The General's Daughter (Snow and Ash #1)

by Heather Knight

I go rigid. He’s not talking about cards. I know this because he slides his foot between mine and rubs his boot against my leg. The higher he pushes it, the more he smiles. Before he can get to anywhere important, I clamp down on him with my thighs.

  “Aw, come on.” His lips are smiling, but his eyes are not.

  Talon saunters in from the back hall, and you’d almost think he was calm except for the way his nostrils are flaring.

  “Denny.” He says it in that flat, emotionless way I’ve learned means bad news for the person he’s talking to.

  Baldo’s smile fades and he turns to Talon with a resentful tilt to his chin. “You got a problem, sir?”

  Talon’s lips pucker as if he’s considering the question. “I think I told you but maybe I didn’t. She’s mine.”

  If Baldo-Denny had any sense in him, he’d drop this now. But he doesn’t.

  “You can’t do that, sir. She belongs to the whole unit.”

  Talon’s eyes go dead. “I’m not gonna say it again. Nobody kills her, nobody fucks her, nobody bloody well looks at her unless it’s me.”

  Baldo rises to his feet and meets Talon in the middle of the living room, and it’s as though they’re trying to out-chest each other.

  Meanwhile, Dinner-Plate Hands studies me, but I’m so embarrassed that I can’t look up. He’s leaning against the useless fridge with his hands on his hips.

  “You all right?” His voice is soft, sympathetic. This surprises me into meeting his gaze. The pity I find there makes me want to cry. Even worse, it doubles my shame, and I swallow. I shift my gaze to the floor and jerk my head yes.

  “Incoming,” calls Blondie. He’s been keeping watch from the dirty bay windows.

  A thrill of hope electrifies my chest.

  Baldo stands down, and Talon joins Blondie at the window. Blondie hands him the binoculars, and he takes a long look.

  Dad? Is he coming for me? Is there a rescue after all? My heart tries to punch its way through my chest.

  No. No, I know my father. If his men are here, it’s not for a rescue. I tremble, just my hands at first, but it quickly spreads throughout my body as I scan the interior of the trailer for a place to hide. Right. Like there’s anyplace I could hide from him.

  “Ours.” Talon hands the binoculars back to Blondie.

  I suck in my breath and smooth my hands up my face and into my hair. I don’t know if this is better or worse.

  “Idris.” Talon addresses Dinner-Plate Hands and indicates me with a tilt of his head.

  Some kind of communication passes between them, but beats me what it is.

  Talon slaps on his cap and heads out the front door.

  Dinner-Plate-Hands Idris plants himself in the entrance to the kitchen and crosses his arms over his chest.

  Okay, then. I’m back to having a bodyguard. This is ironic, considering he’s the one who killed my last one. He seems effective, though. Long-Haired Guy doesn’t seem to care, but Blondie clears his throat and glances away, and Baldo doesn’t even look like he wants to fight. Idris is by far the biggest guy in the room. Probably in the state—if we still had states.

  “What’s going on?” Baldo asks.

  Blondie takes another look through the binoculars. “Recon. Probably from Command.”

  I’m not wringing my hands. My whole body is wringing.

  “Talon doesn’t look happy,” Blondie muses, and Baldo gives me an assessing look.

  “They’re arguing now.”

  Shit.

  By now I’m unashamedly peering out the tiny window over the kitchen sink. There are three soldiers out there, and Talon’s talking to one of them, aggressively it looks like, because he throws his hands around and leans into the other guy’s space. This goes on for several minutes before Talon gives the soldier a shove. Immediately, the other two men, who up until now shouldered their weapons, bring them across their bodies and grip them with both hands like they’re getting ready for business. But their companion doesn’t react to the shove, at least physically, so there’s no fight after all.

  What are they talking about? More importantly, what does this mean for me?

  Talon tosses one last comment, jabs a finger at the one he’s been talking to, and stalks toward the trailer. After a moment, the others make to follow, but Talon rounds on them. I can’t be sure what he’s saying, but by his gestures he’s telling them to go fuck themselves and find someplace else to stay. That’s my interpretation, at any rate.

