A Cast of Shadows: An Araneae Nation Story (9 page)

The male I brought home to my family required a heartbeat. Assuming I chose one at all.

I wasn’t as sure as I was only yesterday that marriage should be my highest aspiration.

Annoyed with myself, and with him, I snapped, “You’re staring.”

The way he looked at me hurt. The desire in his eyes made my chest tender.

Rather than answer, he stalked into the woods. I think he meant to secure the area around the den. He paused, glanced over his shoulder. “I would hand you fabric to bind his wounds but…”

I waved him on. “I’ll get it myself.”

After hearing Brynmor’s story, I understood what it had cost him to remain close to his family. He gave up the spiritlands to guard his loved ones from afar. He was so entrenched in his role in life that he feared losing his identity in death. He was simply
Brynmor
, not a father or a husband.

Well, I wanted to be simply
Daraja
, not a wife or a dutiful daughter. I wanted to be
me
.

I could contribute to my family in ways besides adding to our clan’s numbers, and I would.

Perhaps I had chosen wisely in following the river after all. It had led me to Brynmor, and his story changed how I wanted to be remembered. Perhaps I wanted songs written about me instead of singing them about others. I didn’t want to become Brynmor, trapped in the city of my birth, a slave to the passage of time. I wanted to explore the Second World before returning to my home.

With a pained groan, I forced my legs to bear my weight. I had rested for as long as I dared.

I lumbered to my camp, sorted through my supplies until I found a sheet I could bear to part with and a flask of fresh water. When I returned to Errol, I avoided his head as best I could while pouring water over his wound. I had no herbs to speed his healing. I had lost mine during a storm days earlier and had no chance to purchase more. I draped the sheet over his wound, not much of a bandage, but it was the best I could do with him so eager to gnaw off my hands.

With his wounds tended, I wound the lariat around my waist. It fit in familiar grooves made bloody by my efforts. The den was a gaping hole in the ground, and I stood so close to its mouth, I could brush the fringe of roots decorating its opening with my fingertips. While I gathered my strength to lug Errol that final stretch to safety, Jana darted past me and lost herself in the tunnel.

While Brynmor prowled the woods, I heaved Errol deeper into the den. Once he was hidden, I found myself facing a dilemma. I was so intent on getting him in the hole I hadn’t realized that by dragging him behind me, I had blocked my only means of escape. If he woke, I didn’t care for my chances of escape without me stabbing him or him biting me. Either option hurt one of us.

Too tired to do more than slump against the dirt wall at my back, I shut my eyes.

“The forest is clear.” Brynmor’s voice rumbled near my ear.

I couldn’t help it. I screamed loud enough to wake the dead. I think I had been holding it in for a while, and Brynmor’s appearance at my elbow freed it.

“Do you feel better?” He wiggled a finger in his ear.

It took a few tries to find my voice. “I do, actually.”

He mirrored my position. We sat with our backs flush to the wall and our knees drawn up to our chests. His fingers drummed on his thigh. “I can go if it would make you more comfortable.”

“Stay.” I laughed. “Being underground with the dead seems fitting somehow.”

His hand slowed its rhythmic beat. “I can keep watch better from outside.”

“No.” I let my head fall back. “I would rather have you for company than none at all.”

“I’m pleased to be of service,” he said dryly.

“Where’s Jana?” Even my scream hadn’t brought her running.

“She returned to the bed her mother made for her.” He appeared grim. “She’s sleeping.”

Sleep sounded divine. I closed my eyes again, or maybe they closed themselves.

I covered a yawn. “I’ll start work on your net in the morning.”

“There’s no need.”

“That’s right. With the hunters gone, you’re no longer in need of my services.” Rubbing my eyes, I groaned at the dull ache behind them. Without the net, I had no easy reason for remaining.

“I am in great need of your services.” His voice turned silky. “A good net has many uses.”

“Oh.” I cleared my throat.

“I only meant there was no need to rush.” He murmured near my ear, “You should rest.”

“I am resting.” Cool air whispered across my jaw, traced a line down my throat. I swallowed my rebuke and froze, waiting for what Brynmor did next, but his fingers never strayed from their path. After a while, I grew frustrated with his game. He took too many liberties. “I can feel that.”

“Can you?” he asked as if he knew very well that I could.

“Was this your plan?” I opened my eyes. “Trap me in the den and take advantage of me?”

“If you recall, you were the one who dragged the canis in behind you.” He risked a grin. “Besides, you have already taken advantage of me. I would simply be returning the favor.”

Heat rose in my cheeks, and I hoped his night vision was poorer as a spirit.

“Favors are gifts. They aren’t meant to be repaid.” It was the best retort I could manage while he looked at me that way.

He leaned in closer. “I believe in squaring all my debts, plus interest.”

“Have you contracted the plague?” My voice rose. “Or some other form of madness?”

“No,” he said after a lengthy pause while he seemed to consider his answer.

“Then what’s changed?” I pressed my back firmer against the wall. “What are you doing?”

“It occurs to me that I might not see the sun rise.” He stroked the hottest parts of my cheeks. “It also occurs to me that I have nothing to lose by doing this…” He bent his head, brushing cool lips over mine. His kiss was whisper soft, and I saw through his face to the dirt wall behind him.

Blinking broke the spell. “I can’t do this.”

“Then don’t.” Brynmor cupped my face and claimed my mouth. “Let me do it.”

With my eyes closed, I focused on sensation, on the tingle of his airy caress, and fire ignited in my belly. At the waterfall I might have been his for the taking. He was too virile then, too real. His touch carried the weight of too many consequences. Now Brynmor was as potent as ever, but he was more like a dream, so where was the harm? Pleasure found in dreams didn’t count, did it?

Chill fingers trailed down my bare shoulders. “What are you doing?”

