Healer's Touch (8 page)

He looked at his rumpled bed. Crawled under the blankets and put his head on the pillow. The linens were still warm with the heat from their bodies. He lay there willing his stubborn erection away, trying not to replay the images of the past hour in his mind.

It was some time before he realized he hadn't heard Inella's footsteps on the stairs heading back to the infirmary.

 

Inella lay in the circle of Viera's arms and thought over all that had happened tonight. All she had allowed to happen. Her face filled with heat at the memory. Odd, that she should feel more chagrin from what she'd done tonight than from all the many times she'd fucked a man for money. And it had nothing to do with the fact that Viera was a woman.

It had everything to do with the fact that Inella had taken pleasure in it.

Deep down, she even understood the shame she felt. There was a moral certitude to be found in knowing that though she sold her body, she did so only to feed her children. A part of her hadn't even registered Viera's earlier remark about the cheap, earthly pleasure of whoring—there had certainly never been any such pleasure in it for Inella. And the fact that she took no satisfaction from it was the one thing that had allowed her to do what was necessary and still keep her deepest self apart from the taint of sin.

It wasn't that she hated sex. She'd just always been…unmoved by it. Even with Ned, it had been little more than another chore in her busy day. The real pleasure for her had come from lying like this with him afterward, his arms close around her body, his breath fanning the back of her neck. And there was a pleasure in it, even here and now with Viera, but despite herself, her mind kept returning, again and again, to the mindless, wanton bliss she had found in Aru's bed, under the skilful hands of the other woman.

And even as her cheeks warmed from shame, she found herself smiling into the dark. She felt like a child with her fingers in the honey jar, stealing a few drops of sinful sweetness when other eyes were elsewhere. And that thought led to a sudden memory of Viera's fingers, coated with slickness, and her pink tongue curling around them, licking them clean.

Inella shifted, squeezing her legs together as if she could hold the heat in that way.

Viera's arms tightened and her hand slid into Inella's. “What is it, my dear?”

“I don't know. I just…” She frowned, shifting in Viera's embrace. “I never imagined I could feel like that. Do you think maybe…was it always in me, just waiting for Aru to come along and wake it up?”

She could feel Viera's lips and the breath from her nostrils on her shoulder, comforting and stirring at the same time.

“Maybe.”

“I'm sorry I didn't please you.”

Viera's breath halted for a moment, then resumed. “What makes you think you didn't please me?”

Inella shrugged, her belly tight and aching. “You never…well, you didn't…”

“I didn't come,” Viera said softly. “It was a choice, a message for Aru. That didn't mean I took no pleasure from you. Your softness, your innocence—”

“Innocence?” Inella choked, not sure whether she wanted to laugh or cry.

Viera pulled away, tugging Inella's hand to turn her around. It was a very hard thing to meet the other woman's eyes, but Inella forced herself.

“Yes, innocence. You have no idea what it feels like to know that no other person has touched you like I have, no one else has ever brought you that kind of pleasure. No one else has tasted your come pouring onto their tongue, or felt your cunt shudder against their mouth.”

Inella shut her eyes against waves of heat at Viera's words. Surely it must burn the woman's tongue to speak such things, just as it set Inella's ears aflame to hear them. A moment later, she felt the other woman's lips on hers, coaxing them open, and her breath was like fire.

 

Viera slid her tongue into Inella's mouth, reveling in the tiny sigh of pleasure the other woman gave. She only wished Aru were here to see what she did. She pictured his face, pale and angular, the eyes huge and slanted and gleaming in the dark like a cat's, his body perfectly carved as if from the whitest marble. Behind her closed eyelids she saw herself sliding into his arms, running her fingers along his unblemished skin, taking the perfect, smooth length of him between her hands while her lips sought his.

Inella was kissing her back, leaning closer. A moment later, she propped herself up on one elbow and ran a hand down Viera's torso to her hip.

“Would you like me to…?” the woman asked against her mouth.

Viera arched, her stomach clenching on a renewed wave of desire, and pressed her body close to Inella's. “Please,” she whispered.

