Her nipples actually ached and her loins were engorged and tender, like a storm cloud full to bursting with rain. Slow tears of frustration slipped down her cheeks and her jaw hurt because she’d been clenching it so hard.
She’d tried milking him with her internal muscles, working with the gait of the vran. She knew she was strong, but the gorgeous, masculine solidity of him, the feel of him crammed into her, spreading her helpless flesh wide, had defeated her.
Where her cheek was pillowed on the heavy bands of muscle across his chest, his heart beat, strong and steady. The regular thump of it was echoed in his cock, as though a second heart beat there. It reverberated like a great temple bell through her screamingly sensitive flesh.
Anje sniffed and wiped her damp cheeks against his skin. Gritting her teeth, she reminded herself of who she was. A Child of the Mother. She was strong enough to push.
Delicately, she extended her tongue and flicked one tight, brown nipple. Brin’s cock jerked inside her. Encouraged, she took the tiny, blood-filled peak between her lips and nibbled, keeping the touch excruciatingly light.
“Good?” she whispered.
“Of course.” The shaman’s voice remained calm. “Don’t forget to keep me balanced.”
Sighing, she switched sides, redoubling her efforts, knowing it was useless, wanting to lick and mouth every inch of his glorious chest, the dragon on his belly, his ass…
Brin cupped her buttocks, massaging, kneading, pressing her enveloping flesh around his shaft. He slid one finger up and down the crease between her taut cheeks, spreading her own moisture, making it satiny and slick, teasing the rosette of her anus with a light, circling touch. The sensation forced a moan from her and he dropped a kiss on her temple. “Like that?”
Holy Mother!
Anje discovered sheer desperation could be inspiring.
She snugged her head into the curve of his neck, bit the inside of her cheek and humbled herself. “Please.”
His hands stilled, his breath stirring her hair. “Yes, scout?”
“Take the torque off and I’ll do whatever you want.”
She thought he sighed. “No.”
Avoiding the braided circlet around his neck, she dragged her open mouth across his pulse, barely resisting the impulse to sink her teeth into the firm flesh. “I hate knowing—” Her voice cracked.
“That you have no choice?”
Her nod was almost imperceptible.
Brin’s hand speared into her hair. “Neither do I. Has it occurred to you that your torque is one of a pair, Anje?”
She thought it over, frowning. “Then why did you do it?”
He tugged against her scalp, so that she was forced to meet his eyes. “I can’t afford to have you run. Lufra gave you to me for a reason.”
“Yes, as a pleasure slave!”
His molten gaze was brooding. “The owner of a pleasure slave cares only for his own gratification.”
“And you don’t?”
“This isn’t about ownership.” He hesitated and she had the sense he was making a decision. “It’s about Bonding.”
“Bonding?”
“Can’t you feel it?”
She almost laughed. He had her bound and spread, at the mercy of his mouth, his hands, his hard cock. “I’d have to be dead not to,” she said dryly.
Brin watched the smile tug at her beautiful mouth, swollen with his kisses. A primitive brand of possession, his beard burn marked the soft skin of her cheek, her neck. His soul exulted and he circled his hips, savoring her wet, warm clasp. Like a beast in rut, the hunger roared inside him, almost out of control. But if he let the leash slip now, the firestorm of Lufra might well consume them both.
Anje sank her teeth into that lush lower lip. She was planning another move, he knew it. He waited, almost shuddering with anticipation.
By Lufra, he admired her nerve!
Her wide, violet eyes met his, strangely shy despite the goddess flame flickering silver-hot in her pupils. As a shaman, he’d played these games of sensual torment with temple women whose skills made his sweet warrior appear a complete innocent, yet never before had he doubted that eventually he would be sated, satisfied.
Now he wondered if it was possible to get enough of her.
As if she caught the echo of his thought, Anje dragged in a breath and clenched the powerful muscles of her thighs and buttocks, developed by years of scouting on foot. The action took him unawares, raising her half off his shaft in a glistening ride. His balls tightened agonizingly and he groaned.
