The Taming

by Imogen Keeper

  Preparing to keep her voice calm so even a brute could understand, she inhaled sharply. “I’m sure there’s some neutral place where you c—”

  He didn’t even look at her, but his jaw ticked again. “What part of ‘mouth shut’ confused you? If I have to be stuck with you until I can figure out how to get rid of you, at least I don’t have to listen to your traitorous tongue.”

  She shrank away from the vehemence behind his words and plucked at the fabric of her ivory lace dress, straightening her skirts so they fell evenly to the floor, over her crossed ankles.

  She patted her hair to check that her coiled bun hadn’t been destroyed during their escape. All the instructors at the Institute had said that her hair was one of her best features. Golden and sleek.

  There was no call for bad manners. Fight rudeness with smiles, that’s what the Merentide Ladies’ Institute of the Galactic Future had taught. Leaning forward in her seat, she waved a hand through the air to capture his attention.

  He frowned at her, eyes wary.

  She inclined her head. Manners were a form of armor. She gathered them closely. If she couldn’t speak, it didn’t mean she couldn’t communicate. She pointed to her tightly shut mouth, indicating that she wouldn’t speak again.

  Clearly, compromise was the only way to handle this heathen.

  His frown deepening, he studied her from the top of her head to the bottom of her toes.

  She turned away and dissolved into silence, just as he’d demanded.

  She didn’t bother looking at him again. Instead, she did what she always did when she was upset, and pulled out the holo-cam her father had given her for her last birthday. She passed the time, filming an impressive view of a foggy, glittering pink cloud of an elliptical galaxy winking on the right side of the porthole. It helped, focusing on the familiar feel of the hand-sized holo-cam in her hands. Seeing the images take form, pushing aside the guilt and the fear, and instead imagining a documentary of her travel she could make.

  It was the only available escape, so she clung to it.

  Miraculously, aside from a few dubious glares, he didn’t object.

  SHE WAS AS GOOD as her word, or rather, her not-word. She didn’t open her mouth once. At least not to do anything other than eat her rations. Not for the two days they sat side by side in the cramped bridge of the tiny escape vessel, as he grunted and cursed and growled like an angry beast about what he called the shitty seat. Not when she discovered there was no water for washing, only a sanitizing spray for her hands. Not even when she was forced to use the tiny closet of a bathing chamber well within his earshot.

  And certainly not during the two nights they slept side by side in the seats of the bridge.

  She certainly hadn’t spoken as the escape pod had thundered into the atmosphere of the pale planet where they’d left his ship, flames blasting on the outside of the hull, the pale surface roaring up to meet them, and the interior growing so hot she started to fear they’d be cooked alive, and only her fingers clutched around her holo-cam, filming it all, kept her from screaming. Nor when the landing parachute had engaged and their violent descent had lurched to an even more violent stop, though she’d been more terrified than she’d ever been in her entire life.

  They hit the surface with a loud, metallic bang that rattled her brain, and it was over. They’d landed beside his hulking matte-black spaceship on the dusty planet Araa-Ara.

  She followed him off the escape pod, holding the holo-cam steady in front of her, clambering through the tiny porthole hatch, and trailed him across the hot, dusty stretch of terra.

  His eyes narrowed on the holo-cam, as they did every time he saw it, but he didn’t comment, merely gestured her gruffly ahead of him inside, where it was blessedly cool.

  She hesitated, unsure of what to do.

  He stalked down the passageway and disappeared behind a metal door.

  When she heard a loud splash, she backed away. Was that his bathing chamber? Heat rose up her cheeks. Agammo wouldn’t like this at all. Not one bit. In all the years he’d come to the Institute to visit her, they’d only been alone together a handful of times. And he’d always been staunchly proper.

  And now here she was. All alone. With a big, mean alien who was anything but proper.

  A big, mean alien man, who was apparently naked on the other side of a thin door. She gathered her lacy skirts in her hands and walked to the main hatch of the ship at the exit to wait outside until he finished.

  And then, pray to all the gods he’d let her take a bath too. She’d never been so filthy in her life.

