He laughed against her skin, warm breath skittering down her neck, sending shivers and sparks in its wake. “Maybe. For all we know, you’ll go into heat in a week, or in about five minutes you’ll go mad with lust.”
She hadn’t thought of that. She’d already been pretty mad. And when she said so, he laughed.
“So, it was exuberant enough for you, then?”
“Well…” She bit down on her lip. “I might need another demonstration to be sure.”
His cock pulsed inside her as if it had been challenged. “We’ve got eight days till Vesta. And I’ve got so many ideas, amiera. I’ve thought about this for a long time. All the things I’m going to do you.”
“What about me doing things to you?”
“Oh, you’ll do them,” he purred in her ear, and her toes curled. Growling, he rolled them over so she sat astride him, and his hands dug into her bottom. “I swear on Vaniiya that I will spank this ass again. Much harder this time. And I’ll do it while I’m inside you so I can feel you shudder and clench around me.” He thrust up against her in a way that made her belly hitch, and she started a slow ride in response. “And I’m tying you to the bed again, and this time we aren’t going to sleep at all.”
She trailed her fingertips over his chest, “About that, those handcuffs gave me some ideas.”
“I hate being cuffed.” The orbs drifted over her face, like he was considering it.
She nodded. “But you’ll do it for me.”
His eyes gleamed.
She lifted her hips, slowly, loving the way his eyes drifted out of focus and his mouth parted. She slid down until he was all the way inside, filling her completely. “I’ve got ideas, too.”
“Ideas?” That slow half smile made her insides go liquid.
She whispered a few of the dirtiest ones in his ear, smiling when she saw her plant sitting on the table in the corner.
“I like that last one.” He pulsed inside her, proving the truth of his words. “But I get to do it back. It only seems fair.”
She clenched around him experimentally, reveling in the way his eyelids went heavy and his brows scrunched up in pleasure-pain. She sank her nails into his chest, and marveled that this big, hard, powerful, violent man let her. He didn’t just let her, he reveled in it. She could well believe that if she left marks, he’d be proud.
“Fair?” She lifted her hips a little higher, came down a little faster. “I have it on good authority that nothing’s fair. And no one is free,” she said.
His lips curved up in that deadly, sexy smile that always made her whole body turn to jelly. “Freedom’s overrated.”
Author’s Note
Thank you so much for reading The Taming! It means the world to have my work out there. If you feel moved to leave a review [link TBD], I would be so grateful. It helps spread the word.
KEEP READING FOR A GLIMPSE OF THE NEXT STORY IN THE TRIBE WARRIOR SERIES –
SANGER AND TESSA in THE CLAIMING.
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Thank you!
Immy
1
Can’t catch me.
SQUATTING ON THE ROOFTOP, Tessa stared down at the map in her hand.
It was a crude, sad thing, hand-drawn by a coca junkie, in wavering black lines on a piece of reused paper so filthy and wrinkled it had softened nearly to cloth.
The buildings were denoted by squares and rectangles. Junkie or not, the cartographer of this little scrap had missed his calling with the city’s re-planning division. It was well scaled, and labeled clearly, despite his tremors. He’d even included little jittery spikes for the tammin vines that grew on the sides of the southern facing buildings, and a dotted line for the sidewalks.
This building had been marked with a red star. A festering warehouse in a forgotten part of the city. She had traded the last of the yenna she’d pickpocketed from the crowds on Mebureille Street for this little map.
According to the junkie, he’d seen the Boss here three nights in a row. This was where she’d find him. She could practically feel it thrumming in her bones.
This was it.
She pocketed the map and pressed herself back against the scrap of shade along the edge of a skylight.
The day was glaringly bright, the sun bouncing off pale stucco walls. The buildings were pristine white in the Prime neighborhoods with characteristic golden domes for which Didgermmion was famous, but here the stucco was dingy, and the roofs were flat.
Not a cloud marred the perfect blue bowl of the sky overhead or offered a break from the beating rays, and only a few measly breezes came off the sea in the distance. The city in high summer was hotter than the Abyss.
Ducking under a powerline of thick black wires, she pulled sunglasses over her eyes.
She would wait as long as it took.
In a city of just over a million people, it shouldn’t have been easy for so infamous a man to hide. Half myth, half ghost, the Boss, Delsanthio, spread through the city’s underbelly like a vicious disease, corroding everything he touched, controlling every illicit activity in a city already saturated with crime. Drug-pusher. Slaver. Murderer. Asshole.
She’d been hunting him for so long, she’d started to doubt he even existed.
The sun had passed its zenith long ago, but night wouldn’t come for a couple hours yet, and according to the junkie, Delsanthio, never arrived before sundown.
She would kill him.
Closing her eyes, she envisioned it, lived it, so that it burned so bright in the neurons of her brain and the beating ventricles of her heart that loss of focus would be impossible. Plunging the knife into his chest, watching the blood spread like a blooming rose and the light fade from his eyes, his body going cold and still.
