Why was he not part of the ritual? Why were his hands bloody and his body drugged so heavily that he could not even lift his head?
From deep in my soul, from the place that touched the sacred beating heart of the planet, I received an answer.
None had touched him, and none would, I knew, until later. What the elders planned was not for public consumption, not for the eyes of a priestess or lesser daughters of the Temple. Evil did not like the bright light of day, or eyes to bear witness to its schemes.
I knew then what I had to do. Goddess forgive me if it were the wrong choice. I had little time to prepare. Once the ritual was over, it would be too late.
Chapter Three
Octavia
Silent as a ghost, I slipped back into the ritual room. Nearly three hours had passed since the breeding ritual was completed, yet the room still smelled of sex and seed. Herbs still burned in small pots in the corners, filling the room with the pungent odor mixed with the scents of cleansing flowers, citrus rinds, and sweet grass.
My soft footsteps echoed eerily through the now empty chamber, the whisper of my red robes loud in my ears. Quickly I approached the prisoner. He remained chained and restless, the hard rise of his cock proof that the Fier Potion still boiled through his system.
Soft candlelight lit every inch of his bronzed skin. His huge cock was thick, hard, and ready to be mounted. For several tense moments I couldn’t tear my gaze away from him. My pussy clenched in reaction and I felt empty and needy. I wanted him.
Nay. I couldn’t take him, couldn’t mount him, but I could touch him.
I sank to my knees beside his right ankle and placed my right palm over the joint. He jumped beneath my hand, pulling against his chains.
Stop!
I winced at the rage in that one word. It burned into my mind and tasted like ashes on my tongue. I could not force myself to answer him mind-to-mind. The touch was too intimate. Too powerful. “Hush. I’m not going to… hurt you.”
Perfect masculine lips tightened into a thin line. He pulled against his chains and they rattled again.
I slid my hand up his leg to his knee and untied the leather binding his thighs together. Coarse hair tickled my palm. Powerful muscle flexed beneath my fingers. Fascination held me there for a moment. I loved the feel of his hot skin under my hand. He moaned and turned his head away from me and I couldn’t stop the one thought that rushed to the forefront of my mind.
He was beautiful. Perfect.
Mine. Unbidden, the claim shouted inside my mind once more.
“I am going to free you, Markus.” I needed his cooperation if I wanted to get him out of here alive. “I’m going to get you out of here, but you have to work with me, not against me, or we’re both as good as dead.”
Give me a weapon.
The demand made me shiver, but I ignored it. Not a chance. I smiled and squeezed his leg. This was my last opportunity to touch him. His rippling stomach muscles felt like heaven beneath my palm as I worked more knots loose at his waist and across his chest, as I absorbed the heat of his skin. His nipples rolled into hard peaks beneath my fingertips. If things were different, if he were truly mine, I would taste him there. Just once…
Hurry. And give me a weapon. How do I get out of here? He spoke of fleeing, of fighting, but also flooded my mind with his desire. He moaned and the sound rumbled up through his thick chest into my fingertips. Fascinating.
The potent scents of seed and sex mixed with his skin to invade my lungs. My core roared to life, throbbed. Demanded. Then begged for a taste of the perfect male before me. I longed to trace his nipple with my tongue, then lick and nip every inch of his chest, up his neck, along his jawline… to his lips.
I ran the tip of my tongue along my lips, tasting his unique scent in the air. How I longed to know a real kiss. The soft lines of his lips were denied me. Something must be wrong with me, but in that moment I would have sold my soul to taste him. But he would not welcome my attention. I knew this. He would not yield to the enemy. And I couldn’t blame him.
“Goddess, I’m sorry.” I whispered the apology against his ear. “For everything.” I was Zatari. I was not destined to know what it meant to be kissed by this man. Any man. I was supposed to be saving his life, not making him the star of my ridiculous fantasies.
