The Breaking

by Imogen Keeper

  He tossed his boots to the side. Rose briefly to tug his pants down. The hard planes of his body shifted and moved with each economical movement. Familiar, predictable even, in a safe and comfortable sort of way. Her mate.

  Unperturbed by her eyes on him, he moved with animal grace to step into the pool. He didn’t reach for her, though, as she’d expected. Instead, he leaned against the ledge. “I’m sorry, Feola.”

  She blinked. “For what?”

  “I shouldn’t have let that happen. I should have protected y—”

  “You don’t have to protect me, Ajax.”

  “I’m your mate. I do.”

  “Y—”

  “That’s who I am, and I’m not going to change. Don’t want to.” His eyes were as hard and as determined as she’d ever seen them. Steam curled spirals in the air between them.

  “B—”

  “No buts. It’s a fact. You’ve proven you can take care of yourself. But you shouldn’t have had to kill that man. It should have been me. That’s on me. That’s not your fault. I’m trained to handle this. You aren’t. It was my job to protect you. It’s my shame to bear that you were forced to protect me.”

  “Shame? What do you think you should have done?”

  “Something. Anything. I failed you.” Ajax was as calm as ever, but self-recrimination weighted his words.

  “You were tied down. You didn’t fail me. I don’t blame you.” The water lapped against the tiled edges of the pool as she sliced her hand out hard, emphasizing her point.

  “You should. Because then you wouldn’t blame yourself.”

  “I don’t blame myself.” It was true. I don’t blame myself. “I don’t blame myself,” she said again.

  He cocked his head, a knowing smile lurking at the corner of his lips. “Finally you see the light.”

  “You did that on purpose.”

  One of his shoulders lifted in a lazy shrug.

  “You manipulated me?” She pushed water at him, and it splashed up his chin, earning her a laugh.

  “You needed manipulating.”

  She glanced down to her shaking hands. “That man….”

  “It was him or us, Feola. You made a decision that saved our lives. Would you blame me, if I had killed him?

  No. She wouldn’t.

  He tilted his head to the side. “Then why are you harder on yourself than you would be on me?”

  She didn’t have an answer for that, but her heart felt a bit lighter. So she crossed the little pool into the circle of his open arms.

  His grip was hard as he pulled her into him. She sighed as her legs wrapped around his waist, bouncing against him in the water. Her skin came alive and tingled at the contact. The flesh between her thighs grew even hotter than the water. The needs of the Bonding were there, but not as strong as the pure lust that tore through her core.

  He cradled her head in his palm and tilted her head back. “I’m going to make you talk to me about Rennie.”

  When she tried to look away, he held her still. “You did nothing wrong. But you need to talk about it with me. You can’t push it aside.”

  “Yes, Healer Willo.” Her words were mocking, but she was careful to keep her tone gentle.

  His eyes flared with something. Lust? A small smile appeared at the corner of his lips. “It’s very important, Feola, that as your professional medical practitioner, you submit to my regular evaluations.”

  His hard length bobbed against her belly. Definitely lust. She bit her lip. “Does that include physical examinations?”

  He nodded solemnly and pressed closer, his thickness throbbing against her. Her mouth went dry.

  “Is something troubling you?”

  It was her turn to nod. She held his gaze. “Something doesn’t feel right. I think I need you to touch me and make sure everything is okay.”

  He coughed out a gruff, happy noise. “What seems to be the problem?”

  “Well. I’m all hot. And ummm…” She pushed her hips against him. “Sort of achy. Throbbing.”

  His brows tightened, and he released a protracted sigh as she moved into him again, tracing her hand up the silky skin of his cock, squeezing until a low grumbling purr left his lips. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It doesn’t feel good,” she whispered against his lips.

  “Oh, yeah it does.” He bucked against her hands.

  “No, it feels like I need something.” She stroked her thumb over the head, slippery with serum. “I need—I don’t know. I think I need…”

  His face tightened, and his hands on her hips clenched.

  “Healer Willo, I think I need your help. Can I show you where I need you?”

