by Leith Briar
“You can not delay this forever. Even if I wanted to, there is a hall full of Bhiasts down there who need this to be done so they can do it themselves.”
That is the best explanation I can give her right now.
For the first time tonight, she takes a step closer to me. Her hand extends, and she touches my chest. I stare down at it, the feeling of a woman’s soft hands touching my body unfamiliar. “I’ll try. I promise I’ll try.”
“Very well.”
Chapter 10
Sophia
Relief washes over me at his words.
At least I’ve bought myself some time, which is something I didn’t even think was possible when he had me pinned up against the bed.
I’m still standing close to him when he removes his clothing. He must catch the surprised look on my face because he simply says, “We might not be fucking, but there will be no clothes in my bed.”
I avert my eyes while he removes everything, not wanting to be seen openly looking at him. Apparently finished, he moves around me and begins unhooking the back of the bodice, before letting it fall to the floor. My skirt comes next, and before long I’m also completely naked.
He walks around me, and I watch his face while he takes in the sight of my naked body with hungry eyes. No one has ever seen me naked before, and I always expected I’d be the shy type.
But for some reason I don’t feel shy around Colm.
Perhaps it’s the fact he is just as new to this as I am. He doesn’t have a long list of other women to compare me to, and if he truly meant the ceremony that happened downstairs, then he never will.
And I like the way he looks at me.
He says nothing, but he doesn’t have to, because his eyes say it all. He stops in front of me and drops to his knees, then he reaches out and cups my breast again. Instinctively I try to take a step back, but his other arm is around my back before I can move.
My heart-rate begins to rise again. He said he would give me time? He pulls me in closer to him and this feels like the exact opposite of giving me time.
But then I realise what he is doing. He’s unscrewing the little ring that was tightened around my nipple.
The feel of his rough fingers against my sensitive skin makes me shiver, and that only increases when his warm breath brushes against my cheek.
“Winona says you are not supposed to sleep with these on.”
“I don’t care much for them.”
The corner of his lip lifts in a lazy smile while he works the other one free. I’m trying not to let thoughts of how handsome he looks and how intimate this is get to my head.
“She said that, too. She said to tell you that you will get used to them.”
I very much doubt that, but I can argue the point with him when it’s time to put them back on.
He stands and crosses the room, heading towards the chest and this time curiosity does get the better of me. I watch him with a strange sense of wonder that is difficult to process. He walks with confidence, like he owns the ground beneath our feet.
I guess that’s probably because he does.
“Now, to bed.”
“Leabaidh” I say, to which he chuckles.
But I don’t wait to be told twice. I scoot in and get under the furs in the spot furthest away from his side. I can only hope this uneasy truce we’ve struck means he won’t feel the need to tie me up or smother me tonight, but I can’t be sure.
Colm puts the guard over the fire and the room turns dark. I wait with my eyes open and hear him getting into bed.
“You don’t need to... tie me up tonight,” I tell him. “I won’t run. I have nowhere to go.”
I hear his laugh and then I feel the warmth of him as he pulls me closer to his body. “I was not afraid of you running so much as I was afraid you would stab me in my sleep.”
“Truthfully I hadn’t thought of that.”
He chuckles. “But now you have.”
Since he’s seems in good spirits, and he’s given me what I wanted, I don’t feel the urge to argue with him.
Would it be too much of a risk to ask a question or two? I guess I have only one thing to lose, and that’s that he will go back on the agreement we just made.
“Where is this place?”
“Tis a bed,” he mumbles from above my head.
I fight the urge to roll my eyes at his obvious avoidance of the question. “I mean where is this place in relation to Earth?”
“So many questions for one so small.”
I swallow, wondering if the thing I want to say would be pushing it. “So few answers for one so large.”
He chuckles at that, which I’m glad for.
“Tis far away, and that is all you need to know.”
“How far are we talking?”
He shifts in the bed and I sense him turning over slightly. “I am a man who measures distance in the length of a field. Would you really wish me to calculate that for you?”
“I guess not.”
“A sensible choice, believe me.”
There are one hundred other questions running through my mind, but I sense I will get no real answers from him and it will only serve to frustrate me.
So instead, I close my eyes and try to get comfortable. It’s been a long day, and a longer night, and I’m thankful that he didn’t force the issue that would have made it even longer still.
But I can’t put this off forever.
I know I will have to do this, unless I can find a way of escaping. And that seems impossible.
The man beside me pulls me in closer towards him and I admit it doesn’t feel horrible. It feels... weirdly natural.
I wonder if I had met him on Earth, under normal circumstances, would I have liked him?
Perhaps if he was human.
And that’s what I think about as I drift off to sleep.
Chapter 11
Colm
If there is one thing I have learned about my new wife, it is that she sleeps like a stone. There is no waking her, at least not before the sun comes up.
