Barbarian Prince (9 page)

She would never have thought she would be relieved to see the Prince, but she was and it took an effort to refrain from racing to him the moment she spotted him sprawled in a giant chair near a mammoth fireplace.

The man escorting her released his grip on her as they reached the Prince. Without hesitation, she moved toward the Prince when he lifted his hand and gestured for her to come to him. Actually, she started toward him before he’d gestured, but then she stopped when she reached the chair and looked around uncomfortably, wondering what she was expected to do. Neel? Bow? Before she could jar any possible answers from her confused brain, the Prince reached for her, tugged her closer, and then dragged her onto his lap.

Surprise didn’t begin to describe her feelings when he did that. Before she could react at all, however, he pulled her close to his chest and dragged the heavy fur coat he was wearing around her. She’d stiffened with shock, but the moment she felt the warm of his body, she moved closer, so grateful for the warmth she forgot all about the discomfort of sitting on a strange man’s lap in front of a room full of savages—aliens.

It wasn’t that she felt no discomfort or embarrassment or uneasiness. It was simply that the desperation for warmth far outweighed every other consideration.

And she was still stiff with discomfort.

Despite all resolve to the contrary, when he hooked a finger beneath her chin and tipped her head back inexorably, she resisted, refusing to lift her gaze to meet his even when he prevented her from twisting her head aside.

He caught her off guard again.

She jerked all over in reflex when she felt the warm brush of his lips as they coasted along her cheek. A harder jolt went through her when he captured her mouth beneath his. He took instant advantage of her surprise slackened lips and deepened the kiss, thrusting his tongue into her mouth to explore the warm, wet cavern.

She hadn’t been forewarned or had any expectation that he would immediately instigate intimacy beyond the very public display of holding her on his lap. She had no time to brace herself to accept or fight, or to analyze her situation for the best defensive reaction. And because she didn’t, she couldn’t, later, tell herself that it simply didn’t happen the way she thought.

She wasn’t
just
as bowled over by his kiss as she had been the first time. She was
more
affected.

The uneasy thumping of her heart increased exponentially the moment his scent and taste inundated her senses and set her synapses to firing like a Fourth of July fireworks crescendo. The sense of falling, floating, and spinning dizzily moved over and through her, sapping the starch from her bones so that she couldn’t tell from one moment to the next whether she felt weightless or too heavy to support herself.

Heat poured through her core at the feel of his mouth on hers, the intimate stroke of his tongue. Pleasure spread with the heat, filling her mind not only with enjoyment of the sensations his taste and scent produced but a craving for more.

Alien, foreign, savage, unnatural didn’t enter her mind, though she knew, later, that any or all of those thoughts/reactions should have happened.

The one thing that should
not
have happened did.

Desire swept her away on a heated tsunami, addling her wits so thoroughly that she wasn’t entirely certain of when he began to strum her body in concert to the kiss, lifting and massaging her breasts, tweaking the sensitive nipples, coasting his large, calloused hand over her belly to cup her mound.

So enthralled was she by the heated desire that flowed from the magic of his touch into her that it was slow to sink into her mind she could
feel
the heat and roughness of his hand. Not the pressure—the unrestricted touch of no barrier between her skin and his.

And she wouldn’t have been able to if his hand had been stroking over the gown she was wearing.

The question that instantly leapt into her mind was just how exposed was she—completely? Not at all? Or somewhere between the two?

That realization brought her surfing upward toward awareness swiftly, but she wasn’t altogether certain that she would’ve emerged so quickly if not for the fact that he ceased to explore her with his hand and broke the kiss, releasing her, mostly, from the spell he’d woven.

She felt sluggish and confused when he did. It was a struggle to regain some composure, to manage a pretense of being unaffected.

Glancing toward the great hall to reassure herself that the incident had gone completely unnoticed by the other occupants of the hall, she discovered instead that they had the attention of pretty much everybody in the frigging place!

She felt her face turn scarlet with embarrassment as she frantically searched her mind in an effort to determine if she’d been completely exposed when the bastard had molested her or if he’d at least done it under the covers where some doubt might remain in their minds.

She had a bad feeling, though, that she’d been the main attraction and not much, if anything, had been left to their imagination.

Drak rose abruptly, shifting her in his hold as he did as if she weighed next to nothing and depositing her across one very broad shoulder. The pressure against her mid-section instantly divided her focus between that physical discomfort and the anxiety that the back of her gown had ridden up to expose her butt.

It certainly felt breezy back there!

Before she could check with her hand, though, he took a step that drove his shoulder bone deeper into her belly and the air from her lungs.

“
Kulle—send Kadin to fetch a pair of his boots and breeches, tunic and cape for my woman before she freezes—enough to keep body and soul together until I can have some things made for her. She’s too small for anything we have stored for the women’s use.”

