Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Before I think better of it, I rise up on my tiptoes and bring his face down to my own. Our lips meet with such ease, it’s as if we have been kissing each other for years, and when his tongue seeks to enter me, I want the penetration.
I want him inside me in another place, too.
After all of the travel and the heat, I feel like I’m soaring on the first pleasurable moment I’ve had …
Ever.
I want more of him. I want all of him, his naked skin, his sex in my own, his weight bearing down on me.
When we finally ease back, I stare into those eyes of his and remember the way he stopped before. Flushing, I stammer, “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize for the likes of that.”
A precious moment follows—one I know I’ll recall when I try to sleep tonight, wherever that may be—where we cling to each other’s gaze and both go so much further in our minds. Clearly, I’ve misinterpreted his earlier reversal. Or maybe I was right then … and now is somehow different.
Mortal near-misses make people restless, perhaps?
Although for certain, his “further” is very much more accurate than my own fantasies. Something tells me he’ll teach me, though.
Except then he looks out to the south, and I know, even before he frowns and steps away, that the moment is gone.
Nor should it continue.
A rider approaches.
Thirty-Eight
The Outpost Arrives.
Merc puts himself in front of me, but leaves the broadsword holstered on his back. His hand finds instead the dirk at his hip, and he unsheathes it discreetly, keeping the weapon down by his thigh.
Peering around the meat of his biceps, I narrow my eyes against the low sunlight. A man in a black top hat approaches from the west. He’s dressed in a formal gray and black suit, and astride a very fine black trotter. All the silver flashes on the tack suggest—fine clothes aside—that whoever it is has some wealth. Yet he’s traveling alone.
So, like Julion, he’s either stupid, arrogant … or sufficiently dangerous that he doesn’t need a defender.
But unlike the golden nobleman, this is not someone to trust.
“Don’t say anything.” Merc shakes his head as if I’m already arguing. “At all.”
My impulse is to give him some lip—and not the kissing kind. But the rider is on us, pulling up and halting beside our horse. Under the lee of the top hat’s brim, he has dark sideburns, and the kind of smile that strikes me as a warning, as opposed to a greeting. That I can’t see his eyes is a good thing.
A man like him will come to a violent end. It’s the way of things.
His chuckle is deep and velvety. “A pair of lovebirds in a poisoned stream.”
“What!” I croak as I scramble free of the water, jumping out on the opposite side from him. “Oh, crescent moon—”
“Relax,” he says. “All is quite well. Just a joke.”
As his foreign accent registers, I pat at my wet clothing the way Merc checks his weapons, for all the good that will do. If the water is indeed contaminated, it’s in me, on me. Still, I grab my hollow stomach and take special note of its equilibrium.
“Not much of a joke.” Merc also gets out of the stream, but unlike me, he chooses the side the rider’s on. “I think you need to be moving on, mate.”
If the other man’s dark grin is a warning, Merc’s stance is a fight already in progress. He’s no longer bothering to hide the dirk, either.
“Quite inhospitable you are,” the rider in the top hat drawls. “Then again, I gather you all have somehow managed to cross the Lake of Lost Souls. On that … old nag. A feat that requires a bit of grit.”
Merc says nothing, and I can imagine what his glare must look like.
The rider points to the south and west over his shoulder. “You’re going to the Outpost, then? For a rest and a recovery. You’ll find it not far off in that direction.” That chuckle returns. “Something tells me you’ll be just fine amongst the colorful characters therein.”
The man’s attention returns to me. “I’d keep her well in hand, however. There are many who will seek to sample what you have already enjoyed.”
Touching the brim of his hat, he inclines his head—and yet somehow remains unbowed. Then with a chk-chk between his molars, the black stallion lopes off in a canter that suggests those hooves have plenty more speed at their disposal.
Merc continues to stay where he is, until the rider has hooked up with a well-grooved road many lengths away, and continues forth toward the dark clouds that are gathering to the northeast. When my mercenary finally turns back to the stream, his eyes burn with aggression that’s not directed at me.
Wordlessly, I cross through the water, hop out, and gather the reins of our horse—who is not a nag. Lifting up one of the saddlebags, I shove my other hand in and fish around, and when I feel what I was hoping to find, I pull out an empty cloth sack. I imagine that the mayor or one of his sons probably kept a sizable load of provisions in it. Orange fruit, going by the scent that lingers, no doubt an offering for the Sooths they went to see.