Drink of Me. Jacquelyn Frank

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СКАЧАТЬ face tucked against his neck as her head nestled on his shoulder, while he dipped the cleaning cloth in fresh solution. He balanced her now-heated body against himself to free both hands, sliding away her straggling mop of hair to expose her back to the approaching cloth. Her skin was nearly black with grime, but it was soon clean as he coasted over her shoulders, down her ribs, and along the path of her spine.

      Reule’s gaze was steady and watchful as soap and soil fizzed away in the current of the water and left a clear picture of the damage to her back. His fist tightened reflexively in her wet hair. More bruises, more cuts, but there were also wide swaths of abrasions at her shoulder points and the prominence of every vertebra. Burns, as though she’d been dragged over a surface…or repetitively scoured against one.

      By the Lord, he thought fiercely as he squeezed his eyes shut and touched his forehead to her collarbone in gentle sympathy. Had she been gang-raped by those monsters? It had to have been unimaginably violent to have left such awful damage behind. If that was the truth of it, then the bastards had died pitifully easy. Reule’s fury boiled his blood and he swore softly as he tried to vent it with deep, controlled breaths. ’Twas no use letting it rip him up; what was done was done. They were dead and she was alive and safe now. That was all that mattered.

      Reule lowered her away from his body to continue the chore of assessing as he gently cleansed her, forcing himself to clear the persistent red haze of emotion that dwelled in his vision. He once again found himself faced with the curves of a fully fledged woman. Of most prominent note, and next in his path, were her sweetly rounded breasts. He ran a cloth-covered hand over the swell of her right breast, feeling the partial peak of her nipple rippling under his passing fingers. Partial altered to full rigidity by the time he was done, the reaction so quick that he found himself needing to clear tightness from his throat. Confusion soon followed when he realized unblemished, perfectly pale skin, as well as those taut pink buds, was becoming visible through the water. If she had been sexually abused, her breasts would have suffered badly from mauling and manhandling, wouldn’t they? What male bent on degradation and sexual gratification wouldn’t take advantage of the opportunity to molest such lush, enticing breasts?

      Reule was slowly circling soap around the buoyant globe on the opposite side, his eyes fixing on the way the pink of her areola gathered up into a tight ring. It sent the tip of the attractive nipple pointing outward in tempting invitation. He felt her flesh brushing against his bare chest, luxuriant and slippery with soap. The resulting quickening of his body ought to have been predicted, but it took him by complete surprise. All he knew, as a man of honor and conscience, was that he shouldn’t be feeling the discomforting rush of blood to his groin for an unconscious and defenseless woman. Last he checked, he wasn’t into such callous perversions.

      His gaze and hand sought more neutral territory, traveling on to the gaunt curves of her ribs, which hinted at the duration of her neglect. In his lap, her hips and bottom were well rounded and soft, proving her not too far gone to starvation. Though her legs were slim and long for her build, they were a little too thin at the knees and calves. Her ankles were pronounced even through the water, just like the wrists at the ends of her skinny forearms.

      Reule rubbed away dirt on her gently hollowed belly, finding more bruises, these already healing. Then, very carefully, he washed over her pale thighs. Her hips were a mess of cuts and contusions. Had she been pinned down? Her flesh was scoured over both hips, but there was hardly even a bruise on the top sides of her thighs. Her knees were only a little dusky with damage. Yet he could see angry red and mottled blue in livid circles coiling around her ankles to nearly a third of the way up her calves.

      Bound by her feet, but not her wrists? Reule was more perplexed than ever. His eyes drifted to the triangle of protective curls at the juncture of her thighs, the indeterminable color dark while wet. He found himself swallowing hard against a swell of struggling emotions. Rage. Worry. Empathy. Fear.

      It was because of the fear and his inability to bear the keenness of it that he turned to a safer emotion. Or so he thought. Curiosity. They were the lightest dusting of little curls he’d ever seen on a woman. Without thinking, he reached to touch the pale inside of one thigh, fingertips sliding against wet, silk-soft skin. Reule didn’t even realize he’d dropped the cloth. Those sparse curls, were they as soft as they looked, or more coarse like a Sánge woman’s? Did the friction of mating make her more sensitive? Would it be easier for his fingers to slide between her folds in order to seek out the moisture of—

      Reule shocked himself with his own thoughts and he jerked his hand out of the water as if he’d been burned. He was stunned to realize he was breathing hard and that his cock was ferociously rigid with arousal. Reule was mortified. What in hell is wrong with me? He’d been sitting there, furious at the prospect that she’d been torn up inside by those miserable Jakal bastards, and here he was thinking about touching her himself! He might be Sánge, but contrary to popular outlander belief, he was no beast!

      In the heat of his upset, Reule forgot that there was a huge difference between thinking and acting. For a telepath, it was the hardest and most important lesson to learn. A mind could concoct great fantasies, majestic schemes of both sinister evil and beauteous good. However, actually acting on those fantasies was another thing entirely. It was unfair to hold someone responsible for every stray thought. Reule neglected to forgive himself for basic inclinations of the mind.

      Reule also forgot how hard his emotions could strike out at others when they emanated out of his control. He was harshly reminded of it when the woman in his arms awoke with a traumatized gasp and a forceful jerking of her body. It sent him off balance as he tried to hold her slippery body and keep her head above water simultaneously. Her bottom settled in his lap again, giving him some leverage as he verbally and mentally tried to calm her frantic flailing.

      “Shh. Be easy, kébé. You’re safe,” he assured her, emanating a feeling of security to her, hoping to replace his hostile emotional disturbance of a minute ago. The rush of sorrow he’d come to associate with her assailed him once again, but he found it was fueled with fear as well this time. “Hush, kébé,” he soothed. “Hush, I will keep you safe.”

      Then, all at once, she seemed to hear him. To comprehend. She went abruptly still, reached up, and shoved the wet mass of hair off her face so roughly that he heard strands tear and snap. Then she looked directly at him, allowing him to see her face for the very first time. For a long minute, during which every muscle in his body seemed locked in a mystical paralysis, all Reule could do was stare at her.

      It was her eyes that had the greatest impact. They were so unreal, so brilliantly unusual, that he couldn’t quite take them in for a moment. He doubted he’d ever see anything like them ever again in his lifetime, and that was quite a monumental concept considering how long-lived his breed tended to be.

      How to begin to even describe them? he wondered.

      They were colorless.

      No. That was inaccurate. They were far too enthralling to be a null. They were clear as crystal, yet white and silver all at once. They looked exactly like, and sparkled like, diamonds. Faceted, beautifully cut, clear and precious gemstones, with a platinum setting behind them to enhance every movement they caught in the light. She blinked thick, black, curved lashes over them, and that’s when he broke away from her eyes and saw the rest of her face. It was shaped in the delicate curves of a heart; soft bow lips chapped from thirst and neglect were tucked into a permanent but enticing little pout, and she had a slim nose that ended in the slightest uptilt. She had bruises across both cheeks, some old and yellowed, others fresher, but they did nothing to hide the sweet structure of her bones, and her skin promised to be flawless when free of battering. She was youthful, but clearly a woman; unbelievably pretty, but sorely misused. Those diamond eyes looked at him in utter confusion for several heartbeats.

      Then, like electricity flooding a dark room, СКАЧАТЬ