Maari’s handmaids scuttled backward, squeaking in terror, but Jaarod’s hand tightened around hers. She clung to him so hard she could feel the bones of his hand grind together, but he didn’t flinch. He didn’t even seem to feel it. He only stared at Gareth’s body, lying lifeless on the floor.
“Release her,” one of the Camden men barked at Jaarod, and Maari’s brother blinked, struggling to bring him into focus. “She belongs to us now.”
Jaarod shook his head, not in denial of the fact, but as if he were struggling to wake up. To process what he was seeing and hearing. “Wait. Give me one more minute with her. Please.” He seemed to be directing his request to Orlann, with whom he’d served on the council for years.
Orlann’s dark blue eyes narrowed. Then he nodded once, sharply.
“Just do whatever they want,” Jaarod whispered, pulling her close for one last hug.
“But—”
“Maari.” Her brother pulled far enough away from her that he could look straight down into her eyes. “We’re counting on you. You’re going to be fine.” He squeezed her hand, and his gaze intensified as his voice became a whisper. “Let them make it easier for you.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“You will soon.” Then he let go of her hand.
“No. Please,” Maari begged him. He had Gareth’s sword. His pistol. He could make this right. He could save her. “Jaarod!” But he only stared as the Camden men each took one of her arms and half-dragged her across the large room. Away from her handmaids and her only surviving brother. Away from everything she’d ever known.
They hauled her to a stop in front of Jude, who stared down at her with pale blue eyes, his gaze ice cold. He dropped the button that had killed her brother, and it clattered at her feet as he brushed tear-soaked hair back from her face. “We’re going to have a lot of fun, princess.” His hand slid down her neck and brushed the sideswell of her breast, then it trailed over her side to settle onto her stomach. “You’re going to give us many princes. They’ll never be kings, born to a concubine. But princes, certainly.”
Maari swallowed bile burning at the back of my throat. “May I bring my ladies?” She held his gaze, to show him that she was not afraid. Even though she was terrified.
Jude looked over her head at the women still weeping in each other’s arms against the wall at Jaarod’s back. Then he addressed the two men still flanking Maari, as if they were afraid she might run. “Brothers? What do we think about handmaids?”
“She may bring one,” Orlann said from her left, studying her with eyes of a darker blue. Deep-sea, where Jude’s were like glacier ice.
“But the handmaid must follow our rules.” The third brother—Malac, the bastard—winked at her with eyes a bright, eerie green.
“Agreed.” Jude took her chin and made her look up at him. “You may bring one servant with you. If you can find one willing.”
Maari started to turn away. To see which among the ladies who’d been in her company since her thirteenth birthday would be brave enough to follow her into this new hell. But his grip tightened on her chin.
“First, you will thank me,” Jude ordered. “And because you’re clearly still in shock, I’m going to let you do that with words. Just this once.”
A chill raced down her spine, and when she closed her eyes, he squeezed her chin until a whimper leaked from her throat. “Thank you,” she whispered. And he let her go.
Trembling, Maari turned to look across the great room at the three women huddled behind her brother. “Will one of you accompany me?” To her relief, her voice sounded strong, her spine still straight.
The women huddled tighter, and though she could hear their frightened whispers, she couldn’t make out any of the words. Heads shook, intricate braids bobbing while they discussed her request. But no one stepped forward. None of them would even look at her.
Disappointed, reeling from the betrayal, she started to turn back to Jude, prepared for the ridicule that would surely shine in his eyes. What did it say about her that she couldn’t inspire loyalty from even one of her own handmaids?
But then one slight, slim form stepped forward, her pale braids trailing over one shoulder.
Annah.
“I will come with you,” she said, and Maari swallowed the relieved sob that stuck in her throat as she opened her arms to welcome Annah with a grateful embrace.
“Thank you,” the princess whispered as she clung to her companion. “Thank you.”
