DarykRogue

by Denise A. Agnew

  “How is that different than any other time we’re there?” Rayder tried to look bored and unconcerned.

  “It isn’t, but I have to remind you every time.” Aramus walked toward him slowly, his eyes cold as a glacier. “You forget that I know you well, Daryk One. You are stronger than me. Younger. You hope to take over this ship one day. Perhaps if you follow in my footsteps and learn from me, you’ll inherit my wealth and legacy. Until that time, you’re still my second-in-command. Second. I’ve seen how you pretend deference to Drakus. But that’s all it is. Pretend. You want to string him from the highest tree in the Tarrian jungle.”

  You along with him, you dung eater.

  Rayder wrapped his right hand around the hilt of his sword. He gripped it tightly, wanting more than anything to separate this man’s head from his shoulders. “As you wish, Admiral. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must tend to my betrothed.”

  Aramus inclined his head. “Indeed. I wish you much joy of her.”

  “Sir.” Rayder turned away before he put thought to action and told the admiral where he could shove his joy.

  * * * * *

  Xandra stood at one of the portholes in Rayder’s chambers and stared out at the churning ocean, remembering too much. Far too much about her recent past.

  Blood. Her hands were covered in blood. Her brother was dead. Slaughtered. Stabbed so many times she couldn’t tell where one wound ended and another began. Her brother Durand’s sandy hair, long and thick, lay across his forehead awash in red. His eyes were closed, his face so peaceful. How could he be in peace? How when her heart twisted, her mind skittering with questions, wanting answers, needing to escape this horror. Her father and mother lay close by, their lives cut short by the same horrible wounds.

  She gasped in horror at the memory.

  The cabin door opened quickly and she whirled around, a startled scream on her lips.

  “Easy, my beauty. You’re still safe.” Mocking humor touched Rayder’s eyes as he closed the door and strode toward her. “All this screaming and the men outside will think I’m fucking the hells out of you.”

  His rough words made her flinch, but they also made her blood rush in a very disturbing way. “You are a rogue and a—”

  “A rogue. Yes, that’s true.” His teasing expression disappeared as he walked to his desk. “You are trembling. Are you ill?”

  Still shaking, Xandra smoothed her hands over her face. “No. Bad memories.”

  “Don’t blame you. A wave like that comes along only once in awhile. You were in the wrong place when it decided to appear.”

  Thunder rolled, and she started. Xandra wouldn’t reveal the full content of her dream. No one could know what happened back home. If they did… “A storm is coming?”

  He fiddled with papers on his desk. “Looks like it.”

  She closed her eyes and saw the wave coming toward the ship again, the top so high it was almost too far up to see. She jerked back to awareness, her mind filled with images she didn’t want to see ever again. “We can’t be here if another wave decides to form. We’ll be taken under like my ship.”

  She recalled holding onto Mia and Ketera as the water came down upon them.

  “We’re heading away from it, back toward Dragonia.” His voice was unconcerned. “Besides, this ship is at least five times bigger than the one you were on. It’ll take a lot more than a wave thirty feet high to take us out.”

  She shuddered. “Your admiral thinks this ship is invincible?”

  “Yes, and he is too.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “No, but it’s what he thinks, and on this ship, he’s the law. We have to do whatever he says, whenever he says it.”

  “Are we going to Dragonia for a special reason?” She left the porthole. “To sell more slaves?”

  He spared her an emotionless glance. “Of course. It is what we do”

  Asking the next question took everything she had. “Are you going to sell me?”

  Rayder turned his back to her. “I should.”

  Too many emotions warred for a place with Xandra, chief among them fury and fear. Anger won this time. “I would expect no less from you.”

  He grunted, evidently not the least affronted. “Just as well. Before the day is over, you’ll hate me more than you already do.”

  Apprehension made her stomach sour. “Why?”

  “The admiral has decreed that I shall marry you.”

  No. She couldn’t have heard him right. She laughed feebly. “Your sense of humor is severely faulted.”

