by Jory Strong
She detoured from her clothing and their eyes followed, moving ahead of her to see what had captured her attention. Next to him Zyan’s breath caught in surprise and excitement only a second before Kaeden’s did.
Chapter Six
“We are three times blessed this day,” Zyan said.
There was no denying it. Not only had they gained a woman, one with a talent admired in every tribe, but now, moments before leaving the oasis, a nighttime gajaalo plant had risen from the sand and unfurled as if to offer a fruit to replace the one they’d consumed earlier.
Not bothering to dress, they hurried toward Karena, reaching her just as she knelt in front of the exotic plant. “Is it edible?” she asked without looking up.
“Yes,” Zyan answered, crouching next to her. “But it is rare on Adjara and highly valued. We’ll take it back with us, so it can be used by others as we used it earlier today, just before we saw you.”
Kaeden squatted at her other side, the position making him aware of his testicles hanging heavy and full between his thighs, of the way his cock was erect once again, its wet tip touched to his abdomen.
Worry returned, that she would expect it to be this way always. He rested his hand on her shoulder, more for his sake than for hers, because he feared disappointing her. “The fruit is given to pairs who are also lovers, when they wish to add a female to their joining. It’s a powerful aphrodisiac. Had we not eaten the fruit a short time before your arrival, neither Zyan nor I would have been able to pleasure you as we did today.”
She went rigid beneath his hand, validating his worry and fear with the speed in which she stood, pulling away from him. “I understand.”
Karena turned, biting back a sob. Fighting not to reveal just how shattered she was at Kaeden’s admission.
“I need to dress,” she said, pain crashing through her in huge waves, a never-ending surf building with each step she took.
What a fool she’d been. To hope. To dream. To believe they desired her, and because of it, expect a happy future with Zyan and Kaeden in it.
If premonition was a lesser talent, then it was a gift she wouldn’t easily trust again. One she’d be wary of in the future, understanding now the terrible pain that could be hidden in fantasy.
She reached her clothing, hurriedly putting the stolen shirt and pants on, hiding her nakedness, though covering herself didn’t eradicate the sense of having been stripped bare, of having the deepest parts of herself exposed.
Her sisters’ taunts returned, striking her more deeply on Adjara than they ever had on Qumaar.
You’re too short to be pleasing to a man.
Your breasts are too small and the sight of your bare mound is enough to wither a man’s cock.
Unless he’s wealthy enough to afford the most potent aphrodisiacs, that is.
Memories of Ebann melded with images of Melor’s half-closed eyes and the sick suspicion he would imagine her as young boy in order to secure an heir from her. They tainted the erotic scene of moments ago, bringing a fresh wave of pain rather than the sweet remembrance of intense pleasure.
On her hands and knees, perhaps Kaeden and Zyan could pretend they were mounting each other. Or if they were truly bisexual, then with the front of her body unseen, she might well be another woman, any woman. A fantasy in the dark or behind closed eyes, created in their minds in those times when an aphrodisiac wasn’t available so they could get her pregnant.
A sob escaped and she pressed her knuckles to her lips to prevent another. She’d felt so powerfully feminine when they’d stroked her belly and fondled her breasts as they spoke of her carrying their sons.
She swallowed her tears rather than let them fall. Hunger turned to gnawing upset in her stomach. She was nothing more than an empty vessel to them. What she’d thought was lust in their eyes when they looked at her, what she’d dared believe was true desire, was nothing more than a drug-induced state of arousal.
For an instant she wondered if everything had been staged. From the smugglers jettisoning the pod over Adjara to the wild chase across the desert and the watching tribesmen.
She shook the thought off. Why would they bother with such elaborate methods?
This was a closed world and she was trapped here—
Unless she could find a way to use her talent, so its value exceeded that of her womb to the men who called this planet home.
Her focus sharpened on the mountains, determination suppressing chaotic emotion.
