37.

"What was that all about?" Harlan frowned after Ash.

I wrestled down the surging desire that filled me, remembering now how the other healing that fixed my cracked skull had paved the way to letting Harlan tumble me when we first entered Annfwn. Either the extent of healing made it stronger this time or Ash's particular brand of spring-sap magic had. I wouldn't have put it past him to add some extra zest on purpose, as a little payback for past insults. The only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted Harlan's hands on me with an urgency I might not be able to forestall.

Something I wasn't at all sure how to handle.

Harlan cupped my cheek, the newly healed skin there tingling at his touch, urging me to look at him. "Are you all right?"

Pressing my lips together against the moan that wanted to emerge, the need to slide myself against his body, feel him inside me, I nodded, carefully not meeting his gaze. His thumb rubbed over my bottom lip, sending a tremor through me I barely managed to squelch. I pulled back but his hand tightened on my chin. "What is it you don't want me to see?"

Knocking his hand away, I glared at him. "Ash and his thrice-damned side effects. The healing makes you hot for sex and he knew it. Don't worry-I'll work it off."

"Will you?" Face intent, hunger flaring in his gaze, he dragged me onto his lap, big hands roaming over me. "I'd like to be the one to assist with that."

I braced myself on his chest, stiff armed to hold myself back, though everything else in me longed to devour him whole. "I dislike feeling as if either of us has been manipulated into this."

His face softened. "Because of what went before?"

"What? No. I just don't like feeling . . . at the mercy of something else."

Irritation flickered into his eyes, mixing with the rising hunger. "There's nothing wrong with us wanting each other." He slid a hand up to cup my breast, thumb brushing the peaked nipple. Crumbling the last of my control. "Having each other."

With a sound of almost painful need that would have embarrassed me under other circumstances, I fell on him, voracious, devouring his hard mouth, my blood bursting into flame much like the dry driftwood of our campfire. He met me with a reflection of the same need, running hot and molten, demanding and giving at once. Hands everywhere on me, he seemed to brush my clothes away, mouth moving to each newly bared patch of skin, murmuring his Dasnarian love words.

I might forever associate the sound of his language with dark intimacy and raging desire.

Arching my back, I rode the glorious wave of sensation as he licked and kissed my bare breasts, lightly biting my nipples so I cried out, digging my nails into the hard bulge of his shoulders. He laid me back in the sand, mouth traveling down my body as he settled himself between my spread thighs.

I lifted my hips, dragging at him, urging him into me. He resisted, pushing my knees wider apart, sliding lower still, and nipping at the tendon where my inner thigh met my pelvis. "Not yet," he said against my skin. "I want to taste you. Is that all right?"

Gathering my fire-scattered thoughts, I realized what he meant to do. How exposed and open I was already and how I'd barely noticed. How much I wanted that, too. "Yes." My voice came out hoarse. "Oh, please, yes."

With a grunt of aroused agreement, he kissed the apex of my mons, then ran his tongue into my slick tissues. The sensation skewered me, so excruciatingly intense, I held still, unable to move. Part of me had still braced for the pain and the flesh memory of the nauseating sense of violation. Instead the voluptuous, deliciously keen pleasure spread through me like a balm.

"Danu," I breathed, both in prayer and gratitude. Above me, the midday sun shone down like a benediction, dappling through the green leaves, the sky beyond as aquamarine bright as the sea.

"Mmm. You taste like the sea, my Essla cvan." He licked me, then settled on the point of greatest pleasure, nibbling and sucking, holding my thighs wide as his agile lips and tongue worked me, as I began to thrash and writhe under the unbearable intensity.

"Oh, Harlan," I gasped, feeling helpless against this particular onslaught, on the point of a delicious surrender I couldn't resist, even had I wanted to.

"Oh, yes." He slid a thick finger inside me and pressed up, bearing down with his mouth at the same time.

And I came apart.

