Chapter 14 #2
If this was just another priestly duty he expected me to attend to, I’d dump my entire glass of wine in his lap and leave, but Taran was rarely direct about what he wanted, so the casual way he’d asked made me think there was more to it.
If anything, he seemed flustered by my challenge. He tilted his head, gaze hanging on my lips when I took another sip from my glass.
“I’d like to see what your hair looks like when it’s down and loose,” he said after a moment, voice a shade raspy.
I waited for more. Surely, after three hundred years, he could manage better. I knew I wasn’t beautiful, but I had to have a few charms worth listing.
When I quirked one eyebrow at this lack of effort, his cheeks colored, but he didn’t amend his response, which made me wonder if he’d neglected to lie out of sheer surprise that I hadn’t stormed off.
So I shrugged. “Alright,” I said, and set my cup down so that I could pull the pins out of my hair.
For the party I’d done a more complicated style, arranged like a double crown on the top of my head, and it took a few minutes to get enough pins out so that my braids fell over my chest. His eyes widened but held mine when I took out the ties and carded my fingers all the way to the roots.
When it was all loose, I bent my head and shook the dark red strands out so they fell around my shoulders.
Even crimped from the braids, my hair brushed my thighs, shining in the lantern light. There.
Taran had a small, puzzled frown on his face, like I’d done something inexplicable, even though many women wore their hair loose every day.
He picked up one lock and wound it through his fingers, but it was just hair—there was no magical seductive power in it, or I wouldn’t be the sole frustrated virgin at this party.
When he didn’t say anything, I put my hands behind my neck to coil it up again, but he kept his grip and concentrated on the lock he held. I cleared my throat, and he finally recognized my quizzical expression and blinked, seeming to come back to himself.
“I meant I’d like to see it spread across my pillow,” he said belatedly.
At my nearly audible eye-roll, he pulled my resistant body toward him, almost into his lap.
“It’s true. Everyone who heard you sing is imagining the exact same thing, except they’re afraid I might be concealing a stone knife and a jealous streak,” he said in a more conversational tone, wrapping one arm around my shoulders with his fingers still woven into my hair.
The tug on my scalp made a spark catch low in my belly, a small curl of desire I might still decide to fan into flame.
“Really?”
“Yes. Unfortunately for you, they’re right.”
It had never occurred to me that anyone but Taran would be interested in me, and I scanned the crowd as though I might somehow be able to confirm it. People had been watching us, openly and covertly, but I had assumed that was about Taran’s beauty.
“Then why would I choose you? No one else has tried to trap me into ironing his clothes forever,” I said, still not convinced this was about his straightforward interest.
“Oh, I’ve heard it’s a remarkable experience, if you’ll accept the recommendation of people who knew me while I was serving Genna. I don’t remember, of course.”
There was an edge in the flippant words that made me sure there was something more he wasn’t telling me. I continued thinking out loud. “Why ask me though? Because you think I won’t tell anyone if you’ve completely forgotten what to do…?”
“I have not,” Taran said, looking like he would have liked to haul me out of the performance hall before someone overheard us. Unfortunately for him, I was in the corner, which meant I couldn’t escape but also he couldn’t easily make me be quiet.
“Is that it? Then what if you’ve chosen poorly? Maybe I’m terribly indiscreet. Maybe I’d get up tomorrow and gossip to Lixnea’s court that Taran ab Genna is all elbows and knees in bed, and he snores too.”
I’d missed teasing him, even if I never would have dared on this subject, and I grinned until he pulled up one corner of his mouth in a reluctant smirk.
“Again, I do not,” he said, tightening his grip on my hair until he held it in his fist. “If I disappoint in any way, you have my permission to ruin my flawless reputation.”
My chiding look bounced right off his determined face. He didn’t let go.
“So?”
“So? This doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with me.”
I wanted to hear him say he was overcome with desire for me—and more than that, say something to make me think he always had been.
“Of course it’s to do with you,” he insisted, but he turned his face toward the wall behind us.
It took him several reluctant breaths to speak again, voice low when he finally continued.
