Eliana's Warlord

by Jory Strong

Eliana fought down a whimper. Was nearly overwhelmed by terror and helplessness.

  He jerked open her jeans, his eyes dilating at the sight of her mound. He grabbed the material of her jeans to pull them down.

  His companion said, "I want to see her titties."

  The jeans were released, the front of the shirt grabbed above her breasts.

  Eliana found hope. She found her voice and played on the rumors that had reached behind the walls, of Jax's savagery.

  "Jax will kill you for this. The warlord will hunt you down and make you beg for death before he's done with you."

  The hands on her wrists loosened. Tightened.

  The bearded man grinned. "Trouble is, you ain't in his territory."

  He jerked the two sides of the shirt. A couple of buttons gave, revealing a hint of cleavage.

  "Jax will kill you."

  The grip on her wrists loosened again, tightened.

  "Jax will entertain himself for days with you. He won't waste his bullets, he'll use his metal knuckles, his knives."

  A tremor went through the man holding her wrists. He said, "She wouldn't be out here unless she was running from him. She wouldn't be running unless he wants something from her."

  "He wants pussy, same as we do." But the bearded man didn't give the shirt another jerk.

  The hands around her wrists loosened and remained that way. "He's gotta want something more. Pussy is Jax's for the taking whenever he wants it, same as it is for Josiah. If Jax comes looking for her, and word gets back to Josiah that we had her…"

  A thick tongue darted out and licked over the crusty black hair above a barely visible lip. "You're saying you think we should take her to Josiah?"

  The man holding her wrists nodded vigorously. "That's what I say. Take her to the warlord."

  "What if she's lying?"

  "Josiah will deal with her. But it's not like he's going to know right away. He'll have to send for one of his spies, or send a messenger straight to Jax. In the meantime, we get a reward for taking Josiah something we thought was valuable. Probably get enough to buy some booze and share a whore. So we'll still get pussy. Only it'll be pussy that's safer."

  Her shirt was slowly released. The bearded man's gaze dropped to her exposed mound.

  It made her feel unclean. The kind of dirty that couldn't be eradicated by scalding water and a full bar of soap.

  It took everything Eliana had to stay still. She managed it only because she was afraid that movement would lead to the bearded monster ignoring his friend and deciding he could get away with rape if he followed it with murder.

  He combed long fingernails through his beard. His companion said, "Look at the rag she's got on her hair. Ain't that green what Jax wears when there's a rumble?"

  Eyes shifted to the bandanna. The monster grunted and stood. "You better be right, Walt. You hang on to her. And you let me do the talking when we get to the warlord."

  Eliana couldn't suppress a shiver. Rumors of Josiah's ruthlessness had made it into the city the same as those involving Jax.

  Her would-be rapist released one of her wrists but kept the other manacled. He jerked her to her feet.

  She closed the front of her jeans with her free hand, managed to bend down and grab the black hoodie before she was tugged forward.

  The bearded man crowded close. He tore the bandanna from her hair, looked at the markings on it and grunted, then jammed it into his pocket.

  His hand returned to her hair.

  She shuddered in revulsion.

  He stroked downward, along the length of her spine. His breathing got faster.

  He squeezed a buttock. He reached across his barreled chest and touched her breast with long-nailed fingers.

  She tried to pull away.

  He pinched her nipple. "You sure are a pretty thing."

  His rank breath washed over her cheek.

  Bile rose in her throat and she moved closer to the man shackling her wrist. He smelled as foul as his companion, like wood smoke covering the stench of a slaughter house.

  "We need to take her to Josiah," that man whined, his fear that his companion would change his mind spiking Eliana's fear.

  "We're taking her. No reason I can't enjoy what I can."

  He pinched Eliana's nipple again, rubbed, his other hand squeezing her buttock.

  She blanked her mind. Endured. Suppressed the screams though they welled and swelled inside her until it felt as if she floated up and away from her body while remaining tethered to it like a balloon.

