Page 49 of Of Blood and Fire
“You chasing after curiosity rather than desire.”
I laughed. “There is plenty of time for desire yet. Dawn’s fingers won’t creep across the sky for at least another couple of hours.”
“Hmm” he said, echoing his earlier response.
I laughed again, blew him a kiss, then shifted onto my back and carefully levered myself into the flame-lit darkness beyond. My shoulders scraped the hole’s sides, the rough stone tearing into the wool and digging into skin, but the rest of me got through relatively easily. The gap between the two walls was high, but it was barely two feet wide, and I couldn’t help but wonder again how in Vahree’s name Makki had managed to get in here without making a racket or scraping his shoulders raw.
I released the sides of the hole, thrust my hands on the old passage’s black flagstone flooring to brace myself, and then dragged myself into a sitting position. The flames from the ball I’d tossed in a few minutes ago danced off the black stone and highlighted the dust-laden cobwebs that filled the space to my right. I hoped that meant the spiders had long gone. I wasn’t afraid of them, but I wasn’t a fan of them crawling willy-nilly across my skin, either. Anything that tried that was likely to get crisped in an instant.
“What are you actually looking for?” Damon asked, squatting near my feet.
“I want to see where the entry into the royal suite is.”
“Why?”
“To make sure Garran’s safe. If there’s one rodent tunnel we don’t know about, there might be others, and I wouldn’t put it past Makki to have found them all and told your father.”
I leaned over and scooted forward on my side enough to drag my feet in, then stood. Cobwebs brushed my head, and dust briefly rained around me.
Damon stuck his head through the gap but didn’t bother going any further—and probably couldn’t. Either his shoulders were wider than his brother’s, or my guess about Makki temporarily altering the stone’s width was right.
“I take it Makki found the location of this tunnel by leaning against various walls over the last couple of days and probing them? That’s his usual MO.”
“Yes, but he and your father must have had some idea of their existence in the first place.”
“Maybe your father mentioned it at some point.”
“My parents believed, as I did, that there weren’t tunnels of any kind within this section of the palace.”
I brightened my ball of flame and pushed it deeper into the right side of the tunnel, then carefully followed it, running my gaze and right hand across the wall, looking for some sort of gap or lever or something else that might indicate a doorway into the royal suite. Air tickled my fingertips, and I stopped, brightening my fireball and sweeping it a little closer to the wall. There was a hairline fracture that was far too neat to be natural running up the wall, across the upper edge, and then back down again. I couldn’t see any hinges on either side, but I had no doubt found my door.
I pushed my fireball closer, but the crack was too fine to see what lay beyond. I stepped back and scanned the wall carefully, not seeing any entry point from this side—which was logical if it was a rodent run, but it wouldn’t make much of a difference if another earth witch was sent in here.
I glanced to my left. The tunnel ended about five feet beyond this doorway, which was basically where my bath sat. Given my suite had the same depth as the royal suite, if not the same width, this doorway was located roughly where the large and rather heavy blackwood display cabinet Mom had brought over from Jakarra when she’d married my father sat. There’d be no moving that easily; an earth mage might well be able to refashion and maybe even move the wood, but doing so would break all the delicate little knickknacks she kept within it. Unlessthere was a second rodent exit from the room, Garran was safe from any tunnel-based attack.
Whether we were was another matter entirely. Makki might have been sent back to Zephrine and the rest of Aric’s men confined to military quarters, but a niggle remained in the back of my mind that said we hadn’t seen the last of Aric’s machinations.
I turned and headed back to the hole. “Are you checking the water? The bath should be close to full by now.”
“I’ve already turned it off, because we do need to compensate for water being displaced by our two bodies.”
“Two? May I remind you that neither of us are fish, so eating within water will be challenging.”
“We can eat the bits above water and save the other bits for later.”
I laughed and scooted out of the hole. He helped me back up and then escorted me over to the bath, where he slowly stripped me, then picked me up and carefully placed me in the water. After retrieving soapweed and towels from the shelves, he tossed the former into the water, the latter onto the nearby bench, and then unhurriedly undressed. By the time he was naked, all I wanted to do was run my hands and my tongue over every glorious inch of him, filthy or not.
He stepped in and sat down, sending gentle waves of water lapping across the rim of the bath and my breasts. After slipping his legs under mine, he pulled me closer and handed me soapweed.
“Seeing as you’re being so choosy about cleanliness, my dear wife, I think it best you do the scrubbing. It’s the only way to ensure a satisfactory result.”
I laughed, wiggled a little closer, and proceeded to wash him, sweeping the soapweed across his wide shoulders and well-muscled chest, then on down his abs and stomach, following thelittle happy trail of hair that I couldn’t actually see thanks to the depth of the water, until I reached the base of his cock and his balls. I gently washed around them, then moved up his cock, my strokes long and gentle.
“Keep doing that,” he murmured, his eyes closed and head back, resting against the rim, “and you might get more of a response than you bargained for.”
I tsked. “It is a sad state of affairs when a husband has so little control that a couple of hand strokes has him popping off.”
“Said husband’s bags remain full to the brim, despite the recent all-too-brief release. Said wife’s purse had best be ready to receive the load.”
