Drink of Me (9 page)

She felt desperation in his hands as he held her, a tremor riding through his muscles as he suppressed a tangle of emotion. This man who seemed so gruff and powerful struggled to tamp down his emotions so no one would see them. Or see them as a weakness, she added to herself as she cocked her head. How must that feel? To experience emotion so deeply, yet never feel comfortable sharing it because there was an image to be maintained? It would be confining and lonely, she realized in an instant. Far lonelier than being in a strange world without even a name to ground you. She at least was free to feel and say and think whatever she wished. More so than anyone else, because she had no society or rules to follow at the moment. Although, as she began to examine her mind and instincts, she suspected that those things remained ingrained within her, whatever they were.

“Reule,” she said gently, running both hands over the hard contours of his muscular arms, up to his broad shoulders, “you are no beast. I know it with all of my instincts and with all of my spirit. And I have a feeling I’m the sort of woman who is always right.”

A startled laugh barked out of him and she smiled brightly. His hands left her waist and she soon found her head enveloped between them, his callused thumbs sliding over the crests of her cheekbones as he stared hard at her with his eyes of multicolored greens and golds. She knew she was small, but trapped between his hands like this, she felt incredibly fragile. The calluses told her that this was a man used to hard physical work, the muscles beneath her fingers giving more evidence of that. He could probably crush her to dust if he wanted to.

“You have a beautiful smile,
kébé
,” he murmured in a tone so low it rumbled a vibration through his hands and into her facial bones. It tickled. His thumbs dropped to her mouth where they brushed lightly against the smooth surface of her bottom lip. “You’ve healed remarkably well,” he noted.

She had no mirror to look into, save his eyes and the expression on his face. She knew just by looking at his appreciation and steady regard that the bruises were probably gone and her chapped lips healed. She smiled and reached to brush her fingertips against the warm skin of his neck.

“May I ask a favor of you?” she asked him, enjoying the feel of her lips moving against his thumbs as she spoke.

“Ask,” he commanded simply.

“You cannot keep calling me ‘foundling.’ Or at least not solely. Perhaps we should choose a name for me until I can recall…Why, whatever is wrong?” She widened her eyes when she saw the tautness that came over his expression and radiated down into the tensing of his fingertips. There was a sudden shuttering of his hazel eyes.

“How did you know
kébé
means ‘foundling’?” he asked quietly, a sickening feeling of doubt and suspicion once again crawling through his belly.

“Reule…I don’t know. I just do. I can’t explain these things. I swear to you, I—”

“Your pardon,” he said quickly, pausing to try to clear the rough rumble from his tone that made him sound like the predator he was. “I meant no accusation.” It was part lie, part truth. Reule didn’t know what he meant anymore. All he knew was that she baffled his senses and his thoughts like no other could. “Have you already given thought to a name? Do you have a preference?”

“I…I thought you might suggest something.” Her tone was subdued and Reule could feel her confusion and her uneasiness.

His moody behavior made no sense to her, and wouldn’t to someone completely free of ulterior motive. He believed that she had no nefarious purpose. At least at present. He reminded himself there was no possible way for anyone to spy on the Sánge, considering the power of their telepathy. A deceiver would be discovered easily, would they not? Especially under Reule’s nose. The castle was all but overrun with his Packmates, the most powerful men of their breed.

But if someone was going to be a successful spy, wouldn’t they know the native language and appear in just the sort of way that would cause them to be brought into the very midst of the workings of Sánge government? How much better if the spy’s mind could be altered so that even
they
were ignorant of their purpose and the value of the things they were seeing? That would allow her to move without suspicion among them, her thoughts free of duplicity, free from detection. Then later she could be somehow recovered and…

Reule sighed, reaching up to rub at an ache in his temples. He was beginning to sound paranoid. But didn’t he have cause to be? Growing up as he had? Watching a third of his people die of starvation, exposure to the elements of the lands they’d trudged over, and victims to beasts both two-and four-legged. All in two decades. It had more than taken its toll on him. He’d vowed to never allow such a horror to befall his people again. He’d kept that promise, and he’d done it by being sharp, shrewd, and even paranoid through the years.