  It seemed an eternity before they reached what had probably been the first floor of a towering office building before the Final War. To the left of the entryway door, a muscled, dark-skinned man leaned against a dark blue wall, his chest crisscrossed by a bandoleer holding throwing stars.

  A second man stood to the right of the building entrance. A smoke stick dipped from the corner of his mouth, his hand rested lightly on a gun jammed into the front of his jeans.

  A tremor passed from the man holding her wrist into Eliana but he tugged her forward.

  The dark-skinned man pushed away from the wall and blocked them with arms crossed, his thumbs touched to points on the throwing stars.

  His gaze raked over her, narrowed before lifting to meet her eyes and she silently pleaded for help. Had no way of knowing if this man would interfere if she told him she'd just barely escaped being raped by the men she was with.

  His eyes hardened. His expression hardened but she couldn't tell if the cause was indifference or an intention to get involved.

  "Got something that'll interest the warlord," her bearded tormentor said. "Something he's going to think is important."

  "Let them in," the man with the gun said.

  The dark-skinned man stepped aside.

  They entered the building and there was no mistaking Josiah. He was dark-haired and dark-eyed like Jax, older but equally menacing, equally powerful, equally compelling.

  He sat in a chair and made it a throne. A long-barreled gun lay across his thighs.

  In front of him and to her right, a man stood at one end of a table. He worked a press handle and pills dropped into a metal pan with tiny pings. Illicit drugs or medicine, they could be either or both.

  At other tables, other men counted pills or worked with the raw ingredients. And stationed around the room there had to be twenty men like the two who'd let them enter the building. Most wore bandoleers with either throwing knives or throwing stars, but a couple of them carried guns.

  The handle made another rotation. More pills dropped into the pan.

  Her attention returned to Josiah.

  Dark eyes assessed, probed, stripped her before shifting to the men on either side of her. A wave of his left hand and the man working the press stopped.

  The warlord picked up the gun, looked at the bearded man and circled the barrel in the air in a motion to hurry up and stop wasting his time.

  "This is Jax's woman," the bearded man said, a slight tremor in his voice.

  Josiah's gaze returned to her face. "Is that so?"

  Eliana's heart fluttered frantically and her pulse sped. This wasn't a man to lie to, but the truth was equally dangerous. There was no reason to believe he wouldn't surrender her for a reward.

  "That's what I told them to keep them from raping me," she said, a hard shiver going through her, bringing down the walls she'd managed to erect so that another followed, and another, like shock waves after an earthquake.

  "The bitch belongs to Jax," the bearded man said, grabbing hair at the back of her head, shaking her.

  She couldn't suppress a whimper as she tried to escape his touch.

  He jerked the stolen bandanna from his pocket and held it up. "She was wearing this."

  Josiah stood. The hand holding the gun dropped to his thigh. He stepped forward, his gaze moving from the bandanna to the man's face. "Did you tell anyone else who she is?"

  "No."

  "Good."

  The gun l
ifted.

  Fired.

  Swung to Eliana's right and fired again.

  She hugged herself, sparing only a glance at the dead men who lay on either side of her with holes punched into their chests.

  Josiah closed the distance between them, stopping in front of her. He smelled of gun powder and the soap the men behind the wall favored. But he had none of their softness.

  Like Jax, his was a primal power, the hard, raw masculinity of an apex predator who'd had to prove his dominance by a willingness to kill.

  She trembled. Hugged herself more tightly.

  He used the barrel of the gun to push the hair away from the side of her neck. His gaze dipped to the mark Jax had left on her throat.

  "Now let's try this again. Do you belong to Jax?"

  Chapter 7

  Eliana licked dry lips and Josiah's nostrils flared. A shimmer of heat went through his eyes and an answering shimmer went through her stomach, her body reacting to a dominant male, though it was Jax covering her, Jax inside her that flashed through her mind.

  "I was with him last night. That's all. Just the one time."

  Josiah's mouth lifted at the corner. "Just one time? That's all the stamina Jax had?"

