Blade Kin Read Free Page A

gravitational wind sighed through the trees as Anee’s largest moon, Thor, began to rise.
    Perspiration dotted her forehead, and Fava wiped it away. Outside, Tull was grunting and struggling with the last load. He swung the door open, and stood staring, admiring, as if awed at her beauty. For one moment the look on his face was that of a little boy, then he dropped his packages and closed the door.
    He came to her, he came, as if the evening breeze carried him, trembling and uncertain, a small flame-red bird in a towering dark-green forest.
    Fires coursed through him, flickered in his flesh, consuming, so that he sighed dry air. “ Fava-zhoka-thrall. Fava-zhoka-Pwirandi ,” Tull said. “Fava, give me the love that enslaves. Fava, give me the love that makes people crazy.”
    She gazed into his eyes. “I will not be just a replacement wife for you?”
    Wrapping his arms around her, Tull smiled, leaned his forehead against hers, and Fava wished intensely that she were a Spirit Walker, wished she could see into Tull’s soul and know exactly what measure of love he felt for her.
    “When we were children,” Tull said, “I thought of you as if you were a sister. That other woman that I married, it was a mistake. I should have asked you to marry me sooner. Now I see that you will be my one true love. If you were to die right now, I would follow you down to the House of Dust.”
    Fava stood, letting her blanket fall away, naked but for a white comb above her ear. Tull slipped off his own clothes, and let his eyes wander over her pure form, then he leaned into her, and her soft nipples brushed the hair below his chest.
    Tull laid his cheek on her forehead, kissed her beaded perspiration. “You are the generous fruit of my long search, the only companion fit for my devotion.”
    Fava huddled next to him. Her fingers trembled as her hands hesitantly, inexpertly, molded around his thin naked waist—yet she held back.
    She wanted him to be the aggressor; she wanted him to place the first caress. A wise woman had once told her that “of all the body parts, the tongue is most sensual—not for the physical delights it may confer, but for the words it may speak.”
    Fava wanted him to speak those words now, to trumpet an avowal of insatiable passion. She wanted to perfect their communion.
    Fava shifted her weight, leaned into him, her light bones softly whispering in anticipation. What need have we of words, when the whole body sings? she wondered. What need have we of vows, whispered to the darkness?
    A touch, a sigh. Two lovers clutching on the floor can grasp far more than probing flesh, moist lips, a tumultuous wonder or a ravaging ecstasy.
    Tull’s loins shivered, and Fava’s shivered in answer. She kissed the sweat at the hollow beneath his throat, and groaned, her voice a whisper, “You taste of passion.”
    He bent low, embraced her, one kiss cradled between the mounds of her breasts, one kiss placed on her heart. She could hear it beating, the stirring of a crazed animal.
    Tull’s perspiration glistened like nectar on his bronze skin. She kissed his forehead, and it seemed to burn her lips, hotter than mulled wine, sweeter than any memory.
    He carried her to the bear hide then, and laid her in the writhing light next to the fire. In the dancing heat, their bodies sang in harmony.
    ***

Chapter 2: Honeymoon in Hotland
    As they lay huddled together on the bearskin the next morning, drained and yet full, a cold wind blew through the chinks in the cabin. Tull held Fava and yet stared away, lost in thought, his muscles clenched.
    Fava felt as if something were drawing him away, and he whispered, “I want to go where spring is. I’ve had too much of winter.”
    “South? To Hotland?”
    Tull smiled. “Would that be all right?”
    Hotland, where the ancient Starfarers had placed the dinosaurs. Both Fava and Tull had made the journey many times, for young Pwi often sailed across the ocean to Hotland in the spring to hunt