by Camryn Rhys
He found himself laughing. “Leave? Zolin told me to stay here.”
The young beauty shook her head and glanced at the door. The drumming had reached its climax and gone over the edge. She hurried to the back of the tent, behind the stool and got to her knees.
“What are you doing?” he asked, following her.
The woman pulled him to his knees as well and he wanted to reach for her swaying breasts again.
Was that how this worked? Did he get to have sex with her again? Gods, he hoped they wouldn’t make him have sex with everyone who came in the tent.
She stuck her hand under the tent and raised it into a very shallow opening. “You’ll have to crawl out first,” she said in Spanish. “Before my father finds us.”
Tomás jumped to his feet, shaking off the drug haze. “Your father?”
“Yes, he is the Chief.”
The regal carriage made sense to him. She was the village princess. Holy shit. He’d just fucked the village princess.
She flapped the tent back and forth. “Hurry, before they find us.”
Tomás waved a hand. “Of course they’ll find us. They’re bringing in another woman when I call them.”
“No, they’re bringing her in now.” She pushed at his naked shoulder. “Hurry.”
He glanced back at the tent door, then to the princess who held up the tent for him to escape. “Why would they bring her in before I called them? What if we were having sex again? Don’t they wait for me to—”
“Just go.” She pushed him again and this time, he went head-first through the small opening. Her hands were on his butt, pushing him the rest of the way out. Then, in a moment, she crawled out after him.
The princess reached for a piece of cloth that lay folded on the ground. She slipped the creamy, thin garment over her head, then passed him a similarly shaped piece of cloth.
“Put this on,” she urged, pressing the garment into his hands. “We must leave.”
“Leave, where? I need to tal—”
She opened the cloth and shoved the shirt dress thing over his head, cutting off his protest.
Tomás pushed at her hands when she settled it over one shoulder, then wrapped something around his waist and secured it.
“There. Now. Run.” The princess jumped to her feet and took off down the dirt path.
He stared after her.
She stopped a few feet away and gestured to him. “Run. Now.”
Tomás shook his head. “I can’t. I have a mission. I’ve had enough of this ceremony.”
“This isn’t the ceremony.” Her knee-length half-dress billowed and furled like the sail of a ship as she ran back to him. “And there won’t be a ceremony once they find out what you’ve done.”
“What have I done? Technically, I didn’t do anything. You—you did all the work.”
She sighed and took both his hands, pulling him to his feet.
Tomás still felt uncertain standing up, between the darkness and the drugs. He put out one foot to steady himself.
“You’ve just defiled the Chief’s daughter.” She dropped his hand and pointed into the dark, away from the glowing fire behind him. “Now. Do what I told you and run.”
Chapter Two
Citlani jogged down the mountain path behind the stranger from the sex tent. He might be a stranger, but she was his wife in every sense of the word. Now she just had to keep him moving long enough to avoid the village search parties. If she could get to the rocky place just south of the village, no one would be able to track them. Not if she was careful.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
“Be quiet and keep going,” she responded in his Spanish language. “They will know where we are if you disturb the birds.” She gestured toward the still-quiet canopy of trees.
Thankfully the stranger was still barefoot, keeping his stomping tendencies to a minimum. She’d snuck his bag from the ceremony area and hidden it near the path where she’d led him out of the village.
All his clothes and other gadgets were in the bag. His giant boots would’ve left tracks a five-year-old could follow. No way he was getting those back until they were safely away from the drumming. Citlani could still hear the beat in the distance, meaning they were too close to the village to slow down.
“Can I at least have my shoes?” Tomás gestured toward his bag on her shoulder and leaned against a large tree to rub the sole of his foot.
“No, and do not touch that tree,” she hissed and shoved his shoulder, barely moving him an inch. He wasn’t a giant man, but he was stronger than he looked. Most wolves were.
“Why?” He jumped off it and looked over his shoulder.
The tiniest smile tugged at her lips. “The bark will make you smell and bugs will crawl down your clothes.”
“Shit!” He jumped into action, brushing the tunic of any clinging tree fibers.
It wasn’t true. But at least it got him moving again. He was doing fairly well for a stranger to the mountains, but she needed him to move faster. For the last six days she’d lived without her mother at her side. In all her twenty-one summers, she’d never been separated.
Ever.
Tomás was her best chance to save her mother from whoever had taken her in the market of Choaca. Nothing else mattered, and staying in the village and marrying Zolin was unthinkable. The man smelled of grease, never showered, and had been asking to marry her for the last three years.
Now when her mother truly needed her, he wouldn’t look and neither would her father. It was like they’d both just written her off. They’d given up without even trying.
So, she was trying.
The old women of the village had been preparing her to wed Zolin. Sex lessons. Citlani shuddered, remembering how they’d been so forthright about what would happen, where everything fit together. They’d gone on and on. The sex tent had been terrifying, but once the act had been started, it’d been quite straightforward, thanks to those old women’s instructions. At least most of it. The way the stranger responded had startled her. The old women hadn’t spoken of the man touching her anywhere but her breasts. They’d said men never outgrew their mother’s breasts and always wanted to touch and suckle them, no matter how old.
