Chapter 10 #2
“I haven’t wanted to feel good,” he uttered, her brow wrinkling at the half-explained thought.
“I want you to understand that, Mystique. Touching you, even in this small way”—he drew her against his lips, kissing her forehead and then inhaling the cold, clean fragrance of her hair—“for me it’s so sweet, so damn glorious a feeling, and I didn’t want to feel that.
” He watched as the ache of her loneliness brought scorching tears into her red-rimmed eyes.
He felt an answering sting lance through him.
“He was Pack, kébé,” he said hoarsely. “I can never adequately explain what that means, what it feels like to have him torn away, but I can try to explain mourning rituals.”
“Please,” she begged, “Para has been too beside herself to even speak and … I had no one else to ask. I don’t know about this the way I knew other things.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed. Can we go somewhere warmer? We can talk and, if it’s all right, I’d like very much to hold you close for a while.”
Her response was to fling herself forward against him, wrapping her arms around his body as far and as tight as she could manage, burrowing beneath his cloak for his warmth.
She exhaled a heavy sob of relief and he suddenly realized she’d taken his distance as rejection and maybe even reproach.
He held her a moment, closing his eyes tightly against the bitter wind.
This was the second time she had mistaken his treatment of her for a form of punishment.
It spoke loudly to him of her unknown past.
He moved them indoors, letting her cling to him however much she wanted.
Did she know how good the closeness felt to him too?
He discarded their cloaks and other outerwear, then took her into a small study.
A fire burned enthusiastically and they both headed straight for it even though the room was electrically heated and warm.
Reule took a seat in a large chair and, hooking her wrist in hand, he pulled her down into his lap.
She sighed, making no arguments whatsoever, and snuggled against him.
“There are ten days of mourning for the Sánge,” he began quietly.
“The first three are called the Depths. This is when we immerse ourselves in our grief. We do this,” he took her hand and laid it over the wound near his heart, “so that every time we move or touch the wound, the pain will force a reminder of our loss and grief. The more intense and plentiful the cuts, the more we seek to honor the one who has died. The tradition is very old, but it has evolved to a point that these cuts are usually shallow marks done for symbolism more than anything. But Amando was Pack.”
He said it as though his words explained everything, and Mystique supposed they did. Now she understood why it would be an affront to him to be healed. She didn’t care for the practice, but she did respect what it represented to him.
“The Depths ends the third night, tonight,” he continued, “and the light and dark mourning will be initiated with the ceremony. Tonight we will inter Amando in the royal crypt, honoring his lifetime spent as a Packmate.”
“Light and dark mourning?”
“It means we laugh and cry as we remember him together. We celebrate and mourn together. The first days are solitary, but these seven are spent close to family and friends who were all touched by Amando in his lifetime.” He placed a finger on her windblown cheek.
“The Depths is a very dark and painful period. You understand? It would disrespect others to disturb the grief with improper emotion. This is doubly true of Pack, because our feelings are so interwoven. The Pack feels what I feel, kébé, especially now. They expect me to help them cope with their grief.”
He drew her closer, his lips to her ear.
“I couldn’t accept your solace or endure your sympathy, sweetheart, because of how it makes me feel.
Comforted. Soothed. These feelings would have disturbed the Depths of the others.
Besides, I wouldn’t have contented myself with the solace of your words and heart.
” He slid his fingertips down to the edge of her modest neckline, running its edge as though it were something low and daring against her breasts.
“Only all of you would have sufficed, Mystique. The slaking of my voracious lust for you would have been insulting to the Pack. I believe it would have been insulting to you as well. You wouldn’t have wanted to learn me as a lover under those circumstances. ”
“And now is different?”
“Now is different,” he agreed. “Dusk is coming and soon we will shed the Depths. It will …”
He stopped and, because she was sitting in his lap, she felt the tension that suddenly locked tight in his muscles.
His thighs beneath her bottom became so hard that she shifted uncomfortably.
His hand clamping onto her shoulder stopped her movement, and he turned her toward him as he lifted his hand from her neckline and tipped her chin back.