She managed three exquisite strokes before he recovered sufficiently to stop her and by then it was nearly too late. The hot blast of his seed boiled from his balls, erupting into his cock. He had to resort to a hard, strangling pinch at his base. The effort was killing, the effect excruciating. His breath came in short gasps.
Lufra, she was untutored!
Anje dropped her forehead to his chest, panting. He could feel the ripples surging through the walls of her sheath. A measure of his masculine pride returned. She suffered too.
“Do I win?” she husked into the hollow of his throat.
From somewhere, he found the strength to dredge up a low chuckle. “No, scout.”
“But I came close?”
Honesty compelled him. “You play well.”
She licked the sweat from his collarbone. “Do I get a reward?”
Lufra’s tits, she was something!
He raised her chin and kissed her eyelids, one after the other. “Yes, scout, but no offerings. Not yet.” She kept her gaze lowered, concealing her thoughts from him, the lashes lying against the golden skin of her cheek in a delicate fan. He had a sudden vision of her bending over a child, using them to brush fluttering kisses against a bare, round tummy. Delicious baby giggles, deep-throated and full of joy.
The pang that ran through him was pain-bright with hope and longing. “You’re burning with questions. Ask.”
“Bastard.” She set her jaw. “Tell me…” She paused to swallow a whimper as Twink ambled up a slope, forcing her harder on to Brin’s impaling shaft. “Tell me about the torques. Everything. I want to know—sweet Mother, Twink!” Breathing hard, she sank her teeth into the cushion of her lower lip. He could see her gathering her scattered thoughts. “Tell me what you left out.”
He temporized. “You may not like the answers.”
“The truth, Brin, all of it.”
Honor whispered that he owed her something, if only for her guts and determination, but the whole truth was an unacceptable gamble and it pricked at him like a burr beneath the saddle. All the future generations of his people depended on his control of this woman, his finesse in handling her.
He concentrated, picking his way through a morass of half-facts. “The torques are woven of braided hair.” He twined one of her long curls around his fingers then made a brush of it to stroke her cleavage. “Mine has been in my family for generations. I had only to add a lock of your hair and my own.”
He kept his head bent and his eyes down, concentrating on producing goose bumps of lust on tender breast flesh. “If the blessing of Lufra is given, the torques create a Bond.” A Feolin warrior could not be a coward—by definition—but he had to fight to keep his face impassive. If she had even the slightest inkling of the way he really felt…of the way she tempted him almost beyond endurance, not only with her magnificent natural sensuality, but with the well of sweetness buried beneath the tough façade… Even her dry humor delighted him.
Ay, she’d have him wrapped around her smallest finger in an instant, his control shredded, his soul exposed. He’d be escorting her back to Mother’s Hearth before he knew it. It galled him to have her think he’d use something as precious, as fine, as a Bond torque for a crude shackle. He’d Bonded her because he’d had no choice. Everything he was, everything he ever would be, reared up and growled Mine! whenever he looked at her.
With exquisite gentleness, he ran the rope of her hair through hi
s fingers, testing his control, a hairsbreadth away from seizing her shoulders and showing her the depth of his desperation, his need.
Her straight, silky brows drew together. “Then there’s magic in them? Truly?”
“Only if the Goddess approves.”
“But what does it mean?” Her eyes snapped with frustration.
He smoothed the hair over her shoulder, noting with a strange detachment that his fingers actually trembled. Strange, he’d always adored women, loved everything about them, their weakness and their extraordinary strength, their endearing quirks and fascinating thought processes. He was the shaman of a goddess of love. He’d thought he understood females as well as any man could do.
But now? So much hung on the response of this single amazing woman that he actually felt himself lose the high, strong edge of his arousal. Lufra! He slid up and down in her succulent sheath and felt the rush of blood return.
He said, “I’ll always have a sense of where you are, sometimes of how you’re feeling if the emotion is very strong.”
She snorted. “I don’t feel that about you.”
Brin smiled slowly. “You do, but you refuse to believe it. Besides, I’m blanketing most of it. A shaman’s training is very useful.” He distracted himself by watching her pulse jump when he mouthed her earlobe. “Remember what I told you? About trust? Give enough trust and you can wear my torque half a world away.”
