Chapter 10
The Storm
Roark watched the grey clouds scudding across
the sky from the north. “A storm’s coming,” he told Alina.
“Will it hit before nightfall?”
“It’ll be close enough we should start
looking for shelter now.”
“I trust you,” she said, digging the blade
into his self-inflicted wound a little deeper.
He doubted she’d done it intentionally, as he
hadn’t hurt her intentionally last night by stopping their love
play. Still, he had hurt her.
All day, she’d been trying to act like he
hadn’t, keeping up her end of their conversation with a forced
lightness, but she was nowhere near good enough a liar to pull it
off. The sad, confused look in her beautiful green eyes gave her
away every time.
Roark pulled out his spyglass and searched
the stony mountainside ahead of them. “There’s plenty of wood to
build a lean-to with, if it comes to it,” he said. “Though if we’re
lucky, we’ll find a southern-facing overhang large enough to
shelter us and the horses.”
Alina chuffed. “Neither luck nor the weather
have exactly been on my side through any of this,” she said, the
closest to complaining he’d heard from her since being bound and
gagged and dragged away from her home.
She urged the lighter, fleeter Etain forward,
and Roark followed, scanning ahead of them with the spyglass. The
smaller woodland creatures had already gone to earth and the birds
to roost when Roark sighted an opening between an outcropping of
several large boulders.
“There.” He pointed a quarter league up,
grinning as he saw what looked like the entrance to a cave through
the spyglass.
The horses didn’t show any signs of having
smelled a predator at the cave, but Roark told Alina to stay
mounted and wait while he checked.
The boulders formed an overhang large enough
to protect the horses from the worst of a storm, which was good,
because the opening to the cave was only big enough for Roark to
squeeze through sideways. Once past the opening, he stopped and
waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark as he sniffed around,
smelling nothing more than musty dirt and the vague musk of
rodents. He coughed and the sound didn’t travel far. He didn’t hear
the scurrying of small creatures or the growl or snuff of a large
animal in response.
He squeezed back out into the open. “This
will do,” he told Alina.
“I’ll let the horses graze before the storm
hits,” she said, dismounting and removing her gear from Etain’s
saddle.
Roark did the same with Artur and then piled
their gear and saddles inside the cave as Alina staked the horses
to graze.
“How much firewood should I gather?”
Roark looked up into the sky, which was
almost black with storm clouds as far north as he could see. “Three
days’ worth,” he said, and then quickly added, “though I doubt
we’ll be stuck here that long.”
She returned with her first armload of
kindling and wood, and Roark stacked it inside the cave and struck
his flint, lighting the dry grass and leaves under the kindling and
nurturing it to a steady fire. With the fire’s light, he inspected
the cave, which was high enough to stand in upright, five paces
long and wide. Plenty big and comfortable enough for two
people.
“More wood.” Alina dropped another armload
onto a pile outside. “I’m going to forage a little farther for some
larger logs,” she said, turning on her heels and giving Roark her
pert backside.
He finished stowing the wood inside the cave
and went to find her. He stood at the edge of the woods, cocking
his head and listening for the sound of boot fall or the crunching
of twigs, but heard nothing except the wind and the rustling of
leaves and grass. He grinned. The little owl moved about the woods
as silent as her namesake.
“Alina?”
“Over here.”
He followed her voice into a small glen full
of dried wood from a fallen tree. “This should keep our fire
burning,” he said, gathering up an armload and carrying it back to
the cave. They managed three more armloads each before the first
fat raindrop hit Roark on the nose. “You get Etain, I’ll get
Artur.”
By the time they’d staked the horses under
the rocky overhang with a handful of oats each, the sky let
loose.
***
Alina entered the cave and looked around. It
was small, yet big enough to contain their gear, a fire, and the
two of them, with room to lay their bedrolls out next to each other
and to move around without bumping into each other.
She glanced at Roark, who stood on the other
side of the fire watching her, his rain eyes gleaming, and chided
herself for feeling so shy around him. Especially after all they’d
already seen and done and been through together. She pulled the pot
out of the pile of their gear. “I’m going to catch rainwater to
soak beans in for our breakfast,” she told him, almost hitting her
head on the top of the entrance in her haste to escape the suddenly
small, stuffy cave.
Stepping outside, she took in a deep breath
of brisk, cooling air and set the pot out past the ledge’s edge. At
the rate the rain was coming down, it wouldn’t take long to fill.
She stood outside and double-checked the horses, who looked
miserable but dry, chiding herself for being so reluctant to go
inside and face Roark in such close quarters for the night.