He was lost in these grim thoughts when he felt the skim of warm, rough fingers sliding around his. His attention swung to the hand holding his, comforting him when he was so obviously distressed. However, the gesture inadvertently upset him even more because he could see the tattered state of her nails and the healing wounds on her palms and knew the damage had been inflicted as she had crawled across a wilderness. What right did he have to persecute her without even the slightest shred of proof? Even Darcio’s very personal and taxing invasion into the history of her body had revealed nothing to prove she meant any of the Sánge harm, and it wasn’t like Reule to bear prejudice against anyone, not even Jakals, until they gave him cause.

However, he rather suspected that part of the problem was the uncanny way she had of disrupting his steady, long-familiar calm. She had barely been in the keep for three days. What would he suffer throughout a long winter, should she remain here with them?

What did it matter? To treat her poorly because of his own inadequacies was reprehensible. Reule determined to get himself under control. No matter what she had been before this, right now she was innocent and she was frighteningly lost and alone. Given time, the mystery surrounding his foundling would begin to unfold.

“Mystique,” he said abruptly, the name snapping out of him unexpectedly. The moment he said it, he knew it was perfect. If he went by the smile spreading with pleasure over her face and in her glittering eyes, she agreed.

“Reule, it’s beautiful. Thank you.”

Reule decided he liked the name very much himself. “But,” he said with a playful grin overcoming him, “I think perhaps I will still call you
kébé
from time to time.”

“You, My Prime, may call me whatever you wish,” she said with a soft uptilt of her lips and her eyes smiling with delight. “So long as it is complimentary and full of praise,” she stipulated with a sly glance from under her lashes.

Reule had to laugh. It wasn’t until just that moment that he realized women didn’t usually tease him like that. Oh, his Packmates mocked him incessantly, the practical jokes between Packmates the stuff of legend. Lately, though, Reule had withdrawn a great deal from their antics as his position as Prime pressed him into the responsibility of running a successful city. “I will make a bargain with you,” he said as he eased her from his lap and went to stand up away from her. She held on to him, but he smiled as he grasped her reluctant hands. “I will make every effort to be a fount of praise and compliments, so long as you promise to let me step away before Para comes in the room. She is coming up the stairs as we speak and I have no desire to be scolded for my improprieties with you. I think she sees you as a chick she needs to protect.”

Mystique hardly thought a Sánge Prime had any reason to be swayed by the views of a servant, but she realized with pleasure that Reule was making the effort simply to please Pariedes, whom he clearly felt respect and affection for. She released him as he’d requested and settled back in the bed just as Para came bustling breathlessly through the door.

“Oh! Well! Lady bless you, child, you’re awake at last!” Pariedes gasped as she shut the door and shifted her eyes between her lord and her charge very slowly and with some apparent thought. “I knew the Prime would quickly set you to rights. Are you roused enough to get dressed today? We can draw a bath or go downstairs to the springs. If you’re up to it you can have a meal at table. Well”—Para fluttered her hands before tucking them under her apron to contain their nervous gestures—“you decide, of course. I must say you look very well.”

Reule followed Pariedes’s assessing gaze as she evaluated the compact and beautiful girl a dank attic had given birth to. Reule’s eyes slid over Mystique’s waist, hips, and legs, the soft curves he realized he knew very well even after so short a time. Once she began to eat well, he imagined she would fill out more in those places, transforming simple curves into delicious lushness that would make her even more of a temptation than she already was.

“We have chosen a name for me,” she said with delight, eager to share with her first companion. “Mystique!”

“My, that is very lovely. And apropos. I approve,” Para said with a firm nod.

“Reule chose it.”

“Our Prime is a clever and surprising man,” Para said with a lilting sort of smile that earned her a scowl from him as he tried to figure out what that was supposed to mean. “My Prime, I believe Amando was hoping you would return to the caravan as soon as you were able?”

Reule lifted a thick black brow at Pariedes. He was being summarily dismissed, and there was no doubt about it. The smothered giggle from the bed didn’t please him and he tried to figure out who deserved his darkest look of warning more. They were both gazing at him so innocently and so completely expectant that he’d meekly accept the directive…that he did exactly that.

