But the man still had at least some fight in him. “What if we refuse to leave without our horses?”
Taka shrugged as if he did not care a jot. “Stay if you wish. But we’re giving your weapons to the villagers. Let’s see if you can still look down on them when they’re armed and you’re not.”
That did the trick. As I watched the bandits hurrying out of town, starting on the long walk back up the mountain, I felt a swell of pride in my chest. I had done nothing, of course, but the guys were here because of me. More than that, I felt like they were mine – my men. My men had done well today. I hurried over to them.
“That was amazing, you were brilliant! I don’t think they’ll be back in a hurry.”
Taka pulled a face. “They’ll probably be back tomorrow.”
“They will?”
“And in greater numbers.”
I was shocked. “Then why didn’t you kill them?”
Taka tutted. “And you criticize me for being a killer. You’ve got to give a warning. It’s only polite. They didn’t come to kill us – they didn’t come to kill anyone. And killing those idiots would have been like killing unarmed men – you’d think they’d never held a sword before. They were the errand boys. Tomorrow, they’ll send the real deal, and there’ll be a lot of them.” He turned to his men. “Distribute the bandits’ weapons to the villagers. They won’t need them but it’ll make them feel safe.”
“Thank you.” Ryne had come up while Taka and I were talking. “We really appreciate what you’ve done for us today.”
His words said ‘thank you’, but nothing in his manner did. There was an aura of fear surrounding Ryne and it worried me. I wasn’t sure if he was scared of what the bandits might do in retaliation, or perhaps he was scared of my mercenaries, now he had seen what they were capable of. The bandits had terrorized our town, and these four men had sent them packing with barely an effort – what if they were to turn on his village? I knew it wouldn’t happen, but Ryne did not look so certain.
“You know they’ll come back,” Ryne went on.
“We know,” said Taka. “We’ll be ready.”
“You’ve provoked them now,” Ryne continued, wretchedly.
“That was the idea.”
“They’ll come down on us with everything they’ve got.”
“That was the idea, too,” Taka assured him. “When they attack, I want it to be a full attack. If it’s not, then they might be back again in another week. But if it’s all of them, then we can wipe them out. That’s the only way this ends.”
“And what happens to us if they kill you?”
Taka shook his head. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
Ryne sighed as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. “I’m the headman here, I do have to worry about that.”
And he was not the only one. When I walked back home through the town, I saw people – friends and neighbors I had known all my life – whispering as they looked at me, hushing their voices as I went by so I would not overhear them. I was no longer to be trusted because I was with the mercenaries. I understood their fear – perhaps I would have shared it if I had been in their position. They didn’t know the guys like I did, so how could they trust them? It would all be better tomorrow. If today had not proved whose side the guys were on, if it had not proved that they could do what they had promised, then tomorrow would prove it for sure.
Chapter 13
It was a strange day, a day in which anxiety and ill-feeling hung in the air like a mist. The guys had picked up on it, I knew, but they didn’t seem worried. So their hosts did not trust them? One more fight tomorrow and they were out of here. Why should they care?
I cared.
I cared about how people saw them. I wanted them to be recognized as the heroes they were by more people than just my mom, and maybe Bren. I cared about how people talked about them behind their backs. I had already noticed how some fathers had secreted their daughters away out of sight, locked them in their rooms – there wouldn’t be any lost virginities on their watch. But most of all, I cared that they were leaving. To them, it was just another job, and a badly paid one at that, and afterwards, it was off to the next without a glance back. But to me, the idea of them leaving felt like the end of the world. How quickly my attraction to these men – my lust for them – had evolved into something more. I had seen in them the best of men.
They killed for a living – there was no getting around that - and yet, that occupation seemed to have given them a greater respect of life. I was still not sure I understood them, but what I knew, I could not help but admire.
