It just felt strange when she still felt like they were pretty much strangers and not even human—sort of titillating but also a bit like playing hooky from school—something she thought was going to get her into trouble at some point.
She supposed she was more of a prude than she’d ever realized. She’d long since acknowledged that she wasn’t the adventurous sort like her parents and she wasn’t outgoing or social like her brother. She just hadn’t considered that that carried over to her sex life, covered the entire scope of her being.
Then again, maybe it was just the premeditated aspect that bothered her?
Under the circumstances, there was a lot to be said for Kadin’s approach to the situation even though, at the time, she’d been outdone about it.
A little refection, though, was all it took to convince her that was the real problem. If it had just been spontaneous, with no time to worry over it, she thought she would’ve been very open to intimacy with any or all of them.
This was just a totally bizarre situation all the way around.
And the lack of an actual choice—as in she could just decline—fed her reluctance.
It didn’t matter that it wasn’t Gaelen forcing her.
Well, it did matter, but the problem was that she had no free will to choose—not Gaelen.
Resolutely dismissing all of the doubts circling in her mind, like black buzzards over a rotting carcass, she met Gaelen’s gaze.
“My … hesitance isn’t because of you,” she said quietly. “You know that, right?”
His lips curled into a faint smile. “No know, hoped not.”
She scanned his face. Up close, really looking, instead of merely glancing, she saw he was remarkably handsome. “I know I’m nothing like your women. Will that … uh … create a problem for you?”
His smile died. “No.”
Emma smiled at him with an effort, trying to cut the tension with a touch of humor. “No bags here. You’ll just have to close your eyes.”
He looked confused.
Which wasn’t surprising. “To cover my head so you can pretend I’m somebody else.”
He shook his head and lifted a hand to touch her cheek lightly. “No want oddur.”
That was really sweet and surprisingly, touchingly romantic and she felt a lightening of her doubts. She’d seen how gentle he was with Nye. There was no doubt in her mind of that, at least, that he was as capable of gentleness as he was of fiercely defending.
Not that she thought Kadin and Hauk weren’t equally capable, but she hadn’t seen them interact with the baby as often as she had Gaelen. He was usually the one that came to the cabin to feed the baby.
He distracted her from her thoughts by leaning closer and brushing his lips against hers.
Her lips tingled.
Instinctively, she sucked in a sharp breath, inhaling his scent.
The tingling seemed to follow it down into her lungs and then flow through into her nerve endings.
She hadn’t noticed that she was chilled from being naked—she’d been too distressed by her circumstances—but she did notice when warmth followed the wave of awareness.
He shifted closer as his lips melded with hers, molding his form against hers as he drew her into his arms. She lifted her hands instinctively, palm out, as he did so, pressing her palms against his sculpted chest muscles.
Pleasure and regret warred within her—pleasure at the feel of his warm skin and toned muscles against her palms and regret that she’d blocked him from pressing her fully against his length.
He diverted her almost immediately by deepening the kiss, infiltrating the exquisitely sensitive cavern of her mouth with his taste and touch with the sweep of tongue. It sent a fresh wave of intoxicating endorphins through her system that was like nothing she’d previously experienced. She didn’t enter the almost drugged state of arousal she’d felt with Kadin, but it was far and away more intense than any other lover’s touch. His skin was silkier, the muscles beneath harder, less yielding.
She felt surrounded by him, inundated with him, and it felt so wonderful she began to feel the fever of want almost at once, to feel a thirst for his possession.
She sensed a similar impatience in him in his touch, and yet he held himself back, stroking her, exploring her with his mouth and tongue and hands with languorous thoroughness when he’d had his fill of exploring her mouth.
She was feverish, pulling at him in demand long before he seemed to grasp her desperation and moved over her, probing her flesh with his, stroking her cleft from front to back and back to front with the head of his cock until she was near to passing out from gasping for breath. Relief filled her when he began to fill her channel with his turgid flesh. Not even the fact that he stretched her until she felt the burn of tender flesh near the breaking point squelched the desperation to feel full penetration. She found herself feverishly pumping against him, trying to engulf his flesh.
Profound satisfaction filled her when her lubrication finally yielded the path to him and he sank deeply inside of her.
It was wondrous and a sense of surprise flickered through her that it could feel so completely right to feel him as part of herself, but his movements toward nirvana swept such lofty sentiment aside in favor of carnal pleasure. She focused on reaching her own paradise before he could leave her behind, countering each thrust, holding her breath as she felt the burgeoning inside of her and then gasping for air until she was dizzy.
And then, as abruptly as the climb had begun, her body reached a surfeit of tension and released in convulsive waves of purest joy. She caught the nearest pec with the suction of her mouth to prevent herself from crying out—though she was only dimly aware of the need to keep her enjoyment to herself. The expulsion of passion seemed to trigger his release, he drove into her in swift strokes and then she felt his great body convulse with his release, felt the heat of his seed as it bathed her womb.