Inella's hand slid to Viera's belly and lay there for a moment, as if in indecision. Her breath fanned Viera's lips in hot little bursts, her chest heaving.

Viera smiled. “Shall I tell you what to do?”

“Yes!” Inella blurted, then let out a nervous giggle. “I'm sorry. I just…”

Viera reached up and took the woman's face in her hands, pulling back to look at her. All trace of a smile vanished from Inella's face as a flush stole up her cheeks and her eyes darkened. Viera brushed a thumb across her lips. “I want your mouth on my breasts, Inella.”

The very picture of obedience, Inella leaned down and took one nipple between her lips, suckling gently through the filmy silk of Viera's camisole as her hand skimmed up to cup the roundness of her breast. Nice, but, “Harder, my dear,” Viera instructed, holding Inella's head closer as moisture pooled in her cunt. “Ahh, yes,” she hissed as Inella's mouth tugged more firmly on the knot of flesh, sending a stab of heat through Viera's belly and setting her clit to throbbing. “Just like that.”

Warming to her task, Inella switched to the other breast, lapping at the peaked tip with her tongue, soaking the fabric with saliva. Then she tugged the hem of the camisole up and over Viera's breasts, baring them to the cool air. Her already tight nipples hardened into almost painful points. Inella plucked at them with her fingers, tweaking and pinching until Viera had to bite her lip to keep from squealing. Her pussy was so hot and wet and full of blood she thought she'd go mad from it.

“God, oh god, Inella. Put your hands on me. God, put your fingers inside me. Make me come.”

Inella's fingers slid into her slit, stroking up and down, spreading Viera's wetness all over her labia. They circled around her opening, dipping inside, then pulling out, teasing and playful. In impatience, Viera thrust her hips upward. Inella's two fingers thrust into her, all the way to the last knuckles. They pulled out, then stabbed in again, and Viera's hips rose up to meet them. Inella's lips still sucked at the aching tip of her breast, nipping and lapping, torturing the tight bud while her fingers drove Viera nearly senseless.

“My clit, my clit,” Viera panted, feeling the pressure build in the swelling pebble of flesh.

And then, thank god, Inella's thumb was there, pressing hard, rubbing back and forth. As Viera's senses gathered, she imagined Aru's hands on her, Aru's lips at her breast, Aru's cock where Inella's fingers pushed high up inside her. She imagined the three of them coiled on the bed, a tangle of limbs shuddering with desire, pictured Aru pounding into her from behind while she ate Inella's sweet cunt splayed so beautifully before her. She imagined Aru's seed spilling into her in hot jets until she couldn't hold it all, and in that moment, she cried out and rose up off the bed, her inner muscles spasming around Inella's thrusting fingers. Her hands clutched at the other woman as if to a piece of driftwood in a maelstrom as every nerve in her body fired at once.

Awareness gradually reasserted itself. Her heart still slamming, she nestled deeper into the other woman's embrace, stroking a hand down the fine silk of her hair.

“You love him, don't you?” Inella whispered.

Viera's stomach clenched painfully, but she forced her breath to slow. “Why do you say that?”

“You cried his name just now.”

Viera pulled back, searching Inella's face as her throat tightened in dismay. She knew more than anyone what it felt like to have a lover scream someone else's name. “I'm sorry, my dear.”

Inella smiled, and Viera could find no trace of hurt or sadness in it. “It's all right, Viera. This whole thing is supposed to be about you and him, remember?”

“You're not angry?”

Inella hugged her close, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “You and Aru gave me back my life. Tonight you gave me something just as wonderful, in its way. I will always love you both for that. I just hope I have given you something in return.”

Viera felt tears prickle the back of her nose. “Oh, my dear. No man has ever pleased me better.”
Nor likely ever will.

Inella chuckled. “I could say the same.”

Viera reached up and stroked the hair back from Inella's face, feeling something warm and tender blossoming in her breast. “Will you stay one more night?”

One corner of Inella's mouth quirked up. “Only if you promise to kiss me as you did tonight.”

Viera pressed a quick kiss to Inella's lips and hugged her close, her mind already running through all the things she wanted to do tomorrow night. “I'll do more than that, I promise.”

