Drink of Me (8 page)

Wenda had since found another sponsor and was living in comfort and contentment. Reule had checked up on her discreetly to make certain she was happy.

The point was, he’d learned a measure of control. One that had even earned him the reputation of being rigid. Some accused him of being cold and passionless, these “some” usually being women who tried to sway him sexually only to find he wasn’t easily swayed. Other men looked at him in bafflement, trying to figure out how he could bear the
mnise
without a woman. Some courtiers and commoners worried about the future of their throne when it looked as though he wouldn’t be taking a mate any time soon. Only his Pack understood fully why he held himself in such perfect reserve when it came to sex and women.

It was because he was so deeply in control of this single aspect of his body, he thought with frustration, that he ought never to have reacted to the female stranger the way he had. And yet, even now, just remembering how hotly she had affected him, remembering how she had touched him so boldly…

Reule cursed himself and his hardening body. He cursed the memory of the scent of his soap on her, the sparkle of tearing diamond eyes, and the desperation of need as she’d begged him not to leave her. In all good conscience, he ought to check in on her, visit her and let her know he wasn’t far from her side. But he told himself it wouldn’t matter because she was asleep and she wouldn’t know the difference.

He refused to believe the little voice in the back of his brain telling him that he was a coward.

“Reule! Hand me up that line!”

“My Prime!”

Reule was throwing rope up to Amando when Pariedes came running at full steam, puffing for breath and holding up her skirts in both fists in a way that showed far more ankle and calf than he’d ever seen on her in all her time with him. It was such a shocking display for one as conservative as she was that the courtyard immediately erupted in wolfish whistles from the teasing Pack and the workers standing around.

Reule was forced to reach for her in order to stop her momentum from crashing her into him. She was clearly flustered because she was drawing male amusement. Her elfin face was flushed bright red, and he didn’t think it was all from the exertion of her mad dash into the courtyard.

Reule steadied the housekeeper on her feet, throwing an admonishing growl over his shoulder at the raucous men still making a fuss over her. They silenced instantly except for some chuckles of laughter, but all watched them with full attention while Para caught her breath to speak.

“Very well, Para,” Reule said, “what is it?”

“The girl…” she gasped.

It was all she needed to say. Her concern struck out at him like a fist slamming into his belly. Cursing himself for not feeling it sooner, Reule abandoned Para and bolted for the keep. He hadn’t seen his guest for three days; she’d done nothing but sleep, Para forcing her awake only long enough to eat before she fell back into her exhaustion. He’d known every time she’d come awake, however. That wall of sorrow had struck him whenever she was conscious.

He didn’t feel it now, so he didn’t understand what was happening. He hadn’t bothered to scan Para’s thoughts; he was too focused ahead of himself as he tore up the stairs. He was barely up the first few when he heard the screams. They caught his spine, chilling him as he started leaping three and four stairs at a time. Reule ripped into the bedroom across from his and saw Tetra wringing her hands helplessly by the bedside, watching the woman thrashing and screaming in the bed.

“Out!” he commanded roughly, probably frightening the young maid half to death with the savagery in his voice. He couldn’t help it. His heart was pumping out an awful cadence in his chest as he grabbed for the bedding and tore it away. He reached for the tortured woman, his large hands circling her upper arms as she threw back her head and screamed again, tears streaming from her closed eyes.

Three days of good intentions went to hell in that instant between grasping her arms and the decision to pull her up against his chest. Ignoring her blood-chilling screams in his sensitive ear, he pressed her face against his neck with a hand at the back of her head and held her to the warmth of his body with another against her spine.

“Hush,
kébé
,” he soothed softly against her ear. “You’re safe now. Safe with me. Hush, sweetheart.”

Straight telepaths and empaths had no access to the thoughts or emotions of a dreamer. Only Sánge Dream-weavers could enter the subconscious of another via dreams, and that was a talent almost as rare as his ability to emanate. This was why whenever she fell asleep or unconscious, it was like shutting off a switch, which was only turned on again when she woke. So even though she was clearly suffering and in terror, he could feel none of it but what he could glean from her physiology. Her racing heart. Her tears. The hoarse horror in her voice. And now the clawing clutch of her hands as they came up to grasp the back of his shirt so strongly, he could hear it tearing in tiny increments.

