Unholy War by David Hair Page A

way.’
    He felt a painful throbbing as flesh that had only just convulsed in orgasm was forced to harden again, but that was almost immediately overwhelmed by a return of aching desire – then the full effect of the gnosis boost hit his groin and his lingam went so hard he gasped in shock.
    She pushed him over onto his back. ‘Now,’ she purred, sitting astride him, ‘let’s try this again, shall we?’
    *
    Elena lay naked on the rock, baking in the sun. She felt perfect. Her body was as limber and lean as it had ever been, and even in winter the air was warm through the middle of the day. Her pale skin was slowly turning brown. Her limbs ached from training and her loins from lovemaking. The warm glow of amatory satiation suffused her with rare happiness. She felt utterly divorced from what might be happening in the world; only occasionally did her mind prickle with a lingering discontent that those who had wronged her were still prospering.
    Yes, yes, we will move soon – we will bloody our swords. But I will enjoy this first.
    She turned her head and gazed at Kazim, basking on the rock beside her. It was a month or more since they’d first made love and those early days had been intense, as if they had been making up for lost time. Her loins had taken a battering, but she’d been as insatiable as he was. They rukked the days and nights away: in the pool or beside it; on the cot or under the sky. She lay above him, beneath him, beside him, and whichever way she revelled in him, and in the power of their lovemaking. It even succeeded in banishing her lingering sense of loss for Lorenzo di Kestria, her previous lover; she would always wonder what might have been, but time had passed and Kazim was a young man and full to bursting with life. Even now she marvelled to see his muscular golden body lying beside her; she had to physically quell the urge to crawl onto him and start another bout – but it was darkmoon this week, her bleeding time.
    Managing the risk of pregnancy might have made their sexual explorations a little tricky, but they’d managed to be inventive. During her fertile period they put their energies to other uses: scouting the area, flying at night, then moving on foot during the day, checking the road and marking the best ambush points. They slept rough under the starlit skies and used fingers and tongues to pleasure each other, and other tricks to ensure their bliss didn’t lead to conception. Such acts were ‘nefara’ under the Amteh code, but Kazim said he didn’t care. ‘Rape is the greatest act of nefara, and Gatoz had no qualms about that,’ he growled. ‘I don’t believe in that
bok
any more.’
    This was a significant moment for him: a renunciation of the last vestiges of fanaticism.
But then again, he’s a young man and preternaturally horny
, Elena thought with a grin.
I suspect he’d renounce anything for sex!
    The following week took them into Janune and they spent the month watching troop movements in the Hytel area, identifying places they could lie low and preparing those sites with caches of food and equipment. She bled as the new moon rose, to her huge relief. She’d never wanted a child with Gurvon, and she certainly didn’t want one now, not to a Souldrinker, in spite of all she felt for him. Her theory appeared to be correct too: her gnostic abilities were unchanged, though sometimes she noticed his aura clinging to hers, and she had to forcibly sever those bindings, an odd and uncomfortable sensation. She started to worry that the intermingling of auras might be what turned a mage into a Dokken, but weeks passed and she decided that it too was a false concern.
    When her courses passed, they were at each other again like rabbits until fertility once again enforced caution and gave her battered purse a respite. Now, though, she felt ready to draw steel once again.
    ‘Kaz, Janune – Moharram – is almost gone,’ she whispered now. ‘It’s time we acted.’
    He