The Winds of Khalakovo by Bradley P. Beaulieu Page B

had made her pause; she, like so many of her people, was always making emotional connections like that and contemplating them for days or weeks at a time.
    “Now that she’s come...” Rehada allowed herself another long pull before setting the mouthpiece aside. “Now that you’re staring face-to-face with the prospect, will you marry her still?”
    “There’s little choice. She’ll be my wife within the week whether I like it or not.” Nikandr smiled. “Though I may have delayed it by a day or two.”
    “And how might you have done that?”
    “I should be up at the palotza now, signing the wedding documents.”
    “You’ve said how prickly the Duke of Vostroma can be.”
    Nikandr nodded, and his smile widened. “ Da , he can be that...”
    Rehada regarded him, the firelight and the shadows accentuating the features of her face. “You aren’t bound to her yet. You could go where you will.”
    At this Nikandr’s smile faded. “You’re not so naïve as that.”
    “If anyone is naïve, it is you. You tell me every time you come how much you love the wind. Surely you have enough money to buy a ship. You could take to the winds, travel the world...”
    “I’m not Aramahn.”
    “Meaning what, that you cannot bear to be parted from your precious family?”
    “I may voice displeasure from time to time, but they are my life. They are my love.”
    “If I had one rachma from every man that’s spoken those words...”
    “You’d what, take to the winds?”
    “I’ve done my traveling. I’ve found my place.”
    Nikandr drew breath from the shisha as if it had somehow insulted him. “And I haven’t?” he said while forcing the smoke from his lungs.
    Rehada raised her brow and tilted her mouth in a quirky smile. “ You’re the one running from your marriage.”
    “I’m not running,” Nikandr said. Rehada was prodding him, but the effects of the smoke had already taken the edge from his anger and his feelings of being trapped on the Hill. Without willing it to, his mouth twisted into a smile that was a mirror image of hers. “Well, I suppose I am pulling at the tether a bit.”
    “Why do you never speak of her?” Rehada asked. “Tell me what she’s like.”
    As he downed half of his vodka, the lemon-infused liquor searing his mouth, throat, and finally his stomach, he turned to Rehada and admired the graceful curve of her eyebrows, her long eyelashes and full lips. The orange tourmaline held in the circlet glowed ever so softly. He knew good and well the sort of hezhan that gem granted, and he couldn’t wait for the heat of her to fill him, for the touch of her red hot skin, so unlike Atiana Vostroma’s, which was certain to be white as bone and cold as winter’s chill.
    Rehada, perhaps feeling the effects of the smoke as well, smiled mischievously and poked Nikandr in the ribs with a slippered foot. “What is she like ?”
    Nikandr shrugged and leaned into the pillows, knowing he’d already smoked too much for his own good. Part of him wanted to answer Rehada’s question—the part that always wanted to please her—but he didn’t really know what Atiana was like. He couldn’t remember a single time he’d spoken to her when she wasn’t with Mileva and Ishkyna. He knew them only as a single, three-headed beast.
    “You’re impossible.” Rehada threw the shisha tube aside and straddled him. Her muscled legs tightened against his waist as her long black hair fell across his chest. She didn’t grind her pelvis like a dock whore would, nor did she lean in and kiss him, though her dark eyes spoke of the desire. Instead she smiled. With the low-burning fire lending her already dark skin a ruddy glow, she was breathtaking. She lowered herself, her breasts pressing against his chest, her cheek brushing his. “Tell me something about her,” she said, her hot breath tickling his ear. She raised herself and regarded him. The gem upon her brow glowed brighter. Nikandr felt his loins and chest heat,