“C’mom, Sis.” Roland grinned. “You’d make love to a man in a pigsty if he paid you well enough.”
Rega slapped him. The blow was hard, well aimed. Roland, his hand to his aching jaw, stared at her in amazement.
“What’d you do that for? I meant it as a compliment!”
Rega turned on her heel and stalked out of the clearing. At the edge, she half-turned again and tossed something toward the elf. “Here, rub that on the sores.”
You’re right, she told herself, hurrying into the jungle where she could have her cry out in private. I’ll leave things just the way they are. We’ll deliver the weapons, he’ll leave, and that’ll be an end of it. I’ll smile and tease him and never let him see he meant anything more to me than just a good time.
Paithan, taken by surprise, just barely caught the thrown bottle before it smashed on the ground. He watched Rega plunge into the brush, he could hear her crashing through the undergrowth.
“Women,” said Roland, rubbing his bruised cheek and shaking his head. He took the waterskin over to the elf and dropped it at his feet. “Must be her time of season.”
Paithan flushed a deep red and gave Roland a disgusted look.
The human winked. “What’s the matter, Quin, I say something to embarrass you?”
“In my land, men don’t talk about such things,” Paithan rebuked.
“Yeah?” Roland glanced back toward where Rega had disappeared, then looked over at the elf and his grin widened. “I guess in your land men don’t do a lot of things.”
Paithan’s flush of anger deepened to guilt. Did Roland see Rega and me together? Is this his way of letting me know, warning me to keep my hands off?
Paithan was forced, for Rega’s sake, to swallow the insult. Sitting down on the ground, he began to spread the salve on his skinned and bloody palms, wincing as the brown-colored gunk bit into raw flesh and exposed nerves. He welcomed the pain. At least it was better than the one biting at his heart.
Paithan had enjoyed Rega’s mild flirtations the first cycle or two on their journey until it had suddenly occurred to him that he was enjoying them too much. He found himself watching intently the play of the smooth muscles in her shapely legs, the warm glow of the firelight in her brown eyes, the trick she had of running her tongue across her berry-stained lips when she was deep in thought.
The second night on the trail, when she and Roland had taken their blanket to the other side of the glade and laid down next to each other in the shadowed sunlight of rain’s hour, Paithan had thought his insides would twist out of him in jealousy. No matter that he never saw the two kissing or even touching affectionately. Indeed, they treated each other with a casual familiarity he found quite astonishing, even in husband and wife. He had decided, by the fourth cycle on the trail, that Roland-though a good enough fellow as humans go-didn’t appreciate the treasure he had for a wife.
Paithan felt comforted by this knowledge, it gave him an excuse to let his feelings for the human woman grow and blossom, when he knew very well he should have ripped them up by the roots. Now the plant was in full bloom, the vine twining around his heart. He realized now, too late, the harm that had been done … to them both.
Rega loved him. He knew, he’d felt it in her trembling body, he’d seen it in that one, brief look she’d given him. His heart should have been singing with joy. It was dumb with sick despair. What folly! What mad folly! Oh, sure, he could have his moments of pleasure. He’d done that with countless human women. Love them, then leave them. They expected nothing more, they wanted nothing more. And neither had he. Until now.
Yet, what did he want? A relationship that would cut them both adrift from their lives? A relationship looked upon with abhorrence by both worlds? A relationship that would give them nothing, not even children? A relationship he would have to watch come at last and inevitably to a bitter end?