Caged Warrior

by Lindsey Piper

  Although she’d been holding out her arm in invitation, she levered off the bed and took hold of his hips. She couldn’t resist tasting him. Tongue first, just a circle around the clean, broad head.

  Leto hissed. His hands curled beneath her jaw and lifted her chin. He loomed over her, as if standing as majestically as a mountain was his gift from the Dragon. “I will not be gentle if we begin like that.”

  “Women have done this to you, then?”

  “I’ve practically forced this on women.”

  “Big difference, Leto. Stand still. Enjoy. And know that I’m enjoying it, too.”

  She liked that his hands tightened around her face, a reminder of the strength he held in check. Every lick and swirl and long, languorous suck drew different reactions from him. Sometimes hisses—those were especially good, telling her she’d taken him by surprise. Sometimes grunts and truncated thrusts, when she’d back off. She didn’t want to veer too near to the sharp vigor they’d shared before. Mostly his reactions were told through those hands framing her face. Twitch. Tense. Fingers twisting into her hair.

  He was too big to take as deeply as she wanted. She used the clasp of her fingers to make up the difference remaining between her lips and his body. The rhythm she chose was slow and so, so deliberate, even though her body began to hum a potent charge. Since she’d learned to use her gift, she equated arousal with the explosive force. Gathering energy . . . then the release.

  This gathering was achingly patient. The release would be complete.

  After dragging her tongue along the length of his shaft, she moved to take his throbbing head back into her mouth. Those hands lining her jaw reminded her that, when he wanted to be, Leto was in charge.

  “Enough.” He sounded just as bestial as ever. His eyes, heavy-lidded and fathomless, marked the only difference. He looked stunned. And eager.

  Nynn expected his resolve to crumble. She had pushed him too far. Her warrior would shove her back across the bed and take what his body demanded. She wouldn’t mind; he would be satisfying her needs as well. But she’d hoped they were more than that.

  He proved they could be when he dropped to his knees.

  “Off with these,” he said, tugging her shorts. She had no say—a compromise of sorts between being taken and being coddled. “My turn.”

  Nynn opened her knees even as he pushed them wide. “You’ve done this to women, then?”

  She’d meant it as a teasing echo, but the skin across his cheekbones tightened as he grimaced. “Not often enough for you to appreciate any great skill.”

  “I like an honest man.”

  Lying back on one elbow, she guided his face down until the first rush of contact made her gasp. His lips were hot, but his tongue was even hotter. He lacked finesse. He did not lack patience or intensity. Nynn arched and tipped her pelvis forward. He hooked an arm under her ass to position her as he wanted. His other hand grasped her breast, softly kneading, looping his fingers over her nipple in a pattern that matched the pulse of his tongue.

  Breathing heavily, Nynn offered no resistance when he pushed her breastbone in a signal for her to lie back. He eased two fingers into her sheath. He must’ve appreciated her whispered curse because he grinned against her inner thigh. A rumbled curse of his own trembled up her legs and pooled where his fingers pulsed.

  Without thought, she began to speak in the old language. Not Tigony or Garnis. Not Sath or Pendray or Indranan. There was a language even older than the Five Clans, and she knew its words.

  Leto paused. Looked up her body. Those nearly black eyes held as many questions as promises of lust and satisfaction.

  “I’d forgotten,” he said softly, in that same lost language.

  “Me, too.”

  She caressed his cheek, which was roughened by sharp stubble. The ancient spell wove between them, until speaking English or even her clan’s tongue would’ve seemed like sacrilege in the bubble of time and space they’d claimed for themselves.

  “Then this is how we’re supposed to make love,” he said. “Even down to the words given to us by the Dragon.”

  “Making love.”

  A frown etched between his brows. After a few more luxurious strokes, so deep where she yearned for more, he eased his fingers free. His features still revealed the riddles of his thoughts, but he lifted up and over her body. They were still sideways across the mattress. His feet must’ve been planted firmly on the floor. Nynn could only flick her attention between his taut expression and the hand he’d clamped around the base of his prick.

