East

"Nothing. My arms hurt," I answered him.

"Mine does not."

"Good for you!" I snapped, irritated once again my magic worked on everyone but me.

He chuckled. His breathing deepened, and he slid back into sleep.

I rolled onto my back then side then back. Everything hurt now that I was awake. My thighs, my ass, my hips, my arms and hands. There was no comfortable position on the hard earth.

Shifting onto my side once again, I flexed my hands to test them. They hadn't healed at all, or at least, they felt as raw as they were when Batu's uncle cut them.

I moved to my back and stared into the darkness. Batu moved beside me.

"Be still, Moonbeam," he grumbled.

"I can't. Everything hurts!"

He shifted onto his side facing me. Seconds later, his arm went around me, and he pushed and pulled me until my back was to him. Draping his over tunic over me, he pulled me into him.

I wriggled away. "What're you doing?"

"A shepherd does this when a lamb is fussy." His arm locked around me.

"I'm not a lamb!" Trapped inside his shirt, with his ungiving frame behind me, I ceased struggling not long after I started. His scent was strong, his warmth stronger, and both began moving through my system to relax me.

"But you are fussy."

There were moments when I really hated his observations. He jostled me more to slip his arm beneath my neck. He wasn't the first man I'd slept with like this, but he was definitely the strongest. It was a little unnerving to have his powerful body at my back.

"Shall I sing to you?" he asked.

It's not really singing. I was too irritated to want to explain how different his singing was from what I knew. "Maybe."

"What song? Sky? Grass? Water?"

"Water." Not that I remotely understood the difference between them.

The low growl emanating from his chest began. His chest rumbled at my back, and the vibration entranced me before the second layer of higher pitched notes came from his mouth and nose.

The non-song was as unusual as it was soothing. As with the first time I heard him sing, I was very quickly taken away from my own thoughts and plunged into a near trance by the droning.

My eyes drifted closed, and I felt my body relax under the influence of his song and heat. Seconds before I fell asleep, his singing drifted off, and his breathing deepened once more. He fell asleep. Drowsiness soon softened my pain and pulled me the rest of the way under.