  “Mmmm. Yes. I think that would be wise.”

  Closing her fingers around his hand, she dragged it up over her breasts. His roughly callused thumb grazed her nipples, hardened in the cool air.

  “It hurts here?”

  “Not hurts, but they feel hot. But that’s not where I really need you.”

  “Oh?”

  She dragged his hand lower, down her belly, letting his fingers tickle her skin, under the surface of the water, over the rise of her pelvis, between her thighs.

  “Here? This is where you feel uncomfortable?”

  She nodded, enjoying the heat in his heavy-lidded gaze.

  His fingers parted her folds, and it was her turn to drop her head back and writhe under his touch.

  “You do feel hot,” he whispered, wiggling his fingers. “And so soft.” The word was the barest of caresses, drifting across her skin.

  She nodded, rising again, smiling when the muscles of his chest bounced in response. “I think I need you deeper.”

  He pushed his fingers in farther, hooking them when her eyes drifted closed.

  “Much deeper.” A smile danced across his lips. “Hmmm…. I think I need to use a… longer”—he laughed—“instrument to evaluate properly.”

  She smiled widely.

  “Yes, please, Healer Willo.” She lifted her hips and guided his cock inside, where she was wet and ready, and nothing had ever felt half as good as him filling her. She dropped her forehead to his as they fit together. His hands stroked down her hips, settling at the crook behind her knees, pulling her closer.

  She lifted up so slowly she was pretty sure they both stopped breathing. And slammed her hips down.

  “Fuuuuuuck,” he panted.

  She laughed. She couldn’t help it. He looked so sweet and defenseless at the moment. His head dropped back, the sharp ridge of his Adam’s apple bulging in his neck, his muscles all rippling as he struggled to hold his body still.

  She lifted up again and dropped back down, taking him deep inside.

  He groaned again, and his eyes popped open.

  His hands tightened on her thighs, stroked up over her bottom, wrapping tight around her body, squeezing her tightly in his arms. He claimed her lips with his own.

  “Well, healer?” she asked a moment later, as she slid her body up his again, ever so slowly.

  “Huh?”

  “Is it serious?”

  A ghost of a smile passed his lips. “I think it might require a bit of internal penetration. Frequent internal penetration. But you should be”—she brought her hips back down—“fine.” The last word sounded more like a whimper.

  “So I’ll live?”

  His eyes widened at that, and his hand snaked up her spine to cup her neck again, holding her still so he could guide her breast to his mouth. When he sucked her nipple, she gasped.

  There was no more talking after that.

  About an hour later—with hair still damp from their bath, scented like herbal soap, and feeling cleaner than she had in days—she donned a loose black shirt and pants she found in the lockers. They were enormous. She had to roll up the waist, sleeves, and legs many times, but they were clean.

  Ajax, too, had donned the Vestige’s black clothes, but on him, they hugged his body like a second skin. The ship’s overh
ead lights reflected off the dip of his spine, the thick muscles of his arms. He was a beautiful man, her mate.

  The thought sent tingles through her. Warm. And safe. Sweet. Not the bad kind. Not the warning tingles she’d come to expect when she’d thought of Utto.

  Ajax met her eye from where he stood conversing with Torum, who was shifting his shoulders back and forth irritably. Maybe he’d felt her across their Bond. His gaze softened, and her heart clutched in her chest.

  “Show me how to use the communication system.”

  Torum pursed his lips. “Take off these cuffs.”

  “No.”

  “Then I won’t show you the comm system.” Torum cocked his head to the side, smugness incarnate.

  Ajax lifted his shoulders briefly. “No problem. No comm system. No water. No food.”

  The smile dropped away, and Torum’s face went grim. “Migane.”

  In the end, Torum did show Ajax the comm system, and Ajax did change the shackles. He claimed they were too uncomfortable to be effective and spent some time experimenting with knots before deciding a fabric tie behind his back would be restrictive enough, provided Torum was in their presence. He’d have to be tied down if they left him alone.

