“I’m not her,” said Minarra. “And you aren’t real. You’re just a ghost.”
The robust Komen-tah turned to the slave girls, encouraging their boisterous response. “Did you hear that? I am not real,” he told them. “And neither, therefore, is this.”
They squealed as he held his erect cock in his hand. Komen-tah’s phallus was enormous, thick and banded with green circular designs. One by one they fell to the floor, on their bellies, begging to be fucked. He spurned them all.
“They seem to think me real enough, Priestess. Shall we test the hypothesis?” Prince Komen-tah’s body touched hers, hot as fire. He was a huge man, a wall of muscle, inescapable. The more she squirmed, the more she accommodated his hot desire.
“Please,” she cried in vain.
He slid the coiled whip down her left side. “You will perform for me, Priestess. You will give me pleasure watching you writhe under the whip. Such will be my victory over the gods. I shall humble them, through you. And when the whipping is done, you will service me. I’ve a new sacrament for you…and it involves swallowing.”
“No,” she shook her head desperately.
Pushing his cock into her belly button he grabbed the back of her neck for a kiss. It was deep and rude, but arousing nonetheless. Smashing her defenses, he slipped down, into her consciousness, making her want and need all the wicked things he planned to do. Her pussy dripped in reply and she began to pant. Shame racked her body as the slaves commented on the easiness of her response, the way she welcomed the cruel treatment.
He released her, a shattered woman. “I believe you were saying something? What was it?” he asked amused. “Oh yes, I believe it was no.”
She groaned as he laid the whip coil against the opening to her sex. He was grazing her clit, forcing her to feel unwanted pleasure with every breath.
“Is it still your intent to defy me?” he wanted to know.
Minarra shook her head no.
He smiled in triumph. “In that case,” his eyes bore into hers. “You may come for me…”
She began to spasm, the fluids pouring out of her in floods. The entire room was being filled. They were all going to drown. The slave girls screamed as one by one they were washed away. Minarra fought like mad to get away, but Komen-tah was holding her, keeping her in place. The shouts for help coming from her mouth were not penetrating the water. She was going to die.
At the last second, she heard Mac’s voice. She was in his arms, and he was pulling her up and out of danger…
~~~~~
Mac was just lulling off into a semiconscious state when he heard Minarra cry out. She was having a bad dream, softly moaning, fighting something off. Instinctively, he gathered her in his arms.
“Honey, it’s all right. You’re safe.” Time evaporated, the breakup was a thing of the past, or was it the future? He’d been down this road before. Minarra had always had nightmares, though she would seldom remember the experiences the next morning.
“I have to…escape…the flood…” she was saying.
“Min, you’re dreaming.” He leaned her back, taking her face in his hands, one palm on either cheek. “You feel that? It’s reality. Wake up and feel what’s real.”
Her breathing slowed after a couple of more gasps. At last her eyes opened, slowly. “M-Mac?”
He hadn’t intended to kiss her. Really it was the worst thing in the world he could have done, but there’d been no way to squelch his instincts in time. Those bright, beautiful eyes of hers lit up for a moment and then her lids slid dreamily closed. The hands that a moment ago had pushed at his chest now reached around his neck, drawing him close.
Mac’s erection rose to meet her. If it could have, his cock would have opened the zipper by itself.
Oh god, he needed Minarra…but on an airplane? Three rows back from the pilot? Covering her with the blanket bought him time to think. So did sliding his hand up under the hem of her skirt. He drew a breath, quick and sharp at the firm, familiar silkiness. Those legs. Her thighs. She hadn’t lost a bit of her assets.
“Nnnn, Mac.” Her teeth were chattering. She had her head back, her neck arched, and she was holding his wrist. Was she trying to get his hand off her body or did she want it higher, closer to her center?
He worked his way under the side panel of her panties. He was nearly at the point of no return. “Tell me to stop, Min. Or not.”
“Just take me,” she thrashed her head. “You know you will anyway.”
“No, Min, it’s your choice,” he said fiercely.