Dinner that evening was supposed to be a celebration – not quite one to match the previous night, but still a joyful recognition of what had happened today. But though everyone went through the motions, it was a muted affair. The music lacked energy, the drink flowed less freely, the girls were very much lacking in number, owing to their protective fathers. Taka, Rex and Kai – Luca was conspicuous in his absence - retained their good humor and were friendly and cordial to their hosts. But I could not understand how. They had to be insulted by this. They had saved us and yet, we did not seem to trust them. I was ashamed of my own people.
“No Dana tonight?” I asked Bren.
“Her father won’t let her out.”
I sighed. “What have you been doing to that girl? Honestly, Bren, not all girls are like me.”
“I haven’t done anything,” said Bren, defensively. “It’s your friends.”
“What?”
“Dana’s father said he knows their type.”
“That man wouldn’t know his ass if he tripped over it,” I snarled. “Why don’t you try and sneak her out the window?”
Bren looked at his feet. “I sort of…”
“Oh gods, you agree with him?”
“Not agree, exactly,” Bren replied. “Just… They’re mercenaries, Keira.”
“They saved us today.”
“From what?” Bren countered. “If they hadn’t been here, then the bandits wouldn’t have attacked.”
“No, they’d have taken our food.”
“It’s the price we pay.”
“And they’re trying to make sure we don’t have to pay it.”
“Well, we didn’t ask them to,” pointed out Bren.
“What about the people they take?” I knew this was my killer blow and, sure enough, Bren looked the other way.
“Look, I’m not saying they aren’t helping us. And maybe it’s all to the good. But just because they’re helping us, doesn’t mean they won’t also help themselves.”
“To Dana.”
“Or another girl like her,” Bren insisted. “Girls are all the same to their sort. Anyone will do. You know what they’re like.”
I got up from my seat. “Yes, I do know what they’re like.” I had slept with three out of four of those men and I’d practically had to force them into it. I stalked away from my best friend, angrier at him than I had ever been.
I didn’t have any sense of where I was going, but as I walked through the outskirts of the village, I heard a noise from the stables. Hurrying over, I saw Luca, feeding the new horses. Once again, the big village dinner had not appealed to him, and tonight I could understand why.
“Hi.”
He turned and nodded to me in reply.
I took a step closer. “I just wanted to say; you may have had a point about me.” No reply. “I was out of line last night with those guys. And I was out of line this morning when I tried to kiss you. If it had been the other way round – you trying to kiss me when I wasn’t interested – that’d be a serious offense. You’d be drummed out of the village. I was every bit as wrong, and I’m sorry. I wanted to say,” I took another step closer, “I deserved to be punished, and I want you to finish what you started.”
My ass still ached from the morning, but some secret spot within me ached for more. Perhaps it was wrong, perhaps it was just me taking advantage of hi
m in a different way. But I couldn’t help myself. I longed for it; to feel the sharp sting of his hand on my flesh; to feel the uprush of hot, liquid desire inside me; and this time, to feel the relief of completion. I wanted Luca so badly I could taste it.
“You’re wrong.”
“Wrong?” I frowned.
“Oh, don’t misunderstand me,” Luca turned away from the bandit’s horse to face me, “I think you deserve a good whupping more than any woman I have ever met. But I also think that all four of us, working in shifts, still wouldn’t have stamina enough to tan the impudence out of your hide.”
A pleasant tremor prickled across my skin, partly in pride at being thought so mischievous, partly at the idea of all four of my guys taking it in turns to spank my ass.
“You’re wrong,” Luca continued, “about me. You’re wrong to think that I didn’t want you. I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you and it’s getting harder and more frustrating to hide by the day. I guess that’s what this morning was about. Again, you deserved it for the way you treated those boys, but that’s not why you got it. I’d reached the point where if I didn’t touch you, I’d explode, but if I did, then I didn’t know what would happen. And I didn’t want that to happen. So, I found a way to touch you that didn’t betray my past.”
