Lightning & Thunder #2
It was impossible not to look at Vanu’s face now they were like this.
Impossible not to look at his pale eyelashes, not to meet the intent gaze of his blue eyes when they flicked up.
Lill swallowed. A pulse of longing was beating low in his belly, just below where Vanu’s hands were touching him.
Lill began the incantation for self-control in his mind.
Vanu parted the blue silk gown, pushing it off Lill’s shoulders until the whole thing slithered and slumped to the floor like a shed skin. He touched Lill through the thinner layers of fabric remaining, stroking his arms and his belly.
I am not a man like other men. I am a tool of the Great King and subdue my desires that I may serve him. One was not supposed to have to use this in front of an enemy warrior. One was not supposed to feel like this …
Vanu slipped the bracelets off Lill’s wrists and bowled them over to join the wedding crown.
He unfastened the buttons of the second layer of Lill’s clothing and pushed it off too; it was so light that it floated down like a leaf.
Lill gave a shameful gasp as Vanu’s warm touch travelled down his side and over his hip.
There Vanu paused, his gold eyebrows rising in surprise as he looked down and lifted the hem of Lill’s inner tunic to expose the black trousers that he’d never found a chance to take off.
Lill cursed himself for that stupidity, until he realized that Vanu was plainly delighted.
Somehow, the sight of his bride wearing a man’s trousers under layers of women’s wedding clothes obviously charmed him.
He pulled up the tunic and ran his big hands up Lill’s thighs, and Lill found himself putting out a hand and gripping Vanu’s shoulder.
Purely to keep himself upright, because his legs seemed to be melting.
“May I?” Vanu whispered again, barely audible over the sound of the rain, as he touched the knot of Lill’s inner sash. This time it was said with a teasing twinkle, as if he well knew the answer, and Lill replied only with an incoherent gasp.
The knot slipped loose under Vanu’s fingers, the tunic slid off Lill’s shoulders, and abruptly Lill put up a hand between them, warding Vanu off—which worked.
Vanu froze. Lill stepped backward, over the discarded clothes on the floor.
The heavy necklaces of silver and amber and shell bumped against his bare chest. Two backward steps took him to the end of the bed. He toed off his shoes.
He was breathing hard, and his mind was a jumble. He needed this to go the way it was supposed to. Vanu was a beast. He needed Vanu to act like a beast.
Vanu took the bait. He undid the knot of his own sash with a tug and shrugged out of his black coat.
He was pulling off his boots as he rose to his feet, and then he peeled his shirt off over his head and down his arms and dropped it onto the pile of Lill’s discarded clothes.
He shook back his hair and spent a moment loosening the pinned braids with one hand, letting Lill take in the sight of him stripped to the waist. Curse the man.
He knew he was impressive, and he knew Lill was impressed.
May the hounds of the Dark Valley eat his heart.
But he was impressive: his stature, his lean, well-defined musculature, the scars on his body that spoke of years of daring on the field of battle.
The gold hair on his chest looked pale in the dim, rainy light; it glinted in a trail down his taut stomach, disappearing under the waistband of his trousers.
His skin was sun-kissed even under his shirt, as if perhaps he stripped to exercise in the warmer weather.
Then he pounced, which was just what Lill had hoped for—not because he wanted it! For the mission, to re-establish the order of things, only for that. Vanu bore Lill backward and down onto the bed, cradling him against his warm skin.
The contact was shocking. Vanu was everywhere, his hands on Lill with no fabric between them, exploring, caressing, tangling in Lill’s hair.
His mouth, too, his tongue, his teeth. That finally was a little beast-like—he did like to bite, it seemed—but he bit like a tame animal, affectionately, like a mother beast nipping at a cub, and Lill’s shameful, inexperienced body thrilled to it.
The best he could do to preserve some scrap of honour—some pitiful thing vaguely like honour—was to lie inert in Vanu’s embrace and not touch him.
He wanted to touch him. Angels of the Almighty, he wanted to touch him.
Put his hand on that solid chest, feel the rough curls of hair under his fingers.
He wanted to trace the muscles of Vanu’s arms, the way Vanu was doing with Lill’s own, much slimmer arms. He wanted to touch the scars on Vanu’s face and body, the evidence of everything the man had survived, how often he had risked death.
The only way he’d been able to kiss Vanu downstairs was by being sure that he didn’t want to. It had been necessary, that was all. Part of the mission. It was not necessary to touch Vanu now.