She glimpsed the green-yellow glare of his eyes before she was forced to look at the ceiling, baring her throat to him.
“Who did this?” he demanded, his voice a threatening rumble that made her heart skip a beat. She felt his fingers close around her throat, fitting over the impressions Rye’s hand had left on her. “Answer me, kébé, or I will take the answer from you.”
“No! Please.” She gripped his wrist, pulling at his hand so she could lower her eyes back to his. “It was an accident.”
“An accident? The grip of a man’s hand around a woman’s throat?”
“Something you’ve done yourself in your temper,” she argued. “To this very same throat. He was grieving terribly. You cannot …”
“This was Pack?” Reule surged out of his chair, taking her with him until she was hanging in his grip by her arms. “Someone from the Pack put their hands on you like this?” Reule wanted to shake her as her accusations penetrated his rage-blind brain.
“Don’t dare talk to me of my temper! I restrained you.
I didn’t hurt you, bruise you, and I most certainly would never lay a hand on you if I thought I couldn’t control my anger!
Do you really mean to compare my actions to this … this act of brutality against you?”
“No,” she whispered, knowing how it would make him feel if she did. “But I’m begging you to understand that the volatile mix of grief and anger, the suffering …”
“We’re all suffering! Does that give us all the right to strangle you?
What next? Beating? Whipping our frustrations out on you?
No, Mystique. There is only one being we may injure in grief, and that is ourselves.
With the jihmak, the cutting that you are so disturbed by, for honorable remembrance.
Don’t tell me there is any excuse for a Packmate to hurt you! ”
“Isn’t there? What if he felt that I had failed him? Or that I was responsible for Amando’s death? Or what if,” she said quickly when she saw protest about to explode from him, “the rage he feels is really toward himself because he survived while his friend has been ripped away from him? From you?”
“Rye,” Reule breathed as understanding dawned.
“He blames himself! Cutting himself is never going to allow that feeling to escape. He lashed out at a convenient target—”
“Then let him target me! I made the choice! Lord damn him, I’ll kill him with my bare hands for this dishonorable treatment of a woman! Of my woman!”
“Reule!” she gasped.
Mystique froze for several long beats, her eyes wide, her lips quivering.
She gripped the fabric of his shirt, feeling his chest rapidly rise and fall with his emotion.
Then she flung herself at him, clinging to his body with all her strength.
She dragged herself up his height, cursing the confinement of skirts that prevented her from using her legs to aid her.
It turned out not to be necessary because he helped her with hands at her waist and drew her tightly against himself as he met her questing mouth.
The kiss was soft, despite her demand, and brief, but it was still more than enough to heat their blood in anticipation of more.
“Say it again,” she begged him against his lips. “Without the anger, Reule, please say it again.”
“My woman, Mystique,” he said, his breath and lips as hot as the passion behind the phrase. “Did you doubt it? Did you think I’d simply forget how you make me feel? How extraordinary you are? By the Lord, I’d be insane to let you slip away from me.”
She laughed tremulously as he kissed her cheek and chin. He made it sound so simple. So logical. When he knew it was positively outrageous. “I’m not Sánge,” she breathed as his hands slid up the length of her spine and into her hair. “I’m no one. I have nothing to offer you.”
“You have everything to offer me,” he said roughly, giving her a warning shake just before he sealed his mouth to hers and burned her to her soul with sentient hunger.
She became keenly aware of it with each deep stroke of his seeking tongue.
She was gasping for breath when he finally broke away.
“Beauty, intelligence, power, courage. These are all I crave in a mate, Mystique.”
“A history. A homeland,” she argued breathlessly. “A name.”
His mouth trailed away, striking out for the length of her throat and scorching her with kisses of need and temptation. “I’ve given you a name,” he coaxed softly. “You will make new history with us here. We will be your homeland. Let us love you, sweetheart.”
The phraseology curled a fist of anxiety between her lungs.
“I will let you love me,” she responded quietly.