Healer's Touch (16 page)

“I'm going to talk to him.”

“Viera, I don't know…”

She shook her head. “I can't leave it like this. I need to talk to him. Even if we can't be together. Even if…”

“All right.” He sighed tiredly, nodding. “All right.” Pushing to his feet, he dabbed his bleeding chin with a finger.

She gave him a wobbly smile. “Sorry.”

“Never mind. Half the blood's in your hair. It adds a pretty sheen.”

She laughed in spite of herself.

“I should go. We reopen the shop tomorrow afternoon. Inella will want an early start.”

Viera rose to walk him to the door. “How's she getting on?”

“Strong as a soldier, when she isn't sniveling.”

Viera smiled. That was the most effusive praise she thought she'd ever heard out of his mouth. When he wasn't in the middle of an orgasm, that is.

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Thank you for giving her this chance, Karal. You're a good friend.”

“You going to be all right?”

“I am now. I'll come by the shop tomorrow to say hullo.”

“Tomorrow, then. Sleep well.”

 

Aru let himself into the house. Nothing greeted him but the quiet creaks and sighs of an old building settling on its joints in the chill night. No sound of her, no flash and glow of her aura as she dreamed in her bed above. The burned-down candles still marked the path upstairs, the wilted petals drained of their scent after a single day. He ought to clear them away, but that was a task he could not face tonight.

The infirmary was empty. There had been patients today, but nothing serious. Without Viera, he had no heart for the work and had sent them on to the Kurgan hospital.

He thought about going upstairs, but he could not bring himself to sleep in either bed. Could not bring himself to lie where she had lain, to breathe the scent of her that still clung to the linens, to remember the sight of her body or the sounds of her passion. Even the infirmary was filled with her presence, with its narrow bed where she pleasured herself, feeding him her Power so that he could be strong once more in his own.

There was mead in the kitchen. He went there, poured himself enough to intoxicate a water buffalo, drank it down. At the table where they had shared their meals, he laid his head on his hands and tried to forget what he had seen tonight.

His forearms stung where they had scraped the brick wall of the tavern, but he did nothing to close the wounds. He wanted to hurt. In truth, part of him wanted to die after what he had seen tonight. In the alley outside the Bull's Bollocks, surrounded by offal and vermin, he had stood pressed against that tavern wall, his eyes closed and his mind outside of himself, and watched what she did. What he had driven her to.

All those men, vermin of a different sort. Those who had touched her and those who watched, waiting their turn. He would gladly hunt them down, every one, and spill their blood until the ground and his soul were soaked with it. Not just because they had dared lay hands on her, but because their touch had brought her no joy. Her aura, always so brilliant and many-colored when she took her pleasure, had been a sickly yellow, the dull hue of jaundice or pus. And the more she hurt, the more eager those men seemed to become.

Aru had stood weeping in the alley, watching as his angel was pawed and debased, and he had done nothing, knowing if he went into that tavern, when he left not one of those men would be alive.

Then Karal had come and carried her away. Aru had followed them, had stood in the street and watched the two of them in Viera's apartment, had stayed there until Karal finally left. He had stayed while she made her preparations for bed. Her movements, even after the trauma and wildness of the evening, held a normalcy that soothed his raw emotions. He didn't know what Karal had told her—the half-world of specters and spirits was a place of utter silence, and they had been too distant for his physical ears to detect their words. He did know that, despite his obvious arousal, Karal had not touched her beyond the giving of comfort.

The kinder side of the double-edged sword that was Kurgan honor.

Aru had stayed in the street outside her apartment until she found her bed and fell into an exhausted slumber. Then he'd gone home to his empty house. His empty life. And he promised himself he would never seek her out again. He could spare them both further pain. He could do that much.

He drank and drank until the mead finally eroded the sharp, jagged edges of his guilt, and then he laid his head on the table and slept.

Chapter Ten

“Did you talk to her?” Inella asked without preamble the next morning.

Just like a woman. The door hadn't even shut behind her and already she was interrogating him.

