by Raven Dark
“Nothing will happen here, but if anything goes wrong, we will protect you.”
I shot a look over my shoulder at him before I’d thought about it. What would go wrong? I’d have asked if not for this infernal muzzle.
Z’pheer rubbed my back and continued wending his way through the crowd toward a large table near the very back near a set of double doors.
Ugh. His protectiveness was such a contrast to Malek’s earlier treatment, it spun my head a little. Always the nice one, and yet, after Malek, I couldn’t bring myself to let my guard down even with Z’pheer.
Someone near the back whistled over the cacophony as we approached. Malek waved us over from his seat.
From beside him, Raul looked up at Z’pheer when we stopped at their table. “What the fost took you so long? We’ve been waiting for you for half an hour.” His eyes collided with mine, and a mocking light flashed in them. I wondered if he could see the anger that immediately flared up in me as soon as I saw him.
“I had a few patients to see to in the shelter.” Z’pheer grinned at his impatience. “Some of us have real work to do.”
The crowd of uniformed guards sitting around the table burst into laughter, some of them elbowing Raul. Others banged metal mugs on the table.
“I see wearing the hammak hasn’t dulled your temper any, Majesty.” Z’pheer nodded to the large medallion that rested between Raul’s huge pecs, the red stone gleaming in the torchlight.
The men laughed again.
Raul’s mouth flattened in irritation. “I see my wearing said hammak hasn’t made you any less of a mouthpiece.” His grin around the table said he was joking. He whipped the medallion from his neck and slapped it onto the middle of the table with a clack. “And I am not the Hadu here, so speak to me like an equal and have a seat.”
Fuck, he was over-enunciating his words, talking a little louder than necessary, and some of his words ran together.
He was drunk. Deep seated fears flooded up, and the trembling in my hands worsened.
Z’pheer walked over to an empty seat beside the robed man I recognized as Sashel from Raul’s father’s vigil. He hauled me into his lap, wrapping his arm around my waist. This put him across from Raul and Malek and, unfortunately, left me staring right at Raul.
His eyes trapped mine, no less imprisoning for their being slightly unfocused. I tore my eyes from him. He reached across the table and took my chin, directing my eyes to his. “You’d like to tear one off of me right now, wouldn’t you, nayna?”
That was the understatement of the century. Fuck, I hated this muzzle. The minute I could do it without getting my ass bruised, I’d burn the thing.
There was nothing else to do but wait until he released me. He did, then shuffled the papers scattered across the table in front of him. Most of them looked like various satellite images taken of different areas of the planet. He addressed the men at the table.
“All right, before I become too inebriated to think straight, tell me about this weapon my father mentioned, Kandar.”
A guard with a salt and pepper beard chugged from a large tankard in his hand and leaned forward. He must have been Kandar. “Raul, like I told your father, it doesn’t exist. There is no all-powerful weapon that can destroy the Rith. There never has been.”
“Then why would my father mention it?”
Kandar shared an awkward look with the other guards around the table, a look one gives when they don’t know how to explain a painful truth.
“Your Majesty, you know what a Rith bite does. It eats away at the brain.”
“Are you saying my father was crazy? Talking nonsense?” Raul snapped. I hated the pain that flashed in his eyes.
“Raul,” Malek said carefully.
Raul’s eyes went to the ceiling. He closed them and dropped his big shoulders, then reached for the hammak and slipped it back on. “All right. Let’s say it was the poison talking. Now what? There is another way. There has to be.”
“I didn’t know we were having a meeting. Why didn’t anyone call me?” Laric’s deep, patronizing voice drew my eyes to the far end of the table. Not having noticed his arrival, I looked at him without thinking, and he winked.
Great.
He clapped Malek on the back. “Hey there, little brother. Still hanging with the rabble, I see.”
Malek shot a glare at him, whether for the wink, his words, or his patting him on the back, I couldn’t tell.
