Page 72 of Taken to Lemora
“But you’re wrong, you know.” Her warm breath touches my cheek. She kisses me hotly, moving along my jaw with her tongue and lips. Treating me to tastes of divinity. “I am yours. There’s no denying it now.” She pulls back and loud sounds filter into the room, giving me a headache. I don’t like them. Merquin shouting, pirates shouting, Eshmiri trilling wildly about how much fun they’re having, Ashmara slurring and insulting everybody.
But I focus only on her face as reality slips further and further away from me. I want to stay here with her. I refuse to have it any other way. “What do you mean, miriga?”
She smiles at me and it takes me a moment to realize that her expression issmug. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her look so smug as when she reaches up and strokes just her thumb up from the base of my right horn all the way up to the tip. Pleasure ripples through me, unadulterated, without itching, without buzzing, without pain.
“Your horns. When you whipped Tyto off, it must have been enough for the black to slough entirely away. They’re white fully and only for me.”
I grunt, “Who knew my mate was such a cocky little thing.”
She snorts abruptly but her face twists and she looks down at her chest, wincing at the sight of the blood spreading across her shift. Some of it’s red, but most of it is pink. She gasps. “We need a healer!”
I waste to the side, catching myself at the last moment on my right, injured arm. It buckles. Hands come against my shoulders and back. I can feel rough hands. Hands that belong to my kind. But all I want to feel are the soft hands of the female touching my face, trying to keep me lucid enough to hear her.
“Raingar, if I had horns, I want you to know that they’d be white for you, too. They’d have been white since the moment you demanded to see my hand when I tried to climb through that window. I love you…” Her voice fades and so does the reality around me.
I’m grinning though.
This was a good solar.
Twenty-three solars later…
18
Essmira
“Essmira?” Raingar stands in the doorway of Timor and Lyla’s shop, early lunar light streaming in wonderful colors behind him.
“Coming!” I dust off my hands and pack away the last of my supplies in the drawers that I’ve recently helped Lyla reorganize and label. Then I head to the door and meet him outside. “I just finished up my last alteration on an Asgid dress. It’s a new design. I’m not sure Thoedrea likes it. I’m hoping she does in time.”
“That’s nice,” he grumps, but he sounds distracted.
Outside, the wind is surprisingly warm and I smile. “It’s supposed to be an exceptional sunset this lunar. Do you think we might watch it?”
He huffs and his shoulders sag. He sounds annoyed. Ordinarily, I might berate him for trying to kill my enthusiasm, but this lunar, I worry. “It’s only been twenty-three solars since you were shot. Are you sure you don’t want to postpone whatever surprise this is that you have plann…”
“NOB! Would you just…pagh!” He shouts, sounding annoyed all over again.
He fidgets a lot, shifting from foot-to-foot. He’s stopped wearing the protective healing cover Moreth had fitted to his right shoulder, as well as the graft to replace some of the skin that was lost to the blast — apparently the ion rounds the assassin used were laced with venom from a creature called ahevarr. Found only on Nobu, the acid alone might have chewed straight through all three of his hearts had his skin been less tough than it is.
I frown, heart aching at the thought that I might have lost him before I ever even made him mine. “Raingar…”
“Essmira…please. I promise, I’m fine. I just want to get going before we’re late.”
“Late? And wait — what is this? We’re taking pad pads?” Now, I’mreallyskeptical as he leads me to two pad pads and lifts me onto the smaller one. I straddle her back and give her gentle, soothing touches.
“Unfortunately, yeffa. Now come on. Let’s not drag this out any longer than we need to.”
He starts out of the village at a surprising pace, barking and cursing at villagers to get out of our way, even though they mostly don’t. Instead, they smile and wave up at him — up at us both. It fills me with joy unlike any other. Well, likeoneother.
But…I’ve been too nervous about his injuries to do anything other than kiss him.
I’d like to, but all my training’s flown out of the window. Concern has made me forget how toinitiateintimacy with a male. And I’m not sure how he feels because so far he hasn’t initiated anything either. He’s inexperienced. I should make the first move. I think. Maybe? But he’s also clan chief. And he’s injured.
Perhaps I should ask Moreth if he’s up for…adventure, though if word ever got back to Raingar, he’d probably have a nervous breakdown that I was talking to Moreth about sex.
I snort and Raingar looks over at me from atop his pad pad. The road we’re on is one I’ve never traveled and is almost entirely clear, so we’re able to ride side-by-side.
“What?” He barks.
