Hers to Command (7 page)

Ari
opened his mouth to speak, only to snap it closed.
Why am I hesitating? Fuck. I don’t know.
He tried to kill the man with his eyes, the only weapon left to him. “I’ll think about it.” Quickly turning, Ari rapidly descended the stairs.

As his boots made a staccato
down the stone steps, Ari heard Elder Eirdale’s quiet comment. “I would take that smirk off your face, Patricio. If he turns around and sees it, you are a dead man.”

Eirdale
was correct, but Ari had seen naught but death for far too many years. He didn’t turn around.

* * * * *

“Sari, bring me a day dress, please. I am getting up.” Fleur finally felt her legs would not collapse as soon as they bore her weight. “I think the green and gold, and ask Melinda to come dress my hair.”

“Yes, m’
Lady, are you sure you are ready?”

“Oh, Sari, I think
five days in bed is long enough.” Fleur smiled. “I am certain that stacks of paperwork obscure my desk and my counselors will have fallen into despair at getting anything signed. Yes, I must get up.”

“Ma’am?”

Fleur raised her eyebrows in reaction to Sari’s hesitant query. “Yes, Sari?”

“
High Lord DeTano has been asking to see you. Shall I tell him you will give him audience?”

“Ari?”
Fleur perked up.

“Yes, m’Lady.”

“Yes, I will see him and I have changed my mind. Bring me my rose and silver dress. It is my favorite.”

Sari smiled knowingly and Fleur felt her cheeks flush.
My warlord. I owe him so much.

Unfortunately, when
he joined her, Ari did not seem to notice her becoming dress or the hair Melinda had spent an hour arranging. He never got close enough to smell the rare scent she daubed behind her ears in an unusual moment of womanly hopefulness.

When her guard announced his
presence, she turned with a smile on her face only to be met with furious reprimand. Ari barely graced the threshold before he began.

“You took
a
horrifying
risk, Princess. Don’t do it again.” He took an aggressive step toward her and stopped. “We did
not
succeed because of your self-mastery. That is dangerously under-developed. We did
not
succeed because of your discipline. That is precariously inconsistent. We did
not
succeed because of your three years—
by the gods, three years
—of study. That is appallingly inadequate. We succeeded because of your
obedience
.”

Fleur
winced. “You will need to speak up. I don’t think they heard you on Triton.”

A vicious snarl of curses followed her rejoinder.
She moved to the window, putting distance between them. “Goodness, Ari, you are creative. I don’t think that last is anatomically possible.”

She looked out the window
sightlessly and could not help the gently pleased expression covering her face. “Well, however it happened, we—umm, well,
you,
actually—did succeed.”

Turning away from the window, she smiled shyly. “I think we are
magick
together.”

From across the room
, she watched a muscle tic in his cheek.

“My anger perturbs yo
u not at all, does it, Princess?”

She shrugged.
“I have been raged at by parliamentary leaders and incensed royal counselors—and I assume you have met my father. One irate warlord…” Again she shrugged. “You don’t measure up.”

The glare he threw at her promised violence.
Clenching his hands at his sides, he swept out. The door slammed violently behind him. It vibrated hysterically then came off its hinges with a resounding
ka-boom
!

Her personal guard burst into
her apartments, weapons drawn. The four men, swords in their hands, peered down at the broken door, then looked up at her expectantly.

“Princess?”

She waved her hand dismissively. “Conte DeTano took exception to something I said. Just put the door to rights, please.”

She contained her irritation until the
re-hinged door closed behind the last guardsman. Alone, she threw up her hands and wove a random path around the room.

“
How nice to see you up and about, Princess!”
Thunk.
A small, brass paperweight sailed across the room and bounced off the wall.

“
I’m so glad you aren’t a raving lunatic, Princess!”
Crash
. A china figurine hit the wall. It did not bounce.

“
Isn’t it jolly that we saved Verdantia, Princess!” Shuddering, she returned the picture of her father and mother to the table and flung herself into an armchair. “Men!”

With a small sigh, she relaxed.
Sari and Camilla said he refused to leave me, would let no other touch me. He must care for me, a little.

Chapter Three

The Planet, Nuovo Terra

The City of New Roma—Residence of Augoust Herrimon

One of the most influential Chairmen to the League of Federated Planets took pride in the fact he was also the most corrupt. Herrimon Augoust, Nuovo Terra’s Planetary Chairman on the LFP’s governing council, had accumulated a vast fortune selling his influence. The military “incident” in Verdantia provided yet another opportunity.

Krakoll, the barbarian
Haarb leader, had given him an enormous sum of money and two choice Verdantian slaves in exchange for blocking Verdantia’s entry into the League.

Verdantian diplomats lobbied daily for
their planet’s admittance into the LFP and immediate military support to repulse the invading Haarb. After twelve months of fruitless argument, the Verdantian representative pulled him aside, quietly offering a fortune in
cinnagin
to advance their cause.

Feeling beyond the reach of either,
Herrimon accepted both.

* * * * *

Herrimon Augoust entered the sumptuous master bedchamber on his private estate on Nuovo Terra. The hour was very late. He was pleasantly high on drugs and more than pleasantly sated sexually.

The younger woman had been better than
promised, so fresh and terrified. Her mother had begged so prettily for him to spare her daughter. Stupid Verdantian bitch—to think for even a moment she could bargain with him. He smirked in satisfaction. He’d had them both, the aristocratic bitch of a mother first, so he could watch her innocent daughter’s face as he ‘played’ with her highborn mother.

