38. Doom
Doom
Faren
Faren was single-minded as Mariana led him upstairs, his palm never leaving the small of her back.
He was floating and she was the current sweeping him along.
His body hummed with pent-up need, his perils abandoned on a faraway shore.
He’d spent so much of their journey fretting, and he didn’t want to fret tonight.
By contrast, the set of Mariana’s shoulders grew tenser and tenser with each step.
By the time Faren closed them inside their rented room—shutting out the noise of the raucous pub downstairs—her body was braced.
He’d expected the silence to soothe her, but as she took in the bed, the sparse furniture, the smallness of the space, it became apparent: Mariana was nervous.
He found it oddly endearing.
Faren tried and failed to smother a smile, determined to set her mind at ease.
He had no expectations, no plan. He wanted her body, but more than that, he wanted her safe, fed, happy.
He wanted to make her feel good; he had the sense that she was rather starved of feeling good.
And after weeks camping and traveling alongside her, he knew just how to start.
After dumping their gear by the door, Faren knelt before the fireplace, striking flint and coaxing the flames into a healthy blaze.
Next, he dragged a pair of wooden chairs to the sides of the hearth, opened his and her sodden packs, and began wringing out and draping their soaked bedrolls and clothing over the chairs to dry.
He could feel Mariana watching him from the center of the room as he laid her spare socks on the stone hearth slab one by one.
“Sit,” he said as he worked. “Warm your feet.”
Her reply was overly chipper. “Need help?”
“I need you”—he enunciated, glancing over his shoulder at her—“to relax.”
With a relenting sigh, Mariana gathered a heap of blankets and pillows from the bed and arranged them on the rug in front of the fire.
She sat, removed her boots and socks, then extended her shapely legs out long.
Her shirt and trousers had damp patches on the thighs and around her collar, but as she leaned back on her hands and closed her eyes, Faren saw the crinkle on her forehead gradually disappear.
If she minded him rummaging through her pack and handling all her clothes, she didn’t say so.
Searching for any remaining wet socks, he dug past pots of Hylder salve, mushy rations, and a vial of what appeared to be an anti-pregnancy tincture.
In the bottom, he found the shawl he’d bought her in Waldron, folded neatly with the knit gloves from Orna, the fine garments still mostly dry.
He decided to leave them tucked safely therein, thinking of how he, too, kept his most valuable items protected within the depths of his own bag.
When his task was done, Faren removed his own boots and sat beside Mariana on the floor, keeping a gap between them.
He mirrored her position, legs outstretched, arms braced behind him.
The lick of the flames on the soles of his feet felt divine, as did the sight of the color returning to Mariana’s cheeks as the room heated.
Outside, the storm raged, making their modest haven seem all the more intimate. Faren tipped his head back, basking in the calm; his chilled magic gradually heated, spreading out under the surface of his warmed skin, content.
After a while, his senses prickled with awareness, and when he looked at Mariana, she was already staring back at him.
More specifically, she was staring at his chest, where his semi-damp white shirt was stretched across his broadness.
She seemed to like what she saw. The tip of her tongue slid along the scar that streaked through her upper lip, tracing its ridge.
He could feel it as if it were his own tongue.
When she realized that he’d caught her appreciating him, she pressed her lips together, her long neck pulsing as she swallowed.
She had a strange look on her face, her mouth soft but her jaw tense.
Her dark eyes reflected the fire. He recognized the wariness of before, but there was a wildness to it, now. A thrill.
What he wouldn’t give to peek inside her mind and read all those thoughts, like incantations in a sacred Ledger; if he did, he thought darkly, he’d probably be compelled to take a wicked Oath.
Eyes skittering back to the fire, Mariana said, “This is weird.”
“Weird how?”
“You haven’t said much.”
Faren leaned back on his elbows, stretching out, enjoying her profile: the blade’s edge of her cheekbones and the soft peaks of her breasts underneath her shirt. “What would you like me to say?”
“I don’t know. What’s on your mind?”
A huff. “I’m not sure we should go there just yet.”
“Why not?”
“Dangerous territory.”
“My life is dangerous territory.” She lifted a haughty eyebrow. “You think you can scare me?”
He considered listing all the things he was thinking: how desperately he wanted to explore her naked body, how much he yearned to sink deep inside her, how there were feelings taking root in his chest that had nothing to do with lust, and how foolish he was for being here with her tonight, like this, giving in to his temptation, when a stronger knight—a better knight—would find it in him to resist.
But that was too much to articulate.
“I’d rather hear about what you’re thinking,” Faren said.
“To be honest, I’m tired of thinking.”
“Do you…want my help with that?” he asked carefully.
Her nod was quick and singular.
Faren pushed up off his elbows and moved closer, taking his time.
He started by dragging his fingers across her exposed clavicle, brushing her collar aside.
Her head dropped back, giving him a delectable view of her sternum and Oath-ringed throat, the shadow of cleavage beneath the laces of her shirt.
Her skin was soft and cool, a hot flush blooming beneath its surface to meet his fingertips.
His magic rose in answer to hers, relishing how quickly she responded to his touch.
Keeping his movements slow, firm, and measured, he dragged his hand up, encircling the side of her neck, his thumb on her pulse point.
It jumped and throbbed against him, betraying her arousal.
In answer, Faren bent, pressing a kiss to the center of her chest. A faint moan thrummed out of her, vibrating into his lips.