More intense than before, the climax took me brutally, raking me with claws that brought pure delight. My body might have broken into pieces if not held in place by Harlan's great hands, anchoring me to the earth. He didn't stop, driving me through it with mouth and touch and his sharp-edged, insistent Dasnarian words. I whimpered as the tension built again, harder, higher, and I shoved at his shoulders, close to begging.

"More," he demanded. As if triggered by it, I climaxed again, biting on the back of my hand so as not to scream out and alarm our companions. He gave me no rest, pushing me up again, relentless, fierce, as if starved for me.

"Harlan, please." I was in fact begging and didn't care, sobbing out his name and plucking at his shoulders to urge him into me. He relented, moving up my body, licking and biting on the way, devouring me bit by bit, then fastening his mouth on mine. Like the sea, indeed. He held his hips back from me, though, his cock hard and heavy against my thigh.

"I need a lind. Wait."

"I don't want to wait."

He laughed, a deep sound full of desire. "You also don't want me to get you with child."

"Would it be so bad?" I whispered, holding on to him, thinking of how he'd looked, broadsword in hand, staying behind with tiny Astar strapped to his chest.

Harlan went still, searching my face. "It would be miraculous," he answered. "But there's time to think of such things later."

"You said there won't be anyone else for you."

"True." He braced himself on an elbow and brushed my cheek, tender from the healing. "But you have more considerations than I do."

"Who am I kidding? There won't be anyone else for me. If only because you're the only one who'll ever put up with me."

"Don't say that. The world of men would cast themselves at your feet if they thought they stood a chance."

"I don't want anyone at my feet."

"That's where they went wrong." He kissed me, a sweet brush of his lips. "We don't have to decide now. I don't mind waiting."

"You never have minded that." I smiled at him, heart bursting with love. "But I've had a little too much of it myself."

"What about the line of succession?"

"Ami's covered that twice over. And-" I took a deep breath, let it go. "I'm tired of making decisions based on the throne. I want you, all of you. Your child, too, should we be so blessed."

"Essla," he whispered, eyes full of deep emotion, saying my name with that reverence that undid me. "Are you sure?"

"Who knows what tomorrow may bring?" I answered.

"My love." He kissed me long and deep and shifted back between my thighs. I lifted my hips and he sheathed himself in me, flesh to flesh, and we cried out as one at the sensation of joining. His big body contracted and shuddered, and he dropped his forehead against mine, breathing like a man fighting off a dozen attackers. "I'm not sure I can wait."

"Don't wait." I clenched my muscles around him and his hips flexed in reflexive response. His hand next to my head fisted, his body strained, and he broke. Losing all control, he pumped in and out of me, hard, fast, with such intensity that the wave broke over me, sending me into another climax, pummeled nearly insensible by the glorious strength and beauty of my mercenary.

We drifted awhile. Both unable to move. Lying in the dappled shade, our bodies slicked together. Barely able to draw breath under his weight, I nevertheless reveled in it, in the sensation of all his hot male skin touching me everywhere, inside and out.

He turned his head and pressed a kiss into the side of my throat. "I'm crushing you," he murmured, but he didn't move more than that.

"I like it."

He laughed. "Only you." Levering himself up onto an elbow, still joined to me, he studied my face. "Regrets?"

"Not a one. Except that we can't do it again."

"Can't we?" He smiled, lips curving with smug, so-masculine pride, and moved inside me.

I gasped, my heart shuddering into life, the deep pleasure radiating out. He moved in me slowly this time, almost lazily, watching my face, changing the angle of his thrusts until he found the one that sent me into that helpless state of desire. Beyond worrying about it now, I clung to him, giving myself over to it and to him, until my vision blurred and I fell over the edge yet again.

Andi and Ami were waiting for me when we returned, the same determined look on both their faces.

"Uh-oh," I muttered to Harlan.

"Maybe one day you'll listen to me," he replied under his breath. Then, louder: "I'll get the horses ready. Shall I carry one of the babies, Princess Amelia?"

"Thank you. I finished knitting another carryall for Stella, so now we have one for each."

"Since when do you knit that well?"

