens, adding, “I’ll find her something clean to wear.”
I lay Rose on her pallet, only to find her eyes shimmering with tears. I drop to my knees beside her. “Alara,” I groan, resting my head on her fabric-covered stomach. “I’m not rejecting you. I want you to name every part of me. But my self-control is weaker than you are. I had to stop so I didn’t push you too far and interfere with your recovery. Do you understand?”
Of course she doesn’t. She can’t. But she will someday. Probably someday very soon, given how quickly she’s learning.
“Belly,” she says, the soft, flat surface jumping beneath my forehead.
I can’t help but smile. “Beautiful belly,” I agree, dropping a kiss in the center of it. She cups my face, brushing her thumb over my lips questioningly. “Mouth,” I tell her, swallowing my need to taste her.
She tugs my face impatiently, urging me up her body. “Oljin mouth, beautiful mouth, Rose mouth, yes,” she says.
The words tumble out in a strange order in her strange accent, but her meaning unmistakable. How can I resist such adetermined request for a kiss? I only swore to wait until she asked, and here she is, asking.
“Don’t bite me, Alara,” I warn her, only half joking, before I brush my lips over hers. It’s a chaste kiss, but the feelings it ignites in me are anything but.I’mthe one holding back my bite.
Her lips are chapped and trembling, too-cool after getting out of the thermal bath, and the most perfect, delicious thing I’ve ever tasted. I have to brace myself not to devour her whole and instead take her in mouthfuls, pausing between kisses in the hopes my hunger for her settles.
I pull back when Saana returns, only to see my Alara is crying again, but she’s smiling through her tears. She presses her hand to the center of her chest and says her phrase of gratitude. I cover her hand with mine and repeat it, adding, “You are the one who has gifted me. You are a gift yourself.”
Beside me, Sanna sighs. “I don’t know if this is good for her or not. Normally, I would keep an animal calm while it heals. But R’Hiza take me, I can’t forbid it when the two of you look at each other like that.”
“Good thing. I doubt I could follow that rule.”
“I’m sure you couldn’t,” Saana chuckles, passing me the folded sveli. “You’d tear down this valith first.”
Rose is exhausted. After we help her dress, I let her rest and assist Saana with the heavier outside work. The strain on my muscles and starlight on my shoulders feel good. Feeding the braxa, mending their enclosure, washing pelts...it takes me back to another time. One when I was merely a greenling visiting his friend’s home, no responsibilities to shirk.
It feels even better ending the day with my Alara in my arms, sharing lastmeal and words in our languages. For a fewmore days, we eat and learn and sleep and wake in each other’s arms.
Every day, Rose grows stronger. Every day, I love and understand her more. Every day, I wish I could live this life forever.
But I can’t. Because every day I stay in the grasslands, I’m neglecting my duty.
And today while I’m doing chores, I glance guiltily in the direction of Gren’Irra. Its steep cliffs are just a fuzzy line in the distance, a mere smudge on the scroll of the grassland, but a plume of golden dust rises from the footpath.
Someone is coming.
My absence has been noticed by now. My mother must be worried, though Chanísh is surely bursting with hope that I won’t return. The Frathik delegation, who expected the flattery and attention of both Grenzar’s sons, may have left out of impatience or offense.
Undoubtedly, warriors were dispatched to find me. They’ve probably upended the palace. Interrogated my friends. Emptied every fighting pit and pleasure house. And now they’ve widened the search. I have to get ahead of this somehow.
I sprint back to the valith and scoop up Rose. “Someone’s coming,” I hiss to Saana on my way out, who immediately scans the room for evidence of our presence and begins dissembling the pallet.
“Go. Now. I’ll take care of it.” She shoos me impatiently out the back.
I can’t use the footpath or risk meeting whoever seeks me, so I hug my Alara tight to my chest and plunge downwind into the grass. Long stalks flick past as I run, thrumming the tips of my ears. Blinded and deafened by the thick foliage, I crash onfor long, tense minutes, protecting her with my forearms, desperate to put as much space between us and the traveler as I can.
When I finally stop, chest heaving, to tamp the grass down in a circle, my forearms are raw and sticky with blood drawn in delicate, stinging slices by the resentful blades. Rose is not unscathed: one ankle has felt a cut.
I place her in the center of the cell I’ve created, open to Alioth above but walled in by dense green grass, and kneel down to examine her wound. I’m relieved when it proves shallow, blood only beading and not flowing. Using the hem of my sveli, I dab it away.
She gasps when she notices my injuries, her hands hovering worriedly over the red-smeared skin. “Oljin arm no!” she begins, but I squeeze her ankle, cutting her off even as my pride swells that she called out the words so fluently. Unfortunately, they may carry far enough for sharp Irran hearing.
In fact, when I tilt my ear toward the valith, I can pick up the murmur of voices. I point back the way we came, though the grass has already swallowed our path. Then I touch her lips to indicate she should be silent.