With tongue and teeth, he traveled up her neck, teasing and tasting, giving rise to the goosebumps he was beginning to ache for in every encounter.
When he reached her jaw, her back arched. She turned her head, seeking his mouth, sliding her lips against his in a wet, blazing kiss that made his whole body ignite. He swiveled toward her, using his hand on the back of her head to cradle her as he eased her down to the floor.
The kiss deepened, her fingers raking over his back, tongue sweeping his mind blank.
Her body undulated with each press, pliant as his palm began to roam, sliding over her shirt between her breasts and down her stomach to the sharp point of her hip, which he gripped possessively, eliciting another flimsy moan.
Taking that as a good sign, Faren smoothed his hand up under her shirt, where her skin was warm and supple; on the road, he’d noticed that she often bound her chest, but not tonight.
Her breasts were soft and free beneath the fabric, and he cupped one, his thumb rolling over a hard nipple as he squeezed the perfect shape of her.
With a groan, he nuzzled under her chin, lavishing her neck in kisses, making his way down to—
Her body tensed underneath him, and he paused, moving his hand to the safer territory of her waist. “Alright?” he asked, trying to think of what he could’ve done to get such a reaction. A ticklish spot, perhaps? Or something she didn’t like?
“It’s fine,” Mariana said, gripping the back of his head to return his mouth to hers.
But Faren resisted. “You tensed.”
“It happens sometimes.” She stared past him, at the ceiling, lashes fluttering. “Just ignore it.”
He pinched her chin, forcing her look at him. “I will not,” he stated.
“It’s fine, I’m used to—”
“Have others ignored it?” Rage. Instant rage, which—for her sake—he tried his best to smother.
Her voice was small when she said, “Others haven’t noticed.”
Faren wiped a hand over his face. “Well, I noticed,” he said, “and I will not ignore it.” He rolled off of her, propping his head up on one hand while the other lingered on her hip in what he hoped was an anchoring touch. “Why did you tense?”
With a sigh, Mariana draped a wrist over her eyes, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him as she spoke. “I…get overwhelmed. My magic…I don’t know how to describe it.”
Faren kept his tone encouraging, but not demanding. “Try.”
She removed her arm from her face and looked at him. A deep mauve colored her cheeks, her lips were reddened from his stubble, and her hair was a dark and tangled halo around her head. It felt like a gift to see her like this, exquisitely undone.
“It just gets too intense,” she said. “I start to feel like I don’t know where I am, like I can’t focus, like I’m…”
“Losing yourself?”
A nod.
He couldn’t help a smug smile. “And that’s not a good thing?”
She shoved at his chest, only to clutch his shirt to keep him close. “It’s more than that,” she said. “I become hyperaware of every point of contact, every nerve in my body. The constriction of my clothing, the texture of the rug, the heat of the fire. You. All at once.”
“That happens to me sometimes. Can’t you just rein it in?”
She shook her head no.
Faren considered this, along with the other peculiarities he’d observed on the road: her aversion to damp socks, the specific way she tied the laces at the front of her shirt, her preference for rain on her face instead of the billowing hood of her cloak against her ears.
Most touch magicians were—presumably—like other people; the difference was their ability to heighten sensation when it suited them. But Mariana…
“You aren’t like other touch magicians, are you?”
She shook her head no again, then sat up. Faren knew, then, that she was about tell him a precious secret. “You know how you can dull or increase your sensitivity at will?”
“Yes.”
“Mine isn’t malleable,” she said. “I’m sensitive all the time. Heightened all the time.”
It took Faren a moment to wrap his head around the concept.
He pushed up to sitting, facing the fire, remembering all the terrible sensations of their travels.
The needling rain. The bite of cold. The unyielding ground beneath his bedroll.
The blistering burn of Morta blood. The clang of steel vibrating up his arm every time his sword made contact, whether sparring or in a real fight. The sting of injury.
He thought of the bruises on her ribs. The scar on her pretty upper lip. The twenty-four years she’d endured thus far—of a sentence that was for life. The complete and utter torture she had faced for her duty, made excruciatingly worse by magic she couldn’t escape from.
“Fuck.” When he swiveled to look at her again, his heart cracked. “How do you stand it? How do you survive?”
The questioned seemed to surprise her. “I just do.”
A bemused laugh burst out of him.
“What?” she asked.
“I’m just amazed, is all.”
She sat a little straighter. “Now will you ignore it?”
“Not on your life.”
That seemed to disappoint her. “Why not?”
He reached for her face, then wavered. “Because I don’t want to ignore it,” he said. “You deserve to feel good, not grit your teeth through it on my behalf.”
She gripped his wrist and guided his hand to her cheek, her eyelids fluttering closed with the contact.
“Mariana.” Faren kept his voice very gentle. “We don’t have to.”
Her eyes snapped open. “Do you not want to?”
“Oh, make no mistake,” he said. “I want your body more than I want the sun to rise tomorrow. But I want you—I want this—on your terms.”
Her lips parted, a short breath slipping free. “I want this, too.”
“That’s good to hear.”
She gave him a coy smile that he’d never seen before, almost like she was embarrassed. “It takes me a while to…warm up,” she explained. “Sometimes if it’s too much, too fast, my magic can’t adjust.”
Faren leaned in, his mouth a mere breath from hers. “Teach me,” he murmured. “Of all your secrets, Mariana, that’s the one I want to know most. Teach me how to touch you.”