Enslaved Book III: The Gladiators

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  He turned, carrying her back to the bed and sprawling on it with her, clearing away the things she’d strewn across the bed as he nestled in it with her and found her mouth again, stroking a shaking over her as he explored her flesh. His eagerness made her own surge higher and she moved restlessly against him, stroking her hands over him to fill her palms and fingertips with the feel of his smooth skin and the tensile strength of the muscles beneath.

  He broke from her lips. Sucking in a harsh breath, he rode the column of her throat downward with his lips to the valley between her breasts. He kissed her there, stroking the patch of skin above her heart with his tongue and then nipping at the swell of her breasts on either side while he searched her bra for the opening. He’d just grasped one strap and shoved it from her shoulder when she finally managed to find the clasp and release it.

  “No like dis ting,” he muttered as he brushed the thin fabric from her breasts and massaged them.

  Loren smiled, lifting her eyelids to watch his face as he cupped her breast and teased the tip with his long fingers. “I won’t wear it again,” she murmured.

  He smiled as he lowered his lips to capture the bud. “Wear. I take off.”

  She couldn’t think of a response—or much of anything—once he’d caught her nipple between his lips and curled his tongue around it. A blitz of heat traveled through, arrowing through her belly and directly to her warming core, heating it so that it wept for him.

  She pulled at him, urging him to come inside of her, but he resisted the lure, teasing the nipple he held captive with his tongue and the suction of his mouth until she was gasping for breath. And when she’d reached fever pitch, he burned a trail with heated kisses from the peak of that breast to the other until she was so feverish with need she’d begun to thrash restlessly beneath his touch.

  Lifting his head finally, he studied her face from beneath hooded lids and moved upward again to recapture her mouth, slipping a hand along the center of her torso to her belly and then cupping her sex. She spread her legs to give him easier access as he stroked her cleft, moaning into his mouth when he found her clit and teased it with the tip of his finger.

  He broke the kiss, studying her face intently as he teased it mercilessly. “Kael!” she gasped after a few moments when she thought she couldn’t stand the torture anymore. “Come inside me—now!”

  She felt his jerky movements as he tugged his loincloth off. He tossed it aside, shifting even as he did so into the cradle of her thighs and she felt his cock glide along the slick surface of her cleft. She looked up at him as he probed the mouth of her sex and found him looking down at her, curling his large frame around her to watch her face as he surged against her.

  He waged a tug of war against her resistant flesh. The mouth yielded finally to swallow the head, but she felt herself slipping up the bed when he thrust again. Shifting his hold on her, he locked his arms tightly around her and thrust again, conquering her channel by agonizing degrees that made them both breathless with anticipation. She closed her eyes tightly as he filled her and she could feel his thick flesh inching deeper, stretching her flesh until she’d sheathed him.

  He paused panting for breath and withdrew almost as slowly as he’d claimed her. Sparks of pleasure rippled through her and she lifted eagerly the moment he’d withdrawn to feel him enter again. He reclaimed her molten core more swiftly with the next thrust, retreating and delving deeply with a cadence that lifted her higher and higher until she felt her climax looming. She closed her eyes tightly, tried to close her mind to it, wanting nothing more than to feel the movement of flesh inside of her, but the moment she sealed herself in darkness her body leapt forward, trying to grasp the ecstasy that beckoned.

  She gasped, found herself straining to reach culmination when only moments before she’d been struggling to hold it off, and felt herself reach the precipice. For several heart stopping moments she seemed to teeter on the edge and then she fell over, sucking in a sharp gasp and arching against him as her climax caught her and rapture blossomed and spread outward.

  He began to thrust in earnest then, riding her climax to his own, shuddering and releasing harsh, choked grunts as his body yielded up his seed. Warmth filled her at the knowledge that he’d found pleasure in her. Lifting her arms with an effort, she draped them around him, stroking his back soothingly as he shuddered in the aftermath and struggled to catch his breath.

  He eased away from her finally, withdrawing his flesh from hers, and settled beside her, bringing her close to his chest. She rubbed her face against his hard pecs, listening to the reassuring beat of his heart as it slowed to its normal rhythm, basking in the delight of his arms.

  * * * *

  For a time as Kael lay with Lau-ren pressed snugly against him, his entire focus was on her and the euphoria he was floating in in the aftermath of his release. When it finally drifted through his mind, though, that it was the first time he had actually gotten to hold his lover in the aftermath of their coupling, was in fact the only time he had coupled with her beyond the time of the spawning, his mind began to drift to less pleasant things.

  He had not considered when he had been so distraught to discover that he had not prevented harm from coming to her how it must look from her viewpoint. He had been too consumed with guilt and rage each time he looked at her and saw how battered she was to think straight, to think past his own anger and frustration that he had let it happen by failing to act quickly enough. He had not been able to push from his mind the terrible thought that, if he had been any slower, she might be dead now.