“Mystique, if you’re well enough and would enjoy it, I’d like your company at my table for dinner. The entire Pack will dine together tonight because Amando is about to make his way along the final trade route of the season and we like to send him off with luck, a full belly, and memories of his companions waiting for his return. They would be honored by your attendance and would be pleased to see you looking so well. I will also understand if you feel it is too soon…”

“I would love to!” she said with a burst of excitement he felt sparkling all over his skin. “I feel just fine, and I wish very much to see my new home and to meet those who attend the leader who has rescued me so gallantly.”

Reule didn’t respond to being called her hero, afraid it might go to his head. Instead he gave her a partial bow, wanting to exit the room before Pariedes decided to eject him.

Mystique watched him bow from his great height as he towered above her bed, and she felt her breath catch in her chest. She released it in a sudden sigh of approval as she let her eyes move from the top of his black-haired head to the shiny tips of his polished leather boots. The sound of her breath drew the sharp attention of hazel eyes that she suspected never missed a thing. He watched her steadily from beneath sooty lashes and waves of pitch-colored hair that had settled in a shaggy mane around his forehead and cheekbones, covering the entire back of his neck in differing gradations of length.

He gave her a half-smile, a flash of two or three white teeth that had a sort of wolfishness to it. It was his way of letting her know that everything she was thinking was open to exploration and, whether he took advantage of the opportunity or not, he was very aware of being the subject of her contemplation.

She dipped her chin and narrowed her eyes right back at him, the silent message of a woman who didn’t care if he knew she was appraising him. She hadn’t meant for it to be a secret anyway. She boldly carried on.

When it came to his overall stature, the Sánge male before her was positively breathtaking. He was extremely broad in the shoulders and chest, thick with muscle from top to bottom, and his dark hair and changeable eyes were the perfect accent to pronounced, rugged features deeply tanned from a season spent working outdoors. She could as easily imagine him in the fields as she could envision him sitting in state. The versatility of the man was fascinating to her. He was a complete stranger, yet Mystique felt that every moment, every breath in his company was telling deeper stories about him. It was subtle, something she was learning without even knowing she was absorbing the lesson, but she was certain it was happening. She liked it. She liked knowing she was observant in such ways. It made her feel that she knew herself better.

She smiled slyly, a feeling of confidence surging through her as she watched him turn toward the door to take his leave. She knew she was being obvious, but she didn’t care. She sat up straighter, tucking her legs beneath herself and tilting her head so she could watch him as he moved.

Sánge males wore snug pants in clinging, comfortable fabrics tucked into boots that reached just to their knees. On Reule, both boots and breeches were tailored tightly in universal black. His fit legs were sculpted by material that stretched and stretched to accommodate the thighs of an accomplished horseman, lean hips, a heavenly backside, and…

Well, Mystique had more than a fair idea of the rest. She had felt it, close and hot, when she had been sitting in his lap in the bath that first night. She’d also felt his firm, ridged belly and the hot, smooth skin of his sculpted chest, both of which were now hidden beneath a rather plain white linen shirt with sleeves that he’d rolled back over his forearms and a beautifully tooled leather vest that buttoned with handsome turquoise catches. The strong leather weapons belt and its wickedly prominent dagger rode diagonally across his hips, adding a dash of swagger to an otherwise simple fashion.

His long, thick fingers closed around the knob of the door to draw it open. As she watched, sureness and care radiated from every gesture he made. She remembered roughened calluses and a smooth, long caress along the bare line of her back. She knew little about herself, but she was positive she’d never felt anything as stimulating as this Sánge’s touch against her skin.

Frustration sketched through her as she realized how much she was missing from herself. Fortunately, the longer she was conscious and the better she felt, the more she remembered about basic things. There were no memories of a personal nature, no recollections of people or places of origin, but she had strong impressions of a lot of little tidbits about herself. For instance, while she knew how to speak with the gentle mannerisms of a lady, she realized she also knew tricks to surviving in wild places. She knew, she’d realized, how to fight both physically in order to defend her body and verbally in order to defend her wit. Actually, it was really quite strange the things she remembered…or rather…
felt
she knew.