I sat on a bale of straw and looked up at him. “You could tell me about it, if you liked.”
Luca seemed in two minds, then, he turned to feed one of the horses again, starting to speak as he did so.
“I grew up in a village not so very different from yours. Only, on the plains. Difference there is that you see the war a lot more, you see the soldiers. I was like any other boy, I wanted to be a soldier, wanted to have a sword and fight. Be a hero. Also, like every other boy, I liked the girls.” He smiled a little wanly at the memory. “By the gods, I was a holy terror. Fathers used to lock up their daughters when I was about – just like they have here; don’t think we haven’t noticed. I think they held a party when I left to join the army. I was a good soldier. It’s a bloody business but I saw it as I’d been trained to see it; them and us. And if civilians get in the way then… well, bad luck to them. And whenever I wasn’t fighting, there were plenty enough women in the surrounding towns and cities for me to pursue my other interest. Fighting and fucking – that’s the soldiers’ mantra. Or, at least, it was mine. I’d been in for two years when I got leave to go home for a visit, and when I got there, there was only one girl left in the village.”
I waited quietly as he paused, stroking the horse’s mane.
“Not literally. There were still plenty of pretty girls – and some were well pleased to see me back – but I didn’t see them; I only saw Joss. I’d seen her before, of course, before I left. She’d been one of my ‘conquests’. But now she was... well, she was a woman. I don’t know that she was better looking than the others, smarter, funnier or what have you – I saw her that way, but I couldn’t be sure. I can’t explain it really, there just weren’t any other girls. She was the only one. We spent my leave together and I knew then it wouldn’t be so long before my next visit. But when I got back, I found the war had changed for me. Somehow, Joss had changed me and following orders wasn’t so easy as it had been. One day, a sergeant ordered me to kill a woman for looking at him funny or something, and I wouldn’t do it. ‘Walk away, then’ he said. And I wouldn’t do that either, I stood between him and her. He laughed and called the rest of the squad. Five of them there were, big guys. They strung me up by my hands and took it in turns to use me as a punch bag. As each finished, the sergeant would say, ‘Kill her, and all this stops’. But I couldn’t. I thought of Joss and I couldn’t. They forgot about the girl, she ran off. When she looked back, I honestly don’t know if she was grateful or thought I was crazy. Finally, they cut me down, and as I lay on the ground, bruised, broken and bleeding, the sergeant says he’s going to kill me, and I think I’d have welcomed it if it weren’t for the thought of Joss. Through a film of blood in my eyes, I can see the five of them standing over me. Then – and I swear I just blinked – they were all lying on the ground, and there’s one man standing over me, and he says, ‘If you can stand, then I’ll save you’.”
“Taka?” I asked.
Luca nodded. “I stood. I don’t know how I found the strength, but I stood.” He paused a moment. “I’ve often wondered if he had only just arrived or if he’d watched them beating me up, just to see how tough I was. I’ve never asked. Don’t really want to know. Anyway, he and I put together our little band of mercenaries, operating just outside military law, working for the highest bidder to our own set of ethics. Not strong ethics, but not just following orders, either. I remember,” a sad smile crossed his face, “how proud Joss was when I told her. She thought I was doing the right thing.”
“What happened to her?” I felt that if I didn’t ask, he might not have the courage to tell me.
“Soldiers passing through the village,” said Luca, his eyes not moving from the horse in front of him. “Looting. She tried to stop them. Always trying to do the right thing, was Joss.”
“I’m sorry,” I breathed.
“Since then, I’ve fought like never before. Every soldier I kill could be the one… I’ll get vengeance in volume of blood because there’s no other way open to me.” He sagged. “But I’ll never know who actually did it. So all the blood in the world will never be enough.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said again. So worthless, but what else did you say?
He looked at me as if for the first time. “You know, you’re nothing like her.”
“Oh.”
“She was a good girl.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t mean it as a bad thing.”