  That thought had tormented him the most, the images his mind produced when he saw the bruises all over her, for those looked bad enough it took no great leap to imagine worse. Rage and frustration always followed, for there was no way, now, to avenge the attack.

  He supposed, in a sense, they had when they rescued her, and yet he had not been thinking about revenge at the time—except toward Lecur—and because he had not, there was very little satisfaction to be had from it. He could not feel purged of his rage that they would use their superior size and strength to take what had not been willingly offered, without any regard for the damage they were doing. That outraged him on so many levels it made him sick.

  In truth, he had not had a very high opinion of many of the gladiators before the attack, however well they acquitted themselves in battle, but he was appalled that they were far worse even than he imagined. Fighting skills were not the sum total of the measure of a man. Strength certainly was not when it was primarily a gift of birth. Honor and integrity were the true measure of a man and any who were willing to prey upon those weaker than themselves were animals—not men.

  Those thoughts brought him to Daeman and as soon as his mind turned upon that path, his satisfaction waned and the first threads of anger began to wind themselves through his mind. The Deisen in general and Daeman in particular ranked among the very few other gladiators not Hirachi that he had respected and trusted—at least to the extent that he had been willing to include them in his plan of escape. After his own people, he had gone first to the Deisen to destroy their collars, because he had come to see that, despite their physical differences, the Deisen were very much like the Hirachi in their strong sense of honor and fairness. There were as many differences in their way of looking upon things and their customs, he suspected, as there were similarities, but, as warriors, they had earned his respect.

  If he had not trusted them, he would not have allowed them access to the ship.

  He looked down at Lau-ren and saw that she was sleeping. The urge to stay and enjoy simply looking at her and feeling her warm against him was strong. To stay and slowly awaken her and couple with her again was stronger.

  The urge to confront Daeman was stronger still, however. It had been as clear as day that Lau-ren had no understanding at all of their customs. A woman of his culture would never accept a gift of any kind from a man she was not willing to welcome in any other way. It was the g
ift itself. They all struggled to make or find a gift worthy of the object of their desires, something to show that they would be a thoughtful lover. It did not matter how rich or cunningly made the gift was. What mattered was whether or not the lover had thought it worth his time and effort to discover what would please her the most, what she liked or what she needed most.

  Lau-ren might well believe that Daeman had gone to such extraordinary lengths to find the very thing she had told them she wanted most merely out of kindness. She might believe that he had merely found it and remembered that she had wanted it.

  He knew better. He had searched for it himself many times. Even that first day, when he had been more focused upon insuring that there was no threat aboard the vast machine with them and finding what they all needed to survive it had been at the front of his mind and he had looked. He knew without asking that Dakaar and Balen had also looked.

  They had not found it because Daeman had found it first and had hidden it so that he could give it to her himself. He had not done that only to be obliging! He had been searching for a way to find favor with her.

  It was not his place to tell his lover who she could bestow her favors upon and who she could not. Her body and spirit were her own. He was well aware of that and he did not feel particularly threatened by Daeman in the sense that he feared the Deisen might oust him from his place, although those thoughts had run high in his mind when he had first discovered what Daeman had done. Despite the rage he had first felt, though, he knew he either earned his place in her heart and mind or he did not, that no one else could take Lau-ren’s regard from him. Only he had the power to keep it or lose it—and allowing jealousy to rule his mind and make him behave badly was the surest way to lose her.

  Lau-ren did not seem to understand that she had encouraged Daeman to believe she would accept him, however, and in that sense his actions became a deception, an attempt to take advantage of her generosity of spirit and her kind heart. He had no intention of allowing that. It was his place to protect her—from any potential threat—and he would know whether Daeman presented one or not.

  If he did not understand and respect that Lau-ren was giving far more than the use of her body as a handy receptacle to ease himself on and dump his seed, then the bastard would not touch her if he had to break him in half and stuff him in the garbage dump himself! Easing from the bed to keep from waking her, he bent down to retrieve his loincloth and strode from the room purposefully.

  He met up with Dakaar and Balen in the corridor outside. Both men looked at him with a mixture of hopefulness and resentment that he had beat them back to Lau-ren. His face tightened. He could certainly sympathize with their need when he had felt desperate himself, but they were not going to retain her favor if they put their own needs before hers. “She is sleeping. She is weak from so little food and the baby she carries,” he said tightly. “Keep that in mind.”

  Dakaar and Balen both glared at him indignantly.

  “I know how to treat my lover,” Dakaar said coldly.

  “It is easy for you to say,” Balen pointed out, “when you have just come from her arms!”

  “True and true. I am only reminding you and pointing out that you might receive a warmer welcome if you give her a little time to rest. Disturb her if you are so determined to make asses of yourselves!”

  “Where are you going?” Dakaar asked when he had digested that.

  “Daeman was before all of us,” Kael growled angrily. “I will see what his intentions are.”