Karal kept his eyes fixed on his task, tipping powdered willow bark from a vellum funnel into two-dozen small phials. Even so, he felt his face go red to the roots of his hair. “I did.”

“And?” She shrugged her cloak from her shoulders and hung it up, then crossed to him. Her hand settled on his forearm and he fought the urge to flinch at the sudden heat. Ever since that witch Viera had told him what she and Inella had done, he hadn't been able to think straight. The two of them performing for Aru? Viera, he could imagine, but Inella? All he could think about all night was her blonde head moving between Viera's thighs as she took the other woman with hands and lips and tongue.

Except when he was imagining her doing the same to him.

He flicked a glance at her concerned face, then scowled pointedly at her hand until she took the hint and removed it. Damn, he couldn't even look her in the eye! How was he supposed to work with her now?

“I found her in a tavern, making a spectacle of herself,” he said quellingly. “It wasn't pretty.” Of course, now he was thinking about Viera dancing on that table, which wasn't doing anything to soften his cock.

“Is she all right?”

He tapped the last of the powder into the phials and began to cork them. “She's better. You were right. She deserved to know the truth.”

Her hand was back on his forearm, squeezing gently. “Thank you, Karal.”

Biting back a curse, he jerked his arm from her grasp, needing to get her away from him before his cock leapt out of his pants and started chasing her around the room. “Still plenty of work to do out front before we open.”

She was silent for a moment, sniveling, no doubt. Ruthlessly crushing an inexplicable impulse to apologize, he risked a glance at her. She was glaring at him, but her eyes were dry. A spot of color brightened each cheek and her lips were pressed together in a thin, white line. “You're quite the unmannerly sort, aren't you?” was all she said before she brushed past him and through the door to the front of the shop.

Alone in the back room, Karal let out a long breath and glowered down at his cock where it strained the seam of his trousers. “You're going to get me into trouble,” he muttered.

The pop of a shattering bottle sounded from the front room, followed by a mild oath. Cursing under his breath, Karal started to go check on her.

“Karal?” she called, her voice beginning to tremble with concern. A familiar odor hit his nostrils, stinging the tender tissues inside.
Paraxinal.

“Shite,” he hissed, hurrying into the other room.

“Karal?” she rasped, her frightened eyes flying to his face. At her feet, shards of green glass lay in a hissing, smoking puddle on the floorboards. Her hands gingerly held her skirts away from the fronts of her legs. Wet flecks spattered the hem, beginning to give off fumes.

Hell and blood. “Get out of the puddle, Inella, it will burn through your boots. Did you get any on your skin?”

She nodded, picking her way past the broken glass to a relatively clear spot in the center of the room. “Get me some soap and water, please,” she said with amazing calm.

He reached for a jug of vinegar. “Soap will only make it worse.” Keeling in front of her, he pulled his knife from his belt and grabbed a handful of her skirt, cutting the fabric down the front from waist to hem. Her legs were bare above the tops of her boots and stockings, flecks of the corrosive liquid already reddening the skin on her shins. Uncorking the jug, he splashed a good amount on the burns, then pushed to his feet.

She made no protest as he took her by the waist and lifted her up to sit on a barrel. Her skirts fell to either side of her lap, only her knee-length shift preserving her modesty. One at a time, he cut the laces of her boots and pulled them off, then soaked her stocking-clad feet with vinegar. Her hiss of indrawn breath drew his gaze to her face. Her eyes were closed, brows pulled down low in pain, but she didn't even whimper. The vinegar would have neutralized the alkalinity of the
paraxinal,
but now it would be stinging fiercely on her burned skin. Salgrim's prick, if he ever got his hands on that unorganized disaster that was Festil sur-Maracon, he'd dump a whole bottle of the caustic stuff right on his fucking head.

“It's all right,” he said, smoothing her hair back from her face. Her eyes opened and met his and she nodded. “I'll get some salve.”

She smiled tightly. “Third shelf from the bottom, on the far left.”

He smiled back, fighting the sudden urge to laugh. By the god's balls, she was something.

