by E. A. James
He lifted her higher and pulled her legs around his waist. She fought her dress to get her legs free until her bare skin lay exposed to his ravaging hands. He stumbled back under her weight. His legs hit the bed, but he didn’t fall back on it.
He pushed himself upright and staggered across the room. He slammed Margila’s back against the stone wall, and she cried out in surprise. The next thing she knew, his naked manhood touched her sweet tissues.
She caught her breath and froze, but he burned with unquenchable fire. He tore at her dress until he got it out of his way. He cradled her bare buttocks and pried her flesh apart to make way for his hard rod.
He found the moist cleft waiting for him. Margila sucked in air to rise higher, but gravity dragged her down on top of it. He jammed his hips between her legs and let her sink down on his powerful cock.
A cry of naked lust ripped from her throat as he penetrated to her molten core. He wasted no time in setting up a steady rhythm. He dowsed to the quick with his rigid tool and touched the deepest spots along her channel.
She bounced on his upthrusts with rising cries. His hips slapped against her thighs when he buried his shaft in her brimming hole, and his pubic bone bumped her clitoris to the heights of sensitivity.
He slammed her back on the hard stone, and his weight crushed the air out of her lungs. She yelped and squeaked in insatiable delight. Every stroke of his member brought her higher than she could tolerate until she exploded in his hands. His hot injection sent her rocketing into the darkness of space, where sweat and their primal elixir melded them into one.
CHAPTER TEN
The next morning bright and early, Tanak took Margila to the Armory. He passed a few murmured words with the Master at Arms, who stood back and let them enter without interference.
Tanak opened the door and ushered Margila inside. She beheld racks and racks of weapons not unlike the blasters the Axis soldiers carried. Thousands of these weapons lined the walls. “What are these?”
“They’re weapons. You said you wanted one. This is our armory.”
“I thought you would give me a small one, like the one you carry.”
“You can have one of them, too, but they won’t help you fight the Axis. When the alarm sounds, everyone will line up outside that door. The Master at Arms will issue every man, woman, and child one of these. They’re called phase rifles.”
Margila swallowed hard. “Then what will happen?”
“On your way out, you’ll meet my father. He will assign everyone into one of three factions. My brothers and I will lead the factions, so I would be surprised if he didn’t assign you to my faction. We’ll be together, so you don’t have to worry about that. Each of these factions will defend a different area of the city. My older brother Ralo, Praila’s husband, will take the upper battlements. My younger brother Waru will take the fields.”
“Where will your faction be?”
“We will take the inner passages. We’ll spread our numbers through the entire city, just in case the Axis forces breach our defenses and find their way inside.”
“How likely do you think that is to happen?”
“Who knows? An advanced squad of fighters in dragon form will patrol our southern boundary. They’ll engage the Axis forces first and try to drive them back. With any luck, they’ll never reach the citadel. Even if they defeat those dragons, we have massive cannons all along the battlements. Specially trained gunners will man them and destroy as many of the sky vessels as they can. That way, fewer soldiers will be able to land on the citadel itself.”
Margila shuddered. “It sounds dangerous.”
“It’s beyond dangerous. It’s desperate.”
“Isn’t there anything we can do? Can’t we leave now, before they attack? Don’t we have enough people so we don’t have to stay behind?”
He shook his head. “We don’t have enough people to keep our population going long term, and we won’t have a source of new blood the way we do now with the village. Besides, if we left the planet now, we would have to fight the whole Axis fleet out in space. The ships we have prepared to leave this planet aren’t made for that, and we’re too few to defeat them. They would destroy us, one by one, and there would be nothing left.”
“There must be something we can do. I can’t stand the idea of rolling over and dying, now that I’ve come so far.”
“There is something you can do.” He unclipped a rifle from the rack and placed it in her hands. “You can learn how to use this.”
She stared at the hunk of gleaming metal in her hands. She’d never even seen a gun before he took her from the mountain, and now she had to learn how to use it in the most desperate possible circumstance. She braced herself. “All right. Tell me what to do.”
He took her out of the Armory to a big room surrounded by solid stone walls. Not a single window opened out into the sunshine. A series of lights in the ceiling lit the place. A low table stood at one end of the room, and Tanak went over to it. “Put your weapon down here.”
His entire manner changed, and his voice took on the hard, crisp edge of command. She obeyed. She was his soldier now, and he was in charge. He showed her every part of the weapon. Then he showed her how to open it and put the ammunition inside and charge it. “Now pick it up. No, not like that.”
He took it out of her hands and swept it up to his shoulder. “Jam this part in hard against your shoulder. This hand here should hold it in tight so it doesn’t move. Keep this hand here, but don’t move your finger to the firing mechanism until you know what you want to shoot. Believe me, when you push that button, you will wish you had a tighter hold on it.”