Vanu laid Lill on his back and moved down his body, sinuous as a beast, lapping at his skin. The rain had slackened and the room was growing brighter as the sun came back out. This was going to happen in sunlight, every detail clear, sound no longer muffled by the beat of rain on the roof tiles.
Lill realized he’d put a hand to Vanu’s hair, touching the pale gold strands. Vanu looked up at him, lips red from kissing him, smile canted mischievously. He rubbed against Lill’s touch, tangling his hair in Lill’s fingers, and Lill felt himself smiling back. It was … It felt …
Good. All of it. The kissing, the touching. The sun on his bare skin, the Lion of the Summer Pass smiling playfully at him as he lay there half-naked, wearing a mountain-bride’s jewellery.
Vanu bent his head again and put his open mouth, teeth bared as if to bite, to the front of Lill’s trousers, over the shameful, inarguable proof that Lill felt so good.
And then he didn’t bite at all—he nuzzled.
That, finally, was too much for Lill to take.
His hips bucked involuntarily, he pushed his hand against the side of Vanu’s head, and he gasped, “No!”
Vanu started up, springing off Lill. Lill’s fingers were in his hair; the ring on his middle finger was caught and pulled. Vanu winced and hissed. Lill popped up to sitting and desperately worked his fingers free. It took him a moment to register that Vanu had said something.
He repeated it. Two words; Lill couldn’t make them out at all. Vanu wasn’t whispering now, but his voice was very low, and it had a strange, harsh quality, like broken rocks. Lill couldn’t even tell if he’d spoken Zashian or Hawada.
“What?” was all Lill managed.
Vanu breathed in and rubbed his throat briefly. There was a pale scar just to the right of his voice box. “Do you unlike it, this. Yes?”
He spoke Zashian—sort of. His voice still had that same strained, broken-rocks quality, barely rising above a whisper.
But what really caught Lill’s attention was that at the same time as he spoke aloud, he signed the words with his hands.
It looked to Lill as if he did it without thinking, as if signing was actually easier for him than using his voice.
“You speak hand language!” Lill signed back. “Are you deaf?”
Vanu didn’t smile then, but his face lit up. He returned a rapid volley of signs that Lill could not follow at all. Lill waved his hands in frantic apology.
“I’m sorry,” he said in Hawada, “I only know a very little hand language—a few phrases only. I was just starting to learn it when I—when I had to stop.”
Vanu nodded. “I’m not deaf,” he said aloud. “Hear fine. My girls are deaf—Susami and Atari. Mikhi’s hard of hearing. Tsuruva—where they grew up, it’s—”
“I know of it,” said Lill eagerly. “A village in the Summer Pass where nearly everyone speaks a hand language because there are so many children born deaf there. It’s very interesting!
I have never heard of any other place like that.
I had no idea your daughters were born there.
Was their mother deaf? I knew someone from Tsuruva—he could hear too, but he knew the hand language because there were many deaf people in his family.
I persuaded him to teach me some. I thought it could be useful because—well, in fact I just like to learn languages. ”
“You speak Hawada a treat.” Vanu sat with one knee drawn up, brawny forearm wrapped around his shin.
“Thanks. I do know a few languages. My native language, the one my mother spoke to me before I—when I was a child—is Chiddeng, but I learned Zashian as a child too. I think in Zashian more than Chiddeng these days. And I know Hawada and Akra, and a little bit of the language of Sukiya, though only to read.”
“And hand language,” Vanu signed.
“Well, a little. I, uh, I planned to pretend I was learning Hawada gradually, while I was here.”
Vanu nodded. “Can still do that. Won’t tell.”
Lill blinked in surprise. Why would he offer that?
“Glad you changed your mind. With me.”
“O-oh. Well … I thought it was hard enough for you to talk to me … It didn’t seem … ”
Vanu smiled. “Thanks.” He pointed to the scar on his throat. “When I was thirteen. Arrow.”
Lill gaped. “An arrow? You were shot in the throat? You must have been lucky to live!”
“Very. Just lost my voice—mostly. Can’t speak louder than this.
Don’t like to talk, either. Tiring. Hurts.
Don’t like the way it sounds.” He shrugged.
“Stubborn. Thought—” He broke off, hand going to his throat again.
“I beg your pardon. I tend to use the fewest possible words when I have to speak aloud. I thought someone would have explained all this to you, about my voice, but I should have made sure. I apologize. It must have made you uneasy. Me not talking.”