  “Do you hear me laughing? He thinks we are mates, and on this ship, there are rules. We do not keep a woman in our quarters without being married to her. If she is just here temporarily to fuck us, we must fuck her and then send her back to the slave quarters belowdecks.”

  She threw him a contemptuous look. “That is disgusting.”

  “It is how things are done here. You are lucky I haven’t fucked you and sent you belowdecks.”

  Resentment and pure disbelief hollowed her belly, which already ached from hunger. She wanted to hit him with the nearest blunt object. With his back to her, he was vulnerable. She could clonk him over the head with a huge book sitting on the bedside table and try to escape. But that would be silliness. She had nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. No, she’d wait until they reached Dragonia and find a way to escape.

  He turned toward her, and his assessing gaze didn’t soften. His hands went to his hips. “I realize this is a shock, but it has to be done. We’ll marry on the ship and it can be forgotten later. I have no desire to be saddled with a whiny wife.”

  “No. I won’t do it,” she said softly.

  Impatience slipped over his face. “Your husband is dead, so you are free to marry again. You’ll marry me or you’ll be thrown overboard. It’s the way this ship runs. The admiral’s wife will bring a dress, and a tub is being brought so you can wash. I’ll have food sent in. You must be famished.”

  Famished or not, she wouldn’t let this situation grow. “I am not chattel despite Magonian’s idea of marriage or Dragonian’s idea of marriage. I won’t be married off again. I just ran from—”

  “You will be married. Tomorrow morning. To me.” He turned on her, his eyes darker than the storm threatening nearby. He stalked toward her and only stopped when he came within a few inches of her. “You have no choices here.”

  Thought she wasn’t a short woman, he was easily over six feet tall, and he intimidated her with ease. She hated that, but what could she do? “You may force me to marry you, but I will not have intimate relations with you.”

  One corner of his mouth tilted in a sneer. “Intimate relations? Is that what they call it in Magonia? We don’t have pretty names for the basics, my beauty.”

  “I would expect not.” She titled her nose upward and glared. “My people are significantly more refined than yours from what I’ve been able to tell.”

  Burning indignation in his eyes didn’t alter one degree. “Is that so? And how many Dragonians have you met?”

  He had her there, but she’d be damned to Magon if he’d have one up on her with this argument. “You and the other ruffians who attacked me outside the cabin.”

  As he took another step toward her, she stumbled back, bumping into the wall behind her. His gaze held hers and wouldn’t let go.

  “You count me as one of those scum?” Rayder’s voice held low menace.

  “Of course. I’m your prisoner, and you plan to marry me against my will. I won’t do that again—” She cut herself off.

  Curiosity remained in those dark-as-sin eyes. His nearness already made her so nervous she could barely think straight. “I can see you didn’t love him. Or even admire the man.”

  Her stomach curled. “No.” Fresh agitation made her say with great feeling, “In fact, I hated the ground he walked on.”

  Rayder’s eyebrows slid upward. “Hate is a strong thing.”

  “He deserved it.”


  Tilting his head to the side, he spoke softly. “I understand hate.”

  Introspection filled his eyes, and curiosity almost made her ask him to explain. However, when he turned his gaze toward hers, she lost whatever she meant to say in the strength of his attention.

  His chest brushed her breasts, and the pressure shocked her. Her nipples tingled, and her lips parted in surprise. A man had never stood this close to her before and had this effect—and she couldn’t count the hugs from her brother as one sibling to another. Her father, well, her father had never hugged her. No, this feeling came from an entirely different place, boiling up hazardous sensations and feelings she didn’t dare examine closely. His clean breath puffed over her face, his scent not dirty as she expected but a heady mixture of man she also hadn’t encountered before this moment. Something was different. Very different about the way he looked at her, as if she’d challenged him one too many times and would now pay the ultimate price. It wasn’t aggression she saw in his eyes so much as it was a desire to possess. A desire to consume. Taste. The intensity was startling.

  When he placed his right hand on the wall next to her head, she flinched.