But Tomás had done more than that. He’d touched her between her legs and ignited a fire inside her that had burned hotter than anything she’d ever felt in her life.
Still, just because the sex had been somewhat pleasant didn’t change the fact that it was a tool. A means to an end.
She would give this stranger her body. Produce sons for him. In return, he would help her find her mother. He had to. Citlani didn’t have any other options left.
They left the thickest part of the forest behind and came out into a clearing. On the far side, rocky areas littered the ground. The trackers would lose their trail here.
“Walk on the rocks.” She pointed. “Keep going that way. There is a place we can rest for the night.”
To his credit, the man didn’t object and continued forward. He was starting to limp though. His feet weren’t used to being bare.
“We will be there soon,” she said. The drums had faded. They were out of range. No search parties would come this far. Now they just had to get to the safe alcove she had in mind.
The night animals were rousing as the sun fell behind the horizon. Soon there would be no light left. Citlani stepped up her pace and passed by the stranger. She led him across the stones, further down the mountain, and into a small clearing where a stream cut through the aged grey rock.
To her right was a shallow enclave that would shelter them from the wind. Across the stream, was an open area of grass and flat rocks before the jungle swallowed the landscape again. The moon was rising now and the pink sky was turning shades of blue and purple.
A sigh slipped from her lips. She set down his—her husband’s—bag and squatted next to the stream to get a drink. She cupped her hand and drew several mouthfuls before To
más caught up to her.
“Are we done?” he asked, kneeling beside her and taking a drink from the running stream.
“We should be safe here tonight. We can walk the rest of the way down to Choaca tomorrow.”
Tomás shook his head and closed his eyes. The world still spun just a bit. It was possible the exertion had made it worse, because everything around him seemed to be on fire. Had he heard her right? Back to Choaca?
“Hold on, here.” He pointed back to the path they’d just abandoned. “All this running, and you don’t say a word to me? I need more than we can walk to Choaca tomorrow.”
Her face was goddess-like, all sparkling eyes and beautiful lines, full lips that stayed tight and together, dripping with water. The fiery edge to his vision was almost overwhelming.
“Fine.” She swiped at her mouth. “But you should drink more.”
He sat back on his heels and his head spun. “Not until you tell me what is going on.”
“Suit yourself.” The princess took another swipe of water for herself and slurped it down. “But the herbs they gave you, you need to wash them away.”
“Herbs?”
“One of them—probably Zolin—would have put the oil on the skin of your face. It made you feel light-headed. It made you easy to…” She dropped her eyes. “It makes you suggestible.”
Tomás crossed his arms. It made me easy to control. Why didn’t she just say it out loud?
“I see it’s wearing off,” she said with a bite to her tone. “Drink.”
He bent to the stream and took in as much water as he could manage. In the meantime, she rummaged around in the bag between them.
“Wait, is that my backpack? I assumed I’d have to go back—” He grabbed the black straps and yanked it away from her. “You’re going to tell me who you are and what the hell is going on here. Right now.”
The princess sighed and released the pack. She rolled her long, thick hair in her hands and twisted until she had piled it on top of her head and knotted it. “I apologize for the abruptness of our joining, but it could not be helped.”
“Abruptness?” Tomás barked out a laugh. “That’s putting it mildly.”
She met his eyes with a boldness that almost set him back on his heels. “I had no other choice. If I did not…” A momentary loss of control sent her features whirling into some emotional storm he couldn’t read. “They weren’t even going to try to find her.”
For a moment, he wanted to reach for her, to comfort her, but he resisted. She was a stranger—no matter how beautiful she was, and no matter how much their sexual encounter had seemed like a dream.
“Find who?”
“My mother.” Her tone was so sad, so empty, he could practically hear the crack of her heart through her chest.
“What happened to your mother?”
The princess held her head high and shook her head. “I don’t know. She disappeared in a market in Choaca. Zolin has…taken ownership of me, with my father’s blessing.” Her lip quivered and for a moment as if she might burst into tears, but her mouth tightened. “We never receive visitors, you understand. You were already in the sex tent. I just…I just pushed Fate along a little bit.”
With a shake of his head, he wiped at his face and sighed. “I had no idea about the…well, the tent. Zolin brought me up to meet with the village elders.”
She reached in the backpack and drew out two round, dark ovals that looked a little like hockey pucks. One of them, she handed to him, and the other, she bit into herself. “You should eat. Drink. Get your strength. We’re going to have a long walk ahead of us tomorrow.”
The princess pointed off, over the river, and into the dark. “I had to take us back toward the volcano,” she made the sign with her hand that he recognized from his conversation with Zolin, “in order to throw off the search party. So we need to double back if we are to make Choaca tomorrow.”
Tomás took the cake from her hand and sniffed. It had a faint earthy sweetness, like smelling a box of raisins. He chewed a little on one end and his teeth sunk into it with ease. “Why are we walking to Choaca?”
“I told you.” She chewed at the last of her cake. “To find my mother.”
