Read Online Korval's Game by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee - Free Book Online

couch and handed her one, raising his own in salute.
    “To Lady yos’Phelium, my love.”
    She laughed and shook her head. “Why not to Lord yos’Phelium?”
    “Lord yos’Phelium was not courageous, nor did he comport himself with anything but mediocrity.” He touched her cheek. “Miri, you are a treasure.”
    “If you say so,” she said dubiously and sipped her wine. “I think it’s pretty brave, myself, to trust everything to somebody who don’t even know what fork to use—” She shook her head. “Who knows what fork to use,” she corrected herself, “if there’d been a clue to what the food was!”
    “Ah, I had wondered why you ate so little . . .” He tipped his head. “You must not let it burden you,” he said softly. “You imagine my melant’i is so fragile it will shatter at your slightest error. Instead, it has—resilience—and certainly strength enough to withstand my lifemate’s mistaking a fork—or even using a fork instead of tongs!” He tasted his wine, suddenly serious.
    “In all matters of importance—in your conduct toward your delm and the head of your line; in your answer to tel’Vosti—you were above reproach. If in less vital matters you err, or simply choose to disregard the Code, then it is—a nothing. People will say, if they say at all: ‘Ah, she is an original.’ Which is no bad thing.”
    “An original?” She frowned and shook her head.
    Val Con sighed. “It is one of the reasons I insisted you learn the Code from the source, rather than from my tutoring,” he said slowly. “Each individual takes the Code and—shapes it—according to his own character and necessity. Now, I have, perhaps, taken too much from my uncle’s tutelage—or learned too young, as Shan would have it—so my manner tends toward coolness and extreme precision.” He sipped wine, brows drawn.
    “Shan is an original,” he murmured: “his manners are appalling, but his manner pleases. Anthora follows his style. Pat Rin is very correct, but easy, so the correctness seems joined to and flowing from his melant’i. Nova—” he shook his head, smiling with a touch of wistfulness. “I once overhead someone say he would rather meet an angry lyr-cat unarmed, than Nova and I in a reception line.”
    Miri laughed.
    Val Con leaned over and kissed her.
    “Mmmm,” she said and shivered delightedly as warm, knowing fingers stroked down the line of her throat.
    “You find me too Liaden, Miri?” Val Con’s voice was husky in her ear, his cheek soft against hers.
    She breathed in the scent of him and let the breath go in a half-gasping laugh as desire broke over her. “The clothes threw me,” she murmured. “Why don’t you take ’em off?”
    He laughed gently, took her wineglass and bent to put it aside, his weight pushing her into the cushions. Then his lips were back, demanding full attention, while his hands stroked and teased and finally found the fastenings of the dress and loosed them.
    She tried to return the favor, reaching to open the fine white shirt, but he eluded her hands, keeping her pinned and all but helpless while he slipped the dress down over her shoulders and a bit further, nuzzling her throat, kissing her breasts, her belly . . .
    The dress was gone. She reached again to help him out of the shirt, aching to feel his skin against hers—and was fended off with a breathless laugh: “Ah, not so greedy, cha’trez . . .”
    Mouth and hands engaged her full attention once more, the soft fabrics of trousers and shirt stroking against her nakedness alternately frustrating and exhilarating.
    At some point, he picked her up and lay her down again on that high, wide bed, and was gone for a moment, returning with his hand full of bed-flowers.
    He covered her in them, laughing; crushed one in long fingers and stroked the fragrance across her breasts. She shivered and laughed and twisted, pulling him down and mock wrestling, desperate to have him, with an urgency the flower-scent