A Wilderness of Glass - Grace Draven Page 0,26
he asked, repeating the same question from their second meeting.
She shrugged. “Strength.” Had he forgotten?
Ahtin shook his head and raised her hand to inspect her fingers, the slots between them where no webbing stretched, the short half moons of her nails, pale against skin still deeply brown from the vanished summer sun. The contrast between her skin and his—deep earth on shallow sea—beguiled her. They were land and water, human legs and dolphin tail with nothing in common except an abiding fascination for each other and the connection of the rescued to the rescuer.
His clear brow knitted into a frown. “No. Strength, yes, but more.” He struggled to express himself. “You are this light.” He gestured to the sorcerous light still shimmering around them. “This pool. The moon. The sun.”
Comprehension dawned, and once more the heat of a blush crawled up her neck, into her cheeks. “Beautiful,” she said. “Those things are beautiful.”
Something in her tone alerted him that she understood what he tried to impart, and the frown smoothed away. “Beautiful,” he echoed, reverence in every syllable. “You are beautiful, Brida.”
The last time a man had called her beautiful in such a way, it had been when she lay in Talmai’s arms the night before he left Ancilar to board a deep-water ship at Matalene harbor a league from Ancilar. She’d dreamed those agonizing moments more times than she cared to count after she learned he’d died at sea. Time had passed and the keen sorrow from that particular memory was blunted now. When the merman called her beautiful, butterflies, not tears, spiraled up inside her.
She didn’t move when he leaned in even closer, and his hands settled on her hips, slippery hair shrouding them both. His sigh matched hers when his lips grazed her cheek, tickling her skin with the lightest touch as they mapped a path over the bridge of her nose to her other cheek before drifting up to caress her temple and eyebrows. She closed her eyes against their feathery pressure on her eyelids. Her lips parted as his mouth rested briefly on hers and stayed.
Did merfolk kiss?
The question drifted across her thoughts before fading. It didn’t matter. If he didn’t know, she would teach him and hold close in her dotage the wondrous memory of it.
He twitched against her when she took his bottom lip between her lips and lightly sucked, exhaled a moan when her tongue traced its outline, tasting a hint of brine. Strong hands dug into the folds of her skirt to hold her hips even harder, and he surged against her, the powerful flex of his tail almost carrying him out of the water.
Brida’s eyes snapped open and she pulled away to stare at Ahtin who stared back with a gaze gone almost completely black. Heat poured off him like a furnace, and he loosened his grip on her body long enough to touch his mouth with one fingertip.
A series of clicks, much too rapid and unfamiliar for her to translate, spilled from him before he went silent, scrutiny never wavering as he searched for a word.
“Kiss,” Brida told him. “That’s a kiss.”
“Kiss.” He drew out the end of the word as if savoring its sound and texture.
She smiled a tentative smile. “You like it?” The gods knew she certainly did.
He wore the same look as when he licked the spoon she’d given him. A quick nod, and he reached for her, drawing her closer to him until the lower half of her skirts floated in the pool, drifting around him like a spill of blue ink in the luminescent water. “Land magic,” he breathed across her mouth. “Teach me, beautiful Brida.”
Chapter Five
“Why do humans cover like this?” Ahtin picked at the folds of her skirt, rooting for the shape of her thigh hidden beneath the heavy wool.
Like the night before, they spent these hours together in the sanctuary of the cave lit by Ahtin’s magic. And like the night before, they kissed and explored, learning each other’s taste, the shape of leg and tail, shoulders and arms, cheekbones and necks, chest and breast.
Brida stroked a hand down his side, contouring her palm to the ridges of muscles that laddered down his torso to his narrow waist and the smooth flesh that denoted the beginnings of his tail. The heat of his body kept her warm in the chilly cave. “For protection and warmth. Our bodies don’t get as hot as yours unless we’re sick. Clothing keeps us warm and