by Rachel Grace
Bodhan leaned tiredly on one hip, knowing his next suggestion wasn’t going to go over well. “The queen said I could help, and I can. Whatever is coming, the Deviant needs more men. And men, I have.”
The laughter that escaped Freeman’s lips was as disturbing as it was surprising. “Amaranthe is not going to like that.”
“But you’ll tell her.”
Freeman met Bodhan’s gaze, understanding passing between them. “I’ll tell her. She’ll see the truth in it.” He paused as if unsure whether or not he should continue. “As to your truths, I suggest you sleep on them in Dare’s room. She needs looking after, now more than ever.”
Bodhan felt his hairline rise with his brows. “When you speak you don’t mess around, do you? Before I take your advice, there’s one more thing the captain should be aware of. Phina has seen the Sword before. As have I. He was on the Siren passing himself off as a half-breed.” He’d stopped smiling now, lost in thought. “She’s more than seen him actually, and they disappeared around the same time. Her tail was a bit bent out of shape when she realized who he was last night so I’m thinking…”
He let the sentence hang in the air, but they both understood. Phina had no doubt done what she always did, brought the man to ecstasy then robbed him blind.
“Damn it all.”
Bodhan nodded. “She may be looking for an escape hatch soon, just so you know.”
“No.” The first mate shook his head. “Phina is as loyal to our queen as you or I. She won’t be going anywhere. To be honest, I am more concerned about what the Wode will do when he wakes up and sees her.” He rubbed one callused hand along the back of his neck in frustration. “Maybe he won’t remember.”
Bodhan sincerely doubted it. He had yet to meet the man who had run afoul of Seraphina Felidae and forgotten who she was. But she was the captain’s crew, not his. Her crew. Her problem.
He stood straight and began walking toward the wooden door without another word. Freeman was right. He needed to be with Dare. His energy returned at the thought of touching her again.
Her body, her heart… protecting those was his new job for the foreseeable future. Not because she was the Chalice, but because she was his. He just had to convince her now that she was no longer on his ship. No longer alone. Now that she was free to decide how she truly felt about him.
Chapter Eleven
Dare let her damp hair hang over the edge of the claw-foot tub she’d found waiting for her in her room. It looked heavy, made of stone with copper conduction bars lining the outside—very similar to the baths in the women’s suite of the Siren, though those had been bolted in.
Freeman must have done this for her. Her initial instincts about him had been correct. He was kind.
The water that filled it was steaming, and Dare had no thought to resist its lure. She toed off her boots and shed her grime-covered clothes before lowering herself in its soothing depths.
She tried to piece all that had happened together in her mind. All the wonders and horrors she had seen, along with the queen’s words. Cyrus was alive. Her other half. Against every odd imaginable they had found each other this far from the palace. It was a relief, if she were honest. Cyrus was a true leader. He would know the next steps they needed to take to save Queen Idony.
Would he understand what Dare had done? What she had risked and the company she’d kept since last they met?
He had always been the most honorable of the both of them. Had always followed the rules of Wode. Would he hear her when she explained the truths she’d discovered about the Raj members and their science ministry?
She bit her lip, sinking lower into the heated water. Would he forgive her for Bodhan?
Since she had seen the queen’s message from Idony’s own mouth and her companion guard had appeared, Dare felt pulled in two directions. Her old life beckoned with its security, the family she’d always known, and a lifetime of memories.
Though her adoration and dedication to the queen could not be questioned, and she knew she would find a way to restore her to her throne or willingly sacrifice her life in the process, she was no longer sure that she could return to her former self.
This life called her, too, despite its chaos and her lack of balance. Perhaps because of it. She still needed so many answers. Why the queen had kept so many secrets from her, why people reacted so strangely to the mark she’d been born with. In fact, the only thing she didn’t question was Bodhan. A man full of secrets who was never what he appeared to be. Yet, from him, she had received only honesty. Felt only truth and passion.
He was real. What she felt for him was real. She had no inkling what future there was to be had with the owner of the Siren, but she desired it. Wanted there to be a way. The knowledge was as frightening as it was freeing.
She wanted to be with him.
The door creaked open and she sensed him without opening her eyes. His relief at the sight of her. Desire. She smiled. “Bodhan.”
“I think we need to clear the air between us.” A boot fell with a thud to the floor and she knew he was undressing. “Our queen has commanded I share my greatest secret with the captain, and I will, but I wanted you to know me first. I need you to.”
He sounded serious, and she opened her eyes as the second boot banged on the floor. “If we are being honest, I am not sure we will both fit in this bath.”
Bodhan smiled. “Trust me, we will. Since you shared your secrets in the marsh, I thought it was time to return the favor. Have you ever wondered at the mark on my arm?”
“Of course. I thought trader’s caste, perhaps…”
“It is no trader’s caste I belong to.”
Her brow furrowed. “What do you belong to?”
“Other than to you?” He slipped the large shirt Freeman had loaned him over his head, revealing several cuts and bruises from their recent skirmish. “The answer is not what, it is where. But perhaps that is the wrong place to start.”
