"You are mine!” he spat as he slammed into her defenseless body. “Mine. Not his!"
Over and over he rammed into her until she was no longer fighting him, simply lying there in silence as he strove for release. When it was done, he slid off her, cursing brutally.
"That is not what I wanted to happen,” he said, plowing a shaking hand through his hair. “I wanted to show you my love this time. I...."
She turned her back on him and drew her legs up in a fetal position to stare wide eyed at the wall.
Kona grabbed a handful of his hair and tugged viciously. He had made a mistake in telling her Byrne had been released from prison. As much as he hated admitting it the man was safe, out of the reach of the Resistance, and he suspected she knew that was the way of it. Despite several attempts on his life, the Modartha had escaped each one and dispassionately dispatched those sent to assassinate him. Even though efforts had been stepped up to kill Byrne, the werewolf—it seemed—was untouchable.
"They fucked him, you know,” he told her, knowing the reminder would hurt her.
"He's a strong man. By now, he will have found the ones who did it and killed them.” Her words were steady, spoken through clenched teeth. His taunts no longer carried the same pain as they had.
"You'll never see him again!” Kona snarled and flung himself out of the bed, slamming the door to her prison cell deep within the cave behind him. The overhead light went off—another spiteful act on his part.
Bailey let the tears flow at last as the silence and the pitch black darkness of her cell settled over her. From the first night on Madra when he had forced himself upon her, she had refused to give him what he so desperately wanted. On the long flight to the desert planet, she had realized Van would not want her to bargain her honor, her body for his protection. He would expect her to fight and that was what she had done. She was not a strong woman, but she would not be a coward and give in to Doyle by betraying Van in any way.
Bruises lined her arms and legs and one was imprinted across her cheek. Kona had threatened, then overpowered her, but when she had fought him he had resorted to slaps and punches that had weakened her, stunned her, and made her more pliable to his assault. Now, he kept her naked in the cell with only meager rations of food and water to sustain her in an effort to break her spirit, keeping her in darkness most of the time and never allowing her to see anyone but himself.
He wanted to break her spirit.
It wouldn't work she vowed as she sat up and drew her legs into the perimeter of her arms. She lay her head on her upraised knees. No matter what he did to her, no matter what threats he made against her or Van, she would not willingly give in to his sadistic seduction of her. She would never willingly give her body to a man she despised.
The only thing that sustained Bailey in those dark moments of total seclusion and darkness were thoughts of her husband and the happiness they had shared together those few brief months of married life.
He had been so happy, so carefree, and he smiled more often than he frowned—though he was legendary for his fierce frowns. He joked with her, played silly pranks on her, and behaved far younger than his thirty-some odd years.
She missed that. She ached for it and for him.
"Hurry to me, my Modartha,” she said.
Sleep was all she could do in that barren, ebon cell and so she lay down in with her knees drawn up, her hands clasped and tucked between her legs. Closing her eyes, she tried to pretend the darkness wasn't there pressing down upon her, tried to imagine she was in her bed at the estate he had named WindWolf, tried to imagine Van lying beside her, her head on his chest.
She could almost feel the rough calluses of his fingers trailing over her sensitive flesh, drawing gooseflesh, making her sigh with pleasure. If she strained, she believed she could catch a brief whiff of his manly scent, the cinnamon smell of his cologne. If she listened closely, she could detect his heartbeat echoing in rhythm to her own.
"I love you,” she thought she heard him say.
"I love you,” she said aloud.
Drifting off into that nether world where her dreams resided, she found herself floating on a dark ocean on her back, her arms out to her sides, her white silk gown rippling around her. Overhead, the sky was filled with fleecy clouds that drifted on a soft breeze and bird song lingered in the air.
Then he was there, scooping her up against his dark gray shirt that was wetly plastered to his muscular chest and he was striding out of the water with her in his strong arms.
"Where have you been, wench?” he asked.