 

Inella watched in silence as Karal poured the rest of the vinegar onto the puddle on the floor. The mixture bubbled and frothed, filling the tiny shop with an acrid stench like burning hair. Gingerly, she peeled off her sodden stockings while the Kurgan fetched a tub of salve from the shelves along the wall, and a beaker of water and a towel from the back room.

Kneeling in front of her, he bathed her legs and feet, his hands callused but unexpectedly gentle. Her skin had turned a livid red where the chemical had burned it, and even plain water stung in the wounds. With tender motions he patted her skin dry and inspected the raw patches, scowling at every flinch.

His eyes met hers, dark with displeasure. “I can take you to Aru, if you like,” he suggested.

She cleared her throat, thinking about the night before last, her face filling with heat. Karal still cradled her foot, one hand under the arch, the other behind her ankle. They were big hands, and warm, the fingers long and thick. The breath seemed to abandon her lungs. “I don't think that's such a good idea…”

He dropped his gaze, his scowl deepening. “As you like.”

Opening the tub, he dipped his fingers in the creamy salve and began to dab it on her skin. She couldn't help her gasp as the menthol stung, but soon the pain faded to a blissful coolness. He applied it with smooth, delicate strokes despite the fact that he seemed so angry, his eyes fixed on his task.

“You have a healer's touch,” Inella said. “Why don't you work at the hospital?”

“Can't stand all the sniveling,” he replied curtly.

She bit her lip. He had applied salve to all her burns, but he didn't seem in any hurry to remove his hands from her leg. In a part of her mind, she imagined him sliding them up past her knee and wondered what she would do if he did.

He flicked a glance at her, then glowered at her toes as if they particularly offended him. “I did work at a hospital, back in Sylphae. It wasn't for me. Seeing people in pain. Seeing them die when there's nothing you can do for them but watch and let it happen. This is easier.”

He flicked another look at her, as if daring her to find fault. She offered him a watery smile, her heart starting to flutter. “You're a good man, Karal.”

He dropped her foot as if he only that moment realized he still held it, and pushed to his feet. “I'll take you home.”

“Don't be silly,” she said, cool air replacing the warmth of his hands on her skin. “I haven't even started work.”

“Well, you can't work barefoot in torn skirts,” he said stiffly, keeping his eyes averted and beginning to look more uncomfortable than annoyed.

“My apartment's not far,” she said. “Maybe we could send a boy around to collect my other dress and a pair of my old shoes.”

“I'll go,” he muttered, stomping past the still foaming mess in the middle of the floor. “What's the number?”

“Um, Fourteen Elderberry Mews.” She frowned at the back of him, at the muscles that worked in his arms and torso as he swung his cloak around his shoulders. “You should know my mother is certain you have less than innocent intentions toward me.”

He turned back to her, frowning, then seemed to come to a decision. “I'm hardly the person to convince her otherwise.”

His eyes made a slow, deliberate journey from her face to her breasts to her bare legs and feet. By the time they reached her face again, her nipples were tight and jutting against the wool of her bodice and an increasingly familiar pressure was building between her legs. When had her body begun to do things like that? When had she begun noticing? The heat grew in her cheeks and spread down across her chest as her breath quickened. She tried to come up with a glib reply, something light and flirtatious to relieve this strange heaviness that hovered between them, but her brain seemed to have disengaged.

“I'll be back soon,” he said, then turned and stomped out through the back room without another word.

One hand pressed to her chest, Inella let out a long, slow breath. What was wrong with her? It was beginning to look like Aru had created a monster when he awakened her libido. Karal was hard, unpleasant, impatient, rude and abrupt. His face looked as if it had been carved in ten minutes by a sculptor who'd had too much to drink, and his scars—a thin, white line across his brow and another crescent shaped one on his cheekbone—didn't help any. His body was huge, a pillar of muscle and bone and sinew that…should have been intimidating but somehow wasn't.

She thought about the way he'd touched her, soothed her. The feel of his hand smoothing the hair back from her face. A tender gesture that meant a great deal coming from such a hard man.