“Wake up,” he begged her in a soft whisper. “Please wake up. Come be safe with me,” he urged her, his rapid heartbeat nothing compared to the speed of hers crashing against their joined chests.

Reule closed his eyes and focused on his power of emanation. He gathered up all the strength and safety he felt in his home, surrounded by his Pack, and adored by his people. He fashioned it into an arrow of intention, which he then sent singing into her heart and her mind, hoping somehow it would touch her. He pushed it into her relentlessly and with all the force of his impressive will. He would give her his emotions to fortify her. At least he hoped so. He’d never tried emanating to a sleeping person before.

She’d screamed herself hoarse, but he knew instantly that wasn’t the reason why she suddenly stopped. The sound halted as if it were choked off. Then, like the burst of the sun coming over the horizon, sorrow and anguish flooded through Reule until he laughed in relief; he’d never thought he’d be so happy to feel such things. In this case, it meant she was awake at last.

She was gasping for breath, still clinging to him, but her body had otherwise gone very, very still. He heard her sniff, thinking it was to clear her tears, until she did it again. This time, slowly, deliberately, her nose twitching in a series of nuzzling rubs against his neck as she took in his scent. Reule gritted his teeth together fiercely as a wild thrill rippled over his skin, making the fine hairs of his body stand at attention.
It is nothing!
He told himself this as he fiercely tried to get the rampant reaction under his control. Sánge greeted each other by smell as frequently as not, he argued to himself, and there was absolutely no reason why he should feel such an erotic rush with no other provocation. This was no different from any other—

“Reule,” she sighed, her voice rough from her abuse of it, her satisfaction so damned obvious it made every nerve in his body draw taut in response.

By the Lord, she recognized me by scent.
That meant she had a keen olfactory sensitivity and had taken note of his particular scent. He forced himself not to read anything more into it than that, locking off any idea of attraction or flirtation on her part. That was Sánge cultural behavior, and she wasn’t Sánge. Hell, she was barely awake! Her relief, he told himself, was what anyone would feel after waking from what had obviously been a horrible dream. He was all she knew anymore. It was as simple as that.

Still, it was a heady thing to be the sole focus of her appreciation and contentment. Strange that being the central focus of an entire people had never made him feel what being her hero of the moment did.

“You’re safe,” he murmured to her softly and he closed his eyes and turned his nose against her hair. He breathed in her scent as he spoke, finding it marked in his memory as well, the sweet musk that was unique to her beneath the light scent of vanilla flowers that Para had bathed her in recently.

“You left me,” she sobbed out achingly. “You left me and there was no one for me.”

“No,
kébé
, that’s not true,” he said hoarsely, her pain stirring up his guilt. “I was close all along. Para was here. And Tetra. I would never leave you alone.”

“No! No…” She shook her head slightly as her clutch on him tightened, and he had the distinct feeling that they were talking from two separate worlds.

Reule just held her tightly and let her cry herself out, let her wake further into the real world. “I’m close to you now. I will protect you for as long as you need protecting. You have my vow, sweetheart,” he whispered into her small ear. “The vow of a king, amongst the Sánge, is a powerful thing,
kébé
.”

“I know,” she breathed against his neck.

Reule closed his eyes again and tried to supress the shudder that the awareness of her words sent through him. Again she spoke as though she knew Sánge culture, and the warmth of her breath on his skin seemed to drive it into him like an exhilarating force of nature. What did she really know?
Who is she?

“Do you dream of what happened to you, sweetheart? Is that what makes you scream?” he asked as gently as he could. He felt the reflexive dig of her fingers into his back.

“I don’t remember what happened to me,” she rasped.

