Temple of the Winds

"I know. But I mean that I'm lonely in a bigger way than that. I mean. I'm lonely for the way you. . I don't know how to say it. When I'm alone, I start thinking about what I will have to do to help those people you talked about, and all kinds of fearful things come into my head, and before I know it, I'm sweating in a terror."

"It's often more worrisome to ponder something than it is to actually do it. Just don't think about it. Try to enjoy the big bed, and the fine room. if you can. Who knows, one day we may have to sleep in a ditch."

She nodded. She had to look away from his eyes. lest she lose her courage. "Nathan, I know I'm a plain woman, but you make me feel special. No man ever made me feel pretty, feel. . desirable." "Well, as I said before-"

She reached up and put her fingers to his lips to silence him. "Nathan. I really. ." She looked up into his wonderful eyes. She swallowed and changed what she was going to say. "Nathan, I'm afraid you are just too dashing a man for me to resist. Will you come spend the night in this big bed with me?" He smiled with one side of his mouth as she took her fingers away. "Dashing?" She nodded. "Very." She could feel the curls springing. He rested his arms around her waist. It made her heart beat even faster. "Clarissa, you owe me nothing. I saved you from what was happening in Renwold, but you in return have promised to help me. You owe me nothing beyond that." "I know. It's not-" She wasn't making herself clear, she knew.

She stretched up on her tiptoes, her arms circling his neck, and pressed her lips to his. His arms drew her tight. She abandoned herself in those arms. and to those lips.

He pulled back. "Clarissa, I'm old. You're a young woman. You don't want someone who's as old as I." How long had she hurt because she thought she was too old to have someone?

How often had she felt forlorn because she was too old? And now this man, this wonderful, vibrant, handsome man, was telling her she was too young.

"Nathan, what I want is to be thrown on the bed, to have this fancy, expensive dress pulled off me, and for you to have your way with me until I hear the spirits sing."

In the silence, Nathan stared at her. At last he reached down, put an arm behind her legs, and swept her off her feet. He carried her to the bed, but instead of throwing her onto it, as she had suggested, he set her down gently.

His weight sank into the bed as he reclined beside her. His fingers stroked her forehead. They looked into each other's eyes. Tenderly, he kissed her.

Since her dress was all untied and unbuttoned, it easily slipped down to her waist. She ran her fingers through his long silver hair as she watched him lovingly kiss her breasts. His lips were warm against her. For some reason, she found that surprising, and marvelous. A soft moan escaped her throat at the feeling of her nipples being kissed in such a manly, passionate fashion.

Nathan may have lived longer than she, but he was not an old man in her eyes. He was dashing, daring, and thoughtful, and he made her feel beautiful. She found herself panting at the sight of him without his clothes.

No man had ever touched her with such tender purpose, and the sureness of that touch further heated her passion.

His kisses trailed down the front of her, each making her gasp to catch her breath in sweet, startled desire.

When he at last took his place atop her, she totally and unashamedly succumbed to her need. She felt cradled not only in the canopy bed but in his ardent embrace. At long last, as her whole body stiffened with her cry of release, she could hear the spirits sing.

CHAPTER 40

Like a hawk in a dive, Kahlan silently shot ahead, and at the same time, like an eagle in an updraft, she serenely hovered in place. Light and dark, heat and cold, time and distance, had no meaning, yet they meant everything. It was a marvelous confusion of sensations, heightened by the sweet presence of the sliph each time Kahlan drew the living quicksilver into her lungs, into her soul. It was rapture.

With an abrupt explosion of perception, it ended.

Light erupted in Kahlan's vision. Sounds of birds, breezes, and bugs hurt her ears. Trees draped with streamers of moss, rocks incrusted with lichen and snarled in roots and vines, and patches of damp, dark mist crowded in all around. The overpowering presence of it all terrified her. Breathe, the sliph told her. The thought horrified her. No.

The sliph's voice seemed to sear through Kahlan's mind. Breathe. Kahlan didn't want to be thrust from the serene womb of the sliph into this garish, loud world.

She remembered Richard, and with Richard, the threat to him: Shota. Kahlan expelled the sliph from her lungs. The liquid silver sloughed from her, yet she was not wet. She gasped a deep breath of the strange, sharp air. She covered her ears and shut her eyes as the sliph set her on the edge of the well. "We are where you wished to travel," the sliph said.