He put it down again. Then he put something in her ears so she couldn’t hear. He picked up the weapon and locked it into his shoulder with a powerful grip. He pointed the weapon to the far end of the room, where a bright red square appeared against the wall. Funny, she hadn’t noticed that before. Then he pressed the firing mechanism.
The weapon buzzed for a second. Then it exploded. Even with those things in her ears, the concussion burst against her skull with a loud bang that made her jump. A blast of lightning sizzled from the rifle and struck the center of that red square.
He fired again, and again. After the tenth or twelfth shot, she started to get used to the noise. She saw for herself how the weapon jumped in his hands, even though he used all his strength to hold it steady.
Then he handed it to her. “Now you try.”
She did her best to hold it in position. The red square appeared on the far wall, but when she touched the firing mechanism, the weapon jumped out of her hands and the shot sailed wide. It hit the ceiling and shook the whole citadel.
Tanak only shook his head and jammed it in tighter against her shoulder. “Like this. Now try again.”
She tried, again and again, and again, for hours, until her arms were too tired to hold the thing anymore. At last, he took it away from her and put it away in the Armory. “Now you know what you’re getting into.”
That thought sobered her. She took his hand and they started out of the Armory when a deafening shriek pierced the air. Margila spun around. “What is it?”
“It’s the alarm! Quick! Back to the Armory!”
He burst into the Armory and grabbed the same rifle he just put away. He snatched a fresh ammunition case and shoved it into the magazine before he pushed the weapon into her hands. “Don’t go anywhere. Just stay close to me.”
He rushed out with Margila on his heels. They bumped into the Master at Arms coming the other way. They got untangled from him just as the first people came running down the stairs.
Tanak and Margila took their places in the passage and waited until the Archduke came striding down the stairs. He gave Tanak a curt nod and made his way to the front of the queue where everyone stood waiting for their turns to arm themselves.
As soon as the Archduke appeared, the Master at Arms started handing out rifles. As Tanak warned, men, women, and childr
en stood in line to defend their city. Each person turned away from the Master at Arms and came to the Archduke to be assigned to a faction.
Two men came to Tanak’s side. They murmured to each other. Then they took their places farther down the passage. They could only be Tanak’s brothers. One by one, the Raveniss people joined their faction leaders. People milled around and waited until no more people could fit in the passage.
Tanak raised his rifle and shouted above the noise. “Inner passage faction, follow me.” Before they left the Armory, Margila heard the other two faction leaders calling their people to their positions.
Tanak led the way back up to the main passages of the citadel. Margila did her best to stay close to him, but everyone pushed and jostled in their haste to get into position. Tanak gave orders to everyone and told them where to stand. He left groups of ten or twenty in every passage of the great city.
Margila followed him all the way back to the passage outside their bedchamber. “Do you think it’s a good idea to have everyone near their own quarters?”
“People will fight a lot harder to defend their homes than anywhere else. With any luck, we won’t have to fight today.”
The words hadn’t fallen from his lips when loud bursts of gunfire brought Margila to the window. She looked out to the south, over the parapet. In front of her eyes, some two dozen dragons swooped into view, along with several dozen Axis sky vessels on their tails. The energy blasts sailed from their noses to fire on the dragons.
Five dragons flew overhead in formation. Their wingtips touched. A band of the Axis fighters followed close behind and harassed them with constant fire. The dragons banked over the fields, where the first defenders were just running to take their positions.
The dragons did a complete wheel in the sky. They swept up so high, Margila could barely see them. Then they plummeted toward the ground faster than thought. They caught the Axis fighters before they could react.
The dragons banked around behind them in a solid line. At exactly the same instant, they let loose their fiery breath and incinerated the Axis ships to vapor in the air. In a fraction of a second, they pivoted back the other way to join their fellows in the fight.
Margila caught her breath at the sight. Her spirits soared, but the next minute, they crashed into the depths of despair. Another dragon, fighting on its own, got caught over the fields by six ships working in concert. They surrounded it so it couldn’t get away no matter which way it turned.
It dove for the fields with the ships dogging it all the way. The people on the ground pointed their rifles at the sky and fired on the ships menacing the dragon, but they couldn’t make a dent. The ships were too far away, and the rifles weren’t powerful enough.
Two ships opened fire on the dragon, and their blasts slammed into the ground on either side of it. Bodies bounced out of the way and lay still in the craters the blasts left behind. Margila’s hand flew to her mouth.