“Right.” He took another bite of the sweetness. Something warred inside. A rising part of him felt like he should fight, like he was giving in to something he didn’t understand. Another part just wanted to lay down on the ground and put his arms around her and sleep the night away.
What the hell was wrong with him?
“You should keep drinking the water.” She indicated the stream. “The haija makes your mind too open.”
“Haija?”
“The oil. It’s a mixture of herbs from inside the mouth of the volcano,” she made that sign again, “that the men use to heighten the magick for their rituals.”
Tomás sat on the ground, his legs out in front of him, and tried to clear his thoughts. Fucking haija, or whatever it was. “My family has been mating for a hundred years, and we never needed drugs to do it.”
“You do not have the haija. If you did, you might find it to be helpful in finding your mate.” Her eyes wavered, briefly. “You might not be thirty summers without having mated.”
Tomás scoffed at her. “I’m only twenty-eight, and there’s nothing wrong with not having my mate yet. My father didn’t find my mother until he was thirty-two. It is common, where I’m from.”
Her nose wrinkled and he couldn’t help noticing how cute it made her look. He wanted to touch her nose, her face…he had to stop thinking these things. But she seemed so sad, and her beauty almost took his breath away, even in the dark.
Maybe especially in the dark.
“My mother never mated, even though she became my father’s wife,” she said with a somber drop in her tone. “So perhaps age has nothing to do with it.”
“I am sorry about your mother,” Tomás said, reaching for her. “Of course, I’ll help you find her.”
When his skin touched hers, something sparked between them and she jumped. But she glanced down at his hand on the soft flesh of her upper arm. In a quick flash of cloth, she’d pulled off the tunic and her naked body was moving toward him.
Tomás began to harden so quickly, he wasn’t sure it was all natural. But the air between them had been surging, ever since the sex tent, and he wasn’t surprised that his dick responded so quickly to her.
She was a goddess.
“What is your name?” he asked as she put her hands on his shoulders.
“Citlani,” she murmured, pushing him back onto the ground.
Tomás smiled. “Seet-lawn-y,” he repeated. “That’s beautiful.”
Before he knew what was happening, she had pulled up the front of his tunic and bared his erect cock to the cold night. She slipped her legs over his groin and guided him into her hot wetness.
He blinked several times, trying to process the feel of her tightening around him, then riding him. She grabbed his hands and moved them to her breasts, where he found erect nipples, so sensitive to the pads of his fingertips.
As he twisted them, she cried out in her native tongue, and the night echoed with her pleasure. The pressure in his abdomen built and built, with her holding his hands on her breasts, and groaning.
Citlani increased her pace, bracing her knees on either sides of his hips as she worked on his cock and gripped him, everywhere.
He found himself wanting to pull her down on top of him, to kiss her, to hold her, to go down on her, but her pace was so insistent, and she was so much in control, he could barely think.
“Fuck,” Tomás gasped as he was about to come. He wanted to stick his fingers between her folds and find her pleasure center. Make her come, too. But she had a vise grip on his hands, and her eyes were closed.
She was so beautiful, bouncing over him, lost in pleasure. He released his seed into her and a tiny smile crossed her features. She kept riding him until he had moaned his last, and then she released hi
s hands.
Tomás sat up and her eyes popped open. Still joined, they were so close, he could feel the pebbles of her nipples on his chest. He slid his arms around her and gazed into her surprised eyes.
“Lani,” he whispered. “Beautiful Lani. How do you captivate me like this?”
Her gaze was wide, almost innocent, and with just a touch of something intangible. Distant. She licked her lips and that set off all kinds of fireworks inside Tomás.
He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her, so fervently, with so much heat, he thought he might explode.
When he pulled away, he saw a deeper surprise in her eyes. Almost a flash of tears in her eyes.
She misses her mother, still.
Lani pushed him back to the ground and rolled off his body. She picked up her tunic and slipped it back over her head, shrouding herself from his eyes.
“We should sleep,” she said to the air, not facing him. “As soon as it is light, we should find the path again.” She pulled a blanket out of the backpack.
She really had been prepared.
“I will happily accompany you to Choaca,” he said, scooting across the open space toward her. But she placed the blanket in his hands and then pulled another one from the spacious pack. It was like Mary Poppins in that thing.
“Sleep now.” Lani wrapped herself in the blanket and nestled up to a nearby rock. She turned her back on him.
Tomás stared at her back. She was so intimate one moment, and so cold the next. It dumbfounded him.
But it only made him want her more.
Chapter Three
Citlani could feel him staring at her. He’d agreed to help her find her mother. She hadn’t expected that argument to go quite so easily. The way he looked at her made her skin itch and tingle. When he’d reached for her, she’d done everything the way the old women had taught her, but he still seemed unsatisfied. Like he wanted more.
Then there was the kiss. She’d never been kissed before. Never seen anyone kiss anyone like he’d kissed her . It wasn’t done publically in the village. Kissing was an intimate act kept for the couple alone. When he’d kissed her, she’d felt more. More than just satisfying his male needs. She’d found pleasure in his touch for a second time.
