All the King's Men (21 page)

Still holding her to him with his softening cock embedded in
the warm heat of her pussy, Kirel wrapped an arm around her waist and pressed
her against his chest. “I don’t deserve you,” he whispered against her hair. “I
never have. That’s why the Fates have given you to someone else. That’s why
Shivar took me away from you.”

The thundering beat of her heart matched her panting breaths
in intensity. He was so attuned to her body, he could make out every rippling,
shuddering sigh, every twitch of her tense muscles.

“Why didn’t you look for me?” She’d asked the question so
softly he had to strain to hear it.

“I was told you died. The night the Guardians came to remind
me of my duty.”

“And you never questioned their story?” He searched for the
accusation in her voice but found nothing but tenderness there.

Kirel released a deep breath he hadn’t known he’d been
holding. “I had no reason to.”

After what seemed to Kirel like an eternity, she nodded
against his chest and burrowed closer to him. “I…understand. I can’t say I
forgive you quite yet, but I understand. Besides, you’ll have the rest of your
life to make it up to me.”

The anguish that had been his constant companion for the
past eight years came rushing back. It encased his heart in pure misery, making
it hard to fill his lungs with oxygen.

For the next two hours he smoothed her hair and listened as
she spoke of all the things they’d be able to experience once they left Aris
and the Tradition behind. She planned everything in heartbreaking detail and
the more she talked, the greater the numbness that settled over his soul.

Sometime in the darkest hours of the night, the storm
quieted. Nelina dozed comfortably against his chest. Kirel’s muscles ached from
being curled in the same position for hours, but the pain traveling through his
stiff limbs paled in comparison to the agony that had settled deep in the pit
of his rib cage and speared him each time he breathed.

Taking great care not to wake her, he lowered Nelina to the
ground and wrapped the blanket around her body. He straightened his clothes and
left the pack beside her head. It contained everything she’d need to make it to
safety. She had a head start on the men Shivar would inevitably send for her
and she was clever, more so than anyone had given her credit for. If she could
find a way out of the castle no one else had even considered, she could make it
off the planet.

Besides, she’d have
him
watching out for her. She
wouldn’t know it, but he’d be with her every step of the way until she left
Aris behind.

“Twelve more years,” Kirel whispered as he allowed himself
to gaze at her sleeping form one last time. “Then I’ll come for you. I’ll find
you if I have to scour every corner of the known universe.”

Steeling his nerves before he could reconsider, he spun
around quickly and took off at a sprinting pace up the side of the cliff face,
using his hands and feet to climb as high as he could. He stopped when he
reached a winding path carved out on a high ledge that was perfectly suited for
his needs.

He ducked behind a giant boulder and watched as the first
glittering rays of sunlight spilled over the shadowy edge of her shelter. She’d
be rousing soon. It wouldn’t take her long to figure out he wasn’t coming back.
When that happened, she could set out for freedom.

Real
freedom. Away from the Tradition and all the
king’s men.

He glanced around him, pleased with the obscure trail he’d
located so high up the mountainside. From here, he could shadow her every move
and protect her from the creatures that made their home on Tradition Mountain.

A firm, masculine hand closed around the back of his neck,
lifting him off his feet. A groan slid from his lips as his muscles tightened
in a fight or flight response that sent a jolt of adrenaline to surge through
his veins.

Warm lips pressed against his ear through soft, familiar
fabric. “Have you ever wondered why traps are such an effective method of
capturing someone, Kirel?” Thor said, his voice dangerously husky. “I’ll let
you in on a little secret, one you may thank me for someday.”

As he spoke, more forms broke out of the shadows,
silhouettes Kirel quickly recognized as men of the castle guard.

“They work because the prey never sees it coming.”

Chapter Nine

Nelina slung Kirel’s leather pack over her shoulder and took
one last lingering look at the stone outcropping that had served as her shelter
the previous night.

“Give a man a taste and he’ll come back for more. Let him
taste you twice and you’ll never see him again.”

