Silent Warrior by Lindsey Piper Page A

half on top of her, which scattered the contents of his bag onto the floor. He kissed up from her navel, stopping at each nipple to suck and savor. Her gasps were an aphrodisiac he never would’ve imagined. They were sounds made by a woman everyone believed silent and beyond feeling. The collar was a reminder of what he couldn’t understand about her purpose and her fears, but that was the point of wanting more.
    He’d never thought of himself so bound by the habits of his clan until he’d finally found a puzzle he couldn’t solve within minutes—a treasure meant to be kept forever.
    “Down in the Cages,” he rasped against her shoulder, “you are Silence. You know, I actually want to see that. I want to see you take down badasses with just a glare. Then at night, like this, you’d give me what you give no one else.” He dotted kisses along her jaw. “You hide your body behind armor. You hide your voice and your smiles and your humor—although really, we need to work on your humor.” After a kiss that left them breathless, he pulled away and stared her down. One more test of wills. “But you won’t hide any of it from me. Not ever again.”
    She swallowed. The warrior known as Silence would always stand as a champion. The woman named Orla of Sath looked at him with the vulnerability of the scared, fleeing child she’d once been.
    “Tell me why, Hark.”
    He held her head between his palms. He kissed her lips as if they’d already made their vows. “I spent only two minutes in your mind. Now I want to spend the rest of my life learning what I missed.”

11
    N one of the Five Clans were what human beings would call magicians, but Hark was weaving a spell over her mind, body, heart. He was right. She’d spent mere minutes among his deepest thoughts. The experience was a cruel tease. Dark corners and erotic flashes and hopeful dreams he would never, ever speak aloud—she’d caught glimpses, as if offered a sip of the headiest wine only to have the bottle jerked away from her lips.
    He caressed her thigh and up to her ribs. Then down again. The touch was arousing but no longer overtly sexual. Tension vibrated beneath his skin. She knew that moment was the most charged, the most exposed she’d ever been. Hark’s restlessness gave him away, too. They could be partners for the rest of their days, but at that moment, they were scared when standing on a precipice with no hand to hold.
    She wanted his hand to hold.
    “We don’t have the thorns,” she said, breathless, waiting for the moment when he’d grin and reveal this as one big joke.
    He grinned, but it wasn’t malicious. It was eager .
    “Guess what I found in an old Abyssinian temple about six years ago?”
    “Found?”
    “Yes, found . I wasn’t looking for it because I was too busy trying to steal a headdress one of my great-great-whatevers used to wear when she beheaded servants. We really come from a long line of bitches and bastards, don’t we? Anyway . . .”
    After sitting up, he twisted toward the floor. Silence was treated to a sexy view of his torso. The flex of his back defined by muscles, the pull of his ligaments, and the subtle give of the ribs that supported his upper body. He was supple and strong, canny and maddening, morally dubious and oddly caring.
    In other words, he was more of a man than she’d ever imagined having in her life. She had rarely imagined any man. There were simply too many obstacles to finding the right match. Maybe she’d found the right match in a barroom brawling tournament.
    She caught sight of the curling blond hair at his nape. His bare throat.
    To stay with her, he would need to wear a collar. Not forever . She knew that like she knew the weight of his thigh pressing between hers. Such certainty was not quantifiable like meters and ounces and pennies. It was real to her nonetheless.
    Living gold.
    The Chasm isn’t fixed.
    Silence was wrapped in something far bigger than herself. Was it fair to