by Vi Voxley
If he had it made like this just to ogle at me, I’m going to throw a tantrum, she promised. Tomorrow. Right then she only wanted to sleep. She folded her clothes neatly, took a deep breath and went back to the bedroom.
And then she found out exactly why Iloya kept drooling over the warriors. It wasn’t simply because she liked them. It was also the only adequate reaction, apparently.
She’d only ever been with two men. Both of them had been as young as her at the time. And Miren was of course in pretty good shape even back then, being a warrior in the making. But they had still been boys. Faren was a man.
And what a man. Despite herself, and completely in spite of her sleepiness, Leiya froze in the doorway. Faren was stripped out of his armor, and the sight of him really, really tested Leiya’s character.
She had to wonder if having spent her whole life avoiding seeing warriors was biting her in the ass right about then. Faren was built like a god, if there were a model for them. A teasing thought came to Leiya that maybe gods were built like him. His strong, toned body made her mouth water. She had to bite the inside of her mouth not to be caught staring, but she already was.
Her eyes refused to cut her any slack, roaming over the ridges and the lean, hard muscles of his chest. Before, over his shoulder, Leiya had thought about how his body seemed tense under hers, but that was just the way it really was. When he moved just a bit, she could see his muscles flexing in the dim light of his valor squares.
Gulp.
Oh good gods, please make it so he didn’t hear that.
But of course the gods continued their streak of showing her absolutely no mercy. Faren’s stormy, flashing eyes suddenly held hers, and there was a spark dancing in them. Telling her that she’d been very much caught staring. She pouted and looked away, even if it took a considerable feat of will.
Out of the corner of her eye, however, she caught sight of his erection. In her daze, she’d forgotten her own clothing. Or, more precisely, the very near lack of it. Only a thin shirt covered her naked body, and it did absolutely nothing to conceal anything. Her nipples were hard, poking out from under the shirt’s surface. If she’d been admiring Faren’s body, there was no doubt he was doing the same to her.
She jumped under the covers as fast as she could, eyes wide in mute shock.
That better be a knife or something hidden inside his pants. Maybe he sleeps with a weapon? Because if that was his cock, gods help me.
Leiya knew that was a fool’s hope. One glimpse had told her everything she needed to know about her gerion, and honestly more than she’d wanted to know. So there really was no reason for her mouth to still be watering. She dragged the linens up to her chin, cursing her body for being so out of sync with her mind. It was very clear what her body wanted to do to Faren. All night long, and may sleep be damned.
She turned her back to him, burying her face in the pillow and gathering the sheets around her. If she didn’t see him, maybe she’d be able to forget the godlike body and get to sleep. And then in the morning she might be an actual person and not drool over the Monster of Briolina.
Talking about fool’s hopes…
Faren climbed into the bed next to her. As he’d promised, he made no attempt to touch her. In fact, he was maddeningly close without there being any contact between them. A whine escaped Leiya’s throat before she could catch it off the tip of her tongue.
No, she told her body. Absolutely not. We will not whine for Faren!
Oh, but she wanted to. Wanted to do a lot more than whine. Wanted to scream her voice hoarse, riding that magnificent cock until she couldn’t feel her legs anymore.
Wha…
So much for the good girl image. Leiya was so surprised at herself she could barely believe those words were forming in her mind. She bit into the pillow to smother the maniacal laugh that rose up from her chest. Life was fucking with her in a way she hadn’t considered possible.
While Faren remained perfectly still, a horrible two inches away from her, Leiya’s whole body shook. She knew how keen the senses of the warriors were. For the first time since she’d found out she was the general’s gesha, Leiya was thankful. Faren wasn’t the type of person to rub her face in it.
But there it was. A whole life of avoiding certain things and welcoming others was catching up with her, driving her nearly out of her mind.
Her friends had sometimes, politely and non-intrusively, hinted that she might want to practice. There were plenty of takers. Leiya had been a young star who grew into a big star. Men had been fawning over her since as long as she could remember. When she’d been younger, the fear of her father doing something bad to them had kept her back. Then, modesty.
She tried sex out once or twice – exactly twice, gods be damned. And they were both boys. In truth, they’d left her unfinished. She supposed it felt nice, but an okay kind of nice. The passion, the burning that others talked about was completely unfamiliar to her. So her lack of experience was one problem.
The other was her audience. When you were a star known for liking stories, you couldn’t really control the material that was sent to you. Leiya was always very mindful of her duties to her fans, even if they were self-appointed duties. And one of them was that if she’d asked for stories, she’d also read them. So she did. All of them, as much as she could. And there were many.
The ones that made it into songs were the nice ones, the heart-lifting or heart-breaking ones. Songs that people could listen to and feel better for the experience. Those that inspired, even if they didn’t always inspire happiness. Sadness was a necessary emotion too.
Among the ones Leiya discarded were the dirty ones. Of course she got a lot of fan-mail. Men desired her, men fantasized about her. They weren’t even all bad. Some people took her invitation to send her true, raw emotions very literally. So they described their experiences with their fated, and what was a rawer emotion than the binding.
