I put a hand on each shoulder. The damask weave of his dash jacket caressed my palms.
“I want this chain off my tongue, Vai. Just as you want the chains off your village, just as Bee wants to live. I want not to live at the mercy of Four Moons House, or a prince’s militia, or the general’s schemes. Surely it’s the same thing most people want. Health and vigor. A refuge which is not a cage but those who care for us and whom we care for. Like Luce’s giggle. Aunt Tilly’s smile. Rory’s loyalty. Bee’s happiness. You.”
I pushed him onto the bed and pinned him there with my body stretched atop the length of his. His was a fine body to borrow as a mattress, not one bit soft. He lay beneath me, his dark gaze steady. I drew my fingers down his throat, then spread my hand so fingers and thumb spanned his collarbone, for his jacket was unbuttoned just that far. To measure my skin against his in so simple a way made me almost dizzy. Really, it was provoking how quiet the man could be.
“Vai, I made my choice the night of the areito. I can’t walk free and leave you behind. So I choose the path I walk with you, whatever it brings. Anyhow, I’m not going to let some mage House woman steal you from me.”
I brushed my mouth over his. His eyes fluttered as his lips parted and chin lifted to receive a full kiss. But I drew back and slowly counted down the buttons until I got to the sixth. He watched me, not quite smiling. If anything, he looked a bit dazed.
“I’ve changed my mind,” I said as I unbuttoned the sixth and slid my fingers to the seventh. “I am going to take off?”—the eighth and the ninth slipped free—“this beautiful jacket… Unless by that quiver of your eyebrows you mean to indicate there is something you want to say first.”
“Yes,” he said, in quite the hoarsest voice I had ever heard out of him.
“Gracious Melqart, Vai, how many buttons does this garment have?”
He breathed, if you could call that breathing when in fact it sounded more as if he had been running most of the way across Expedition.
“Fourteen?” I demanded as I sat back to undo the last buttons. I spread the jacket to either side to expose not a vest and linen shirt beneath or even a singlet, as I had expected, but only bare chest. “Oh,” I said, intelligently. “Well. Let me not pretend I haven’t been thinking about doing this.”
I explored the muscled curve of his shoulders, fondled the necklace chain and, briefly, his nipples, and stroked along the contours of his chest. My hands halted at the line of buttons that fastened the waistband of his trousers. At which point, stricken by the first onslaught of shyness I had ever experienced in my entire life, I lost my voice.
He found his. “If I had stayed in the village, my grandmother would have found a hard-working, placid, quiet young woman for me. I would have married her without expectation of anything except a hard-working, placid, quiet affection that might have arisen after years of going on together. Everyone knows that is the best way. The one least disruptive to the harmonious peace of the community. Not to mention a man’s peace of mind.”
I bit back a smile and, instead, drew down my brows to indicate vexed consideration. “Is there a point to this pedantic speech? As you know, I’m very hard-working.”
He slid his hands caressingly up my hips, and by the tensing of his arms and back, my Barahal training and cat’s instincts warned me he was about to attempt an abrupt reversal.
“I don’t think you should try that, Vai,” I murmured, bracing myself.
“But are you truly hard-working, Catherine? I suppose we’re about to find out.”
32
I woke at dawn with birds singing and the scent of flowers wafting in through the open shutters, which seemed a little much even considering my euphoric mood. Lying tucked in against him, my head resting on his shoulder, felt the most natural thing in the world. In case he was still asleep, I whispered.
“Vai?”
“Mmm.”
“I had no idea.”
Eyes shut, he smiled in a drowsy, contented way. “Of course you couldn’t have had. You weren’t with me.”
Silence allowed me to contemplate this astonishing statement for a while, during which I stroked my fingers up and down his admirable chest.
“Vai?”
“Mmm?”
“Are you really that conceited? Or are you having a bit of a joke with yourself at times?”
“Catherine, I promise you, no one will ever make you feel as good as I will.”
“As the djeli said, ‘Men act humble until they get what they want.’ Although obviously the djeli who said that hadn’t met you. Anyway, wouldn’t a person of scientific inclination say that to verify such a statement I would need to make a significant number of comparative tests with other subjects?”