Three Worlds 01 - Seduce Me In Dreams (9 page)

“But it is only a dream after all,” she said coldly.

Bronse sucked in a breath as a ferocious chill of warning walked down his spine.

Ravenna had never encouraged the breaking off of communication between them. By saying that, she had all but guaranteed the event. Even now he was surprised that he remained asleep.

Perhaps he was too exhausted to be so easily put off, or too soon into the visit for such a trick to work. All he knew was that he was grateful her ploy had failed.

But something was very wrong here.

He stood up and began to walk toward her. She suddenly flung a halting hand back toward him, turning her face away.

“No! Don‟t come any closer!”

Her violent demand and body language made him hesitate for a second. But then her body motion also parted her hair against her back. Bronse sucked in a harsh, choking breath when the unmistakable redness of blood and swelling appeared in an angry red line. No. Many lines, he realized.

“By all that is cursed and holy!” he swore, suddenly rushing to her and falling to his knees behind her. “Ravenna, what in the Great Being‟s name happened?” Why did he even ask?

He already knew, even before he brushed her hair away with both hands as gingerly as he could.

The strands, delicate as they were, clung to the wounds, stuck to the dried blood on her back. She had been whipped. There was no mistaking such wounds. No mistaking the ragged tearing of her silken gown down its back.

“Please, don‟t …” she whispered.

Bronse could not grant her the request. In their short, vague acquaintance, he had seen a proud beauty who knew her mind and how to express her convictions. She was gentle by nature in spite of that. She was not the type to give anyone cause to do such a thing, not that anyone ever deserved it. He knew it hurt her to be seen like this by him, to be shamed and weakened before him, and he felt his throat closing with fury and sympathetic pain for her because he would feel exactly the same way. He, too, would have tried to push her away had the situation been reversed. Yet he would have secretly welcomed what he was about to do for her.

“Hush,” he soothed her gently, reaching to cup her chin in his fingers, his thumb stroking her cheek from his position behind her. “There is no shame between friends, Ravenna. No shame when we are abused in ways we do not deserve.”

“Bronse, please,” she gasped, and he could feel her shaking with repressed emotion.

“No,” he said firmly. “I will not leave you to suffer alone. Don‟t be so brave, that‟s my profession.”

At last, she broke, a hard, shuddering sob wracking through her. She keened softly in her pain and despair, and Bronse slid around her so he could pull her against him in an effort to comfort her. He did so gingerly, holding her by an arm and the back of her head, knowing that she would feel agonizing pain if he touched or pulled at her back in any way.

“I was not made for this.” She wept softly, her face burrowing against the fabric of his sleeping tunic. “I have been cherished most of my life. I believed that the gods would always protect me. I don‟t understand why it all changed!”

Bronse suspected that was not true, that she understood it all too well, but he did not expect her to be logical when she was suffering so much. There would come a time, later, when he would be able to understand everything about her with clarity. For now, he worked with instincts he hadn‟t even realized that a hard-core warrior like him could have. But this woman had always touched him in the strangest ways, even though they had never met.

He gently brushed her hair away from her tear-streaked cheeks, feeling the pangs of so many emotions that he hardly had time to identify them all. Bronse touched his lips to her forehead in comfort.

“No,” he agreed softly, “I can tell you were not made for this. None of us is truly made for acts of war and violence.”

“You are,” she countered, even in her upset refusing to allow him to get away with that generalization.

“Perhaps.” He chuckled softly. “But even I have my limits. I‟m trained to face this kind of … of torture in the event of captivity, but I don‟t have the stomach to mete out cruelty for the sake of my own enjoyment. I have never understood those who like to toy with their victims.

That‟s not to say I don‟t mete out justice, though. I‟m no saint.”

“I never thought you were. No saint, but destined to be a savior. Mine.” She spoke with such conviction that it gave Bronse a chill that washed down through his guts.

“I hope you‟re right, Ravenna,” he murmured softly against her skin. “I wish I had the faith of your conviction.”

“Why should you when you know nothing about me, or this connection we have between us? You would be a fool to accept my word with no empirical proof or data. You are a man of logic, I know, inasmuch as you are a soldier.”

