by Marie Harte
Life before Clarissa had been a steady drone of flowers, shrubberies and gardening. The hope that someday she and her mother could pay their way out of servitude had been a possibility, surely, if not a probability. But her mother had died six years ago, leaving her trapped with the princess. Miranda had never been free to make her own choices. Only until Clarissa is safely married off. Then I can run for freedom, or at least to wherever four hundred gold crowns will take me. She’d managed to scrape together enough coin for a fresh start. Now she just had to find her new life.
The caw of a few blood ravens drew her attention to the sky. Oddly enough, the birds seemed to follow them. She’d remarked upon it, but Danner had told her to ignore them. He’d shot a blast of rockshot in the air, but the birds had only avoided the shot and returned to circle above them. She’d gotten fairly used to them. The longtooths, not so much. And she continued to be thankful that the human scum Danner had warned her about remained sight unseen.
Danner walked beside her, one foot in front of the other, in silence.
To her simultaneous relief and chagrin, he hadn’t made another pass at her. She should have thanked her stars he seemed uninterested in calling in his debt. But she was piqued. While he had obviously raged with lust because of the lighting he’d consumed, she’d come to understand that she wanted Danner because she desired him. She’d tasted lightning before, had felt its effects.
Miranda glanced at Danner’s mouth and those rough, callused hands she could still feel moving over her. She’d shared a passionate kiss or two while growing up around servants immersed in carnal liaisons. But Danner had driven her past the point of saying no. He made her want more, and for the life of her, she couldn’t summon a lady’s sense of shame for it.
Perhaps the West had indeed turned her into the whore her cousin had once accused her of being. “A no-good whore, just like your dead mother,” Clarissa had snarled the last time Miranda had seen her, then burst into tears and apologized. So unhappy, so unkind. Miranda’s mother, Minerva, had been no whore, merely an unfortunate victim of a king’s petty lusts.
“You’re quiet.”
She started. As if you could forget he was next to you. She drew a deep breath and took his scent into her lungs. Captivating, sensual, powerful. Blast the man!
“Yes, I am quiet.” Giving him a taste of his own silent treatment, she continued their fevered pace.
He chuckled, annoying her, because the raspy tenor of his voice aroused her again, licking at the lightning she buried deep inside. She glared at him but said nothing, determined not to stop until they reached Mournful Mountain, where they’d rest for the night, the gods willing.
I’ll take a long swallow of water and a bite to eat. And then I’ll fall right asleep. I won’t dream of Danner. I really, really won’t.
Chapter Five
She dreamed of Danner. To her mortification, she’d woken to his hands shaking her, waking her from a heated fantasy where she begged for more of his touch. His name had been on her lips when she’d opened her eyes, and the smug jackanapes wouldn’t let her forget it. As they continued on their journey, he pressed her for details.
“Some dream, huh?”
She walked faster, wishing the locomotive hadn’t been destroyed. She glanced longingly at the railway tracks several paces to her right, dark against the light-colored sand beneath her feet. So close, yet so far.
“I mean, you were moaning and sighing something awful.” Danner’s good cheer soured her already dour mood. “Your body was just aching for it, darlin’. So ripe for a man’s touch.” He narrowed in on her heaving breasts.
She flushed, wishing now she’d consented to those god-awful corsets and bindings that proper ladies of the East always wore. Miranda found them terribly restrictive and didn’t need the extra support, anyway. She considered herself properly covered by Western standards.
The way he looked at her, one would think she wore nothing. Yet the blasted man hadn’t touched her at all last night. To torture her with waiting? With the frustration of not knowing the pleasure of his kiss again? She fumed, wishing she understood what he hoped to gain by toying with her.
He tipped back his hat. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“You need a man’s touch, darlin’?” His low, gravelly voice did strange things to her insides. And the rogue knew it.
She stopped and lowered her lids. “I do, desperately.” She licked her lips and leaned closer to him. His eyes darkened, and he moved to meet her, when she finished with, “So if you see a man anywhere, be sure to point him out, won’t you?”
