Lady Sun Has Risn Read online

  Neither answer felt right.

  “Get more torches!” Miryea exclaimed, putting all her grandmother's commanding force behind it. “We may have missed him in the dark—he may be bleeding to death while we sit here slandering him!” She snatched up the first torch herself, telling herself it was just a budding physician's instincts, nothing more.

  But search as they might, they found no trace of Adimir. A few dead slavers, but no trace of Adimir. Finally even Miryea had to admit he was gone. Fled.

  Velari must be right.

  He was either a coward or an accomplice of the slavers.

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  * * *

  Chapter Five

  Morning brought its usual bustle—but no Adimir.

  Miryea went to the caravan-master. “I've checked on the injured,” she informed him, trying to invest her words with the authority of a full physician, “and we need to stop here another day. Some folks aren't ready to be moved yet."

  The weathered man nodded dubiously. “This ain't because you're waiting for that Adimir fellow, is it? It's real big-hearted of you not to want to leave him behind and all..."

  “I was thinking more about the people with concussions and broken bones."

  “But Adimir's gone. If he ain't in with the slavers or too ashamed to show his face after hiding, he's gone off to celebrate the spring with his own folks and I can't blame him for that. He was just traveling with us for a bit anyway, tagging along as it were. We'll bide here—I don't much like staying here where we've already been attacked, but I trust you if you say it's needed—but don't be expecting that Thelanese fellow to come back."

  She nodded and stalked away, more angered at the caravan-master's conclusions than she probably had a right to be. It was too soon to move some of her patients, and that was by far her main motivation in talking with him. That didn't mean, however, that she wasn't hoping Adimir would turn up, safe and with a reasonable explanation.

  There was more bonestrength at the edge of the woods and she might as well gather it. A walk might clear her exhausted head.

  Heeding Adimir's earlier warning—for after all, there had been dangerous men in the forest—she brought one of Shiran's friends with her, a young man who had been quite useful in the fighting. Almost as important in her decision, the fellow was clearly much in love with the man he was traveling with and wouldn't take her request for companionship as anything other than what it was.

  The warm spring sun, though, proved too much of a lure after the near-sleepless night, and soon he was sprawled on the new grass, snoring quietly.

  And she was alone with her thoughts.

  Thoughts of possible danger, but also, distractingly, of Adimir's mouth against hers, the strength of his body, his skilled hands bringing her to orgasm. You're mine. We both know it. And on the night of the Equinox, I'll claim you before the gods.

  “Sure you will, Adimir,” she muttered. “Not sure I wanted it anyway, but it would have been nice not to make promises you had no intention of keeping."

  There was no sound to alert her, but the back of her neck prickled as if someone was watching her.

  And then she heard a laugh as rich and sweet and dark as the red wine of Koromel.

  She turned around slowly.

  Adimir stood at the edge of the clearing.

  Twigs and bright young leaves clung to his hair, and his torso was scratched, and he was smeared with dirt and grass and what she hoped was other people's blood. But he was grinning triumphantly.

  And he was not alone.

  Behind him in a semicircle clustered perhaps two dozen young men and women, some scarcely out of childhood. If he was dirty, they were filthy, and most of them were clad in rags. Some of them still wore wrist shackles with pieces of broken chain swinging from them.

  “I should take them directly to Arlind, see about getting them back where they belong,” he said, “but I had to make sure you were all right, little rabbit."

  Her sleeping companion woke up just on time to catch the last few words. “Little rabbit? Tough talk from the man who ran away! You missed her clocking brigands with that quarterstaff, and patching up all the folks who go hurt last night while you..."

  The boy paused and made a face like a fish, finally taking in who the people with Adimir were.

  “While he was busy performing a daring rescue,” Miryea filled in for him.

  Saying the words made it real to her, made her believe what her barbarian had really been up to during the hours when she was convinced he was a coward or worse.

  He might be half Kulchu, but he'd tracked his way back to the slavers’ camp—alone—to take care of the rest of the slavers and set Soranians free.