The first time Leiya had read one of those had been when she was almost too young to understand what they were talking about. That might have played a small part in why she later treated sex as she did, but that was a sob story for another night. The more pressing one was that the images had stuck with her despite her best intentions and so had the words.
And now, with the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen lying a touch away from her, Leiya’s long-ignored needs were rushing her. It nearly made her dizzy, but it was nothing compared to the throbbing between her thighs. She couldn’t remember being that wet in her life.
It was the temptation, the curse of every good love story. Faren was her gerion. At a whiff of her interest, he’d give her everything she desired. And Leiya didn’t doubt for one second that the general was experienced. Didn’t they say it was a common custom for the warriors to fuck after battle? With all those emotions still pounding in their blood? And Faren was a handsome man, even her pacifist friends couldn’t deny that. How could any woman refuse him?
Every inch of her suddenly ached. She’d thought herself better than that, but the day kept proving her wrong.
Images flooded her mind. Most of them were of him, looking as he had when she’d stepped in. His hard, strong body standing in the light of his valor squares. The strength of him so obvious as to be nearly palpable, the way his muscles kept flexing as he breathed calmly. She’d also caught the very silent hitch in his breathing when he’d seen her.
Oh gods, help me…
And his gorgeous, stormy eyes. Leiya wanted to see that storm turned to her but have it rage for her pleasure. She couldn’t even imagine what Faren might look like in passion, but she wanted to know that more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life.
She rubbed her legs together, past the point of caring whether Faren knew what she was doing or not. The friction on her clit was so torturously good that she nearly cried out. All the stories she’d been sent were like bullets in her brain, destroying her resolve one after another. She couldn’t deny that with an imagination as g
ood as hers, she’d imagined what the people in the stories might have looked like. Only now, in her mind’s eye, they were replaced. Now it was her and Faren, writhing together the first time as a fated couple.
It was destined to happen anyway, wasn’t it? So why not now, why couldn’t she just turn around, and reach out, and run her hand across his broad, ripped back? Feel the way his body would shiver under her touch?
She’d been curious as to whether sex could really be as good as all those stories said, but now it was a hunger. A hunger to feel how good it would be if the general thrust himself in to the hilt, stretching her wide – his thick, hard cock rubbing against the walls of her pussy. Leiya bit deeper into the pillow remembering how some claimed to have shivered merely from the touch of a tongue against their breasts.
Or how a gerion’s voice alone, whispering in their ear, could take down every defense they ever thought they had. She’d heard Faren’s voice drop low, but it hadn’t occurred to her to think of it in passion. Would it be arousing then instead of terrifying?
To be honest, Leiya could no longer properly distinguish between her emotions. She was still afraid, terribly afraid, but the hunger was eating up the fear. She wanted to feel the general’s power unleashed on her, to be pressed against the bed, held tightly against his body. To arch and moan beneath his thrusts, to have him take her so deeply she could feel every inch of him, to have him come inside her and feel the heat of it.
She’d missed the moment her shivering had become full-blown shaking. The slight movement behind her shocked her out of the daze she was still in, her orgasm so close she could taste it. And her legs still didn’t stop moving, rubbing together, making her tremble.
“I could make you bite straight through the pillow,” was all Faren said, but that was enough to make Leiya whimper.
The trouble was that she didn’t doubt he could. She pressed her eyes shut, dragging her nails across the sheets in helpless frustration. Everything she was screamed “yes”, and everything she wanted to be was yelling “no”. It took tremendous willpower to stay silent, considering her body was trembling head to toe with need, brought back from the brink, but she didn’t say anything.
Faren made no comment on that. After minutes of trying to rediscover the reason she was fighting him so hard, Leiya finally fell asleep. The last thing she was aware of was feeling the unwelcome pain of regret.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Leiya
Leiya woke up to a myriad of emotions.
Most of them were aftermath from the night before, unfortunately. There was the regret, still fresh and vivid in her mind. Her body was physically rested, but hungered for Faren more than ever. Maybe it would have been better to finish so as not to wake with the need she’d left unresolved the night before.
Oh well, regrets of the past. And then there was the disappointment, also still pressing against her mind. Had she become the girl she’d promised she would never be? Had she forsaken all her principles for a set of pretty eyes? Gods no.
Speaking of gods, if they were so intent on keeping testing her – bring it on! Without Faren beside her in bed, Leiya felt that her resolve was stronger. She’d keep fighting. He wouldn’t force her, would he?
Brion customs were weird about that. The fated couples usually ended up together, not because the geshas were given no choice, but because most of them gave in. All of them, in fact, although Leiya had heard from here and there that it wasn’t so black and white. It made sense, since sometimes the bindings took a long time to happen. A gesha simply kept saying no, and it was anathema to the Brions to force someone into a relationship they didn’t want.
Apparently that didn’t entail carrying someone off and making them sleep in a bed they didn’t wish to be in, but… still. Faren had not touched her in that way, even when she’d been tucked over his shoulder like a trophy. And she’d seen the proof of his arousal and his need for her the night before. So it was pretty safe to say the general would honor that custom, at least.