Miranda turned on her heel and caught up to the auton. To her consternation, Danner’s full-throated laughter filled the air. So much for taking him down a peg.
The day passed much as the first had, but without the threat of longtooths, thankfully. She convinced Danner she didn’t need nearly as many rest breaks as he thought she did. She thought she’d caught a hint of respect in his eyes when she’d once glanced his way, but then she did her best to avoid looking at him completely, afraid he’d see how much she desired him.
He called a halt just as they reached a small group of clustered boulders three times her size. She’d noticed the scarcity of vegetation as they walked. Instead of the thinning trees she’d grown accustomed to seeing, large boulders clustered in odd formations among the plains. Water boulders, Danner called them, though she’d seen no sign of the precious life-sustaining liquid.
“Let’s rest here.”
She nodded and saw to her needs away from the large stones behind another rock formation nearby. The Damned Plains were so much sand and dust. She sighed and took off her hat to run her hands through her tangled hair, then brushed the sand from her clothes. She dearly wished for a bath.
When she returned to their small camp, Danner stood with his shirt off, his dark hair slicked back and wet, his chest glistening with water.
Gods, the sight of him. Half-dressed, he seemed so much larger. The water clung to him, delineating the ridges of muscle in his abdomen and chest. His biceps clenched when he ran a hand over his hair, and Miranda did her level best to look unaffected. From the sly grin on Danner’s face, she didn’t think she’d succeeded.
She cleared her throat and took a closer look at the water flowing down the side of a large boulder.
He pointed to a spot just above her head on the rock, where a steady stream flowed down the gray stone into the surprisingly moist ground below. Overhead, the sun continued to set, and the sky turned from a burnt orange into a shadowy indigo. “Good spot for gettin’ clean.”
“How is it there’s water here?”
“Underground river pushes up through the rocks to even out the pressure below. Gases down there can be siphoned off for fuel, if you’ve a mind to cross the Plains and have the gear to haul it out.” He brushed more water from his chest. The droplets raced to the waistband of his dungarees, drawing her attention to the last place she needed to be looking. “There are a few underground rivers around here, but this is one place I always make sure to stop when I travel. Not too many others know of it.” He studied her. “The sun’s setting. I’ll get the chow going and keep watch while you bathe.”
She stared back at him. “Bathe?”
From the auton, he took out three stones the size of his fist and an iron tripod. He set the stones together on the ground and placed the tripod over it. With a flicker of his finger, a bolt of white energy lit the rocks aglow and small, purplish flames danced on the stones. Upon the tripod he settled a cast-iron skillet.
Danner glanced up at her. “I figure after that crack about looking for a ‘real man’ earlier, least you can do is entertain me some. After all—” he paused and his voice lowered, “—I still haven’t been paid for this trip.”
What could she say? She had agreed to his terms in exchange for his accompaniment to the Crystal Palace. She gritted her teeth. Why couldn’t she have found a nicer man to take her on her jo
urney?
“You’re no gentleman.”
He chuckled. “Yep, you’re right. Now strip and get yourself clean. Light’s fading. Go on, Miranda. Just pretend I’m not even here. Hell, I can barely see you as it is.”
She could sure as heck see him. A half-naked man who looked like Danner could never fade into the landscape. Still, she wanted to be clean very badly. It had been days since she’d had a decent bath, and that was before boarding the steam train to Endville. She’d been making do with hand baths for too long. And it wasn’t as if she had to engage in intimacies with Danner. Not yet.
She mentally chastised her body when it lit up at the idea of pursuing that line of thought.
Turning her back to him, she stomped over to a more distant boulder, where she could hear and see the water streaming down. “Oh, that is nice.”
Miranda ignored Danner’s low laugh, vowing to disregard him completely, and stepped out of her clothes once she decided the darkening shadows covered her well enough.
“You sure are pretty,” he drawled.
