dark watches
Ezio bolted awake, frantically trying to claw away from the nightmare enveloping him – Mal’s twins and blood, everywhere blood, and always, always, that pregnant dead girl with eyes like Taline’s. Something is wrong. He blinked blearily and willed his breathing to deepen and slow. Where’s Taline? Her place beside him in their bed was empty. His heart hammered with a fresh wave of blind gut-wrenching panic. He reminded himself that his first instinct – to bellow her name, repeatedly, until she answered – would not please their new neighbors; he had to keep quiet and use his mind. The blankets still retained some of the warmth of her body. She has not been gone long. His eyes shot to Taline’s side of the dresser and he slid out of bed to check if her clothing and jewelry were all where they were supposed to be. They were. So were her shoes, every pair. She can’t have gone very far. It seemed highly unlikely that she would go anywhere barefoot in the middle of the night, especially so early in the spring. Winter had lingered in the mountains, reluctant to relinquish its icy hold.
He heard the toilet flush and braced a hand against the dresser to steady himself as his vision swam with relief. Of course. The baby makes her sick. Stupid stronzo. He hurried back to their bed and lay perfectly still, listening for Taline to come back to bed. Water was running – the bathroom sink, from the sound of it – for a suspiciously long time before Taline shut it off, and it was several more long moments after that before he heard the bedroom door open.
She took her time creeping back to their bed, moving carefully and quietly. Probably trying not to wake me, he realized with a bewildering rush of tenderness. She’s such a good little wife. He waited until she had settled beside him to reach for her, drawing her against himself to nuzzle his face against hers. Her lips finally brushed against his and he kissed her hungrily.
“I thought you were asleep, Varpet,” she murmured between kisses. “Did I wake you?”
“Your absence woke me,” he replied, wrapping himself more tightly around her slight body. “I hate it when I wake up and you’re not here.”
She sighed. “Ezio – you’re my husband, I’m carrying your child; my place is here with you. Where do you think I would go, Varpet?”
“I don’t know!” He hated how petulant he sounded. “It just worries me when you’re gone.” Actually, it terrified him. He panicked every time he woke up and she wasn’t beside him, every time he came home and she wasn’t immediately there to greet him, terrified that she’d left him, that she no longer needed or wanted him, that she didn’t want them to have a family together anymore after all.
“I’m sorry.”
She kissed him again, sweetly, and he allowed himself to be distracted, reassured. He pulled off the slip she’d put on and kissed her swollen breasts, hands sliding down to caress the newly rounded contours of her belly.
“Is he kicking yet? Can you feel our child moving inside you, Mogliettina?” he asked, pressing kisses against her abdomen, working his way lower and lower, closer to where he desperately wanted to taste her, but still was not allowed. One day, she’d let him do that, and she’d love it and he’d love it and they’d both wish he’d been allowed that intimacy sooner.
“Not yet.” She squirmed with excitement as he sheathed his fingers inside her; she was already warm and slick for him, she was always warm and slick for him lately. He took it as a promising sign of her growing affection for him.
“The hekim says our baby’s quickening is still several weeks away. Ezio-”
“Oddio, Mogliettina, I love how wet you get for me,” he panted, licking his fingers before plunging them back inside her again. “You taste so good. Jesus Christ, I need your sweet figa. Are you ready for my uccellone?”
Her hands slid over his shoulders, urging him back up her body. “Gently, please, Varpet. Be careful not to hurt our baby.”
He clenched his teeth. It was starting to feel like she was using the baby as a way to slyly admonish him when he failed in some way to conform to her ideal of a husband. He wished she would just speak plainly with him. He felt like a brute when they made love and he could tell she wasn’t enjoying it. He wished she would tell him what he was doing wrong, what he could do differently to make it right. He was trying so hard to make sex better for her, to help her like it, help her like him.
She’d been strangely resistant to telling his family their good news. It wasn’t a very well-kept secret, anyway – Ibrahim knew, the medics and her teacher friend Taghrid knew, hell, even the entire group of his German-speaking students knew – he didn’t understand why she didn’t want him telling Mari, his mother, or his uncle. They were bound to find out, sooner rather than later, and he wanted it to be from him. His mother would be livid if that news came to her second hand; he wrote to her straight away, behind Taline’s back. He wrote to his uncle after weathering a confrontation with his furious sister. Altaïr, of course, had already known. He’d done a terrible job of looking surprised when Ezio told him. Kadija hadn’t even bothered to act surprised.