“Fine. I’ve heard a lot of things about myself tonight, and it’s not pleasant to be the most ignorant person in the room on that subject, but I’m trying to catch up.
So I was just…thinking. While watching you on the stage.
About the light on your hair, and your hands on the lute, and your lips while you sing—anyway, I was thinking how much I wanted to take you to bed, and that seemed like a good reason to ask you, but it occurred to me that I don’t know if that ever was a good enough reason before.
I don’t know if that was ever even one of my reasons before, or if it was always for Genna’s power. ”
My smile faded, and after a moment, Taran reluctantly let go of my hair.
“That’s awful,” I said quietly, which made him scowl and shift in his seat.
“I don’t know if it was or wasn’t. All I know is if there was ever anyone I wanted for myself, they weren’t waiting for me when I got home.” He ran one careful knuckle along the curve of my shoulder. “But you—I’d know.”
He exhaled and finally met my eyes, honest and piercingly lovely in the lantern glow.
I twisted my hands together in my lap, caught between regret and desire.
I wanted to smooth the hard edge of his mouth with my thumb, kiss the line of his jaw to softness, tell him that I’d never doubted he could be good to someone in every way one person could be to another.
I held myself back.
“I’m not sure that wanting to prove something to yourself is a good enough reason to go to bed with someone.”
“Not just that. I said—”
I sighed. “Yes, even with my hair, and my voice, and everything else that you can see right here.”
“What is a good reason, then?” he asked, sounding curious.
“You’re asking a maiden-priest?”
“You were going to be married. Surely you at least thought about it.”
Now it was my turn to look away. “I thought about it.”
I wished I knew.
There was a lot in my short, declarative sentence, and after Taran had digested it, he said simply oh. Not in a pitying way, just thoughtful.
Perhaps sensing that my resolve was not rock-solid, he took my hand again and traced a fingertip along the edge.
Followed it slowly down the line of my arm and let it fall to my thigh, where he spread his palm to smooth my dress over my leg and let me feel the heat of his hand.
A small show of finesse: this was how he’d touch me. Gently and intentionally.
I wished that he’d ever asked when I could have been unconflicted about my answer. But there was probably a reason he never had. I let the moment pass.
“Taran, it’s a bad idea. I’d be all elbows and knees. Tears, too.”
He blinked, taken aback. “Tears? Why would you cry? I wouldn’t do anything to make you cry.”
It was the first thing I’d said that made him sound honestly wounded.
I’m sorry, Taran, I’d be thinking about my betrothed, who is dead, and is also you, and I find that very confusing sometimes.
I ducked my head as I looked for a way to deflect his question, so I was startled when I felt his hand cup my cheek.
He moved slowly enough that I could have turned my face away, but I found that I desperately wanted to know how Taran kissed someone he wanted to go to bed with, and I held very still as he leaned toward me.
The kiss was gentle and coaxing, his lips lingering at the corner of my mouth to warm me with his breath until I lifted my chin and turned into him.
He took me in small sips, just a sweet give and take that drew on the hidden reservoir of heat in my center and urged it to spread through my body.
When I opened to him, his thumb swept down my jaw, but only the tip of his tongue brushed my own.
Making me the one to pursue him, the one to chase sensation and feeling.
He was being oh so careful, saying without words that if I left with him, he’d take very good care of me.
That ember of desire flared and brightened in my core, a feeling that for years I’d put aside for later.
But this time I fed it, leaning in and pressing the backs of my hands against the hot skin of Taran’s throat, just below where his hand cupped my face.
My forearms rested against the taut muscles of his chest. This had been the place I felt safest. Loved.
Our first kiss wasn’t like this. It had been about a minute after he asked me to marry him, or a minute after I realized he was serious.
I hadn’t known what to do with my nose or my hands or my breathing because it had been not just our first kiss but my first kiss ever, and Taran had been more concerned with getting an answer out of me than with showing me what to do.
Is that a yes? Please say yes, nightingale.
After I did get that single, joyous word out, Taran had run outside to tell everyone, and then a full day’s march and our inescapable responsibilities had meant it wasn’t until late that evening that we had another moment alone.