Z’pheer must have picked up on my unease, because his palm massaged my belly, soothing. “What did I tell you, ra alia?” His breath fanned my ear. “We will protect you.”
Whether I liked it or not, the heat and strength of his body seeped into me, making me feel as protected as he’d promised. I relaxed, leaning my head on his shoulder.
He kissed my ear. “Good girl. Focus on me.”
“Don’t worry, Laric,” Raul muttered. He drank from his mug and wiped his mouth. “If we ever need you, you will be called.”
If it was possible for me to snort through a muzzle, I would have.
Laric signaled to a yellow-skinned alien server for a drink and then ambled around the table to Raul’s end. “I see congratulations are in order.” He eyed the hammak on Raul’s neck with greedy eyes. He dropped to one knee, head bowed with a mocking flair. “How convenient that you showed up just as the King breathed his last breath, Hadu Raul.”
Wow. Rude much?
The entire tavern seemed to have gone silent, expectation filling the room with tension that could have been sliced with a laser sword.
“I appreciate your fealty, Laric.” Raul smirked, waving his hand. “You may rise.”
Snickers rippled.
Laric stomped off. As soon as he was gone, the noise in the tavern resumed. Kandar leaned toward Raul, his voice lowered so that I barely heard him. “About your earlier question. A representative from the Order will be arriving tomorrow to pay respects to your father. You can ask him about the weapon when he gets here. If it does exist, he’ll know.”
A loud cacophony of men’s whoops and shouts carried across the room, drowning out whatever Raul said. I stole a glance toward the large table filled with other guards and bare-chest warriors. My eyes nearly fell out of my head.
A woman, the only one in a room full of more than a hundred men, walked through the crowd toward the table. She was the strangest woman I’d ever seen, but she was also stunningly beautiful, in an alien sort of way. There was nothing gay about me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her and only partly because she was all but buck naked.
Obscenely long hair the color of pink cotton candy twirled around her lithe, toned body, along with her only clothing—gossamer-thin scarves that wound around her in ribbons of gold. The gold stood out against pale, smooth skin the color of aquamarine. She laced her arms above her head, her supple hips and flat belly moving to the rhythm of a soft, seductive drum beat that pounded from somewhere in the room.
There was something mesmerizing about her, and I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Every man’s eyes were on her, all except Raul who only glanced irritably back at her, and Malek who shook his head and put his eyes right back on his drink.
And Z’pheer, who was running his nose through my hair.
I swallowed, uncomfortable with the heat spreading between my legs, watching her. I wasn’t attracted to her, it was more like… I didn’t know what it was.
“Do we have enough provisions for the people staying here, Kandar?” Raul’s voice drifted to my ears.
Kandar replied, but I didn’t process it. The woman had wrapped her scarf around one of the men’s necks. She swayed between his legs, slow, seductive movements meant to draw the eye. The men watched her, transfixed as if she were a magnet.
Heat flooded every inch of me.
“Fascinating to watch, isn’t it, the way people react to her?” Z’pheer whispered.
I swallowed and nodded. I wished I could have asked, what is she? There was something unn
aturally seductive about her, a pull even I felt, deep in my soul. I’d have died to touch her. She reminded me of Vela, the Orion Green Girl from the old Star Trek show.
“She’s called a Tara N’a.” Z’pheer’s husky voice washed over me. “A Tara woman’s seductive powers can draw in every man who sees her. Almost any man. They border on magic.”
Like a siren, I thought. Except they lured them with something else other than song. Whatever that something was, I felt a sudden, irrational jealousy toward her, realizing Z’pheer was watching her.
“See the way she moves? She isn’t trained to do that. It’s like instinct. She draws women, too.”
But I noticed Malek and Raul had no interest in her. They’d seen her, but they weren’t staring and drooling like every other man in the joint. I looked back at Z’pheer and felt a bolt of shame. I’d looked to see if he was ogling her like every other man in the room.