  She launched herself at Adimir, and he caught her around the waist and swung her before setting her down. “Adimir, I didn't really think..."

  “Yes, you did. You thought I was in league with the slavers—and that I wouldn't be back to celebrate the Equinox with you."

  “Well, it certainly looked that way!"

  “Not everyone who serves the Emperor can afford to look the part.” Adimir swatted her ass. This time it was light, clearly playful, but there was a promise behind it—a promise that sent fire through her, despite her sleepless night and a brain still busy trying to sort everything out. “So little faith in me, rabbit! We'll deal with that tomorrow. But meanwhile..."

  The kiss provoked embarrassed laughter from some of the captives and a smattering of applause from her young friend.

  Miryea didn't want to stop. Wanted their clothing to melt away, wanted to sink down onto the grass with him and discover every way that their bodies could fit together.

  But she still had work to do. “Hey,” she said, pushing him gently but firmly away, “let's get these people settled before we get too carried away. They need a good meal, and some of them have hurts to tend, and I have patients in the camp to check on."

  She wasn't sure how he'd react to this firmness, this new confidence. But to her delight, he beamed and nodded. “You've changed from yesterday. Grown somehow. You've been blooded."

  It wasn't the word she'd have chosen, but she knew what he meant. She felt it herself, a new confidence that came from knowing that she could both heal when it counted and fight if she must, although she'd rather avoid it. She said “Thank you,” gathered up the bonestrength, and walked back into camp with him, leading the freed slaves.

  * * * *

  Adimir watched Miryea bustle around the camp, tending to the freed captives and to the wounded.

  Had his perception of her changed seeing her in action, or had she actually matured, deepened, overnight? Before, she'd seemed all potential—brightness and bluster, without any experience to back it up. Now she seemed more adult and confident, and that made her all the more attractive.

  He went to her as she stopped to get more water to distribute. “You're doing what the gods intend you to do,” he said softly. “It shows. You told me before that you were merely an apprentice. But you were wrong. You are a healer."

  “I won't be a physician unless I finish my apprenticeship.” She caught what she was saying, corrected herself. “Until I finish it, that is."

  “A physician is a name for a job you do. A healer is who you are. You will become the one in time, little rabbit. You are already the other."

  She smiled. “Just as Soranian or Kulchu is a name, but hero is who you are.” She stretched up, kissed him fleetingly on the cheek, and then went back to her work.

  He stood stock-still, stunned, hand on the spot where she had kissed, after she bustled away.

  He'd been called many things in his life, but never a hero.

  And nothing had ever quite felt the same as that kiss. So innocent, but with so much emotion bubbling behind it.

  Good Lord and Lady, was he...

  Yes, he was. He'd been attracted to Miryea from the first instant, liking her spirit and lusting after her juicy little body. But now he was on
an adventure much riskier than infiltrating a slavers’ network or freeing captives.

  He was falling in love.

  And tomorrow was the Equinox.

  This was either very good or plain terrifying, or perhaps both, and he wouldn't know which it was until it was too late.

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  * * *

  Chapter Six

  As the dawn birds began to sing, Miryea awoke with Adimir sprawled beside her, one arm slung over her. Momentarily panicked, she cast her mind back over the night before.

  Fortunately, or more honestly unfortunately, she didn't recall any wild lovemaking. Instead, fatigue had caught up with her abruptly as she was eating the soup they'd stretched to feed their new numbers, and she'd all but nodded off where she sat. She remembered Adimir guiding her to her blankets, and some time later, waking briefly when he lay down beside her.

  It was either presumptuous or sweet.

  Some of both, she supposed, but at the moment, remembering his kind words from the day before, his gentleness, the way he hadn't taken any advantage, she was leaning more toward sweet.

  Certainly he felt good there, welcome, like it was most natural thing in the world for him to be lying naked next to her.