“Is it okay to make love like this?” he asked, bracing a hand on either side of her to keep as much of his weight off of her as he possibly could. “Would it be better for you to ride me?”
She made a small, discomforted sound that tore his heart to hear as he tried to penetrate her. “I don’t know, Varpet. Wouldn’t you like a minet instead,” she cajoled sweetly.
“No. Voglio scopare, per carità[1],” he snapped as he pushed away from her to curl up on his side. He didn’t bother to translate what he’d said; he could tell she’d understood the gist well enough by the way she flinched. The unfolding silence felt heavy between them. He didn’t understand what was wrong; her body was hot and slick and more than ready for him.
“Ezio…” she murmured after a moment, shifting closer to press kisses against the top of his spine as her hand slid over his hip. She tugged at him gently, encouraging him roll over onto his back and face her. “Im hovatak,” she purred in his ear.
My stallion. Narek, the Veteran who’d translated Taline’s letters for him in Armenia, had looked especially embarrassed the first time he’d translated that particular endearment Taline used with him. He liked it. He liked that she was quietly boasting about him as her lover; she knew someone would have to translate her letters for him, that that particular pet name wouldn’t stay just between them. It felt like she was publicly claiming him – something Cristina had always seemed unwilling to do – and he liked how that felt, the sense of comfort and security it gave him to belong to someone so completely. Her breasts felt fuller than they had only the week before as she pressed herself against him. He knew she was manipulating him, managing him. Giving him little tastes of what he desperately wanted, but only on her terms. He sighed and rolled over to face her, pressing his shoulder blades firmly against the mattress.
She kissed him with just a hint of hesitation and he was reminded that she was far less confident than she was pretending to be, that sex was still something she was learning, and that they were still, essentially, strangers – no matter that they had been married and were now expecting their first child.
“Indz hetsnel hovatak pes …[2]”
He hated himself for the way her breath caught sharply through her teeth when he penetrated her, the tightness and tension of her body and the way she softly whimpered as she sheathed him. He hated being unable to stop himself from taking her. She started crying, which, unfortunately, wasn’t unusual – she was always crying as she begged him not to stop – but he was beginning to resent how guilty it made him feel.
“Can’t you try to like it?” he blurted out in frustration afterwards as she cried softly against his chest. “I’m not – other women like being intimate with me, why can’t you?”
Her body went stiff before she pushed away from him. “Other women?”
Cazzo.
“In the past,” he hurriedly reassured her.
She pushed his hands away and shrugged off his attempts to draw her back against himself.
“In the past, Mogliettina. There’s no one now but you. I don’t want anyone but you.” He sighed and reached for her again. “Come here, Taline. Come to your husband; come to your Varpet.”
She hesitated. “No other women?” she asked in a small voice as she allowed him to draw her body back to his.
“No other women,” he assured her, kissing the side of her throat. “Only my beautiful wife, busily ripening my seed in her belly.”
“Do you, do you want to take me again?” she offered shyly, hands settling against his chest.
He nuzzled his face against hers. “Yeah. I always want your figa again, so tight and sweet-” He shivered and kissed her with growing urgency. “Let me have you again, Mogliettina? Now?”
Gentle, be gentle with her, he admonished himself when she flinched away from his thrusts. He loved the way she caught her bottom lip between her teeth, loved the rolling arch of her back as she rode him, and the way the tender, pale column of her throat was bared as her head tilted back. Taline…
The physical changes to her body, tangible confirmation of her pregnancy, excited him. He couldn’t wait to see the child they’d made together, to watch him nursing at her breast, to hold him in his arms, and to teach him how to be a better man than his own father had been. He wanted to make his mother proud.
She let him kiss her belly afterwards, her swollen breasts, before she cuddled into his arms to sleep. Carrying his child exhausted her.
She woke him in the morning with a hand-job. Coagulating ejaculate on the sheets was one way to make sure that he didn’t just roll over and go back to sleep after she got up. Kadija had commented approvingly that marriage had made him more punctual for morning training; he didn’t share the reason why.
“Buongiorno, Mogliettina,” he managed to mumble as he staggered into the kitchen, right before an enormous yawn nearly cracked his head in two.
“I made you coffee,” she chirped, pouring him a cup. She brought it to him with a smile.
