Shattered (21 page)

“Fine then.  Kiss me.”

“What?”  He dropped her hand and looked over his shoulder, but people walked on oblivious to them.  “Now?”

Adara folded her arms
across her chest.  “Right now.”

He could see how determined she was to prove him a liar.  Her lips pressed so tightly together they formed a straight line, etched just as deep as the frown on her brow.

“Fine,” he retorted, and pecked her once on the lips.  His eyes did scan the street again as he straightened, he couldn’t help that, for they both knew she was right.

“That was easily the worst kiss I’ve ever received.”

Modesty be damned.  He wasn’t about to stand here and be insulted by her, of all people. 

In one fluid motion Nathan stepped into her, backed her against the wall, took her face in his hands and lifted her lips to his.  She let out a little gasp but he stifled it with his mouth and used the opportunity of that breath to steal into hers.  Her stubbornness and her fight faded and all the rigidness she held on to melted against him.

The ache he had suppressed last night surged back to life.  He focused that need into their kiss, and it went way beyond her challenge.  He sucked her tongue into his mouth, played with it there.  His hands wandered down to her waist, he pressed his hips against hers, felt the breath of her moan between them.  And he knew if he went much further it would be too far.

Nathan pulled away enough to meet her eyes.  “I hope I’ve made my point Adara.”

Adara grinned up at him and her hand snaked down his body.  “You’ve made
a
point, I’ll grant you that.”

She rubbed the underside of his erection through his pants and Nathan brought his hands up to both sides of her head to brace himself against the wall.  His eyes closed momentarily and a
shudder shot down his body.

“Kiss me again Master Nathan,” Adara said.  It wasn’t a question or a request, for in her tone there was no room to dis
obey.

Nathan leaned over her and she had to turn her head a little to the side to tilt it up enough to reach his lips.  He felt her go onto her tiptoes to meet him half way, and between them her hands tucked at his waistband.

“Not here Adara,” he whispered into her mouth, but he made no move to stop her.  He heard his own voice, his protests were half-hearted.  He pressed back down upon her lips and then he had no room to speak further.

Her hand went around his cock and he jerked forward involuntarily.  The muscles i
n his thighs tensed as she worked the length of him to the tip.  Her other hand went opposite, down his shaft, until her fingers traced over his balls.  Nathan swallowed back his moan and lost his focus on their kiss.  His lips hovered just over hers and he felt every exhale between them.

Adara’s hand on his shaft gained speed and it was all he could do to stand there and not move.  He kissed her again and his tongue dove into her mouth.  He tried to put his mind there, to fight down the pressure building in his groin, but all he felt was how hot and wet her mouth was, how her tongue slid a
round his.  He abandoned it altogether and straightened up, arched his hips a little into her, and her face buried into his chest as she continued to stroke him, up and down, harder and harder.

“You’re goi
ng to make me cum,” he warned, a broken breath against her hair.

He felt Adara nod against him.  Her hands went to the tip and she squeezed him, ran her thin fingers over the head.  The muscles in his groin tensed again and he jerked forward into her hand, but without the friction on his sh
aft he wouldn’t be able climax.  It made him burn down to his toes.

“Finish in my hands
,” she said, and cupped both of hers around the tip.

Nathan
’s fingers slid down the wall and wrapped around his shaft.  It was so hot in his hand, having left cooler stone, but nothing compared to the sensation in his legs.  He stroked to counter the stinging pleasure of her softer touch on the head of his cock.  And as his hand moved faster that pressure left his thighs and coiled again in his groin.

It built up until he couldn’t hold it back and burst from him in a rush.  Adara’s hands encircle the head of his cock
as his own urged release from him.  The relief from that need was profound that he realized he’d been carrying it around with him all day.

Nathan backed away from her half a step and her hands came off him.  He couldn’t see th
e mess within her cupped hands, but he knew it was there.  He pinched down once more on his shaft, milking the last of it out, and swept that bead clean with one finger.  Without thinking he sucked that finger into his mouth.

“Clean
mine too?” She asked, half as a joke, leaving him an out to refuse, but he heard the seriousness of her tone as well.  She looked up at him and when he didn’t laugh she spread her palms to reveal the sticky white fluid all over her fingers.

He didn’t even need to think about it.  He took one hand and kissed the pad of her palm, slid his tongue along it, sucked on each finger.  He kissed the inside of her hand again once it was clean and let it fall back to her side, and then took up the other.

He’d tasted himself once before and memories of that time came back to him now.  He was subdued.  Submissive.  He wanted nothing more than to sit on the ground at her feet and lean against her leg.

The cry of a crow brought his mind back to where they were and snapped him from those thoughts. 
The reintroduction of reality left him confused and unexplainably agitated.  He didn’t fault Adara for what they’d just done, it wasn’t that at all.  He faulted himself, that he continued to use her like this, and worse, that she didn’t seem to mind.

Nathan stepped away from her and saw the mischievous little grin on her face. 
It didn’t seem right that she should be so happy, not with her station in life.  Her eyes met his and she reined in her expression, no doubt queuing off whatever she saw in him.  Her smile faded and her brows went upward, and she all but spoke the question on her face.

“I’m suddenly tired.  L
et’s go home,” Nathan mumbled.

He couldn’t stand the hurt on her face
and he took her hand and started to walk instead.  He kept his eyes forward and off her, and for a time he didn’t care that they were lost, for it gave him an excuse to keep moving without conversation.

