CRAVE (Exiled Book 2)

by Victoria Danann

  “I will.” She smiled, showing off her white teeth. Then her eyes grew dark and serious as a thundercloud. “But I’d better never catch you with another female.”

  Crave’s first reaction was to be offended at the suggestion. Even in his fantasies, the only female he could imagine mounting was her. “I wouldn’t do that,” he protested. Understanding flitted across his boyish features as he considered the implications and his expression changed to a look of worry. “Same for you. Right? No other males.”

  Dandy smiled a perfectly coy female smile and drew closer. “I would never, Crave,” she breathed. “You’re my Promise.”

  His forehead smoothed as he relaxed then promptly dunked her under with a mischievous grin.

  When Dandelion finally reached the waterfall pool, she was feeling the workout. She’d never made the journey alone. Had never wanted to. She wouldn’t have wanted to that day if it wasn’t for the fact that she was on a mission.

  She looked around for a pink granite rock that would be small enough to carry back to Newland. Maybe the sight of pink granite would uncover one of Crave’s buried memories and let a crack of light into the darkness of his mind.

  Out of breath she looked around. Instead of spotting the right stone to carry back, her eyes came to rest on a flat stone promontory where she and Crave used to sit and talk and cuddle and experiment with teenage sexuality. She sat down on the rock, enjoying the feeling of mid-afternoon sun since she was so rarely outside anymore. As she sat, soaking in the sun, the memories of the place haunted her with sound and vision until she burst into tears.

  Not once since Crave’s rescue had she allowed herself to cry. She was steadfastly focused on finding a way to bring Crave back to her. She wouldn’t tolerate the idea that she might not be successful. Likewise, she refused to feel sorry for herself. Life had given her what life had given her, good and bad. She’d taken the good and enjoyed it. She’d take the bad for eternity if it meant that Crave might be restored to himself someday.

  She felt a little silly, sitting in the middle of the wilderness alone, sobbing loudly. But she also felt a little entitled. Hearing a rustle in the trees behind her, she promptly forgot about everything else. She leaped into a crouch and turned to see a black bear emerge. For several minutes she held that pose, staring at the bear as he or she stared back.

  Finally she said, “Challenging me today would be a big mistake, bear. I might not be a famous warrior, but I’m mad!” She punctuated that by showing her fangs and letting out a feline roar that could be heard from some distance away.

  The bear looked away, looked back at her, and seemed to decide that she was probably more trouble than she was worth. He or she withdrew back into the trees. Dandy listened to crashing about for a couple of minutes, the sounds growing fainter until they were gone.

  “See?” she said to no one. “Even bears know I’m not having a good day.”

  She jumped off the flat rock, dipped her hand in the cold water and brought it to her face, instantly relieving the fever and puffiness caused by a well-deserved cry. She found a rock that would do. Not so large that it would be hard to carry home. Not so small that Crave might mistake it for something else. She washed it in its native water and started down the mountain.

  It was dusk by the time she returned to the holding facility. As soon as she opened the door Crave roared his objection.

  “Glad to see you missed me,” she said, not appearing to be the least bothered. “I brought you something. I can’t put it in there with you because gods only know what you might do with it, but you can look through the bars.”

  She set the stone down in the corner next to the door. He continued his perpetual growl, but dialed the volume down while he watched what she was doing. He approached the bars, got as close to the stone as possible and gave it a good look over.

  “You know what this is?” He answered her question with rage indicating how very deeply he objected to being addressed. His roar gradually leveled out to his typical low level growl as he looked at the rock. She waited patiently until she could be heard over the growling. “It’s from the waterfall pool. Remember the waterfall pool?” He snarled and showed fangs. “Yeah. That’s what I expected. But I had to try.”

  Dandy looked over Crave’s naked body, which was thin and gaunt but still familiar. She knew the shape and curve of his rib cage, the shoulders that still looked powerful even after years of malnutrition and long spells of cramped inactivity. What was new were the scars of a gruesome variety and a number too many to count. There were deep ridges on his back, buttocks, and legs that looked like he’d been repeatedly whipped.

  Staring at the scars made her clench her teeth in anger. She invariably found herself wishing that she could personally deliver the same treatment to those who had abused her Promise so sadistically. The fact that they were dead didn’t provide nearly enough satisfaction.

  His genitals hadn’t changed except perhaps to look larger because of his diminished size overall.

  Discipline sometimes eluded her when trying not to think of Crave in a sexual way. After all, they’d been lovers for a long time.

  When the Exiled were freed by Kellareal and given the opportunity to establish their own community, they had no conclusive religious, political, or social imperatives to impose upon the construction of their infant culture. An anthropologist would have seen Newland as the grandest of experiments and would have been in heaven collecting data on what, why, and how a spiritually free people, who are newly freed physically, would determine the structure of their society.

  But the fact that the Exiled had no dogma programmed into their consciousness at an early age did not mean that they were a completely blank slate. They had spent a generation listening to the conversations of their guards, who spoke freely as if they weren’t there, and in so doing they’d picked up hints of how their creator/captors lived.