They should prove entertaining for at least another seven-day before he had to ‘restock’ the playroom. Perhaps even longer
; certainly the older woman would last that long but he had doubts about her daughter. She couldn’t take much pain. He had barely begun before she lost consciousness.

His
rock-hard cock pulsed against his groin. By the gods, he was a stallion. He had been fully erect for hours. He had come multiple times, regaining his erection within minutes each time. He chortled gleefully. He was a fucking
bull
of a man. His past impotence was an anomaly, a mere aberration. He was a fucking
bull
.

The
cinnagin
he received for voting in favor of Verdantia’s acceptance into the League was as potent as promised. He had to obtain more. He would take a small nap and some refreshment then return to his playroom. His little toy should have regained consciousness by then.

“
Lights—on—low,” he commanded as he sauntered further into his rooms. As the house computer system brought the lights up to dim, he reeled to a standstill. “Krakoll.” Augoust felt his bowels loosen. There sat the leader of the Haarb, in
his
bedroom. Why hadn’t his guards intercepted this piece of refuse? He paid them exorbitantly for just that reason. His heart jackhammered in his chest. His bladder threatened to void itself.

The swarthy
Haarb leader stared coldly. His fat lips sneered, exposing sharply pointed, brown stained teeth. Leaning forward, Krakoll contemptuously spat out a viscous glob of mucus and masticated, olive-green leaf matter. Augoust gaped in horror-struck incredulity as the slimy gobbets splattered his costly footwear.
They are ruined. I’ll never get that off.

“
You haven’t lived up to our agreement, Councilman Herrimon.” The Haarb’s murky yellow eyes carried a surety of pain. “You were to block Verdantia’s acceptance into the LFP. Now we fight the League’s elite marines instead of unarmed Verdantians.”

Krakoll
rose ponderously from the luxurious chair and casually stood, almost touching Augoust. The savage nomad towered over the slightly built council head. Augoust stood gaping, transfixed in place, every muscle screaming “Run! Run!” yet incapable of movement or sound. Perspiration popped from every pore in his body. Sweat beaded on his forehead then trickled down his face. His heart thundered in his ears.

“
Very pretty.” The Haarb killer flicked his fingers through the fine materials and jewels covering Augoust’s chest. “Did we buy these for you?”

Krakoll cocked his head and
Augoust felt himself skewered by Krakoll’s eerie yellow eyes with their vertical, snake-like pupils. Expelling a revolted whimper, he recoiled backward from the miasma of stench that accompanied the Haarb leader’s breath.

“
Where are you going, pretty man?” Krakoll’s meaty, calloused hand grabbed Augoust by one of his costly chains of metal and jewels and inexorably wound it around and around its rough, scarred surface. The precious metal bit sharply into Augoust’s skin, pulling him ever closer into the Haarb leader, constricting his breathing and raising him on his toes until he dangled, suspended, strangling, at the end of the massive barbarian’s burly fist.

Krakoll closed the small gap.
Augoust clawed frantically at his throat, desperate for air. Krakoll’s nose pressed against his jaw and sniffed. The Haarb’s slavering tongue snaked up Augoust’s cheek in a swipe of saliva as he kicked in the air, helplessly suffocating.

Krakoll
smacked his lips. “Very tasty. You stink and taste of
Ardamonian
spice. Are you addicted to that opiate, Councilman?”

Shoved with brutal force to the
ground, Augoust landed with a spine-jarring crack, sprawling between Krakoll’s feet, sucking in air through his tortured throat. His arms refused to hold him up and he melted into a boneless lump of unresisting flesh. “No, no, no—not addicted, no, no,” he croaked.

Krakoll grunted in surprise. Running a hand to his crotch, he rubbed the hardening bulge.
“Well, well, well, earther, you cut it with
cinnagin
. You maintain ruinously expensive habits.”

He grinned derisively.
“So, Councilman Herrimon, you like fucking fresh, young, aristo women. You like making it painful. In need of a little help getting ‘up’ for it?” Krakoll tilted his head as if he were mulling over a decision, then grinned with malicious enjoyment.

Herrimon
couldn’t overcome his terror or his need for air to formulate an answer.

“
We have something in common, Councilor Herrimon. I like giving pain too. I prefer fucking pretty, pompous, double-dealing earthers. I
was
going to simply cut you up a bit, make you a little less pretty but your
cinnagin
has changed my mind. I never waste a good hard-on.”

The
Haarb leader’s face morphed into a cruel mask. “Later we will discuss how you can correct your failure to block Verdantia’s entry into the League.”

Disbelieving,
Augoust held his throat in sickened horror as the Haarb opened his pants and fisted his thickly veined organ. The Haarb leader’s hand could easily enwrap a large sugar pulp melon, but as broad as Krakoll’s hand was, it could not fully enclose his engorging, lengthening staff. A fat purple head as thick as his fist emerged from the quickly retracting foreskin. The eye-like slit in the center seemed to stare directly at him. Augoust gaped, unable to look away, choking on small incoherent whimpers and garbled denial. He was finally able to force words through his tortured throat.

“
No, no, Krakoll, think! You need me. I can deliver Verdantia. I just need more time. Oh god, oh god, please don’t, don’t. Have mercy, oh gods, Krakoll, mercy. You will kill me.”

The
Haarb laughed delightedly. His hand supported his grossly abnormal member at its base while he leered down at Augoust.

“
Worried my fucking your mouth and ass will kill you, pretty man?” Krakoll pouted in mock insult. “How little you think of me.”