“Calling me a ‘bad girl’ is hardly a compliment.”
Luca laughed. “Would you disagree?”
“No.” Of course I wouldn’t. I’d spent my whole damn life breaking rules just because they were there. I did the wrong thing because it amused me. I was a bad girl.
“I mean, it’s no bad thing you’re different to her,” Luca explained. “If you were like Joss, then I’d compare you to her, and that’s a short route to unhappiness. But you’re so completely unlike her. She was the ideal version of who she was and you,” he gave me the most honest and beautiful smile I had seen on his handsome features, “you’re about as perfect a version of Keira as could possibly exist.”
“Bad girl and all?”
“You own it,” said Luca. “You know who you are.”
I smiled. It was an odd compliment, but a rather lovely one, nonetheless.
“You’re a very beautiful woman,” said Luca, making it sound like an admission. “As soon as I saw you, I found myself… drawn. Attracted. I desired you. I comforted myself with the fact that you were probably a little bitch, and then you started breaking rules, which gave me hope. But then you damn well grew on me. Maybe you were a little bitch, but you were an honest one, and I realized that my attraction to you had become more than physical.” He looked down at his feet. “I’m sorry.”
I wasn’t sure if he was apologizing to me or to Joss.
I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to tell him that it was time to move on, that he had to live his life, that Joss would understand and would want him to be happy. But how much of that was just me pleasing myself because of my own burning attraction to him?
I stood up. “I’ll go.”
“No.”
I turned back to see Luca holding out a hand to me.
“I don’t know what’s going on inside me at the moment. I don’t know if what I want is right or wrong or just next. But I do know what I want, and I think if I don’t kiss you then I will regret it forever.”
Chapter 14
The touch of Luca’s lips on mine was like a drink at an oasis after a long walk through a desert. Until that touch, until his tongue slipped into my mouth, I don’t think I was fully aware of how much I had desired him all that time, even when i
t had seemed that he had hated me. It was a feeling of relief, as much as anything else, that finally this was happening. I kissed him back ardently, but made sure not to press too hard or move too fast. I knew what I wanted, and I thought he wanted the same, but after the story he had just told me, I would not have been comfortable moving as demandingly as I might have with another man.
But my worries appeared to be groundless, for while I touched him only lightly on his chest and leg, his arms enfolded me and picked me up from the straw bale on which I had been sitting. We continued to kiss as Luca carried me across the room, where he set me down beside the pile of loose hay against one wall. He removed the sword he wore across his back and dropped it to one side. Then, he swung off his cloak and laid it down on the hay, creating a makeshift bed for us. I lay down and held out a hand for him to join me.
For a moment, Luca looked down at me, the heat in his eyes tempered by wonder – perhaps at me, perhaps at the fact that he was here, doing this, with another woman. I wondered if he might pull away, if perhaps this was still all too much, too soon. But in the next heartbeat, he joined me, crushing his lips against mine as I accepted his pleasant weight on top of me, running my hands through his blond hair. His own hands now explored my body, caressing me through my clothes till one slid beneath my blouse to skid across my belly and up to the soft roundness of my breasts. I moaned into Luca’s mouth as he stroked my nipples to full arousal, till my whole body felt flushed. One of his strong thighs had made its way between my legs and I worked my core frustratingly against him, relishing the friction that gave me some of the satisfaction I craved.
But by now, I needed more, and did not feel that I could wait much longer. I began to tug at Luca’s clothes with urgent hands, desperate to see more of the man on top of me. But Luca pulled back. Again, I wondered if I had gone too fast, but instead, he drew me up with him into a sitting position so he could pull my blouse up over my head. His eyes widened as he took in the breasts he had already been caressing. Now, his mouth joined his hands and I gasped in pleasure as his lips and tongue embarked on a tour of my breasts, leaving no spot unkissed, his tongue feathering with agile strokes across my skin, lapping at my tight nipples till I could have screamed.
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