So all she had to do was hold out, right? After a time, maybe Faren would realize she didn’t want him. Maybe she should talk to a healer about this. After the Rhea events when the Elders had admitted to hiding the harvest planet from the Brions, other things had begun to surface.
Apparently there were some truths that just weren’t thought safe to be released to the public. Leiya was a very famous person, and probably more rumors made their way to her than to any other, excepting maybe the senators. There were whispers that bindings actually weren’t completely set in stone. That there had been cases in which the couple denied the bond between them.
If that was true, they were definitely one. After all, the whole affair seemed like a great joke. Briolina’s young star and the most horrible general the Brions had ever released into the galaxy. In Leiya’s mind, she’d always found the twins more terrifying than Diego Grothan.
She knew he was a better fighter – the best, really. But from what she’d heard and seen, especially during the Rhea dispute, was that he could be reasoned with. He was a purebred warrior, but he was at least someone she could understand. No one had understood the twins.
Under the anger still boiling in her heart and the regret her body was feeling, Leiya’s mind was surprisingly calm. She’d expected that waking up in Faren’s room would be terrible, but she felt peculiarly safe. Like it was where she belonged. It wasn't as unwelcome a thought as she might have wanted.
Up to the point where she stepped into the central room and found the beast that crept in the shadows waiting for her.
She jumped a good solid ten inches into the air, or so it seemed. And the shocked yelp had also definitely come from her lips. It was getting ridiculous.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” the thing said.
What was his name? Raten? Rawen? Roven.
“No, no,” Leiya said.
Her good girl image she dearly loved had taken a severe hit the night before when she’d almost crawled into Faren’s powerful, welcoming arms… No. She refused to think of that further. She had to be herself again.
The binding was messing up everything she thought she knew about herself. Above all else, Leiya refused to acknowledge the creeping feeling of finally getting closer to being who she was. She didn't want Faren to be the reason for that. She didn't want Faren to have anything to do with her.
“I’m sorry. I keep screaming apparently. It’s just that…”
She didn’t know how to phrase it delicately.
“I know how I look,” the thing helped.
“Sorry,” Leiya said. “I’m not trying to offend you. It’s just really dark here usually, and you really spooked me. Please don't be offended..”
Great phrasing.
“You look so horrible I can’t stop screaming when I see you, but hey, don’t take this the wrong way.”
The warrior nodded.
“I'm not. Is there anything you need?”
Um. Was there anything she needed? Honestly, Leiya didn’t know. The first day aboard the Unbroken hadn’t, overall, been as bad as she’d expected. It sounded weird to think so, when she’d been kidnapped from her home, but she’d feared much worse. She’d been afraid Faren would hurt her, she’d feared her saying no would offend him and he’d seek revenge. She’d even feared that he’d drink his usual cup of blood as they said before going to sleep.
Well, that was one nonsense rumor debunked. What else was there?
Basically, her mind commented dryly. What you’re saying is that he dragged you to his ship and refuses to let you go… but it’s okay, because at least it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. Great going.
Fine. Yes. Of course she wanted off the ship. Definitely. Leiya shook her head clear. Of course she wanted to go home and to make it to her concerts. Only a part of her was making arguments that life with Faren might not have been the worst that could have happened to her. She didn’t want to listen to that part or admit to any reason in its arguments.
She belonged on Briolina. That was it. All that mattered was getting there and hiding. Not thinking of where she might put all her things in the rooms that Faren had promised her.
“Where is Fa… where is the General?” she asked.
“Training, as usual,” Roven said.
He really didn’t seem upset at her initial reaction. Leiya wondered if that was because people had reacted similarly before and he was used to it? What a terrible thing to get used to…
“I would like to see him, please,” she said.
It was a whole new day. Maybe he’d be more inclined to listen to reason now. Perhaps even Faren panicked. His abduction of her had been a very sudden event. It made sense for him to fear for her. So, now that he’d had a rest, he might be more open to listening to her arguments. She did have concerts, after all. He couldn’t go around planning her life for her.
Roven was looking at her oddly, though.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
Why would she not be sure?
“Yes,” she said.
Reminding herself that he was assigned to protect her and this was the Unbroken, where everything functioned by Faren's command, she repeated,
“Take me to him.”
It worked like magic. Roven straightened up immediately and nodded.
“As you wish. Follow me.”
Oh damn, Leiya thought when they stepped into the pitch black corridor. Playing hide and seek again. At least I have the spookiest player with me already.
“Do these corridors even have lights?” she asked.
Roven hesitated, offering her his arm for support. Hesitantly, she took it.
“You know,” the warrior said. “I’m not entirely sure. I’ve never seen them lit, at least.”
Oh, wonderful.
Their trip to the arenas was quite interesting to Leiya. She found herself planning escape routes and doing some interior decorating at the same time. It seemed that the two parts in her were now in open war with each other, and she didn’t seem to be able to silence either of them.