It would be so sweet.
Only then would this be over.
What she’d do after that… that was anybody’s guess. She’d take Cara away from here. Someplace safe. Maybe they could get to one of the softer countries. Tamminia maybe, where felana trade was forbidden.
The sun sank low, and the city moved on around her. But she stayed still, settling into the half-conscious lull of one accustomed to waiting.
Her mind drifted.
The skylight cracked beside her, loud enough to make her jump. The paint along the casing split, and the window lifted upward.
Rolling to her side, she pulled up to a crouch, one hand splayed on the roof, the other on the knife at her hip. She held her breath as the glass lifted skyward.
The pole that operated the skylight jostled the joist, pushing up until it caught. She relaxed. Most buildings in Didgermmion weren’t airconditioned, so they had skylights like this to release rising hot air. Someone was opening the window. That was all.
She was twenty feet above them, and the angle was off. They shouldn’t be able to see her, but just in case, she didn’t move a muscle. Barely breathing, she waited for the pole, and its operator, to move on.
It was too early for it to be the Boss. He shouldn’t be here for hours yet.
The open skylight was an unexpected boon. She might be able to hear them speaking.
She inhaled slowly against the smattering of nerves. No time to get excited. She was close, the closest she’d ever been. But she needed to stay calm. Objective. Figure out who he was, what he looked like.
Notorious as he was, nobody ever saw him in the flesh. Except the
junkie, and all he’d said was big and dark and scary. That could be almost anyone on the whole of Vesta.
So she waited.
Twilight spread over the city, lavender and pale, but the warehouse stayed quiet. It was the prettiest time in Didgermmion. The stars glittered on and the city lights blinked to life in reds and blues and greens, and the wind off the swampland to the south and the harbor to the east picked up.
For a moment, one could almost forget they were trapped in hell by the water and swamp to the south, and everywhere lese by the craggy, impassable mountains and the desperate, endless desert beyond.
The temperature plummeted as darkness spread, and salt air, carried the scent of growing things. And mozzies. The little bastards usually avoided her. She wasn’t sweet enough, but still. She hated their itching bites.
She tugged on the man’s overshirt that was part of her constant disguise. Black like everything she wore. Black like the dark. Black so she could hide.
When the hum of hushed voices touched her ears, she crawled to peer over the opening.
A single, exposed bulb lit the space in a meagre circle. Five men, and one woman stood on a broken concrete floor. They conversed in tones too low to catch. Another man pushed in a dolly, loaded with crates.
They argued. The woman wore a gaudy red dress, her breasts pushed up to her collarbone. She gestured sharply toward the crates.
One of the men, a big bald brute, tore the wood planks off a crate, and lifted the lid, tattooed muscles bulging.
Black metal glimmered.
Tessa swallowed, leaning closer, mouth dropping.
Rezal blasters.
A lot of them.
No one but the Poliza had rezals in Didgermmion. That was one way the Prime aristos maintained control of the Humanis. The Humanis weren’t strong enough on their own to fight against the faster, stronger Primes, and anyway, they had nothing to fight for.
If all those crates were full of rezals, there must be hundreds. Her whole life would change if she could get her hands on just one. She’d never need to be afraid again. No one would be able to touch her or Leyla.
Palms clammy, she leaned closer, straining to hear, wrapping her hands around the edge of the skylight as she shifted forward, lowering her ear to the opening.
Nothing. Which one was the Boss?
The men were all big and dark and scary. So the junkie’s description was less than worthless.
An agreement of sorts was made. She could tell by their body language. The woman, still pissed, made a few sharp remarks.
She caught a few words, rising like smoke in the thick air. “Harder for us to… Need a break…. Too many…. You don’t know what you’re asking.”
Another of the men, one who hadn’t spoken much, with thick, dark hair, dressed all in black, said something that seemed to calm the woman.
He was big—enormous actually—standing with his legs braced apart, arms crossed, the corded muscles of his arms glinting in the light. He looked like a Prime, but he wasn’t wearing the classic togata of the nobility. Which meant, he either wasn’t a Prime, he wasn’t noble, or he just didn’t like wearing the dandified togatas. And of all those options, the only one that made sense was the last one, since all Primes were nobles, and he had to be a Prime. Humanis just didn’t come that big or arrogant.
Maybe…
One of his words hit her ear. Boss.
Her eyes narrowed. She’d been holding out hope that he was the Boss. There was a slight deference in the way everyone spoke to him. Like they were waiting for him. But he wouldn’t talk about himself in third person, would he? Even the Boss wouldn’t be that weird.
And it wasn’t the woman.
The Boss was a man. She knew that much.
The woman and the speaker were out. They’d outright dismissed something the bald, tattooed guy had said. He couldn’t be the Boss then. She couldn’t picture anyone dismissing Delsanthio, not if half the rumors were true.
The other two, she’d distinctly gotten the impression, worked for the woman. Her bodyguards maybe. They’d stayed back from the circle of the two men and the woman.