  By the time Talon comes back inside, he looks like someone just tried to chew his balls. I don’t think I’ve seen even my dad this angry. He pitches his hat into the corner and barely looks at me. “Go back to the room. I’ll call you when you can come out.”

  I don’t like it, but I get to my feet. You know, like the obedient girl I’ve been trained to be. As I pass Idris, he offers me another look of sympathy.

  Once back in the bedroom, I close the door, making sure it’s with enough force that they can hear it. Then, softly as I can, I crack it open.

  “There’s no sign Balenchuk’s even left the mountain.”

  “Shit.” That’s Baldo.

  “Well, he came back, didn’t he?” Idris asks.

  “Within a day of her capture,” Talon confirms.

  “Are they sure he’s still there?” This sounds like Blondie, but I can’t be certain.

  “His army hasn’t moved, and he sure as shittin’ isn’t coming by himself.”

  “Her own daddy and he’s not going to do anything?” Idris sounds indignant on my behalf, and I realize I like this mountain of a man. Well, sort of. I mean, he killed Garrett.

  Talon swears, and I hear a bang like he’s kicked something, hard.

  “What now?” Blondie asks.

  “He has four more days. If Balenchuk doesn’t show by then…” Talon hesitates. “The general has new plans.”

  “What plans?” Baldo sounds a little too eager for the answer.

  Talon mumbles something, but I can’t hear.

  “He can’t do that,” says Idris.

  Talon makes a scoffing sound. “He won’t. It’ll be us. It’ll be me. If it comes to that, we’re to leave her head somewhere they’ll find it. Preferably on his doorstep.”

  I can’t describe the feeling that comes over me, other than to say it is enough to send me to my knees and make catching my breath impossible. If I could have, I would have bolted for the door right there and then.

  “She ain’t nothing,” Idris reminds the others. “She’s got nothing to do with anything.”

  “She’s a pawn.” Talon sounds defeated. “She was never meant to be anything but a means to get to Balenchuk. If Barry can’t draw him out to rescue her, then he’ll use her death to weaken him.”

  My hands shake as I close the door as gently as I can. I can’t let Talon know I heard. I don’t want him tying me up again. If he does that, I’ll never get away.

  It’s several minutes before I’m calm enough to think, and it hits me that there’s nowhere to go. Sure, maybe I’ll make it out of their encampment, but then what? Girls on their own—they don’t make it, and if they do, they wish they hadn’t. There are so many ways I can die out there, and being someone’s dinner isn’t even the worst. My God. This can’t be how it ends. There’s a sharp rap on the door before it opens. Talon pokes his head inside, and his mouth opens as though he’s going to say something like you can come out now or would you like some more nearly rotten peanut butter. The words die on his lips.

  He pushes into the room and carefully shuts the door. “You heard us.”

  There’s no use denying it. The evidence is all over me—the shaking alone gives me away. I have to swallow a couple times before I can speak. “We both knew it would happen. Either by him or by you.”

  Talon chews his lips and pushes himself off the door. He picks me up and sits me on the bed and eases down beside me.

  “I’m sorry. This wasn’t in the plans.”

  How fucking funny is
that? He’s sorry. The guy hates me. He’s going to saw my neck in half.

  I wipe a hand over my face. “When you do it, will you please make it quick? I mean, I don’t want to know it’s coming.”

  I can’t help it. I explode into ugly sobs.

  Talon tilts his chin, inhales sharply, and presses my head to his chest. I crave his touch, this tiny proof that he is, after all, human. But I can’t do this. He’s my executioner. I shove myself away from him and wipe my face. My chest still heaves, but I stifle the pointless sobs.

  “People hate me. I know that. Some of it I even deserve. Who wouldn’t hate the girl who dresses in silk and eats steak when everyone else eats scraps? I didn’t choose it, but that doesn’t matter. And when I shaved my head and tended bar in that rat hole, people treated me like I was dirt. It didn’t matter that I had nowhere else to go, that no one else was willing to pay me under the table.”

  “You could’ve—”

  “No, I couldn’t,” I snarl. “Go home and live in that house? Go to hell, Talon. That lying son of a bitch should have told us about Joanna and Misty. I wouldn’t have thought she was some creepy stalker. I would have treated her like a sister. Mom wouldn’t have had to hear about all this on the day she found out she was going to lose both breasts and all her hair. I would have been a pole dancer before I’d have gone home.”