There would be time to grieve the loss of a dream, to recover from the devastation and the strike directly to the core of her being. She’d survived life on Qumaar knowing she had little value to her family. She’d survived the humiliation of having a sex tutor hired for her, and the taunts and insults and insecurities that had come as a result of it. She’d survive this as well.
A small glance to the side and she saw Zyan and Kaeden talking quietly. They’d yet to don their robes and despite everything, she ached at seeing the moonlight caressing their skin, longed for what had seemed so pure and real before physical hunger arrived in the wake of carnal.
They stood close together, their cocks hardened, touching. Zyan’s hands on Kaeden’s shoulders as he spoke with intensity though his words didn’t carry to her.
Karena forced herself to look away from them, to take the first step toward the stallion. She reached for him with her mind because his speed and stamina made him her choice this time. If she was to make her escape to the mountains, now was the time, when Kaeden and Zyan were absorbed, no longer aware of her.
“You see things to worry about when there are none,” Zyan said. “She’s hungry, that’s all. Finding the fruit but being unable to eat it only made her want to hurry to the feast we’ve promised her.”
Kaeden glanced down at the red fruit now in his hand. If only honor didn’t demand they surrender it to the tribe. “She’s disappointed, upset at having learned we won’t be able to pleasure her in the same manner as we have today. What do we know of the men on Qumaar? What if they’re better endowed than we are? What if it’s normal for them to be able to mate constantly with their women?”
Zyan moved a little closer, so his cock rubbed and pressed against Kaeden’s. “We pleased her. I didn’t mistake either the joy or the satisfaction I saw in her eyes when she looked at us, when she touched and kissed and took us inside her.”
“I thought I saw the same, but what if it was all an act so she could gain our trust and make her escape?”
A fist clamped around Zyan’s heart, creating pain equal to what he heard in Kaeden’s voice. “No. I don’t believe that.”
“Then why is she sending cautious glances our way as she approaches the stallion?”
Zyan looked toward Karena and felt his throat tighten on a protest, a sound of denial. Surely he wasn’t mistaken. She had found pleasure with them.
He would have bet his life on it. He’d already bet his heart on it.
She was meant to be theirs. They’d sought a vision and seen her in it.
And then she’d come to them. Dropped from the sky like a divine gift.
“Do we let her go?” Kaeden asked, sounding uncertain, hollow with the pain of loss and betrayal. Hurt and upset by the strike to his masculinity at having their third no longer desire them after learning the truth about their prowess.
Zyan swallowed, the ache in his chest moving upward. “Do you want to let her go?”
“No. I thought love had begun to blossom. It seems I was mistaken. But even so, I’d prefer to do what I can to ensure her happiness.”
“Even if it means we take her back to the tribe and allow her to choose another pair rather than making our union official?”
Kaeden closed his eyes, trying desperately to close his mind to the thought of seeing her with others, of hearing her cries of release through tent walls.
If they let her go, she’d find her fate in the mountains. She’d become a member of the Zehren tribe when she was discovered and
claimed, sparing them both the agony.
“Yes,” he answered, meeting Zyan’s gaze. “Even if it means that, as long as you are also willing to endure it.”
“I am.”
Kaeden rubbed at the spot above his heart. Resigned to the prospect of more suffering, he said, “You’d rather know the truth about what passed here today.”
“Yes. I’d regret not knowing the why. Or finding out later we possessed…shortcomings that might have been overcome if we’d spoken openly about them.”
Kaeden’s shoulders sagged. “You’re right. Let’s do this now. In another minute she’ll be astride the stallion and gone.”
Karena felt their attention, felt them striding toward her and fumbled with the knot in her hurry to get it untied. Her palms were suddenly slick, her heart racing in a wild, erratic beat, not only with sudden desperation but in an effort to keep the pain suppressed and the memories along with it.
They reached her just as she freed the rope from the picket line, each of them taking one of hers wrists, surprising her with the gentleness of their grip.
“Why?” Zyan asked.