“That’s enough.” Jude pulled the women apart, dismissing the handmaid with hardly a glance. “It’s time to go. But first…” His coldly beautiful lips turned up in mockery of a smile, revealing two slightly pointed incisors. Then he leaned down as if he would kiss Maari.
Instead, he bit her lower lip, hard enough to pierce the skin on the inside with those two pointed teeth.
She gasped, and blood flowed into her mouth, but she was trapped there, trembling, while Jude sucked on her lip, caressing it with his tongue. Tasting her blood.
Finally, he let her go, and she glared at him while she wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.
Next Orlann pulled her close and pushed her dress off her shoulder, baring the top of her right breast. She tried to push him away, but he seized her wrist and twisted it behind her back brutally as he leaned down and gave her tender skin a lick. Then he bit into the upper curve of her breast, much harder than his brother had bitten her. Maari gasped as his teeth broke the skin, and when he stepped back, he left a perfect, complete set of bloody teeth marks, with odd, round punctures where his incisors had pierced her.
Before she could truly comprehend the throbbing pain in her breast, the third brother spun her around and bent to latch his teeth onto her shoulder, biting into the muscle at the base of her neck. She screamed, and when the green-eyed brother finally released her, he licked blood from the wound he’d made, smiling at her almost sweetly.
Maari didn’t understand what had just happened. Why they would bite her. But the uneasy look of sympathy Annah gave her as she dug a tissue from her pocket told Maari that the handmaid knew exactly what had just happened. And that she was not going to like understanding, when it came.
Jude studied her as his brothers eyed their work. Their marks on her flesh. “We’ll get started making those princes as soon as you’re feeling better.”
Maari started to ask what he meant. Then the great hall began to spin around her, and her eyes lost focus. Her legs folded, and she was caught by a set of hard, thick arms. Her stomach pitched as she was swung up into a cradle hold. Then the world went dark around her.
2
Jude
Jude swiped a vase of flowers from the center of the table and dropped the severed head of his enemy in its place. “Put her on the couch.” He waved one hand at the leather sofa, but Malac carried their new prize to the bed instead.
“I want to play with her,” he said as he laid her across the neatly made up mattress, the lower halves of her legs dangling over the edge.
“Not until she wakes up,” Jude insisted. “She’ll have to be broken in.”
“What do we do with this one?” Orlann glanced at the handmaid who’d followed them into the suite, as she took up an unobtrusive position beside the door. Her frame bobbed a little, as the sovereign’s personal transport rose into the air, and the floor lurched beneath her.
Jude glanced at the mousy little woman, then dismissed her. “She’s fine where she is.”
“I’ll just play a little bit,” Malac conceded, sitting on the bed next to their unconscious new pet. He ran the back of one knuckle down her cheek and over the bite he had left at the base of her throat. It was red and inflamed, but the bleeding had already stopped. “She’s very soft.”
“She’s small.” Orlann scowled down at her while he pulled the stopper from a crystal decanter sitting on the liquor cart. “Are we sure she can even carry a child to term?”
“She’s fertile and i
n perfect health,” the woman by the door spoke up, and Jude was on her in an instant, his hand at her throat. Applying enough pressure to scare her, but not enough to keep her from answering his question.
“Who said you could speak?”
“Apologies,” she croaked.
“Servants of Stead Camden speak only when spoken to, unless specifically instructed otherwise. Do you understand?”
The maid bobbed her head, her hands shaking at her sides with an apparent effort to resist grasping his wrist. To try to free herself.
“What do you know of Maari’s health?” he demanded.
The woman swallowed, and Jude enjoyed the feel of her throat working beneath his hand. Her neck was so thin he could snap it with little more than a twitch of his fingers. He liked that. He liked the fear in her eyes. The smell of it leaking from her pores. The handmaid was pretty. Not as pretty as the fallen princess spread across his bed, but pretty enough.
“She was examined last week,” the handmaid whispered. “The princess was to be given in matrimony to Elan, heir to Stead Edgar within the month. To seal an alliance.”