I reached over his head and grabbed the key that would release the metal shackles on his ankles and wrists. Beneath me, his hot breath seeped through the thin robe that covered my breasts. My nipples hardened where they hung suspended above his mouth. If he just lifted his head…
Awareness sizzled my nerve endings. Focus. I had a job to do, a war to prevent, a man to set free…
“They want to breed you to the entire royal court.” My whisper sounded huge in the empty chamber. “And then kill you.”
The giant tensed beneath me as I gently removed the gag from his mouth. Raw psychic power surged through his body and froze me in place.
I was a not a warrior who’d spent a lifetime training to fight and kill. I was about to free an angry giant with a power I could barely comprehend. My only weapon was a small dagger strapped to my thigh. It would be less than useless against such a huge and powerful man. Without the drugs in his system, the elders wouldn’t have been able to hold him. He was more powerful than anyone I’d ever met. Perhaps setting him free wasn’t such a good idea…
“No.” His rough voice jarred me back to the moment. “Do not lose your courage now, woman! Do not leave me here.”
“I…” Doubt twisted my stomach into a tight knot. What would he do once free? Would he return with a marauding army and attack my home? I hesitated, chewed my bottom lip with worry. I was trying to save lives, not invite more bloodshed.
“What is your price?” He swung his head to face me. Staring down at his blindfolded face unnerved me almost as much as his husky voice. “Name your price.”
The small key in my hand was suddenly heavy as a stone. Was this to be my fate again in a few weeks? Witness another breeding ceremony, search the room and know that a man’s death might immediately follow? There was no honor in that.
Banishment. I would be forced to flee the continent. There would be no explaining my actions. The elder council would exile me for setting this man free. An enemy would walk free, a man who was a prince, the heir to a king we despised, our nemesis. Every rule I broke this night was sacred. Unforgivable.
I threw away my future for him, for a warrior’s body that had brought me no true pleasure, for a voice in my mind, a face I’d never seen.
I pulled the blindfold from his eyes and tossed it onto the hard wooden platform. Hatred smoldered in their smoky gray depths, savagery born of desperation.
He wouldn’t forget. Or forgive.
“Damn you, woman! Name your price or kill me!” He yanked his hands and feet again. Hard. The chains clinked loudly. Blood swelled then dripped anew from beneath the metal cuffs to blend with the deep red of the wood beneath them.
“Hush.” I placed three fingers over his lips and a jolt of electricity raced from my fingers to my core. Self-disgust curled my insides. He hated me and still I wanted him buried deep inside me. Men were dangerous creatures, indeed. But I didn’t do this for him; I did this to save lives, to prevent war. “You must vow, on your blood and honor, never to return to Zatari, never to send soldiers here for vengeance. Never. That is the price of your freedom.”
I pulled a small black pouch from my pocket and laid it on his chest. “There’s a key to a cruiser in the bag and enough credits to get you wherever it is you need to go.”
My hands shook as I slid the small key into the lock on his left wrist, but I did not turn it. I could not free him if it would bring death to my sisters. “Do you agree to my terms? Do you give me your vow?”
I could have counted to thirty while waiting for his answer. An agony of silence stretched between us. I imagined him weighing his honor against his need for revenge.
“I give you my vow,
Princess.”
I stiffened my spine and fought the urge to collapse against his strength in relief. I wanted to lean on him, to follow him from this place and exist in some fantasyland where he would cherish me, protect me, want me as I wanted him. But that was foolish indeed. Such a place didn’t exist. I would free him and then I would see to my own escape from this Temple.
I twisted the key until I felt the metal latch give. I freed his feet next, and then pressed the key into the bloody palm of his free hand. I stepped out of arms’ reach, leaving the final binding on his right wrist to him. “Leave this room by the door to your right. Stay quiet. Run fast and straight past two hallways, then turn left at the third. The door at the end of that corridor leads to the docking bay.”
With a cruiser, one of the Zatari’s small spacecraft, he could be halfway around the world before anyone knew he was missing. Zatari cruisers were the fastest ships built. No one would catch him.
