Deathless by Belinda Burke Page B

mind, not enough—not, by itself, enough. And there was more, so much more.
    How he did not want to have to ask for a kiss when it was much, much more than a kiss that he wanted. How he needed a label for the taste of skin and sweetness, for the soft sensations and the rough ones.
    He wanted a name for eager laughter, for moans slick and smooth as water, moans whose ripples were still moving in his mind. They created currents of desire that curled close around his need.
    There was only one solution, really. One answer, dangerous and deadly as it was. To learn words, he would have to seek them out, then keep them for himself. One at a time, until he had enough to share his truth.
    Slowly, then faster, he became a shadow that passed over the landscape. Tethered by neither light nor substance, Kas made his way toward the sounds of people —humans and their mortal noises, their mortal laughter.
    Mortal words .
    The tribe he found was small, but full of voices. He passed unseen, unnoticed, of less weight than the wind. His ears were hungry for every bit of speech he encountered, but first and strongest he was drawn to the words of lovers, soft noises that came through windows, out of open doorways. Kas had no interest in watching them, no interest in their flesh. He only wanted the soft murmurs that filled out the red sound of sex.
    He heard all the things that Myrddin had said to him, and many more. Words of love, and the names of touches and the places that were touched—hands and fingers he knew, lips and mouth and tongue, but now he learned teeth , learned suck and bite, throat and neck and shoulder.
    Collarbone, nipples, cock, and he tasted again that tingling skin. Bend, and knees, and hair , and he clenched his fingers and opened them, remembering softness. Want, and love, and lover—and need.
    Fury burned in him, riled the ghost of goodbye into something he wanted no part of. The world was growing cool and quiet around him, a silence spreading. Silence . As he had said to Myrddin, he need only be for there to be danger…and here, there was unnecessary proof.
    The soft noises of love had vanished into his own silence. There was quiet now where there had been the pounding heartbeats of lovers, the two whose words he had taken for himself.
    The quiet of the dead. Lips and voices were still now, as they would be still forever. Did it matter? They would come to him with all the others, with the dust and shadow of the rising moon.
    Still. Be still, all that I am. But it wouldn’t come—the old solitude was an acknowledgment of emptiness now. Missing pieces… There had been completion in the help he’d given, in the rite that they had made, he and Myrddin together, but—
    “And you never listen !”
    They were angry words in a human voice, and they came to his ears bright with the same feeling that flared in his chest at the thought of goodbye . The only word he possessed that he did not want, and it echoed. Returned, again and again, minute by minute, to touch him with a touch that was as soft and tingling as those parting fingers on his cheek, the lips that had brushed his mouth.
    By inches, he crossed the village, one side to the other, ignored those walking, wandering, leaning out their doors or working in the snow, in favor of following those furious words that mimicked his own feeling. Listen. Never. Yes, that was part of the problem, maybe all of the problem, maybe…
    “I want to but—”
    But. A second voice answered the first, equally human, but this one saturated with regret. Kas listened as the second voice made excuses, gave reasons for some unknown failure. Excuses—reasons—either was as bad as the other and neither was what Kas wanted, but he had heard that tone before, in Myrddin’s voice. He scowled, and took another step closer.
    “The same thing, over and over! Maybe I should just leave!”
    The angry one again. Just…leave ? To leave means goodbye.
    He heard more words then, faster and