Jude scoffed at the thought. Stead Edgar had sided with the council—with Stead Camden—against Stead Delayne. Against his own fiancé. His father had no doubt made that decision, but Jude had it on good authority that the Edgar prince hadn’t raised so much as a single objection. Maybe he valued his own life over what lay between the princess’s pretty little legs. Or maybe he understood what Jude had known all his life—that until the paperwork had been signed, one woman was just as good as another.
There would be no lack of virgin princesses eager to throw themselves at the Edgar heir, now that Maari Delayne and her entire stead had fallen from grace. Hell, Jude had a couple of younger sisters who had yet to be married off.
“The Edgar brat will make a claim against her.” Orlann poured an inch of amber liquor into his glass, then turned it up and drained it in one gulp. “Recompense for the loss.”
“Let him take that up with the council.” The king let the handmaid go, and she gasped, rubbing at her throat as he crossed the room without a glance back at her.
Orlann huffed. “I’m on the council.”
Jude took the decanter and half-filled a glass for himself. “Then you should be more than capable of convincing him that we’ve done him a favor. That now he’s free to find a bride from a stead that hasn’t suffered such dishonor. And to ally with us instead.” He shrugged and sipped from the glass. “Let’s offer him Calla.”
“She’s not yet sixteen,” Orlann informed him.
“Fine then. Lynna.” Jude drained his glass. Lynna wasn’t as much of a beauty as little Calla, but marriage was about alliances, and the Edgar heir should be fucking grateful for the chance to bed a Camden woman. “Have an offer drawn up. We’ll throw in that summer house on the coast—the one near the border we share with the Edgars—with a complete domestic staff in place.”
“Should I inform Lynna?”
Jude shrugged. “Only if Edgar accepts.”
“She’s intact,” Malac growled, arousal thick in the sound. Jude turned to see that his youngest brother had flipped the princess’s skirt up to expose the thatch between her legs, and that he had one finger inside her. “Fucking tight, too. I want to tear her.”
“No.” Jude pulled him back from the unconscious woman. “You’ll go third, as is your birthright. And if you complain, all you’ll get is her mouth.”
Malac flipped him off with the finger that had been inside their prize—a gesture Jude wouldn’t have tolerated from anyone on the planet, other than his bastard brother, who’d grown up with most of the privileges of a prince, but few of the responsibilities and obligations. Then Malac slid that finger into his mouth to taste her. “So sweet…” he moaned as he climbed onto the bed again and rearranged her skirt to allow her some dignity. For the moment. Malac lay next to her, propped up on one elbow, and began to caress her with his free hand, running it over every curve and hollow. “She’s so pretty. I’ve never fucked a princess.”
Orlann snorted. “What bastard has?”
Malac was immune to the insult, having heard it all his life. And, Jude knew, as Defense Commander, Malac believed he outranked Orlann, if not in birth order, then certainly in the stead’s political hierarchy.
“Make yourself useful.” Jude hauled his youngest brother off the bed onto his feet. “Call ahead and have a room prepared for her.”
“That sounds like an administrative task.” Malac glanced pointedly at Orlann. “Which means it’s a job for a council member rather than a war general, right?” He shrugged. “Let me know when you need an enemy assassinated or an army defeated.”
“Our enemy is dead,” Orlann pointed out with a gesture at Jude’s new severed-head centerpiece. “And the war is over. You’re going to have plenty of time to fill, soon, with less exciting assignments.”
“Plenty of woman to fill too.” Malac shrugged. “Fine. I’ll pick out a room for her.”
Jude took another sip from his glass. “Something in the east wing.”
Malac frowned. “Why so far from the family wing?”
“Because she isn’t family. Give her the room at the end of the hall. The one with four-post bed. It’ll be convenient to have something to tie her to, should that prove necessary.”
“That room’s drafty,” Malac objected. “And there’s no fireplace.”
