J. Ward - Lover Enshrined

“Shall we,” he murmured. And led her to the door.

When they stepped out into the hall, Cormia couldn’t believe her hand was in the Primale’s. After she’d wanted some private time with him for so long, it was surreal that she finally had not only that, but actual physical contact.

As they headed for where she had already been, he dropped her hand but stayed close. His limp was barely noticeable, just a slight shadow in his elegant gait, and as usual he was lovelier to her than any piece of art she could possibly behold.

She worried for him, though, and not just because of what she’d overheard.

The clothes he had on were not the ones he wore to meals. The leathers and the black button-down were what he’d been fighting in, and they were marked with stains.

Blood, she thought. His and the race’s enemies.

That wasn’t the worst of it. There was a fading streak around his neck, as if some damage had been done to the skin there, and he had bruises, too, on the backs of his hands and the side of his face.

She thought of what his king had said about him. Danger to himself and others.

“My brother Darius was an art collector,” the Primale said as they went by Wrath’s study. “Like everything else in this house, these were all his. Now they’re Beth and John’s.”

“John is the son of Darius, son of Marklon?”

“Yes.”

“I read of Darius.” And of Beth, the queen, being his daughter. But there had been nothing on John Matthew. Odd… as son of the warrior, he should have been listed on the front page with the Brother’s other progeny.

“You read D’s biography?”

“Yes.” She’d gone looking for information on Vishous, the Brother she’d been originally promised to. Had she known who the Primale would turn out to be, however, she would have checked the rows of red leather volumes for the ones on Phury, son of Ahgony.

The Primale paused at the head of the hall of statues. “What do you do when a Brother dies?” he asked. “With his books?”

“One of the scribes marks any vacant pages with a black chrih symbol, and the date is noted on the front page of the first volume. There are ceremonies, as well. We performed them for Darius and we wait… with regard to Tohrment, son of Hharm.”

He nodded once and walked forward, as if they had discussed nothing of particular import.

“Why for do you ask?” she said.

There was a pause. “These statues are all from the Greco-Roman period.”

Cormia drew the lapels of her robing more closely to her neck. “Are they.”

The Primale bypassed the first four statues, including the fully nude one, thank the Virgin Scribe, but paused by the one with the missing parts. “They’re a little beaten up, but considering they’re over two thousand years old, it’s a miracle any part of them survived. Er… I hope the nudity doesn’t offend you?”

“No.” But she was glad he didn’t know how she’d touched the naked one. “I think they’re beautiful no matter whether they are covered or not. And I don’t care if they are imperfect.”

“They remind me of where I grew up.”

She waited, acutely aware of how much she wanted him to finish the thought. “How so?”

“We had a statuary.” He frowned. “It was covered in vines, though. The gardens all were. Vines everywhere.”

The Primale resumed walking.

“Where did you grow up?” she asked.

“In the Old Country.”

“Are your parents-”

“These statues were bought in the forties and fifties. Darius went through a three-dimensional stage, and as he’d always hated modern art, this was what he bought.”

As they came to the end of the corridor, he stopped in front of the door into one of the bedrooms and stared at it. “I’m tired.”

Bella was in that room, she thought. It was obvious from his expression. “Have you eaten?” she asked, thinking it would be lovely to head him in the opposite direction.

“I don’t remember.” He looked down at his feet, which were in heavy boots. “Good… God. I haven’t changed, have I?”There was an odd hollowness to his voice, as if the realization had emptied him out. “I should have changed. Before we did this.”

Reach out , she told herself. Reach out and take his hand. Just as he reached out for yours.

“I should change,” the Primale said quietly. “I need to change.”

Cormia took a deep breath, and, extending her arm, she clasped his hand. It was cold to the touch. Alarmingly so.

“Let us go back to your room,” she told him. “Let us go back there.”

He nodded but didn’t move, and before she knew it, she was leading him. Or his body, at any rate. She sensed his mind had gone off somewhere else.

She took him into his room, to the marble confines of his bath, and when she stopped him, he stood where she left him, in front of the two sinks and the wide mirror. While she turned on the spray chamber they called a shower, he waited not so much patiently as with unawareness.

When the rush of water was warm enough under her hand, she turned back to him. “Your grace, it is all set for you. You may wash.”

His yellow eyes stared straight ahead into one of the mirrors, but there was no recognition of his reflection in his handsome face. It was as if a stranger confronted him in the glass, a stranger he didn’t trust or approve of.

“Your grace?” she said. The stillness in him was alarming, and had he not been upright, she would have checked the beating of his heart. “Your grace, the shower.”

You can do this , she told herself.

“May I disrobe you, your grace?”

After he nodded a little, she stepped in front of him and raised tentative hands to the buttons on his shirt. One by one she freed them, the black cloth gradually parting open to expose his broad chest. When she got down to his belly button, she tugged the tails free of his leathers and kept going. All the while, he stayed still and unresisting with his eyes locked on the mirror, even as she parted the two halves of the shirt and pushed them off his shoulders.

He was magnificent in the dim light of the bath, putting all the statues to shame. His chest was enormous, the width of his shoulders nearly three times that of her own. The star-shaped scar on his left pectoral looked as if it had been engraved on his otherwise smooth, hairless skin, and she wanted to touch that place, to trace the spokes that radiated out from the center of the marking.

She wanted to press her lips to him there, she thought, press them over his heart. Over the flesh badge of the Brotherhood.

Laying his shirt out on the edge of the deep-bellied bath, she waited for the Primale to take over the undressing. He did nothing of the sort.

“Shall I… remove your pants?”

His head nodded.

Her fingers trembled as she worked loose his belt’s buckle, then freed the button of his leathers. His body eased back and forth under her tugging, but not by much, and she was struck by how solid he was.

Dearest Virgin Scribe, he smelled fantastic.

The copper zipper went down slowly, and she had to hold the two halves of the waistband together because of the angle she was working from. When she let go, the front burst open. Beneath the leathers, he wore a tight loin cover in black, which was a relief.

Of sorts.

The bulge of his sex in it made her swallow hard.

She was about to ask him if she should continue when she looked up and realized he was gone, for all intents and purposes. Either she kept at what she was doing, or he was going under the water partially dressed.

As she tugged the leather down his thighs to his knees, her eyes stuck to the male flesh that was cradled in soft cotton. She remembered what it had felt like when he had come up against her body in his sleep. What she was looking at now had seemed much larger then, and it had been stiff as it pressed into her hip.