“I don’t want a fucking choice, Mac. I’ll only feel shittier about this when it’s over.”
Fuck. Talk about making a man feel like a heel…
“Forget it,” he growled. “This is a mistake.”
Minarra pushed him away. There was something wild in her eyes, something he’d never seen before. With hair all disheveled like this and her lips puffy from sleep, she looked like some kind of succubus, pure eros, pure darkness.
“I’ll be in the bathroom,” she told him. “I need some air.”
He refrained from grabbing her. More than anything he wanted to follow her, the sway of that ass and the motion of those flanks. He was having visions of her, pinned against the wall of the tiny restroom, her palms on the metal, his cock slipping into her from behind. Screwing like rabbits at fifty-thousand feet.
Talk about crazy. For one thing, there were all the new security regulations. Only one person in the toilet at a time. Granted, he could sneak in, but still, it would be opening a Pandora’s Box. Reopening a nearly fatal wound for the sake of a quickie…a total violation of every rule of sane and healthy human conduct.
He had to laugh at that one.
As if their passion had ever followed any rules.
What exactly is that you’re lying on? He’d asked her the day she’d surprised him, naked in his tent, happily arrayed on a Persian rug.
You know damned well what it is, she’d propped her chin up on her hands, her knees bent behind her as she lay on her belly. It’s a priceless Khartoush Dynasty Coronation rug.
The one from your father’s tent?
What do you think? They have these lying around at the bazaar in town?
You’re fucking crazy.
Nope. Just fucking horny.
It killed him to think what he’d done to that playful, impish young woman—totally destroying the trust she’d so fully placed in him. Like a bird, spreading its wings in the wrong palm, only to have them crushed.
There was no way he could go after her now. It would be taking advantage. She wasn’t fully awake. That look in her eyes—whatever she’d dreamt this time had messed with her head. Her mother Sofia had had the dreams, too. Roger had told him. They got worse just before the insanity kicked in. From there it was all downhill…
Fear gripped Mac’s heart as he thought of Sofia’s end. Discovered early one morning, an empty bottle of pills in her hand. He couldn’t leave Minarra alone right now, as much as he knew it was wrong to pursue her for sex. He’d go just to talk to her, to get her back to her seat so she could share what had happened and let him help her work through it.
Helping—that was it. Not sex. No matter how badly he wanted it. And her.
* * * * *
Minarra slid the latch to the occupied position, not daring to breathe until she was securely within the confines of the steel compartment. It had been a close call, far too close for comfort. She’d very nearly succumbed to him, despite all of her resolve and carefully built walls of hatred and loathing.
The dream was responsible. That accursed, mind-eating, repetitive dream.
She had opened her eyes and seen his face, full of concern, so strong and masculine, yet so tender. She’d called his name and then…they were kissing.
Things had gotten fuzzy again. He’d touched her and she’d responded, but something had held them back and the next thing she knew she was running away.
She’d made good her esc
ape. The question was, now what?
She splashed water on her face. She was shaking all over. What was happening to her? Her reflection in the mirror showed a woman she barely recognized. Between the stress and lack of sleep, the pressure of getting this mission ready while dealing with all these dreams, she had been gradually wearing herself to a frazzle.
But there was something else, too—a different glint in her eyes, ancient and fierce and alien. Almost like someone else staring back at her. Was it her imagination fired by all her readings, or was she quite possibly looking at some facet of the Minar-ra of old?
“Minarra. Open up.” It was Mac, knocking on the door.
“Go away.”
“No, I won’t. Let me in now, or I’ll break the door down.”
“Don’t be crazy. The pilot or someone will shoot you.”
“I’ll take the chance. I’m not kidding, Minarra, let me in.”
Minarra uttered a curse under her breath. He was just crazy enough to do something like that, too. She slid the latch to unoccupied. He turned the handle at once, opening the door.
The room was filled with his presence. Tall and strong. And comforting. The last thing she wanted to do was bury her head against his chest…but that’s exactly what was happening. The way his arms wrapped around her, so tight and perfect, both comforted and alarmed her.