“Thank you.” He gingerly accepted it and managed a smile in return. Taline was terrible at making coffee. “You don’t need to make my coffee, Mogliettina, I can do it myself.”
“I like making your coffee,” she replied as she bustled back to the counter. “And the smell helps settle my stomach.”
His cheek muscles spasmed as he forced a smile. “Oh really?” Cazzo. “The smell of coffee helps your morning sickness?”
“Very much.”
“I’m glad.” He took a tentative sip of coffee and nearly failed at suppressing the knee jerk instinct to immediately spit it back out.
Porca puttana!
“Too hot?” Taline asked, brow creasing in concern at his expression.
“No. No, just a little…” Weak. Scorched. Undrinkably sweet… He coughed and the side of his scalded tongue scraped against his teeth. “Um, yeah. It’s a bit on the warm side, and, um, very sweet.”
“Oh.” Her face fell.
“It’s fine,” he hastily reassured her as he strode over to the sink to dump out the coffee. “I’ll pour myself another cup.”
“I mixed the sugar in when I brewed it,” she whispered.
He sighed. “Mogliettina-”
She started crying so suddenly that he just stood there for a moment blinking stupidly and trying to figure out what had just happened.
“Hey, none of that,” he murmured soothingly when he finally got his bearings, coming around the counter to draw her into a comforting embrace. “It’s fine, yeah? It’s just coffee, Mogliettina.” He felt her nod as she sobbed against him, fingers twisted in the fabric of his clothing.
Asad had assured him that Taline’s mood swings were a perfectly normal side effect of the sudden influx of hormones in her body during pregnancy, and that her mood would even out as her pregnancy progressed. He hoped Asad was right. She vacillated between being clingy and standoffish, bright, cheerful chatter one moment and tempestuous tears the next. It was confusing. He wished he knew what to do for her, what she needed from him to feel better. Be supportive and understanding, Ezio. That’s what she needs most from you, support and understanding. He noticed that she’d stopped crying.
“Feel better?” he asked gently as he rubbed the traces of tears from her cheeks.
“I’m sorry-”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” he assured her.
“It’s silly-”
“No-”
“It’s just coffee,” she said firmly. “Nothing to cry over.”
“Just coffee,” he readily agreed, relieved her mood seemed to be turning again so quickly. While he found her sudden tears alarming, how rapidly she cycled between emotions was at least somewhat reassuring because it meant that she was crying because she was pregnant, and not because of some failure on his part.
Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy from her tears, but she still had a glow about her – skin dewy soft and slightly flushed, lips plush and ruddy, and her breasts were positively plump – it made him feel even more possessive and protective, coupled with a sometimes overwhelming feeling of tenderness. He wanted to take care of her, provide for her.
“Would you like me to order some early strawberries for you, Mogliettina? For after dinner tonight or maybe with breakfast tomorrow?” he asked as he stroked her cheek. My god, she’s so tiny.
“Won’t that be expensive?” she asked, turning to press her cheek into his palm.
“You let me worry about money, Mogliettina. Your only job is to be healthy and strong for our baby, so he will be healthy and strong too,” he murmured and rubbed the pad of his thumb over her lips. His breath caught when she drew the tip of his thumb into her mouth and gently sucked. His cock twitched with sluggish interest. Down boy. Not now, Ezione.
She released his thumb with a wet pop and looked up at him with wide, heart-melting eyes. “I don’t want you to go away again. I was so worried that you wouldn’t come back. I’m frightened here, without you, Varpet.”
“Then I won’t take another contract until after our baby is born. Money isn’t something you have to worry about; there’s plenty of it,” he assured her. “And I can always make more. Alamūt is desperately understaffed with Masters; I can get more students assigned to me. Honestly, it would be harder not to; there’s so much work. You’ll have everything you need for our baby, anything at all you want. Ask me and it’s yours.”
She bit her bottom lip and rubbed his stomach. “Walk me to class?”
“Of course.”
He kissed Taline goodbye at her classroom door and circled back to the bungalow they’d moved into after he’d been reassigned to Alamūt from Rome. Kadija had secured it for them – as a wedding present, she had said. He was still unsure what to make of that.
You got me a house? he had asked incredulously.
We – me and Altaïr – got Taline a house, she’d replied with an enigmatic smile. But you can live there too.