He’d be free. He twisted onto his side, away from me to unlock his other wrist. Muscles rippled beneath the smooth skin of his back and my mouth went dry at the sight. The metal binding dropped from his right wrist with a loud clang. I jumped at the sound and my gaze darted to the closed doors. Could the guards hear that? No cameras were allowed in the breeding chamber, but the second he stepped into the hallway he’d be on their monitors. I hoped he was fast on his feet.
Now he’d be free and I’d be homeless.
So be it.
Instinct drove me backward, away from the giant rising to his feet. Trussed to the table, he made my body ache. Standing naked, angry, and proud before me, he twisted me with equal parts fear and maddening lust.
Without warning he leaped at me. He fisted his hands in my long blond hair, forcing my face up to his. The entire length of my body slammed against his gleaming flesh and the scent of musk and massage oils made me shudder. His skin scorched me through my thin gown. Alarm and excitement caused my heart to stutter. He was huge! Everywhere. I could almost taste his skin; the idea would haunt me forever. “What are you doing?”
“Taking a prisoner.”
“No! I set you free.” Energy coiled in my chest and I reached for my dagger. Before I could recover from the shock, he trapped my wrist, and my weapon, uselessly against my side.
“Aye, you did. That’s the only reason I haven’t snapped your neck.”
I’d risked everything, sacrificed my future, to free him and he’d betrayed me? The elders were right about Delti men after all. I should’ve listened to them. I should have believed the threats. “You have no honor. I should have let them have you.”
A smile curved his lips. Perhaps. Enmity and desire flowed behind the word into my mind as he pushed my hips hard against his straining cock.
Chapter Four
Markus
I battled the drug-induced demon inside me, but it was no easy task. The woman’s hair slid like silk in my hand. Her bright eyes and full lips made the beast within want to conquer. Her soft body pressed to mine and I knew by the rapid beat of her heart and the dark pools in her eyes that she felt the pull between us as keenly as I.
“What is your name?” I needed to know. Powerful memories of her mind touching mine, of her lust-filled thoughts as she’d gazed at me, conquered my will, forced me to desire her. That weakness compelled me to master her in return.
“Octavia.” Her gaze darted from my eyes to my lips and the rage I’d tried so hard to stoke changed from a blaze of vengeance to one that demanded I protect this woman. This brave female was no threat to me. She was small, soft, and vulnerable, her neck stretched back as she looked up at me, her lips parted and her body pinned to mine with no hope of escape. Yet, she did not fight my hold. She melted into me in an act of trust I doubted she was aware of.
My initial thoughts, as she’d leaned over my chained body, had been to give her to my father for ransom. That I now considered keeping her for myself proved just how far these Zatari bitches had pushed me. Ironic that the leads I’d been following in my sister’s abduction had led me here. To this room. To hell.
To her. Every moment I breathed her in, felt her mind’s touch, scented her desire was another moment closer to the truth.
She was mine. My Fated Mate. I could never let her go.
“They will banish you for this?” I’d read the thought easily in her mind. She was sacrificing her life here in order to save mine. That should have been enough to make me forgive her for being one of the enemy. Somehow, it wasn’t. She wasn’t doing this to help me; she did it to prevent war, to save her vile and twisted elders.
“Yes. But I am not your concern. You are free now. Just go.”
“I’m afraid you are wrong about that, Octavia.” Holding her close, I lifted my thumb to trace the plump swell of her bottom lip. The lust I saw in her dark eyes made me lose focus. Desire had called me, her desire, and mine answered. She’d taken from me the one thing I would have died to protect, to keep out of the hands of her people, a direct link to my body, to my soul. We were fated now, our souls bonded the moment her mind touched mine. It was too late for both of us.
Leaving this woman behind was not an option. I’d slit the soft skin of every throat in the Temple before I’d allow her out of my sight. I took the dagger from her and looked for something to cover myself.
