Chapter 23 #2
That last time that the Dervish had been that aware of eight inches, they’d been attached to a rather smug gentleman with white-blond hair and a tattoo of a fish on his left arm.
Ancestors, I haven’t thought about him in years.
What was his name? It was in that town with the blue-glazed-tile roofs on everything.
I remember being impressed, but not nearly as impressed as he was with himself.
The steam smelled like pine trees. He’d been in places where they burned sagebrush to heat the stones, which was a stronger scent. This was pleasant. Maybe all those ridiculous unidentified trees outside had some virtues after all.
“Built this myself,” said the wizened old man out of nowhere.
“It’s very nice,” Edmund said.
The man grunted and ladled more water over the stones.
Sweat trickled down the Dervish’s back. Muscles began to loosen that had been drawn tight for days.
It was odd that going into the sword never seemed to help.
It healed everything else, but perhaps tight muscles were too subtle, or perhaps his muscles had been tight going into the sword in the first place, so the magic assumed that was normal.
I was a trifle tense when they killed me the first time.
The old man got up, wrapping his towel more securely around his spindly frame. “I’ll throw another log on outside,” he said, more to the door than to Edmund and the Dervish. “Should stay hot for another fifteen, twenty minutes.”
“That should be plenty,” Edmund said. “Thank you.”
Another grunt. The door closed behind him, causing the sexual tension in the room to go up several notches.
The Dervish glanced at Edmund, who had leaned back against the wall, his eyes closed.
A bead of sweat was running slowly down his chest, over muscle that was neither chiseled nor rock-hard, but strong enough to wrangle a mule.
Strong enough for what needed to be done.
He watched the bead of sweat slide over Edmund’s belly and meet the towel slung low around his hips.
Edmund cleared his throat.
The Dervish looked up and saw the scholar watching him. He smiled lazily. Edmund swallowed, though it was hard to tell if he was blushing since both of them had turned red from the heat.
The Dervish had always enjoyed this part of the dance, the point where flirtation had gone far enough that you could be sure both parties were interested, the way the tension would ratchet and then release.
In some ways it was more rewarding than the sex itself.
That could be good or bad or indifferent, but this part was always good.
“Your ribs have healed up nicely,” he said, running a fingertip up Edmund’s side.
Edmund yelped and nearly jumped off the seat. “Careful!” The Dervish stretched out an arm to keep him from going into the hot rocks. “Sorry. I should have warned you. Are you ticklish?”
“No! Just. Um.” He cleared his throat. “They don’t hurt anymore.”
“That’s good. And your face doesn’t look like you’ve been beaten within an inch of your life.” The Dervish leaned back. “At the risk of jinxing everything, I am starting to think we might actually make it to this city of yours.”
“From your lips to the ears of the gods,” Edmund said fervently. “This is the second-worst trip I’ve ever been on.”
“Only the second?”
“The first one accidently went through the Vagrant Hills. We were attacked by mandrake roots throwing owl pellets.”
“Aren’t mandrake roots plants?”
“Yes. These were very angry plants. There were other things too … incredible marvels … living stone salmon and spiders that wove tapestries between trees and the wonder engine, of course … but the mandrake roots were the ones that I remember most vividly.”
“I can understand why.” The Dervish shook his head. “No wonder you took the sword thing in stride.”
“Oh, not that you’re not a marvel too,” Edmund assured him, then froze. “I mean—not that—” He stopped and put his hand against his forehead.
The Dervish chuckled and stroked the back of his hand down the scholar’s bare arm, feeling muscle under sweat-slick skin.
Edmund closed his eyes and shivered despite the heat. The Dervish watched with interest as he took a deep breath, then said, carefully, “I swear that I am normally an extremely articulate man and that I do not usually put my foot in my mouth every third sentence.”
“It’s all right. I rather like being called a marvel.”
Edmund’s sidelong look was wry. “You are,” he said. “But not because of the sword.”
There was really only one proper response to that. The Dervish reached out and took the other man’s chin in his hand and kissed him.
It was not the fierce kiss they had shared in the wake of the dragon.
Then the Dervish had had something to prove.
This was an invitation, not a boast. Edmund’s mouth was cool compared to the heat of the sauna, and his response was perhaps not quite so inexperienced as the Dervish had thought.
Ah. Our fine scholar isn’t a complete novice.
You simply have to give him a little time, instead of pouncing on him like a ravening animal.
When it was finally too hot, when the steam meant that they either broke apart or died of heat stroke, the Dervish rubbed his thumb across Edmund’s cheek, which had gone from stubble to the beginning of a beard.
“I think,” he said lightly, “that perhaps we should get out of here before we overheat.”
“Too late,” the scholar muttered, but he rose and followed the Dervish into the antechamber.
Where the Dervish, with great deliberation, let the towel drop.
There was a small, stifled noise from behind him. He could feel Edmund’s eyes on his skin as he went to the barrel of cold water and dunked most of the upper half of his body into it, then came up gasping.
“That’ll wake you up,” he said, turning his head.
Water ran into his eyes and he pushed his hair back and grinned at Edmund.
On the floor here? No, it’s just bare boards and while we might not care at the time, pretty sure we’d feel it later.
And I’ll need another few minutes anyway. Saunas are a little too relaxing.
Still clutching his towel, Edmund approached the barrel. He took a rather more restrained approach, using a nearby pitcher to dump water over his head, but sputtered from the cold anyway. Water droplets clung to his eyelashes like tears.
“Brisk,” he managed to gasp.