“Have you no concept of honor on Vesta, then?”
The smirk grew more caustic as he quirked a brow. “Honor’s for fools and losers. I’m neither.”
That said just about everything she needed to know about him. No honor.
Insults would get her nowhere with him. He clearly had no finer feelings. Demands would get her nowhere, either. Evidently, the man didn’t have a chivalrous bone in his body.
She swallowed her pride, straightened her shoulders, and tried to match his insouciant tone. “What do you intend to do with me, then?”
His amusement faded. A muscle ticked in his hard, unshaven jaw.
She pressed her advantage. “You can’t just leave me on a planet somewhere and forget about me.”
He glanced over at her and raised a brow.
She stiffened. “You wouldn’t.”
A grin flashed across his face.
“I would have no way to defend myself or provide for myself, and no way to get home. Even you couldn’t be so cruel.”
His dour glare implied that perhaps, in fact, he really could be just that cruel. His biceps flexed and rippled through his thin, white shirt as he shifted to run his hands through his hair. “Hamianna. Inns yiurian a ghiann.”
She spoke Vestigi quite well, but the last word was not one with which she was familiar. The tone left no doubt it was a curse.
The enemy tongue had been part of her comprehensive education, but curse words had not been included in her curriculum. Young ladies of the academy did not need to know the coarser elements of enemy linguistics. The second part stung, however. You’d deserve it and worse. She choked back the sob rising in her throat.
It didn’t matter.
He could curse at her all he wanted.
He could hate her as much as he liked, as long as he helped her get home. She needed him until he could help her get in contact with Agammo. Then sweet, gentle Agammo would come for her. They would Bond as they’d always intended. They’d be together. And all of this would be nothing more than ugliness left in the past. Forgotten.
“Please, if you’ll just help me get somewhere safe and help me contact home—I’m sure my fiancé would see you well rewarded.”
“Your fiancé is bleeding out as we speak,” he growled.
Deep breaths. “Spiro will be fine. His brother is a good healer. I meant my real fiancé. Agammo.”
Another sharp, acidic laugh huffed out of him. He muttered more curses, scraping his hands along the hard edges of his bristly jaw. “How many fiancés do you have?”
She bristled at the insolent words.
“Don’t answer that. I don’t give a fuck. Just keep your mouth shut.”
Her eyes burned.
He glanced at the display on the dash.
Preparing to keep her voice even and speak calmly so even a brute could understand, she inhaled sharply. “I’m sure there’s some neutral place where you c—”
He didn’t even look at her, but his jaw ticked again. “What part of ‘shut up’ confused you? Maybe I’m not enough of an asshole to leave you behind on an abandoned planet somewhere, though all the gods know I should, but don’t push your luck. I might change my mind. And in the meantime, if I have to be stuck with you until I can figure out how to get rid of you, at least I don’t have to listen to your conniving tongue.”
She shrank away from the vehemence behind his words. She opened her mouth, but the look in his black eyes stilled any retort before it had d even formed.
It was so unfair.
Without her, he’d still be a prisoner of his sworn enemy, on a ship headed toward who-knew-what. The people from her planet hated the people from his. He’d likely have been interrogated by the Tribe warriors of Argentus. Or worse. Tortured.
She plucked at the fabric of her ivory lace dress, straightening her skirts, so they fell smoothly to the floor, over her crossed ankles. She smoothed her hair and checked her fingernails. If she had to be hated, at least she could look her best, and if he was determined to be hateful, she would be as polite as she’d been taught. There was no call for bad manners.
Leaning forward in her seat, she waved a hand through the air to capture his attention.
He frowned at her, eyes wary.
She inclined her head politely and offered the placid smile all genteel women of Argentus were trained to use. Manners were a form of armor. She gathered them closely. If she couldn’t speak, it didn’t mean she couldn’t communicate. She pointed to her mouth and inclined her head in a stately bow, indicating that she would keep her mouth shut. Just as he’d asked.
Clearly, compromise was the only way to handle this heathen.
His frown deepening, he studied her from the top of her head to the bottom of her toes.
She turned away, flipping her hair over her shoulder. All the instructors at the academy had said that her hair was one of her best features. Pale gold and sleek.
She didn’t bother looking at him again. Instead, she passed the time by studying the impressive view of the foggy, glittering pink cloud of an elliptical galaxy not too far away.
She was as good as her word, or rather, her not-word. She didn’t open her mouth once. At least not to do anything but eat her rations. Not for the two days they sat side by side in the cramped cockpit of the tiny escape vessel. Not when she discovered there was no water for washing, only a sanitizing spray for her hands. Not even when she was forced to use the bathroom in the tiny closet off the back of the tiny room.
And certainly not during the two nights they slept side by side in the chairs of the cockpit, shivering and shaking because her dress, despite the long-sleeved undershirt, with its high neck, had not been designed to keep one warm while sleeping.
She certainly hadn’t spoken as Torum landed the escape pod beside his hulking black spaceship on the dusty planet of Araa-Ara, where it had been abandoned a few days ago.
Not as she followed him off the escape pod. Not as she followed him across the hot, dusty stretch of terra on this foreign planet to his ship. Not as he gestured her gruffly ahead of him inside.
