Abducting the Princess (2 page)

He clucked his tongue, “Be nice, Mira.”

Oh, don’t you dare speak my name aloud.

His amused, approving stare skimmed over her undoubtedly flushed face to rest on the circlet that lay askew across her brow. He ran a hand over the gems encrusted into the fine silver wires. “I think we can put this to much better use.”

She shook her head as he removed it. Her eyes widened as held the priceless trinket at the joining, then snapped it apart between his fists. “Mmpth.”

His lopsided smile might well have caught her breath in a far different manner had she not known better.

“Raise your hands.”

Fuck. You.

She glared harder. “Mmpth. Mmp.”

More incoherent words were uttered beneath the
darfe
as he used a hand to clamp her wrists together, before binding them crudely with her circlet.

“My apologies if those gems cut into your skin,” he said with a raised brow that conveyed the very opposite, “guess fashion comes at a price, hmm?”

She didn’t have time to try to voice any number of swear words his way. At the sound of her soldiers running feet and their muffled curses and shouts, Mahaya pushed her forward, through another lot of endless twists and turns before he finally brought her to what appeared to be a dead end.

Gasping for breath, she still managed a half laugh through the
darfe.
He was trapped! Her soldiers would finally call his bluff.

But it was a victory too short lived when Mahaya crouched low—evidently aware she was never going to outrun him, even if she’d had the strength—and lifted a concealed hatch.

Her heart sank.
Damn him.
She should have known better than to doubt this man, with his clever, hard eyes and even harder exterior.

She should have listened to the advice of her
cotesh
servants and taken them up on their self-defense training. Instead she’d shrugged off their concerns and spent her time in talks with her people and their many needs and petty injustices.

Her words were her weapon. Her ability to listen and solve problems, her strength.

Or so she’d thought.

He gestured toward the hole in the ground. “After you, Princess.”

She shook her head. Her fingers clenched and unclenched as she imagined all too vividly the unrelenting blackness of the underground tunnels.

He stepped toward her. “Have it your way then.”

Her scream barely penetrated her gag when he lifted her bodily. She kicked out at him, but it had little, if any effect. The ground abruptly dropped from beneath her. She braced herself, but Mahaya held her tight, his legs absorbing the jolt of impact.

She swallowed a gasp as realization dawned. That was some drop. Much too great a fall for any human she knew.

The hatch above them abruptly crashed back into place.
Shit.
Mahaya evidently had another ally. But it was the darkness descending as though a candle snuffed that had her skin crawling and her throat drying. Never mind that the closed hatch would once again lay concealed on the ground and the soldiers would assume they’d never been there.

Her greatest fears were being realized.

She turned to the eerily glowing eyes of the man she’d thought human. The same glowing eyes that would undoubtedly be reflected right back at him. One set silver blue, one set vivid green.

Sweet goddess above.
She should have known by her body’s reaction to him that he was not human. Then again, she would have sensed one of her own kind immediately. Her belly twisted as soul deep dread infused her system. Mahaya was definitelyno
larakyte
.

She was in far more trouble than she could have ever imagined.

“Say it,” he growled softly. His hands were deft as he unknotted her gag. “Say what I am that fills you with so much terror.”

Damp limestone and mildew scents filled her lungs as the
darfe
fell free. She barely noticed.
“Nightmix.”

Chapter Two

“And that makes me worse than a kidnapper?” he asked. Yet even as he said it there was an unmistakable undertone of savagery in his voice that sped up her already racing heartbeat.

“Much,” she said with quiet, unshakeable conviction. She wouldn’t let him know how much he scared her.

Except instead of wrath, she heard something close to resignation in his voice when he said, “I would love to hear why your father is accepted as a
nightmix
when others of our kind are feared more than the plague.”

Because my father is one in a million, with an exceptional capability of withholding his dark side, when history has proven time after time that nightmixes can’t help but give into their wicked natures.