  The warlord's men laughed and heat climbed up her neck. He touched the warm gun barrel to the mark Jax had left on her throat, used it to stroke over her skin in a way that was sensuous, as if the gun was so much a part of his hand that it was merely an extension of it.

  "My name is Josiah."

  "I know."

  His laugh was dark. "Are you playing games with me, mamacita?"

  Her voice emerged as a whispered, "No."

  "You dodged my question about Jax's stamina. I can shrug that off. I'm not a man who likes to think about a beautiful woman's past when I'm interested in her. But you didn't give me your name when I offered you mine."

  Dark eyes probed, pierced, warned that the man they belonged to was ruthless when it came to smashing through resistance and learning secrets.

  "Marie," she said, giving him her middle name.

  "Marie." He wet his lips. Tasted it. His eyes not leaving hers, he said, "DeAngelo, pay a visit to Jax. See if he's missing anything of value."

  "And if he is?" DeAngelo asked, though she didn't dare look away from the warlord to see who he was sending to Jax.

  "If he's missing something and wants it back, he comes in person to bargain."

  "How many guards?"

  Josiah drew the gun away from her throat. He moved it to his left hand and used his right to collar her neck.

  Her body reacted to the dominant hold, though her heart and mind rejected the possibility of seeking protection from this man by giving herself to him.

  Josiah's thumb rubbed the place where Jax's mouth and teeth had created streaks and waves of pleasure. Her nipples tightened with the memory of it, making her glad that her crossed arms hid the reaction.

  "How much does he want you back?" Josiah murmured.

  His voice held equal measures of heat and speculation but she didn't answer. She didn't have an answer, though a traitorous part of her wished she could tell him that Jax desperately wanted her back, and that his desperation had nothing to do with having learned how valuable she was to a man behind the wall.

  The cold reality of being pursued washed through her and obliterated the heat triggered by this warlord's dominance and the memory of another warlord's touch. She shivered beneath Josiah's palm.

  "If he wants to bargain for her," Josiah told his man, "he comes alone and he returns with you. No delays."

  "Unarmed?"

  Josiah laughed. "I'm not afraid of Jax. He can come for her with his gun."

  "Bring him here?"

  "No. We'll be at the house."

  Footsteps marked DeAngelo's leaving. The warlord looked to his right, at one of the men with a bandoleer of bullets. "Take over here, Saul."

  To the man standing a few feet away from Saul, he said, "Hector, you get trash duty."

  Hector grimaced. "At least you went for center mass. I fucking hate cleaning up bones and brains."

  Josiah's hand moved from Eliana's neck to her upper arm. He shackled her the same way Jax had the night before, when he'd claimed her in the aftermath of the fight.

  They left through a back door and entered a candlelit stairwell that only went down.

  At the end of the first flight of stairs, rubble had filled a doorway and been plastered over with mortar.

  They continued downward, reached another landing, this one with a metal door that had a keypad.

  Josiah urged her to keep going. At the bottom of the next flight of stairs, the weak candlelight disappeared into cavernous blackness. The air was cool and smelled slightly wet, like dampened earth.

  He took a stubby white candle from a basket of them sitting on the floor. Lighting it, he urged her forward.

  Their footsteps echoed through the space around them. The concrete beneath their feet was smooth and had traces of old yellow paint.

  They passed a wide, thick concrete pillar and it came to her that they must be in what had once been an underground parking garage.

  It was easy to imagine there were places like this in New San Jose, but instead of dark passageways, they had probably been turned into fortresses those in power could escape to if the warlords ever joined forces and tried to take the walled city.

  Reaching a metal door with a keypad next to it, Josiah blew out the candle. In a blackness deeper than night, his fingers moved over the keypad. The faint sound of metal being pressed and the tiny clicking inside the wall revealed that he'd touched nine numbers.

  A lock disengaged and he opened the door into another candlelit stairwell. They climbed three flights and exited into a sunlit plaza.