It bled the tension from both of them at almost the same time. The tension expelled, they collapsed weakly against one another, gasping for air.
Gaelen grew heavier the more he relaxed. By the time he came to himself sufficiently to realize she couldn’t handle his full weight she’d begun to think she was going to have to slug him to get his attention. Grunting, he rolled off of her, allowing her to take her first deep breath in far too many minutes.
She felt way too mellow in the aftermath, though, to be too pissed off about him nearly crushing her.
He dropped a heavy hand to the top of her head, cupped it as if measuring it and finally scooped her up and draped her over his chest.
“Wha’ was that?”
“Make sure brains still dere.”
Emma snorted. “Oh you’re hilarious.”
“Serious,” he said, trying to sound like he was.
Inwardly, Emma shrugged. It probably had been a while for him, poor man. No telling how long he’d been on this mission. A knot formed in her throat on that thought.
Gaelen dropped a heavy arm across her back. “Nye alright.”
That comment jerked Emma from the edge of consciousness and she lifted her head to stare at him. “You’ve seen him?” she gasped hopefully.
He shook his head, looking as if he was already regretting the impulse to say anything. “No see. Hear here,” he said, touching his temple.
Emma lowered her head to his chest again, struggling with the urge to burst into tears for some minutes. Finally, she mastered it with the reflection that it was hardly a fitting reward for the poor man after all his efforts to please her for her to sob all over him. “You aren’t just saying that to make me feel better? It’s true?”
He cupped her face in both hands and made her lift her head to meet his gaze. “True. No lie to Emma. Neber.”
Emma felt her throat close. “You are the most wonderful man! Don’t freak out, but I think I could love you without a lot of encouragement.”
Chapter Eleven
Emma cringed inwardly as soon
as the words were out, thinking how much better it would have been if she’d considered before she’d said anything.
Gaelen tensed.
She wasn’t surprised—well maybe a little that he seemed to actually understand what she’d said when the impression she’d gotten was that he didn’t fully grasp the language.
Which might have had something to do with the inspiration to say it.
Because he wouldn’t understand anyway.
“That was a joke,” she said quickly before he could say anything. “I mean … I wasn’t actually serious, just … uh … God! I don’t know. I’m socially awkward. It’s not unusual for me to stick my foot in my mouth.”
“Am confused. Why stick foot in mouth?”
“I’m not surprised,” Emma muttered wryly. “Let me try again—thank you for letting me know about Nye. I can’t begin to explain how much that meant to me. I had no way to find out anything and I’ve been worried sick.” And her gratitude had boiled over into stupidity.
“Ah,” Gaelen responded, nodding, clearly not really enlightened.
Or maybe not happy with that explanation?
Right! He wanted her to fall madly in love with him!
This wasn’t just fucking! It was meaningful. And not just in the sense of using it to procreate.
Emma just wished she truly understood, but, as absolutely pathetic as it was, she realized there was more truth than humor in what she’d said.
Why else had it even occurred to her to say such a thing? Even with mockery and self-depreciation, why that and not something silly?
Of course it was silly, but it also wasn’t something anybody should ever say flippantly.
Especially when they’d just had sex with a man they hadn’t known even a month—well, maybe that long.
She was deranged from her experiences?
Or maybe, she thought uncomfortably, her near death experiences had brought out something she’d been hiding from herself?
She wasn’t happy with her life, or even mostly content. She was desperate for someone to love who would love her back and she just didn’t have a clue of how to go about finding what she needed.
Then Nye had virtually landed in her lap and almost instantly won her heart, making it clear what she needed.
And then, in the blink of an eye, he was snatched away.
Mentally, she shook her head at herself. She was looking for something to soothe her sensibilities about the role she’d been forced in to—so she could pretend she wasn’t just fucking to breed for the slave masters.
It was as simple and as complicated as that.
So, yes, she supposed fear had scrambled her brains.
But it was also true that she’d developed a fondness for the men who’d taken her from her old life because she wanted to be with Nye, especially Gaelen. There was plenty there to make them loveable.
Struggling to dismiss it, she turned to Gaelen for distraction. He managed it with amazing ease, taking her to paradise again, dispelling all of her tension and sucking the energy from her so that she could fall into a black pit where life hadn’t been upended.
When she roused later to a level near consciousness, she realized that Gaelen was no longer beside her. Consternation flickered through her but she was too exhausted to simply bound up and wide awake, even if it meant a threat of some kind. Instead, she drifted closer to surfacing and then she realized that what had wakened her was the sound of splashing water.
It wasn’t the drip of a feeder line. This was … bigger.
Struggling, she managed to sit up and look around.
There was still no sign of Gaelen, but she heard the splash again and slipped off of the platform to investigate. She discovered a narrow opening at one end of the platform that was much like the one in the cell she’d occupied with Kadin.
The sound was coming from there.
