{Can you stand?}
{Yes.} She half-lied, a part of her still lost in the echoes of pleasure.
He took her hand and led her away from the dark shadows that hid them and then out of the tunnel into blazing light. She staggered behind him, blinking, her mind befuddled.
{Ramsey? The men fucking aroused you?}
His sardonic amusement mocked her through the comm-linc. {The men aroused you. You aroused me…but, Steffania, I’m Verdantian. I’ve had male lovers.}
Of course, Verdantians have no sexual bias. She knew that.
~ ~ ~
“I was afraid for you today, Dominus.” Pansy’s soft voice greeted him at the entrance to the villa. Steffania moved past him with a murmur about preparing a bath.
He was unused to people caring if he lived or died. Pansy’s worry for him left him disgruntled and provoked an unfamiliar desire to reassure her. “On Verdantia I don’t fight for glory. I fight to stay alive – a markedly different experience from these games. You do not want to know how many men I have killed in live combat, and I do not intend to recount it. Most of the men I face in the Dominion Games do this for sport or notoriety. Unless I do something spectacularly stupid, you need not worry.”
Pansy stopped his progress down the hall with a gentle hand on his arm. “Dominus, Kella ordered me to drug you tonight. Whatever they plan will happen tomorrow. Please use extra caution.”
Ramsey examined her closely. “You are certain they will believe your ruse?”
The tiny woman nodded carefully. “Yes. The painkiller, Donset, looks identical to LasiCon. It is entirely believable that I would confuse them.”
“Stay in the villa, tomorrow. Stay out of their sight.”
Pansy nodded. “Please promise you will take care, Dominus.”
“Don’t worry about me, Pansy. I’ll be fine.”
Ram patted Pansy’s delicate shoulder in reassurance and walked down the hall to the bath.
Pansy brought food and drink to the bathroom and carried away his filthy clothing and armor to be cleaned and readied for the following day. Ramsey and Steffania relaxed in the swirling hot water and strategized before seeking their bed.
~ ~ ~
Ram lay in bed on his back and watched through hooded eyes as Steffania stripped down to all but her gold collar. With a mysterious, feminine smile, she joined him on the bed, lying next to him on her side.
{How can you have the energy for more sex, DeKieran?} Her glance swept his nude body to the juncture of his thighs and the full-blown erection thrusting out of a nest of dark hair toward his navel.
“There is something about a primal contest of life and death that stirs my lust. I do two things well – kill and fuck. Now it is time to fuck.”
She snuggled into his side and placed a gentle kiss on his chest. {Yes. I do know what you mean. I, too, have felt such.} Her fingers played through his curling chest hairs.
“Were you hoping for a passionate discourse on your irresistible beauty?” Ram said with stinging sarcasm. She was irresistible, and the knowledge he could not keep her made him bitter.
She looked up at him in question. “No, of course not. I know what this is.”
He ran a finger lightly over the golden links banding her neck and swallowed words of apology. He should not care what she thought of him.
“Have many have worn your collar, DeKieran?”
“The collar you wear was made for you. No one else has worn it.” He hadn’t answered her question and Ram knew it.
“I’m flattered. Thank you. So, DeKieran...have you collared many lovers?”
He drew back with a forbidding stare and snapped, “No.”
“How many? Five? Ten? Tell me.”
He closed his eyes on a long, low growl. “Two. You and one other.”
Steffania stopped her petting. “Who was she? Or was it a he?”
“A ‘she’. Doesn’t matter, she’s dead.”
“You can’t get away with that answer, Ramsey.”
“Can’t I?” he grunted.
“No, not this time. Does this have anything to do with the murder charges against you?”
The damn woman was nothing if not persistent. If he didn’t answer her now, she would bring it up over and over until he did. He sighed heavily. He’d never spoken about this. Not with anyone. He supposed it was time and curiously, he didn’t mind telling Steffania.
“Yes,” he said.
“Did you?”
He knew exactly what she was asking. “No. I loved her more than life.”
“So you are innocent of murder.”
He grunted. “No. I just didn’t kill her.”