Reule wasn’t so sure about that. She remembered something of it. Whether it was disjointed flashes of horror in consciousness, or full clarity in her dreams, she did remember something. It’d take time, but one day she’d come to understand what she had been through. Right now, her mind was protecting itself from the trauma. Waiting for the rest of her body to heal, perhaps, before forcing her to mentally deal with what she had suffered.

“Please don’t leave me again,” she begged him softly, her voice breaking with fear.

“I never did,
kébé
. I swear. I was close all along.”

“But I couldn’t touch you. I couldn’t hold you or speak to you. I couldn’t see you!”

Reule swallowed hard, clenching his teeth as guilt flushed through him again. He’d purposely distanced himself from her because he’d not been able to control his reactions to her bold, strange ways. He’d punished her for his failings. Disgusted with himself, Reule swore restitution.

“What could I have done for you?” he said, inserting the lilt of a tease in his voice as he gathered her into the cradle of his arms and lap. He turned to settle back against the headboard. “You’ve been snoring away quite peacefully for days. You barely woke to eat, and I believe you slept through your most recent bath.”

She snorted softly against his throat, a halfhearted sound of sarcasm that told him she saw that as no excuse for his absence.

“If you plan to join the waking world,
kébé
, I’ll be glad to attend you.”

She hesitated a moment, then lifted her head at last and looked into his eyes. That was when Reule noticed her hair for the first time. To his absolute and utter astonishment, it was a deep, dark red unlike anything he’d ever seen before on a woman. It was even more unexpected on this woman because he’d held her and bathed her and never once had an inkling that this astounding color had lain beneath all that filth. He’d expected black, or even brown…but not this deep crimson color. As red as blood, and there was no denying the comparison. Though not the bright flash of a smear, it was rather that nearly black darkness of a single fat drop as it solidified.

Nor had he realized her hair was so long. In fact, it touched her elbows, and it was lightly curled enough to form casual, wide spirals that took several inches to make a complete revolution. Unable to stop the impulse, and perhaps unwilling as well, Reule reached out and picked up one of the clean locks between two fingers so he could run the length of it through them. It was soft as silk, a little lank from being slept on, and damp from the sweat of her dreams. It was also quite beautiful, dark as it was, and Reule found it an enchanting complement to her diamond eyes.

“You like my hair.” It was a statement, albeit a slightly shy one.

“Yes. Is this a bad thing, that I like your hair? It’s very lovely.”

She blinked those sparkling eyes up at him. “I like your hair as well.” She reached to touch his hair and Reule stiffened reactively. She felt it with all of her body and she stopped just before touching his hairline. “Do you dislike my touch so much?” she asked softly, a combination of curiosity and hurt showing in the tilt of her head and brows.

“No,” he said on a rough exhale. “Your touch…” He cleared his throat. “Your touch is an astounding pleasure,
kébé
. Sánge hair…our scalps are one of our most sensitive erogenous zones.” Best to be blunt with her, he thought. She seemed to understand things better that way. To prefer them that way. Frankly, so did he.

“Oh,” she said softly, slightly lowering her hand. “I remember things about the Sánge so clearly sometimes, but I didn’t remember that.”

She had no way of knowing how that statement tore at him. So, she remembered the Sánge in bits and pieces, did she? Granted, she seemed better informed than most, but it explained why she had disjointed ideas about the Sánge.

“We’re a complex people,” Reule said to her kindly, making certain to banish any hint of disappointment and frustration from his voice. “But we’re not the beasts we’re accused of being.”

“Beasts!” She jerked into a sitting position, her hands coming to wrap around his biceps. “That’s ridiculous! You, Para, and Tetra are angels! Kindness personified! Taking in a stranger rank with dirt and troubles when you could’ve easily left me to wither and die!”

“Never!” His sudden, savage growl seemed to take them both by surprise. Reule’s hands had fallen to her narrow waist where they now circled her lower rib cage. He held her so tightly that she was afraid to draw a breath for fear she wouldn’t be able to. “I’d never leave even the lowest animal on this planet to suffer as you were suffering,” he explained awkwardly. “Y-you were crying out to me. I could never ignore so sad a plea.”