  “We have a religious man. He’ll do the ceremony for us and it will be legal even within Dragonia. As for sex, we’ll see about that,” he said.

  His gaze caressed her mouth and traveled downward. Like a caress, his touch brought fire to her body, a need for something she’d never understood before. Her breathing quickened as she absorbed his admiration. As he brushed a soft touch over her cheek and tilted her chin upward, her lips parted. He moved closer, almost touching her. His mouth brushed over her forehead, her nose, and drifted over her cheek where he found her ear. He twirled his tongue around the lobe.

  “Oh.” She gasped and shivered, the sensation shocking and thrilling.

  Taris hadn’t tried to seduce her into sex their wedding night. He’d tossed her on the bed, yanked her dress up and attempted sex.

  Attempted.

  Taris had never kissed her before they married. Even then, his kisses and fumbling touches had revolted her. This…this was entirely different.

  As his hands tested her, trailing along her sides to tease so near her breasts, she moaned softly. His breath was hot as he lingered along her neck, his touches soft and so tender her entire thought process dissolved under his attention.

  Feathering his lips over her throat, he groaned low in his throat. “You taste like sin, my beauty.”

  By the god Magon. No man had ever said that to her. No man had ever touched her this way or spoken so boldly and gently to her. Emotions tumbled over themselves as she tried to right her world. Terrified she was losing control, she considered shoving him away, calling him every kind of blackguard imaginable.

  Until he found her mouth. A warm, sweet kiss plied and teased her senses. Surprised, she started to push him away. Hard, immovable muscles defied her to budge him. An involuntary and instinctive desire demanded she explore carved pectorals and male nipples. He stroked deep, his mouth moving over hers in an intimate caress that startled her down to the roots. Earlier his tongue had taken her mouth, and yet in the privacy of this room the familiarity promised to seduce her senses into a reckless fashion. What threw her the most was his tender consideration. From his earlier fierceness and attitude, she’d expected a violent ravishing. Unguarded, she allowed him to plunder and stroke until she joined him in the chase. Tentatively her tongue moved, brushed his, tangled and stroked. Wild feelings coursed through her, starting a fire low in her belly and an ache between her legs. She wanted writhe and twist, to escape these treacherous sensations as much as she wanted relief from them.

  A low moan left his throat. A growl that expressed pure male need and intention. He hauled her against him, one arm around her waist, the other buried in her hair as his mouth twisted over hers to discover another fit. This, this was the animal inside him and she expected it, but even then he didn’t hurt her. He simply took and took and gave and gave. Heat spread over her body as he kissed her, his touch tracing over her back and caressing in slow sweeping movements over her hips. He gripped her butt cheeks and lifted her until the thick evidence of his arousal pressed between her thighs. She tore her mouth from his and gasped, startled and shocked.

  Undeniable lust filled his eyes. His nostrils flared, his lips parted. “You can stop pretending you don’t feel something. Your little nipples are burning holes in me, my beauty. Your tongue mated with mine.”

  His shocking words made her mouth fall open again. “You’re a cad.”

  He snorted softly. “I’m worse than that. Can’t you feel it?”

  The hardness between his thighs stirred an answering response low in her belly, ravaging her with hungry wanting that demanded she press closer, to give in to whatever he asked. “I know that you aren’t a gentleman. That you can’t restrain your animal urges. My mother warned me about men like you. You’re just like my dead husband.”

  Laughter shone through the heat in his eyes. “I doubt that. But what did she tell you? That a sexually aroused man grows horns at night and flies dragons? I know a slaver who tames dragons but even he doesn’t fly them.” His fingers tangled in her hair, and he angled her head so she couldn’t avoid looking him straight in the eye. “Or maybe she told you there are men who will do and say anything to strip you of your clothes. To strip you of dignity and integrity. Is that what she told you?”

  Startled by the passion in his question, she stared at him a long time before answering. “She said men were beasts. That they used fallen women for their pleasures until they married. When they’re married, they are bound by law to have…sex with their wife. That I wasn’t to have these relations until I married. Then…when I found out what those relations were…” She curled her lip in disgust.