They were too good of a fit. Always had been.
“Min, tell me what’s going on?”
She looked up into his eyes. Kissing him was a cheat, a way to avoid the subject—along with all the others between them. He did not refuse. He was a man, after all. He tasted of fresh mouthwash. A bit of stubble brushed her cheek. Suddenly nothing mattered but him. He absorbed her senses, her essence.
Here was an opportunity, she thought, her mind working in split second flashes, to drive away the loneliness, to silence the pain and doubts.
Minarra pulled him back, so she was pinned against the wall. Grabbing him by the collar, she made it clear in no uncertain terms.
“Fuck me.”
He was hesitating, despite his obvious arousal. So the bastard was trying to be all moral on her now?
“Fuck me,” she repeated, hissing the vulgarity as she went to work on his zipper. “You owe me that much.”
His face darkened—he wasn’t happy with what she was saying, but that was his tough luck. He had taken things this far, he’d stacked the deck from day one of their relationship, so he’d bloody well come through now when she was horny and scared.
He sealed the bathroom door with his palm and locked it. “You’ve changed,” he pulled up her skirt. “You’re…different.”
“I’m not that naïve young woman anymore,” she agreed, exposing his cock—that magnificent spear she knew so well. The man had lost nothing of his virility. It was every bit as hard and sensitive and pulsing as she remembered. Touching the vein underneath, the part she knew drove him wild, she added. “So you’d better live up to my standards.”
The frown was visible. She’d hit a nerve. “How many others have there been, Min?”
She laughed, enjoying the pain she seemed to be causing. “I don’t keep count, sweetheart. Do you?”
“There are things you don’t understand.” He pulled her skirt up, out of the way. Those creamy, white thighs, the delta under those sweet, cotton panties, and that ass of hers, a perfect heart. The way she was acting he wasn’t sure if he wanted to fuck her or spank her.
“Oh I’m sure. A man has needs…he can’t be tied down… Just out of curiosity, how many others were you screwing at the same time as me? Iona? She had the big tits remember? What about Helga? A little old, but hey, I guess any hole will do.”
The sarcasm wasn’t lost. “Don’t be hurtful, Min. I told you, you don’t understand…”
“I don’t have to,” she wriggled her panties down, with the direct aim of matching up his cock to her moist opening underneath. “I’m just a piece of ass. Same now as then. Daddy told me how you handle women.”
The words were like a blow to the solar plexus. He’d been half-afraid Roger would cover things with lies, but he hadn’t wanted to believe his mentor capable of such a thing. “What did Roger tell you?”
“Just the truth, big boy. Now stop talking and fuck me. You don’t deserve a conversation.”
Mac scooped her up by her ass cheeks and impaled her, his uncircumcised cock head easily parting her swollen, pink lips. She was more than ready, lubricated and inviting.
“It’s not that easy. Not by a long shot.” Working his length in and out a couple of times, he lifted her legs, helping her to wrap them around his ass. Her sharp words quickly changed to soft moans and whimpers. She laid her head on his shoulder, her fingers clutching at his back. Her breath was ragged, every tiny motion of her lungs bringing her to what he knew from experience was the edge of orgasm.
She was so fucking beautiful like this, so completely vulnerable, yet filled with a fire that could incinerate half a city. It was he who had helped her make that discovery in herself. The buried riches of her own sex. His name belonged on that find. There was no way another man could go there and do that. There was no way she could respond like that with anyone else.
The very thought of it drove him out of his mind…
“How many?” He asked again compulsively, employing a single, powerful thrust. “How many have you let get inside you…after all we had?”
God—what am I saying? What sense did that make? He’d spent the first two years after the breakup filling his life with empty sex to dull the pain, and she hadn’t even had the benefit of knowing why the thing had happened at all.
“How many, Min? Five? Ten? Fifty?” He couldn’t help himself. He’d gone too far already. It was a jealousy fuck now. “You will tell me, if I have to make you name them all.”