She moved her head aside. “Might as well sign on as a life-partner and be done with it.”
“Is that what the Children of the Mother call it?”
Intimately entwined as they were, he felt the exact second she comprehended his meaning.
“Brin, what have you done?” It was an appalled whisper.
He drew Twink to a halt and stared deep into her eyes, letting her see the flames in his, showing her his ravening hunger. “Lufra sent you, Anje. First in my dreams, now in the flesh. I’m the shaman of a goddess. I have my duty. She wants you to come to Feolin and the Bond ensures you will.” He shrugged. “But I’m selfish. I want you too.”
Her honey-toned skin, flushed rosy with passion, went dead pale with shock and fury. Her mouth opened and closed. Watching her work through it was like teetering on a precipice. His gut clenched with tension, but through it all he stayed rock hard inside her, wrapped in a hot, tight glove that sheathed him perfectly. It was perverse, but somehow no more than he’d grown to expect. She had the most extraordinary effect on him, his sweet warrior.
“You bastard!” Anje bit out the words. “So I’m a pleasure slave after all? After all the fine speeches?”
“No.” He began to feel irritated. There was nothing he could do to change matters.
“You talk of duty.” She spoke through gritted teeth. “What of mine? The Children need my map. I’m honor-bound to put it in the hands of the Matriarchs.”
Tears of rage glittered in her amethyst eyes. With a sigh, Brin ran his hands down her arms to the thong binding her wrists and loosed it. The game didn’t matter anymore.
“A map is it? I’ll have someone deliver it for you, as soon as we get back to Feolin.”
The tears disappeared. She rubbed her wrists and treated him to a narrow-eyed glare. “I’ve never failed in my duty. I don’t intend to now.”
He shrugged. “I’m sorry, scout,” he said, meaning it. “The Feolin need you too.” He circled his hips, reminding her.
“I’m no one’s property. And what is it they need me for? You didn’t say.”
“No, I didn’t.”
As he let the silence run on, her lips thinned with temper. “You’re going to pay for your arrogance, mighty shaman.” She sank her fingers into his upper arms, the nails biting into his skin. “Pay ‘til you weep. How much further?”
The challenge in her expression heated Brin’s blood. “Ten minutes.” They were in an open area of the foothills, grassy and flat.
Twisting her lithe body like a fareng, she turned and punched Twink hard behind the ear with her closed fist. “Yee-hah!”
With a high-pitched whistle of alarm, the vran reared, dropped its forelegs back to the ground with a bone-jarring thud and took off at a panicked trot.
“Lufra!” Brin blessed his trained reflexes. He’d arched in time to prevent his testicles from being crushed, but now his cock was thundering inside her slick, grasping pussy. Every stride slid his rigidity over wet satin, muscular walls, up and down, fast and gut-punchingly hard.
It was insanely dangerous and she was pressed up against him, clinging for dear life, her crazy laughter tattered by the wind of their passage.
“Woman, you’re mad!” It was all he could do to ride Twink in the right direction, while Lufra’s Gift rode him, whooping like a lunatic, her hair whipping across his jaw.
His cock burned with an ecstasy so hot it was painful. A bubble of feeling grew in his chest and burst out of him in a great bellow of laughter. Who knew whether it was insanity or joy?
Twink was heading for camp, Brownie laboring in pursuit. The mightiest shaman of the Feolin, a man famed for his iron control, abandoned himself to mad impulse. He dropped the reins, wrapped his arms around his warrior woman and let her ride him into a climax that shredded his spine, fogged his vision and had his excruciated cock spurting in rapture.
He was barely aware that Twink had skidded to a stop, sides heaving. From somewhere very far away, he heard her gasp, “I won!” She rippled around him as he softened.
A hard hand gripped his knee. “I’d say it was a dead heat, love,” said Trey.