His lips pulled into a knee-weakening smile. He pushed a lock of hair behind my ear. “You have nothing to fear from the Tara N’a, ra alia. She doesn’t compare to you.”
How was that possible? If she was supposed to have such a powerful draw to any male around, how could he have any interest in me while she was there? I wasn’t ugly by any means, but that alien woman was beyond gorgeous even without her power, like a goddess.
Unable to speak, I raised a brow at him.
He chuckled and ran his nose along my neck. “Tara women have no power over a Bonded male. I’ll explain to you later,” he added, apparently not realizing Malek had explained the Bond to me.
I was about to shake my head, the only way I had to tell him I already knew, but the dancing woman cried out, riveting my attention to the table across the room.
My heart leaped into my throat. One of the men had grabbed her, thrown her across the table, and now pinned her there with his hand on the middle of her back so that her naked breasts were squashed against the table. Two other men were closing in, stroking already hard cocks that jutted out of their pants.
Wolves closing in on the kitten in their midst. My throat went dry, panic seizing my chest.
“Relax, alia. She was made for this. Tara women enjoy pain almost as much as they enjoy sex.”
Was he sure about that? The man holding her down was tying her hands behind her back with her own scarf. He kicked her legs apart.
My chest rose and fell on heavy breaths, the air huffing against the muzzle that suddenly felt like a steel trap. My sex was also aching. The men around our table were still talking about the Rith; I heard their words, but muffled, as if down a long tunnel, through the blood hammering in my ears.
Z’pheer’s fingers brushed slowly up my leg and toward my thigh. “Trust me. Just watch. I wanted you here. I wanted you to see this.”
But I didn’t want to watch. All three of those barbarians were huge, and none of them looked gentle. The one behind her had already thrust into her, pounding her with slow, measured thrusts. His eyes were closed, his expression pure rapture. The woman clawed at the table, her face contorted in what I thought was a look of pain. She was whimpering, small, fragile sounds that reminded me of suffering animal.
I tried to turn my eyes away, but Z’pheer held my chin, keeping eyes on the debauchery across the room. I thought I heard Laric shout something at Raul, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Just watch. Trust me.” Z’pheer’s other hand lifted the hem of my dress far enough that his hand slid between my legs easily.
The barbarian continued to thrust into the woman in front of him, hard, demanding thrusts, his grunts filling my ears like the beat of a drum.
She was still whimpering. Then I saw her eyes roll back and the pain fled from her face. Her eyes glazed over with passion, and her ass rocked into him. My sex was soaked, my nipples poking at the cloth that covered them. Z’pheer’s fingers stroked my aching clit.
The woman cried out, pure pleasure. The barbarian pounded her fast and hard, every stroke making me hotter.
“Not all of us are heartless monsters, ra alia.” I could hear his smile. “Sometimes women like what we do to them as much as we enjoy doing it.”
The ache between my legs mounted until I was rutting against his touch. He slid his hand away, and I moaned at the loss.
“There is a fine line between pleasure and pain,” Z’pheer purred. “Often there is no difference between the face a woman wears when she’s in pain, and when she orgasms.”
Fuck, what was he doing, reading my mind? I could feel the experience pounding off of him, years of knowledge in the fine art of bringing a woman to the heights of bliss.
The barbarian came with a furious thrust, and the woman screamed, thrashing into him, chasing her high. Damn. I’d never seen anything so sexy.
Z’pheer’s hand released my chin and he brushed my neck with his hot lips. “Your life could be like that, alia. Endless nights of nothing but pleasure at our hands, if only you would accept us as your V’irs and let go of your fear. Your hate.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder, unsure how to feel about him, about what I’d seen, about any of this.
“When will you let go, ra alia?” he rasped. Then he squeezed my hip and set me on my feet, standing up. I could feel that the question was rhetorical, left for me to think on.
The fog around me lifted, and I realized everyone else was getting up from the table. I wondered if Z’pheer had deliberately distracted me from the men talk.
