Then his other arm moved behind her back and pulled her infinitesimally closer to his body. When touching would have been more comfortable, he allowed that small space where their bodies lay poised on the brink of contact as his lips passed from her forehead to her jaw. The kisses sizzled as they made their path down her face.
Clara's emotions began to unravel. She had ached for Matthew since she had told him and Bracus to court her no more. The looks passing between them full of unbridled heat was all the contact she would allow. The energy crackled between she and Matthew like a painful conduit.
The dam breaking about her, Clara allowed herself to be swept into his embrace, their bodies pressing together, the gap no more.
She moaned and he clutched her as he laid kiss after kiss upon her mouth while kneading his hands along her ribcage. He encircled his hands around her waist until his fingers met and he pulled her ever nearer. She wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back. Her promise to Rowenna was no more than a dim bell that chimed dully.
A noise made them break apart and there stood Edwin, a sardonic smile on his face. “You are quite busy for a Queen.”
*
“It appears that I have come too late for a courtship. That you have already selected your mate, Queen Clara.” Edwin's black brow arched.
Matthew said nothing but turned Clara to face Edwin. Clara struggled to recover from the moment of passion interrupted. “I have spoken with Rowenna...”
“Your mother?”
Clara nodded. He made a gesture with his hand, go on. “She has encouraged me to entertain your interest in me.”
She was startled when he laughed from his belly. “Really now? My interest. Yes, let us discuss this. You see, my dear Clara,” Clara did not need to see Matthew's face to feel his tense displeasure at the endearment.
It was not lost on Edwin, whose smile broadened. “You are the first true select in a decade. The first female, aside from your mother, that has come to breeding age. Yes, I think my interest is true.” His gaze darkened as he took Clara in. Her bronze hair shone like embers in a fire which smoldered, her eyes capturing the sea that washed upon the shore but steps away. Edwin found her beautiful. She had the look of this clan, but somewhat different. He knew that she was but half- savage but had heard that she could produce throat slits.
She would breed true. He could feel it.
Edwin turned his attention to the male that had been feeding off her with his mouth. He would be trouble, Edwin thought. There was a wildness about him that was unsettled. It felt like unique circumstances had challenged this one of the Band. He would find out all he could about this male.
After all, he was his adversary.
“Let us be well-met, Matthew of the Band,” Edwin said, sticking out his hand in the offensive.
Matthew's eyes narrowed. He had no choice but to be reciprocal. This male was clever, he would need to be wary. Matthew's choice made, his hand grabbed Edwin's in a tense clasp of force, the two hands locking and turning white at the edges.
Clara saw the men measure each other through the handshake, neither soft. She moved between them, their hands shaking from the pressure they applied. She put her small hands over their meshed hands. “Please, let us discuss things like civil people do.”
They looked at her at the same moment and Clara smiled, their handshake breaking.
She walked away from them, not waiting to see if they followed her.
They did.
The Band was not known for civility, Clara thought as she entered into the most dangerous game of her life.
CHAPTER 22
Clara was homesick. It had been two weeks at the Clan of Cape Cod. She had established a routine of sorts and spent more time than she cared to admit beside the shore. She had decided that she would sacrifice being ladylike to feel the sand between her toes. She strolled the shore each day, usually joined by either Matthew or Edwin. They were of the Band and did not think the flesh of her feet was an immodest sight.
Charles had.
“Clara,” he had said but one day past as he found her feet buried in the sand, the hem of her linen skirt drenched in saltwater. “You should not be walking about without stockings and shoes. Just because we are here amongst,” he paused significantly, “the clan, we are still of the sphere and as such, we should cleave to our own ways.”
Clara rolled her eyes. Things had irrevocably changed between herself and Charles. Edwin had been introduced as suitor and Matthew was back as a romantic feature. Charles was not going to court her.
It had never been an option. Even if she had not been bound to wed with one of the Band, she felt naught but friendship for Charles. That he took out feelings she could not change against her? Well, it worked against him. As he was doing now. Pecking at her like a misguided hen.
She sighed.
“You are Queen. Queens do not lounge about without their proper apparel on hand.” He crouched beside her as she wrote with a finger in the sand, ignoring his words. “Clara,” he said more softly, “I am meant to advise you. What has happened? You listen to reason no longer?”
“I have spent my whole life being reasonable and received nothing for my trouble but the back of a hand. I am now trying to live within greater constraints than I have ever known.” She lifted her head, her eyes like the angry sea at their feet. “But I am under threat for my safety no longer. And for that I am grateful. You would do well to remember what it was like but one year past. You dwell on things that are not important. Let us think on what is best for the kingdom, the clan we are now aligned with.”
She stood, brushing off her skirt, the sand clinging like greedy fingers. She bent at her knees and picked up her silk stockings and leather moccasins Rowenna had given her. She had taken them in trade with the Red Men. They were supple and beaded liberally, small colorful stones sparkled about the top. They looked strangely pretty and the comfort was superior to anything she had ever worn. However, without the heel she was accustomed to, she was acutely aware of her height even more. Or her lack thereof. That was the main difference she saw amongst her kin. They were all tall, strongly built people. None looked as frail as she.