  The air outside was fiery hot, and the sun, only three-quarters of the way through its arc, hovered, blinding and merciless overhead.

  She walked around the edge of the ship to stand in the shade. Dusty soil rose around her legs in great powdery gusts.

  The clime in her city, Merentide on Argentus, was far more civilized. Cool and breezy, at least in the spring and autumn months, when a cool breeze blew off the Meren Gray River. Even in summer, it never approached this heat.

  She tugged at the bodice of her dress. A bead of sweat ran down her neck. Her clothes would be ruined at this rate. Not to mention the smell if she kept sweating in the silk lace and skipping baths.

  Glancing back at the ship, she undid the tiny row of pearl buttons down the bodice that she wore over her dress, and tugged the dress, with its high neck, long bell-shaped sleeves, and lacy designs, over her head, leaving her only in her loose chemise.

  On impulse, she rucked up the chemise, and untied the tight laces of her corset. Didn’t even give herself time to think before she tugged it off. Thick red welts ran along the skin over her ribs. She hated stays.

  She hurried to re-button the bodice over her chemise, which was little more than an ankle length, sleeveless shift, that left her entire neck and upper chest bare, as well as her arms, not to mention the tops of her breasts, but it was the only bra she had. She didn’t dare leave it off.

  On Argentus, this would be scandalous, but Torum despised her. He wouldn’t even look at her twice.

  A stray draft cooled the sweat on her skin. Heavenly. She could move. And breathe. Feeling guilty all over again, she tugged the long white stockings she usually wore down her thighs, rolling them around her ankles.

  Another breeze blew. Decadent.

  She traced the toe of one of her slippers through the soil. A little cloud puffed up around it, but small blue flowers peaked out, tossing petals to swirl through the air.

  She smiled despite herself and gathered a few of the tiny blossoms. Smaller than her pinkie nail. When she pulled a long tendril of a vine, another cluster of flowers came too.

  There was only the subtlest of scents when she lifted them to her nose, but the soft blooms made her happy for the first time in days. She gathered handfuls of the spreading vines in a bouquet of pale white leaves and bold blue blossoms that trailed from her hands like water.

  In the distance, lavender trees glimmered against the horizon, and beyond them, a darker, violet hill rose with a sparkling waterfall and a white building complete with shining silvery domes. A fairyland. A foreign fairyland light-years from home.

  She raised the holo-cam to capture it, already picturing how she could splice together the peaceful footage with the violent landing. Maybe in a decade, back on Argentus, safe with Agammo, they’d watch these vids and laugh and wonder at the beauty of places so far from home.

  If Torum weren’t such a beast, this would be the adventure of her lifetime. She’d be like the heroines in the books she read, free to wander on a foreign planet, explore the ruins, roam at will, unsupervised. She’d never been anywhere outside the home in which she was born, and the Institute where she had been raised.

  Until now.

  “Where the hell are you?” A bellow from the mouth of the ship diverted her attention. “Klymeni!”

  Torum charged around the entrance, black hair, long and wet around his neck, wearing a pair of
black trousers—and nothing else.

  His broad, bare chest gleamed in the harsh sunlight. Sleek muscles rippled as he stormed around the corner. And that tattoo covered not just his neck. It snaked down the entire right side of his chest, along his upper arm, and even part of his rippling abdomen, disappearing into the waist of his trousers. She’d never seen a tattoo in her life, but she’d heard of them.

  And scars. The man had so many scars. Small ones and large ones. One trailed down his right pectoral, and another bisected one of his abdominal muscles.

  He stopped dead when he saw her, his gaze dropping to the top of her bodice. Her skin heated at the look in his eyes.

  “What the he—Are you picking flowers?”

  His gaze flickered over her breasts. She opened her mouth, on the edge of explaining, and remembered that she’d been commanded not to speak.

  Angling her chin at him, she gestured toward the vista before them, the hills in the distance.

  His brows drew together.

  She smiled sweetly and gathered her clothing and flowers. Holding his gaze, she walked toward the ship’s entrance. Hauteur might be a silly defense, but it was all she had.