I jerked the slave’s dress in place and tried not to notice the mocking looks every man at the table gave me, including a watching Raul.
When would I let go of my hatred, my fear? To that, I had no answer. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I could afford to. Malek was right; it was my armor, my protection. Without it, what did I have left?
“We’ll meet first thing in the morning before the Order’s official gets here, you two.” Raul nodded to Z’pheer and then Malek. Then he turned to me and cradled my chin with his big palm, instantly snapping me out of my dangerous thoughts. His fingers tightened there, bringing my gaze up to his. His eyes danced, sending my anger with him flooding back full force. By the way his lips quirked, he must have seen the anger all over my face.
“Have her brought to my chambers, Z’pheer. She wants to claw my eyes out, I’m sure. I’m looking forward to it.”
He left without another word, and my blood cooled as if the words were ice water splashed on me.
Well, shit.
If I was nervous about confronting Raul before, it was nothing compared to how I felt when Z’pheer escorted me down the halls of the shelter toward Raul’s chambers.
Z’pheer kept his hand on the small of my back the way he always did. There’d been times when his presence soothed me, but right then, it did nothing for the unease spreading through my belly like a poison.
Or the trembling in my hands.
Twice, I tensed in the hall, ready to turn around and to somehow try to appeal to him, to tell him I wasn’t going to be alone with Raul now. He must have sensed it, because both times, the pressure of his hand increased as he continued toward the suite Raul apparently stayed in.
It was just as well. I couldn’t avoid Raul forever. There was too much that needed to be said.
Don’t be a coward, Danika. He can’t do any worse to you than he’s already done. You’re too valuable for that.
I shivered.
The truth was, even if Raul didn’t listen, even if it didn’t stop him from carrying out his plan to force me into having his child, he had to know how I felt. Where we stood. I had to be strong and face him.
At a junction in the corridors, a guard met us and whispered in Z’pheer’s ear, gesturing to a set of doors down one hall. Z’pheer nodded and escorted me to them. Another guard waiting there admitted us through the double doors to the lavish suite where we’d seen Raul’s father. Where his father had died. The same hush laid over the rooms, as if the silence of the man’s final hour had seeped out into the rest of the
rooms.
Memories of my mother’s slow and painful death, of her pale face, her frail hand in mine, flooded up, and I shut them down, along with the heavy cloud of sympathy for Raul that rose up.
If I let myself feel bad for him, I wouldn’t be able to stay angry, and if I didn’t stay angry, fear would take over.
At the double doors to the bedroom portion of the suite, Z’pheer raised his fist to knock, but stopped. Unable to speak with the damn muzzle on my face, I raised a brow at him. Then I realized why he hadn’t knocked.
Voices carried from the room, hushed and gruff with anger. One sounded like Raul, and the other…
“I should have expected this from you, Raul. This is just so typical of my brother, and of you.”
Laric. His voice, so much like Malek’s, but harsher somehow, filled the room with a loathing so intense it made me stiffen where I stood. Loathing and something else I couldn’t put a name to.
Raul responded, but his rumble was so low I couldn’t make it out beyond the unmistakable tone of controlled anger.
“Come on,” Z’pheer said quietly, leading me over to a long bench a short distance from the doors. “Let’s wait over here.”
Since there was nothing else I could do, I followed him, but another guard came up to him and pulled him aside. Z’pheer kept an eye on me at first, but then seemed to get lost in the conversation, nodding to whatever the guard said.
Instead of sitting, I paced in front of the bench, too restless to relax. Laric was speaking again.
“First, you abdicate the throne when you know there is no one else to wear the hammak, dragging my brother off, and for what? To join the Order on one of your idiotic crusades?”
“Watch yourself, Laric. Malek may be too blind to see what you are, but I—”
“And then what do you do? You disappear for two seasons, right when a war with those yellow-eyed bastards breaks out again, with your father sick. You abandoned your people, Raul. And for what? To get a piece of Gerthling ass?”
