This time there was no laughter from Siret, but his eyes burned. Branding me. Claiming me.
His hands clenched and unclenched at my waist, until he eventually pulled my hand away from him and grabbed my hips, pulling me onto him. He entered me, our bodies immediately finding a shared rhythm as though we were starved, and maybe we were. I felt deprived of them—all five of my Abcurses. In a way, there was an emptiness between us now, one which had been there since my death. Like we needed to secure the soul-bond between us. It wanted us to acknowledge it—to give ourselves to each other.
Siret was losing his grip on control, his touch becoming more demanding, his god-strength leaking through his caresses. It wasn’t painful to me the way it might have been before Rau’s curse had hit me—now, I revelled in it. I returned it twofold, until we were finishing together, a pile of limbs and laboured breathing. He never stopped touching me, the entire time his hands gliding, rubbing, soothing. His lips feathered out over my temple before finding mine, and it was the most natural thing in the world to tell him how I felt. I opened my mouth to say the words, but he was already saying them, his voice a husky whisper against my hair.
“I love you, Soldier.”
I really had to die more often if this was the reward.
Six
Siret was cradling most of my body, his hands gliding across my skin, but still the cold crept inside of me. It was so cold, and I could feel a draught … which shouldn’t have been possible inside a cave.
“What’s wrong with this room?” I murmured, shivering against Siret.
Before he could answer, there was a burst of light from across the room. I was on my feet in a flash, hidden behind over six foot of angry god.
Angry naked god.
“Oh shit,” a nervous voice exclaimed.
I peeked around Siret to find a sol standing there. A male, with shoulder-length dirty blond hair pulled back at the nape of his neck, held there by a piece of leather. He had in his hands a single throw, thin, not at all warm looking, and a small pile of clothing.
“You have less than a click to tell me what the hell you’re doing in here.” Siret’s voice sounded all drawly and calm, but I was touching his rigid back. He was anything but calm.
“Uh, I’m … this … what.”
This sol was definitely going to have a heart attack if he didn’t calm down. He also seemed to be spending an awful lot of time staring at the ceiling, and since it was dark and a single-toned stone up there, I couldn’t figure out what was so fascinating.
“He’s trying not to look at you naked, Soldier,” Siret informed me. “Because then he knows I’ll throw him off this cliff.”
Right, I had forgotten we were both naked. “They’re just boobs,” I told the sol, still trying to get around Siret, who was still shuffling me back. “We all have them, mine are just bigger than yours.”
The sol made a choked noise. His face was very red, reflected in the beam of light from the door he’d opened to come into the room.
“Why are you in here?” Siret barked, having had enough.
“Thisismyroom,” the sol rushed out. “I didn’t know anyone was in here.”
Noticing Siret’s pants a few feet away, I quickly leaned over and snatched them up, handing them to him. He pulled them on, turning to still block me, before he ran his hand across my front. My insides tightened, but this time it wasn’t fun touching. He was dressing me again.
It was then that I finally took the time to absorb my surroundings.
“There’s no furniture in here.” I squinted at the twinkling lights. “And there’s a huge hole in the side of this room! Someone could just roll out of it during the night.”
Half of the wall was missing. That had to be a hazard of some kind—namely the falling to your death kind.
The sol shuffled his feet, looking miserable. “Staviti wants only the strongest to survive. We will be living with less comforts than usual.”
“Hell no,” I declared, crossing my arms over my chest. “I will not be sleeping with a hole in the wall of my room. On a mountain. That’s tempting fate way too much for me.”
The sol spoke up again. “Gods are not in this section, it’s sols and dwellers only. The Abcurses will be … somewhere else.”
Siret, still shirtless and wearing that dark look he only pulled out when he was seriously annoyed, wrapped an arm around me. We started toward the open door.
“Uh, nice to meet you,” I said over my shoulder. “Thanks for the room.” I really should have been more embarrassed by our situation, but I wasn’t. I’d lived through worse, that was for sure.
Siret led me down a dark tunnel and then we were in what looked like a central mingling area. It was well lit; there were sols everywhere trying to figure out which death-trap of a cell they were in. Dwellers were scurrying about, directing the sols. The moment Siret stepped into their midst, his beautiful bronze skin on display, absolute silence filled the cave. Wide eyes followed our movements, and I would guess they both feared and craved the god who walked among them. Craving was definitely an emotion Siret brought out in me as well.
My body already wanted more. From all of my Abcurses. Undead sex was definitely the best. The corner of Siret’s lips quirked up, and when he lowered his gaze to meet mine, my toes pretty much curled in my new Trickery boots.
“How are we supposed to find your rooms?” I asked to distract us both. “We need Emmy. She’ll know.”
Before he could reply, a deep voice drifted in from a dark archway. “Here’s my little trouble maker.” White robes swished into view as he stepped forward, looking all dangerous and beautiful.
“You’re an asshole, I hope you know that,” I snarled at Cyrus. “You threw that girl off a cliff. She’s dead now!”
He shrugged, like it was no big deal, and I fought against my urge to punch him. Would I actually be able to hurt him now that I was some sort of undead thing?
“If you don’t hurt him, Soldier, I could try,” Siret drawled casually.
Cyrus let out an exasperated sound. “This is not the fucking sun-cycle to try me. I’m not supposed to be babysitting all of these pathetic wormers. I have a life. I have duties. I don’t just laze around all sun-cycle doing nothing.”
I shrugged, mimicking him from before. “Kinda looks like you do to me.” I still wasn’t sure exactly what Cyrus did with his Neutral powers.
Before he could make whatever disparaging remark was about to come out of his mouth, I interrupted. “We need to go to our rooms, so we can’t really hang about and chat.”
I might have still been a little cranky about the killing thing.
Cyrus’s eyes shone, and he looked to be on the edge of doing that really scary thing he did. I had no idea what usually followed after the really scary thing, though, because at that point, I usually ran.
“Your room is back there.” He pointed toward the round cave.
“No.”
He blinked at my blunt reply.
“I stay with the Abcurses. You know that. And Emmy stays with me.” I took another step closer to him, my finger coming up to jab him in the chest. Siret grabbed my arm before I could, edging himself between me and Cyrus.
I ducked my head out to the side to shoot another glare at him.
“You and your brothers are in the god-residences a level above,” I heard Cyrus mutter. “If Staviti comes down to check on everything, I will not be covering for Willa being in your rooms.”
Then, in a swish of white robes, he was walking away.
Siret reached out and captured my hand, threading our fingers together. We walked hand in hand the rest of the way back to the edge of the mountain, and up several winding steps to a higher level of stone hallways, connecting rooms and meeting areas carved into the mountain.