He paused at my wrists, and gooseflesh rippled over my arms. “Helping you relax.”

“Relax?” It was the furthest thing from my mind.

Brynmor ignored me. “Lay down.”

I did as he asked, and eased my body onto the worn floor of the den. He knelt beside me, a thin barrier between me and Errol. It was too much. I stared at the canis and his shallow breaths.

“Look at me.”

The command in Brynmor’s voice snapped my gaze to his.

“Good.” He praised me with a pat on my thigh that was little more than a breeze.

“How will this work?” I was genuinely curious.

He sighed. “Must you always ask so many questions?”

I glared at him, and he had the nerve to chuckle at me.

He traced the waist of my pants with his finger. “Take these off.”

“You can’t be serious.”

He stared down his nose at me, and I shivered. I had no trouble seeing him as the Mimetidae paladin, devious and cunning, now that he sought control of me.

Grumbling as I worked the laces of my pants, I shed them and lay pliant before him.

He drew in a sharp breath, as if scenting my arousal. I clenched my thighs tight together and swallowed past the lump in my throat. It hadn’t occurred to me that if he was substantial enough for even the feather-light caresses he teased me with so far, that his other senses would function as well.

“Spread these.” He tapped my knees.

I let my legs fall open a fraction.

“More.” His voice crackled with desire.

I did as he asked, bared myself to him in that most intimate way, and sank my fingernails in the ground to either side of my thighs. It tickled at first, the rush of icy air creeping over my toes as Brynmor crawled up my body. He stopped with his fists braced to either side of my hips and a wicked grin on his face. He still wore clothes, and a sharp rush of embarrassment made my knees clamp shut somewhere in the vicinity of his hips. Cold air rushed over my bare legs then, and his expression shifted from domineering to hesitant. As if he finally realized how foolish we looked.

When he reared back, I leaned forward and grasped his wrists. My hands closed over air.

It was enough. He paused, staring down at me, trying to read me as I had tried so often to read him. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. I lay back and resumed my indelicate position.

His gruff acceptance of my obeisance showed in the slight crinkle around his eyes. Dipping his head, he nuzzled the valley between my breasts. Cool pressure made me gasp, a strangled sound that earned me a hum of approval. Brynmor ignored the fact I still wore my shirt and covered the tip of one breast with his mouth. I arched beneath his icy touch, the slow pattern his tongue traced around my nipple as if the thick fabric was no barrier. Perhaps to him it wasn’t.

Frustration sank my fingers into the dirt. I had no lover to claw. The ground bore the marks I would have given Brynmor’s back, his flanks, any part of him in reach
if I could only touch him
.

Sensing my loss of focus, Brynmor kissed his way down my chest, past my navel to my hipbone. He savored the skin there before nibbling his way across my abdomen and lower, until he tasted the fire he stoked in me. The flames in my gut, my lover’s icy caresses, made me writhe.

His kisses grew colder as Brynmor’s efforts to manifest leached away the warmth in the air.

While taunting my empty sex with airy strokes of his tongue, Brynmor caressed my ribs. His hands drifted higher where he brought my nipples to peaks I thought might shatter from the cold.

He murmured a soft word against my skin my sensation-addled brain fought to comprehend. More pressure built until his next frigid exhale perched me on the edge of orgasm.

“Come,” he demanded of me.

And I did, with a shiver and a sigh.

Brynmor rolled from between my legs, which sprawled limp and useless, to stretch out next to me. He lay on his side, facing me, watching my chest rise and fall in the frantic concert of my afterglow. He traced my bare hip until gooseflesh rose and he appeared to decide his touch made me uncomfortable. Amusing how moments earlier he wouldn’t have cared about my discomfort.

He was too focused on bringing me pleasure to mind the nip of pain his icy flesh delivered.

“Well?” He leaned in close enough his cool breath fanned my cheek.

I turned to face him. “I think you and I have very different ideas about what
relax
means.”

My pulse thrummed, my core ached for more, for him. I longed for the fulfillment I sensed outside of my grasp. Or perhaps it was Brynmor being so far beyond my reach that stung.

The way his lips curved made my heart lurch. “I much prefer my definition.”

“You would,” I said on a tired laugh that stretched into a yawn.

“Get some sleep.” Brynmor shifted onto his back and crossed his arms behind his head.

I watched him stare at the den’s ceiling. “Can you—I mean—do spirits…?”

“I don’t sleep.” He turned his head toward me. “I’ll watch over you until dawn.”

“Wake me if Errol…” If the canis died, Brynmor would cease to exist. Anger had dulled my reaction before, but the dreamy haze where I drifted now, sated and secure, wrecked that barrier.

I feared falling asleep. What if I woke alone with a dead canis and only the wisps of a lover I would never see or hear, never touch or taste again? For a male I had known so briefly, Brynmor had carved himself a place in my regard. Despite my hurt at his deception, I wanted him to earn redemption. I wanted him to tell me stories and spark my curiosity as only he could. For a male I knew the gods had granted a full lifetime to, I found myself praying they granted him even more.

I found myself hoping they did have a purpose for him in allowing this strange, new life.

And I selfishly hoped his purpose was me.

Chapter Seven

Waking underground with no pants on and no sign of your lover is never a good thing.

What made it worse was the canis rumbling steadily in my direction. Errol’s eyes were shut, but I wasn’t foolish enough to believe I wasn’t in danger from him if I made a wrong move.

“Errol,” Brynmor said. “That’s enough.”

I sucked in a quick breath at the sound of his voice. Happiness, it seemed, was a sharper rush than I recalled. The den was empty but for me and Errol, and I supposed Jana waited somewhere.

“I can hear you.” I hurried into my clothes and snagged my lariat. “But I can’t see you.”