The Lone Warrior (12 page)

“Florien, isn’t it?” Gods, if he had a mind to, he could count the child’s ribs.

A nod.

“Where are you from?”

“Sybaris.” His lips barely parted, the word grudgingly given.

“Your parents? Family?”

A shake this time. “Cenda,” the boy said after a pause. “I guess. Mebbe Erik.” A frown. “An’ I work fer Prue, fer ’em all.” He squared skinny shoulders.

Deiter snorted. “Boy’s a guttersnipe. But Cenda insisted on bringing him. The gods know why.”

Florien curled a lip, though Walker noted the trembling hands, the pulse beating in his thin neck. The child was terrified, as well he might be. “Wouldn’t work fer ye, old man. Not iffen ye paid me.”

But he had balls. Fleetingly, Walker saw another face, a girl with hair as black as his own and a wheedling grin.
C’mon, big brother, I’m tall enough now. Teach me quarterstaff. Mam won’t know, I swear.

Casually, he stepped between Deiter and the boy. “Get Dai to show you the basics, without the knife, mind. When he says you’re ready, come to me.”

Florien’s mouth dropped open. Then he flushed a deep scarlet, eyes as black as Walker’s own sparkling like polished jet.

“No,” Mehcredi said immediately. “Dai’s not up to anything like that.”

Walker ignored her. “Dai?”

A nod and a smile.
Sure
.

“Good.” Walker turned on his heel and headed back toward his accounts.

Her skin still flushed with warmth after another stolen bath, Mehcredi lit the stub of a candle, lowered herself to the edge of her bed and stared at the swordmaster’s shirt. The moment he’d disappeared into the building, she’d stopped using it as a makeshift towel. And once she gained her room, she draped it carefully over the back of the single chair to dry.

She was trembling now, with the oddest mixture of excitement and trepidation. All day she’d been thinking of that piece of linen, a secret pleasure that filled her with glee, naughty as a child with stolen candy.

Biting her lip, she reached out to finger a dangling cuff. It wasn’t a good shirt, she’d done enough laundry to know that, just something he chose for rough work. The fabric was worn and soft, with a couple of neat darns. One of the laces was frayed at the end. Not a garment he was likely to miss.

Letting out a gusty breath, she rose and spread it out over the bed, patting and twitching it into place as if it were a fine satin quilt. Then she jammed the back of the chair under the doorknob, as she did every night. Without giving herself time to think, she reefed the shift over her head and flung it to the floor.

Her heart banged about behind her ribs, the sonorous beat so loud it echoed in her ears.

Now. Sweet Sister,
now
!

Before she lost her nerve, Mehcredi grabbed the shirt, squeezed her eyes shut and slid into it the way she slipped under the deep water of her bath, fumbling her arms into the sleeves. Walker was broader across the shoulders and the chest and the cut of the garment was loose, so it slithered down over breasts, hips and buttocks without hindrance, a whispered caress that finished midthigh.

It smelled of man—not just any man—of
him
, his skin, his body, his uncompromising masculinity. As if he’d put his arms around her and drawn her close, her nose buried against the soft skin behind his ear. The sensation was more overpowering than she’d anticipated, so much so that she swayed where she stood. When she raised an arm to brace herself against the low ceiling, the soft linen shifted, sliding against the sensitive skin under her arm, brushing the shaman’s Mark on her breast, the curve of her stomach.

Silvery heat flared low in her belly, so bright and clenching, she doubled over, stumbled and fell back on the bed with a choked cry. Pressing the heel of her hand against the mound of her sex made it worse, even more intense.
Gods
. Every swirling line of the Mark on her breast tingled. The tender flesh swelled, the skin tightening. Her nipples ached as if compressed between hard fingers. Shaking, she stroked fingertips over the fabric, tracing every line of the Mark beneath. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine it was the swordmaster, hunter’s face intent, Magick flowing from his fingers, soaking into her skin in the wake of his skilled touch. With his other hand, he’d cradle the breast, pulling the skin taut with a thumb to create his canvas.

He’d only done it because he had to, she knew that, and he’d probably been disgusted, but for these few moments, all her senses wrapped up by the fabric that had touched his skin, she’d allow herself the fantasy.

The soft folds between her legs were wet and swollen, puffy with lust. She might be a half-wit slut, but she wasn’t completely ignorant. Because lust was all it was, pure and simple. Or not so pure. The half-formed chuckle morphed into a long groan. She knew what she was about to do, knew how stupid it was, but she’d never felt so . . . so . . . lit up. She almost expected the heat to be visible through her skin, a luminescent glow like a fire blazing behind a screen.

If there was one thing she’d learned at Lonefell, it was the comfort her own body could give her. The only names she knew for what she did were ugly or childish, or both—frigging, beating off, jerking off. Taso called that soft, sensitive place a
cunt
, spitting out the word as if it tasted foul in his mouth. But when she lay hunched in some hideyhole at the keep, cold and miserable and unable to sleep, stroking it helped. The fingers of one hand busy, she’d achieve release, the other fist shoved in her mouth to stifle her cries. Afterward, she’d drift off, telling herself it didn’t matter, that at least one person cared enough to gift her with pleasure—even if it was she herself.