Not even when he left her standing in the middle of the central aisle of the ship and disappeared behind a metal sliding door. She waited awkwardly, looking around his almost entirely black ship until she heard a loud splash.
Then she backed away. Was that his bathing chamber? Was he naked in there? Heat rose up her cheeks. Until that moment, she’d never paused to consider her current predicament. Agammo wouldn’t like this at all. Not one bit. In all the years he’d come to the academy to visit her, they’d only been alone together a handful of times. And he’d always been quite proper. But Torum was anything but proper.
And now here she was. All alone. On a strange planet. With a big, mean alien male.
A big, mean alien male who was apparently naked on the other side of a thin door. She gathered her lacy skirts in her hands and walked to the main hatch of the ship at the exit. She’d wait outside until he finished.
And then, pray to the gods he’d let her take a bath too. She’d never felt so filthy in her life.
The outside air was fiery hot, and the sun, only three-quarters of the way through its arc, hovered, blinding and merciless overhead.
She walked around the edge of the ship to stand in the shade. She would sit down, but the dusty soil rose around her legs in great powdery gusts, and she had no other clothes. Who knew how long she’d be forced to wear this dress?
The clime in her city, Merintide on Argentus, was far more civilized. Cool and breezy. At least in the spring and autumn months, when a cool breeze blew off the sound of the Merin Gray River.
She tugged at the bodice of her dress. A bead of sweat ran down her neck. Her clothes would be ruined at this rate. Not to mention the smell if she kept sweating like a laboring peasant in the silk lace.
Glancing back at the ship, she undid the tiny row of pearl buttons down the front of the bodice, and tugged the underdress, with its high neck, long
bell-shaped sleeves, and lacy designs, over her head.
It left her entire neck and upper chest bare, as well as her arms, not to mention the tops of her breasts. On Argentus, this would be scandalous, but Torum hated her. He likely wouldn’t even look at her twice.
A stray breeze cooled the sweat on her skin. Heavenly. Feeling guilty all over again, she tugged the long white stockings she usually wore down her thighs, rolling them around her ankles.
Another breeze blew. It felt decadent. Naughty. And a little dangerous. But Torum didn’t need to know that her legs were bare beneath her gown.
She traced the toe of one of her slippers through the soil. A little cloud puffed up around it, but small blue flowers peaked out, tossing petals to swirl through the air.
She smiled in spite of herself and gathered a few of the tiny blossoms. Smaller than her pinky nail, but she pulled a long tendril of a vine and with it came a cluster of flowers.
There was no scent when she lifted them to her nose, but the soft, sweet blooms made her happy for the first time in days. She gathered handfuls of the spreading vines. Pale white leaves and bold blue blossoms that trailed from her hands like water.
In the distance, pale-lavender trees glimmered against the horizon, and beyond them, a darker, violet hill rose with a sparkling waterfall and a white building complete with shining domes. A fairyland.
How magical to wander on a foreign planet, explore the ruins. She’d never been anywhere outside the home in which she was born, and the academy where she had been raised. Not until Spiro had come to collect her, that was.
“Where the hell are you?” A bellow from the mouth of the ship diverted her attention. “Klymeni? Klymeni!” Torum charged around the entrance, wearing only a pair of black trousers. His bare chest gleamed in the harsh sunlight. Sleek muscles rippled as he stormed around the corner. And that tattoo covered not just his neck. It snaked down the entire right side of his chest, along his upper arm, and even part of his abdomen, disappearing into the waist of his trousers. She’d never seen a tattoo in her life, but she’d heard of them. Supposedly they hurt when they were applied.
This one must have hurt a great deal.
He stopped dead when he saw her, his gaze dropping to the top of her bodice. Her skin heated at the look in his eyes.
“What the hell are you doing out here?”
She lifted her shoulders lightly, and again, his gaze flickered over her breasts. She opened her mouth, on the edge of explaining, and remembered that she’d been commanded not to speak. Angling her chin at him, she gestured toward the vista before them, the hills in the distance.
He scowled.
She smiled sweetly, stroking her bouquet, holding his gaze as she walked toward the ship’s entrance, trailing flower vines, keeping her strides as regal as a queen’s. Hauteur may be a silly defense, but it was all she had.
Besides, she wanted a bath of her own. And he was in her way.
“Where do you think you’re going now?”
Her smile never flickered. Not even when she got close enough to smell his woodsy, soapy, post-bath scent. He was so tall she had to tilt her head back in order to keep her eyes on his. She raised a cool brow, schooling her face against even the merest of flinches.
She walked right past him, and through the hissing hatch door, down the passageway with its icy blast of cool air, and slid the door of the bathing chamber shut behind her.
Only there did she rest her back against the wall. Torum was completely different than any man she’d ever come across. Unlike the elderly instructors at the academy, he wasn’t kind, patient, and gentle. Unlike Agammo and Spiro, he wasn’t courteous, gentlemanly, and predictable.
No, Torum was something else entirely.
For more information about The Taming, please visit my website at www.ImogenKeeper.com.
Table of Contents
Dedication
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
Author’s Note
Also by Imogen Keeper
The Breaking Page 31