He had a vague sense of w
here they were when they came upon the river that intersected the city.  It flowed north to south and the water here was clean of debris, and he knew they were on the northern side of the city because of it.

“I’m sorry I made you do that,”
Adara whispered.  She bobbed along beside him, taking two steps to every one of his to keep up.

“You didn’t
make me do anything,” he replied, and made a show of looking around so he wouldn’t have to look at her.  But he didn’t really see anything, just a blur of color as his eyes passed over too quick.  Too much of his attention was focused on reading her.

Adara stopped and her hand slipped from his as he continued on an extra step.  “Yes I did
Master.  You don’t know how to say no to me and I took advantage of that.”

He turned towards her and looked at the stubborn frown that creased her forehead.  The sun reflected off her eyes and made the blue there brighter, even as she squinted a little
.

“I can say no to you,” he insisted, and the words felt automatic, like he was simply rising to the challenge she was laying down now, and maybe she was right.  Because it was the second part he really wanted to say and it wouldn’t come out.  He knew how to say no
to her, he just didn’t want to.

“Then why are you mad?”
She asked and he could tell by her stance they weren’t moving from this spot until he gave her an answer.

“I’m not mad.”

Adara snorted and hugged her sides a little tighter.  Her dress flattened against her body and held to the slight curve of her waist.

Nathan sighed
and closed the gap between them.  “I’m mad at myself.”

“Why?”

“You just don’t know how to mind your own business, do you?” He asked, and brushed her lip free from between her teeth with his thumb.

“Nope,”
Adara replied cheerfully, and she was smiling again, and Nathan realized he was too.  She had that effect on him.  It only made him sigh anew.

“I wish I could just say whateve
r I like, like you,” Nathan whispered.  He reached up and stroked her hair.  The sun had made it warm and it was smooth beneath his fingers.

“Like what?”

He chuckled at that.  “I wouldn’t have to wish if I could just say it, now would I?”

Adara frowned a little as she thought about that.  And then she looked up again, from beneath her bangs, and he could see her smile in her eyes.  “I could guess.  Then you wouldn’t be saying it, I would.”

Nathan shook his head.  “You really don’t belong here Adara, you know that?  You’re too good a person.  We’re going to ruin you here,” he said, and he knew he was only half joking.

“
Maybe I’ll ruin you first,” she said with a smirk. “It does go both ways Master.”

Nathan
leaned forward and kissed her once on the cheek.  “You’re a comfort, somehow,” he whispered, near her ear, and took her hand again.  He should send her away, for her own good, but he needed her here.  And he’d continue to use her, one way or another.  His guilt would have to be penance enough for that.

They walked the rest of the way in unburdened silence.  Adara to her thoughts and Nathan to his. 
There was something in her simple, unspoiled innocence that reminded him of Clara, and suddenly he knew how he could protect his sister from a threat he didn’t understand.

**

He’d send
Clara away again, before she could even return.  It was simple.  Whatever harm threatened her in Surnat couldn’t touch her if she wasn’t here.  It couldn’t corrupt her or ruin her, or whatever it was he was supposed to protect her from.  There was nothing good here anyway.  Every single person was rotten.

He made five copies of
the same letter, for he didn’t know precisely when she and Elizabeth would arrive, nor which road they’d take, and five runners was all he was willing to risk.  He left her name out, and his, but it was easy to reference something they shared to validate his words.  Trent had only ever treated the girls as a responsibility, Jeremy simply ignored them, and only Nathan had ever been a brother to either.  Clara would trust him, she had to.

Nathan knew he was taking a risk sending the girls
to Perena, but it was likely the last place anyone would look for them.  He could send half his army out that way too, to meet up with the girls in secret and escort them there, and neither Trent nor Jeremy would think anything of it.  It would be months before anyone knew the truth.

He
wished there was a better option, but he had no allies outside these walls.  Only starving vassals.  The price set on them was simply high.  He needed to stand up to Trent, for there must be solutions that didn’t include violence.

Nathan looked up from the letters he’d written to
Adara.  She’d been hovering at the edge of his attention ever since they returned, oscillating back and forth between cleaning and flipping through his things.  She seemed so curious with everything that he couldn’t even call it snooping, for that would imply a maliciousness she didn’t possess.

Maybe not every person
here was rotten, he thought, and he had to wonder what protected her.  He wondered if she wasn’t as broken as the rest of them and that, somehow, she was simply able to hide it.  It didn’t seem possible to live here unscathed.

She’d been humming absen
tly for the last half hour now, little fragments of songs that could probably be traced back to her childhood.  It didn’t bother him, he found the tune soothing.  And he realized then that, for as familiar as she felt, he’d been unaware of her a day ago.  He knew nothing about her at all.

She looked up from
the drawer she’d been digging through and offered him a soft smiled.  It shone more in her eyes than in her lips, like she was thinking to somewhere that wasn’t here.  But when his eyes didn’t drop back to his work she pulled back from her thought and straightened a little.

“Are you done
Master?”

“Yes.  And truly Adara, you can just call me Nathan.”

She approached his desk and leaned over the side opposite him.  Her elbows planted against the wood and her arms went vertical.  She put her chin atop her closed fists, level to his face, and stared straight at him.  There was such focus in her eyes he couldn’t look away.

“Can I start guessing the thing you don’t want to say now Nathan?”

Nathan let out a little breath, the top half of a chuckle, but the rest stalled when he saw how serious she was.  To not see her smiling was strange.  It was powerful.

She took his silence for permission. 
“You don’t like your brothers.”