Noelle heard the command Drak flung over his shoulder at the man who’d escorted her to the great hall, but she was in no condition to even try to make sense of it. She supposed it was something of a blessing that she was also in too much physical distress to worry about her modesty/exposure or feel any of the discomfort and embarrassment she would have if she hadn’t been struggling to control the jarring impact of the Prince’s shoulder against her belly with every step he took as he carried her back across the great hall and upstairs again. But she was in no condition to appreciate it.

When they reached his room once more, he strode inside and dropped her unceremoniously on the bed. She flung her arms and legs out reflexively, landing hard enough to jounce upward and meet the impact of his descending form on the rebound. The collision was a long way from gentle, but so much less painful than being carried across his hard shoulder that it made little impression.

Particularly since he sought and captured her mouth beneath his in a kiss that was filled with so much hunger that it shot her upwards from zero to two hundred fast enough to make her head swim.

‘
What the hell???’ did flicker through her mind, but remained an unfinished thought.

Her heart was hammering hard enough to deafen her, flooding her system with so much excess oxygen that she felt like she was going to pass out. He moved restlessly against her as he kissed her thoroughly, acquainting himself intimately with every soft, sensitive surface within the cavern of her mouth. The pinch of one nipple between his thumb and forefinger grounded her even as it sent an electrifying jolt through her. Her throat closed with an instantaneous hunger to feel his mouth there—her nether throat closing in a kneading spasm that forced moisture along her channel.

And then a knock upon the hard panel of the door fractured the moment completely.

Drak pulled away from her, studied her for a pregnant moment from beneath hooded lids and then tossed the coverlet over her and rose from the bed, abandoning her.

Shock rolled over Noelle as the fur landed on her face, blocking her vision until she fought the damned thing off. She sat up just as a young boy opened the door and peered around the room—one of the boys from the previous night.

“
Kulle said I was to bring these things …?”

Drak, whom she saw had moved from the bed to the fireplace, jerked his head in the direction of the bed. “You can leave them there.”

Nodding, the body approached the bed and settled the pile of clothing at the very foot of it—a good mile from where Noelle sat, studying him blankly while she tried to gather her scattered wits.

He flicked a curious glance her way and then turned. Drak, who’d crouched beside the hearth to build the fire up, finished his task, straightened, and escorted the youth from the room.

Noelle had no idea he intended to
leave
with the boy until he shut the door firmly behind him.

She blinked at the closed door when she’d been left alone, struggling with the emotions roiling inside her and trying to sort them.

Outrage was one of them.

She wasn’t entirely certain of
why
she felt that particular thing, but she had a sneaking suspicion it had a
lot
to do with the blood still throbbing in places she didn’t want to think about.

After staring at the door blankly for a while, turning the flickering impressions over and over in her mind in an attempt to understand what the hell was going on—what had happened and why it had happened—Noelle debated briefly and finally decided to access her PMAI—personal memory assist implant.

She wasn’t in the habit of it. She’d been very reluctant to allow it to be installed, in point of fact, for although it seemed, on the surface, that it would be handy to be able to perfectly recall anything that happened around her that she’d ‘witnessed’ with any of her senses, the anxiety that her privacy would be infringed upon was never far from her mind when she thought of the PMAI.

That was one of the things that had made colonization appealing—the vanishing privacy of life on Earth because of the many new devices and laws that ‘protected’ everyone by intrusions on their privacy and increasing limitations on freedom.

Unfortunately, it was required of colonists and it was either or—allow the implant or forget about going. And she could concede that there was actually a good reason for having it so long as the ‘powers’ didn’t abuse their right to scan the PMAIs of its citizens.

It was a well known fact, though, that memory was notoriously inaccurate under the best of circumstances because it was influenced by emotions, personality traits, distractions of the moment—numerous internal and external influences that altered the
perception
of the memory. The PMAIs used the eyes and ears to record, just like natural memory did, but the devices recorded even things you weren’t aware of seeing or hearing—background noises or conversations. Things you saw but weren’t conscious of.

And there were no shadings of emotions, no altering of events by the mind’s interpretation of it. It was a safeguard for colonists in the event that any of the laws were broken by any of the other colonists. It was also insurance for the colonists that if anyone ran into trouble, they could actually use the PMAI to alert colony security to their distress.

They aren’t designed for long range transmissions, however.

Which had dismayed and distressed Noelle when she’d finally remembered the damned implant—until it occurred to her that it had recorded personal events she damned well didn’t want to share!

Thankfully, it would only record what had happened—not how she’d felt about what had happened—so she didn’t have to worry about having her privacy regarding her personal feelings exposed, but she rather thought she didn’t actually want to share even the events.