“Do you think this storm will reach the coast
and slow Roger’s men?” she asked as she measured two meals’ worth
of field beans into the pot.
“It’s hard to say. The Mounths have their own
weather, and the coast is leagues and leagues away. Plus, we’re on
the opposite side of the peaks from the coast. Odds are the rain
clouds’ll be too heavy to cross over the peaks.”
Alina let her breath out in a rush. “That’s
what I was afraid of.”
“Losing time, or being cooped up in here with
me?”
“Both,” she answered honestly. “I don’t know
what to do about either.”
Roark grinned, slow and easy, and the cave
grew small and sweltering hot. “There’s nothing you can do about
the storm,” he said. “It’ll wail and blow until it doesn’t. As for
me, Ali girl, I’ll keep to my word and not bother you. I swear
it.”
“That’s the problem,” she said. She, who’d
always considered herself a person of sense and intellect, a woman
of self-control and practicality, that was until she met Roark and
stared into his rain eyes. Until he’d smiled at her with that
melting grin of his. Until he’d kissed her. “I don't want you
to.”
Roark cocked his head. “What do you
mean?”
“I mean,” she said, closing the distance
between them in three strides and standing nose to chin with him,
“I want you to bother me. You bothering me is all I think about day
and night. The thinking about it gets me bothered to the point
where I feel like I’ll either erupt or cave in.”
He stood still and silent, his nostrils
flaring and the black of his pupils almost eclipsing the grey of
his eyes. The image of him standing naked in the river came to her
as it had a hundred times since yesterday.
“I mean,” she said, her voice thick with need
pooling deep in her core, “I want to do more than see you naked. I
want to feel you, stones deep, inside me.”
“Ali, I…” He laid his hand on her shoulder,
about to give in or to fight her, she couldn’t tell, when a bolt of
lightning arced and filled the sky outside with a flash of blinding
light, its ear-splitting crack echoing off the cave walls and
causing them to jump. “Damnation.” He laughed, quick and short, and
started to back away from her, but Alina wasn’t having it.
“Oh no, you don’t.” She grabbed him by the
tunic and pulled him to her, stood on her toes and kissed him,
firmly and none too gently, the pent-up energy in her ready to
spark and arc as bright and dangerous as the lightning still
cracking outside. She pressed her body against his, breasts to
chest, pelvis to pelvis, and smiled as he gave in with a groan and
clasped her even closer, one hand in her hair and the other cupping
her backside, his mouth slanting over hers.
He broke the kiss and stared hard into her
eyes. “Are you sure, Princess?”
Still gripping his tunic, Alina nodded. “In
my land,” she told him, “a woman doesn’t have to be a virgin to
marry. Not even a princess.”
Roark snorted. “A woman doesn’t have to be a
virgin to marry in any land,” he said. “That doesn’t mean a husband
wouldn’t prefer her to be. Men can be verra territorial when it
comes to the woman they love.”
“Love?”
“Wed.”
“Which is it?” Alina teased. “Love or
wed?”
“Both,” he said, “if they’re lucky. Which
most are not.”
“My parents were,” she said. “As were my
grandparents and my great-grandparents. As could we be, for however
long we have here in our little cave, our little world, where we
could do everything but.”
Roark went still everywhere but for the
growing heat against Alina’s belly. “Are you sure, Ali?” he
whispered hoarsely.
She smiled, letting everything she felt for
him shine in her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “My answer to you has
always been yes.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ve known since the
moment I walked into your greenhouse.”
“Knew what?” Alina asked, her brazen courage
faltering. That she was an easy mark? That he was bait she couldn’t
refuse?
He held her face in his hands and grinned,
slow and easy. “I knew that you were mine, as I was yours.”
Alina let out the breath she’d been holding
with a long sigh. “I knew it too,” she whispered. “Despite
everything that’s happened, I’ve always known it.” Her courage
building apace with her desire, she bumped her pelvis against his
erection, his groan reverberating to her core. “What are we going
to do about it?” she asked, her voice low and thick.
He touched his lips to hers. “Everything
but,” he said, nipping her lower lip. “We are going to do
everything but.” He claimed her with his mouth, branding her with
his lips as he trailed searing kisses along her jaw and down her
throat to her shoulder, the neck of her tunic. “Lift your arms,” he
rasped, grabbing her tunic by the hem and pulling it up over her
head and tossing it onto the bedrolls.
Alina stood half-naked before him, basking in
the heat of his gaze as he stared at her breasts, her nipples