“Who did you kill? Talk to me, Ramsey. Don’t make me drag it out of you word by word.”
Ram shifted on the bed and lay on his side, facing Steffania. “I was a young lieutenant. Desiree DeHavre was the most beautiful, kindest, gentlest woman I had ever met. The happiest day of my life was the day she agreed to marry me.” Ram closed his eyes and tried to remember Desiree’s face. He couldn’t do it. Desiree’s beloved features kept morphing into those of a red-haired vixen. Ramsey strangled the blossoming pain and guilt at the realization before it could flower fully. “I returned from a ten-day sortie to find her in our small home, strangled to death with my téad de ghrásta.” He’d never forget walking in and seeing her lifeless body bound to their marriage bed. He looked up at Steffania, taken aback at the sorrow in her eyes. “My proclivities were well known. Someone had set me up. It took me some time, but I found out who.” He paused so long she didn’t think he would continue. “He was a former lover. I hunted him down, and I killed him. You know the rest.” Ram lay back and stared at the ceiling. Silence settled in the room.
“I’m sorry, Ramsey. I’m very, very sorry,” Steffania whispered and the frozen place inside his soul thawed a little more.
He rolled to his side to face her. “Who did you pierce your nipple for?
Steffania’s eyes flared in surprise at the abrupt change in topic. “I know what you are doing, Ramsey.” She frowned in distaste. “I pierced my nipple for a man who is no longer important. I thought he was someone I could trust. I was wrong.”
“A Verdantian?” Ram asked. His fingers reached out and he lightly stroked the underside of her breast, gently flicking the small, ruby-eyed emblem of his aristocratic heritage.
“No.”
“Recent past?”
“No,” she said.
Ramsey chuckled softly. “Do I have to drag it out of you word by word?”
She glared at him, then dropped her gaze. “I suppose turn-about is fair play.” She lay quiet for long moments. Ram could see the unhappy memories cross her face. He knew a moment of regret for asking and it was on his lips to tell her she needn’t answer, but she spoke. “Years ago, I fell in love with someone who said he loved me, but he only loved the sexually subservient Steffania. The decisive, independent Captain Rickard emasculated him. He needed something I couldn’t give him. He wanted someone I wasn’t.”
Ram easily read the hurt and self-doubt hidden in her terse words. He considered himself something of an expert on rejection. “Yet you still wear his nipple ring.”
“It reminds me never to settle for a lover who won’t accept all of me – and perhaps someday, to wear the mark of one who will.”
His insatiable need for this woman, the totality of her, sank deep goads into his senses and he reached for Steffania, intent on supplanting the pain lingering in her eyes with desire. Rolling over and settling between her thighs, his lips wandered hers in drugging, intense kisses, tasting her unique flavor, dueling with her tongue in the most carnal of battles. She rose up under him in melting surrender, small cries of pleasure escaping her mouth, beseeching whispers tickling his ears. Before he surrendered to a maelstrom of physical gratification, Ram wondered if Steffania realized that she still wore his gryphon.
In the deep hours of the night, Steffania lay awake, snugged against Ram’s h
ard body. His arm banded her to him and his heavy leg draped hers in blatant possession. They started this way every night. It was almost as if he held her down to prevent her escape. As if I should want to escape. She wondered if he did this with all his women – or only with her.
Different triumphs and uncertainties had dominated the past days but the nights had remained the same. Glorious, soul-shattering, exhilarating sex filled those hours as two healthy animals at the prime of their potency reveled in each other – until tonight. Tonight had not felt like ‘sex’. Tonight, unless she was badly mistaken, Lord Ramsey Melborn DeKieran had made love to her – not sex, not games of domination and submission, but love. Did Ramsey realize it? That question beleaguered her brain, stole her peace of mind – and threatened to break her heart.