After she’d pulled the memories up and reviewed them, she was
positive
she didn’t want to share. She was going to have to demand a ‘wipe’ on the grounds of privacy once she got back to the colony!

If
she got back.

Drak left his suite in a state he was completely unaccustomed to—too disordered to think straight. A large part of it—most of it—was due to his state of high arousal and the psychotic break his system had had with his mind when he broke off his pursuit of completion rather than finishing what he had started. His system was still screaming for release and threatening to explode. His brain was wrestling with his desires and trying to figure out why it had seemed like the best course to stop when everything inside of him was screaming don’t stop.

Had she indicated that she was willing to fight to the death to prevent culmination?

He certainly did not recall that she had.

In point of fact—now that he thought about it really hard—it seemed to him that she had been completely open to the possibility.

Not eager of course, but then that was not to be expected—unless it was eagerness to cut one’s throat!

She had not struggled, though, and she had not been dead or unconscious.

That generally constituted ‘willing’ in the minds of any of his clansmen.

Inwardly, he shrugged. He was in the habit of considering that a conquest himself, if it came to that. Women who presented only a token protest or struggle were ready and willing to be bred. They fought long enough to convince themselves the man would be a strong breeder and then they pretended to be paralyzed when he bestowed the mating kiss, he was convinced, to make certain the man did not get the idea that they were actually wanted.

Which meant they were willing to allow a man to mount them as many times as it took to reach that goal.

Was it confusion because he knew she was not one of ‘the people’?

He did not think he could convince himself that it was reluctance or revulsion because she was not his kind. The nearly constant state of arousal that he had experienced since he had captured her gave that the lie.

He cooled as he strode automatically toward the great hall once more and, as he did, his brain began to function somewhat more rationally.

Kadin’s arrival with the clothing he had asked for—or at least the knock on the door panel—had recalled him to enough awareness to remember there was a need far more important than assuaging his lust.

The woman could be the key to superiority for his clan.

He was halfway down the stairs before he recalled that that was why he could not allow his lust to overrule his good sense. By the time he had stomped across the great hall to the great entrance, bellowing that they were going a-hunting for meat for their celebration feast, he had managed to regain most of his facilities and recall how he had arrived at that conclusion.

His beautiful little captive was not of his world, Aiper, or the god, Aiper’s, sister world, K’naiper. She came from the stars with her people—which meant that her people had knowledge that had been lost to his long ago.

He could not afford to risk alienating her only to assuage his lust on her. He needed to try to establish a friendship with her that might be parlayed into an alliance between his people and hers.

The little that remained to them of the ‘old times’ was rotting before their eyes no matter how hard they worked to preserve it. And most of it, truth to tell, had been useless—as far as they knew—even when it was found or captured.

She might be able to restore some of their treasures and if not, then possibly some of her people might.

They would not have the same things, he knew—but similar, maybe, and maybe similar enough they could figure out what purpose his mysterious treasures had been meant to serve.

For that to happen, however, they had to be willing to help.

He would have to convince them that an alliance with him would be an advantage to them.

Noelle wondered what the hell was going on. She’d braced herself for rape, given herself a pep talk about how to behave as a victim to survive her ordeal and then—nothing.

She’d braced herself
several
times when it seemed he was about to do what he’d captured her to do.

And then—nothing!

He’d kissed her stupid and then just left! Or quit—in the middle of something that had actually begun to seem not so terrible after all!

Maybe he just wasn’t attracted to her?

Maybe she was just too different from the women he was accustomed to and that was a turnoff he couldn’t overcome? Either physically or because she wasn’t a warrior woman and that was glaringly obvious?

Reviewing the event log from her PMAI was no frigging help at all!

Basically, it just made everything seem way worse than she’d realized at the time—because she recalled she’d been feeling all sorts of things as the events unfolded and, reviewed without any sort of emotion, it looked like she’d just gone limp and he’d dropped her.

Maybe that was it? She didn’t have enough … spunk? Maybe he was so used to the women struggling that her going limp was like reeling in a … dead fish? Maybe he lost his hard-on the minute she turned to mush?

Or maybe they were physically different where it counted and he knew it and he hadn’t figured out what, if anything, could be done about it?

She didn’t know, but she did know he was driving her crazy!

She’d gotten over scared.

Well, most of it.

Maybe it would be more accurate to say she’d gotten over terrified? She wasn’t absolutely, blithering idiot terrified after having been around him through the capture and several days of captivity?

Because there was no indication that she needed to worry about anything painful.

Because even though the warrior women had acted as if they were terrified and panicked when the barbarians had come after them, and they had maintained distain and a lack of cooperation since capture,
they
didn’t behave as if they knew the torture would start any minute.

Truth to tell, she was starting to get bored.