“And you are a very wise woman.” He drew a deep breath, the softly spiced scent she wore on her skin drifting into his lungs. “Is there no one to tend these wounds where you are?”

“No one who is allowed the opportunity,” she said vaguely. “I am being left to suffer because I tried to buy myself some time and …”

There was something ominous to the feel of her unspoken sentence. It was reinforced when she shuddered with a feminine violence that he had felt once before. Bronse had once come upon a village in the Tari wilderness that had been decimated by a war between clans. One clan had swooped down mercilessly upon the other, slaughtering every single male in the town.

As Bronse had walked through the devastation, a woman had staggered into him, gripping him wordlessly as her wide eyes reflected the horrors that had been visited upon her by her enemies.

She, too, had worn a dress torn asunder, and blood had stained rivulets down her thighs as she had shuddered with that same violence.

Again, Bronse was overcome with an outrageous wrath that he could barely control. He was not one to feel so stark and wild, so he felt lost, as though he were foundering for direction as he held her tightly against him. “Did they rape you?” he asked heedlessly, knowing it was a terrible thing to ask her even as the words passed his wooden lips. But he simply could not help himself. Then, being a man and knowing what men were capable of doing, he amended the question. “Did they violate you, Ravenna?”

She had not reacted to the first question, but she crumbled at the second version of it, giving him an answer he did not have the capacity to deal with just then. He stored the outcries and rage buffeting through him for another time. And he knew that time would come. Soon.

Someone would pay for every tear and every tremble ratcheting through this precious woman.

He would see to that. Yet he knew that promises of vengeance and retribution meant little to her.

Her needs were altogether different right now.

As carefully as he could as he sat cross-legged on the floor, he drew her into the well of his lap, cradling her gently and holding her close to the warmth and security of his body. “You will be safe with me,” he promised her. It was a promise for the future and, hopefully, for the present as well. “We will find each other soon. Remember?”

“Yes. If you and your companions survive the separation that is coming.”

“We will,” he assured her with all the ETF superiority he could muster. He felt her smiling against his chest, and he smiled, too, in response. “Can you tell me where I will find you?”

“I don‟t know where anymore. I don‟t know where I am. I only know we are now underground.”

“I keep hearing a „we‟ here. Is that something I should know?”

“Perhaps. My brother, Kith, is a captive here as well. They … they like to make him watch … what they do to me.”

“By all that is cursed!” he ground out, unable to suppress his furious reaction. “You‟re being held by Nomaads!”

“Yes. How did you—?”

“Well, telling me you were underground was a good clue. But I‟ve seen Nomaadic torture methods before. The one you speak of is an old favorite of theirs. Forcing family to watch.” He stopped, knowing she didn‟t need his recounting when she was obviously experiencing the facts firsthand. She and her brother.

“Bronse …” She suddenly turned, and her hands slid up over his chest to grasp his shoulders.

He tried. He honestly tried, but he could not repress the shudder of pleasure her touch sent through him. Furious with himself, Bronse shoved down the wayward and inappropriate reactions. He could only hope she did not sense the reason behind his response. Perhaps she had not noticed it.

“It‟s okay,” he said with an even, soothing tone as he tried to hold her in comfort and avoid her raw back. He felt awkward, as if his hands were superfluous, because he
wanted
to touch her so badly, because he felt that instinctual urge within himself to stroke her and soothe her, feeding her disturbed psyche with the warmth of his strength and good intentions through the touch of his hands.

“Tell me,” she begged softly. “How long before you come here? Do you know?”

Bronse closed his eyes tightly, suddenly feeling all the inadequacies of his situation with a great deal of pain and frustration. How could he possibly predict the unpredictable? Were it his choice, he would be liberating her even then.

But he had no choice. He had a mission to fulfill.

Whether it was a trap, lambs to the slaughter or even a legitimate operation, he must carry out his orders as instructed until he felt that other action was warranted. His team understood that, and they were prepared for it. How could he possibly prepare this serene woman for a wait that promised to be pure hell at the hands of the bastards who held her? They had whipped her today. The Great Being knew what else they had done. What would tomorrow hold for her?

“No sooner than two days,” he said at last. “Beyond that, I cannot say.”