  Dakaar and Balen exchanged a look of outrage and disbelief and hurried after him.

  “He is courting our woman?” Dakaar demanded angrily.

  “She is only yours if she says that she is yours,” Kael reminded him.

  “She did say that!” Dakaar retorted angrily. “If I had not allowed my anger to rule me ….”

  “But you did,” Balen said pointedly.

  Dakaar turned to glare at him. “What is this about the Deisen?”

  “He waited until we were occupied trying to find gifts for her to apologize for our thoughtlessness and gave her the box that she had been wanting.”

  “The brown box that looks the same as the loincloths and is this big?” Dakaar demanded, making the shape and size with his hands as Lau-ren had.

  “That box—which was filled with many things.”

  “Why?” Balen demanded suspiciously.

  Kael sent him a sardonic look. “I will beat the answer out of him and then we will know.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Daeman was not pleased at the intrusion when he had gone to great lengths to find solitude to wrestle with the thoughts creating such havoc within him. That it was the very men responsible to a great extent for the chaos made their presence in the cargo bay where he had retreated all the more unwelcome and anger surged through him even before he noticed the tension in them and their expressions of anger.

  That in itself created more conflict, however, when he did notice their aggression. Hope surged through him at once that Lau-ren had indicated in some way that she returned his interest and then died when he realized that it was most likely only the gift itself that had enraged them. His anger intensified at that thought, churned higher by the reflection that they considered him unworthy of her interest simply by virtue of being Deisen, rather than Hirachi.

  They would not have questioned his right to court her if he had been Hirachi!

  He surged to his feet at that thought, angry enough to challenge all three at once, although a calmer mind would not have given him any assurance that he had a chance of triumphing over those odds. In truth, he might have entertained doubts that he could best any of the three alone. He certainly would not have been so lost to all reason as to think he could best them all.

  Indignation was piled upon the unpleasant certainty that they stood between him and the woman that he wanted, however, and topping that was the hope of avenging that frustration and purging the unfamiliar sense of defeat churning in his belly. He assumed a wide legged stance for battle, feeling a fierce satisfaction that they were unarmed as he was. It would be a battle with fists that would allow him to expend his own anger and aggression.

  Dakaar and Balen slowed when they saw Daeman take up a fighting stance. As angry as they both were at what Kael had told them, he had announced his intentions first and they moved to a position to take part as spectators only. If Daeman felt up to challenging them when Kael was done with him, then they would have their chance to fight him.

  Dakaar seriously doubted that he would and, even if he did, it was not likely that he would be in any condition to make it a fair fight. He would just have to be satisfied, he decided, with Kael being Lau-ren’s champion—unless Daeman was stupid enough to challenge him himself.

  Hope surged in him briefly, but he had not noticed that Daeman was stupid and it died almost as quickly as it had arisen.

  Balen’s thoughts were much the same, but he decided that he would merely wait for Daeman to recover and then challenge him. However it turned out, and he had little doubt that Kael would emerge the victor, he would not be satisfied until he had confronted Daeman himself.

  Kael narrowed his eyes assessingly when he halted in front of Daeman instead of launching a blow to his face as he was more than half inclined to. It would be deeply satisfying to simply pound on him until he couldn’t get up, but it would not give him the answers he sought. Fortunately, the Deisen had learned the Hirachi language and there was some hope that they might come to an understanding. “Why did you give Lau-ren a gift?”

  Daeman’s face tightened. “Because I wished to,” he growled.

  Kael’s lips compressed with his own anger. “That is not the answer to the question I asked.”

  “You have brought a great deal of company to ask your questions,” Daeman said sarcastically.

  Kael lifted his brows. “You impugn the honor of the Hirachi. Is this because you have none yourself?”

  Daeman’s
fury nearly blinded him at that. “You believe the Hirachi are the sole possessors of any sense of honor? Is that what this is about? You think I soil Lau-ren only by wanting her when I am not Hirachi?”

  “Do you?”

  Daeman lost his reason then. Uttering a bellow of rage, he clenched his hands into fists and threw his weight into the punch he swung at Kael’s taunting face. His rage cost him as anger was inclined to do. Kael blocked the punch easily and retaliated with one of his own that sent Daeman staggering back several feet before he regained his balance. He was too enraged to feel more than the impact of the blow, however, and his failure to punch through Kael’s defense only added frustration.

  He surged forward again and for many moments they stood toe to toe, trading hammering blows with one another to the face and torso, blocking some and deflecting others with their meaty forearms. They fell back from one another after a few minutes to catch their breath for another round.

  By that time, Daeman had expended much of his rage and some modicum of reason had reasserted itself, however.

  “Was I right, Deisen? I will not allow you to soil her with your touch if you think only to take advantage of her!”

  “By what right do you question me, Hirachi!” Deisen bellowed, furious all over again. “It is her decision!”