I get dressed and head to the library where Brody and some other advisors and commanders are waiting for news. I could hear their conversation from the end of the passageway, but the room turns silent as soon as I enter.
“The girl lives?” Gregor, who would be second in command if it was not for Brody, is the first to speak up.
Here the stone walls are covered with shelves and tapestries, the shelves littered with books and the hangings depicting scenes of our old ways on Earth. Back then, it would have been women who made them, but here it is the Balachs. Their fingers may not be as small nor as dainty, but they are not half bad as long as you do not look too closely. My desk sits by a roaring fire, and leather chairs fill the center of the room, each one now occupied.
“Aye, she lives,” I tell the group.
“Then we must send word to the Plaigh. They will want to know.”
I shake my head. “She lives because the deed was not done.”
There is a long silence while we all look at each other. I know what they are thinking. It was supposed to be me because I am the leader. I am the one who is supposed to put the needs of my men above my own. I am the one who has no feelings, the one who is most ferocious in battle, the one with the coldest heart.
They called me Diabhal on Earth.
And yet I could not even fuck a little human female.
“What happened?”
I sigh and cross the room, taking a seat at my desk while I think on my answer.
“She asked me to give her more time.”
“We do not have time,” Brody says.
“I know that.”
If we are lucky, the Plaigh will return within the week and they will expect an answer. If we are not lucky, they will already be on their way.
“I will give her until tomorrow eve to do it of her own free will. If she will not comply, then I will do what needs to be done.”
“I do not unde
rstand why you would not just do it,” Gregor says. He is stubborn and there are no shades of grey with him, he is only black or white. “That was why it had to be that girl. If she dies, then so be it.”
I am not going to tell him it was her doe eyes that convinced me otherwise, or spend any time thinking about how she might have got under my skin. I doubt anyone in this room would understand such concepts, and I am not about to explain it to them.
But it is Loche who clears his throat and emerges from the shadows. In truth, I had not even noticed he was there.
“If I may, it seems we went to a lot of trouble to bring this girl here. It also seems to me that she is calm and level headed, and she is dealing with her situation remarkably well. Would it not be sensible to take a day or two — in the name of progress — rather than pushing ahead and risk having to start again?”
Balachs are not usually allowed to speak so freely, but I make many exceptions for Loche. He speaks sense.
“I do not see how a day or two will change anything at all,” Brody says.
I shrug. “I told the girl the same thing.”
Loche shakes his head. “Then you must try to change it.”
“Aye, alright. And how do you suggest I do that?”
He misses a beat before letting out a sigh. “Well, you could show her around her new home. Talk to her. Charm her.”
The laughter that comes from my men floats to my ears and I shake my head, chuckling too. What the fuck do I know about charming a woman?
“I do not see how that is going to help. She fucking hates me.”
Loche shrugs. “Well, if you do not try, then I fear you are right, nothing will change and the wait will be for naught.”
I lean back in my chair, rubbing the overnight growth on my chin while I think on his words. Show her around. I could do that. I am not sure if it will have the effect Loche hoped for, though. Our world is not like the world we left, and the home we have created on this planet was never supposed to include women.
But he is right. If I do not do something, nothing will change. Charm her? I would not even know where to start, and it feels like I would just be deceiving her. I am not a charming man. I am a man who under any other circumstance would take what he wanted — consequences be damned.
Perhaps giving her a little push would not be the worst thing.
Chapter 12
Sophia
I wake up just as I did yesterday — to the sounds of bodies moving quickly around the room. The only difference is that today he did not bind my hands above my head, and I’m thankful for that as I pull the fur covers up over my nakedness.
“Oh, she lives!” Loche announces, the sarcasm clear. I rub my eyes and try to tame my unruly hair with my fingers.
“I need an alarm clock. What time is it?”
He stands at the bottom of the bed and puts his hands on his hips. “We do not have time here like we did on Earth, we have dawn, noon and dusk. Right now it is closer to noon than it is to dawn.”
I roll my neck to relieve some stiffness and look over to the empty side of the bed. “And Colm rises closer to dawn than noon?”
He smiles. “Colm rises well before dawn, my lady.”
Well, my lady is a new development. I guess he didn’t get the memo that I’m not technically the wife yet.
“What’s in the wardrobe today?”
He grins and turns around, clapping his hands twice and telling the other two men to scarper. Then he sets about the same way he did yesterday, gathering my clothes and lotions and jewellery.
I remember being a little girl and thinking how wonderful it would be to be a princess with pretty dresses and servants. I had a handsome prince then, too. If only that little girl could see me now, sucking in my breath while Loche pulls the corset thing tighter around my stomach.
“You know I read these are terrible for you and distort all your bones.”
He tuts while he gives the laces another pull. “Only if you start too young.”
“My first law as Queen will be to outlaw these things.”