Chapter Thirteen
The heavy, mouth-watering odor of fried sweet cakes and succulent, roasted meats flavored the morning air in the stadium of the XIV Dominion Games on another relentlessly clear Vxloncian day. Barkers hawked souvenirs and drinks in piercing yells to eager fans milling in the lower galleries and also to those in their seats. Dotted throughout the crowd, colorful, fringed canopies shaded the upper class from the shimmering dazzle of the sun. Dozens of hover-cams whirred about like gargantuan metal insects, darting in for close-ups of the fighters. Ramsey resisted the urge to swat at them.
All we need are the dancing bears. It’s a gods-be-damned karnivalle. Ram glanced around the dais where he stood with the other three finalists. His fellow combatants appeared deadly. The first male, the Aeleon, would face Cextalun, a Vxloncian fighter from Dominion. The Aeleon favored a long, deadly triune spear and weighted net. The Vxloncian male used a razor-edged blade that measured the length of his body. The Aeleon fought skillfully, but Ramsey knew the Vxloncian would best him. Should he win, Cextalun would await the outcome of Ramsey's fight with Tok. The mincing host flitted between the four fighters with overblown introductions, which the masses packed into the stadium met with roars of approval or jeers of derision. Ram’s mood, sour to begin with, deteriorated.
Cextalun sidled close to Ram, his voice an undertone. “Can you take him, Verdantian?”
Ramsey stared at him.
“The Khlossian.”
Ram grunted.
“I’ll dispatch the Aeleon and help you.” The Vxloncian grinned. “Together we can bring him down. Personally, I fancy my chances against you over the Khlossian.”
“Go fuck yourself,” almost passed his lips before Ram reconsidered. It might take two of them to bring down his friend. Victory was essential. He had prostituted his honor before. So what if he killed another small part of his soul? Ramsey snarled with unhappy impotence. “All right,” he spat and looked away to hide his thorough self-hatred – right into the too-aware gaze of Tok.
The Khlossian looked at him with a knowing lift to his mouth and nodded slowly. “No friends in this fight, Verdantian.”
Ramsey clenched his jaw and consigned his conscience to bloody hell.
~ ~ ~
Bam! Ramsey grunted in pain. He needed two hands on his blade to block another slamming blow from Tok. The sinews in his shoulders and elbows screamed in duress. The muscles in his biceps and forearms blazed with the pain of imminent failure. When the bloody hilt of his sword slipped in his numb grasp, he fell back. Earlier, the Khlossian had opened a shallow slice above Ram’s right wrist that bled steadily into his handgrip – nothing fatal, just inconvenient. Sweat stung his eyes and his mouth closed on grit from the up-stirred arena sand. He would give half his prize money for a drink of water. The run of Tok’s blade against the shoulder of his sword’s cross guard resounded with a loud shwing.
For the past two hours, the Khlossian had battered Ramsey in an untiring, methodical decimation that demonstrated no skill, merely remorseless, brutal efficiency. Small rivulets of blood dotted the torso of the hulking giant where Ramsey had penetrated his guard but like the wound on Ram’s wrist, they were inconvenient – not life threatening. Now, Ram fought a purely defensive battle, waiting for the Vxloncian fighter to join him.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ram saw Cextalun slip behind him, and he surged forward to re-engage Tok. A sword stroke passed by his ear so closely it ruffled his hair. The stroke had come from behind. Son-of-a-carrion-eating-dog! Cextalun had stuck at him.
Again, a blade passed so close Ram felt the wash of air as it flew. He whirled to defend himself from Cextalun’s unlooked-for attack but Tok’s throw spared him the necessity for action. The behemoth flipped a throwing knife through the air in a swift fluid move Ram hadn’t seen before, striking Cextalun even as the Vxloncian started his arm in an arc to lob a second knife. The hilt of Tok’s deadly projectile protruded several inches from the eye socket of a startled Cextalun. With a puzzled look, the Vxloncian slipped to the arena floor, dead.
Slipping backward to give himself room to maneuver, Ram folded into a wary crouch and faced the Khlossian. Ram circled him with caution, looking for an opening, any vulnerability. “Thank you, I suppose.” He squinted up through the dusty haze at the towering goliath as they turned a slow circle face-to-face.
