Chapter 34 #3
His fingers found the edge of her sash. Paused there, as if even in sleep some part of him was asking.
Her breath had gone shallow. His palm spread flat against her stomach through the fabric.
It was warm, heavy and covering a truly embarrassing amount of territory, and she thought, distantly, that she had been cold for a very long time.
She turned her head slightly.
It was hard to fall back asleep with his hardness pressed against her.
She reached down. Covered his hand with hers.
His breathing deepened. She adjusted her thighs, easing her discomfort as it slipped through. His voice was rough against her ear.
He bucked his hips, a word leaving his lips. “Khatun…”
She bit her lips, feeling the friction between her thighs, his hand pressing down on her belly. She steadied her breathing, feeling her body warm to his actions.
“Must you torture me?” He whispered hoarsely. “I can feel it, how wet you are.”
Azul’s body stiffened, unsure of what to do. "Sleep" was all she could say.
He was quiet for a moment but then he pulled her closer.
“If that is your wish, I will oblige.”
A sick man had no business acting on his body’s desires.
Ragnar woke to her absence.
The warmth that had been pressed against his side was gone; the furs beside him were cool enough that she had been absent for some time. His arm, which had been across her waist, lay empty against the bedding.
Ragnar opened his eyes slowly. His fever had broken. His head was clear.
His heart was not.
He stared at the ceiling.
He had dreamed of her before. Vividly. In enough detail that he'd developed a thorough and humiliating familiarity with the difference between memory and imagination. He knew the fever had been bad enough to blur the line entirely and he had learned, in the last month, not to trust the mornings.
She had been here.
He was almost certain she had been here. The pillow beside him still held a suggestion of weight, the furs still carried warmth in the shape of a woman, and he could have sworn he heard her voice.
He closed his eyes.
Ragnar.
He had dreamed that too. Her voice held his name.
He exhaled.
He was going to have to get up. Face Thane, the war council, the siege, and the logistics requiring his attention before the sun fully rose.
His ears picked up a sound.
It was soft and wandering. He knew that hum.
His eyes opened.
He did not move, for he was sure that any sudden movement might end this, and he was not prepared for it to end.
He closed his eyes again, a smile settling on his features.
She was humming from the direction of his bathing partition—the canvas screen in the corner, behind which sat the tub he had occupied last night. He heard water still.
Then he heard her steps and his heart made a decision of its own to accelerate without his permission.
He kept his eyes closed.
She moved through the tent with her characteristic silence—he had noticed, months ago, that she made almost no sound when she chose not to, that her footsteps were a deliberate choice rather than a natural consequence.
She wasn’t even trained; perhaps in her last life she had been a deadly assassin like Nyraxa.
She paused in front of him.
He could feel her looking at him.
He breathed evenly, hoping she didn’t see his pulse in his throat.
After a long moment, she moved away.
The tent flap shifted.
She was gone.
He waited and counted to ten.
Her side of the bed smelled of hemlock. The same scent that had haunted him in dreams, in the dark of his own tent when sleep wouldn’t come and his imagination had entirely too much unsupervised time.
He pressed his face into the pillow.
This was beneath him. He was aware of this. He was the Great Khan of the Valthorne, commander of ten thousand men, a blade of Ukhel’s will.
He breathed in.
The sound that came out of him was not something he would ever be permitting her to hear. Low, involuntary and deeply, catastrophically undignified. His fist closed in the furs beside him. His eyes, already shut, pressed tighter.
It wasn’t a dream this time. She had been here, in this bed, with her hand over his and her voice speaking like it was his fault —
It was entirely his fault.
He turned his face further into the pillow.
Her scent pressed against every rational thought he possessed and dismantled them catastrophically.
Ten years of campaign discipline. A decade of maintaining the composure that kept men alive and armies moving and tribes from falling.
All of it was gone. He wanted to feel more of her, his hands moving, stroking.
She was there.
Right there, within reach.
And he was too fucking sick to do anything but sleep. His mind had betrayed him so thoroughly his memories of her felt like a dream. He couldn’t even savour the moment.
His other hand found the furs on her side, closing around them.
He made another sound. Worse than the first. Muffled entirely by the pillow, which was the only mercy available to him at this moment.
You’re watching me. Liar.
He rolled onto his back.
Forearm over his eyes. Hand flat on his chest.
His heart hammered against his ribs.
He stared at the inside of his own forearm.
“Khatun,” he said quietly to the empty tent. “Have mercy on me.”