The dragon swept low over the shattered fields and soared back into the sky, but the fighters were too close and too many. They fired again, and a blast ripped through its wing. It stalled in mid-air, and the sharks moved in for the kill.
More rifle fire popped from the ground, but even from the inner citadel, Margila couldn’t hear it. The fighters surrounded the injured dragon and let loose a massive volley of blasts. The first blast tore through its chest, and another ripped its one good wing off at the shoulder.
The dragon shrieked in fear and pain. A moment later, a thunderous barrage of fire sent it exploding into a million pieces. The remains of the once-proud dragon tumbled to the ground among its own people.
Tanak laid a hand on Margila’s arm. “Move away from the window. It’s not safe.”
Margila turned away all too willingly. She couldn’t watch anymore. She swallowed the lump in her throat and concentrated on the weapon in her hands. In a few minutes, she could be called on to defend her life and Tanak’s with this thing. Could she do it?
Just a few minutes before, she couldn’t muster the strength to hold it up. Now, her own adrenaline gave her all the strength she needed. She held it up the way Tanak showed her. She harbored no doubt she could shoulder it and fire as many times as she needed to if anyone came near her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The rumble of battle grew louder, but Margila dared not approach the window again. The screams of injured dragons echoed over the fields, and rifle fire drifted up from the ground.
Then Margila noticed the rumble coming from the citadel itself. It came from somewhere up above her. The cannons must be engaging the Axis forces. How much longer before the soldiers landed on the roof? Were Katya and Praila up there somewhere? Would they survive the assault? Would any of them?
Every now and again, the whine of an engine sailed overhead and ended in an explosion. The dragons and the cannons must be bringing down some of the ships. That was fewer soldiers the defenders would have to deal with when they landed.
Tanak moved through the passages to check on his people. He gave everyone an encouraging word, but when he returned to Margila, he let the mask of determined certainty fall from his face. How haggard and careworn he looked all of a sudden, and she’d only known him a few days.
What would become of them? Would they ever have the chance to live the life of their dreams, a life of love and peace together with their people? She went through so much in the mountain wilderness to discover she loved him. Would it all come to nothing right here before her eyes? Did she have to stand here and watch him die, along with the others?
The same horror at losing him threatened to drown her the way it did when the soldiers attacked him on the mountain. She would gladly give her own life to save him. She couldn’t stand by and watch him die. She would rather die with him.
Tanak sat down heavily on a bench near the window, but he didn’t look out. He leaned his rifle against the seat and let his shoulders slump. He glanced up at Margila watching him. “Are you hungry?”
“No, I ate right after we landed here. Your mother insisted on it.”
He looked around with haunted eyes. “I’m hungry.”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t eaten since we landed here.”
“I haven’t had time. I’ve been busy with my father and my brothers....and with you.”
She sat down next to him. “You should have told me. We could have made time for you to get something to eat. Now you may have to fight on an empty stomach. That’s not good. All these people are looking to you to be strong. You should have told me. Here. You stay here and I’ll go get you something.” She started to get up. “I don’t know where I’ll go, but I’ll find something.”
He stopped her. “You can’t go. We need you here.”
“Then you should go. We can’t have a commander who isn’t fit for battle.”
He shook his head. “I can’t. This is no time to worry about food.”
“You just said yourself you’re hungry. You’re distracted.”
She shook his hand off her arm. He didn’t put up much resistance. She laid her rifle next to his and went back to their bedchamber. She found the table set against the wall. A few bones with meat on them and a flask of wine still remained from her own meal. She took it back to him.
He didn’t say anything. He ate what she put in front of him and guzzled down the wine.
“I wish there was more.”
He put the dish aside. “Later.”
Another explosion shook the air outside. “What do you think is going on out there?”
“They’re cutting our people down. That’s what’s going on out there. They’ll land in a little while, and they’ll start cutting down Ralo’s people up on the roof if they haven’t already.”
“When will we know if they’re coming our way?”
“We won’t know until they break in here. Then it will be chaos.”
“How can we ever defeat them that way? They have all the firepower.”
“We can’
t defeat them. We’ll be fighting to the last man.”
At that moment, a thunderous explosion rocked the citadel. It shook the floor beneath Margila’s feet. She started out of her seat. “What was that?”
In a flash, he was on his feet. “They’re explosive charges. They’ve breached the outer wall. They’ll be here in a minute.” He snatched up his rifle and called down the passage. “Pass the word. They’ve breached the walls. Stand ready to defend the citadel.”
Margila grabbed her rifle and locked it into her shoulder. It fused with her muscles and became part of her own flesh. She followed Tanak out into the passage and took her place at his side. They stood back to back, with him facing one direction while she faced the other way, so they covered both possible approaches.