  “That’s what we’re doing, Nynn. Making love.”

  She smiled, almost relieved that his confusion came from something so simple. Although none of this felt simple. “Yes, we are.”

  She pulled him down as she lifted up, that same dance of compromise, as they balanced each other. Dovetailed one another. His mouth tasted of her body, which was both shocking and amazingly intimate. Soon that taste was licked and kissed away until she found only Leto. His heat and the sharp sweetness of his tongue swished over hers. Rough breaths puffed between them in a quiet, tender duel.

  Nynn was restless. The place he’d filled with such care, with only two of his blunt fingers, needed more. She needed the heavy erection jutting out from the body he held rigid.

  She touched one of his unsteady biceps. “This from my warrior? Shaking?”

  “You take everything from me.” He positioned himself at her slick opening and pulsed inside. No quick thrust. Not even a tease—just the gentleness she’d asked for. Hard, thick, almost asking permission. “Just as you give everything to me.”

  “Give me everything now.”

  He shook his head. “We’re making love. Those are the right words for what we’re doing. Because I am not a beast.”

  “No. You’re not.”

  “And I’m not just your warrior.”

  Tears burned beneath her lids. She couldn’t breathe except in pained little gulps. She lifted her hand and touched the collar she’d always hated. Now she had so many more reasons to despise the things.

  She’d asked him once, and she asked him again. “What would you be without this?”

  His answer . . .

  Oh, Dragon be. Please.

  With eyes as dark as midnight, as expressive as dance, he pushed his full, throbbing length into her waiting body. Nynn opened her mouth but made no sound. Only shuddered at the rightness of their joining.

  He leaned down, cradling the back of her head. She clung to him, wrapped her legs around him, moved with him.

  Against her temple he whispered, “I’d be a better man.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Leto wanted to close his eyes and bask in softness. This was what softness felt like—not just Nynn’s body, which welcomed his with trust, warmth, and an intimacy so fierce that it stung each nerve. This was the softness of letting down his guard. He gave in to her keeping. So often he’d believed he was the one to keep her safe, but that protection traveled in two directions.

  He needed this moment as much as he needed victory.

  No, that’s wasn’t true. He needed this more than victory, because he’d lost in the Cage. Although his pride had been damaged, he had not dried into dust. Unmanned. Ashamed. No, he still breathed. He breathed the scent of the woman who was teaching him different ways of seeing the world. The world he knew was small, tight, dark.

  If he shut his eyes, glorying in unfamiliar sensations, he’d be back in the darkness. He stayed with Nynn, with her clear blue eyes that shimmered silver in the pale light. He stayed with the way her moist lips parted. Every deliberate slide into her slick, tight pussy drew forth a gasp or a sigh or a little cry. He moved slowly, giving himself a brief moment to wonder which sound would come next. He liked changing the angle of his thrusts just enough to catch her by surprise.

  She clutched his flanks with edgy fingers, urging him with restless pulses. Her nails were blunt, but that didn’t mean her sharp journey from his hip
to the top of his spine was any less potent. He shivered under the weight of his vulnerability and released his confusion with a trio of sharp thrusts. Nynn’s heavy breathing ratcheted down to a moan. Oh yes. More sounds to find. More softness edged with the passion and strength they both possessed.

  While crossing his arm beneath her back, he turned her to lie fully along the bed. He’d thought of taking her again, in the interminable days after they’d fought. He’d imagined that she would ride him, so as not to aggravate her tattoo and the wounds on her back. Two months on, she was healed. Reality meant he could lever his body over hers and claim her. One day she would straddle his torso and set the pace, but not this night.

  He braced his weight on his elbows. Despite the hazy desire in her eyes, she was completely fixed on him, as if he was the answer to every question she’d ever asked.

  Him. Leto of Garnis. She believed he could be better than he was. More than believed; she expected it.