  They heard their captors talk about gods and monsters and afterlife and thought that, since humans appeared to strongly believe such things, there was probably at least a kernel of truth when all was said and done. So word spread among them that there were powers beyond the limits of their physical strength or mental comprehension.

  When Kellareal appeared from nothing and whisked them through mists to a new world, it was confirmation that indeed, superior beings capable of magic did exist. When Kellareal was asked if he was the supreme god, he’d laughed and said, “Far from it. I’m just a humble servant.”

  Free had told the Exiled what Kellareal had said and they’d agreed it was logical that, if the angel was merely a servant, his masters must be powerful beyond imagination.

  For the most part Kellareal had stayed out of their business, although he had made suggestions now and then. He didn’t want the project to fail because of an incidental trifle like lacking thousands of years of experience figuring out how people could live together. To end up with a happy collective, there’s a fine line that must be established between getting individual needs met and supporting the happiness of the group at large.

  For a people as smart and physically powerful as the Exiled, anarchy would be a disaster before it even began.

  Kellareal had lucked out when he chose Free to lead, though some might be more inclined to say it was destiny. Whether that would be Free’s destiny or Kellareal’s was a question better pondered by philosophers. The important thing was that Free was almost surely the right person for the job.

  This preamble was to say that the Exiled instituted many familiar social and economic mores, but there were also striking differences. For one thing, they agreed that prosperity was pointless unless everyone in the tribe participated. They believed that a people are only as prosperous as the person who has the least.

  For another thing, while they were monogamous by nature and chose to mate with one person, there were no dogmas regarding how households should be constituted. Nor were there rules, laws, or guidelines concerning the sexual behavior of unmated
people or those who had not yet given their promise formally before all the tribe on a full moon night

  Dandelion became familiar with Crave’s body when they were prepubescent and vice versa. They watched each other grow and develop with focused interest and great delight, sometimes teasing about changes, sometimes experimenting with ways to use teeth or tongue or hands.

  By the time Crave became an active duty warrior, pledged to protect the humans of Farsuitwail to the best of his ability, they were both fully matured in every sense of the word.

  Five Years Earlier

  Crave came to Dandy’s window more nights than not. He climbed up, knocked on the window, and she let him in. He could have walked through the front door just as easily. Like all doors in Newland, it wasn’t locked, and neither of their parents objected to the fact that their children were lovers. He just liked coming through the window. By the time he reached his late teens, his shoulders were a tight fit, but he persisted in using the window.

  Dandy knew that he loved the cuddling and the sleeping like spoons every bit as much as he loved the sex, but he liked sex with Dandy a lot.

  They’d spent years petting and exploring before actual penetration. The first time had been a summer day. The waterfall pool water was chilly, as it was year round, but the mid-day sun warmed them and dried them off quickly. They fell onto the grassy promontory where they’d shared every secret. Dandy rolled into Crave, claiming his eager kisses, and threw her leg over his hip to draw him closer.

  She loved everything about Crave’s body from the size of his hands to the sound of his voice. On that particular day he didn’t tickle her or laugh with her about the size of his erection or the taut nubs her nipples made when they were cold or touched intimately. As they lay on their sides kissing, skin to skin, neck to toe, Crave said, “I want to put it in.”

  “Alright,” she said.

  “I heard it hurts. A little.”

  “Who told you that?”

  He sniffed. “Somebody. I don’t know. That’s not important. I don’t want you to say yes unless it’s what you really want. Too.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay what?”

  “Okay. It’s what I really want to.”

  “Even if it hurts.”

  She smiled. “It can’t be that bad. Right?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not a girl.”

  “Oh. I thought you were.” She giggled.

  “Dandy! This is serious.”

  “No, it’s not, Crave.”

  “Well, what is it then? If it’s not serious?”

  “It’s… natural.”

  Crave stared into her eyes and thought about that for a minute. “Yeah. I guess.”

  “If it was all that bad there wouldn’t be any births. Right?”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “So…” She bumped his erection with her pelvis. “Waiting.”

  He smiled, looking almost embarrassed. “Okay. If you’re sure.”

  “Crave! Do you want me to put it in?”

  He froze, appearing to consider the pros and cons of that. “Do you want to?”

  “Argggh. Just do it. Okay?”

  “Okay. Just. Give me a minute to figure this out.”

  “There’s nothing to figure out. You’ve seen the animals.”

  “Yeah, but we’re not animals.”

  “Sure we are. Just a different kind.”

  “Alright, well…”

  He rolled them over so that he was on top of Dandy. She pulled him down into a kiss and opened her legs at the same time. When she did that he lost all thought of anything except being inside his Promise.

  His hand slid down her body to her core. When he brushed her clit, she bucked like she always did, which made him growl softly.

  Dandy, who, if anything, was more impatient than Crave, decided there was more to sex than anticipation. She reached between them and circled his swollen cock with her hand. The sensuality of the resulting snarl that gave her motivation to find out what else might get similar reactions from Crave.