She looked up at Charles and struggled to keep liking him. His manner had digressed into a pious mix of obnoxious bitter resentment.
“When do we depart from this place, Clara? And what is truly the plan with this one of the Band of Massachusetts? You do not care for him already?” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Methinks she likes my company very much, sphere-dweller,” Edwin said, his approach muffled by the surf.
Clara smiled at Edwin. He was the opposite of Matthew, who was quiet and serious by nature. Edwin had a ready smile and an open heart. She liked him very much. She did not share the torrid history of battles and strife that bound Matthew and she so closely, but there was something about his readiness that was a compliment to her. She was unsure of where it would lead.
Charles whirled around and scowled at the newcomer. That swine of a man, so dapper. Or so he thought, Charles fumed. Clara was so gullible as to think that any of the Band truly cared about her. Or understood how important her role was. They were so caught up on her select status they could not see her importance past the tip of their own noses.
“And what, pray tell, do you need of her right now?”
“Her company, of course,” Edwin said, giving Clara a large grin. She grinned back. He was exactly what she needed after the dour interlude with Charles.
He moved past Charles and held out his arm and she placed hers in the crook of it. Charles huffed and strode off in the opposite direction.
They walked for a time on the beach and then Edwin led her to a piece of driftwood where she sat and rubbed her bare feet free of as much sand as she could. She hesitated in putting her stockings on in front of him. They were long and much of her leg would be visible to him. Already his eyes were on her feet like a caress.
Mayhap Charles had some s
mall point, she deliberated. No matter, she would never give him the satisfaction of knowing she may agree with him. Instead she slipped on the moccasins without the stockings. She would don them later.
Edwin smiled. A modest female. He intuited exactly why she did not wish to put the stockings back on but said nothing. Their culture had significant differences. Edwin liked Clara, he had grown accustomed to her sharp mind. And for one from such a cloistered upbringing she was surprisingly independent. He had carefully learned of her entanglement within the fragment and Matthew's timely rescue and protection of her. He was yet to decide if she was attached to him by way of gratefulness or by a deeper emotion.
Mayhap she loved him.
He sensed a deep part of her story that lay beneath the surface which she had not yet relayed. He had been about finding out. He had finally made acquaintance with the woman that she was closest to, Sarah.
Sarah had no such compunction about keeping that part of Clara's life private. Between the serpent Prince and her vile “mother” she had suffered much. He asked her now from a point of educated knowledge. He hoped to surprise her into telling him even more.
“Sarah has told me that the Prince may still live.”
Clara looked up at him sharply, his golden eyes hooded in a face devoid of expression. She took a deep breath. “She has, has she?” she whispered, offering nothing.
He frowned. He had hoped that it would go easier, that the words would come.
“I do not see how this is relevant. I do not speak of my time with the Prince,” she replied as evenly as possible.
“I would protect you,” he said.
“Any of the Band would,” she replied.
“Did Matthew dispatch him with finality?”
Clara looked down then met his eyes. “He was startled by the appearance of my gills. It made his blade waver.”
“Gills?”
Clara thought. “Throat slits.”
Ah, a most curious thing, that. “My blade would not have wavered.”
“You do not know what your blade would have done in the middle of battle with a female you supposed was one thing, only to find out that she was entirely something else.”
He smiled. Matthew of the Clan of Ohio was obviously something of a question amongst all the Band. Quiet and brooding, he kept to himself. But his devotion to Clara was clear to all that bothered to notice.
Edwin was noticing. He could not disparage Matthew to gain her trust; it would not be a successful tactic with Clara.
He switched his tack. “You are right, I am sure that I cannot know all.”
Her face softened at his verbal retreat and they resumed their walk. “Let us walk to the spring. You still wish to bathe?”
She nodded. “I was to meet Anna there.”
“Excellent, I shall accompany you. How many sentries do they have guard this day?”
Clara told him she thought there were three.
“More than enough. One cannot be too careful of our females.”
Clara knew this to be true. Even now her heart sped when she neared any spring. It was there that Matthew had taken her. She knew now his intent had been all mixed about with his life's experience and his newness in understanding her as a female of the select. Regardless, that was part of the fabric of her life. Her memories. Its nearness made her anxious.
Edwin stilled beside her, sensing her discomfort. “What is it?”
She shook her head, trying to clear it of the unease. “It is nothing. Sometimes, I feel ill at ease when I am at the spring.”
He frowned, taking her by the upper arms and drawing her closer. Clara gasped at his nearness, at once drowning in the physical closeness. Desperately wanting the contact and feeling intensely frightened about it.
Edwin loved the feel of the select in his arms. There was no comparison. The ordinary female of the clan was great company and of course, lust would always rear its rightful head. The truth was, his body already felt mated to her. It mattered not that she had not chosen. His body had chosen for him. His heart was slipping toward her as well. In his mind's eye, he saw her hand the depository for his love, he held it away from her with the last of his free will.