Given her situation, she supposed she needed her head examined. She was a captive and she still didn’t really have a clue of what was to become of her, or what the plan was.

She was pretty sure, though, that this is how the women were reproducing! So much for the idea that they were asexual!

They should have
known
that it was highly unlikely that any higher life form would evolve in such a way as to spontaneously reproduce!

Of course, she’d begun to suspect when she and Monica had been taken to the river to bathe that they’d been mistaken about all of the villagers being female anyway. She’d forgotten that observation in light of the frightening events directly afterward, but she remembered then that she’d thought maybe the natives simply dressed androgynously, that there actually
were
male and female natives.

That must make things … unpleasant for the raiders when they captured a male instead of the female they were hoping for!

Or maybe that didn’t matter to either of them?

There was still more that she didn’t understand than there was that she
did
comprehend about these people of the sister worlds.

Drak may have been known far and wide for his acute sense of fairness, but he was not famous for his patience. He steered clear of Noelle for days after the near total breakdown of his self-control.

It was nothing short of amazing that desire could make the most
un
reasonable things seem perfectly reasonable, he thought with a mixture of wry amusement and irritation.

Not that expending himself on her would have been the least bit unreasonable under typical circumstances. They went to outrageous lengths to have a woman to warm their beds and expend themselves on during the frigid winter months.

But he found it highly annoying that he could be ruled by his desires instead of in control of them.

Generally, he
was
in control!

Was he getting old, he wondered in self-disgust? Or was there just something about Noelle that weakened him?

“
Women,” he muttered, drawing Kulle’s attention despite the fact that the noise level in the great hall was nearly deafening with the revelry of the men. He shook his head at the questioning look the older man sent him and abruptly pushed himself to his feet. He had spent three days in the damned uncomfortable great hall with his men to give Noelle time to calm down after his last near disastrous loss of control. That should be enough! And he was damned tired of trying to sleep on a hard pallet by the hearth instead of his bed.

Maybe he
was
getting old?

And soft?

His men would not have agreed with that assessment. In point of fact, although Drak did not notice it, the moment he got abruptly to his feet it so unnerved the men close enough to notice that they fell immediately silent. By the time he reached the stairs there was not a man—or woman—that had not noticed his thunderous expression or his abrupt departure and the hall was considerably quieter than it had been. Most of them had the sense to pick up their conversations again as soon as they were certain
they
weren’t the target of his wrath, but some of them had been too unnerved to recall what they’d been saying and there was no getting around the fact that a good bit of the revelry had soured.

What he needed to do, Drak decided when he reached the top of the stairs, was to steer clear of the bed and see what information he could pump from her by engaging her in conversation.

It was rather unfortunate that the word ‘pump’ leapt into his mind, because it completely diverted him from his original purpose.

Noelle was startled when Prince Drak entered the room.

Mostly this was because she hadn’t seen him in a few days—not since the night he’d teased her with the possibility of ravishment and then left her feeling as if she’d missed something she regretted missing. But also because she felt guilty because she’d spent most of those days plundering his room to see what she could find of interest.

She’d done her best to cover her tracks and was hopeful he wouldn’t be able to discern her intrusion, but she wasn’t as certain of that as she would’ve liked to have been.

The young boys that had been seeing to her needs had damned near caught her twice—until she’d gotten used to the times they arrived with food and or more fuel for the fire they’d, thankfully, kept burning since her arrival so that the room had finally reached a point of being a tolerable temperature.

Actually, as embarrassed as she was to admit it even to herself, the leap in her pulse wasn’t entirely from either surprise or guilt. Hopefulness had also played a part.

Because she’d spent a good deal of time reliving those moments when he’d kissed her and raised her core temperature with desire and she was no longer convinced that being the Prince’s sex slave was completely repulsive to every feeling.

Instead of instantly whisking her to the bed to finish what he’d started, however, the Prince settled in one of the large chairs near the hearth and studied her thoughtfully for some moments.

“
My son has seen that your needs have been attended?” he asked after a few moments.

The question both startled and disconcerted Noelle. “Yes,” she responded cautiously, wondering which of the two boys was his son. Well, she supposed he must be referring to the elder of the two. The younger boy didn’t seem old enough to be given such a task despite the fact that he’d helped the elder very adequately.

She had, in point of fact, been working for days on making overtures of friendship toward the two boys in hopes of a little company and entertainment if she couldn’t pry any useful information out of them. The younger of the two seemed willing enough, but the elder—apparently the Prince’s heir—was clearly suspicious of her motives. And not only wouldn’t let his guard down, he also prevented any attempts on the younger child’s part to talk to her.

It occurred to her to wonder at the Prince’s motive for bringing it up, to wonder if he was trying to establish a rapport purely for the sake of entertaining himself or if he was leading up to something by pointing out that she had been treated well.