  Besides, she wanted a bath of her own. And he was in her way.

  “Where do you think you’re going now?”

  Her smile never flickered. Not even when she got close enough to smell his woody, soapy, post-bath scent. He was so tall she had to tilt her head back to keep her eyes on his. She raised a cool brow, schooling her face against even the merest of flinches.

  She walked right past him, and through the hissing hatch door, down the passageway with its icy blast of cool air, and slid the door of the bathing chamber shut behind her.

  Only there did she rest her back against the wall. Torum was different than any man she’d ever come across. Unlike the elderly instructors at the Institute, he wasn’t kind, patient, and gentle. Unlike Agammo and Spiro, he wasn’t courteous, gentlemanly and predictable. No, Torum was something else entirely—but at least for now, she needed him. He was her only hope in the universe of getting home.

  3

  The meanest of kisses

  TOR FLEXED HIS FISTS and cracked his neck, willing his body to relax. It didn’t. He rotated his jaw, adjusted his pants, and sent a few creative curses toward an unsympathetic sky.

  Damn the Argenti and their womanless world. He’d seen far too few since he’d left home. It had been way too long since he’d had his cock in anything other than his own fist.

  The woman was infuriating. He’d half expected to find her making off with his rezals and instead found her stripped down to a nearly invisible dress, with a little tit-shoving vest over it, picking flowers and taking film like she was getting ready for a picnic. A half-naked picnic.

  Since he’d met her a few days ago, she’d lurked in the background in her prim lacy dress, face pinched and suspicious. And now she randomly decided to strip down.

  He glared out across the dusty wasteland that surrounded them. Silent treatment. Ridiculous. A perfect specimen of her people, pampered and soft.

  How his life had ended up here, he had no clue.

  For the last decade, he’d chased criminals across galaxies. Before that, he’d fought in brutal battles against an enemy he didn’t understand for reasons that made no sense.

  Life had been an endless parade of shifting languages, new planets, and strange customs. He’d been free to do whatever the hell he’d wanted. But one thing had been constant. He’d had his partner, Jasto, at his back.

  And now, in the span of a week, he’d lost two good men, been captured, Jasto had been killed, lost a perp, escaped, and an idiot Argenti woman had hitched a ride on his ship. And she wasn’t exactly nobody either. The fucking daughter of Chief Merona. If anyone from the Alliance found out he had her, they’d come looking for him, and he did not want to have to go into hiding for her.

  He wrapped his hand around the hilt of his sword. At least he had Miannya back. He always felt naked without her.

  His pants beeped.

  He tugged his digi from his pocket.

  The message on the screen in glowing red letters was eight days old.

  Urgent. Return comm now. It was from his mother.

  Vaniiya migane.

  He kicked a cloud of dirt in the air.

  He thought about Klymeni’s tits in the tiny vest-dress and kicked up another cloud. What the fuck did happen if an Argenti woman and a Vestige Prime had sex? Primes in rut pumped the air full of pheromones that made the women on Vesta go insane with lust. And the Argenti supposedly had aphrodisiacs in their saliva and some addictive component in their own pheromones.

  He’d found himself pondering the concept during the entire duration of the escape pod, wondering if his cock was hard because of some strange pheromone in the air, or if it was just that he liked looking at her.

  His digi beeped again.

  He hadn’t spoken with anyone from home in years. Whatever his mother wanted, it couldn’t be good. She’d beg him to come home and lay guilt heap after guilt heap at his feet.

  He let his head fall back and stared up at a white-hot sky.

  And this woman. What the hell was he going to do with her?

  He couldn’t take her to Argentus. They’d arrest him, torture him until he gave up every last bit of information he knew about military operations and planetary defense, and then, when there was nothing left, they’d kill him.

  He couldn’t leave her alone in the neutral zone—a lone Argenti woman—she’d probably stick that stupid holo-cam in front of her face and forget to look where she was going. She’d be kidnapped and sold into the sex trade inside a minute.

