The Claiming

by Imogen Keeper

  “Is that your favor?”

  “Asking you to stop pulling my hair? No.”

  He let out an annoyingly smug laugh.

  “You pulled my hair after I asked for a favor,” she pointed out.

  He didn’t let her hair go even an inch.

  When she writhed, caught in his grip, he only pulled harder, until her throat arched. He had her trapped. She could barely breathe. Her felana heart melted at the display of dominance, even as her woman’s heart just got pissed.

  “You will learn, in time, felana, that there is very little I wouldn’t do for you, if you ask nicely.”

  His voice echoed off the walls, humming with electricity. Her stomach fluttered, a little pathetic dance, right there, that tugged on her heart strings.

  She tried her first ever coy smile. “So, if I ask nicely for something, you’ll say yes?”

  The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Not if it’s for a gun. We already discussed that.”

  “I remember. That’s not the favor. And stop pulling my hair.”

  His grip softened, finally and his fingers threaded along her scalp.

  She swallowed. He would say yes. He had to say yes. “Will you help me find out who took my sister?”

  He studied her for a long moment, his eyes probing hers, his jaw working, the little muscle tightening and flexing. “What happened to her?”

  She swallowed, hating the words even as they formed on her tongue. “She was taken.”

  He stepped away, lowered his body back into the pool, submerging his arms and shoulders so the water lapped all around his jaw. Her body complained, thrumming and buzzing at the lack of contact. His posture was calm, but his eyes were intent. It made her wary. “What else do you know?”

  She wanted to tell him the rest, that she was in heat, that she’d be alone and scared, but she didn’t. It seemed too personal somehow, like a betrayal of Leyla’s stubborn pride. “Nothing.”

  “Is she in heat?” The bastard could read minds.

  She glared at him. The helplessness of Leyla’s situation stuck in her throat, had her fists tightening.

  “Let’s say I helped you find out who took her, what would you do?”

  Despite the heat of the water, she shivered at the look in his eyes. “Get her back. Whatever it takes.”

  His brow quirked, just a tiny motion, almost too fast to notice. He shook his head tightly. “You have a death wish.”

  “Only if the death you mean is the Boss’s.”

  His nostrils flared. “Vengeance isn’t always what you think it is.”

  “You speak from experience.”

  Nothing shifted in his face, but somehow, she could just tell that bothered him. “You’ve been running on luck and it ran out when you went into heat in the marketplace. It’ll run out again.”

  “If I don’t have Leyla…” She bit her lip. She’d never thought about it before, but it was true. Without Leyla, she’d be alone. Not just for a few minutes, or the night, but for all time.

  “Come here.” His voice was unyielding. He wasn’t a man who demanded obedience with voice raised or rage. He asked as soft as the water lapping against her breasts, sliding between her thighs, heating her from the inside out. That was the strength of Sanger, he commanded without emotion, without reaction, and without any possibility of disobedience.

  In another mood, she might refuse just to see what he’d do, but not now.

  She paddled across the pool, just to be closer to him, wrapping her legs around his waist because she needed it like she needed to breathe. “What are you going to do? Pull my hair again?”

  He didn’t pull her hair—because unlike everyone else in her life, when she said rude things, he just liked her better. He did sink his fingers into her ass in a hard grip. That impassive face, the hard cheekbones, deep-set eyes, stone hard jaw, firm lips didn’t seem so robotic now. He seemed warm, approachable, open to her in a way he rarely was. “No more risks.”

  “Once this heat is over, I won’t be yours to order around.”

  His face hardened slightly.

  “Will you help me get my sister back?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “And after?” The words came out hoarse, rougher than she’d meant them. It was like a funeral pall playing in the back of her mind. The heat would end, her heart would break, he would leave her. Unless…

  The armor settled in across his face, the muscles tightening, like shutters slamming closed one-by-one against a coming storm. “I’m not the kind of Prime who keeps felanas.”