He sounded hoarse, and for an instant hope battled through the other emotions, rising from the ashes of her dreams like the legendary firebird and making her hear pain in Zyan’s voice rather than the physical effects of rushing across the sand to stop her.
She held herself still, as if in doing so she could keep herself from shattering. Remained silent, telling herself, Don’t be a fool again. Don’t reveal anything more of yourself.
“Was your acceptance of us a lie?” Kaeden asked, and she resisted the urge to look at his face at hearing the strain in his voice, the same harsh edge of pain that sliced through her.
It wasn’t real. Or if it was, it was only because rape was punishable by death here and without her willing consent, they’d never father children.
Her silence was answer enough for Zyan, her stiff posture speaking for her. He took a deep breath, his eyes meeting Kaeden’s over her head as he released her wrist. “If you no longer wish to become our third, or if you never did, despite the passion we shared and the feelings we thought—”
He couldn’t go on for the swell of tears and the tightening of his chest.
“At least accept our protection,” Kaeden said, finishing it, also breaking the physical contact with her. “You won’t find sanctuary in the mountains. You’ll be caught and made part of a threesome according to the rules of the Zehren tribe. Come back to camp with us. We’ll relinquish our claim. Perhaps there is another pair that will…better satisfy you.”
“All I want is to leave this place. What I’ve found here is no different than what my father planned for me on Qumaar, pairing me with a man who cared only about producing a legal heir.”
Karena hugged herself. It was the same protective gesture she’d had when they caught her, and seeing it added size to the lump already in Zyan’s throat. Somehow he managed to say, “Children are important to us, but there’s not a pair on Adjara who would think of you as a brood mare. Your talent with horses is one every tribe values. For that alone you’d be welcome among us. If you were a man instead of a woman, your life would have been spared and the tribes would have vied with one another to make you a member.”
“And if I were a man, would I be so highly valued I would never be allowed to leave Adjara?”
“Are you so sure you won’t find happiness here?” Zyan countered.
“As a prisoner?” She looked up then, trembling with emotion not revealed in her face. “As a prisoner? If not yours, or the men who circled the oasis earlier, then to some other pair in the mountains?”
Hearing her name herself a prisoner struck at Zyan’s core. Had she felt this way all along? But if she had, then why had she approached them after the Syn’jahin left and said, “I want you”?
It was confusing, frustrating. A man wouldn’t—
But she wasn’t a man.
Insight pushed aside the curtain of turbulent emotion. He thought back to those first glorious moments after she’d entered their lives, when she’d called the filly to her and it had seemed as though Karena asked, and the filly—who’d never known a rider—freely accepted one.
Perhaps, in some measure, Karena wasn’t so very different from the filly. Despite his own sureness about the future, maybe Karena needed the choice of whether to run free, or willingly accept the weight that came with all relationships.
He struggled to find a way to give her choice and finally saw a pathway that might provide it. “Neither Kaeden nor I can promise you’ll be able to escape Adjara. But we can offer you the possibility of it.”
She went completely still, turning his heart into a leaden weight.
“How?”
“With your gift our tribe will have an advantage when we race at the gatherings. Wins bring greater wealth and faster mounts, perhaps sponsorship from one of the tribes owning a transport ship. It might also bring with it the chance to go to Z’nyia, where we sell some of our horses and run others. There’d be reason for you to accompany us, as jockey and communicator. And while we were there—”
He blinked against the painful prospect of it and Kaeden finished the thought. “You could escape.”
“You’d let me?”
“Yes.” The answer came immediately from both of them.
“After I’ve given you children first?”
It hurt Kaeden to know she thought that’s all they wanted of her. “No. If you have no wish to become pregnant, there is a plant root used to prevent it. If you have no desire to share our bed, then you can share only the tent, though we’ll have to be officially joined and pretend there’s truth to it if there’s to be a possibility of escape for you.”