  He couldn’t take her home. The daughter of the fucking Premier War Chief of Argentus. If the Alliance found her, they’d torture her for secrets, not that she was likely to have any, and send her back to her father in pieces. No way would he help the Alliance by giving her up to them.

  He could just leave her here with the escape pod and a few weeks’ worth of rations, but she’d die eventually.

  Did he care? Not really. But it wouldn’t sit right. He had enough on his conscience already without piling extra bodies on top of it.

  He scowled.

  He’d gone looking for her to find out if she knew the numerics for Assamo or whatever she’d called him, the other future-mate, but then she’d been half-naked, and he’d forgotten all about it.

  He glanced back at the ship and stomped after her.

  The ship’s cool air hit his skin like a slap.

  He paused in the passageway outside the bathing chamber.

  A quick image flashed through his mind of those tits bouncing on the surface of the water in his bathing pool. With her soft honey-gold skin and golden hair, he’d put down half the yenna he had on the odds that her nipples were a nice, bright pink. The same color as her sweet, tight...

  He gritted his teeth. More trouble than she was worth. He should have left her with Spiro; she’d have been safer that way, and he’d have been free.

  Best plan of operation—contact the limp-dick future-mate, one of them anyway, whichever one she wanted, dump her on one of the peace planets where both Argenti and Vestige were permitted to conduct business, and carry on his merry way.

  First, he had to get Jasto. And for that, he needed daylight. The sun would set soon, and his experience on this alien rock was of fast sunsets and nights darker than death, not to mention the killer birds. They’d sleep here, and set off in the morning.

  He stomped up to the flight deck to return his mother’s comm and entered the numerics.

  Splashing echoed down the passageway while he waited for the connection to establish. The holo burst to life.

  One of the family stewards answered.

  When Tor asked for his father, the man’s eyes widened briefly. Just a quick pause and a flare of… something. Fear maybe, or nerves. Doubt? And off he went.

  Tor frowned. His father was probably of
f rutting one of his felanas. It would be a while. His father always kept him waiting. A classic tactic designed to remind everyone who was in control.

  His mother would give him that look. And his brothers would shake their heads. And his father.

  He didn’t want to think about what his father would do after the way he’d left. The last time Tor had seen him had been the day after his father had abducted Sanger’s wife. Tor had stood in his study, bruises still spreading angry and blue across his chest, still crippled from an axe he’d taken to the back on Punt-Rayabad, the latest of his father’s murderous raids on a distant colony, and his father, in the same breath had ordered Tor to revenge-breed Sanger’s wife, and announced that he’d sold Sanger’s sister, Amaline.

  He’d stared down at the blood of a thousand faceless men still crusted beneath his fingernails, dropped his family’s ceremonial sword on the floor, turned his back on his father, his whole planet, walked out of the office, out of the cassia, and never looked back.

  Tor readjusted the angle of the comm’s holo-feed, and sat in his seat, propping his feet on the console. It would annoy his father to see him lounging like that. But he loved this seat. It was big, and in the years he’d had this ship, it had conformed to his body.

  Mother appeared on the comm, eyes harder than he remembered, and they hadn’t been soft to begin with. Crow’s feet spread from her dark eyes, and her hair had turned nearly white. “You’ve been gone too long, Tor.”

  She said the same exact thing every time they spoke. He sighed. “Nice to see you too, Mother. Where’s Father?”

  Her brows lowered. “Don’t be flippant, Torum. You need to come home. Now. This nonsense has gone on long enough.”

  “I’m great. Thanks for asking. Lost my first perp. Jasto, you didn’t know him, but he taught me everything I know about bounty hunting, is dead. I was captured by a rabid Argenti couple and tied up. Don’t worry, though, I got free, but now I’m saddled with a madwoman. But other than that…” He spread his arms wide. “All’s well on planet Araa-Ar—”

  “Your father is dead.” Her left eye twitched. That was about as much emotion as Mother ever showed. A normal person might cry or scream or tear at their hair. But not Mother. Never. The most anyone ever got was a twitch and a frown. “So is your brother.”