I spent some hours of reflection that day—the ones not spent selecting flowers for our wedding or naming our future children—on the thought that I had certainly not been Taran’s first kiss.
Acolytes of Genna had considerably more freedom than acolytes of Wesha, after all, and a reputation for… freedom.
When Taran finally did pull me aside late that night and lifted my face to his with two confident fingertips beneath my chin, I apologized earnestly.
I’m sorry, I’m probably terrible at this. But I’ll try to get better.
Taran was rarely serious, and he wasn’t then. He ground the tip of his nose into my cheek until I squealed and collapsed against him.
No, you’re perfect. But you are welcome to practice on me as much as you’d like.
And I did. As hard as I’d ever worked at singing the Maiden’s blessings with perfect pitch and diction, I worked on kissing him. I kissed him until our lips were swollen and his pupils were blown, until his hands flexed convulsively on my hips and his breathing ran ragged.
For all he’d imagined some stone-solid line he couldn’t cross with me, I couldn’t believe there was anyone who was as expert at kissing Taran ab Genna as I was—even in three hundred years, there couldn’t have been anyone as motivated as me to learn.
The kiss was deeper now, intent in a way it had never been before, with one hand tangled in my hair and the other pulling me hard against his body.
I took his tongue fully into my mouth as my body lit with three years of carefully banked need.
The kiss was no longer careful; it was hungry and desperate.
He was the one to break it, pulling back with a noise of surprise from deep in his chest.
Taran’s face had lit with the same gratified astonishment as the night I sang to Marit, softened by what looked painfully like tenderness.
I’d hoped to learn something about him. Instead, he was obviously wondering why I kissed him not like a woman trying to decide whether she wanted to take a man home from a party but like his sweetheart, who’d missed him terribly. Who loved him.
“Say yes, Iona,” he breathed, and my given name in his mouth was like a splash of cold water.
I wasn’t his sweetheart. He wasn’t a runaway acolyte who’d died on the cliffs half a year ago. If this new man wanted to celebrate his freedom, he could start by offering me my own.
“Take me to the Painted Tower,” I said, forcing myself back to the present.
“What?” Taran jerked away, whipsawed by my change of subject.
I shook my head, mind grasping for clarity. Trying to hold on to the things I now knew about him.
“Are you…trying to bargain with me?” He was not just stunned but angry, but I needed to remember to stay angry too.
“Yes. If you’ll take me to the Painted Tower, you can have whatever you want from me.”
His lips parted in shock.
“You still want to go? You think, what, Wesha will really give you your betrothed back?”
I didn’t know. Wesha didn’t have the power to change Taran’s heart, did she? She’d promised me Taran exactly as he was—as willing as he’d ever been to weave his life to mine, I supposed, so he might not go home with me.
But at least I’d have a choice about how to spend my life.
“Yes, I do.”
“And what would your husband-to-be think of you buying his life with that bargain?” Taran retorted with silky fury.
“I think under the circumstances, he’d be understanding,” I drawled.
The joke didn’t land, of course. Taran’s jaw tensed, emerald eyes going hard and resistant as he gave his answer.
“No. Don’t ask me again.”
Some part of me was relieved that he didn’t offer anything else, but I shoved at his arm anyway until he slid down the bench so that I could get up.
His expression was still stung when he was on his feet. “So that’s it, then? That’s all you want?”
I nearly laughed, because I didn’t want so very much—only the things he’d chosen to promise me. I hadn’t asked for anything!
But yes, I still wanted all of it.
“I want what I came here for,” I said to his beautiful and wary face.
“I was going to be married. To someone who was…the best man I’d ever met.
A hero. Who promised to build me a stone house with a plum tree by the front window.
And love me forever, until the stars fell out of the sky.
We were going to be together for the rest of my life, Taran.
That’s what I want! Explain it to me—why would I ever accept less from you? ”
I knew he couldn’t actually have an answer for that, so I excused myself quickly, fighting the part of me that wanted to soothe away every hurt on his face, even the ones I had inflicted.