He stepped back, making it clear he wouldn’t prevent her from leaving. “It’s all we can offer besides the freedom to find your fate in the mountains, or to choose another pair among the Elsian.”
Zyan’s body and heart and soul protested, even as he knew following Kaeden’s example was the right thing to do. He couldn’t step away from her without making a final entreaty. “Please give us a chance. Share our tent and our lives. See if you might come to love us and want to share our bed as well. I believe we were meant to be together for a lifetime. It was your face Kaeden and I saw in our joining vision after we ate the gajaalo fruit. Stealing a woman is a crime here, but even thinking we risked death in taking you from the place in the desert that accompanied your image, we went there seeking you.”
He thought perhaps he saw surprise in her eyes. But she said only, “Without the fruit, you never would have desired me.”
Confusion buffeted Zyan, and from Kaeden’s expression, he felt the same.
Zyan glanced down at the red fruit still in Kaeden’s hand. In his mind he replayed the sequence of events leading up to this moment, seeing her abrupt departure on the heels of Kaeden telling her the fruit was a powerful aphrodisiac, and had they not eaten it, they wouldn’t have been able to pleasure her as well as they did today.
Hope seized Zyan. He took her hand, carrying it down to his erection. “You can’t believe we don’t desire you.”
A shuddering breath betrayed her, shocking Kaeden. He grasped her other hand, curling her fingers and his own around his cock. “I worried that we would disappoint you after the effects of the gajaalo fruit left our system, Karena. And when you stiffened and turned away, I imagined that the men on Qumaar were better endowed, perhaps able to pleasure a woman continuously as we’ve done today.”
He could barely hear his own words for the thunder of his heartbeat. “When you sought to escape, my fears were confirmed. And then I thought perhaps you’d only pretended satisfaction so you could get away from us.”
A shiver went through Karena. He tightened his hand on hers, moving it up and down his shaft. “If you doubt your effect on us, all the more reason to return to camp and share our tent. I don’t know how much longer the effects of the fruit will last—we took i
t only to enter a joining vision—but by morning it should be gone.”
Zyan dared to crowd closer, to risk a kiss pressed to her mouth, her neck. Hope rooted itself more firmly in his heart when she seemed to soften, to accept his caress.
“By the end of tomorrow, you’ll feel well loved,” he whispered. “That I can promise you. If our cocks need time to recover between bouts of lovemaking, then we’ll bring you release with our hands and lips and tongues.”
Kaeden leaned in, nuzzling her neck, her ear. “We’ll prove our desire in any manner you choose, in whatever positions satisfy you. How can you possibly think we don’t want you? We have only to look at your body to feel aroused. You are beautiful, a fantasy made real, a woman we will be grateful for having in our lives until death parts us.”
“We could love you as deeply as we love each other,” Zyan said. “The beginnings of it are already inside both of us. The thought of losing you, even after so short a time, leaves a gaping wound. Tell us what we can do to prove ourselves to you, to make you believe you can find happiness on Adjara as our third.”
Tears wet the corners of Karena’s eyes at hearing their impassioned words. At seeing their expressions of tenderness and longing, and learning their desire was overshadowed by the fear they weren’t enough for her, or that she would find them somehow lacking.
“Please don’t cry,” Kaeden murmured. “Talk to us. Tell us what we need to do. Your happiness matters to us. Life is too short to live it in misery.”
She pulled her hands from beneath theirs, away from their cocks, and saw the flash of pain in their eyes, an agony so familiar to her that tears fell regardless of Kaeden’s entreaty. “On Qumaar my gift held no value,” she said, sliding her arms around their waists, drawing them closer so the three of them touched along the lengths of their bodies.
She ducked her head so she spoke at the ground, as if she could cast the memories of being less onto the sand and they’d be forever lost to time and scorching wind. “I was viewed as undesirable, so much so the tutor my mother hired to teach me the sexual arts, so I might find a husband, required an aphrodisiac in order to perform his services.”