“None,” she cried, spasming around his cock, her drenched, molten pussy clenching and unclenching in orgasmic fury. “Not a single…fucking…one. Are you happy, asshole?”
Mac came amid a swirl of emotions. Guilt and shame and pity for himself, yet also a kind of deep, male satisfaction. So Minarra was still his woman, in a very real sense. She’d never gone to another for comfort. She’d never let another claim her body.
He grunted, like a man stabbed, squeezing out every last drop, filling her. His woman… She’d waited six years, more gorgeous than ever, free spirited, untamed, except by him. And now here he was, back again—enjoying the best sex in all that time, feeling better than he had in years. It was all so very simple. Just a nice, neat little do-over and go on, right?
Except there’d be a lot of questions, wouldn’t there? Like why, even if he did leave her out of respect for her father, didn’t he come back for her after the old man’s death less than a year later? Why had he stood, watching her from afar, at the funeral? In her black dress she had looked so elegant and lovely, so tortured and frail. Why hadn’t he held her then, instead of waiting until now—in an airplane bathroom?
He couldn’t answer that. He only knew that he had not belonged at that funeral, nor, at that point, in her life at all. He’d skulked away from the graveside, across the green lawns, back to his jeep, leaving Minarra by the granite headstones of Sofia and Roger Hunt.
“Minarra,” he breathed in the wake of the storm, the rushing air of the vents partially obliterating his plea. “I’m sorry…for all of it.”
She shoved him away, as far as the tight quarters would allow. “Leave me alone, Mac. Go, now.”
He stuffed his cock back in his pants. There was no way he’d touch all those emotions…like a pile of coiled snakes, slithering and hissing. “All right, Min, have it your way.”
She locked the door again after him. He could hear the sound of crying as he walked back to his seat.
A few minutes later she came out, fully composed. Resuming her seat, waiting for him to rest his head and nod off against the window of the airplane, she said, “And just so you know, nothing is going to cha
nge. I am not going to jump willy-nilly into your arms now. In fact, I am not even going to treat you as a civilized human being, except where absolutely vital to this expedition.”
He attempted a small olive branch. “I’m glad at least we’ll still be working together.”
The answer seemed to irritate her. “Don’t play coy, I know what you were up to, and it didn’t work in there. You thought you’d use me? Well I used you. How does it feel, big man? I got off on you. I used you for your cock.”
“I don’t think you believe that, Minarra.”
“Fuck you,” she told him. And that was the last thing she said until the plane landed.
Chapter Three
In order to stay calm, focused and rational, Minarra diverted herself, making a thorough study of everything in her environment on the way to the hotel. Porto Sayeed was a place of stark and terrible contrasts. From the window of the rickety double-decker vehicle, she could observe, on this particular street, a row of stick supported canopies, a bazaar, teeming with long-robed merchants offering everything from figs to Fujika cameras. An old woman in a veil selling woven prayer rugs sat quietly next to a young man in a USA T-shirt hawking CD players. Tinny, Arabian music played from loudspeakers on wooden poles, interspersed with the live flute of a snake charmer and the sounds of rap music coming from a boom box. Children played something akin to jacks on the cobblestone street, as armed soldiers watched warily, machine guns at the ready.
They’d been traveling downhill, following the general contours of the city that led to the harbor, the mouth of Porto Sayeed, in more ways than one. Pirates had a different slang for the opening through which they thrust their vessels, one the priests and mullahs would hardly approve. Minarra found it interesting herself. That this same, teeming, self-contradictory haven for the tall ships traveling over crystal-blue seas, could be synonymous with sex, worship, commerce, or in the case of some souls, sheer magic.
In the same way, she could choose to regard what happened with Mac in any number of ways. The proper thing to do was to assign it as little value as possible. The same with the dreams. They were as real and deep as she made them. Granted, she was becoming a bit hesitant to sleep…but that didn’t mean there was anything real behind them.
Prisoner of Shera-Sa Page 4
