Drink of Me. Jacquelyn Frank
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man swoon. He was very nearly that weaker man, Reule thought as his heart thumped with a fury against his breastbone.
“And in your society men and women never bathe one another? Never at all?”
Reule was about to agree, but realized it would be inaccurate. “Well, sometimes if a man and woman are lovers they will share a bath or shower.”
“And that’s not improper?”
“Um…no. What lovers do in private between themselves is acceptable if both desire it.”
“Then send her away”—she jerked her head toward Para—“and we’ll become lovers. Then you’ll have no need to leave.” She gave him a satisfied smile at her own logic. Reule, meanwhile, almost choked up a lung. He’d never heard such outrageous reasoning in all of his life.
“Kébé,” he choked out, “people don’t become lovers just so they can bathe together!”
“Well, why not? They become lovers for far less practical reasons, only to regret it later.” She paused to nod after a moment’s consideration. “I wouldn’t regret it. You’re very handsome and I can tell you desire me very much.” She punctuated the observation by sliding her hand quickly down the front of his body and over the bulge in his breeches. She boldly cupped his balls and cock, outlining her evidence with palm and fingers. “I suspect you’d be an excellent mate. You’re strong and powerful, and quite well-endowed for a male.”
There was a resounding thud as Pariedes hit the floor in a dead faint behind them. Reule hardly had the presence of mind to care. He was strangling, in clothes, in reactions, and in raw heat that far outshined that of the pool. He could feel the difference between that small, small hand and his large, engorged body, and it was devastatingly arousing. He hated himself for feeling that, for wanting that, when he knew this was all so wrong. Even so, he saw her eyes widen as she got a true idea of his measure and he throbbed against her seeking touch in response. She licked her neglected lips slowly and he knew her thoughts, no telepathy necessary.
She was killing him, he thought with a groan.
He was hungry, tired, and honorable, and yet she made him ferocious with the desire to throw it all away and accept her taunting invitation.
“Kébé,” he rasped as he reached for her wrist, “you’ve been through too much to make such choices right now. Especially when you can’t remember if…” If she already has a lover? If she’s been raped? If…? “Besides,” he forced out in cruel reminder for them both as he placed her hand safely at his neck, “you wouldn’t want to be my lover. I am Sánge. Outlanders don’t take Sánge for their lovers. Though I know not which kind, you are most obviously an outlander.”
“Why not?” she asked softly, her frown deeply troubled by the revelation. “What’s wrong with taking Sánge for lovers?”
Tension coiled through Reule instantly, clenching at every muscle in his body. She doesn’t know. This was why she’d been so warm and accepting. Of course she didn’t know. If she’d known, she’d have reacted with disgust just as all the others did. He’d been foolish to expect or think otherwise. But how to explain what she’d said the moment he’d found her? A remnant of memory? Of nightmares? A fevered snatch of recall from a horror story about the Sánge?
“You don’t want to know,” he said sharply, his tone extremely harsh as he got up and stepped out of the water.
“Yes, I do! Tell me, please,” she begged him as she clung as tightly to him as she could.
Tell her? Could he tell her? Impossible. At the moment, he was the only anchor she had in a world torn apart by terror. If he took that trust away, replaced it with fear, who would she have?
And how could he ever explain it so she’d truly understand that the drinking of a lover’s blood wasn’t the horrifying, blasphemous act other cultures thought it was? How to describe that moment, just before climax, when a man sank his teeth into a woman? That instant when the essence of her very life pulsed onto his tongue, slid down his throat, and then spilled through him in the most intensely erotic sensation, so that it made his entire body clench and shudder with pleasure until he came in endless, drenching pulsations of ecstasy? There was no delicate way to explain an act that was so intensely wonderful when he knew none but Sánge could ever really understand; could ever really accept. If he couldn’t explain that, then he couldn’t explain the rest. Acts of body and mind beyond outlander sensibilities. The possessiveness, the ferocity, the sheer intensity of mating with a telepathic Sánge. Especially a telepathic Sánge like him.
In a sudden fit of anger, Reule overpowered her physically to pry her off him and she landed on the bench with a thump and a small sound of pain. Regret twanged through him, but he couldn’t pause to apologize or he’d never leave the room. He had to leave. Now.
Reule reached down to Para and lightly smacked his fingers against her cheek until she opened her eyes with a flutter. “Wake, lioness,” he called to her gently. “Your cub needs you. Are you well?” She blushed and nodded vigorously and he felt her embarrassment over her display.
Reule surged up to his full imposing height, unable to find it within himself to reassure her just then. His tone was clipped as he instructed the servant. “Bathe her, dress her, and feed her. Install her in the north wing.” In his current temper, he wanted to forbid her from staying on the same floor as he. But her innocence didn’t deserve punishment. He was the only one she trusted, whether she should or not, and it would be wrong to exile her to a lonely place in a strange world. “Across the hall from my suite will do. No one is to approach her save yourself and another girl to help you. She’s frightened enough.”
It was all the instruction he could give. He turned on his heel and marched out of the bath. He didn’t have to look back to see the beseeching hand that tried to grab for him or to hear the panicked gasp of fear as he completed the act that terrified her from sense to soul.
He abandoned her.
But he felt it all quite plainly as that tidal wave of sorrow burst forth in full majesty once more.
As promised, Reule didn’t go far. Apparently he was something of a masochist, he thought grimly as he sat in a private bath across the hall and washed away the grime from his body, if not the spreading stain on his soul. He could feel her like a sharply rising and falling aria, painfully honest as her emotional expression expanded from mere sorrow to fear and a raw sense of betrayal and rejection.
Lord. Reule rubbed his fingers against his temple as his head began to throb painfully. He despised knowing that he’d provided those newer emotions to her mostly blank canvas of feelings and thoughts. But what was he to do? It was the only choice. If she knew the depth and truth of what was seen as Sánge savagery…
Sánge, bautor mo.
The phrase she had spoken rushed into his mind like a flatland wind scour, an infamous windstorm that scrubbed away everything along its path. People, animals, every blade of grass, all would be swept away.
Sánge, bautor mo.
Sánge, drink of me.
Reule shuddered at the erotic rush that remembering the words sent through him. If she didn’t know, why would she say that? It kept coming back to that single, crucial command. It wasn’t an accident she’d said it that way. It couldn’t be. It was ritualistic, that phrase. It was what a Sánge bride said to her husband on the night of her marriage, the first time she stepped into his arms and prepared to make love.
Reule reached below the water and wrapped a fist around his savagely aroused penis, closing his eyes as another shudder rocked through him. He shouldn’t be feeling this. He shouldn’t be reacting like an untried boy getting hard at every thought of a woman. It wasn’t who he was. It never really had been, even as a youth. He’d been born in war and the desolation of starvation and persecution. He’d learned to flee before he’d learned to walk. He’d been heir to devastating responsibility, taking on the mantle of it when he was only sixteen years old. Too young to become responsible