“It’s just a tank of water high over a piss pot with a hole in it,” Lylia said, grinning as if she enjoyed the innocent rudeness of the conversation.
“It’s that the tank fills itself to exactly full and stops that I think is amazing. A human would know that the tank is empty and could fill it and then stop when it was full. It’s like they made it intelligent, yet inside the tank are only little pieces of metal and cork.”
She covered her mouth on a laugh. “Oh, please, you’ll make me nervous to sit with my pants around my ankles with these ‘intelligent’ tanks of water above my head.”
He laughed. Lylia surprised him by taking his hands in hers and looking up at him.
“Kiss me,” she demanded.
“What?” Jerin blinked in amazement.
“Kiss me.”
Jerin glanced around to see if anyone was about to observe them. Where had his sisters and Cullen gone? “Would it be proper?”
Lylia seemed to consider for a moment, or maybe it was just an act of considering. “Proper enough. It’s not like I’m asking to mount you.”
“No.” he admitted uneasily, “but one seems to follow the other.”
She giggled, and then leaned forward-pressing her body full against his, wetting her lips before whispering again. “Kiss me.”
He supposed this was why the sisters were princesses. They commanded and everyone else was helpless not to obey. Certainly he also was helpless not to enjoy. Her lips were warm, moist velvet, her taste of apples, and her scent of cinnamon. She put her arms about his neck, ran her fingers down his braid, and tugged at the end. A moment later his braid uncoiled and his hair cascaded forward, a waterfall of silky black. She ran fingers through his hair.
“Lylia,” Ren said from behind her sister.
The younger princess broke the kiss. “I’m behaving.” She skipped backward, grinning, until she collided with Ren. She rolled her head back on Ren’s shoulder to look up at her older, taller sister. “He’s dreamy.”
“You’re supposed to be escorting your cousin.” Ren lifted her arm to point back up the path. “Go!”
“I’m gone.” She spun to duck under Ren’s arm and cantered off.
“Um.” Jerin ran his thumb across his forehead, gath-ering up his hair and pulling it out of his face. “I’m not sure how to say no to you princesses.”
“I suppose not,” Ren said quietly. “Our society can’t allow men to learn how to say no; it’s too important they say yes to so many women. Maybe if there were one man for every five women, or every three women, we could afford for men to say no.”
“What if there were five men for every woman?”
Ren studied a cloud as she considered. “Interesting question. Five sisters can share one man because each of them is individually rewarded with a child. Five men could share one woman, and be individually rewarded, but only if the woman was careful in allotting her pregnancies. It seems to run against human nature, though. Waiting five nights for one’s turn is not the same as waiting almost five years. Allowing your husband to impregnate your sister is not on the same level of commitment and risk as letting your wife carry and give birth to a child for your brother. Plus, any midwife can tell you, space the babies too close together, and each subsequent child is unhealthier than the previous one. Which brother gets to go first? Which brother has to be last?”
“It would seem that the power would remain with the woman,” Jerin said.
“It does indeed. The very nature of intercourse-an act to produce a pregnancy-and the risks to the woman’s health as such, I think will always make‘ the choice of yes or no the woman’s.”
“So the man can never say no.”
“Actually,” she said as she gathered up his hair into a ponytail, “you can always say no. I suppose I sound the hypocrite, but you have the right to choose who does what to your body.”
“Even though I belong to my sisters, as much as a chair or a table belongs to them, and they can sell me to whoever they want, despite my wishes?”
“I have never believed that to be right and good.”
She began to rework his hair into a braid. “Nowhere in the holy book does it say that a sister has the right to treat her brother as something less than human. Sometime, somehow, simple human greed worked its way into the law. The greed says, I will not give up something I have without getting something in return, even for someone I should love dearly.”
“But if you are giving up the only male you have, you’re giving up the ability to have children, even if only by means of incest. No babies to love, no daughters to tend you when you are old, no descendants to honor your memory.”
She picked up his ribbon from where her sister had dropped it and tied the end of his braid. “If it didn’t cost you to gain a husband, you wouldn’t have to sell your brother. The ability to sell a brother leads to circumstances such as your uncle’s, who was sold to finance a trading house.”
“My mothers allowed him to choose his wives. He loves them dearly.”
“Your mothers are particularly noble, then, compared to stories I have heard at court. The most pitiful ones are widows suing their husband’s sisters because he committed suicide after the money was exchanged.”
He nodded slowly. “It is hard knowing I won’t be going back home, that I’ll only see my youngest sisters and little brothers again if my wives allow it.”
“That, unfortunately, is the nature of marriage and not an evil that can be banished by law. The husband has to go live with his wives.”
“I suppose it’s because a man’s little sisters will grow up and become women with a husband to fill their thoughts, run their house, and raise their children. In his wives’ home, a man’s wives and children will always need him.”
“You are wise beyond your years.” Her eyes sung his praises.
He suddenly realized that he was wasting this moment alone with her, maybe the last he would have.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be wise of him to kiss her, but he had been wanting to since she left the farm. He stepped closer to her, leaning awkwardly forward, torn between wanting to close his eyes and knowing that he’d probably miss her mouth if he did shut them.
For a moment he thought he was horribly wrong in trying to kiss her, because the slight smile on her face faded. But then she was pulling him close, her lips pressed to his in unmistakable desire.
I love you! I love you! But he was afraid to speak the words aloud, because if she didn’t crush him down with some cruel remark, he knew that his feelings would grow. Even now he found great comfort in her returning his kisses as if she was as starved for his touch as he was for hers. When the edge of their mutual hunger was dulled to bearable, they stood, foreheads gently touching, his arms about her neck, her hands on his hips, holding him to her. She would exhale, and he would inhale her warm breath, feeling at one with her.
He finally whispered much safer words that those that shouted in his heart. “I’ve missed you. I’ve dreamed of you.”
“And I, you,” Ren breathed.
Lest his empty mouth fill up with the dangerous words, he trailed kisses down the tan, graceful curve of her neck, desire filling him, blotting out common sense. The memory of her breasts, replayed almost every night since that night in the kitchen, lured him downward. Her fingers moved in front of his advance, opening the line of attack. He moved his lips across skin silken as flower petals. Ren arched her back, making a small sound of pleasure. His right hand found the buttons of her trousers, worried them open, and slid down her fiat stomach.
His universe became her; she filled all his senses and thoughts. The murmur of falling water, the birdsong, and the drone of bees faded till he heard only her breath, her soft sighs. She guided his mouth to hers, demanding his lips, and they breathed as one. And when she finally clung to him, shuddering, it was as if they were a single being, filling all of reality. They stood entwined-mouth to mouth, heart to heart, hip to hip.
“I envy my ancestors,” Ren murmured against his lips. “I think I would give anything to be able to just take what I wanted.”
“Does that include me?”
Ren laughed softly. “At the moment, you’re the only thing I want-your sisters, my sisters, my mothers, the whole queendom be damned.”