Her cheeks heated but she reminded herself he couldn’t really see her. He was just trying to unsettle her. She ignored him and used the water to rinse herself clean. Oh, dear Freyja, but the water felt so good over her skin, as if the gods rinsed her worries and visited her with a peace that she’d long been lacking.
She didn’t know how long she’d been standing under the water when a hand touched her arm. She started and nearly turned around before she realized Danner stood just behind her.
“Here’s a bar of soap, princess.” He placed the cake in her unsteady hand, his voice deep, husky. “Take your time and get nice and clean.”
Danner caressed her shoulder before he moved back, and she hoped he hadn’t noticed the way her entire body locked up when he neared.
“So tell me, are you and Clarissa close?”
She sighed. There went her peace. “No.”
When she said nothing more, he sighed loudly, mimicking her. “You know, if you and I had a nice, decent conversation, I bet I could forget you’re standing there wearing nothing but the skin the gods gave you. Might even make me reconsider licking all that water from your body.” His voice lowered. “’Cause I can just imagine sucking the water from your nipples, following the trail down your firm belly to the pretty white curls between yours legs. Hmm, yeah, you’ll be sweet, won’t you? Hot and wet, and that little clit will be near to bursting when I suck it hard—”
“We’re not close at all,” she sputtered, wishing her body hadn’t reacted to his gravelly promise.
“Oh?”
She worked the soap over herself, trying to ignore the feel of his gaze all over her. She shivered in the cooling air but had no intention of turning around until she urged a promise from him to look away first. “Clarissa hates me, well, the idea of me, anyway. She blames my mother for the unhappiness between her aunt and uncle.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah, huh.” She wished she could let the old animosity go. Clarissa was still so young, and she’d been raised to be a spoiled brat. “She was taught to believe such nonsense. As if my mother could have turned down the King of York. He’s a libertine, a soulless monster who only wants to satisfy his own hungers. Nothing he’s ever done has been for the good of the people, only for the good of himself.”
The silence between them grew longer. Bloody hell. Not only had she confessed the identity of her father to a renegade and stranger, but she’d compounded her mistake by spouting treason. Most vocally.
Danner grunted. “Yeah, that’s about what I’d gathered. Good to know you take after your mother.”
“Why would you assume that?” She risked a glance over her shoulder. Though darkness enveloped their camp, the violet illumination of the rocks and the gentle swell of moonlight hovering behind the clouds overhead gave their small camp an otherworldly feel.
“Well, you’re going after your cousin even though she’s a bitch, right?”
Miranda didn’t answer.
“Yessiree, that ass is finer than fine.” Danner smacked his lips. “Figure once I’m done coming inside you, I’ll show you how good a reaming can feel. You haven’t taken one up your ass yet, have you?”
She gaped at him. “D-Danner, really.”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“Fine. You want my life’s story? Then here it is. The king seduced my mother, and besotted with her beauty, he gave her the great boon of giving birth to a child he would never claim but that she could keep. He then sequestered us in the royal gardens, where we were forced to work under the unforgiving nose of the angry queen and her snot-nosed niece. They contrived to have us wait upon their every whim. Yes, my mother and I had been indentured servants, but we’d almost managed to buy back our freedom after sixteen years of hard work.”
“Damn,” he muttered.
“And then six years ago my mother died, and the king, my good father, forced me to step in and serve as his niece’s companion. I’m a chaperone and all-around whipping girl for her royal highness. And no, Danner, it wouldn’t surprise me if she and Prince Philippe were in cahoots in this kidnapping. Clarissa hates me, and Philippe would like nothing better than to ‘fuck me raw,’ as he once so eloquently put it. Happy now?”
The clouds moved and covered the small bit of moonlight overhead. The black of night deepened the quiet between them into an uncomfortable tension. Miranda felt more than naked as she stood there. Vulnerable, exposed, and most of all she felt hopeless. She’d never find Clarissa in time to prevent the princess’s ruin. Philippe would grab Clarissa’s dowry and implicate Miranda in her kidnapping. The king would hunt down and toss Miranda into the gaols, where she’d never be heard from again. She’d be raped repeatedly, brutally beaten, probably killed without ever seeing a ray of sunlight…
Danner was suddenly just there. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into the warmth of his chest, but she was too startled to react. “Shh, I’m sorry for pushing, darlin’.”