He took hold of her upper arm and pushed her forward. “But there’s no time right now to listen to your weak excuses. I’ll learn all I need to soon enough.”

Tingling warmth traveled from her arm to her belly and then straight to her pussy. She swallowed back another bout of anxiety. Mahaya being
nightmix
was the least of her troubles when the powerful, animalistic needs coming to the fore at his touch, his presence, threatened to consume her.

It was unspeakable that this man was the one who brought her beast to life.

She pushed the needs of her inner panther back, aware that by having to suddenly do so she was at risk of a
fallout
—an uncontrolled and barely endurable shift into her panther form. She’d never had that misfortune before. She’d never had to even try to withhold her inner beast. Whether that was because of her rare genetics or not, she’d probably never know.

She’d always been an anomaly, forever having to prove her worth.

Introspection slid away with her rocketing pulse and heated skin. She fought to regain her composure and bring her beast to heel. Drawing in a breath, she concentrated on partly shifting her eyesight, enabling her to use her panther vision to better see her surrounds.

With her fear of the dark, it was the only shape shifter skill she’d ever consciously practiced. The ability would also help ease a little of her sudden need to change shape.

The physical pain of a
fallout
she was certain she could tolerate if need be. The debilitating, mental toll of darkness, not so much.

“I believe your mother once used these same tunnels to help save your father’s life,” Mahaya said in a hoarse voice that revealed his own needs. “It’s through her bravery that you’re here today.”

She lifted her chin, an act of defiance that was laughable if he only knew the truth. “I’m sure you’d be devastated if I wasn’t.”

It was sarcasm and derision rolled into one. So why was she the one without anything to say when his hand tightened on her arm and he answered with blunt honesty, “Without a doubt.”

Despite the fact that this man had kidnapped her; despite the fact he was a fabled
nightmix
,awareness continued to press on her senses, more forcibly than even the darkness that enclosed them.

“Did you know,” he continued, “that these tunnels lead to the very caves where shifters were forced to live, waiting and hoping for human acceptance?”

She didn’t answer. She’d heard the story of how her father, the great King Judas, had taken in shape shifters when no humans except a trusted few had known his true identity. He’d hidden the shifters in the caves with their network of tunnels, whilst rebuilding the
larakytes
palace close to the caves and a life giving oasis in the
Helbelzcha
desert.

His plan to integrate many of the shifters amongst the
Zaneean
people, ensuring they were accepted by at least a handful of humans before allowing them to shift shape and reveal their true identity, had worked for the most part.

Humans had shown no desire to turn their backs on the shifters—their friends—they’d come to know and respect. It’d been a long battle, but the
Zaneeans
had finally accepted shape shifters as equals. Or so she and most other
larakytes
had presumed.

What of Mahaya, then? He was a
nightmix
, a part shifter, so why did his allegiance lie with the human dissenters?

She didn’t have time to think upon it further. He steered her right, into another tunnel leading off the main one. It narrowed considerably and even with her many-times-better-than-human vision, her eyesight could barely penetrate the blackness ahead.

Disorientated and beyond anxious, she took deep, steadying breaths. It didn’t help. She felt as suffocated by the damp limestone and mildew scents as she was by the walls looming inward that created the near impenetrable darkness. She didn’t suffer from claustrophobia as her mother had, but right then she could well imagine the nightmare her mother had endured trying to save the king.

Mira’s one weakness, aside from her unfailing duty for her people, was her fear of the dark. She’d never told anyone, but she lived in constant anxiety that she’d inherited her father’s
nightmix
soul. A fear that had manifested itself until she’d even began to dread the coming nights.

An outer darkness that might well become a reflection of her inner darkness.

Perhaps that was why she’d never shifted shape? To become a panther and expect the silver coat of her
larakyte
heritage and instead see the black coat of a
nightmix
was too horrifying to even contemplate.