Loch chuckles and then spins me around to work on blackening my eyes again. “There is only one Queen, on this island at least.”
“We’re on an island?”
“Aye, of sorts.”
“What do you mean of sorts?”
“I am sure Colm will explain all you need to know.”
I roll my eyes. “I very much doubt that. The man pretended he didn’t speak English, specifically, so he didn’t have to talk to me.”
He doesn’t reply to that, and we finish getting ready in silence.
Just as I’m tucking the fabric back into the bodice to cover my chest up, the door swings open and in strolls Colm.
He is wearing no furs today and instead he is bare-chested, the same dark kilt he always wears now swooping across his shoulder. Our eyes meet and I have to look away because it’s too intense.
“You never heard of knocking?”
He clears his throat before he speaks. “You look... nice.”
I glance back over at him. “Thank you.”
Colm’s eyes move to Loche who is putting things away, but he quickly takes the hint and leaves the room.
“Did you sleep well?”
“I did. Did you?”
He nods. “Aye.”
“That’s good.”
Fuck, this is awkward. All I can think about is what happened last night on that bedpost I’m standing right beside.
“I thought you could take breakfast with me, and I will show you around.”
My eyes light up, all thoughts instantly leading to my escape. It would be impossible to get anywhere without knowing where I am, or what exists outside of this place. Knowing all those things is the first step.
“That sounds good.”
He nods, his face straight, and gestures for me to follow him.
I have to practically skip to keep up, and he’s not even walking that quickly. We’re about half way down the stairs when he realises, then he slows a little and holds out his arm for me to take.
“I forget how slow you are,” he says with a chuckle.
“I’m not slow for a person of normal height.”
“And what is normal height? You are not on Earth anymore.”
“Yeah, I realised that when I got thrown out of the wagon and noted there was more that one moon in the sky.”
Colm looks down at me strangely. “Someone threw you out of the wagon?”
“Scarface,” I tell him.
Immediately he laughs and I screw my face up.
His laughter dies down, and he finally explains. “I am not laughing that he manhandled you — I will have words with him about that. Just the moniker you have given him. It makes me wonder what you call me behind my back.”
“Well, he didn’t exactly introduce himself.”
We emerge from the huge double doors where Scarface brought me a few nights ago, and instantly my arm flies to cover my eyes as they burn from the brightness.
The heat outside is searing and uncomfortable, and all I want to do is reverse and get back on the cool side of the door.
Colm bends down and murmurs into my ear, “It would have been much more pleasant if you had not slept the morning away.”
“I wouldn’t have slept the morning away if you people had invented alarm clocks.”
He chuckles and takes me by the arm, guiding me forwards. I can feel the rough stone cobbles under my feet but I can’t see them, because every time I open my eyes the sunlight is like an acid bath.
“Have you invented sunglasses?”
“Sunglasses?”
“You put them over your eyes and it helps you see in the sun,” I explain.
“No. Just open your eyes and deal with it. They will adjust soon enough.”
I do as he says because I will hardly achieve my goal of escape if I can’t very well see anything.
We’re standing in the middle of the courtyard place and I bl
ink rapidly as I try to look around.
“The buildings are black so as not to reflect the light so much,” he tells me. “And the walls are thick to keep the heat out in the day, and to help us warm them at night. It is summer now, but in the winter the temperature drops to levels that make going outside painful.”
“From one extreme to the other,” I say.
“Aye. I would say you get used to it, but we have been here seven-hundred years and you never really do.”
There’s that number again. Seven-hundred years. They all speak of it like it’s important. “Why seven-hundred years? Do you mean that is how long humans have been on this planet? And what exactly is this planet, anyway?”
He whistles and a few moments later a man emerges with a... I can only describe it as a beast.
It looks like a horse, but it’s definitely not a horse. The shape is the same, but it’s much bigger. Like a shire horse on steroids. And its skin is incredibly course, like an alligator’s but with more defined ridges and black all over. The thing whinnies and I get a flash of razor-sharp teeth.
Instantly I jump back, putting Colm between us, much to his amusement.
“He will not hurt you, not if he smells me on you.”
“But your smell isn’t on me?”
Before I’ve properly managed to get the sentence out, he turns around and lifts me up. My legs fit through the slits in my dress and now I’m quite literally wrapped around his stomach. We’re closer to eye level now than we’ve ever been, but instead I look over his shoulder and notice everyone else has suddenly averted their eyes.
“What are you doing?” I whisper, my heart thudding in my ears.
He smirks before responding. “Getting my scent all over you.”
He’s not lying. The only thing separating my skin from his is the thin scrap of fabric between my legs, and the even thinner piece that’s precariously covering the girls.
He presses one hand to my back and guides me closer to him until I’m pushed up tightly. The little rings around my nipples tug against his hard chest and I feel myself getting aroused.