"Waiting for you, my Modartha,” she answered, her arms around his neck.
With water cascading from his dark trousers, he carried her up a small embankment and lay her down upon soft, sweet clover that cushioned her like a giant meringue.
"I've been searching all over for you,” he said and he stood to unbutton his shirt.
"Now you've found me,” she said.
"Now I've found you,” he said and shrugged out of his wet shirt.
She stared up at his broad chest with the dark hairs tipped with water droplets as his tawny hands went to the clasp of his trousers. “Did you miss me?” she asked.
"With all my heart and all my soul,” he replied and pushed the trousers down his long legs, his shaft leaping to erect fullness.
"I can see you did,” she said with a giggle and held her arms up to him.
He dropped down beside her and gathered her in his arms, her gown dissolving as though it were the finest tissue paper. He cradled her to him, his lips in her wet hair. “Did you miss me?” he asked.
"With every breath I took and all the beats of my heart,” she told him.
His lips trailed hot kisses on the side of her face and down her neck. His warm breath sighed into the spiral of her ear and his teeth tugged at the sensitive lobe. His palm covered her breast and he kneaded her, his thumb raking gently over her hardening nipple.
"Did they hurt you?” she asked, looking up into his solemn gray eyes.
"Shush,” he said. “We'll not speak of it."
His hands moved over her ribcage and down to her flat belly. He lay his palm there. “You are carrying my seed, you know,” he said as he stroked her, massaged her velvety flesh.
"Truly?” she asked.
"Aye,” he said and his hand dipped lower, “but I can still love you if only here in our dreams."
He slid his fingers through her wiry curls and down between her legs, pushing one gently into her warm sheath. He pressed inside her then withdrew his finger to put it in his mouth to taste her juices.
"Ah, Van. Do you have any idea what that does to me when you do it?"
"The same as it does to me, most likely,” he said with a grin.
"How do I taste?” she asked boldly.
"Good enough to eat,” he said and shifted down her body so he could take her into his mouth, his tongue plying her swollen clitoris with expert ease.
Bailey held on to his thick hair and sighed deeply. Her husband was a skillful lover and the things he could do to her body turned her inside out at times. His tongue, his fingers, and his shaft—they touched her in ways she knew no man ever could have.
He kissed his way up her belly and across her breasts, settling his body over hers, pushing her legs apart to accommodate his weight, his suddenly naked body.
"How do you do that?” she asked.
"It's a dream, wench,” he said as though she should have remembered that.
"Oh, aye,” she whispered.
His cock went unerringly into her sheath and settled deep, her vaginal muscles gripping him tightly as he began to pump in and out of her with slow, deliberate speed and knowing thrusts.
"This is us,” he said. “This is the way it should always be."
Heat and wetness, a sublime itch that made her ache and squirm beneath him. His hands pushing under her rump to lever her up for a deeper penetration. His mouth settling over hers to stroke her tongue wit
h his own, his teeth tugging at her bottom lip.
Release hovered there for a long moment then burst, shattering them both. Her hands tightened in his hair. His fingers dug into her ass. His cock pumped furiously as he spilled himself into her hot, pulsing sheath.
"Van!” she cried out and lifted her legs to entrap him in the warmth of her body.
* * * *
"Bailey!"
Van sat bold upright in bed, his face glistening with sweat. The dream had been all too real and he could still taste her moistness on his tongue, feel her channel gripping his shaft.
"Baby,” he said and knew it was true as surely as he felt the ache in his heart at the loss of his lady. “We're having a baby?"
Swinging his legs over the side of the mattress with its tousled sheets, he raked a hand through his damp hair and tried to still the rapid beating of his heart. It was almost as though her scent clung to him, the sweetened honey of her fluids were still upon his tongue. It was but a dream yet he knew he had connected with her in some strange, mystical way and he knew her to be all right.