  It was a compromise of sorts.

  So while Ajax entered in the codes to reach Tam on Triannon, Torum stretched his shoulders and Feola chewed her fingernails.

  It took a while, but when Tam’s grinning face filled the flat screen of the Vestigi communication panel, her knees wobbled slightly. She gripped the back of the pilot’s seat Ajax sat in and released a huge exhalation of pent-up air.

  Nissa pushed Tam aside, smiling. “Feola. Thank the gods, you’re okay. Come home. We have a place ready for you.”

  Tears burned at the back of Feola’s eyes. She could barely manage more than a nod at the Queen Designate.

  “We’ve been in contact with Argentus,” Nissa continued. “They’ve been informed that we claim Feola as our own, and you, Ajax, as her mate.”

  Ajax’s blond head bobbed. Feola dropped her hand down to his shoulder and squeezed.

  “How did they respond?” he asked.

  Tam shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. They can go to war with us, or they can let us keep you legally. They won’t go to war with us.”

  “But,” Nissa continued, “they can keep our courts locked up for years. Senator Upranimus isn’t giving up.”

  “Our ship is no longer flyable.” Ajax explained briefly how they had crashed.

  “I’ll contact your brother. He’s on his way here now. He’ll come pick you up and bring you here. He’s got a woman with him.”

  “A woman?”

  “Yeah. Your father made a political alliance. She’s the daughter of some senator, some big opponent of Upranimus. They’re engaged in exchange for his support.”

  Ajax blew out a long breath. “I can’t let Spiro do that.”

  Tam smirked. “You really think he minds?”

  Feola’s face heated. How would Ajax answer? When the silence became too hard to handle, she spoke up to cover her embarrassment. “So what happens next?”

  “We start working on a case against Utto’s family.” Tam’s voice was hard and dead even. “You have any information?”

  Ajax glanced back at Feola and raised a brow.

  She squeezed his shoulder. “Yes. He used a drug on me called septusine. That’s how he coerced me into marrying him in the first place.”

  Tam and Nissa exchanged a glance. He shook his head. She frowned and made sympathetic noises. “Never heard of it.”

  Tam looked pissed. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Basically. It’s a serum-based, mind-altering drug that was made during the Plague of Days when all our women fell ill,” Ajax explained.

  She clenched her hands. She would do this. She would face Utto again, and when she did, she would bring his family to their knees. “And there’s more.”

  Everyone looked surprised, even Torum leaning insolently against the wall, hands cuffed at his waist.

  “They’re kidnapping women. They’re selling them as slaves. Rennie was one of the kings of Pilan.”

  “A scum-king?” Ajax muttered.

  “Yes.”

  “What?” Tam asked, and Ajax explained about the politics on Pilan.

  Everyone stared at each other.

  “So now we build our case.”

  Feola tightened her grip on Ajax’s shoulder, shamelessly sucking comfort from the contact.

  It’s almost over. We just need to get home to Triannon. We’ll be safe then.

  41

  Something special.

  The next five days were the happiest of Feola’s life. Most of her time was spent wrapped around Ajax. They had problems. The threat of a showdown with Utto’s uncle looming over them. A prisoner to deal with. But all of it faded away when she was with Ajax.

  Torum dismantled the brig. Headbutted the camera, kicked apart the bed and chair, flooded the toilet, and generally made so much noise that they let him out and tied him down to a cot in the passageway. But not even his glowering eyes could dampen her spirits.

  The two of them existed in halcyon bliss.

  Their wayward captive was relatively good natured, voluntarily presenting his hands to be handcuffed to the roof or beneath his body or to the bed, depending on the time of day and his needs.

  For Feola, it was the first time since her childhood that she’d been able to open up, without limitations, to another person. There was no doubt with Ajax. No hesitation. He gave, and if she offered, he took with unabashed joy.

  There was no sense that if she withdrew or resisted, he would use his superior strength against her. No sense that if she were to offend him by disagreeing, he would exact vengeance. If anything, she knew it was virtually impossible for her to displease him.