“Come!” Hand still in her hair, I pulled her behind me to the wall where the Temple robes hung. I yanked the longest from its hook with my free hand and threw it around my shoulders. It didn’t cover me completely, but anything was better than running down the corridors naked. I pulled her to stand before me, her tight ass pressed against my still painful erection. Her heat threatened to release the lust-filled haze again. If not for the thin layer of material separating us, I’d bend her over and bury myself to the hilt.
“Let’s go!” I pressed the dagger I’d taken from her against her back and shoved her before me toward the door she’d indicated earlier. Time to steal a ship and get out of this prison.
The corridors were deserted. The recessed lights were turned down low. Dark shadows blended into an eerie amalgamation. I forced her to a quick jog. The pace served. In no time at all, I was staring at three rows of docked cruisers. Just one would bring a small fortune. Zatari cruisers were impossible to steal. The owner’s retinal scan served as a lock on the entire ship’s systems. No one else could activate one. Unless one had a master key. Like the one she’d just given me.
I snarled. Escape would have been impossible without her aid. One more thing I owed to her. I would repay my debt to her by saving her from a life of exile. But nothing would save her from a long, hard fucking once she was safely onboard my ship. My mind and senses were hyper-focused, centered completely on her with a strange urgency I’d never before experienced. I wondered if this attraction, my need to claim her, keep her, protect her would fade as the drug left my system.
I chose the cruiser closest to us and walked her onto the ship, down the short corridor to the copilot’s seat. I strapped her in. “Don’t move.”
She didn’t argue, but I could feel her intellect working at an impressive speed, her intelligence like a buzzing in the back of my mind.
It made my cock harder. I did not lust after stupid females.
I took my seat and used the key she’d given me to start the cruiser’s engine. We were off the ground and headed for open sky before the first shots flew past the small ship’s port side wing.
I flew the ship toward the forbidden zone, the mountainous region that served as a buffer between the Zatari and the lands my people controlled. This ship was mine now, as I was sure the one they had taken from me had probably already been sold or stripped for parts.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Does it matter?”
“I suppose not. My fate is sealed. I have betrayed my people. My sister will not pay a ransom for me now. The elders would not allow it.” She sighed and looked out the window. Dawn was just beginning its slow rise in the
east and the sky lit her face with a soft orange and pink glow. She was beautiful. And dangerous. And an enemy. If my father ever got his hands on her, a high priestess of the Zatari Temples, her fate would be far worse than mine would have been in the breeding room.
I had no reason to protect her, no reason to want her, but I would, and I did. She was mine now.
Mine!
The voice rose up within me with a primitive zeal I had no hope to control. The thought was as elemental as my heart beating or taking in air.
We flew for a few minutes in silence before the small monitor between us stirred to life. The High Priestess of Zatari spoke directly to us through the small screen.
“Octavia? Are you there? What the hell are you doing? Bring him back here. If you want a slave, love, simply ask. You can have him.”
Beside me, Octavia stiffened and I watched her eyes round in shock. “They think I kidnapped you so I could keep you for myself.”
“I guess I can ransom you, after all.” I watched her body for any hint of a reaction, but she was cool under pressure. If the Zatari ruling court was anything like my father’s, that composure would have been necessary to her survival.
“Octavia? Answer me!” The High Priestess’s voice didn’t rise in tone, it deepened, the words sharp and wicked as blades.
I debated whether to respond, or allow my captive to answer. But no. Better to keep them guessing. For now. I reached out and turned off the monitor and disabled all geo-navigation and communication software. I turned to Octavia and discovered her mask had slipped. A single tear rolled from her left cheek in lonely silence and a horrible suspicion occurred to me.
“Is the High Priestess your lover?” The Zatari Temple was well known to have strictly female unions in many households. I nearly groaned as jealousy rose, sharp and ugly within me for a woman I barely knew. Still, logic played no part in my reaction as I waited for her to reply. Was she in love with the High Priestess?
Mates of Zatari 01 Claiming His Mate Page 3