As a child, Nelina hadn’t grown up with bedtime stories of
heroic deeds or tales of beautiful damsels in distress and their handsome
rescuers. She’d been raised with regular doses of no-nonsense advice and crude
sayings her mother had picked up from the inn’s guests. Many of them had been
commoners, men whose idea of a heroic deed was lasting for longer than two
minutes before spilling their seed inside a willing whore.

Which is exactly what Nelina had felt like when she’d awoken
to find Kirel gone.

Now with the mid-morning sun beating down her back, she was
ashamed to think she’d wasted the better part of the morning expecting him to
return. At first she’d thought he’d risen before her and had left to scrounge
up breakfast. She’d waited, wrapped up in a cocoon of warmth, inhaling the
spicy, masculine scent that still lingered on the blanket he’d brought with
him.

It wasn’t until the sun had drifted over the ridge of the
jutting rock that she began to think perhaps he hadn’t gone hunting after all.
He’d abandoned her, just as he’d done eight years ago.

And just as before, she was pining away for a man who’d
never been what he’d claimed. He was a scoundrel, pure and simple. A lover
who’d put on a heck of a show for a woman who was obviously too stupid to know
better.

Swallowing hard, Nelina pulled the hood of the
skella
she’d found in the pack over her eyes to block out the shimmering dust. At
least he’d left her some supplies, though the oversized uniform, the scraps of
old food and the weapons were poor payment for the way he’d treated her.

Never in her entire life had she felt more used than she did
at that exact moment. Even when Thor and Domenic were sating their lust inside
her body, she’d been in control. She could have put a stop to the carnal
activities at any time.

But the humiliation Kirel had saddled her with was almost
beyond her ability to manage. She kept replaying the events of the previous
night through her mind, his voice ringing in her head with every step she took.

I love you. I always have.

How little he must have thought of her to imagine she’d fall
for such a tired line. And Gods, how desperate she must have been to have
believed him.

There’d been a time she’d yearned to hear those words from
his mouth. This morning, she’d learned the hard way that time was long gone.

Red dust coated the soles of her bare feet. Kirel hadn’t
cared enough to leave her his boots and her toes had long gone numb from the
trek through the mountainside. She didn’t dare leave the mountain in favor of
the common road snaking through the valley below Tradition Mountain. There was
no doubt in her mind the king’s men would be scouring the terrain by now
searching for her.

With any luck, she’d be able to avoid them completely by
furtively following the brisk slope of the mountain range until she reached
Soori, the closest town with a space port and landing base for off-world ships.
Once there, finding passage on one of the vessels wouldn’t be a problem. As a
peaceful race, Arisians never put much stock in security procedures that would
limit the comings and goings of those who wished to visit their planet.

With the gold coins she’d found in the front pocket of
Kirel’s pack, she’d have no trouble booking passage to a nearby space station.
From there, she could go anywhere, do anything…become anyone she chose. There
was no limit to what she could do once off this forsaken planet and no way for
anyone to track her down.

Not even the Guardians with all their bravado and macho
arrogance.

Tears of frustration clogged her throat. She swallowed them
down, refusing to give Kirel even that much power over her. Last night she’d
believed they’d be traipsing through the universe together. She’d envisioned
the two of them exploring new places, tackling new experiences, leaning on one
another and sharing everything the universe had to offer.

What a fool she’d been.

What a lovesick, idiotic fool—

A noise like the deep rumbling of an avalanche startled her
out of her self-pitying thoughts. She lunged backward a step and cautiously
peered upward at the steep cliff face towering above her but saw no sign of an
impending rockslide.

Her heart had leapt into her throat at the sound and she had
to take a deep, steadying breath to calm her frazzled nerves. She was wound up
much too tight. What she needed was to be off this hunk of rock. Perhaps she’d
head for a warmer planet, one that boasted a series of hedonistic pleasure
palaces with alien beings ready to obey and satisfy her every whim.

