Page 23 of Strange Grace
Rhun shudders and does the same to her hips, and they grip each other too tightly.
“We’re not supposed to do this,” he says.
“Whatever the best boy does is right and good,” she teases, his own frequent words, tilting her head up for a kiss. Their mouths come together lightly, touching quick. Rhun shakes his head, pushing her hips back and holding her an arm’s length away. He says nothing.
Mair touches his mouth, then his waist again, and presses the heels of her hands to his hips. Her mouth is dry; she licks her lips, staring through the darkness at the curve toward his belly and the arc of skin vanishing beneath the laces of his braies. “Let me give you this to hold on to, to remember, so you know exactly what you have to come home to.”
“Holy mother Mary,” he breathes.
Mairwen smiles for how it sounds like her own name, even as she flushes. She knows what to do. Her mother made certain Mair knew her own body as soon as she started to bleed. She slides her hands flat along Rhun’s worn waistband, but he grabs her again, pulling her against him, kissing hard. He takes her ribs, slides his hands up her back, down her arms, to her waist and hips and rear, a mess of desperate pulling. Mairwen sighs, lets her head fall back, arching against him. Rhun puts one arm full around her waist. His other hand draws up to her breast and hovers there, either unsure or reverent.
Mairwen is still, cool and calmer than she thinks she should be. “Rhun,” she whispers, and he strangles some wordless answer, hand pressing her breast flat. She grabs for his neck, tugging onto her toes, and puts her mouth against his throat, where he tastes like smoke and salt. She will make a charm of these kisses: life, death, and blessing in between.
“Stop, Mair. Wait. Stop,” he gasps, resisting her with his hands clenched in fists. “I can’t.” He pants between his words, but forces them out. “I can’t. Mair, we have to—to stop.”
She releases him and sits on the straw mattress. After a long moment, she says, “We don’thaveto stop, Rhun.”
“We do, because...,” he whispers. He’s a black pillar in the center of the small room, hands pressed together flatly as if in prayer.
She says, “I do love you. I’ve never said it to you, have I?”
His back is half turned away, but his shoulders slump and his head tilts to her. All his spiral hair flops down around his face. “I love you too, so much.”
“Come here, then. Come here and—and justdo it.”
He crouches, one hand balanced on the packed-earth floor. “It isn’t because of you, because I don’t want to—with you.”
She slides off the bed to kneel beside him. His eyes are tight shut, his mouth in a line. She says, “Arthur. If it were him here, you’d do it.”
Rhun lifts his dark eyes and shrugs helplessly.
“Oh, Rhun.”
They bend together in silence for a long while. Frustration makes her feel brittle and sharp. Finally she says, “I’ll go.”
“No.” He catches her hand. “Stay. I want you to stay. Even if he were here I’d... Oh God, I’d want you to stay too. Both of you. Maybe there is something wrong with me. Maybe I’m not the best.”
The admittance of doubt freezes her heart. She blinks away sudden tears. It’s so stupid, so unfair that this has been his burden for so long. “Don’t let Arthur Couch make you question yourself, do you hear me? He’s an idiot. He has everything, and pushes it away because of fear.” She brushes springy hair back from Rhun’s face, gathering it in her hands, and together they climb onto the straw mattress. Leaning against the rough wall, Rhun pulls her against him, his arm slung around her. She plays with the tips of his fingers, calloused from a thousand times plucking his bow.
Into the darkness, he says, “After all of this, will you promise me to take care of him?”
Mairwen hisses, clutching his hand. “You’ll do it, because you’ll live.”
“Mair.” He leans his head against hers.
“Arthur can take care of himself.”
“Promise me.”
“You promise me you’ll live.”
Rhun sighs. His eyes close.
Mairwen strokes a finger down his crooked nose. “Survive, and I’ll marry Arthur to trap him here, and you can live with us, because I’m a witch and you’re a saint and we can do whatever we want, and then you can spend the rest of your life seducing him. We’ll fight all the time, but we’ll be happy.”
A laugh bubbles up Rhun’s throat, popping light and merry. “And we’ll never know who fathers your children, tying us all together even more.”
“Oh, we’ll know,” Mairwen sneers. “Yours won’t cause me any pain at all, and Arthur will only have daughters with hearts so hot they burn me the entire time they’re cooking.”