It was a nice house, much nicer than the guest quarters he’d been assigned when he was officially transferred to Alamūt. There were established herb and flower gardens in the front when they’d moved in, a large, old fig tree in the back – its heavy branches perfect for hanging a child’s swing – and charming partial-width front and back porches. The front door opened into a simple living room with a wide, focal fireplace. In addition to the eat-in kitchen, there was also a formal dining room and a short hallway that led to two spacious bedrooms, separated by the pass-through bathroom between them. Taline had claimed the smaller bedroom for the nursery and had spangled the walls with different colored swatches of paint. She couldn’t seem to make up her mind as to the color scheme or furnishings she wanted.
He dumped the rest of the coffee Taline had made and checked the time. The weekly Masters’ meeting with Al Mualim was scheduled for that morning, and he had just enough time to make fresh coffee and shave. He finished grinding his coffee and dumped the grounds into the French press he’d hastily rinsed out and drew his blade to heat a pitcher of water; he helped himself to a slightly stale yeast roll, left over from the previous evening’s delivery from the bakers, while he waited for the water to almost boil. The stove gleamed behind him, its chrome polished to a nearly mirror-like finish; it hadn’t been used once since they moved in.
It really was shocking how ill-equipped Taline was for domestic duties – she couldn’t make coffee, she barely knew how to cook, and he suspected the little she did know was being taught to her by her friend Taghrid. She could, however, make tea, and she knew her needlework; she’d knit him several nice pairs of socks while he’d been away on contract. He glanced upwards with a sigh. It’s a good thing the attic is spacious enough for a house elf’s quarters. To be perfectly fair, the women in his family weren’t any more capable at the wifely arts than Taline was, but they were all fidā'ī, and had been training as such from childhood; that didn’t leave much time for learning cookery or needlework. His mother had only learned how to cook a little and knit after she was forced to retire. Kadija and Mari could make coffee and tea, but not much else.
Cristina knew how to bake and cook and sew. His throat felt tight. She was also a liar and a leech who threw away my child and left me when I became too inconvenient for her. He hated how much it still hurt.
He poured the hot water into the French press and went to the bathroom to shave. Like all Assassin architecture, the interior of their house was much larger than it appeared from the outside. The bathroom was enormous, like every other room in their house, and the plumbing was good; he never had to wait for the water to get hot. He lathered and shaved mechanically, running through his assigned students and adding mental notes on the state of their progress in preparation for the morning’s meeting. He wiped the residual traces of shaving soap off of his face and the sink with a damp towel, then cleaned and sharpened his razor before putting it away. He fished a small pot of unguent out of his shaving kit and rubbed some of the contents into his freshly shaven skin; a jojoba oil based preparation, enchanted to inhibit hair regrowth. Hopefully he’d still be somewhat soft and smooth when he came home to Taline that evening. He washed the traces of the unguent off of his hands, then finger-combed his hair back into a messy ponytail and secured it with a piece of elastic. His hair needed cutting; he was starting to get split ends.
He found his sister swanning around the living room when he came out of the bathroom to pour his coffee. Her hair had been plaited into a thick French braid, still smooth enough for him to tell it had been freshly done; it never took Mari’s hair long to begin working its way loose from any attempt to contain it. Their mother had never known how to handle Mari’s hair. He had hundreds upon hundreds of childhood memories of Mari desperately shrieking for him as their mother advanced upon her bearing a comb and a look of grim resolution, followed by the expressions of patent relief on both of their faces when he invariably offered to help with his sister’s hair. He’d spent hours carefully teasing the snarls from her hair, untangling massive matted knots strand by strand. Mari used to cut the knots out when he wasn’t around, rather than ask their mother for help, but it seemed that she’d finally learned how to master her hair and tame it to her will. He felt a sudden and inexplicable wave of sadness at the sight of that smooth sleek braid; Mari had grown up and didn’t need him so much anymore. The thought stung, and he impatiently shrugged it away.
She’d paused in front of the fireplace and was studying the wedding picture of Taline’s parents with the sharp sort of interest she sometimes showed in things – usually the sort of things he wished she’d overlook. He’d put the picture in one of the heavy silver frames they’d received from Altaïr, and the photograph itself was Lucia’s wedding gift to them. She’d managed to track down the photography studio in Turkey where Taline’s parents had their wedding portrait taken and had ordered copies of it and the group portrait of all three of Taline’s brothers, taken years after their parents’ wedding pictures. Taline had cried when she first saw the photographs, and then she’d cried again when she came home and saw that he’d put them in beautiful frames and placed them on the mantel. She’d let him make love to her on the floor in front of the fireplace that evening, on the heavy polar bear rug his former Master, Gebhard Von Grimmelshausen, now Rafīk of Oslo, had sent them.
