Stolen - Nhys Glover Page 0,37

podmate…”

I threw my arms around his neck, clinging on to him as tightly as I had during our escape.

“I can’t believe you came back to me,” I sobbed out. “I was shattered by your death. If I can have you back, I don’t care about anything else. You are nothing like the renegades, and your age is irrelevant. Nothing is relevant but you.”

I began crying, but this time my tears were of joy. I let them soak into my rescuer’s black shirt. My emotions were all over the place. I should be sensible. I should think this through properly before I attempted to throw my life away on an impossible dream. But I couldn’t seem to make myself listen. I thought Rian gone forever, and now I knew he wasn’t.

Our lips came together without me being aware it was happening. It seemed the natural consequence of our reunion. I kissed the stranger as if I’d known him forever. I kissed him with all my heart. Nothing mattered but us. Nothing.

Well, maybe not nothing.

A whiff of unpleasant odor pulled me out of my passion-fogged state. I was filthy. Although I no longer seemed to smell as bad as I had in the village, I was still not as clean as I wanted to be when taking this next level.

I drew back reluctantly. Nothing mattered. Nothing but cleanliness, I realized.

“Rian, I need to get clean first.”

His bright silver eyes, that only moments before had been glazed with passion, looked down at me in surprise. For the first time he seemed to really see me. Hands bloody from the ripped skin on my palms. Scratches and abrasions on my arms and legs. I could only imagine what my face looked like. Although I hadn’t registered more than a passing pain when I lay on my back, I knew I probably had blood and scratched skin there, too. My knees were probably the worst. Or maybe my feet. It was hard to tell.

How had I thought sex was a good idea? Rian might look no worse for wear, but I was a wreck.

“I’m sorry. I was just so happy to be with you, and keen to let you know who I was, that I didn’t think to tend to your injuries. That’s not the way a Danan warrior behaves with his podmate.” His tone was harsh. He was beating himself up, big time.

I stroked his pale cheek, so different to the cheek I’d last seen on him. “Neither of us was thinking straight. Is there a creek or something nearby?”

He went back inside the ship and reappeared a few minutes later with supplies. “There’s a watercourse about five minutes from here. Are you going to be able to walk or will I carry you?”

He looked at the bottom of my feet worriedly.

I laughed, aiming for light-hearted but not quite making it. “For a bath I’d run the marathon.”

But climbing to my feet was harder than I expected. The nap had refreshed me, but my body was still complaining from the workout I’d given it. And Rian didn’t seem that much better, I realized.

Together, holding each other up, we staggered over to the narrow but deep river nearby. As the ground was so flat and the grasses so long, it was no surprise I hadn’t noticed it.

We collapsed on the edge and I looked dubiously at the green water. Water this color usually belonged on scum covered ponds. It was never suitable for swimming in or drinking. But I saw no scum and the water was flowing freely. Maybe it was just another example of the odd coloring in this place.

Rian—or was it Charsus now?—leaned over the water and scooped a little of it up into a vial. He attached a gadget and read the information on it.

“It’s drinkable,” he said.

Relieved, I pulled what was left of my kaftan over my head and carefully lowered myself into the water. Rian’s eyes were as wide as an owl’s. Impishly, I grinned up at him. The water was surprisingly warm and a balm to my strained muscles and many scrapes.

“Come on in, the water’s great,” I offered, holding up one hand as I held tight to the bank with the other. There were no sloping sides. The river bed dropped straight down and probably did the same thing on the other side, ten feet away.

Rian tore his clothes off faster than I would have expected. I got to see the full effect of the elven male’s beauty.