They fell asleep like that, entwined in each other's arms.

 

Aru stood on the landing, aching. Viera's door might be shut tight, but that hadn't kept him from watching what they did. Except that now he felt the same smear of dirt on his conscience that he felt when he spied on the whores in the alley from his bedroom window. The guilty stain of the true voyeur. Inella and Viera had come to his room and included him in their earlier games, but this—this was not meant for his eyes. What had transpired behind this door was between the two women, and he was not invited.

Still, even hating himself for it, he had watched.

His eyes closed, his hands pressed to the smooth oak of the door, he had seen them clear as day, their spectral forms like a coalescence of light and color against the blank empty backdrop of the half-world. He had watched them kiss and press against each other, watched as Inella's mouth fastened onto Viera's breasts, watched as her fingers plunged in and out of Viera's cunt, the place where she burned brightest. He had watched that place flare and explode in a conflagration that would have blinded mortal eyes as her soul arced upward in her moment of crisis. And as he watched it, as he heard his name tear itself from her lips, even with both his hands pressed to the door, he had come, his seed spilling forth against the carved wood to drip onto the floor.

He had envied Inella earlier that night as she lay writhing beside Viera on his bed. Envied every touch of Viera's hands and lips and tongue on the woman's flesh, and wished himself there in Inella's place. But now, oh, now it was worse. Worse to watch Inella's hands and lips and tongue travel to all the places he would have his own. Worse to see Viera writhe and scream and come under the touch of one who was not him. To know that even though she cried his name, she did so under someone else's fondling, that was true envy.

But it was not the worst. Not by half.

Worst was to see them collapse soothed and sated in a weary embrace, to witness the lazy, affectionate caresses, hear their muffled voices tenderly whispering as they held each other. To see the closeness they shared in that quiet, vulnerable space of time after lovemaking, and to know it was not for him, and never would be.

What he felt observing them through the door as they fell asleep pressed tight together was not envy. It was different, harder, brighter, more painful. It stabbed at his heart, twisted in his gut, clenched like a strangling hand around his throat.

He had envied Inella all evening—in truth, he had envied them both—but he was not jealous until this moment.

Chapter Six

“Hell and blood, if I find that stinking whoreson I'll tear him a new asshole! I'll wear his teeth as a necklace! I'll feed his foreskin to my dog!”

Viera stood in the little shop on Clove Street, one hand pressed to her mouth, and tried to stifle her giggles. She could just see the top of a head of disheveled sand-colored hair above the edge of the cluttered counter. Grunts and banging emanated from the space behind, then a spectacular crash, followed by a lengthy tinkling of broken glass.

“Fuck! Fuck, fuck,
fuck,
I won't rest until I've pulled his toes from his feet, one by one! I'll peel his skin and wear it as a cloak, I'll stuff every one of these bottles up his scrawny backside, and then melt him down for window panes!”

Viera cleared her throat. “Might I ask to whom you are referring, Karal? So that I can tell him you're looking for him, you understand.”

She winced at the sharp crack of Karal's head on the underside of the counter as he started to rise. His curses this time were just as evocative, but he kept them mostly under his breath. Slowly, more cautiously, he unfolded his tall frame and stood rubbing his head and glaring resentfully at Viera.

“Festil sur-Maracon,” he said sourly. “My useless twit of an assistant. I hope you haven't come for willow bark. Gorgorn only knows where the miserable worm put it. Three weeks he spends undoing my entire system, turns my whole shop upside down, then the bastard walks out. Fucking weasel.”

Viera smiled behind her hand. “I'll put the word out that you're hiring.”

“No bloody thanks,” the Kurgan said, folding his enormous arms across his chest and shaking his head. “I'm better off on my own than with the help I've had. Fucking educated morons think they know everything—like three years at the university gives them the right to question my methods. You see these?” He held out his right arm and showed her his tattoos—two sunbursts, one green, one red. His muscles rippled under his skin, making the stylized designs seem to flare and waver. “The green is for alchemy. It took me fourteen years of study to earn it, backed by more than a millennium of Kurgan research. And these morons think they have something to teach me.”