She was glad of it. This time when Reule left her presence, she wasn’t so frightened and she didn’t feel so alone. Initially, he’d been the very air she breathed, and when he’d walked away from her it’d been suffocating and terrible.
They must remain together
, the voice of the spirit within her cried even now.
Why?
She just felt it. And slowly, as different lights flicked on in her faulty brain, it was the one thing that became steadily more certain.

So when the door closed behind him, she had to take several moments in order to wrestle down the urgent sense of panic that overcame her. When she could breathe again, Mystique realized she could feel him still. She could even
smell
him. That blend of his woodsy soap, the musk of his vital body, and the earthy tang of leather. Sensing him beyond the door like that was the first hint she had of possessing heightened senses. She hadn’t noticed it before, but something just told her…

She was oblivious to Para’s chitchat as the attendant worked to prepare Mystique to face the impending meal with the Pack. Her focus was completely on the male just beyond her chamber.

He was simply standing against the door. She could even picture his hand still on the brass knob. Curious, she found herself straining to listen. The low, rhythmic whoosh that reached her made her heartbeat stutter, then join the pulse of his life perfectly. She heard his heartbeat suffer a mistimed interruption in its smooth cadence. She listened to the rush of his pulse, the rasp of his breath against his throat, so rough and sexy to her hungry ears. She shuddered as she remembered how the cascade of his breath against her neck had felt, her breasts growing taut with the sensual memory, her nipples tightening into expectant peaks as she…

“Mystique.” He whispered her new name on a low, intense breath. “Never forget that I can read your mind,
kébé
,” he said softly, his words the barest murmur.

Mystique gasped in a small breath. She’d forgotten. Confusion reigned a long moment and her heart pounded while she tried to recall what she’d been thinking about him all this time. It was a foolish thing to do because if he’d missed her thoughts the first time, reviewing them would certainly finish the job.

She heard him chuckle softly under his breath. She could picture his grin easily. She could picture everything about him easily. Mystique hastily swept that thought away before she ended up somewhere more personal than she was prepared to be at the moment. She was certain it was already too late, knew he’d probably seen her every covetous thought, and realized she really didn’t mind.

She slipped out of bed, gathering the material of her sleeping gown because the skirt was too long for her height. She walked almost as if she were entranced until she came to a dressing table and a large mirror. She looked into her own eyes in the mirror, a smile lifting the corners of her lips. Her heart picked up in rhythm as she looked at herself, knowing very well that Reule still hadn’t moved from the other side of the door. His breaths rose and fell with an increasing intensity. She tilted her chin down slightly, the slant casting sleek angles over her face, a couple of ringlets of hair brushing over her throat and chest. Mystique slowly lowered her eyes along her reflection. The thin fabric she wore was low against her bosom, damp from the sweat of dreams that lingered. She let her eyes fall to her own breasts, the dark pink of her nipples actually visible through the pale silk, as were the shadows and curves that made it abundantly clear she was a lush sort of female, for all her petite frame and underfed form.

She was paying very close attention to the sharpness of her senses. She wasn’t disappointed. Reule’s breath vacated his lungs with a hissing rush and she heard the clench of his fingers on the brass of the knob. She took in a slow breath and her sly smile grew in ratio to the heat and scent of a decidedly aroused male. She thrilled in the racing of his heart and luxuriated in the pheromonal changes oozing off his heated skin.

And they weren’t even in the same room.

Mystique wished she was alone. She might have taken hold of the slim straps of the gown and…

“Enough!”
he whispered sharply for her mind alone, the command ferocious enough to make her start.
“Lord and Lady, you fiendish little minx,”
he accused her hotly,
“you try my restraint on purpose!”

“So you think I’m playing games, then?”
she murmured through her thoughts.
“I’m not entirely sure I know how, or if I’m any good at them.”

“What do you call this, if not a game?”
he demanded.
“You’re making calculated moves toward an end goal, the very definition of a game. I don’t think you’ll expect what you will win if you continue to push me.”

The sudden sureness of her feminine power sang through her.
“What I expect, My Prime, is to draw you to me. What I know is that I like what happens to you when you think of me. And I enjoy my response to that. Don’t think to frighten me with what I can expect from you.”

Leaning nearly all of his weight against the sturdy door, Reule shuddered in response. There were few things more stimulating than a confident woman who knew what she wanted. She was like a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky. Unexpected, shocking, and able to make him sizzle from head to toe in a single strike.