  Naked? Rather daring, considering there was no way of knowing they wouldn't be attacked again. (She suppressed a laugh at the mental image of Adimir fighting naked—but somehow she could see him doing it. He seemed that easy in his body and that confident—no, face it, arrogant—about his abilities.)

  She reached out a tentative hand, stroked the hard, muscled thigh with its light down of hair. Reached up a little higher.

  Oh Lord and Lady, definitely naked. And starting to get hard.

  Her pussy clenched.

  When the first sunlight of the Spring Equinox was peeking over the horizon and you found yourself lying next to a gorgeous naked man—and one who'd risked his own life the day before to do a noble deed, no less—there was only one thing to be done.

  Probably the warmth she felt toward Adimir was lust and fondness born of shared adventures, nothing that would last. But the Equinox festival was the time to indulge such attractions. In the spring, lust helped bring the green world to life, ensured a good summer's crops. At any other time, it might be crazy to throw herself at her barbarian hero this way, but now it was doing her religious duty.

  From some of the small, happy sounds she heard from around the camp, other people were already at their religious duties, and that thought just made her more eager.

  Footsteps on her other side made her glance away from Adimir. Velari's bedroll was next to hers, but a bit further away than it had been ... and Shiran was creeping toward it. He caught her eye, grinned. She waved and mouthed, “Lady Sun is rising."

  Excellent. Velari would have a good holy day.

  She slipped out of the under-robe she wore for sleeping and rolled on top of Adimir, her legs straddling his tight hips. This, of course, brought her vulva into contact with his cock. Half-hard, it stirred, exciting her, even through the thin linen separating their flesh.

  That linen needed to go. She reached for the drawstring of her salvar.

  His eyes opened, and he stared at her blearily. “What are you doing?"

  “You have to ask? Celebrating the Equinox. The sun's rising. It's spring. Why wait?"

  “I'd rather not put on a show for all these good people, even if they're distracted with their own celebrations. Back to our clearing?"

  They didn't bother throwing on clothes. It was the Equinox, and, especially here in the wilds, the normal rules of society would be suspended for the day. (He did bring his sword with him, and Miryea her staff. Most of the time, even criminals observed the holy days—if only because the festivals were fun—but Kulchu brigands wouldn't.)

  The air smelled green and damp as they entered the woods, and the birds were going mad greeting the dawn. Small yellow flowers had come into bloom overnight, turning the grass into a golden blanket.

  “Lady's Message,” Adimir said, plucking one. “In Thelana, we say it is Lady Sun's way of apologizing to the Lord of Grain for her long winter's absence at the far side of the world.” He ran the golden flower down Miryea's cheek. Tickled the sensitive skin along her collarbone with it, and used it to trace the valley between her breasts.

  The cool touch of the petals, still spangled with dew, made her shiver, and when he spiraled it in around her breast, gyring toward the nipple, she whimpered with pleasure.

  She'd thought Adimir looked like the Lord of Grain, but she was wrong. The Lord of Grain was always depicted as a beautiful, almost girlish youth with a face like the full moon, some of his proportions subtly wrong to indicate his divine nature. Naked in the green-dappled light, though, Adimir was all human, all masculine, and all too well proportioned with that broad chest, those tight hips and rounded, muscular buttocks, those long, strong legs.

  That cock, rising huge and hard out of its nest of dark hair.

  The Equinox was no time to be shy.

  She reached for what she only brushed against until now, noting with pleasure that her hand could barely circle his girth. “In your legends, are the flowers enough to make the Lord of Grain to forgive Lady Sun ... or does she have to work for it?” She milked his cock as she spoke, reveling in the sensation of soft skin moving over iron hardness.

  “Oh, she has to work for it.” Adimir's fingers grasped her nipple, crushing the flower against her flesh, rolled the tender, swelling bud in a firm grasp—firm enough that she would have expected it to be painful.

  Instead, it shot bolts of pleasure from the nipple to her sex. Heat gathered between her legs. Her pelvis felt heavier, weighted with blood, and she could feel slickness gathering on her lips, feel the bud of her clitoris starting to bloom.