  Even though it broke her heart, the way he opened up for one second, then slammed shut the gates the next, she forced herself to smile. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pressed her face into his neck so she wouldn’t have to see the cold, empty, robotic look on his face, and forced herself to say something stupid.

  “I meant after the bath, asshole.”

  That brought a laugh, complete with crinkling eyes, and shaking shoulders, and a hand gripping the rise of her butt. “All this talk about asses…”

  21

  rage, toxic as poison

  SANGER SLID from the sheets and padded silently across the room, leaving the felana in the bed behind him. He tapped his wrist comm to Shane.

  Bring Draggor. Time to find out what he’s been doing with V.

  His glutes were on fire and, judging by his tongue, which felt about as thick and dry as an old rag, he was dehydrated. Ruts were hard work. He’d been holed up with Tessa for two whole days now.

  Time to work.

  Chugging water from a metal bottle with one hand, he took a long-overdue piss, then snagged a pair of black combat pants and a t-shirt from his closet, but didn’t put them on.

  Shane would be here any minute.

  He trusted Shane with his life, but he didn’t want anyone to know about Tessa. She was a secret he didn’t want to share.

  At the door, he hesitated, looking back at the bed. Tessa lay on her stomach, sprawled across the bed, her long lean arms scattered wide, like a puppet whose strings had been clipped. Her brows were lowered and her lips pushed out in a surly pout. Even in sleep she was cranky. She slept harder and deeper than anyone he’d ever known, probably to make up for the frenzy of motion during her waking hours. Like she’d been going and going and finally exhaustion claimed her.

  Her hair spread in a dark tangle, the sheet wrapped around her torso, one beautiful leg hitched up.

  Balls tingling, he slipped out the door naked, and jogged down the stairs and across the courtyard to take a quick dip in the bathing pool to wash off the pervasive scent of felana from his skin.

  When he was done, he dressed quickly, walked to the side entrance, and the basement there. It was the same place Shane would come in.

  The floor was a cobble of old stones, so worn by time they were smooth and soft, cold beneath his bare feet. The rear wall had a metal trapdoor hidden behind a painting, beyond which was an entrance to the tunnels. One of sixty-seven such entrances that he and his men used to navigate the city. They slept there, trained there, moved goods through there.

  How do you keep an army of six thousand secret inside a city with an oppressive government? The answer…a lot of fucking time, coordination, front business, and most of all, an ancient and forgotten underground tunnel system.

  He twisted the lock on the tunnel door, but didn’t open the hatch, then pulled open his digi-screen and sent off a few quick messages while he waited. Touching base with his other sergeants, men like Draggor who ran warehouses, or businesses, with small armies of informants, corrupt officials, and trained officers, scattered across the city.

  Behind him, right on time, the hatch groaned and slid inward with a gust of cold air that smelled like water and moss.

  Shane ducked through the tunnel door, toothpick between his lips, his over-developed muscles flexing. “Hey, Boss.”

  Sanger nodded, sorting through the drawers of his desk. He checked the safety and tossed
an operable gun at Shane. “You got knives?”

  “Yeah.”

  Sanger tucked a knife into his belt and then slid a garotte up his sleeve. “I don’t want to have to kill him. And I’d rather avoid the blood. But still.”

  Shane laughed softly, fingering his toothpick. “He slept with Vangie again last night.”

  Sanger leaned his hip against his desk. “Are they actually fucking?”

  “Yes.” No hesitation, which meant Shane had seen them in the act, or someone he trusted had. “She came through with the explosives.”

  Sanger raised a brow in silent question.

  Shane jerked his chin back toward the tunnel door. “In there.”

  Good news. And right on time. Sanger walked through to look at the four crates of explosives sitting on a dolly. It was chillier in the tunnels. The light from the itannim fungus that grew there casting an eerie glow over them all, glimmering on the explosives, resting in their crates.

  One hundred black cubes smaller than his palm.

  “Tested?”

  Shane followed him in, arms crossed. “Fully functional.” He grinned. “Rode the river down to the farms yesterday. Blew the shit out of an old barn.”