“Don’t bother to knock,” he said sarcastically. Things were still awkward between them, especially since Mari probably still expected an apology from him for throwing her out the night she’d brought her boyfriend over for dinner in his temporary quarters a couple months ago; he had absolutely no intention of apologizing.
“I did, but you didn’t answer-” she replied, following him into the kitchen.
“So you invited yourself in,” he finished the sentence for her as he poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Don’t be like-”
“Like what?” He negligently leaned his hip against the counter as he lifted his coffee to his lips.
She clenched her teeth and made a production of swallowing down what she clearly wanted to say. “Look, I’m sorry, okay?”
“No, you’re not,” he hummed before taking a pointedly casual sip of coffee. “But I appreciate you saying it.”
“Jesus-Fucking-Christ,” she swore, slamming a hand down on the counter. “You and Altaïr, I swear. This is why I hate apologizing to either of you.”
“When did you last apologize to Altaïr? When you were seven?” he shot back before he could stop himself. Not helpful, really not helpful.
“Recently,” she snapped. “Not that it’s any of your business.” She unclenched her hands and pressed them against the counter with a deep, shaky breath. “Are you going to offer me coffee?”
“If you really wanted coffee you would have helped yourself already,” he replied, summoning a mug. It landed on the counter with a satisfyingly solid clink.
“I’m a guest; it’s good manners.”
“No, you’re not. I didn’t invite you.” He watched her pour a cup of coffee, help herself to sugar and look around for milk. He relented and gestured in the appropriate direction. “It’s in the ice box, un’asina.”
“Thanks.” She retrieved the milk and returned to the counter. She bit her bottom lip as she watched the milk diffuse through her coffee. “So… she’s really pregnant?”
“Yeah.” He clenched his teeth and pointedly looked past his sister at the doorway leading to the living room. “And yes, it’s mine, before you ask.”
“I wasn’t going – of course it’s yours, Bello. Why would you even-”
“Oh, so you meant it as a joke when you insinuated I was cornuto? Funny how I somehow missed the intended humor in that.” The hand gesture she’d made at him before storming out the night she’d brought her Slav boyfriend to dinner still stung. He hated how his sister somehow always knew just where to hurt him.
“I was drunk!” she protested. “And angry. You know I didn’t really mean-”
“You also called my wife a whore, right in front of her, in a language you know she doesn’t understand – or did you not really mean that either?” he interrupted her savagely. It surprised him how much it hurt that she had treated Taline like that. “She’s my wife, Mari. She’s carrying my child – your future niece or nephew – show her some respect!”
“I said I was sorry, Jesus,” Mari snapped. “What more do you want from me?”
“Be nice to her! Fuck! You were nice to Cristina, why can’t you try to be nice to the woman I married?” he demanded, voice rising with frustration.
“I actually like Cristina,” she retorted.
Like. Not liked – past tense – she said she still likes Cristina better.
“You hardly know Taline-” he shot back, reeling from the sudden physical pain he felt at his sister’s thoughtless statement.
“You don’t know her either,” she angrily pointed out. “She’s a little gold-digger you picked up at the cabaret who’s preying on your vulnerable points to score herself a lifelong meal ticket. What’s there to like about that?”
“That’s not how it happened.” His throat felt tight. I’m the one who took advantage of her when she was vulnerable and then coerced her into marrying me. He didn’t want to have to explain that to his sister; she was really weird about anything having to do with the Maraas.
“E-zo…” Mari’s face softened with sympathy.
“That’s not how it happened,” he repeated firmly. “She’s a sweet girl, Mari. She’s a good wife and she’ll be a good mother to our children. She wants to be a part of our family, and she’s trying really hard with you; can’t you at least make an effort to meet her part way?”
“What do you want me to do?” she asked with a put-upon sigh.
“Be nicer to her.”
Mari rolled her eyes. “Can you be more specific?”
“Yeah,” he snapped, finally losing his patience at his sister’s dismissive attitude. “You can start by never calling her a whore again. Think you can manage that?”
“I’ll try,” she simpered.
