clenched her fists around the Gauntlets before taking them off.
Then she built a bed of the fresh greenery, and held out her hand. “Give me the cloak and I’ll dry it.”
Her tone was anything but erotic, yet Raed felt curiously reluctant to give it back to her. She rolled her eyes. “Your virtue is safe with me, pirate Prince, but a night in that wet clothing and your ship will need a new captain.”
The smirk on her face said she knew she was right, and the worst thing was that he knew it as well. With as much dignity as he could muster, Raed handed her the cloak, and hoped his body wouldn’t betray him. He quickly did as she bid, and lay down close to the fire. Carefully, she covered him with more of the ferns.
Then he gulped, because she was taking her own advice. A better man would have looked away, but Raed was unable to. Sorcha used a framework of sticks to hang her cloak close to the fire, and then she too stripped off her clothes. Raed swallowed hard as she unbuckled her armor. Then Sorcha peeled off her sodden underclothes, and draped them over the sticks to dry along with the cloak.
He was going to say something about being suddenly grateful to the Rossin, but as she shook out her hair and revealed her nakedness, all without the slightest sign of embarrassment, his mouth went dry. Her body would not have been proper in the court of Felstaad or probably the Empire, with scars and muscles that spoke of a hard life, but it was certainly beautiful. He was entranced by the flicker of the firelight over the soft curves and harder planes of her form.
Padding over to where Raed lay curled in the greenery, Sorcha dropped her Gauntlets to the ground nearby and slipped in behind him under the ferns. Raed felt his body spring to life at the press of her against him. The sharp line of her hip and the soft swell of her breast made him draw a ragged breath.
“By the Ancients,” he whispered, completely unsure what to do or what the protocol of having a nude member of the Order right next to him was. What was the Deacon thinking? Should he turn around and kiss her or would she blast him into charcoal? All these thoughts raced through his mind as his body screamed in favor of action. Against his back, he could feel that she was tense too.
“It won’t take long for our clothes to dry,” she whispered, her tone uncomfortable. “As soon as they are, we can get going.” The way her breath tickled the back of his neck was incredible torture. If it had been any other woman, he would have rolled over and let those chips fall where they might. But this was a Deacon, a married Deacon, and one that he was relying on to keep the Rossin from taking hold. It was taking every ounce of his willpower not to turn around. The world narrowed down to simple and torturous sensations: the smell of her skin and the feeling of her breasts pressed into the small of his back. Raed let out a long breath as every muscle in his body clenched. He tried to keep the memory of the Rossin and the Change in his head, tried to drive away the surging blood he could feel everywhere.
It seemed, however, that the same could not be said of Sorcha. After a minute, he was able to tell by her breathing that she’d actually fallen asleep. His male ego was more than a little pricked by that. It had been a long while since he’d had a naked woman anywhere near him. Raed was sure that she had kissed him back in their tussle in the tunnel.
With a groan, Raed curled tighter. He really shouldn’t have recalled that memory. The next hour or so was spent miserably as he suffered the tides of desire. Just when he thought he had conquered his body and mind, Sorcha would murmur in her sleep and brush differently against him.
Finally, some sort of internal clock must have gone off, because she got up and stretched. When she dressed, she was thankfully quick. “Nice and dry,” Sorcha said, tossing her cloak to Raed. “Now, let’s get down this hill and find that reprobate crew of yours.”
Every supposition that the Pretender had about Deacons had been blown out of the water. He’d had only one miserable experience with one to go on, of course; yet he’d always imagined they lived staid, boring lives; ascetics who only studied and never actually experienced life. When Sorcha had told him that there was nothing they couldn’t do, apparently she hadn’t been joking.
ELEVEN
The Martyr, the Pretender
Sorcha couldn’t stop smiling to herself as she led the silent Pretender down the hill. He was shocked by her behavior, and truthfully, so was she. On one hand, it had been only practical to dry their clothes after getting them soaked, and they had needed to keep warm while waiting for the garments to dry. On the other hand, she still wasn’t sure why she had deliberately tormented Raed.
Pretending to sleep was the first thing novices learned in the Abbey; when the Presbyter came to check on the students after lights out, it paid to be good at it. She could have lain still, but part of her—a part of her that she had thought long dead—had deliberately moved against the Pretender’s back. What exactly she would have done if he had succumbed to her goading, Sorcha didn’t know.
It had been nearly two years since Sorcha had made love with Kolya. Their partnership might still exist, but their marriage had been dead for a long time. Whatever safe harbor she had thought he might offer, she had made the wrong choice. It didn’t make her feel good about herself, but there it was . . . the truth.
With a little flush, she acknowledged that she’d enjoyed seeing the naked man more than she expected to. And that kiss . . .
Sorcha stumbled a little on the rocky slope, catching herself only at the last minute. It could have been a nasty and embarrassing tumble. In truth, the kiss had felt like an awakening. How long had it been since she’d been kissed like that?
With a curse, she shook her head. She was far too old for this idiocy—it had been only a kiss, and it was behind her now. There were enough complications to her life already. “Catch up,” she found herself snapping in Raed’s direction. He made no comment, and for the next two hours they scrambled silently through the broken landscape toward Ulrich proper.
She looked through her Center before they got down to street level, but found no evidence of the unliving. After the last few encounters, however, that was no longer a reassurance. Hearing Raed come up behind her, she let out a sigh. “Looks nice and quiet.”
“So did that tunnel,” he growled.
His bluntness brought a bitter smile to Sorcha’s lips. “Fair enough. So let’s not just walk straight up to that ship of yours.”
He nodded in agreement. Keeping to the shadows of the houses, they reached the ship in short order. The quay was more open, with only small stacks of cargo offering any cover. Sorcha could feel her skin prickle with a heat that was at odds with the season.
“Plenty of lights on,” Raed whispered over her shoulder, “and it looks like Aachon has posted guards.”
Two crewmen were indeed sitting huddled around a lantern on the deck, though their usefulness as lookouts was limited by the playing cards in their hands. She raised an eyebrow in the Pretender’s direction. “And these are the people you trust your life to?”
“Most of the trouble they run into is due to their captain’s presence; with me on dry land, they don’t need to be vigilant.”
Sorcha snorted. This was why everyone always thought the Deacons so efficient—the rest of the world was just terminally incompetent. She was tempted to slide on her Gauntlets and deal a hand of her own. Raed had, however, slipped away from her and was striding toward his ship, obviously not too happy about her assessment of his crew.
She heard the cardplayers greet their captain, and their greeting turned to laughter just as she walked up. The men had just realized their captain was stark naked under his borrowed cloak. When she climbed aboard, the laughter stopped abruptly. Many things weren’t so funny when face-to-face with a Deacon.
“My lord—the Rossin?” At Raed’s curt nod, he sent the sobered crew to fetch spare clothing from the cabin.
The Pretender gave a spare gesture toward Sorcha. “Were it not for the assistance of the Deacon, who
