At the Edge of Waking by Holly Phillips

Author:Holly Phillips [Phillips, Holly]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, collection
ISBN: 9781607013563
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2012-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Virgin of the Sands

Neil came out of the desert leaving most of his men dead behind him. He debriefed, he bathed, he dressed in a borrowed uniform, and without food, without rest, though he needed both, he went to see the girl.

The army had found her rooms in a shambling mud-brick compound shaded by palms. She was young, God knew, too young, but her rooms had a private entrance, and there was no guard to watch who came and went. Who would disturb Special Recon’s witch? Neil left the motor pool driver at the east side of the market and walked through the labyrinth of goats, cotton, chickens, oranges, dates, to her door. The afternoon was amber with heat, the air a stinking resin caught with flies. Nothing like the dry furnace blast of the wadi where his squad had been ambushed and killed. He knocked, stupid with thirst, and wondered if she was home.

She was.

Tentative, always, their first touch: her fingertips on his bare arm, her mouth as heavy with grief as with desire. She knew, then. He bent his face to hers and felt the dampness of a recent bath. She smelled of well water and ancient spice. They hung a moment, barely touching, mingled breath and her fingers against his skin, and then he took her mouth, and drank.

“I’m sorry,” she said, after.

He lay across her bed, bound to exhaustion, awaiting release. “We walked right into them,” he said, eyes closed. “Walked right into their guns.”

“I’m sorry.”

She sounded so unhappy. He reached for her with a blind hand. “Not your fault. The dead can’t tell you everything.”

She laid her palm across his, her touch still cool despite the sweat that soaked her sheets. “I know.”

“They expect too much of you.” By they he meant the generals. When she said nothing he turned his head and looked at her. She knelt beside him on the bed, barred with light from the rattan blind. Her dark hair was loose around her face, her dark eyes shadowed with worry. So young she broke his heart. He said, “You expect too much of yourself.”

She covered his eyes with her free hand. “Sleep.”

“You can only work with what we bring you. If we don’t bring you the men who know . . . who knew . . . ” The darkness of her touch seeped through him.

“Sleep.”

“Will you still be here?”

“Yes. Now sleep.”

Three times told, he slept.

She had to be pure to work her craft, a virgin in the heart of army intelligence. He never knew if this loving would compromise her with her superiors. She swore it would not touch her power, and he did not ask her more. He just took her with his hands, his tongue, his skin, and if sometimes the forbidden depths of her had him aching with need, that only made the moment when she slid her mouth around him more potent, explosive as a shell bursting in the bore of a gun. And he laughed sometimes when she twisted against him, growling, her teeth sharp on his neck: virgin.

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