So the Boss wasn’t there?
She ignored the smattering of disappointment. Where the hell was he?
It didn’t matter, she’d come back tomorrow, and the next night, and the next, and the one after that, if she had to. Until he made an appearance, and she saw the bastard in the flesh. She’d never give up.
She leaned closer, bracing herself against the window casing.
Which was a mistake. Because it was old, and the sun, heat and humidity had broken it down to little more than dust.
It crumbled away.
Right beneath her fingertips.
One second the casing was a solid weight under her palm, and the next it was gone. And there was nothing but dust and air as her hand plunged into the warehouse below.
She scrabbled for purchase, throwing out a leg, and flailing with her other arm, but she was too slow.
Her shoulder plunged through the opening. Paint chips and rotted caulking rained down.
Her cheek bone smacked against the glass hard enough to make her eyes tear up. She squeezed them shut, waiting for the glass to give. But it held. It didn’t shatter. If it had, she’d already be dead on the ground.
She shuddered.
Twenty feet below, five heads turned up. Five pairs of eyes zeroed on her.
Shit.
Time to run.
2
Tell me your lies,
And I’ll tell you mine.
THE BIG ONE didn’t even flinch.
He just launched into motion, bolting toward the door in a dark blur.
The way he moved, there was no longer any doubt about his physiology. Prime.
Of the four genuses; Prime, Prima, Humani and felana, only Primes and the incredibly rare Primas could move like that. Superfast. Felanas could move faster than Humanis, but nothing like the Primes. He was bigger, stronger and faster with heightened senses and probably formal combat training.
She was totally screwed.
Grabbing her bag, she took off at a sprint. Straightening her palms to slice through the air, she leaped across an alley and onto the rooftop next to the warehouse. Pounded across the tops of three more buildings. Dropped to a crouch, straining her ears.
She couldn’t hear a thing. Her heart was pounding in her ears hard enough to explode, and she was breathing too loud.
Way too loud. He’d be able to hear it.
She sucked in air, expanding her lungs to compress her heart enough to slow its beats, she cocked her head, listening. The breeze. City sounds. A few birds in the distance. And below that… there it was. The slap of booted feet on the streets below.
She launched into another full sprint across the roof top. Vaulted over two more.
Calm down. She needed to calm down. Panic served no purpose. But she couldn’t trust herself to think clearly.
The wrong move would get her caught by the big bastard of a prime below, and he’d deliver her straight to the Boss.
And everyone in the city knew exactly what the Boss did with any stray felana dumb enough to get caught unmarked or unattended.
She cursed at the stars, and came to a stop at the edge of a building, hesitated with the toes of her boots overhanging the roof by an inch. Down below, the bald one with tattoos ran by. His boots made a rhythmic patta-pat-patta-pat that echoed across the night.
The warehouse.
She spun a tight circle and ran a straight path to where she came from, leaping from a final rooftop, catching herself on a balcony and climbing up a gutter back to the roof with the window.
They wouldn’t expect her to go back here. They’d all be off searching in the wrong spot.
Moving quietly across a rusty metal fire-escape ladder, she climbed down to street level, and froze at the bottom to get her bearings. It was too dark to see much more than shadows.
A few hovers moved around
in the distance. The woman in the warehouse spoke to someone in a low murmur. But nothing else.
Pebbles cracking beneath her feet with every step, Tessa sidled down the alley. In ended at another, larger one that stretched between Chappo and Hastineas Streets. And that was homefree. Two more blocks and she could blend in with the Humanis and the stink of the market.
“Psssst.”
She didn’t even pause to look, just grabbed the knife in its sheath, and the muscles of her thighs tightened, preparing to run.
She didn’t make it even a single step.
A hand like steel closed around her upper arm and whipped her back so hard her teeth smacked together. A jab to the forearm numbed her wrist, and the knife clattered across the pavement and out of reach.
Useless.
Vaniiya.
She opened her mouth to cry out, but a hand clapped down, stifling any noise. Nobody on the main streets would have heard her anyway, and even if they had, they wouldn’t have helped. Nobody helped anybody in Didgermmion. Not since the Council had sealed off the city, instituted rationing and made it illegal for felanas to go outside unattended or unmarked.
Whoever had caught her dragged her back into the darkness. No way was she getting taken to the stalls.
She fought like hell, kicking and bucking and throwing her arms, but an arm snaked around her ribcage, and drew her in tight.
A pathetic little whimper escaped her lips.
It was a man. A Prime. She knew that smell, even though she’d spent every second of her adult life actively avoiding the species.
He shoved her against a wall, her skull thudded and pinpricks of light burst in front of her eyes. She lashed out, knees and elbows. She was panting, breathing so hard it felt like her lungs would explode, but he wasn’t. He was cold as ice, as he trapped her wrists in his fist.
She twisted, lifting her knee up hard, heading straight for his groin.
“Fuck.” He dodged it with his thigh, and he closed a hand around her neck.
The Taming Page 30