  She didn’t turn loose of his engorged cock. She let primal instinct take over as she guided him to the opening that was begging to be filled. When he thrust forward enough to embed the head, she turned loose and ran both hands down his back to his butt cheeks. When she squeezed, he threw his head back, panted harder and pushed all the way forward with a powerful thrust she was prepared for.

  Dandy was shocked by the sudden sting of having her maidenhead plowed by a force of nature. She stopped breathing and Crave stopped moving as he remembered that she was more important than the climax that was demanding his attention.

  “You okay?”

  After a couple of beats, she said, “I think it’s over. Just go kind of slow at first.”

  He took her instruction to the extreme, pulling away so agonizingly slowly that she wanted to throttle him.

  “Not that slow.”

  “Crap, Dandy. Make up your mind.”

  “Don’t you yell at me, Crave. You’re supposed to be…”

  “What? I’m supposed to be what?”

  “I don’t know. Loving.”

  His face softened. He smiled and gave her a peck on the lips. “I’m loving. And you know it.”

  She smiled. “Then get down to business and stop playing around.”

  Dandy felt herself smiling as she remembered that first intimacy. She would never forget the look on Crave’s face when he experienced his first orgasm inside her. He looked like he’d died and seen Summerland. His face was flushed, eyes abnormally bright, and his attention was acutely trained on her and her alone. She’d never gotten tired of seeing his face in the throes of sex. She knew she never would.

  A growl ripped from Crave’s throat, and brought her back to the present. She looked at him with irritation because he’d interrupted a very pleasant reverie, the kind that reminded her why she was doing what she was doing.

  “You know I always admired your stubbornness and thought it was an admirable quality. You wouldn’t give up trying to teach me how to play that stupid scruffal. You didn’t give up on learning to read until you learned. You insisted that I was your best friend even when the other males gave you grief for it.” His growl surged and then quieted again like an engine revving. With her back to the wall she slid down until her rump rested on the floor, maintaining eye contact with Crave, which he obviously hated. He didn’t like her to look straight at him and seemed to feel like it was some sort of challenge, but she did it anyway. “Well, now I’m thinking maybe that stubbornness isn’t so great.”

  He grumbled in response.

  “Yeah. You’re nothing if not predictable these days. You ready for a story?”

  He knew what that meant, that he was going to have to endure the grating sound of her voice for a protracted time. He turned and went to the farthest corner and sat, presumably to get away from the female who taunted him with her constant presence. Dandy sighed and began reading.

  She went to sleep thinking about the day Carnal came to tell her that Crave had been captured. Carnal was every bit as bereft as she was, with an added burden of guilt. He was irrationally certain that somehow it was his fault, even though he’d been a good mile away at the time. Carnal had always been friendly with her before and had found the constancy of his younger brother’s relationship amusing. But after Crave was taken, Carnal had avoided her whenever he could.

  Carnal still came to the Commons after that. He just didn’t stop by the bar or make eye contact with Dandy. He also had somebody in his crew get his drinks.

  CHAPTER SIX

  When she woke the next morning, her first thought was that there was a chill in the air and that she’d need to start a fire. Carnal’s crew had thoughtfully stacked quarter split logs next to the hearth so that it wouldn’t be trouble for her.

  The second thing she noticed was the silence. When she realized that there was no growling, not even the low level rumble he kept up when he slept, he
r eyes jerked to Crave. He was also lying on his side, eyes open, looking straight at her. Something was different. The gleam of madness was gone.

  He looked lucid.

  She continued to stare without moving or saying anything, not wanting to break the spell if it was temporary. When he parted his lips, she waited for a ferocious vocal protest that never came. Instead, he said in a voice that was rough, but calm and steady, “Who are you?”

  She answered without hesitation, hoping to keep her voice even, but knowing he’d be aware of how her heartrate had sped up. “Dandelion. You call me Dandy.”

  “I know you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t remember you.”

  “Oh.”

  “What is this place?”

  Dandy hesitated, wanting to choose her words carefully. “You haven’t been yourself. We built this place for you while you were recovering.”

  “Recovering,” he repeated. Recognition made his brows come together. “I was a prisoner.”

  She nodded. “You were. But now you’re here. With people who love you.”

  He looked around. “Still a prisoner.” He glanced down. “Can I have some clothes?”

  She sat up. “Of course. I’ll be right back, but you can use this in the meantime.”

  She approached the bars cautiously, having learned that it was dangerous to get within reach of his hands, but he waited quietly as she pushed her bedding through the bars.

  On the other side of the door, she broke into a run and didn’t stop until she reached the Extant’s house. When she reached the front door, she ran straight in without knocking and began shouting, “Something’s happened! He’s calm! And he wants clothes!”

  Free and Serene hurried toward the front door from where they were having tea in the kitchen. Though it was early, Charming had already gone to supervise plans for the move to Farsuitwail. So it was just the two of them in the house. Serene stared at her with parted lips for only a couple of seconds before hurrying upstairs to gather clothes.