“Then say it aloud,” ordered Milo. “The good captain doesn’t mindspeak.”
Pale moonlight bathed Lord Alexandros’ couch and a soft night breeze cooled his love-wet skin. Mara lay pressed close beside him, her head pillowed on his shoulder, her breath still ragged, her shapely legs quivering yet from the joy he had given her.
After a long, dreamy while, she half whispered, “Lekos?”
“Yes, Mara?” he murmured.
Without speaking, she rolled her body atop his. her full, firm breasts pressed tightly against his chest. Resting on her elbows, her thick hair cascaded down either side of her small head, enclosing their two faces in a faery-pavilion, through which moonlight filtered as through blue-black gossamer. For an interminable moment, she gazed into his eyes, then slowly lowered her face and pasted her hot, red mouth firmly over his. But when his arms made to close around her, she tore out of their incipient embrace.
“No, Lekos, we must talk.”
Knowing her moodiness as well as he knew her matchless body, Alexandros lay back, cupping his hands beneath his head.
Mara reclined on her elbow, tracing the scars on his body with a forefinger. Keeping her eyes firmly fixed on the finger, she stated, “Lekos, I love you. I think that I love you as much as I loved your grandfather, my first Lekos … perhaps more. With you, in these past weeks, I have re-experienced a rapture that I had thought I would never again know.
“But, unlike my first Lekos, you as well as I knew that it could not last, that it must end. And why, as well. I would gladly give anything of which I can think if you could be as me or I as you, but Fate has ruled otherwise.
“My husband and Aldora and I are not truly immortal—Demetrios’ death proves that. -Anything that keeps air from our lungs is fatal to us, but our almost-instantaneous regeneration of tissue makes us impervious to most injuries or wounds or diseases and keeps us youthful for hundreds of years. To look at Aldora or at me, few would guess our ages at over five-and-twenty, yet Aldora is well past her fiftieth year, and I am well over three hundred years old. Milo is not even certain of his own age; he thinks that he is seven hundred, possibly more.
“What I am trying to tell you, Lekos . . .” Gently, he placed two fingers to her full lips and softly said, “That you could not bear to see me grow old, my Mara? No, that must never happen, my love, for it would be the cruelest of torture for both of us. So you wish me to leave. When must I leave you?”
“I dispatched a galley this morning, Lekos. With favorable weather, she should reach Kehnooryos Knossos in a few days. The message I sent Captain Yahnekos was to send a larger ship than a bireme … for I have a favor to ask you, Lekos.” “And what is that, Mara?”
“I want you to take Aldora with you, Lekos. Knowing her proclivities, she’ll no doubt seduce you soon after you reach home … if not before. But make love to her with a free heart, Lekos, for my blessing will be upon you both.”
This time, it was Mara whose hand covered his mouth, stilling his outraged, protests.
“Be still, Lekos, and listen well. Long life does not equate to eternal happiness. Aldora has had a tragic life to date. She was born of a noble family of Theesispolis and her father was of the sort of Vahrohnos Paulos, whom you slew; his wife was a necessary evil, because he could breed no sons without a woman. When poor Aldora was but a babe, her mother died and you can imagine how much parental affection a girl-child received from such a father. She grew to be a bigger than average girl and became pubescent at about ten. When she was but eleven, Theesispolis was taken by storm and she had to watch her father and brothers butchered by mercenaries, three of whom later raped her, then sold her to a horseclansman who did not speak her language. At that time, her mindspeak talent was quiescent. Horse-clansmen share their concubines and sometimes their wives with their kindred or eminent guests, and I’ll not elaborate on her ordeal before it was brought to the attention of the clansmen that, since the girl was less than fourteen, they were violating a tribal law in using her.