  “She didn’t tell you what those relations were, did she?”

  Damn him for knowing. “No. But I’ve read things and imagine they involve some of the things we’ve…just done. My husband wasn’t much for kissing.”

  “Don’t fool yourself.” His voice turned even deeper and huskier. “What you experienced with your husband wasn’t sex. What you experience with me…that will be sex.”

  Rayder’s arrogance made her mouth drop open—she wanted to say something cutting and equally snide. Instead, heat continued to pour into her belly and between her legs as she imagined sex that wasn’t halfhearted. That wasn’t demeaning and ugly.

  “Your arrogance is astonishing,” was all she could come up with.

  “I don’t have to be arrogant, Xandra. What churns between us is evidence enough for me. When we come together, when we fuck, the damn ocean is going to boil.”

  Huh. Little did this man know. She hadn’t experienced real sex with her husband. At least not what she understood of sex. The Chronicles of Magon were right. Sex was for procreation. Nothing to become enamored of at any rate.

  Her hands smoothed upward over his chest, tweaking his nipples by accident. He drew in a quick breath. “Don’t do that, my beauty. You’ll make me want you even more.”

  Thunder rumbled outside, the ominous sound filling her with dread. Right now she needed distraction from the storm gathering nearby. “Why do you call me that? My beauty?”

  His gaze traveled up and down, assessing without any pretension at hiding that he liked what he saw. “No one’s told you how pretty you are?”

  “Never. I’m…not.”

  He cupped her face. “What imbeciles the men must be on your continent. Your hair is a wild mess of tangled red and gold. I think it matches your temper.”

  She bristled. “My hair is my hair, not my temper. Decorum, common sense, intelligence and decency are not imbecilic.”

  He grunted, his thumbs brushing her cheeks. “Decency, eh? What is that exactly? Emotionless, loveless? A boring existence? I want none of it.”

  Her lips parted, ready with a retort. “Marriage and coupling are for the making of children. For humanity to go on.�
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  He grunted. “I can agree with that.” His voice was husky, thick with emotion. “You hate the man you married. This man Taris Elian? And yet you didn’t have children?”

  A burn, this one not pleasant, started in her stomach. She didn’t want to think about children, about the horrible sacrifice she’d had to make. “No. I wasn’t married long enough for that.”

  Something new and dangerous flooded his eyes. “If he isn’t dead and comes looking for you eventually, I shall have to kill him.”

  Marriage. I can’t marry him. Or anyone else ever again. Fear returned, lashing at her like a whip. “He drowned. He must have.”

  He grunted. “Perhaps.”

  Perhaps? There could be no perhaps. Fear rushed and throbbed inside her. If Taris was still out there, her apprehension would continue, the creeping, crawling feeling that meant she still needed to run. To hide.

  With Rayder, her needs and feelings entwined with her confusion about his intentions. She knew if she didn’t act now, he’d push this forbidden liaison an inch further. Perhaps more. Thrills danced up and down her body as she absorbed the sensation of his body against hers, every warm, strong, incredible inch. She shouldn’t feel this way. She shouldn’t want more of something that didn’t exist. Cravings assaulted Xandra and demanded she take that step, to allow him access to taste and touch and do so much more.

  She nudged his chest, pressing with her palms and forced strength into her voice. “Let me go.”

  A knock on the door startled her, and she pulled from his arms. Without a word he crossed to the door. When he opened it, two men stood there with a huge bathing tub and another with a tray laden with fruit, drink and some sort of meat.

  “You wanted this here, Captain Tyrus?” one brawny guy carrying the tub asked.

  Rayder threw a smile her way. “It’s for my bride-to-be. Bring it inside.”

  The men struggled with the tub, and two women who must be slaves brought in bucket after bucket of heated water to pour into the tub. This was a luxury her passenger ship hadn’t provided, and she hadn’t felt the relaxing pleasure since she left Magonia.