“What the fuck does that matter?” The entire palace was climate controlled.
“I like a fireplace. For ambiance. And if we’re going to be spending a lot of time in there—”
“We won’t be,” Jude growled. “Our job is to breed her, not play house with her.”
Malac rolled his green eyes, a constant reminder to Jude that he and his youngest brother did not share a mother. “If you want to leave as soon as you’ve come, that’s your prerogative. But I intend to linger and enjoy this gift the council has bestowed upon us. And I’d rather do that in relative comfort.” He plucked a fat red berry from the bowl of fruit on the table, and as he bit into it, he reached out and brushed back a lock of hair from Gareth Delayne’s severed head. “And anyway, she is a princess…”
“Fine.” Jude poured himself another inch of brown liquor. “Give her the lilac room. But have a four-post bed brought in. She should be awake by this evening. I want everything in place so we can visit her after dinner and establish some expectations.”
“What the hell are you going to do with that?” Orlann nodded in disgust at the head of the former Delayne sovereign.
“I’m going to have it preserved and mounted, just like all my other trophies.” Jude turned to the unconscious princess, still prone on the bed, and it occurred to him with no small amount of satisfaction that this trophy, too, would also be preserved and mounted. But in an entirely different—and more pleasurable—way.
3
Maari
“Princess!”
Startled by the urgency in Annah’s voice, Maari forced her eyes open, mentally grasping for…anything. The day. The hour. The location.
The darkly stained wood beams running across the ceiling above her were alien. Her hands curled in the bedclothes, and the rough stitching felt foreign. She forced her body upright, pulse racing, and found herself seated on a neatly made four-post bed she’d never seen before, in a room that— Well, it was nice. The windows were dressed in lush, pale purple drapes, probably hand-stitched like the comforter she couldn’t stop clutching. A creamy white fabric covered the walls, pinstriped in the same shade as the drapes, as well as a pale sage green. There was a big, archaic-looking dresser and a desk, both standing on claw feet, as was the full-length wood-framed mirror. In an alcove by one window, a small dinette had been arranged, its upholstery white, with tiny, pale purple flowers.
And there was a gorgeous white marble fireplace in the center of the far wall.
The effect, as a whole, was antiquated, beautiful, and delicately feminine.
But this was not her room.
“Where am I?” Maari stood, and her feet landed on a heated stone floor. Which was nice, but where were her shoes?
“Princess,” Annah said again. “They’re coming. The Camdens.”
Maari’s gaze found her handmaid, where she stood wringing her hands near the door. And just like that, she remembered. “What happened? Why did I pass out?”
Before Annah could answer, the door swung open and Jude Camden took up most of its frame. He’d changed out of his uniform, yet he still looked every bit the warrior-king. A man who’d probably never heard the word no and rarely said the word yes.
His brothers peered over his shoulders from the darkened hallway.
Maari retreated until the backs of her thighs hit the bed, as the Camdens entered the room.
“Out,” Orlann snapped at Annah, his deep-sea gaze as hard as his voice.
Annah scurried from the room, and the third brother closed the door behind her. “Take off your clothes,” he said, his green-eyed gaze roaming hungrily over Maari.
“I… Maybe we could start with something a little more…basic?” She extended her hand toward Jude, who was the closest. “We haven’t actually been introduced. I’m Maari Delayne, third-born of Stead Delayne.”
“Malac gave you an order.” Jude ignored her hand, and she let it fall to her side.
Maari turned her silent appeal toward the man with deep-sea eyes. “You know my brother. Jaarod Delayne. You sat on the council with him, right?” Orlann only folded his arms over his chest, evidently waiting for her to comply with Malac’s order to strip. “Do you think I could contact him? This would be a lot easier for me if I could just speak to my brother.” But her com device had been missing, along with her shoes, when she’d woken up in this unfamiliar room.
“Take off your clothes, or I will tear them from your body,” Orlann said at last.
Dirty Lovely Broken Page 2