Mehcredi fixed her gaze on the square of night sky framed by the window under the eaves, but what she saw was the swordmaster dancing with his swords on the green grass, his near-nude body so brutally male the impact of its beauty made her heart ache. He wore what she’d come to think of as his
inward
face, all his attention focused within, hard with concentration. Try as she might, even in her mind’s eye, she couldn’t change that expression to something softer. She tried to imagine how he’d look if he cared about the woman he was fucking, but it was beyond her. She couldn’t even make her mental image smile.

Her eyes stung. Godsdammit, she’d take what she could get, pathetic though it might be.

Inhaling deeply, she filled her lungs with dark spice, allowing one hand to drift down, down, over ribs and belly, to the satin skin on the inside of her thigh. Back up, the hem of the shirt riding on her wrist. The muscles in her legs went slack and her thighs lolled open. With her fingertips, she furrowed through sparse curls, quivering when she encountered wet flesh.

“Please,” she whimpered to the silent room, lifting her hips in yearning. “Oh, please.”

He took pity on her, adding another finger, and finally,
finally
, strumming the little bump of hot aching flesh at the apex of her cleft with his thumb. How so much sensation could be concentrated in such a small area she had no idea, but Walker knew.

With the last fragment of her sanity, Mehcredi turned her head and bit the pillow.

Everything dissolved. White lightning flashed across the inside of her eyelids. As she shuddered and arched, the earth spun, trees grew tall as the sky, spreading their branches in canopies that covered the world, withered, died and sprang forth again. More silvery flashes, slowly dissipating, until they became simple spasms of pleasure and then no more than the reminiscent twitching of exhausted nerve and muscle.

She clamped her eyelids shut, riding it out, moaning and gasping into the pillow.

When she opened her eyes, an eon later, the stars in the window were watery smears. She could smell herself, her body sheened with sweat, thighs shiny with her own juices. Every muscle ached.

Sniffing, she wiped her eyes and removed the shirt. Carefully, she hung it over the back of the chair and wiped herself down with a corner of the threadbare sheet. Her knees felt like water, the pulse still drumming in her ears.

That had been . . . She swallowed hard. Sweet Sister, she’d thought she was going to die—and she hadn’t cared.

Tears dripped down her cheek and off her chin, hot and salty. She’d felt . . . exalted, as though her passion was holy and beautiful, a force of Nature. But now, she sat in a bare little room in the House of Swords, sweat pooling in the small of her back, the muscles of her legs protesting because she’d frigged herself into a stupor like the half-wit slut she was.

All the breath whooshed out of her, as effectively as if she’d tumbled down all four flights of stairs and landed in a heap at Walker’s feet in the front hall. Was it part of his shaman’s Magick, of his justice, to punish her like this? To make her feel small and dirty?

Rolling over, she picked up a shard of mirror from the rickety nightstand. She had a broken-backed hairbrush too, both rescued from the trash heap. The mirror was shaped like a long, narrow triangle that came to a nasty point, lethal as a poniard. From the moment she’d seen it, she’d thought it might make a useful weapon. She still thought so. Tilting it, she stared into her own eyes, a stormy gray luminous with tears. Her nose was pink, so were her cheeks.

Well, shit. What was done was done. Mehcredi set her jaw. A daft lump she might be, but small and dirty she wasn’t. Her lips twisted in a wry smile. Certainly not small.

She poured herself a cup of water from the chipped jug and drank it slowly, thinking. Walker wasn’t interested in her body, in fucking. He’d made that clear enough from the outset.
You are not appealing to me in any way whatsoever,
he’d said, his voice deep, each word spaced for emphasis. So it followed he would have no knowledge of her stupid sluttish fantasies.

They were all her own. Her gaze traveled to the shirt. With a wistful smile, she wrapped her arms around her middle. All her own. It was tempting, but she wouldn’t sleep in the shirt, or even with it. If she did, it would end up smelling like her and she’d lose this tiny stolen piece of an impossible dream.

She’d never met anyone like the swordmaster, could never have imagined such a man might exist. But then, she had so little experience. Perhaps there were men like him all over the world?

No, not possible. She wasn’t the only one who thought he was amazing. Wait a minute. Mehcredi corrugated her brow, thinking. Had she seen anyone laugh in Walker’s presence? Or even giggle? She didn’t think so. Serafina had made her loyalties clear from the very beginning, so had the ex-mercenary called Pounder, the man who’d prevented her from falling down the stairs, but they hadn’t claimed friendship with the swordmaster—respect maybe, but not friendship. When she’d asked Walker if Prue and Dai were his friends, he hadn’t answered.

Normal people tended to
cluster
, she knew that much. Resolutely, she set aside the grief that came with the thought. Nothing to be done. People had families, or barrack mates. They made connections, took food together, laughed and fought and argued. Even the revolting Taso had an equally revolting father, a senile bundle of rags he referred to as the Old One.

Who was in the swordmaster’s cluster? Dai perhaps? She made a mental note to ask the man.