  Benches surrounded what had once been a fountain cascading into a small wishing pool. Trees had erupted through concrete and had survived where most of them had been cut down to become shelter or firewood when the warrens formed. Tall walls with razor sharp wire along the top turned the courtyard into a private refuge.

  The warlord aimed her away from the plaza and toward a wide, short staircase that led down to a sidewalk and an old street. On the opposite side of the street stood a pale blue Victorian-style house.

  It was tall and narrow, its face beautiful with large panes of glass and white, ornate woodwork around the windows. How it had survived the Final War and The Civilizing to be lovingly restored, Eliana didn't know, but she was glad it had.

  Josiah guided her across a street that was slowly cracking and crumbling. A dozen white stairs led up to a small porch and front door.

  Reaching the door, he twisted the knob and pushed it open. "Makayla!"

  Silence greeted his shout.

  They stepped into a beautifully furnished living room. "Makayla!"

  An older woman with steel-gray hair pulled into a severe bun emerged from a room at the end of the hallway. "She's probably in her room."

  "She better be in this house. Makayla!"

  A feminine voice came from down the hall and to the left. "I'm coming already. Where's the fire?"

  "It's going to be in your ass if you don't get down here."

  The old woman rolled eyes that turned chilly when they landed on Eliana. "Should I get a room ready for your guest?"

  Josiah laughed. "She won't need one if she stays."

  Eliana's heart rabbited into her throat to beat beneath her jaw. She forced it back into her chest with the memory of him killing her would-be rapists, by telling herself that Josiah wouldn't take her against her will.

  The old woman's gaze returned to his face. Her lips thinned. There was reprimand in her expression. "The boy needs a mother." Not a whore.

  I'm not one! Eliana shouted against the silent condemnation.

  "I'll decide what the boy needs," Josiah said, his voice sharply edged.

  Footsteps coming down stairs drew closer. Makayla emerged from the stairwell, and the resemblance to the war
lord was unmistakable. A younger sister maybe, or cousin only a year or so older than she was.

  Makayla was dressed in a full gold skirt that stopped between her knees and ankles. Her blouse was white with gold flowers embroidered along the collar.

  Her gaze snapped to Eliana and there was immediate hostility before her attention shifted to Josiah. "Now that you know I haven't escaped, can I go back to my room?"

  "You and Marie are the same size. Go get one of the dresses you love to complain about so she'll have something to wear after she bathes."

  A feeling of being deeply unclean filled her in a rush and Eliana had never wanted to bathe more than she did at that moment. The trembling returned. Glancing at his face she said, "Thank you," her voice emerging as little more than a shaky whisper.

  Josiah collared her neck beneath the fall of her hair; his thumb rubbed Jax's mark. "One way or the other, it'll be my pleasure."

  She pulled away from him, escaping the intimate touch, but only because he allowed it. If she'd met him first, given herself to him first—

  But she hadn't. It was Jax she wanted.

  "Take as much time in the bath as you want," Josiah said. "Rosa will show you to the tub."

  "The tub?" Rosa's voice was sharp.

  "The tub." His voice was silky heat, sensual promise and erotic threat. It was invitation and warning alike, that if Jax didn't arrive, he intended to seduce her.

  He grasped a strand of her hair and she froze, a rabbit caught in a snare. Josiah could make her want him. But she didn't want to want him. In the end, it'd be no different with him than it would be with Jax. He'd surrender her in a heartbeat to gain whatever reward was being offered for her return.

  She had to escape, had to. But for now her only choice was to wait until Josiah's man returned and told him Jax had laughed when he heard her claim that she belonged to him. He wouldn't come after her—

  Unless he'd learned of the reward and hoped Josiah hadn't.

  Her heart fluttered violently. Don't panic, she told herself. There's nothing to be gained in panicking.

  Josiah rubbed his thumb over the strand of hair he'd captured. "I think I'd enjoy drying and brushing it out, mami. But a sane man would wait to see what Jax has to say first."