Chapter Ten
Hssrda—Anatomy:
The scaly, armored bodies of Hssrda are vulnerable at two points only—under the jaw and in the armpit. Their sheer bulk and strength, together with natural armaments of talon, fang and spur, make them almost impossible to kill.
Excerpt from the Great Encyclopedia, compiled by Miriliel the Burnished.
Anje didn’t wait for Twink to kneel. Ignoring Brin’s wince, she swung her leg over and slid down the vran’s feathered side—straight into Trey’s arms.
“Brin’s gone all strong and silent. What did you do, you bad woman?” He kissed her enthusiastically, paying no heed to the rigidity of her spine, her lack of response. When she turned her head away, he guided it back with a gentle palm against her cheek.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, believe me.” He rubbed his nose against hers. “Later.” He looked over her shoulder at the shaman, removing the fareng carcasses from Brownie with grim efficiency. “Brin, I’ve got something to show you.”
“Later?” she asked, though she told herself she shouldn’t.
Trey laced up her shirt like a fond parent. “Don’t worry, I promise we’ll finish you off.”
Anje stared. The man was surely mad. Finish her off? He’d just seen her screaming in the throes of a climax so brutal she’d nearly passed out and he was saying she needed more?
The flesh she’d thought sated pulsed hard and she realized with a shock that she’d never felt more alive. Her body buzzed with energy, so hot she could have sworn she had a fever. Appalled, she clenched her fists against her sides, lest she seize Trey and wrestle him to the ground.
Through a fog, she heard Brin’s dark chuckle. “Ay, but me first. We have a score to settle, Anje and I.” Surely that wasn’t pride in his voice?
Trey gave her a brisk pat on the bottom. “It breaks my heart, truly it does.” His smile twisted. “But you need to see this, Brin.” He led the way past the tent to the grove of candlewood trees.
The heavy body of a Hssrdan lay sprawled in the shade, its eyes with their slit pupils half-lidded in death, the fanged snout drawn back in a snarl. A trail of bitemes trekked toward the pool of greenish-black blood soaking into the leaf litter beneath it.
Anje’s stomach lurched. She stared from one face to the other. The Feolin warriors studied the fallen Hssrdan in thoughtful silence. They looked pleased, but only mildly interested.
“You killed it?” sh
e asked. Trey nodded.
“By yourself?” He nodded again.
She laid an urgent hand on his arm. “Gods, you’re not hurt?”
Trey’s brow creased as though he was puzzled. “No,” he said at last.
The ornate handle of a slim blade blossomed from the soft skin under the Hssrdan’s jaw like an improbable accessory. It had been a precision blow, delivered with masterly skill.
Anje estimated the creature was not much taller than she was, but its girth was bigger around than her arms could reach, its tail longer than her leg. Its scales ranged from sewage brown on the back to a mottled khaki underneath.
“I’m still winning though,” said Brin. “Four to three.” He shoved the heavy tail with his boot. “This one’s such a tiddler, I’m not even sure we should count it.”
Trey put indignant hands on his hips. “Not fair,” he argued. “It’s hardly my fault it wasn’t the biggest in the clutch.”
“What—exactly—are you talking about?” she grated.
Two masculine faces stared at her with identical expressions of surprise.
“We’ve been ridding this part of the Empty Lands of Hssrda,” said Brin finally. “While we waited for you.”
Anje gritted her teeth. “You’ve been killing Hssrda?” Her voice rose. “Indiscriminately?”
“We didn’t know you were so fond of them.” Brin arched a brow.
Anje tugged at her hair.
Trey said, “We’ve given them every chance, Anje, if that’s what worries you. But if they go for us—” He shrugged. “Fair enough.”
No wonder they’d shown no signs of apprehension. She would have wasted her time warning them they were Hssrda-bait. Because that was exactly what they wished to be.
“Mother save me,” she husked, “you’re mad, the pair of you!”
Steeling herself against the carrion reek already emanating from the carcass, she crouched and used two hands to tug Trey’s blade free. “How much do you know about them?”
“Enough to know the world’s a better place without the bastards,” said Brin. “They deal in human bodies. There’s nothing lower than a slaver.”
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