Getting to his feet, he walked over to the window and pulled aside the curtain, staring out into the darkness. His enhanced night vision could pick up the patrols beyond the gate. There would be guards always around him now that several attempts had been made on his life.
"Doyle won't give up until one of us is dead,” he'd told his brothers. “I intend he be the one we bury."
Leaning against the window jamb, he looked to the east and knew dawn was a few hours away still. O'Rourke had not gotten back to him on the sound detector devices. He suspected they had to be rounded up and installed on the huge transport ships he had requisitioned.
"We will need to put a communication blackout on this from now on,” Declan had suggested. “You can't afford for Doyle to know what we're up to."
"The Interceptor will be outfitted with a detection blocking device that will make it impossible for anyone scanning it from Madra to pick up either her heat signature or any pings sent back from her Com Array,” one of Van's trusted operatives had stated. “They won't know we're there until we start sucking people up into the transport beam and by then it will be too late for them to do anything about."
"Luckily Madra is a relatively techno-deprived planet,” Patrick commented. “They won't have much in the way of firepower."
"Once we show up with the armada, the Madras won't attempt to stop us. They'll take one look at us and piss down their legs. They know we have the capability to turn their world into so much kibble,” Van stated.
Orders had gone out to the Portal Police that no ships were to enter or leave Faolchúan air space until further notice. No transmissions were to be allowed into or out of Com Central without a corresponding voice code and location of sender okayed by the men under the Modartha's personal command. Only those in positions of high authority that Van knew for a certainty he could trust were in on what would be the largest military operation since before the Tangier Wars in the twenty-fourth century.
"I want twenty Mass Trans ships that have been gutted and then re-enforced with one large holding cell each into which we can transport prisoners we take from those caves on Madra,” Van had instructed. “Soup those babies up until you know they can outrun anything in the megaverse. I want them armed to the teeth with plasma missiles and depth charges so they can annihilate anything that comes at us."
"We can do that,” O'Rourke agreed.
"How will we find Bailey amid the throng?” Patrick had inquired.
Van had looked to Colm Donley for the answer since Donley was an intelligence specialist.
"She was a civilian employee of the government wasn't she?” Donley had asked.
"A Cróinéir 2nd Class,” Van had replied.
"Then we'll have a voice recognition disk in her packet along with retinal and handprint scans, DNA, and dental records. We'll be able to program the Interceptor we send in with the sound detectors to filter out all but her voice. We'll find her that way,” Donley told them.
"That's provided she says something we can pick up when the Interceptor is doing the flyover,” Declan reminded them.
"Won't matter,” Donley said. “They'll have done the customary physicals on her so we'll have her heart rhythm pattern on file. HRPs are as individual as fingerprints because the heartbeats reflecting off the ribcage are different for each of us."
"As soon as we home in on her voice, we'll pluck her out of there,” Declan said.
"No, we won't,” Van said to the dark beyond his window. There was no way now he could transport her up if she was pregnant without doing potential harm to the child. He would take no chances. He'd have to fly a runabout down to her or else steal Tara's Fiach to take Bailey to safety.
Making a mental note to tell O'Rourke to make sure a runabout was put on the command ship he went back to the bed and sat down, his shoulders slumping.
He missed Bailey so much he ached. Though he cared deeply for his brothers—admitting to himself that he most likely loved them—Bailey had become his entire being. Before he met her, he had been putting in time, existing, living his life day to day, bored, and unhappy but not really knowing why, wanting something he couldn't describe, needing something he couldn't quite imagine. With her coming, he knew now what he had been wanting. He knew what he'd been needing and missing—companionship. But it was beyond companionship, beyond an intimate friendship. It was love he had been craving and hadn't even known it. She had given him something so precious, so priceless, and so invaluable it couldn't be bought or borrowed or stolen. It had been given—unconditionally—and she had bestowed it upon him with such ease.
"By the gods, wench, I miss you,” he said, lying down to stare into space.