Dare gasped when he dropped his pants and swept her out of the water in one smooth move. Her body chilled in the cooler air of the room but warmed instantly when he stepped inside the tub and lowered them both until she was sitting in his lap, her legs on either side of his waist. “Oh my.”
His cock hardened against her stomach. “Do not distract me with your love words,” he muttered. “You know what I’m feeling as well as I, don’t you?”
He raised his eyebrows at her shocked expression. “I heard the queen. And I’m no idiot, Dare—I already knew you were special. Special enough that you knew what Lennis was thinking. What all of us were feeling. Enough that there can be no secrets between us. Not on my end. So you know that everything I say to you is true. Which makes my usual mysterious charm irrelevant.”
He relaxed into the water, his fingers gripping her hips, making it difficult for Dare to concentrate. Though she sensed that he needed her to, that what he had to tell her was important.
“I am what I’ve always claimed to be. The owner of the Siren. My father, however, is a master inventor. He built her when I was a young man, with help from the Khepri. An uncle of mine ran her until I came of age, and then passed her secrets and her guardianship to me.” He paused. “The kind of political and personal secrets you can only get from taking down a man’s guard. Putting them in compromising situations. The kind that would ensure we could keep the queen safe… and our people hidden.”
“Your people?”
Bodhan’s eyes darkened as they gazed into hers. “My people. People who live without caste. Without the laws of the Theorrean Raj or the enforcement of their laws by the Wode. It is paradise, my home, Dare. Beyond description. I do what I do, protect who I can, for them. The Khepri has his way, the captain hers… the Siren is mine.”
How could that be possible? The Wode had outposts in every habitable corner of the world. No one was beyond the law. Yet the way he described it was intriguing. Paradise. It sounded far more welcoming than the world she’d come to know. “Th
is is your secret that the queen wanted you to share? Your people? And Queen Idony and the Khepri both know of this place? These people?”
He nodded, his fingers caressing her lower back, her hips. She pressed her palms against his chest, reveling in the resistance of his powerful body.
“I believe we were the ones she was referring to in her message. If the men of Aaru knew she was in danger, nothing—not fear of discovery or death—would stop them. My people love and honor the queen. When the others look to the Copper Palace and bless the queen, the people of Aaru pray for her freedom.”
Her freedom? But she had not been taken that long ago. Bodhan read her expression. “You have felt it yourself, Dare, you know you have. The palace is a cage. Beautiful and gleaming, but still a cage. Since you have been her Chalice, has she left it? She may have uttered no word against the ever-increasing control of the Raj, but surely you felt it?”
She had. Her limbs began to tremble as she felt the truth in his words. A truth that had crept into her awareness over the last few days. Had it only been days?
She had accepted, without question, what she had been told to. She had wondered why the queen would remain silent when she disagreed with each new law passed by the Raj. Wondered but never dared question. She felt unworthy of being the Chalice.
He swore. “Dare, I am an ass. This was not what I meant to—I wanted to tell you everything. To share what I am with you. All that I am. So you would know that I wasn’t a criminal. That I am as loyal to the queen as any on this ship. As the companion guard you love. I have no cause nor the ability to pass judgment on you and neither does the queen. Look at all you have risked searching for her. To save her. Is it any wonder she would love you?” He lifted her chin with the fingers of one hand until she was looking into his eyes once more. “That I would love you? That I would hope that you could find a way to love me in return?”
His words broke through the darkness that had been crowding in on her. He loved her. And she knew now that, even when she’d believed him nothing more than a criminal, she had desired him. Loved him.
Her mind was spinning again. She had a feeling that was a sensation she would have to get used to. Her world had changed but she was now living in it. A part of it. No more secrets or riddles or games. It was hard, but it was real.
Now all she wanted, all she had, was this moment, was this. Touching him. Loving him. Feeling his love for her. “Perhaps we could save any new and life-altering sharing for tomorrow?”
Bodhan studied her face intently for a long moment and then his smile returned. “Whatever will we do with ourselves until then?”
“You could give me another first.”
A growl rumbled in his chest and his cheeks flushed with arousal. Dare reached down between them, taking him in her hands and lifting her hips to guide him inside her.
“First time in the bath or on top?” Bodhan’s voice was raspy. Breathless.
She lowered herself onto his erection, leaning forward until her words brushed his lips with her own. “The first time I tell you I love you, too.”
He kissed her and Dare melted into him, her body alive with sensation, on fire with need. He filled her so completely, so perfectly. As if he had been designed for her body. Created for her pleasure. Born for her to love.
The world could wait for them. For this. It could stop for this moment. Just this once. As long as his hands kept hold of her hips while she rocked against him, water splashing from the tub onto the floor with the power of her thrusts. As long as he continued to kiss her, sucking her tongue into his mouth and moaning at her taste. As long as he loved her.
He tore his mouth from hers with obvious difficulty. She was so close to that remembered feeling, so close to breaking apart in his arms, that it took a moment for his words to register.
“I love you, Dare. Senedal or no. You are my Siren. The only woman I cannot resist.”