  While drawing out the agonizing pleasure of their joining, he almost shared her belief. Warriors fought and bled and fucked. They didn’t make love in a way that put a partner’s satisfaction above their own. Leto felt that way now. No matter how urgently he wanted to thrust—hard, deep, unrelenting—he held back. That resistance tapped into long years of training. He was strong enough to be patient. He basked in the moments of soft splendor, waiting for the moment when Nynn would need him to be anything but.

  He bowed over her body while she explored his. Hands and fingers and even her heels found rough crevices and made them smooth. She calmed him in ways he’d never thought possible. So very aroused yet somehow lethargic. He dropped his forehead to hers.

  “I’ve never had this.” The admission made his rhythm falter, along with his heartbeat. He hadn’t meant to say anything so personal, even as they shared such a personal act.

  She cupped the side of his face in the way that made him shudder with a sense of belonging. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Leto pushed away his body’s needs and lifted from hers. “Bathatéi.”

  “What?” On her elbows, Nynn’s confusion was written across her brow.

  “You have felt this . . . this . . . Dragon damn, Nynn, it’s beautiful. And they took that from you. Your husband . . .”

  He’d never felt more humiliated by his inability to make a point.

  Nynn’s face had paled, so distinctive in her pain or fear. The golden tone of her skin drained away and left behind the pattern of freckles he had memorized.

  She didn’t shy away or stop touching him. He’d expected both. When faced with a reminder of that loss, how could she not? Just the opposite happened. She touched him with more assurance and more vigor.

  Leto swallowed to quell the monster in his blood. “Because you remember it all now, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Guilt overwhelmed him. She was in possession of memories they hadn’t discussed. That meant she had her husband back—the life they’d shared, the life that had been ripped away from her.

  Nynn stroked where his inner thigh met his groin. He flinched. She caressed him again, until the flinches eased into calm. “Breathe,” she whispered.

  Now he closed his eyes. She changed position on the bed so that she knelt at his side. Leto was enveloped by softness once again, this time nestled between her breasts. He breathed just to soak up her scent.

  “Caleb was taken from me.” Her halting words feathered across the buzzed hair and the crown of his head. “And yes, I ache with the knowledge of what we could’ve shared. We’ll never have that.”

  “I was as brainwashed as you first said. I was part of the system that made your family suffer.”

  “You were a boy raised to be a man with no choice as to how that happened. Do you yearn to kill and maim, Leto? I don’t believe you do. You’ve never hinted at enjoying the blood for blood’s sake. It’s all been for your sisters.”

  “And for glory,” he said wearily. “You’ve felt it. We both know how intense it can be.”

  “Just like we both know the unfairness of it all. And who really caused it. I’ll dig their graves with bare hands if I have to, because the Asters will not escape the punishment they deserve.”

  “You’ll have help digging those graves, if they deserve such a courtesy.” The cadence of her touches was so soothing. Leto crisscrossed his arms behind her back and held tight. “I can’t replace your husband.”

  “Of course you can’t.” She lifted his head and held his gaze. “That doesn’t mean I want to be alone forever.”

  “I never thought I’d be anything but alone.”

  “What about your family?”

  “I’ve fought for their safety, but I can’t speak to them. Sometimes they exist more as goals than people. There are moments I regret that I wasn’t born one of the Dragon-damned Heartless. At least Indranan warriors can communicate with those outside.”

  “No.” She kissed him so tenderly that it might have been a daydream, but her hand was still at the juncture of his thigh and groin. Nynn was no daydream. “You are Leto of Garnis,” she said against his mouth. “You are a Dragon King. And if you let me, I could love you.”

  He bracketed her head in his hands. “Could?”

  Her expression took on a teasing glint—a glimmer of silver to lead them out of the black. “You have to admit, we haven’t been on the same side very often.”

  “It felt right when we were.”

  “Yes. It did. And it does now.” She arched into his touch when he threaded hard, possessive fingers into her hair. “I asked for you, remember? I want to be here with you. To be on the same side and know it’s forever.”