  Sanger sent him a wary glance.

  “Relax. I put it in the cellar. No one saw or heard. The explosives are sound. Just waiting to be moved into position.”

  They’d be in position, and the fire they’d make would be a signal that would bring a rain of warriors down on Didgermmion. Tor would see them and his armies would invade. The Argenti would see them, and their armies would invade. And Sanger’s own men and women would see them, and they would know the time had come.

  He picked one up, held its weight in his hand. He’d draw up the locations soon, arrange for them to be scattered across the city.

  He walked back out and placed the explosive on his desk as a reminder.

  Shane ambled out of the tunnels and took a seat on the sofa.

  “Did you find anything else out about the felana?”

  Shane crossed his feet at the ankles, spreading his arms across the back and tugged something out of his pocket, a piece of fabric. Pale blue with pink flowers. When he tossed it into the air, it fluttered like a petal in the breeze. “I bribed one of the bathhouse guards who was working the day the felana went missing. He says it’s not one. It’s two felanas. One in heat.” He twirled the panties around his finger. “And a dealer with a missing tooth claims that same felana, the other felana, tried to buy a gun from him at the night market, but ran off. Last thing he smelled before the Polizei showed up, was a waft of felana.” Shane’s eyes got cagey, and he sank his teeth into his lower lip like he was trying not to smile.

  Sanger folded his arms across his chest, schooling his cheeks to apathy. Forced the tiny muscles of his face not to so much as twitch.

  “Lot of people claiming they saw a big-ass Prime chasing her. Killed three humanis running after her. Took down a few Primes too.” Shane’s brows lifted high, and the toothpick rolled across his mouth to sit in the corner of his lips. “Biggest Prime they’d ever seen, dark hair.” A smile spread across his cheeks. Shane always loved a secret. “Big-ass Prime. They kept on saying that. You know anything about that, Boss?”

  Sanger didn’t move.

  “They’re saying the two felanas are sisters. Belonging to Manivietto himself. And he’s willing to pay anything to get them back.”

  Face as cool as the river that ran beneath them, and voice as vacant as the lowest of the tunnels that stretched from the doorway behind him, Sanger asked, “What’s the reward?”

  “Serious bones, Boss.” He pulled the toothpick out for a second. “A man could retire forever on it. Buy himself a villa on the hills, and a pack of felana wives, spend the rest of his days with them drooling all over his nuts.”

  Shane tossed the little piece of fabric across the room, straight at Sanger, and it carried the scent of felana with it. A pair of panties—not Tessa’s, his nose told him fast, thank fuck-all that was holy—hit him right in the chest and dropped to the floor.

  Shane tugged a second little scrap of fabric from another pocket. “These yours?”

  Sanger tensed, new fury tingling along his skin. Those had to be Tessa’s. His body reacted instantly, roaring at him yes, motherfucking yes, those panties were his and so was the pussy that had last touched them. He didn’t have time to puzzle out the mystifying welter of emotions, the war of incompatible impulses, because at that precise moment, there was a click at the basement door.

  Draggor walked in.

  Shane turned to acknowledge him. The slip of panties sat on the floor in front of Sanger, Tessa’s still dangling from Shane’s fingertips.

  Draggor coughed a laugh and strutted into the room, all working swagger and confidence, probably feeling smug and powerful having gotten a rare invite into the heart of the whole operation. “You two sniffing panties together, now?”

  Shane dropped the panties on the table, as Draggor slid down onto the sofa beside him.

  He leaned forward, stretched out one long limb, the stripes and swirls of the tattoos on his lower arm visible beneath his rolled-up T-shirt.

  His fingers pinched together, and the fabric of the panties wrinkled, releasing a puff of molecules into the air, saturated with a scent Sanger knew by now as well as his own.

  The riotous territorialism of the Prime reared back to the forefront, and this time, so did the man inside him who just fucking wanted to keep her safe, both of them snarling and beating their chests like troglodytes.

  It was something he hadn’t felt in a long time.