“Please, just let me...” he bent his head to hers and Clara tried to pull away, she felt wrong with his intent hanging above her. It was too soon. But he pressed his lips to hers even as her mind told her body not to respond. She stayed stiff in his arms, the liquid fire from his point of contact on her mouth spreading through her like an open flame.
He determinedly worked his mouth over hers softly, with an urgent intensity that shattered her. She understood in some dim way that this was biology at work and she needed to fight it. Tears brimmed on her eyelashes as her arms circled his neck and they fell, staining the face that he was kissing.
Edwin felt her resistance falter just as the wetness began to soak their skin. What was this? He pulled away from her, looking down upon her swollen mouth, her lovely eyes luminescent in the gloom of the forest.
His heart fell. “Why do you cry?” he asked bending down and scooping her jaw into hands that cupped her whole head. He brushed the tears away with the pads of his thumbs, his gold eyes searching hers.
She shook her head violently, her hair falling forward like a bronze curtain. He let go of her chin and crushed her to him. “I cannot abide your sorrow. Tell me what is wrong and I will fix it.”
“It is me!” she cried. “I am a horrible female without tact, without remorse.”
Edwin smiled, putting her away just enough that he could tuck the hair behind her ears. “You are select. You are meant to respond to males of the Band. It is quite natural for you to do so.” He hugged her to him again, loving the way the smallness of her body fit so well against his larger one.
She pushed against him. “I am weak. If I were the woman that everyone thinks me to be, I would not be a wanton thing. Kissing whomever I court.” She pushed against him weakly again, her self-hate riding her body like a loathsome smell.
He took her face in his hands, looking at her intently. “Hear me, Clara.” She reluctantly looked at him, disbelief flooding her face. She was not wanting to listen, her mind made up about herself. “You are brave and fierce as the lion. Do not be other than what you are.” His eyes gazed into hers and she cried in earnest then.
Clara wanted to be just a woman. She was tired of being Queen, being a select. Being savage. And foremost, she hated that she was not woman enough to shoulder it all. She thought of Evelyn and the other females that depended on her. She sighed, her breath blowing the fine wisps of hair away from her face.
She looked up at Edwin with determination, choking back the tears in her throat. This is what her father had meant when he said to rule was the hardest thing to master. She was not mastering anything well presently. She could not even command her emotions.
“I will not kiss you again unless I wish it.”
“You seemed as if you did wish it,” Edwin said with a small smile.
Clara glowered at him. “You press your advantage over me. We have not even had a Rite in which to determine your suitability as a Potential.” She huffed, crossing her arms.
Fast as a snake, Edwin clamped onto her arms and enveloped her again, giving her no time to respond he clamped down on her lips, forcing them apart. He moved one hand to the small of her back and the other to the back of her head. She held stiff for such a long time Edwin almost begged off his assault. Then slowly, she kissed him back, her hands fisting into the back of his tunic her tongue licking his bottom lip.
Clara had no warning as Matthew barreled into Edwin and they rolled into a tangle of limbs, their bodies rolling down the incline toward the spring, as she stumbled backward.
Good Guardian, what had she done? Clara stood up and ran after them, her skirt an encumbrance. She jerked it up to her knees and sprinted.
Edwin had straddled Matthew and was striking him in the face. She saw his fist strike Edwin's nose in a fierce
jab that caused blood to spurt. Clara threw herself onto Edwin as Matthew's fist came forward and he checked it at the last second.
“Clara!” Matthew roared. “Stay as you lay!”
Edwin rolled on top of Clara, his arms a cage above her body as Matthew went for him. He grasped Edwin by the shoulders, tearing him off her. Edwin had time only to see she was stunned but unhurt before Matthew struck him in the deepest part of his gut, the breath leaving his body. Edwin used his head like a battering ram and launched himself forward. His throat slits stung with their need for oxygen just as his head connected with Matthew's torso. The Bandsman was ready and took him about the neck, further constricting his airways and wrapped them both up and threw him to the side, letting go at the last moment. Edwin rolled and as he came to a stop he watched from upside down Matthew advance on Clara, his face as thunder.
Would he hurt her?
Edwin shook his head, the air sucking into his throat slits like precious water and sprang to his feet, running to where Clara was.
Clara looked at Matthew as he threw Edwin away from his body, the muscles bulging and constricting as he did. He turned and looked at her, his face a mask of rage.
She cowered in fear. There was nothing more frightening than one of the Band when they faced you in anger.
But it was Matthew.
Matthew had come upon her kissing Edwin. She jumped to her feet and ran, the blood from Edwin covering her face. Matthew came crashing after her.
She felt his breath on her neck before his fingers bit into her shoulders and hauled her back against him. He turned her around and the rage had been replaced by concern. He searched her face and body frantically. “Did he harm you?”
What? “No, he did not!” she cried.
The SAVAGE Series, Books 1-3: The Pearl Savage, The Savage Blood and The Savage Principle Page 45