“Don’t like back-stabbers,” Tok rumbled. “Wouldn’t have stopped him if he’d come from the front.”
Ram bared his teeth in a savage grin. “Fair enough.”
Tok’s low chuckle sounded like boulders grinding together. He beckoned with his hand in invitation. “Come, Verdantian.”
Ah, hell...With a snarling bellow, Ramsey attacked the Khlossian. Bam! Shwing! Sparks flew from the collision of the blades. Ram’s arms strained to hold off the giant’s sword thrust. A feral snarl left his mouth at the mocking laughter in his opponent’s eyes. The pommel of Tok’s sword slipped under his guard and clipped Ram’s chin. As his vision grayed, Ramsey realized with consternation that he was going to pass out. To add to his humiliation, he felt the massive arms of the Khlossian ease him as gently as a babe to the blood-soaked grit of the arena floor.
~ ~ ~
“If something unexpected happens, get off Vxloncia on the first transport available and take Pansy with you.”
As if she would ever leave a teammate behind. Idiot.
Ram’s words had reverberated in her brain as Steffania sat with Pansy and watched the Games’ finals on the villa’s vid-screen. Unlike the previous days, today Ramsey had not wanted her with him in the stadium.
“It will be easier to get off planet immediately if you’re not at the stadium.”
So, she’d watched the vid-cast of the Games just as billions of others did. She’d watched, helpless, crying out a warning to the screen as the Vxloncian fighter ambushed Ramsey from the rear. She’d watched, helpless, as Ramsey’s head snapped back at the ugly upper cut from the Khlossian and then slumped in Tok’s arms, lifeless. The hover-cams zoomed for close ups as the gurney bearing Ram floated from the arena, his arms dangling off the edge of the stretcher like pieces of loose rope. She hadn’t known if he was living or dead.
Steffania would not, could not, acknowledge the meaning of the paralyzing fear that had swept through her. At that moment nothing had been more important than getting to Ramsey – not their mission, not Alessa DeAlbero, nothing. She and Pansy had flown out of the villa, desperate to flag down public transport, but not one would stop for an unaccompanied slaaf – not on this day when all the world and his dog were out for the spectacle of the Games.
Anxiety swamped her gut in waves of nausea for hours as she and Pansy waited. Her relief when the Games’ officials deposited Ramsey at the villa, unconscious but relatively unharmed, morphed into a simmering, smoldering anger. She blamed it on her uncertainty about completing their mission, though the mission had not entered her thoughts until she’d seen Ramsey and known he was safe. Damn the man.
She had been able to steel her heart at the thought of walking away from him as long as he behaved like an arrogant dick-head, but Ram hadn’t done her the courtesy of staying in character. Instead, for the past six d
ays, he’d transformed into the lover of her dreams – a masterful dominus at night – by the gods, those nights – and a respectful, intelligent partner all other times. Her heart ached at the idea that the end of this mission signaled the end of their time together. He had spoken no words to indicate he wanted anything more, and Steffania raged at her idiotic hopes. She had done the unthinkable. She’d become emotionally invested in someone who would never return the sentiment.
~ ~ ~
Ram swam up to consciousness through a foggy maze of pain and disorientation. He lay on his back in his bedroom at the villa. Someone had torn his jaw off his face and then pounded it back into joint with an iron mallet. He blinked slowly, waiting as his eyeballs stopped their unfocused crossing. Two pairs of anxious eyes peered down at him – one honey-gold, one violet. Faces swam in and out of focus then finally steadied – Steffania and Pansy.
A bright light flicked into each eye, bringing with it a jagged lance of pain and he held up his arm in protest. Or rather, he tried to hold up his arm in protest. The ill-behaved appendage flopped at his side like a banked fish.
“His pupils are equal and reactive, thank god, so perhaps not a severe concussion.” Pansy cast a relieved glance at Steffania, then returned her attentions to Ram. “Dominus, can you tell us your name?”
His jaws resisted his efforts to speak. “Ramsey Melborn DeKieran,” he croaked.
Hers To Cherish (Verdantia Book 3) Page 13