He slammed his coffee down on the counter so hard the cup cracked. “You’ll damn-well do more than try. I fucking mean it, Mari. Stop being such a bitch!”
“Or what? You’ll slap me around like you do your wife?” she shot back, no longer even fazed by him calling her a bitch. It was an uncomfortable reminder of how much their relationship had deteriorated over the last few months. “Jesus Christ, Ezio. What kind of a monster do you have to be to beat a woman not even half your size?”
He could only stare at her aghast for a long moment, blood roaring in his ears, before he found his voice. “Did you, did you just accuse me of beating my wife?” he finally asked incredulously. “You think that’s actually something I would do?”
“You get back and she turns up with a big, nasty bruise on her wrist, and gives me the least believable explanation for how it got there I’ve ever heard,” she bit out. “What am I supposed to think?”
“I’m your brother! You could have fucking asked me,” he retorted, throwing his hands up in frustration.
“She had a bruise on the side of her face last week,” Mari added ruthlessly.
He sighed, loudly. “A couple of the ankle-biters were arguing and she got hit in the face with the wooden toy they were fighting over when she went to separate them. Ask the other teacher, if you don’t believe me, your brother. I wanted to go have a talk with the parents, but she forbade me.” He was still annoyed about that, actually. She let those brats off far too lightly.
“She cries a lot.”
“How would you know?”
“I’m not blind, Ezio.”
“Because she’s pregnant! The medics said it’s perfectly normal in the first trimester.”
Mari looked skeptical. “Aren’t pregnant women usually, I don’t know, happier about it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t see why. From what I can tell, being pregnant seems pretty miserable. She throws up nearly everything she eats-”
“I don’t think that’s normal, E-zo,” Mari interrupted him with a frown. “Are you sure something isn’t wrong? She should go see the medics, just-”
“She’s fine,” he snapped. “The medics said she and the baby will be just fine so long as she doesn’t stress herself sick. So don’t you go and say anything to her, she’s anxious enough already. I mean it Mari,” he added warningly. “Not a word. You know what, even better, just stay away from her, period.”
“What is she so anxious about, E-zo?”
“I don’t know!” He threw his hands up in frustration. “Mostly going to Roma, I think, but I don’t know for sure.”
“You think?” she repeated incredulously. “How do you not know for sure? She’s your wife, would it be so hard to – I don’t know – ask her?”
“You try asking her anything,” he snapped. “Maybe she’ll give you straighter answers than she gives me.”
“That’s highly unlikely,” Mari snorted. “I doubt she likes me very much.”
“And whose fault is that, I wonder,” he hummed as he checked the time. Merda! It was later than he thought; he bolted the remainder of his coffee. “You’ve got to go; I’m going to be late for my meeting.”
“I can’t stay and finish my coffee?” she asked sweetly, with wide innocent eyes. She reached over and repaired his cracked mug. He wasn’t taken in by the gesture.
“Stay and snoop, you mean,” he retorted as he took her still half-full coffee and dumped it down the sink. “No. It’ll upset Taline. Out, Mari.”
“Nana Claudia would be appalled that you’re throwing your own sister out of your house,” she groused, trying to shrug off the hand he pressed between her shoulder blades as he propelled her forward. “Your only sister.”
“Nana Claudia would be even more appalled by how unforgivably rude you’ve gone out of your way to be to your onlybrother’s wife,” he retorted, shutting the front door behind them and casting a ward. No one locked their doors within Alamūt – it suggested that one had something to hide – and the ward he’d cast wasn’t a lock, just a tracer; he wanted to know if anyone other than himself and Taline entered their home.
“She’ll understand.”
He clenched his teeth. “Mother won’t.”
“You’re threatening to tell on me? Jesus Christ, E-zo, we’re in our twenties,” Mari exclaimed as she followed him.
He gritted his teeth and walked faster.
“And you’re running away from me? Grow up already, Ezio,” she added, jogging along beside him.
“I have a meeting-”
“Conveniently when you want to avoid talking to me.” She didn’t sound at all winded. Having to keep pace with Altaïr has really improved her stamina.
“-with Al Mualim,” he finished his sentence doggedly. “And if I’m late, I’m telling Altaïr it was because I got stuck talking to you.”
Mari all but vanished in the blink of an eye.
That got rid of her. He broke into a jog. He hated being late.
[1] I want to fuck, for heaven's sake
[2] Ride me like a stallion