Page 134 of The Seeker
Meera sat on a low cushion near the stove. She couldn’t take her eyes off the tall man who was quickly becoming the steady center of her world. She held out her hands for Rhys’s as he sat across from her.
He took them and gripped them tightly. “I never thought this day would come for me. I wasn’t talking about the formalities this week. Those were… an honor. Truly, I consider all these guests, everything your parents have done, to be an enormous honor.” He stared at their joined hands but didn’t look at her.
“What are you trying to say, Rhys?”
“I remember those months. That horrible summer. I remember the Rending. The heartbreak and the terror. Though much of my family survived, not all did. More than that, I saw singers I’d grown up with, ones I’d cared for, killed during that time.” He looked up, raw emotion clear on his face. “I have been a cynic for most of my life because I didn’t think I had any reason to hope. I did my duty, but in my heart I thought our people were too broken to survive. Even as I watched my brothers find mates in the past few years, I doubted. And I honestly did not think I would ever have that same privilege.”
Meera squeezed his hands. “Why not?”
“I don’t know.” He smiled a little. “Maybe the Creator thought I was too contrary. Too much of a doubter.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“I know that now.” He cleared his throat. “What I’m saying, Meera Bai, is that you are the most unexpected and perfect gift I didn’t have the hope to imagine. I could not have imagined you. I wasn’t capable of it.” He finally looked up and met her eyes. “It has nothing to do with your role or your magic or your status in our world. None of those things matter to me. You aresha ne’ev reshon. My beloved. Your brilliant mind. Your open heart. Your wit and your optimism.”
Thank you, Uriel, for the gift of this man.Meera’s heart was too full to speak.
“You could have been anyone,” he continued. “A farmer or a healer or a tradeswoman, and you would still have been the most perfect gift I wasn’t capable of imagining.”
Meera leaned forward and captured his lips. She couldn’t take any more. Tears filled her eyes. Her heart overflowed with the desire to touch him, possess him, make him hers. She pulled away, tears wetting her cheeks. “Put your mark on me, Rhys of Glast, because you are my own perfect gift, a man who seesme. Not the role I have been given or the gifts I bear. I already love you. I wasn’t expecting that. I never could have imagined it. Thank the heavens the universe is wiser than we are.”
Rhys kissed her again, pressed his lips to her throat, and lifted his hands to the back of her neck where he began to unbutton the silk tunic she wore. His dexterous fingers made quick work of the fastening; he stood, drawing her up, and Meera let the tunic fall to the ground. Rhys knelt before her and pulled down the silk that covered her legs. He reached up and untied the linen undergarments that veiled her until she was bare before him.
“Goddess,” he murmured, kissing the top of her pubis.
She smiled. “I am no divinity.”
“You are to me.” He stayed on his knees, running his hands from her knees up to her hips and along the curve of her waist until he cupped her breasts in his hands.
“Mark me, Rhys.”
“I have to taste you first.” He lifted her leg and draped it over his shoulder. “I’m too hungry to think.”
Meera braced her hand and closed her eyes as Rhys feasted on her. He held her breast in one hand, teasing the nipple, and he gripped her bottom with his other hand, pressing her flesh to his mouth.
“Gabriel’s fist!” She gasped. The swiftly building climax was so intense she nearly lost her balance. “Rhys!” Her knees buckled, but he caught her around the waist.
“There.” He nibbled the inside of her thigh. “Now I can think.”
“I can’t.” Meera carefully lowered herself to the cushion before the fire. “Sorry. My brain has completely abandoned me, so we’ll have to finish this mating another time. I can’t remember my song.”
He chuckled and swatted her bottom playfully. “Turn around.”
“Are you staying clothed?” She turned on the pillow. “That seems very unfair.”
“If I don’t keep these clothes on, I’ll never finish your mating marks. If I don’t finish, I don’t get to hear your song.” He pulled her closer, his chest to her back, and whispered, “And I have been waiting hundreds of years to hear your song.”
She saw the henna pigment and brushes laid out by the fire. Rhys chose the finest sable brush and dipped it in the ink. Then he kissed the nape of her neck. “Are you ready?”
Meera closed her eyes. “Yes.”
As the brush slipped over her skin, she entered a meditative trance. She could feel the fine curls and intricate twists of his hand. The magic touched her skin and grew. She could smell it rising. Taste it in the air. Incense had been lit, and the heady fragrance mixed with the scent of magic.
Rhys hummed as he wrote, old songs and whispered melodies as ancient as the people whose line he continued. In her mind’s eye, Meera saw rolling green fields and dark crags of rock rising from cold seas. Grey skies and damp earth that smelled of salt and sea grass.
The brush slid down the center of her back and swept up to her left shoulder. She could feel the fine hairs lifting to follow Rhys’s hand. His lips touched her shoulder, a featherlight brush of fingertips on her arm. Meera lost all sense of time, staring intently into the blue and red flame as Rhys marked her.
The trappings of ceremony and pomp had been stripped away. They were male and female, two beings of angelic blood binding their magic in a ritual as old as time.
