“You shouldn’t be here alone.” There was a hard edge to my voice I hadn’t anticipated when I spoke. Nazreen, who wasstanding with her back to me, tensed, then turned. Her eyes flashed, like starlight slicing over deep water.
“It isn’t allowed?”
“It isn’t safe.”
She watched me with something like wariness. Wariness that was not quite fear.
No, not fear at all. Not when she held my gaze like that. I’d startled her. But she was not afraid.
“I didn’t go far,” she said. Her breath misted in the cool air.
“You went far enough. And you went alone.”
Why alone?I wondered.What are you doing out here, strange creature, on your own in the dark of my mountains?
She may have held the depiction of Zoren’s face in her hands for the duration of the vaklok, but she had not brought him here as either a chaperone or friend. She did not have a deep attachment to him, or to Oxriel, as Fiona did to Dalk. It was nearly alarming, the dark satisfaction I felt at this. That even if she had not chosen me to walk with her, she had not chosen any other male of her acquaintance, either.
“I wouldn’t have gone any further than this,” she said, a little more softly now, some of the challenge ebbing from her eyes. “I just wanted to see the water.”
Again, a darkly silken satisfaction slid through me. Unlike the Sea Sand men, she and the other new women liked water. Just like my people did. For some reason, this felt right to me.
“If there is anything in my mountains that you wish to see,” I found myself saying, “you need merely ask. And I will show you myself.”
The elegant arches of her brows rose at this.
“You’re the Gahn,” she replied. “Don’t you have other things you need to do than tour me around?”
“You are my priority.”
I’d meant to say that cultivating a relationship with the new women was one of my priorities. I’d invited them to stay in my mountains specifically to show them that our tribe could provide for them. That we had comforts to offer, should the Vrika choose one – or all – of them for my men. If they wished to see more of my territory, I would of course grant such a request.
But that is not what I said.
I said, “You are my priority.” And my voice took on an oddly husky quality I had not ever heard from myself before.
She did not answer this. Merely watched me for a moment, then turned back to face the water. She approached the edge of the rippling pool, then crouched, dipping her small, clawless fingers in. She gave a small gasp. The sound went straight down my spine. All at once, I was imagining her making that same, little sound before me, but without her cloak. Without any of her clothes at all.
“It’s cold!” She whipped her hand back from the water, shook it until water droplets went spattering through the night. Then, after a slight hesitation, she plunged her hand back in. My body gave a start, as if to stop her. But I didn’t, feeling my sight stars tighten as I observed her from behind.
“If it is too cold,” I said as she put her other hand in as well, “then why are you still touching it?”
“I said it’s cold,” she reiterated, “not that it’s too cold.” Letting her hands drift back and forth, she made new ripples in the pool. Then, she withdrew her hands and swiftly stood. “OK. Now it’s too cold.”
She turned to face me once more, her hands cupped against her mouth. She breathed out onto them, then rubbed them together.
This seemed an incredibly inefficient way to warm her hands. Without a fire nearby, it would have made more sense to put her hands into her clothing and use some of her own body heat.
Or mine.
My cock felt heavy and hot beneath my loincloth. It throbbed violently at the thought of cold, trembling fingers seeking warmth against it. As if to distract myself from the intensity of this savage and sudden desire, I did something else nearly as unthinkable.
I closed the distance between us and took her hands in mine.
They were so small. Delicate bones beneath thin, vulnerable hide, soft as the brush of a braxilk’s wing. And very cold against the heat of my palms. I enveloped her entirely.
Nazreen went utterly still. The darkest, central points of her sight stars had bloomed into black moons, no more green visible. I would have thought that she’d stopped breathing if I could not hear the newly quickened, shallow sound of it.
“What are you doing?”
