My Reaper's Daughter (9 page)

She stilled for a moment then flicked her nails—one at a time—up the underside of his

scrotum.

“Alel!” he gasped, and nearly shot up from the bed. He jerked on the sheet and lifted his head

to look at her.

“Lie back down, warrior,” she ordered, “or I’ll stop.”

“No,” he said, and slammed his head into the pillow. He stared blindly at the ceiling as she

repeated the action. The woman was a fast learner.

Across and around and under his tightening balls her fingers traveled. His cock was at full

staff and aching, burning with need. He should have been ashamed of her lying that close to the

wretched thing, but all he could do was lie there and shake as she pushed to her knees.

“Can I do this?” she asked, and wrapped the fingers of her left hand around his shaft as she

continued to flick her fingernails on his balls.

“By the gods, you can,” he whispered. The sheet was bunched in his hands and his heels

were digging into the mattress. His legs were shaking.

“But wouldn’t this be better?”

She stunned him by replacing her hand with her mouth, her lips closing around the head of

his cock in a tight suction that had him groaning, his ass writhing. But then she didn’t move and

when he lifted his head to see what was wrong, he found her looking up at him.

The sight of her mouth wrapped around him, her chocolate-brown eyes fused with his was a

heady sensation.

She arched a brow.

“What?” he asked, his own brows drawn together.

She popped him out of her mouth. “What now, warrior? What do I do with it once it’s in my

mouth?”

The way that pop felt had been sheer heaven. He was starting to sweat.

“Ah, you should lick him first,” he said.

“Oh right,” she agreed. “That makes sense.”

Her tongue was warm and moist and sent the most glorious sensations through his body.

She used it to swirl over the head, to lap at the underside, to flick little sorties up and down the

entire length. But when she swept it over his balls, he cried out, rending the sheet in his right

hand.

“Oh, my warrior really likes that!” she said, and set to work turning her warrior into a mass

of quivering flesh.

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My Reaper’s Daughter

He was enjoying the torment far too much to end it. It was torture but it was an exquisite

torture he was happy to endure. She peppered the insides of his thighs with hot little kisses,

dragged her tongue over his balls, up and down his cock, nibbled at his flesh when she found that

particular little bit of foreplay drove him crazy. By the time she took him into her mouth again,

he was sure he was but a heartbeat away from complete insanity.

She kept her mouth taut as she ran her tongue into the slit of his cock. The suction alone was

enough to drive him over the edge. His legs were shaking and his fingernails had gone past the

torn sides of the sheet and were now buried inside the feather mattress.

“Baby?” he asked in a voice that sound like a teenage boy’s.

She looked up from her work. “Aye?”

He swallowed hard, dragged air into his lungs through his open mouth. “Wrap your hand

around the base of him and…”

“Like this?” she asked, quick learner that she was.

“Aye,” he replied in a strangled voice. “Now move your hand up and down him like I do in

and out of you.”

She began the motion, taking the upward motion just to the ridge of his penis.

“Now slide your palm over the top of him and then down in a twisting motion. Think you

can do that?”

She didn’t answer but set to the task like an old pro. Before he could tell her what else would

pleasure him, her hand moved all the way down his shaft and her mouth was enclosed around

him halfway down. Instinct seemed to take over and she moved her lips and hands in unison.

“Sweet Merciful…” He brought his knees up. She was killing him with that sweet mouth,

but he would gladly die under her ministrations.

His hands went to her hair. His scrotum tightened, drawing up close to his body. He was

coming. He was…

“I thought
Mo Regina
warned us to never yank on our sticks, Kullen.”

The amused voice brought Glyn up in a heartbeat, his gun clutched in hand. He

faced the man who had entered his campsite undetected.

“Fuck you, Kiel!” he hissed, arming the sweat from his brow. “I could have shot

your sorry ass!”

“With what?” Phelan Kiel asked. “The cock you were rubbing?” The Reaper Third

Class laughed. “You really aren’t my type, Kullen.”

Snarling, Glyn bent down to pick up his gun belt, shoving the six-shooter into the

holster with a foul curse.

“You need to find you a whore, Glyn,” Phelan suggested. “You can’t be doing that

unless you want Her on your ass and I don’t think you’d like it.”

Ashamed he’d been seen masturbating—and that must have been what he’d been

doing during the dream—Glyn turned away from his fellow lawman. “What the hell

are you doing up here?”

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

“What the hell are you doing
over
here?” Phelan inquired. “You’re in Vircars, bud.”

“Oh,” Glyn growled. “I didn’t realize I’d entered your personal sanctuary. I thought

I was still in Bev’s bailiwick.”

“You’re actually right on the edge of your territory, mine and his. I was coming

back from the Citadel, inspecting the borders of my lands.”

“I did that as soon as they released me from my sentence then Lord Kheelan sent

me out to Wismin and Moilia to check on Owen’s territory for him,” Glyn reported.

“Poor bastard,” Phelan said.

“Did you see him while you were at the fortress?”

“Lord Kheelan wouldn’t allow it. I guess Tohre’s Transitioned to that state where

the Shadowlords don’t want anyone to see him,” Phelan answered.

“Yeah,” Glyn said with a wince. “That happens about your sixth month according

to Cynyr.”

“I don’t care to find out.”

“He’ll be released soon though. How’s Rachel?” Glyn inquired.

“Big as a barn,” Phelan said with a grin. “She learned last week that she’s carrying

twins.”

“Twins?” Glyn repeated. “Holy shit! Are you kidding me?”

Kiel shrugged. “Owen was a twin so I guess it wasn’t altogether a surprise to the

healers when they discovered a second heartbeat.”

“What about Aingeal and Briton? Has the bantling grown much since I’ve been

gone?”

“The little bugger is walking and talking, calling Cyn ‘Papa’. Can you believe it?”