  “We can’t promise forever. Not down here.”

  “Then we get out of here.”

  He shook his head. “Not possible.”

  “I wouldn’t do it with the stupid, impatient trust I gave Kilgore. Instead, you’re my warrior, and I light up like Dragon-damned fireworks.” She grinned, slid her warm palms to his shoulders, and gave him a good shake. “Then you could love me, too.”

  Could?

  There was no “could” about it.

  He loved her. Nynn of Tigony was a firework, so bright and beautiful in a place that had never known either. He needed that light, craved it. More meaningfully, he was grateful that she’d shared it with him. He’d taken to heart that he would keep her safe because his heart was at risk. To lose her now would mean losing a part of himself he hadn’t known existed, liberated of everyone else’s wishes but his. And hers.

  “When we’re free,” he said with his lips against her bare shoulder. “That’s my promise.”

  “Now you get to promise that you won’t stop again.”

  She stretched back against the mattress, with her knees negligently parted. The pink wetness of her sex made him want to taste. He dipped low and licked. Nynn’s hands flew to the back of his head. Another new sound. Greed. A combination of yes and a groan and a curse word older than the Five Clans. She was salt and sweet, hot and pulsing against his tongue. Each questing swirl revived his arousal. The past was the past—painful, and not without a demand to be avenged.

  At that moment, however, Leto was finally able to set his mind aside and let his body loose. Reflex. Instinct. Selfish need. Every satisfying lick made Nynn writhe. Her hands stroked faster along the back of his head. Dragon be, she could drive him mad with her enthusiasm. They had matched from the beginning, not in goals, but in resolve and pure stubbornness. He put that stubbornness to its most sensual use, flicking faster, sucking deeper. His prick swelled in response. He was so ready.

  This was a claiming, and it was mutual.

  “Leto! Please, here with me. Not by myself.”

  The breath punched out of him. Without thought, he was over her, kissing her, inside her. The slow softness they’d given each other was still there, in the way they caressed and in the encouraging sounds of pleasure. Little gifts. But Leto could not be gentle, pushing, pulsing with tha
t word repeating in his mind. Claim.

  “I’m here,” he said on a gasp. With his head tucked next to hers on the pillow, he drove with gathering speed. Each stroke was stronger. Her tight legs and quick hips met him each time. “We do this together.”

  Previous orgasms had all been explosions, full and potent and as hard as he’d fucked. This time, with Nynn stretched beneath him and her breath breaking to pieces, he felt his climax building and building. It could’ve been seconds. It could’ve been years.

  “Nynn, tell me. Tell me you’re close.”

  She had no words, only the fierce arch of her spine and a mangled cry. The clench of her sheath around his cock broke through the gradual build of his pleasure—broke through, then dragged him into an abyss that seized his muscles and locked his bones. His last thrust was as deep as she could take, and she took all of him. Every thick, aching inch. He growled his satisfaction into the pillow, where Nynn had already turned her head, kissing his temple. She licked away the sheen of sweat.

  When his breathing quieted, he rolled off and around so that she tucked along his side. “Again,” he said into the near-dark. “I want that again.”

  “Tell your prick.” Her voice was sleepy, but he heard a smile.

  He kissed her hair, grinning in return. He was grinning. “Dragon Kings have remarkable powers of recovery.”

  “Yes, they do.” She yawned and snuggled more deeply into his embrace. “Imagine what it could be if you could use all of your gift. All of those amazing senses.”

  The thought was almost too much to handle. He’d overload. But that made him hate the collar even more. He had touched, tasted, inhaled Nynn’s distinct beauty. All of it blunted. He was half-tempted to drag them to the training Cage and make love to her without the barrier that stood between him and his true power.

  But no, that would be a poor substitute. Nynn had been right. They would be free.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “After the match . . .”

  Leto’s scratchy, rumbling voice broke their long, long silence. Nynn may have dozed, but for minutes at a time. It was as if her body only wanted brief moments of sleep so that she wouldn’t stray from him for long.