To Miranda’s surprise, her tears fell harder, and she couldn’t stop herself once she’d started.
“That’s it. Let it all out. Sounds to me like you’ve got a journeyman’s own luck,” he whispered and kissed the top of her head. “It’s okay. I’m not asking for anything from you, Miranda. Just let it go.”
She turned around in his embrace and hugged him tight, unable to reject the comfort he provided. His hold didn’t feel sexual, and it had been so long since she’d been touched by another without needing to protect herself. Danner might be trying to trick her, to ease her fears before taking advantage. But exhausted and soul-weary, she just couldn’t find it in herself to care.
When he leaned back a bit and tilted up her chin, she waited for the worst. A flare of light sparked in his eyes, and she could see the concern in his gaze despite the ink of night.
Danner kissed her tenderly on the lips before pulling back, and the brightness that had lit his eyes dimmed once more, so that everything paled but the small glow from the stones. Shadows upon shadows, the darkness a welcome relief. Miranda wanted nothing more than to hide from everything and everyone.
“Let’s dry you off.” He stroked her cheek, trailing over her skin with a care she couldn’t fathom.
She felt his arousal, but he did no more than dry her off with a towel and dress her. Then he laid her down on his bedroll and told her to go to sleep.
To her surprise, she did.
Danner stared down at Miranda, piercing the dark of night with a journeyman’s keen eye. He didn’t doubt she told the truth. The woman had vibrated with tense emotion, a bitterness all too familiar. He clenched his fists, wondering how much trouble he’d get into if he paid a visit to good King Norcross. There’d never been a whisper about Miranda’s parentage. The Eastern king had done a thorough job of keeping his bastard daughter and mistress a secret.
From what he knew of Clarissa, living with the spoiled princess would have been a nightma
re. Danner scowled. He knew something about nightmares. Hell, he’d been tossed out of Vanaheim because a trickster of a goddess had used him to punish her lecherous husband. Fuck Vi. If he’d been satisfying his bitch of a wife instead of bedding as many mortals as he could get his hundred-fingered hands on, Danner might still be living it up in the godlands. But no, the asshole had to go and get another human pregnant. Must be at least four dozen of his own bastards littering Midgard’s landscape, east and west of the border.
Yet while Vi could fuck his way across the world, Danner had been punished for making a mistake. He’d drunk too much, fucked too much, and ended up falling prey to a beautiful stranger—a goddess in disguise. Danner had never propositioned married women and never would. But he’d been disciplined for it anyway. And dear old Dad hadn’t said one fucking word in his defense. Nope. Danner had been tried, found guilty and castigated before he’d sobered from a night of drugged debauchery.
Seven years of wandering this godsforsaken land, unable to revisit his friends in the godlands of Alfheim, Vanaheim or Asgard. Stuck in fucking Midgard, hanging between the untamable West and the pretentious East with no happy middle in sight.
He’d done his best to help those less fortunate around him, even provided what justice he could for those needing it. Humans were a piss-poor lot. Hell, he was half-human himself. He knew well what it was like to have a father that couldn’t give a rat’s ass. The old man liked to turn a blind eye. Ironic, since the bastard only had one that worked anyway.
Danner crouched down and ran his finger over Miranda’s cheek. The poor woman looked exhausted, yet even now he could see her purity, the beauty that shone through her soul. And the lightning help him, her outer beauty had nearly made him say to hell with his fucking principles and take her the way he wanted to. Everything about the damned woman entranced him, and for a moment, he wondered if Vi had set him up to fall once more. Then he shrugged the suspicion away. Danner wasn’t even important enough to concern his own father. A godbolt of punishment from Vi here or there, sure. But the complicated nonsense of dealing with this female?