“That the brat can walk and talk by now?” Glyn countered. “I should certainly hope

so. After all, in human years the boy would be about eighteen months old wouldn’t

he?”

Phelan waved a dismissive hand and gave his fellow Reaper a raspberry. “I mean

Cyn being a papa, asswipe. The brattling is a cute little shit. Thank the goddess he’s

sleeping the night,” Phelan replied. “To the relief of everyone on their floor, lemme tell

you! I don’t think they realized those walls weren’t soundproofed. Lord Naois said they

would be by the time the Tohre twins hatch.”

“Hatch,” Glyn said, and thought of Valda.

“You know what I mean.”

“Aye,” Glyn answered.

“Well, I’ve got to mosey on,” Phelan said. “Had to come over and rattle your chain

a bit.”

“I think I’m gonna head on out too,” Glyn told him. “I’m not doing too well in the

sleeping department tonight.”

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My Reaper’s Daughter

“Keep your hands off your cock and you won’t have that problem,” Phelan

suggested with a wink.

“Fuck you,” Glyn countered with a mean grin.

“That’s the second time you’ve said that,” Phelan observed, folding his arms over

his brawny chest. “You really want to?”

The grin slipped from Glyn’s face. Kiel’s sexual orientation had always been a

source of speculation for the other Reapers.

“Hell no!” Glyn snapped.

“Then stop offering.” He unfolded his arms. “Else someone might think you bend

that way, Kullen.”

“I don’t!” Glyn was quick to say.

“You never know,” Phelan said with a lewd wink then turned to walk away.

“I know!” Glyn called after him. “By the gods, I know, Kiel!”

Laughter drifted back to him then the sound of hooves striking the ground.

“Asshole,” Glyn pronounced, and he kicked sand into the campfire. He leaned over

and grabbed the cold coffee pot and pan of beans congealed in the fatback grease he’d

added for flavor. He stomped over to the stream that ran just beyond where he camped,

poured out the coffee and beans, rinsed the pot and scrubbed the frying pan with sand

before dredging it through the water. The entire time he cursed Phelan Kiel and

wondered if his fellow Reaper were a half man or not.

As he folded his bedroll and readied Stannair for the long ride up to the Citadel, he

continued to think about Kiel. The man had never made any overt moves toward him

or any of the other Reapers, but neither had they seen him with a woman. When the

others were together on R & R, they never failed to hit the brothels.

All except Kiel.

The man was a few months older than Kullen but he was more naïve than even the

youngest of them—Iden Belial, who had been in his late twenties when he’d bought it

on Othar. Kiel was a good soldier, a powerful warrior, but he was a secretive man who

had been with them ten years before he even told them how he’d met his end on his

homeworld of Bdathach.

“I was crushed to death,” he said simply, and did not elaborate.

Nor did the man have much patience. His family crest was the owl but Kiel had

managed to pass up the telling traits of that bird of portent. He had the least patience of

any man Glyn knew and was forever asking questions to which the answer led only to

another question.

Although Glyn wouldn’t have laid down any money on it, he was willing to bet

Kiel was taking them all for a ride with the hints of homosexuality he was forever

tossing around. He wouldn’t put it past the Bdathachian to deliberately mislead

everyone.

“Asshole,” he said again as he swung into the saddle.

45

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

It was a long ride to the Citadel and the sky was threatening again. He looked up

uneasily at the gunmetal gray heavens but he saw no lightning, heard no telltale

thunder rumbling in the distance. If he were lucky, the lightning would hold off.

As he rode, his thoughts returned again and again to Mystery and the impish little

girl who had stolen his heart.

“She could be yours for the asking.”

The voice of the Triune Goddess intruded and wound its way through his mind.

“I don’t need a woman,” he said resolutely, his words making Stannair fling its

head to jingle its bit.

“Then why can you not stop thinking of her?”

“Leave me be,
Mo Regina
,” he pleaded.

“Stubborn, stubborn man,”
She told him
. “Your stubbornness is precisely why Dylynda

died untouched and unhappy.”

“Don’t say her name to me!” he shouted, looking angrily into the boiling sky. “You

know why I could not Join with her!”

“I know she died wishing she had known your body,”
the Triune Goddess whispered.

He shook his head furiously as though to hurl away the hateful words and though

he tried to keep the lovely face of Dylynda McGregor from floating across his mind’s

eye, it did anyway. Along with it came the accusatory pale blue eyes that looked back at

him with such infinite sorrow.

“Please don’t,” he begged the goddess.

“
Man was not meant to live alone, Glyn Kullen
,” She reminded him.

Dylynda’s beautiful countenance dissolved into mist and vanished, the halo of her

bright blonde hair the last thing to vanish.

A sob caught in the Reaper’s throat and his gloved hands tightened around the

reins. His heart ached as it had the day he had learned of Dylynda’s miserable death at

the hands of a squad of Cleavton troopers, her sweet, young body torn apart by their

lust and brutality. He had not been there to save her from such degradation or to

prevent the troopers from tossing her broken body into the flames to mingle her ashes

with those of other murdered women.

“Dylynda,” he whispered.

He should have kept to the date they had set to Join. At least he could have given

her that much. But he had not wanted to leave her a widow and the war was still raging

long past the time they had set aside for their Joining.

The pain of his memories lashed at him and he dug his heels into Stannair’s flanks,

leaning low over the stallion’s neck, trying to outrace the coming storm building above

him and the one that would forever be tumbling in his mind.

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My Reaper’s Daughter

Chapter Four

Leilani Shoad tied the fifth knot in the pink yarn. “My love will come,” she

whispered. In her mind, she held the image of the perfect lover—tall, black hair,

muscular and virile—and charged each knot with her energy. She tied the sixth knot.