She met his gaze as soon as his eyes opened. Bronse was struck by the soulful depths of her soft topaz irises, the deeply toasted gold with its starbursts of brown and their incredible bravery in the face of all the implications of his answer.

“I understand,” she murmured. “It is meant to be. I don‟t know why I asked. Everything will unfold in its predestined way. Nothing that either of us does will change that. Or perhaps if we change it, we risk never meeting at all. Such is the danger of precognition.”

Bronse felt her logic and her acceptance on what could only be described as a spiritual level. How could he not? It was so soft and simple, without hint of bitterness or resignation. It was a rare and painfully beautiful thing to behold in such close proximity.
She
was a rare and beautiful thing to behold. He finally found an acceptable locale for his hand, raising it to her soft, high cheek, brushing a calloused thumb over a perfection of smooth skin. She felt so real and so warm. He had never felt anything as supple as her skin. He had never seen eyes of such fortitude in a woman that could also be so exquisitely lovely.

Of its own accord, his gaze drifted down to the ample shape of her jewel-toned lips.

Before he realized it, his thumb was brushing over the breadth of her bottom lip, feeling its lush warmth and slight dampness as her heated breath cascaded over his hand. He was breathing as if he had run an obstacle course by the time his gaze darted back up to hers with guilt, need, and other conflicts gleaming in periwinkle depths.

Bronse was shocked to realize that his other hand had found a comfortable home wrapped around the thick swath of her hair. This time, he recognized grimly, it was he who held her in the lovers‟ embrace. Only where her intent had been innocent of those connotations, he knew that his was not. He was fighting the urge to draw her to his kiss like he had never fought any other impulse before in his life.

“Why?” She asked the question so softly that he wasn‟t sure he had even heard her correctly at first.

“Why … what?”

“Why not follow your impulses?” she asked with painfully blatant curiosity. “Why would you think that, in the face of all I must endure here, I would not want something purer and of my own free will to sustain me?”

Bronse groaned as aching desire trebled throughout his body. His forehead fell forward to touch hers as he clenched his teeth together.

“Because you don‟t … Ravenna, you don‟t understand. I‟m not some gentle savior. I‟m afraid you have made me out to be something in your mind that I‟m not. I‟m not the kind of man who would treat you the way you‟d want me to. Treat you as you deserve to be treated.”

“And the Nomaads are? What man is it that you think I deserve? I may see you as a savior, but I have never expected gentility from you. Though you have shown it in abundance, Bronse, I have never blindly assumed you to have gentleness in your nature.” She lifted her hand from his shoulder, her hot fingers spreading across his cheek, her nails scraping through the nighttime shadow along his jaw. “What will you give me that you think will be so offensive?”

she asked breathlessly.

“Nothing. Everything! Hell …” he ground out, her invitations sending heat searing through his flesh and bones. Inch by inch he flooded with a slow, intense burn for her. It left him with negative life signs—no breath, no heartbeat, not even a coherent brain wave—for all of thirty seconds. “It‟s not right,” he said stubbornly.

“It‟s not?” she asked, blinking those damnably beautiful eyes at him with utter guilelessness.

“No!” he insisted furiously, right before he dragged her mouth beneath his. Then he was kissing her, getting it out of his cursedly callous system, greedy, rotten bastard that he was turning out to be. Undeserving. He knew it even if she did not. He didn‟t deserve …

Ravenna‟s mouth. It felt just as full as it had looked, her warm lips spreading generously over his as if she had no reason to second-guess or hesitate. Her perfume welled up into his senses with heady perfection—flowers, spice, and the warmth of a woman all wrapped up in a potent confection. Her body gave a luscious little tremble in his lap, her breath catching and exhaling in a jolted shudder of surprise. She made a sweet sound of wonder and astonishment, as though she hadn‟t expected to be pleased. Bronse might have been a little insulted if her lips hadn‟t parted to make the little noise, leaving him with an irresistible opening. He took advantage, touching the velvet warmth of his tongue to the inside of her lower lip. Great Being, that lip suddenly seemed the most delectable thing he‟d ever come across in his life. He sucked it gently, savoring it for a very long moment, making a liar of himself about his deficiencies in gentility. He silkily switched from lower lip to upper, tasting her sweetness and her surprise with a surging sense of delight and male satisfaction.