  It told him he could resist Tessa all he wanted with his mind, but his body had other plans.

  He knew from experience, both in battle and out, fighting your own nature was a losing battle.

  Which meant he was fucked.

  He sucked in a breath, bracing himself, preparing as if before a great battle, to make a move that was nothing like the cautious, careful, premediated man he’d forced himself to become, a move that wasn’t planned or calculated, a plan that was the sheer instinctive reaction of a Prime when his felana was threatened.

  Shane’s eyes flitted briefly to Sanger’s, no doubt trying to gage his reaction, as Draggor brought Tessa’s panties to his nose and inhaled, his eyes drifting closed with relish. “Felana cunt. Close to heat.”

  Rage, bright and pure and toxic as poison, surged through Sanger’s veins.

  22

  migane, fool,

  don’t fall in love

  TESSA ROLLED OVER, stretching out on the bed. Muscles that hadn’t been sore in a long time complained. Without Sanger, the bed felt vast and foreign. She dragged a hand over soft, crisp white sheets.

  A door closed somewhere in the house. Probably Sanger, getting more food.

  She’d leave here fatter than she’d been since the seraglio.

  She sat up, wincing as her thighs burned, which brought on a really vivid memory of what caused those thighs to be sore.

  She dropped her hands over her eyes, trying to rub away the flashing visual of Sanger’s face… as she sat on top of it. His dark eyes locked on hers, her hips moving, his grip tightening on her thighs and his tongue...

  Her cheeks heated.

  Vaniiya, she’d been out of control, humping his face like a rabid animal.

  Though, he hadn’t seemed to mind.

  This was the first time he’d left her alone. At least, the first time she knew of. It felt…odd.

  If she had to guess, she had two days until the heat passed, and when that happened, she needed to be ready to get out there and find Leyla. She couldn’t rely on him to do it for her. The secrets in his eyes promised he had his own version of the truth.

  He wouldn’t kick her out, she believed him when he’d said it. He was a good man, despite the migane assdemon he worked for.

  But how long would she be able to handle being around him and not being able to touch him? Once the excuse
of the heat went away, it would be too painful, knowing he didn’t want her, not really. He’d said as much in the bathhouse. He’d protect her. He’d keep her safe. But he wasn’t going to fall for her.

  She might as well enjoy the food and eeffoc now.

  She slipped from the bed and grabbed a T-shirt from his closet. It smelled like him. Delicious and spicy and so, so Sanger. Not even bothering to pretend otherwise, she let her hands knead into her stomach as she headed down the stairs, pausing now and again to listen.

  The house was empty, but a noise in the courtyard drew her to the kitchen door.

  Sanger was out there, stalking across the lawn from the bath house, tugging a dark T-shirt over his head, his abs rippling with his motions, his brows lowered. Annoyed or determined, she couldn’t quite tell which. She ducked under the door’s window.

  He hadn’t been headed toward her, rather toward the side of the house. After a few seconds pause, she dared poke her head up again. He was gone.

  She blew out a long breath. What had she expected? That he’d stay in bed through the whole entire heat? Yeah, maybe.

  It felt like an odd betrayal to see him doing something he clearly didn’t want her to know about. She forced herself to tidy up in the kitchen. Rinse out the eeffoc cups, put away the plates, wipe down the sink.

  When that was done, she couldn’t quite bring herself to go back upstairs and wait for him. She hated waiting.

  She kneaded the shirt for a while, going through the various things Sanger might be doing in that basement. Her fingers clenched on her stomach, freezing mid-knead, her eyes widening.

  What if he was meeting with the Boss? What if this was her chance to find out what he looked like.

  What if it was about Leyla?

  The thought nearly stopped her heart.

  Moving at half speed, barely breathing, she slid open the door and stepped out into moist morning air.

  A few birds twittered. Hovers whined in the distance. The world was still, in that way of mornings, as if the dawn itself was still stretching and blinking. She crept across the courtyard, through shafts of pale sunlight. The stones of the little walkway were slick and damp from the night’s dew.