Damn. It was as if his little foundling had been conjured just for the torture of his senses. Senses that were reacting wildly to her. Reule glanced down the front of his body at the positive proof of his reaction, which was fiercely testing the seams wrought by his tailor.

This was wrong, he thought with an internal groan. It had to be wrong. His Packmates were the ones who loved to sniff around women, flirting and bedding whoever suited their ravenous appetites.

Not he. He was in control of his needs and his desires at all times. And yet, this painful state of body, this low, taunting pulse, seemed to fiercely whisper his need for the outlander woman. A woman who might not even know what she was getting herself into. A woman who had been in his existence for all of a few days!

Curses spewed through Reule’s mind as he finally pushed away from the door. Once he was in motion, his stride began to eat up yards of wood, stone, and carpeted floors, the step of his boots striking out a tattoo he found satisfying to his temperament. He at last began to master his body as he distanced himself from the too-near temptation of a compact beauty with hair of deep, breathtaking crimson.

Darcio was sitting before the fireplace in the Pack’s common room, located just outside the dining hall. He was in his favorite chair, relaxed into a slump with his booted ankles crossed and propped on the large ottoman in front of him. His slim fingers were threaded together and both hands rested palms down over his flat stomach. His eyes were closed beneath the spiky fall of his straw-gold hair, which gleamed and caught the colors of the flames.

Finally he opened an eye and, tilting his head so the fall of his hair shifted out of his line of sight, he narrowed eyes the color of a coming storm on his Packmate, who had moved soundlessly up beside him.

“Something I can do for you, Rye?”

“I’m worried about this girl.”

Darcio smiled. He could always count on Rye to get straight to his point. In the position of Prime Blade, Rye was captain of the Jeth armies as well as heir to Reule’s throne should he die without issue. Their Prime’s family had been destroyed in the persecutions and the aftermath of the wanderings before they’d finally found a home in the Jeth Valley. With no blood heirs, Prime Reule had long ago selected Rye from his Pack to succeed him. It was a well-deserved honor. Rye was the second strongest ’pathic in the city of Jeth, as well as having a head for matters of state and the even temper Reule himself strove for, even if their Prime didn’t always succeed at it.

“Why would a half-starved and wholly abused girl disturb you, Rye?”

“Because she’s just too damn convenient,” he muttered, throwing himself into a nearby chair when it looked as though he wasn’t going to be able to stir Darcio from his relaxation. “And I’m not the only one who thinks so. Delano is—”

“Delano is Prime Assassin, it’s his job to suspect everything that breathes of foul play.”

“Well, I’d never discount his opinion,” Rye said with a dark scowl lining his already dark features. Rye’s sky-blue eyes fixed on Darcio. “Did you see how Reule reacted today when Para came running into the courtyard? Did you
feel
it?”

“Of course I did. I’m neither blind nor as ’pathically challenged as some think I am,” Darcio scoffed.

“That isn’t what I meant to imply and you know it,” Rye snapped. He caught his own tone and exhaled his frustration with Darcio, running both hands through his mane of black hair as he leaned back in his chair. “Why are you being purposely obtuse?”

“Because I don’t see anything to worry about. Yes, Reule reacted strongly. I would have, too, after the way Para came running up on us. Reule sees things that we don’t, and that’s a fact. He feels things that we don’t. I wouldn’t presume to question so simple an incident as him running off to help someone in trouble.”

Rye snorted. “I hardly call a nightmare being in trouble.”

Darcio studied Rye through lowered lashes. He knew Rye well, and he could safely assume that this wasn’t necessarily the Blade’s own opinion he was hearing. Rye wasn’t the sort to be easily swayed, unless it was by Reule’s desire. Or unless someone was trying to convince him that Reule was in danger. Delano and Saber, Assassin and Defender respectively, were the only ones capable of doing so.

“This is more than Delano’s usual paranoia, isn’t it?” Darcio guessed. “Saber must be in a twist as well to compel you to seek me out.” The Prime Shadow tried not to smile at the flash of surprise and sheepishness that struck the heir’s features. “So, one very small girl has an entire Pack of brutes shaking with fear and worry?”