That certainly sounded much better than mating with the king
of Aris or even being in Kirel’s arms for that matter. She didn’t need him. She
didn’t even want—

There was no noise this time, no warning. A heavy weight
slammed into her from behind, knocking her off her feet. She stumbled forward
and fell face first against the unforgiving cliff. Only her instinct to stretch
out her palms as she fell saved her from smashing her cheek against the rough
surface of the rock.

Her breath had been knocked out of her chest. She struggled
to draw air into her constricted lungs but the incessant thrumming pressure
that shoved against her back made it impossible to breathe.

That’s when she felt the claws ripping at the fabric of her
skella
and heard that low, guttural sound again, the one she’d thought had been the
groan of an incoming avalanche. It had been a growl, she realized now through a
rising wave of panic. A feral snarl vocalized through gritted teeth.

The creature tugged at her clothes, its claws scraping the
skin along the knobby protrusions of her spine. She heard it snap its teeth
close to her ear. Its fetid breath warmed her cheek as it huffed through its
nostrils. A long, wet tongue scraped her earlobe.

With a shudder, she forced herself to lie still beneath its
forceful paws. She hadn’t been able to get a look at the beast but she guessed
it had to be a
linqust
, a creature she’d heard about but had never
encountered. Not many people had. Legend had it they were created from the
mouth of Tradition Mountain’s volcano itself. Black as the night sky with an
insatiable hunger for blood, the rumors she’d heard spoke of their talent for
tormenting a victim before finally tearing his throat and devouring what little
was left of the poor soul by that point.

Something sharp dug into the pit of her stomach, just
beneath her bellybutton.

Kirel’s blade.

She’d thrust it into the waistband of the pants before tying
the rope tightly around it to hold them up. Now the weapon pressed against her
flesh, hard and insistent, trapped between her body and the jagged rock.

The creature snorted, pawing at her torn
skella
,
lingering on the curve of her back, just above her buttocks. It toyed with her,
in no rush to maim or mangle, almost as if it fed on her fear and enjoyed her
terror even more than it would relish clawing her apart.

Gritting her teeth, Nelina shifted a fraction of an inch,
just enough to slide her fingertips against her waist. The
linqust
gave
a low, warning growl. Heart hammering, she held her breath and waited until it
returned its attention to the fabric of her pants. It hooked a sharp claw
beneath her waistband and tugged, tearing a long strip with little effort.

The rope she’d tied around her waist fell around either side
of her, loosening the blade. Knowing this was the only opportunity she’d ever
get, Nelina thrust her hand down the front of her abdomen and gripped the hilt
of the weapon.

The creature reacted as she tugged it out from beneath her
but she moved with an almost supernatural force. Survival instinct guided her
hand. She wrenched her wrist backward, slamming the blade with an uncanny
accuracy into the beast’s gut.

It howled in agony, leaping off her in a stumbling lurch. As
it fought to get away, the blade slashed smoothly through pulpy tissue and
muscle, carving a gaping wound through the beast’s belly.

With a howl that threatened to split her eardrums, the
linqust
scurried up the mountain, leaving splashes of dark blood in the dust-strewn
cliff face.

Nelina rolled on her back, blade gripped in both hands,
chest heaving. Her hair was slicked to her forehead, falling into her eyes.
Through the messy strands, she thought she could make out a dark, masculine
shape.

She blinked and shook her head, trying to clear her field of
vision. It only took her a heartbeat longer to realize that had been a very bad
idea.

Thor clapped his hands, the sound echoing mockingly off the
sheer rock. “Why, m’lady, I was going to come to your rescue but it seems you
have everything under control.”

She scowled and scrambled to her feet. The ripped tunic fell
forward, drooping over the slope of her breasts. Propping it up against her
chest with her left hand to keep from exposing herself, she held the
outstretched blade gripped in her right fist pointed at him.
Linqust
blood dripped off the weapon’s metal edge, shimmering darkly in the sunlight.

“One step closer and I’ll skewer you just like I did that
beast.”