Teaching Thaelen

The Concordia, Twelve Hundred Years Before

The human girl had hair like fire and freckles scattered across skin so white it gleamed like a pearl in the moonlight. The veins below the skin were an inviting rich blue roadmap laid bare for Thaelen as he stripped her of her gown and eased her onto the night-cool sand. The campfires further down the beach danced as bright as her hair, and the ropes holding the long boats into the shallow water groaned with the tug of the tide against the anchors.

Her hair, freed of the braid, slid through his hands like a skein of silk. He spread it out onto the sand around her, admiring the way it caught the firelight. She watched him, desire, and fear in her eyes.

“They say that it will hurt,” she said uncertainly. She was shy and awkward, her body stiff and unwieldly.

“No,” he promised as he stripped off his shirt and trousers. “Only if the man does not take care. I will not hurt you.”

She nodded. “That is what she said,” she whispered. “When she sent