He desperately tried not to think of what Doyle might be doing to her at that moment. Just knowing she was in the bastard's hands sent him into a black fugue so deep it roiled in his gut and brought a copper taste to his mouth. Striving not to imagine Doyle lying with her, taking her, using her, was the hardest thing Crevan Byrne had ever done. He was determined not to let his mind run wild with speculation for it cut him to the quick, made his heart bleed, his eyes prickle just knowing she was at Doyle's mercy.
Turning to his back, he shoved his hands under his head and let out a long, hopeless sigh. Not even the tortures visited upon him at the Spider's hands could compare to the agony he was enduring tonight. No brutal flesh thrust into him was as horrendous as the wondering.
"I will come for you, Bailey,” he said. “Never doubt it."
* * * *
Colonel Collin O'Rourke leaned back in the form-fitting chair that had been given to him when he took over General Brennan's position and knew he'd accomplished a lot in the last two hours. Van had asked for twenty ships but O'Rourke had commandeered thirty. Even as he sat there with his fingers threaded together over his belly, the ships were being retrofitted with superior firepower and bolstered with speeds that would be the envy of every star fighter pilot in the galaxy. Men would be working overtime night and day to get the Mass Trans ready for flight. Ultra-sensitive sound detectors were on their way from the Tappas Industries satellite factory on Leon and would arrive within the next twelve hours. At Donley's suggestion, disks of Bailey's voice as well as those of Kona Doyle and Tara Cowart-Flynn were already in the main computer banks, and the data would be fed into each of the sound detectors that would be installed in the Mass Trans ships.
Satisfied he'd done all he could to help the Modartha, O'Rourke closed his eyes and relaxed but his active mind would not allow him to nod off. He went over and over the precautions his team had taken to maintain a communications blackout of the planet. It would be suicide for a Resistance spy to relay a message to Doyle that a fleet of Faolchúan ships were on their way to extract his fighters from the depths of the caves into which the slimy bastards had crawled.
Opening his eyes as he thought of one more safety measure that needed to be put into place, he lean
ed forward to buzz his personal secretary. “Warren, make sure the men working on the Mass Trans ships are not allowed to go home until after the operation has been finalized. Keep them redlined the hangars. There is to be no communication between them and the outside. Understood?"
"Aye, Colonel,” Warren Davidson acknowledged the order to insure those working on the ships were not allowed to leave the hangar.
Knowing the sound detectors had been marked deceptively at the T.I. end as replicator parts to avoid even a hint of their real purpose leaking out, O'Rourke ordered his secretary to make sure the deliverymen were redlined, as well. He would take no chances of any information leaking out to Resistance sympathizers.
* * * *
Lady Tara Cowart-Flynn paced from one end of the dismal cavern room to the other. Irritated that she was required to hide underground she was even more annoyed with the Spartan accommodations. For a woman born and bred to luxury, it was nearly unbearable for her to do without the trappings to which she was accustomed. Glaring at the rough stone walls bare of decoration, the cheap carpeting that had stains from the gods only knew what, the lumpy mattress on a bed that squeaked with every movement she made, Tara was finding Resistance life far from the exciting adventure she thought it would be.
Sweeping aside the skirt of her designer dress, she sat upon the musty bed, her upper lip crooked with disgust. At that moment, she was angry with herself for becoming involved with Doyle and his cause. What had started as a rebellious move against her government-supporting parents had become a money-sucking vortex into which she'd pitched hundreds of thousands of gold pieces from her inheritance without gaining any tangible reward.
Sneaking into a Resistance rally one evening, she had listened to Kona Doyle ranting against the Modartha and for which it stood.
"They have all the real power within the government! They can do whatever the hell they want to and no one can stop them!” Doyle had shouted to the crowd. “Even the Central Committee is afraid of them. If we can bring down the Modartha—and in particular the man who runs it—we will gain for ourselves a chance at the freedom we are striving to attain!"
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