  She increased the pressure and speed of her hand slightly, circling her palm over the plum-shaped head of his cock to add to his arousal. “That kind of work I like."

  His free hand grasped her buttock, bruisingly hard, pulled her closer. A possessive kiss further stoked the flames as he all but devoured her mouth.

  Had she been uncertain about him, or taken by surprise, his forcefulness might have been too much. But after several days of teasing and touching and desiring, after reaching a point where she knew that she wanted him with all her body and, she admitted, her heart as well, it added an exciting edge, a hint of mock-danger, to the play that she'd never experienced before.

  Now that she had, she wondered if she could ever do without it.

  When they had to pause for breath in the kiss, Adimir whispered, “Were this any other day, I would lay you down in the grass now and love you with my tongue and my cock until you screamed with pleasure. But in Thelana, the Lord and the Lady sometimes have a stormy relationship."

  “Do we have to ... fight first or something?” She wanted to giggle at the notion—the idea of pretending to quarrel was so silly, even if it were part of the Thelanese ritual—but Adimir seemed so serious.

  She'd have asked more questions, but she was finding it harder and harder to speak articulately.

  He smiled sensuously, yet somehow menacingly. “No, we can go right to the reconciliation. The Lady has offered flowers, and her body, and her apologies. And the Lord loves her and desires her—but he is still hurt, not sure he can trust her to stay."

  “Is spring stormy in Thelana?” She'd heard similar legends to explain bouts of bad weather.

  “Hardly ever. Sometimes when a couple quarrels, one or another must yield and make amends. Each year the men and women of Thelana enact the way in which Lady Sun lets her Lord know that she is truly sorry for having been away, and each year, we have a fine spring."

  Miryea was about to ask what the ritual was, but as Adimir kneaded at her bottom, it became clear to her. “She lets him ... punish her,” she said nervously, remembering the combination of pain and pleasure when he'd struck her asscheeks before, the hot, shameful delight when he'd pinched
her nipple. “And I must do the same?"

  That wicked smile again. “You must yield to a spanking, yes. But don't think of it as a punishment. The Lord loves his Lady, and by the time they get to spanking, he's not angry any more. And she's not really sorry she left for the winter, because she needed to bring summer to foreign parts.” He gestured vaguely, indicating somewhere far, far away. “But she feels bad that her lord was lonely. They need to do something out of the ordinary to clear the air between them, but really, it's all about joy.” The hand clutching her butt slid forward, grazing between her cheeks to toy with her sex.

  First one big finger slid into her, then two. Not deep, just enough to arouse her, tantalize all her senses, make her already damp pussy wet and throbbing.

  “Will you do this for me?"

  When she hesitated—less because she was indecisive than because she was having trouble talking—Adimir snaked his other hand to her clit. Circling. Stroking. Pushing her higher and higher yet, until her legs trembled and only his strength supported her.

  “Will you?” he repeated, flicking at her most sensitive spot as he did.

  And as pleasure rippled through her, her cry of “Yes” startled the birds out of the trees.

  “Oh, lovely. You are so sweet, little rabbit. So hot and sweet.” While she was still trembling from aftershock, Adimir helped her ease down to the grass.

  “As Lady Sun offered herself so the Lord of Grain might grow once more, so does Miryea offer herself to me,” Adimir intoned, the words clearly ritualistic. “We honor Lady Sun and the Lord of Grain, and I honor Miryea, who yields and is greater for it, not lesser."

  He sat down then, leaning against a tree, and pulled her into his lap, rump in the air and face among the softly fragrant flowers of Lady's Message.

  She braced herself for a blow, but instead felt Adimir's hand flowing along the line of her back, the curve of her cheeks, then slipping under her belly to cup her mound. “Lovely,” he said, “and still dripping. Rain to nourish the land.” He caressed, stroking at her, dipping into her overflowing sex with his fingers as he pressed against her clit with his palm, arousing her again until she felt like lava was flowing between her legs.