Her birth was unprecedented. A
larakyte
and
nightmix
had never borne offspring before. She was an unknown entity, forever trying to prove herself to everyone, including her own people.

Shame, self-doubt gnawed at her determination, eating away her confidence until she wondered how the darkness hadn’t already taken her over.

Darkness
.

Her throat abruptly closed. She stumbled, then stilled. Had she wanted to, she couldn’t move. She couldn’t even breathe.

Mahaya’s hand moved to her back. His touch was warm and sure as he rubbed up and down her spine and said in an oddly gentle, coaxing tone, “Breathe, Mira.”

Except the panic within didn’t subside. Her skin prickled with sweat, her pulse thudding and her throat closing even further.

He drew her backward, far enough from the closed-in space to turn her toward him. With quick, sure movements he untied her hands. The jeweled circlet clattered unnoticed to the rocky ground as he brought her close, drawing her head against his chest while his arms shielded her from all harm.

She had no idea how long she stayed that way, slowly breathing, their bodies pressed together almost as one, their shifter scents infusing and drowning out the earthy cave odor that filled the air. But as her panic retreated seemingly right along with the darkness, something far more unwelcome advanced.

From their very first meeting her inner panther had responded to his alpha. Never mind that he was a
nightmix
and the last man on the planet she wanted to be near. Right then she craved Mahaya as much as she did the scant oxygen in her lungs.

And she wasn’t alone in her needs. She sensed his panther had stirred the same as hers.

She looked up, and in the pitch darkness the faint red gleam of his eyes revealed his shifter nature was much more pronounced. As was his desire.

What little air was left in her lungs expelled in a rush.

Energy. Attraction. Lust. It sizzled between them, an invisible shimmering of the air.

Mahaya groaned. His head dropped, his mouth crashing onto hers. She sucked in a breath—his oxygen. And in an instant every repressed need, animal and human, was released from the cage she’d kept within herself.

She wanted this man with his hard, muscled fighter body and his rough-skinned hands. Wanted with a quiet desperation the one male in the world she should be running away from with everything she had.

In that moment she didn’t care about what she
should
be doing.

She pushed onto her tiptoes and grasped his broad shoulders. Her tongue clashed and tangled with his and she whimpered into his mouth with a yearning she could barely contain.

If everything about him was hard and unyielding, his lips were soft and pliant. Yet he kissed with a relentless skill that left her giddy and weak at the knees. It was just a kiss, but it was so much more. Every part of her was branded, as if he’d claimed her as his own.

His mouth left hers for a moment, his breath hot in her ear. “I can’t take you, not here,” he said hoarsely, though his hands ran over her body and traced her every dip and line as though an artist forming his sculpture from clay.

His touch made her want him all the more.

His words were a cold douse of water in the face.

She stepped back. What was she doing? Had she lost her mind? “There will be
no
taking. We won’t be continuing this…ever.”

His eyes flashed. “Don’t lie, Princess. I’m a shifter just the same as you. My body responds to your body’s needs.”

She shook her head, though it was doubtful he could see. “Except you’re
not
just the same as me. You’re a
nightmix.
”

It was a slap in the face and she knew it. But guilt was a fleeting emotion when she heard his footfall and a torch abruptly flamed, shockingly bright and dazzling after the endless wash of black.

She shielded her eyes for a moment, too dumbfounded to react. Then, “You had this light and you didn’t even tell me.”

“There are a half dozen placed at various points along the cave walls, if you know where to look.” He shrugged, every bit the cold bastard she knew he was. “Guess I wasn’t in too big of a hurry to push you away. It was nice to be wanted.” He swept an arm forward. “After you, Princess.”

Tears pricked her eyes. How could she have been so stupid? Even knowing what he was she’d imagined he was something more…something better. And who did he think he was fooling? As if he wouldn’t have women falling over themselves to be with him. She could well imagine them pining over his stark handsomeness and big, hard body. Not to mention the illicit thrill of perhaps calling to his darkness within.