  He treated her as if she were something rare, and profound and beautiful. The memories of Utto’s hands and Rennie’s blood slowly receded. She and Ajax spoke of it constantly, it seemed, about the man they left behind in the copse of lavender trees, and the one she’d left bleeding on the bathroom floor on Romeo-Two.

  Ajax was determined. Gentle, but implacable. He made her repeat over and over that she’d done nothing wrong, that she’d defended herself, defended him, saved their lives, that she’d made the only possible choice in an impossible situation until she was forced to believe it.

  If she hadn’t done what she did, they would likely be chained on Torum’s ship, headed toward Utto, toward a tribunal meeting that would likely see Ajax sentenced to a life of penury in Insuractius, and her… she’d probably be turned over to Utto.

  So they talked. And when they weren’t talking, they made love. And life was simple. And easy.

  After five days of idyll, the skies erupted in stormless thunder, and a great white ship descended from the heavens to settle on the powdery dust beside Torum’s ship.

  The hatch opened as the dust settled, and a man paused, looking so much like Ajax that she gasped. His hair was darker, not the pale blond she’d come to love, but more a burnished gold. But he moved with the same cool grace and carried his head with the same proud ease. This was Spiro. Ajax’s older brother.

  A woman stepped behind him, as though she weren’t entirely sure where to stand. Tall, with warm blond hair and rich honey-colored skin.

  Ajax closed his hand around Feola’s and pulled her forward to meet them.

  “Ajax. Insuffairtus shyanumay,” Spiro said, pulling him into a gruff hug. It was a greeting Feola knew but had never heard said aloud. It translated roughly to Truly, the sun shines upon us and was an old Argenti expression of joy at meeting.

  “Spiro.” Ajax returned the greeting. They smacked each other’s backs. “This is my mate, Feola.”

  She rushed forward to take Spiro’s outstretched arm and grasp his forearm as she’d learned on Romeo-Two, the Argenti greeting of respect.

  A vague tremor danced across the back of her n
eck at the proximity to another man, but she forced it away, turning to smile at the woman beside him. Spiro smiled at her warmly, his eyes crinkling in the corners just like Ajax’s did.

  “This is Klymeni, my future-mate,” he gestured proudly at the woman, who inclined her head, a reserved smile flickering across her lips. “Klymeni, this is Feola, mate of my brother.”

  Feola hadn’t met many Argenti women, but Klymeni seemed almost fragile and very scared, with pale, watchful gray eyes.

  She clasped Feola’s forearm, then Ajax’s, with a dignified, if distant grace. Feola had assumed, from her experience with Samila back at Romeo-Two, that all Argenti women were open, sweet and fun. She should have known better. There weren’t many of them, but they’d be as varied as the Trianni, the Vestige, or the Argenti males.

  Klymeni seemed… distant. Her icy gaze drifted over Torum, hulking in the distance.

  Spiro glanced at him, too. “What the hell are we going to do with him?”

  She and Ajax glanced at one another. It was something they’d discussed at length.

  “We have to bring him to Triannon for now.”

  Spiro scowled. Klymeni didn’t speak.

  Torum grunted behind her, and Ajax sent him a filthy glare. Feola bit her lip against the bubble of nervous laughter in the back of her throat.

  “I can’t see any way around it. I don’t want to kill him. And we can’t leave him here. He’ll just follow us.”

  “I’ll just go home. You can trust me.”

  Ajax smiled at that. “We’ll take him with us. It’s the only option. We’ll figure out safe passage for him some other way.”

  Spiro’s brow furrowed, and after a moment, his teeth flashed in a white grin that made her love him, just a little. He looked so much like Ajax. “I doubt they’ll let him go. We’ll have to turn him in on Triannon. Argentus will intervene. We’re already asking enough trying to get you two asylum.”

  Torum argued.

  And so it went.

  An hour later, Feola was buckled into a ship, wedged between Ajax and Klymeni as the ship geared up for takeoff, thrilled beyond reason to leave Araa-Ara behind.