By the Sea of Sand Read online

  All at once, everything came back to him.

  Chapter 33

  She’d lost him. Teila held her son in her arms, willing him to breathe and unable to make him. The man in front of her staggered forward, going to his knees in front of her with a low, moaning sob.

  “No,” he said. “No. He’s not gone.”

  Her own sobs came then, stealing her voice. She reached for him. He pulled her close, one of his hands on Stephin’s chest. He looked into her eyes.

  “Teila, I can save him. But you have to trust me.” He kissed her swiftly, saying against her mouth, “I remember.”

  She gasped and choked, her grief too vast for any amount of joy to find its way in. When he tried to take the boy from her arms, she couldn’t even find the strength to fight him. He lifted Stephin gently and moved toward the door.

  “Come on,” he told her. “You can make it, Teila. You’re strong enough. Come on.”

  The lights came on as she reached the hallway. The brightness hurt her eyes, but even squinting against it she kept moving after him. Down the stairs, along the corridor, to the kitchen where Kason laid Stephin on the blood-stained kitchen table.

  Billis burst through the back door. “I fixed the—is he dead?”

  “Salt,” Kason barked, arranging Stephin’s limbs into straight lines. “As much as you can find. A barrel of it, if you have one.”

  They did, of course, for storing the milka in. Several barrels, as a matter of fact, in the store room. Billis ran at once to bring one while Teila moved to the table. Every part of her ached and stung and the world threatened to spin out from beneath her feet. She clung to the table edge, head down, unable to do more than that.

  “Water,” Kason said. “Make a paste. Cover him with it. It will draw out the poison.”

  Billis moved to help him while all Teila could do was take up her son’s limp and lifeless hand. “It’s too late, Kason.”

  “No. The data stream,” he said. “I know how to do this.”

  With the water and the salt, Kason made a thick paste and covered as much of Stephin’s skin as possible, even tucking some onto the boy’s tongue. Then he tipped the boy’s head back and positioned his mouth over Stephin’s and blew hard enough to raise the boy’s chest. Then again. Again. Teila could only watch, horrified and overrun with grief.

  Kason worked for a long time, many heartbeats, too many too count. Until at last, defeated, he sagged into a chair with his head in his hands. His shoulders shook.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I failed.”

  Teila couldn’t speak. She took her son’s hand with both of hers and brought it to her lips. Her tears wet the gritty paste covering his skin. She tasted salt and the sting of whale oil beneath that.

  Let me die from it, she thought, numb. Let it kill me, too.

  From the corner, Billis began to cry. At her side, her husband buried his face against her. Teila wept without sound.

  In front of her, Stephin opened his mouth and let out a long, choking cough.

  Epilogue

  Her husband touched her with slow but certain hands. Smoothing fingers up the backs of her calves, the insides of her thighs. He teased her soft flesh, stroking along her seam and parting it to slip inside. His thumb pressed her clit as the heat of his breath caressed her. Teasing.

  “Kason.” Pleasure pushed his name to her lips, intensified by the simple ability to use it without fear. She breathed it out with every sigh. “Kason, Kason, Kason . . .”

  His murmured laughter sent shivers of desire pulsing through her as his lips found her clit. Then, his tongue. He worked her body with his mouth and fingers until she arched and shuddered under him. But he didn’t let her go over. No, he knew her better than that.

  Easing off, he kept her on the edge until everything else faded away but his touch. Teila lost herself in it, greedy and not ashamed to urge him with the lift of her hips, her gasps, the tug of her fingers in his hair. She gave herself up to him even as she demanded more from him. And he gave it to her. He gave her everything.

  Her orgasm rippled through her, tickling and then coming in a rush. She bucked helplessly against the waves of pleasure devouring her. It consumed her. She went up in flames and became her own fiery sun.

  “I know why the poets call climax ‘joining the sun’,” she said lazily when she’d found her voice again. Her fingers threaded through his hair.

  Kason had rested his head on her belly, his hand still cupping between her legs. He looked up at her with mischievous eyes, his mouth still wet from her arousal. “Oh?”

  “Yes. Yes, yes, yes,” she said. “Yes.”

  She pulled him to her mouth, open for his kiss, and sucked his tongue. She licked him with feathery strokes and nibbled his chin, his jaw. She pressed her mouth to the beat of pulse in his throat. She dug her nails into the muscles of his ass and urged him to press his cock against her.

  “Yes?” Kason asked. “This?”

  He rubbed his cock back and forth over her clit, sliding with ease from her slickness. It seemed impossible that she could rise to pleasure again, but he took his time until both of them were shuddering and she ached with an emptiness she desperately needed him to fill. Yet still he teased her, though the muscles on his arms corded with effort and a thin sheen of sweat coated him.

  Teila opened herself to him as he moved, and though Kason might’ve intended to keep on stroking his cock over her, she’d tilted her body at just the right angle to urge him inside with nothing more than a well-placed wriggle. He laughed and groaned at her trick, but seated himself balls deep. He kissed her, long and wet, not moving anything but his mouth. The beat of his heart thumped against her, and she clung to him, tight.

  “I love you, husband,” she said. “I love you, love you, love you.”

  “And I love you, wife,” he murmured between kisses.

  With him filling her, all she had to do was tighten her internal muscles to bring them both another wave of pleasure. She laughed at his groan and sighed at his shudder. Hooking her heels behind his calves, Teila ran her nails lightly down his back, urging him to fuck into her. He didn’t at first, resisting, but with another shift, another squeeze, he gave in at last.

  He moved. She sighed, her hips rocking. They made love for a long time, slow and steady, until once more she could no longer hold back the fire inside her. No explosion this time, more a steady growing flame that eventually consumed her. Consumed them both.

  Shaking, Kason kissed her as he spent himself. He crushed her with his full weight for a moment or so, but then slid to the side to cradle her against him. He nuzzled into the hollow of her shoulder.

  “I could stay here forever. Never get up,” he said.

  She stroked his hair. “I would let you, sweetheart. But the lamp . . .”

  He sighed, put-upon, but she knew he didn’t mean it. He looked up at her with a faint grin. “I’ll still be here when you get back.”

  “Oh, you.” She knuckled his side, which turned into him pinning her arms above her head . . . which became him kissing her breathless.

  With his hand flat on her belly, Kason propped himself on one elbow. “You stay in bed. I’ll check the lamp. You need your rest.”

  She gave him a lifted brow. “I appreciate the sentiment, husband, but somehow the time we’ve just spent doesn’t reflect that attitude very well. In fact, it sounds like more of an excuse simply to keep me abed for your own pleasure.”

  “Guilty,” he told her, then slid down her body to kiss her stomach and the slightest of bulges there. “But there’s this, as well. Tell me, Teila. You feel all right?”

  She didn’t laugh at his concern. “Yes, sweetheart. I feel totally fine. I’m all right.”

  He moved to kiss her mouth again. “Because we could have a medicus come—”

  “I’ve seen one.” They’d all seen one after the horror with Rehker and Pera and poor Venga. Vikus would need months of care but was well on his way to recovery, and Step