  His face pales, and he draws back.

  “It’s been an ugly fucking life, even when I was young and didn’t know it. I just wish—” I swallow back another explosion of tears. I was about to admit that I’d dreamed of doing a better job, of having my own family one day and giving them all the love I’d never had.

  Talon brushes the hair back from my face. His expression twists as though he’s in pain. It’s sick, the hope this gives me. It’s bloody sick.

  “I told you he wasn’t coming,” I remind him.

  “Yes, he is,” he insists.

  I spread my hands as though to say, you see him anywhere?

  He takes my face between his hands. “He’s going to come, and General Barry’s going to take him, and you’re going to be okay.”

  I try to shake my head, but he won’t let me.

  “Listen,” he bites out. “You’re not going to die. I won’t let you.” He crushes me to him, my breasts to his chest, his lips to mine.

  I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I feel so desperate and frightened, like I’m falling off the edge of a cliff and Talon’s hand is the only rope that can save me. I cry, and he drowns me in kisses. I welcome them. I want him to touch me. I want to feel, at least for a moment, that I’m alive, that there’s something good and beautiful still left for me.

  I let him take my top off. This time he takes his off too, and the crisp tuft of curls on his torso rubs against my bare skin. I close my eyes, reveling in the feeling. “Please,” I whisper. “Make me feel alive.”

  He shudders, and before I can so much as blink, we’re both naked and he’s all over me with his lips, his hands, and his tongue. There is no anger in his eyes. There is no contempt, no hatred or calculation. All I see is passion, and the way he runs his hands up and down my body, it’s like he’s trying to absorb me into him, to bring us closer than two people have ever been.

  I reach for him, and I find his cock so engorged that his veins bulge out. It’s practically purple.

  “No,” he protests. “I want to make you come.”

  I slide off the bed onto my knees and cup his balls in my hand. He groans as I take a lick at the tip of his cock and the salty taste of precum fills my mouth. The fresh layer of sweat lends him a musky scent that intoxicates me, and I wrap my lips around the head and use my tongue, just the way the trucker taught me.

  I lick, I suck, and when his hips begin to pump, I hold still and let him fuck my mouth.

  “That’s it,” he groans. “Oh, just like that.”

  Before he can come, I release him and trace my tongue down the length of him. I bathe his balls with my tongue, and he spreads his legs and arches off the bed. I take one sac into my mouth and suck, then the other. This is my gift to him.

  Then I take his shaft in my mouth again. I let it slide back, back. When it hits the entrance to my throat, I gag.

  “Fuck, oh fuck, yeah.” He buries his hands in my hair, urging me on.

  I haven’t forgotten how. I breathe through my nose as I relax. I angle my head and let his thick red penis slide back into my throat. It’s so dirty, me doing this, and my pussy contracts. I tongue him, sweet and slow, just how I was taught.

  Talon’s breath hitches, his thighs tense, and he pulls at my hair. “Jesus! Fuck yeah, oh God!”

  But his face screws up and he grits his teeth. “No. Not yet.”

  I come up for air, and like a desperate, starving animal, he pulls me to him and begins rubbing my clit with his cock, kissing me all the while. “You’re so warm,” he rasps. “So wet.”

  While he slides his cock back and forth against my clit, his hands knead my breasts, and he pinches and thumbs my nipples. I feel it, the pressure inside me. I want it. I want it so badly, this feeling, this mindless animalistic bliss. I undulate against him, and oh God, he feels so good.

  “Baby,” he mutters, and the desperation in his voice strokes my core. I glance down at our bodies, at his stiff cock shoving up against me, and yes. Yes. Oh God—I explode in a sweet burst of ecstasy that shatters every cell in my body. I cry out as my cunt starts to pulsate.

  Talon shoves me onto my back and stabs the thick meat of his cock deep inside me. I’m still contracting, and when my walls find purchase, it drives me over the edge again. Head thrown back, body arched, I wrap my legs around him as a keening sound escapes my throat. I am mindless. I am no one. I am cunt.

