Strife & Valor: Book II of The Rorke Burningsoul Saga by Regina Watts (red queen ebook .TXT) 📕

gorgeous face and body. The witch closed the distance between us, lean muscles rippling beneath her soft white flesh. Gundrygia poured herself against me, her white arms enfolding my neck, her graceful mouth offered to mine like the mouth of a flower.

How gladly I pressed my lips to the petal of that rose! I held her by the shoulders at first, but soon one hand found its way into the wild mane of rich black hair that so elegantly framed her face. She moaned softly as my other palm slid down the curve of her spine to settle in the small of her back, that flesh as agonizingly smooth as I had expected it to be. Even through my tunic, her nude body was warmer than those of the other women whose company I had begun to regularly enjoy. She yearned for me, this much was evident, and her embrace of me tightened to permit her to slide upon my knee. There she slowly rocked herself, her fingertips tickling through my hair while at last she drew her mouth away.

“My father’s name is Clinschor,” she whispered, gazing into my face, her hands traveling over my chest while I sighed with pleasure to study her features. “And if my name is forgotten, his is sure to be.”

“I struggle to believe anyone could forget a woman like you.”

“All things are forgotten amid the march of time, Paladin…Burningsoul. Handsome, proud”—her long fingers at last reached my breeches, those tantalizing lips brushing mine while she slowly untied them and unleashed my gasping desire for her—“night’s hair and smouldering eyes…what is your breeding, Burningsoul?”

Exhaling as she explored my anatomy, I trailed my hands over her curves and confessed to her, “I don’t know.”

Her smile grew wicked and inspired a throb of mad pleasure. “Would you like to?”

My lips parted in shock. Gundrygia laughed at once, delighted by my astonishment. As the high spate of madwoman’s laughter cracked like a peal of thunder, another sound reached my ears.

Branwen’s voice, calling, “Rorke! Ror-ke!”

I still do not know how I got up out of that pit. I still do not know what happened to that pit. One second I was grabbing Gundrygia’s wrist to detain her for further questions, the time for games having suddenly passed us by. The next, I lay upon my back surrounded by those offerings the gimlets left the sleeping woman, the torch’s blue glow illuminating the plateau where once had been a hole—and where now I rested, supine upon flat ground. Disoriented by the transition as I was, I still had faculty enough to answer Branwen’s repetition of, “Ror-ke!”

“Here,” I called back, unmoving, my head for some reason aching. This, I thought, might have had something to do with finding myself so suddenly in another place. Soon footsteps hurried to my location. The search party made up of Branwen and Indra found me where I’d awoken.

“Rorke!” Branwen gasped, hurrying off the gimlets’ road and down to their site of strange worship. “Are you all right?”

“Seems like I’m always waking up to beautiful women,” I said while the pair helped me up, Indra frowning while she kindly dusted me off. “But this time, I was the one who did the waking…I thought I did, at any rate.”

The warmth of her body in my hands, the taste of her on my lips—no.

It could not have been a dream. It was not a dream. The taste of her was still on my lips. I touched them in dreamy delirium before looking up to ask my rescuers, “How is it you found me?”

“You were gone on the trails at least an hour—far longer than any of us expected. Then we heard a noise like a rock slide. I decided I’d better track it down.” Looking me over for cuts or bruises, Branwen asked with curiosity, “What is this about a woman?”

“A mountain witch of some kind…under this plateau here. There was a sepulcher. Its rotunda was thin before, collapsed right beneath my feet, and…”

I looked between them, then down at myself. All three of us stood atop the same place I had fallen through. The ground beneath our feet showed not the slightest evidence of instability.

“Maybe I did dream her,” I said softly, baffled.

“Perhaps you tripped and hit your head?” Indra, concerned, leaned upon her toes to check through my hair and along my scalp. “We didn’t see anyone on the trail.”

“Not even a gimlet? I remember, now…yes, a gimlet stole my torch and brought it here. But why were they worshiping this woman? Gundrygia…”

While I fell into a state of almost trancelike rumination on the subject, Branwen and Indra shared a look of concern.

“Come on,” said Branwen, “let’s get you back to the fork…we’ll call up and see if Odile and Valeria can meet us there. If not, I’ll go fetch them.”

THE TOWN OF SOOT

PRAISE BE TO Weltyr for sparing our precious time! Valeria and Odile were able to hear us without issue. They met us at the fork and, together, we made our long way down the mountain.

Though not nearly so grueling downhill as it had been up through claustrophobic caverns for blooms on end, our descent to Soot proved a long hike and an appropriately belabored denouement to our journey through the Nightlands. Even now I remain awash with gratitude that Odile’s lantern and the warmth of the dancing wisp flames made it an easier task to navigate than one might have otherwise expected.

Except, of course, for watching out for Valeria, whose face so frequently darted toward the stars that I feared she would trip and slide down any number of the steep switchbacks we navigated in a slow and steady line. I slid my hand into her splendid, soft elbow to keep her upright. She smiled at me, and I smiled back, though I confess my thoughts were elsewhere.

Upon touching her, my hand crackled with the memory of touching Gundrygia.

Had I really tripped and fallen? For some reason the