Dare bit his jaw, rocking her hips against him and crying out as her movement started a deep, powerful quaking inside her. “Am I your first?”
His fingers tightened almost painfully against her flesh. “You are. In every way that counts. You are my heart. My only. Love— Dare.”
He dragged her against him and took her mouth again. When he joined her in oblivion, his shouts mingling with hers as they shattered together.
It was not until they were lying in her bed after hours had passed that Dare could form a coherent thought again. “I feel bad for Coral and the others. For James Stacy. They must be worried for you. Wondering what happened.”
Bodhan lifted his lips from her neck, where he’d been gifting her with slow, tender kisses as she lay in his embrace. “They know.”
She lifted herself onto one elbow, feeling her eyes widen with her surprise. “How?”
He grinned. “My cuff is connected to the Siren, princess. They could find me anywhere as long as it was turned on. And it has been since we left. I tapped out a message before I removed the theorrite in the marsh.” She nodded and he continued, “I received their reply just before dawn. James and a few of the others are on their way. Captain Amaranthe’s newest recruits until I can get word to Aaru.”
She could hardly believe it. “They’re leaving the Siren to come here?”
“Some will stay, though I’ve given orders that we are out of business for the indefinite future.” His expression sobered and he reached out to cup her cheek with his warm palm. “Did you think I—that any of us—would leave you alone in this, Dare? Did you imagine I could? The Siren is at the queen’s command, along with the Deviant. At your command, Chalice. We will find her together.”
Dare’s vision blurred. She was not alone. She and Cyrus had allies now.
She had Bodhan.
It was impossible for her to know how her companion shield guard—her friend—would react to the news when he woke. But one thing was certain. Once again, nothing would ever be the same.
For Dare, loving a man like Bodhan would ensure it.
FIERY TEMPTATIONS
Chapter One
“So little to drink, so much time.”
Seraphina uttered Gebby’s favorite salute to the empty air before pressing a bottle to her lips and tipping back her head. She swallowed the final moss-colored drop, set down the empty container on a wooden chopping block in the galley, and glared at it in morose consternation.
“Absencea,” she scoffed. It refused to deliver on the promise of sweet oblivion it had given her in the past. Two bottles into the noble’s beverage of choice and her tail was still on edge. Now, nothing of the finer liquor remained on board. She would have to drink the rot they had left in the cupboards.
The crowd of Siren guards who had invaded her safe haven had no doubt drained Freeman’s private stock. Not exactly welcome guests. As of last night, the Deviant had been overrun and was flying in circles. Two of Phina’s lives, the ones she’d kept separate for so long, were merging into singular chaos.
She needed another drink.
She had served Captain Amaranthe on the airship Deviant as a part of her crew, a consummate thief and—should the situation prove dire—assassin. Her service on the submersible Siren was in an entirely different capacity.
Each ship gave her its own brand of satisfaction and release, but the Deviant was her home. The only place she had true purpose. She served Queen Idony. In her own unique fashion.
The queen. Phina owed her everything, loved her with a ferocity of emotion she had never allowed herself to feel for a human before. Without her, she would have been lost long ago. To the mines. To beatings from the Wode for her rebellious nature. Or worse, killed for the treason she had been coerced into committing, the ignorant accomplice in the abduction of the Queen’s Sword.
Since she’d sworn her allegiance to Queen Idony and aligned herself with the captain and the Khepri, Phina had never looked back. Her confidence in her skills and wits, as well as her ability to squeeze out of tight places, had never faltered.
She should have known Dare was the Queen’s Chalice, regardless of her unusual scent. She should have searched Bodhan’s infernal wrist cuff, the one device he’d kept close to him at all times on the Siren. Though even if she had, they would have never been able to use it without Dare.
She should have known that damned stubborn man she’d used all her wiles to seduce when he arrived on the Siren was the last man she should have trifled with. Or let trifle with her before leaving him to his fate.
Above all of these things she should have known, the queen’s jeopardy was the most difficult for Phina to deal with. She should have returned to the Copper Palace for their annual late-night visit instead of throwing herself into the distraction of sexual play aboard the Siren. Sexual play meant to distract her from a certain blue-eyed Wode. The fact that he had been taken. That she had been complicit in his disappearance.
Phina grabbed a full jug of the homemade rotgut and left the galley, her thoughts no longer entirely on her queen. She could smell him. His scent was distinctive from the other males aboard, and it was all over the damned ship.
Cyrus. The Arendal Sword. The Queen’s Sword. He smelled like the first snows on the mountains. The clean cold air that occasionally cut through the factory fog. The fire and sweat in the air when a mating occurred in the Felidae settlement.
The scent was stronger than it had been in days, making her hair stand on end, her flesh heat, and her lips curl back in instinctive reaction.
He was awake now. He would see her. Know she was on board. How would he react? With remembered pleasure for a night of passion, or rage?
She stopped in the hallway, aware that she’d been heading to his room, gravitating there as she had each time she allowed herself belowdeck. She’d watched him while he’d slept and healed. Where had he been? What had happened to him since she’d last seen him?