The Barbed Rose. Gail Dayton

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      Servants were still whisking dust covers from the elaborate white and gold furniture in the suite when they arrived. Every piece Kallista had ordered removed during their previous sojourn, clearing the first two-thirds of the long central room for a practice area, had been replaced, requiring them to thread their way through the obstacles.

      “Perhaps we should have paid a visit to the palace barbers as well.” Kallista stripped off her grubby overtunic, letting it lie where it fell. “I scarcely feel human.” She plucked at the damp shirt beneath. She didn’t think she’d been dry since they left home.

      “Servants will bring baths,” Obed said. “I requested it before they departed.”

      “Bless you.” She touched his cheek, stretching up for a kiss he ducked away from. He disguised it as a bow, graceful as a dancer, but he could not disguise the truth. He did not want her kiss.

      Hurt, she turned away, found Torchay there as always, and kissed him. But that was not fair to him, to give kisses because they were refused elsewhere. She rested her forehead in the curve between his neck and shoulder, taking comfort in the arms around her until the tension in him broke through her pout.

      Kallista tried to move back, but Torchay’s arms tightened, holding her in place. His hand moved, cupping the back of her head, and he turned his face to nuzzle her ear. “This has to end, Kallista,” he murmured for her only. “We’ve arrived. We don’t need his sword. If he hurts you again, I’ll kill him.”

      “You can’t.” She kept her voice low despite her need to scream at something. Obed’s behavior offended Torchay most, because he knew her best, saw better how it hurt her, cared more that it did. “He won’t. He hasn’t.”

      “Has he no’?” He softened his grip enough she could see his face, turned toward Obed with angry challenge in his eyes.

      “We need him, Torchay.”

      “The One sent him. She can send another.”

      “You think She will? If we destroy Her gift?” She worked her hands free and clasped his face between them, forcing his gaze away from Obed to her. “Do not turn your anger at this…this mess onto one who bears no fault for it.”

      “I blame him only for his own faults.” Torchay tried to lift his head, to glare at Obed again, but Kallista held him with a touch he could easily break.

      “Your anger is out of proportion with this fault.” She brought his face down to hers and kissed him.

      No longer seeking comfort or offering thanks, this was a kiss of desire rekindled and passion delayed. She scuffed her hands through the week-old growth along his jaw, savoring the bristly softness against her palms. He opened his mouth over hers and she welcomed him in, needing the taste and feel of him like she needed the very air to breathe. His hand at her waist slipped lower, cupped her bottom and brought her in hard against his arousal, thick and straight and all for her.

      Kallista’s moan nearly drowned out the distant sound of a genteel knocking at the door. It registered only when Torchay set her away from him. “Too much demands our attention now,” he said.

      The quick, gasping rate of his breath eased Kallista’s frustration. A bit. Most new mothers did not wait so long before welcoming their mates back to their beds. Because Kallista had borne twins, and because her magic was so strange and so strong, Merinda had advised caution. So Kallista had followed the healer’s advice.

      Now, caution drowned in a flood of passion and she was in no mood to resurrect it. She needed this, needed to know soul deep that what family remained to her here was indeed hers as she was theirs. And if Obed didn’t want her, Torchay did. But he was right, damn it. Now was not the moment.

      Her own breathing finally under control, Kallista glanced up, saw Obed following the teams of servants bearing tin hip baths and willed him to look at her. Maybe the magic was returning, for he did what she wished. Or maybe the guilt she read in his eyes the few seconds he met her gaze made him look.

      Why guilt? Did he believe he should want her kisses? He had wanted them—wanted her—once with a fervor that pulsed so powerfully through the magic linking them it had come near driving her insane. What had changed? Could it be changed back? Did she have any right to do so?

      Torchay ordered the tubs set up in three of the small private sleeping rooms off to each side of the main parlor. A wise decision. If they’d bathed together in the same room, Kallista feared little bathing would have been accomplished. On her own, she washed quickly and efficiently, using the extra can of water to rinse her hair of soap. Dressed again in fresh clothes provided by the ever efficient Torchay, she was the first to emerge, her hair spread across her shoulders to dry.

      She notified the servant waiting outside the suite door that her bath was ready to be removed and returned to find Torchay, clean and freshly shaved, if a bit crumpled around the edges. She was no better. Saddlebags did not keep clothing in the best of press. He drew her like one bespelled, but the only spell was the man himself. Fortunately, Obed joined them a moment later or she might have shocked the servants. Certain things called for the privacy of the ilian.

      The last tub had just been carried out when another knocking, this one far from genteel, pounded at the door. Likely the guard had been waiting for this moment. Kallista caught Torchay’s gaze, then Obed’s, silently reminding them one at a time of the promises they had made. Then she called out. “Come.”

      The door flew open and the guard lieutenant СКАЧАТЬ