She braked, unwilling to invade his privacy if he was making use of the facilities, but really it didn’t sound like that. It sounded like someone moving around in a … well something tank-like, like a bathtub. After a moment, she moved to the opening and took a quick peek.
There was a tank alright, an enormous one, but it looked nothing like a bathtub.
After a few moments, still hearing the slap of water against the sides she decided, she moved closer, shifted up on to her tiptoes and looked inside.
Gaelen was laying on the bottom with his eyes open.
“Oh my god!” Emma gasped in horrified shock, whipping a quick look around for something to help her get over the wall and into the tank.
Seeing nothing, but certain time wasn’t on Gaelen’s side, she began struggling to climb over the wall to get to him.
Abruptly, he sat up.
She nearly had a heart attack. “You’re ok?” she asked faintly, feeling as if she was about to pass out.
He frowned. “Yes.”
Emma felt her face crumple, struggled with the urge to burst into tears.
Gaelen grasped her arms. “What is wrong?”
She did cry then. “You scared me!”
He stared at her blankly. “How I scare?”
She sniffed, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “I thought you’d drowned! My god! You were just lying there!”
He looked alarmed and confused. “No can swim dis ting. No big enough.”
“Swim?” Emma blinked at him, feeling so blank at the comments that she was distracted from tears.
That question seemed to sink in. Enlightenment dawned. He looked uncomfortable. “Hirachi people lib in sea.”
Emma just stared at him, blinking, trying to make her brain function. Fins, she thought abruptly. Those odd looking flaps of skin along his forearms and calves that had reminded her of fins. They were fins.
The aliens thought she could breed with sea people? Like … mermen?
Kadin had those, too.
Not Hauk.
“I’m … uh … sorry I … uh … interrupted,” she stammered, whirling and heading back into the other room in complete disarray.
She discovered when she got there that food had been delivered, shoved through a tiny opening in the outer door. She stared at it uncomprehendingly for several moments and finally decided to ignore the immediate response of her stomach demanding it—whatever the hell it was—and climbed on the platform.
Gaelen made no attempt to follow her, struggling with his anger over her reaction to the ‘discovery’. It was a discovery for her, he reminded himself. There were many of her kind that had been taken that were very familiar with his people, but Emma was not one of them.
He should have thought about that long since, but there was no getting around the fact that he had not, and therefore he had not expected such a negative reaction to him when she learned what she had not known.
He tried to look at it from her perspective but found he could not.
He had thought that she was beautiful as soon as he had seen her, because she was not like the women of his tribe.
It was not that he did not find their women attractive. He did. There had been one that he had wanted for many seasons. But he liked that Emma was so different.
On the other hand, she was not the first of her kind that he had seen. He thought that he would have felt the same, but he could not know that.
He was the first of his kind that she had seen.
He could do nothing but give her the time and space she needed to find acceptance.
Or not.
She was sitting on the sleeping platform when he returned to the cell, which surprised him, but he was not a fool to take that as an invitation or even encouragement. She had chosen it because it was more comfortable than the floor.
And ignored the food that had been brought that was their only meal of the day.
And that did not bode particularly well.
Pretending he did not notice that she had stiffened when he came in, he strode past her and collected the ‘bread’. He supposed, wryly, that they
were fortunate that it was mostly tasteless. It could have tasted horrible and it would still have been all that they had to eat.
Very carefully, he halved it and moved to the edge of the platform and extended his hand with her half.
She simply stared at it for several moments until he had begun to think she just did not want to come close enough to take it, but finally she reached for it.
“This is half,” she said once she had looked at it.
“Yes.”
She looked at him. “I don’t need half. You should have more. You’re bigger. You need more.”
He shook his head. “Am ok.”
Emma gave him a stern look. “If this is all we get, you definitely need more to keep up your strength up. I wouldn’t be much help in a fight,” she finished, only half joking.
Amusement flickered in his eyes. “Emma strong, brave woman.”
She shook her head. “I’m not delusional. I’m not strong or brave. My first choice would always be to run.”
His gaze flickered over her face. “Protect Nye. Fight with just hands.”
Emma felt her throat close. “Tried,” she said flatly.
“We also.”
Discomfort flickered through her. Instead of arguing more about who was stronger and braver, she broke her piece in half, climbed off the platform and held it out until he took it, and then settled beside him on the floor and began munching on the other half. “This wouldn’t be half bad if it was something else,” she muttered.
Gaelen chuckled.
The sound made Emma smile in return, lightening her mood.
The next sound she heard snatched that moment away as quickly as it had come.
It was the hiss of gas.
Emma knew exactly what it meant.
And she hadn’t had a chance to smooth things over with Gaelen!
She whipped a quick look at him, and managed to slip an arm around his waist before she fell down into the black pit.
When she came to, she was on the platform again, alone.
Disoriented, she tried to recall if she’d been lying on the platform when she passed out. She couldn’t, but she did remember that she’d been with Gaelen.
Birth of a King Page 9