  Talon pumps me furiously, his face a mask of torment. His balls, his beautiful balls, they slap up against me. Sweat drips from his face onto my breasts, and I arch up to accept it. I want all of him.

  His eyes flutter shut, and I swear to God, his cock grows inside me.

  “Please,” I beg as I slide my hands up his stomach to his chest. “Give me what I deserve.”

  He arches over me as he slams his body into mine. He lets out a roar as he climaxes. I bite my lip and my eyelids go heavy as his warm, healing seed shoots deep inside me.

  I wake up later to find him again working his cock inside me. I’m not even sure he knows what he’s doing, but I don’t care. He’s bucking wildly like he’s shoving away his demons, and I’m pretty sure he’s stuffing them into me. I wrap my legs around him, letting him do what he needs to do. What I need him to do. I suck him deeper and deeper into me. Savage bliss flows back and forth between us like an electrical current. A groan erupts deep from his chest, and he freezes. His organ pulses inside me, and the walls of my pussy contract, milking him as he shoots hard jets of cum deep into my belly. I’m open. My hips tilt up to accept his gift. It’s absolution.

  When I wake again, I’m cuddled in his arms. We’re naked, both in soul and in body. Maybe my breathing changes or perhaps I make some small movement, because he draws me closer. I feel his erection press against my backside, and damn it, my nipples harden and I feel the now-familiar pull low in my belly.

  But this time it’s all for me. He uses his fingers and his tongue to wring from me a series of cries until I have nothing left, nothing at all. Only then does he mount me.

  The smell of our sex hangs thick in the room. I watch his expressions, the mix of euphoria, and torture, and single-minded need. I see the animal in him, feel it, hear it in his groans as he works my pussy. My breasts jiggle and bounce with each of his thrusts, and the sound of flesh slapping flesh is so dirty it makes me wish I could come again.

  “Fuck, oh Ilsa, fuck!” He comes, his body bowed over mine and a vicious snarl on his face. It’s like he’s claiming ownership. Like he’s telling me he’s master and I am slave.

  It’s the most beautiful moment of my life.

  “Thank you,” I whisper
finally.

  He frenches me lazily for a few minutes, and we sink back into unconsciousness.

  #

  Long-Haired Guy is cleaning his weapon for the umpteenth time, further evidence that the guys are getting antsy. We all are. Cooped up in this derelict structure for so long with nothing to do is dangerous. Being cooped up with four potential executioners has my stomach dissolving itself in its own acid. Can I trust what Talon said last night? Will he really protect me, or was he just trying to placate me?

  When Talon and I emerged this morning, I felt like such a whore. Interestingly enough, none of the men have given me so much as a cross-eyed look, despite all the noise I made last night. All night. Maybe it was the look on Talon’s face, the one that said don’t fuck with me. Seriously, he has a way about him that scares people. It’s probably something you learn early on when your dad cooks meth, then master when you join him in the family business. You have to be a hard son of a bitch to pull off that lifestyle.

  “Come on,” Talon says, holding out his hand. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  Reluctantly, I let him lead me away from the others. I still have three more days. Don’t I? He’s not going to shoot me now, right? After yesterday?

  We climb down the rotten steps into the freshly fallen snow, and Talon keeps my hand in his. But he’s not looking at me. His face is troubled. He’s thinking about something, but I don’t know what and I’m scared to ask.

  Shit. Who am I kidding? Last night meant nothing. Not to him, anyway. Guys’ll stick their dick into anything with two legs and a pussy. Still, I allow him to lead me toward the wilderness, because there’s really nothing else I can do. A gang rape awaits me back at the trailer. Cannibals on the hunt lurk everywhere else. There’s a hard pit in my stomach weighing me down.

  “Where are we going?” I ask when I can no longer take the silence.

  He works his mouth into a frown, like he’s really not sure where he’s taking me or why. “You used to walk every day,” he says finally, “back in Bluefield. I thought you might like one, after…”

  His voice drifts off.

  After what? A night of raw sex? Or after hearing I only have a few days left to live? I could fire back a bitchy reply. One puckers at the tip of my tongue. But I don’t want my last days to be ugly.