“I agree. My ass doesn’t like it either.”
Wiggling, he made a squeaky noise. “Did you hear that? Not very sexy.”
Edna pulled her panties and pants on. “Even if I could, I have no intention of turning my office into a shag pad. I have a perfectly fine bed at home.”
Rufsur padded over to the desk and got their shoes. “Beds are overrated, but right now, I’m with you on that.” He put on his and handed her hers.
“I hope the chairs survived.” He lifted one and examined it. “Good to go.” Then he did the same with the other. “No damage done.”
As they left her office and headed down the stairs, Edna wished that she had the willpower to tell Rufsur to go home. But she was just a flesh and blood woman, and she craved more of what he’d given her on that desk.
Outside, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders, staking his claim for all to see, and once more, she lacked the will to stop him. It just felt too good, and she was tired of fighting.
What would happen if she just went with the flow?
It wasn’t her job to hold the floodgates of change closed. It was Kian and Annani’s. She deserved a few moments of happiness too.
You deserve more than that, the small voice in the back of her head whispered. You’ve grieved enough, and you deserve a lifetime of happiness.
Tightening his hand on her shoulder, Rufsur pulled her closer against his side. “I bet that you’ve never had sex bent over a desk before,” he whispered in her ear.
Edna didn’t want Rufsur to think that she was a prude. She’d been quite daring back in the day. “I haven’t, but I’ve had my share of sex adventures.”
“Oh, yeah?” He looked at her with amusement in his eyes. “Do tell.”
Would telling him about the things she’d done with Robbie betray the memory?
She’d never talked with anyone about it, and maybe she should before she forgot even more. Honoring Robbie’s memory didn’t mean keeping him a secret.
On the contrary.
“I once made love under a waterfall.”
“That doesn’t sound too daring. Fun, but wet.”
Edna chuckled. “Wet and cold, but it was exhilarating. Robbie’s men knew what we were up to, and they could probably hear us too, but we were young and stupidly in love, and we didn’t care what the world thought of us.”
“You were in love? With a human?”
She nodded. “He was the love of my life, and I was young and naive, and I thought that I could make it work.”
“What happened?”
“He died.”
22
Rufsur
Was that the source of Edna’s sadness?
If she’d been a young woman at the time, it must have been hundreds of years ago. Was she still mourning her lover’s death?
It was possible.
Rufsur’s loss wasn’t that old, and a hundred years had dulled the pain significantly, but he still got sad when he thought about his mother. He hadn’t been around when she died, and he had no idea what her life had been like after he’d been taken away from her. All he had was the memory of her face as a young woman, and the sound of her wretched sobs as they’d dragged him away from the Dormants’ enclosure.
He’d been so scared, not so much for himself as for her.
Had she been punished for her emotional outburst? The mothers had been encouraged to show pride when their sons were taken away to become immortal warriors. After all, achieving that had been their singular goal in life, and the more sons a Dormant had, the higher her status had been. Except, his mother hadn’t cared about any of that, and her reaction had been considered a bad example for the others.
They hadn’t killed her, he was sure of that. Dormants were too precious to waste. But they might have beaten her up.
Edna sighed. “It happened a long time ago, but I’ve never gotten over his death.”
He squeezed her shoulder. “Did you hope that he was a Dormant?”
She shook her head. “Back then, we didn’t even know that Dormants existed outside of Navuh’s camp or our clan. Robbie might have been a Dormant, but it never occurred to me. All I wanted was to be with him for as long as he lived.”
Poor Edna. Did she feel guilty for not having her lover induced by one of her male clan members?
“Are you blaming yourself for his death?”
She nodded. “But not because of that. He most likely wasn’t a Dormant, and even if he was, there was no way I could have suspected it. I blame myself for not trying harder to stop him from leaving to negotiate a peace agreement with his neighboring clan. I had a feeling that they were up to no good, and I warned him, but he said that he had to try. He and his men were ambushed and all but one were slaughtered.”
That explained why Edna was so wary of Kalugal and his men.
“That was a long time ago, and you can’t extrapolate from what happened to Robbie to the negotiations between Kian and Kalugal. We are not two warring clans, we have no land dispute, no blood feud, nor any of the reasons that prompted the Scottish clans to attack each other.”
“I know. I just believe in being cautious.”
“Caution is good unless it’s paralyzing.”
Rufsur thought of Kalugal’s decision to leave his guards behind. Perhaps his boss was right about taking that small risk and showing Kian that he trusted him. Fear was the enemy of progress.
Edna nodded. “I’m well aware of that. But when you suffer a loss as great as I did, it’s difficult to trust people’s good intentions.”
“It happened a long time ago. The pain must have dulled over the years.”
“It did. But it’s still in here.” She put a hand over her heart. “I’ve never been able to completely get over the loss.” She lifted her sad eyes to him. “I’m sorry for spoiling the mood.”
Leaning, he kissed the top of her head. “I have a feeling that you don’t talk about it much. You hide your pain. In the beginning, it must have hurt too much, but since so many years have passed, maybe it’s time that you let it out. It might lighten your load.”
“You talk like you’ve experienced grief yourself.”
“I did, but it was different than yours.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I grieved for the loss of my mother years before she actually died. The day I was forcefully taken away from her to be inducted into immortality and join the warrior ranks was the last time I saw her. Knowing that I would never see her face or hear her voice again, I felt as if a part of me died that day, which is precisely why the Brotherhood does it that way. They break the boys to build men out of them, ruthless warriors whose only family are their fellow fighters. Over the years, I’ve lost friends as well, and I grieved for them too, but the pain wasn’t as acute as the pain of losing my mother.”
Wrapping her arm around his middle, Edna rested her head on his chest. “You are right. It’s not the same, but that doesn’t make it any less traumatic. You loved your mother, and you were just a young boy when you lost her. I loved Robbie with everything I had. I was willing to break every clan rule to be with him, and I did. The year I spent with him was the happiest of my life, and when he died, I knew that I would never have that again.”