Ami widened her pretty violet eyes and fluttered her lashes, but the look in them had an edge. "I have acquired many new skills. I'm not a little girl anymore."

"Neither of us is," Andi inserted. "And the three of us are going to talk."

I scowled at Harlan, a short distance away, the sense of well-being curdling in my gut. "What did the mercenary tell you?"

"What should he have told us?" Andi countered. "You keep your own counsel well, Ursula, but it's time to share some of the burden. I have an idea what you think you were protecting us from."

"What?" Ami demanded. "Nobody ever tells me anything."

I folded my arms, daring Andi, who nodded, storm-cloud eyes darkening. "Uorsin brutalized her before all of court."

"One blow doesn't count as-"

"One that broke your nose and cracked your skull. But it wasn't just once, was it? I've been thinking back over the years, all those times that you sported breaks and bruises. From training, you always claimed," Andi continued.

"Uorsin?" Ami breathed his name, pure distress on her face. "Our father hurt you all those times?"

"Not all those times, no," I snapped. I made myself meet Andi's accusing stare. "Many of them were from opponents. That's how you learn. That's how you-"

"Grow strong," Andi finished. "Learn to get back up. I remember him saying that to you all the time. What else?"

"There is nothing else. Is the interrogation over yet?"

"Not by a long shot," Andi replied evenly, looking through me in her witchy way. "What else?"

"Isn't that bad enough?" Ami protested, knotting her fingers together. "He never once struck me. As much as he raged and blustered, I never thought he would."

"He wouldn't have-because she made sure of it. Isn't that right, Ursula?"

I stared her down, not answering. Not sure how to answer or to escape this line of questioning intact. The sun beat down, too hot, and sweat ran an icy trail down my spine.

"What else did he do to you?" Andi repeated the insistent question.

"What are you saying, Andi?" Ami had paled.

"Think about it. You heard some of the snide innuendos as well as I did."

"That was just talk. No one really thought any of it was true."

"Maybe we just didn't want it to be true. Did he try to force you down that path?"

"Oh, Glorianna." Ami's face crumpled. "He didn't."

I couldn't stand the expressions on their faces, the horror and pity. Dropping my head, I tried to breathe smoothly and opened my mouth to refute it, to tell them it wasn't true. Or that it was, but that it hadn't been the awful thing everyone seemed to think.

I couldn't. Instead I looked at my bare feet, long and brown against the white sand, realizing the drops of water falling onto and around them were tears.

"I can't talk about this," I finally got out.

Ami put a slender arm around my waist, leaning into me, though I still had my arms tightly folded. She smelled of sunshine, roses, and baby milk. "You don't have to, Essla."

Andi slid in on the other side, embracing both of us, the toes of her riding boots shiny and new compared to Ami's scuffed ones. "The last time we stood like this," she said, "the last time before this that we all three were together, was right before I left Ordnung. You had blood on your boots and we said good-bye."

"I remember," I managed.

"You could have told us. You should have told us."

"I didn't want you to know. Couldn't bear for anyone to know. I couldn't stand for you two to be hurt or to think I wouldn't be strong enough to protect you."

Ami snorted in a most unmusical, unladylike way. "Says the most heroic woman alive."

"What I want to know is," Andi said slowly, "how can you not hate him?"

"Don't you see? I couldn't, or it would all be a lie. Everything I believed in and worked for. That our mother sacrificed."

"I don't think they're the same thing, Essla," Ami whispered.

"I know. I make no sense, even to myself. I don't know what to think about anything anymore."

"I can understand that," Andi said. "What I don't understand is why you'd even consider turning more children over to him."

"I wouldn't." I wiped my cheeks. "You never gave me a chance to answer, but I won't ask either of you to go back to Ordnung. Would never force you."

"But you're going," Ami said into the silence that fell.

"I have to. I can't abandon our people. It's my path."

"That's what we thought," Andi answered.

"Which is why we're going with you," Ami added.

Surprised, I looked at them. No longer girls, indeed, but women. Queens in their own right.