Rise of the Rain Queen
Page 1
Table of Contents
Synopsis
What Reviewers Say About Fiona Zedde’s Work
By the Author
Part One Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Part Two Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
About the Author
Books Available from Bold Strokes Books
Synopsis
Nyandoro was born the favorite. As the only girl of her parents’ six children, she gets everything she wants without even asking for it. When the latest thing she desires is the wife of a village elder, she faces consequences she never had to before.
These consequences come with the dawn of a passion she didn’t know existed, a carnal feast of flesh she can’t get enough of. But on the night she gains the ultimate satisfaction from the woman she’d always wanted, she also loses every good thing she ever had. This loss takes Ny from the shelter of her family and home to the unknown wilds of a new world flush with ancient power, and into the arms of an old lover who has always been by her side.
What Reviewers Say About Fiona Zedde’s Work
“Zedde’s explicit erotic scenes keep no secrets, and her tender, masterful storytelling will keep readers spellbound and squirming.”—Publishers Weekly
“Fiona Zedde is a culinary artist with words, cooking up spicy, flavorful tales [to] satisfy the appetite of a malnourished audience.”—Washington Blade/Southern Voice
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Rise of the Rain
© 2016 By Fiona Zedde. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-593-0
This Electronic Book is published by
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, New York 12185
First Edition: July 2016
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editor: Cindy Cresap
Production Design: Susan Ramundo
Cover Design By Sheri (graphicartist2020@hotmail.com)
By the Author
Broken in Soft Places
Every Dark Desire
Desire at Dawn
Rise of the Rain Queen
Part One
Chapter One
Tanganyika Region, 1414
Duni walked ahead of Nyandoro as if she held the most delicate treasure between her thighs. Duni had a graceful and swaying walk that was almost like dancing, hips moving beneath the kanga cloth tied low on her waist while her yellow and green waist beads gleamed against her skin. That skin glowed with sweat from her walk in the hot sun. The dimpled small of her back caught and held Ny’s eyes as she imagined, not for the first time, fitting her hands there as she kissed the hollow of Duni’s throat.
With her four brothers, Nyandoro trailed behind Duni and the clutch of women winding their way through the center of the village on their way to the river. Her eyes were only focused on Duni. The early morning sunshine seemed to gather around Duni who walked in the midst of her sister wives, graceful and glowing with the thatched basket of clothes balanced on her head. She was the tallest of the wives and, in Ny’s opinion, the most beautiful with her smooth dark skin, high cheekbones, and perpetually sleepy eyes. Like she’d already seen all there was in the world and found it all boring. She wasn’t bored now, though. Leaning close to one of her sister wives, Duni laughed, her fingers fluttering up to cover the flash of white teeth. Ny felt the rippling of that joyous laughter down to her very toes.
Nyandoro couldn’t look away from her.
“You watch her any harder and she’s going to end up with a baby in her.” One of her brothers, Kizo, said with a low laugh. His thick hair, long and luxurious as a girl’s, lay heavily down his back.
“You do know that’s not how it happens, right?” Nyandoro shoved Kizo.
“What do you know about where babies come from?” Adli, one of the twins, asked, laughing at her too. “You still have the smell of Iya’s milk on your breath.” Like all the boys, he was tall and handsome, a copy of their father. He wore his hair the shortest of them all, telling anyone who cared to listen that it made the dimple in his chin, and the rest of his good looks, stand out more.
“Shut up!” Ny muttered.
She fell back with a pout, her brothers’ teasing make her blush and stumble on the smooth path. Ny was used to their teasing. She was small, like no one else in the family, her hips and breasts rounded and full in a way that often attracted stares from men and women alike, and drove her to tackle the hardest physical task, try for the most difficult kill during a hunt so no one could take her womanly shape and round, doll-like face for weakness. Her brothers remained merciless though.
Up ahead, Duni stopped laughing and nodded at something one of her sister wives said, a smile curving her lips. Then she looked over her shoulder. Ny stumbled again. This time she fell into Duni’s eyes that lingered on her, warm and thoughtful, for longer than a dozen heartbeats. Then Duni turned back around, not missing a single step. Ny’s heart thumped like a frightened rabbit in her chest and she tried to control her breathing. If not for moments like those, she told herself, her infatuation would have died long ago. But it had been two long seasons and she still felt foolish and breathless every time she saw Duni. Her want felt like the full-grown ache of a woman, not the uncertain desires of a child who had not yet seen her twentieth season.
In Jaguar Village where she and her family lived, the people were notoriously long-lived. One hundred and ten seasons was the average age of an elder. Because of that, the maturity of the young people officially came at twenty, much later than the fifteen and eighteen seasons Ny had heard of other villages not far from their seat at the edge of the forest. A few boys were impatient with that, eager to start their new lives with wives of their choosing. But Nyandoro was okay with waiting.
Aside from Duni, who was already married and, at twenty-five seasons, had already begun her own family, no one in the village caught her interest. And even when she visited other villages with her father on his diplomatic missions, none of the women there attracted her either, at least not enough to tempt her for something more than the physical. She’d found no one she would give up her life of hunting and brawling with her brothers for. No, she was okay with waiting until she reached her twenty seasons. Especially if Duni was to remain forever out of her reach.
Ny gripped her spear with a sweat-slick hand and stared at the slim form moving easily among the sister wives, a group of women who differed as much in age as they did in temperament. Ibada, husband to the women, was a greedy man with no discernable preference. All the women had in common was their beauty, though Ny would argue that Duni was the most beautiful, and the most interesting, of the wives.
“You have to be more subtle than that.” Kizo lightly gripped her shoulder, his palm hot and dry on her skin. “If her husband saw you looking at her that way, he would be the one hunting today, not you.”
But that was not all she wanted to do. Every night, she dreamed of other things, of touching and tasting and making Duni moan her name as they moved as one on the sleeping mat, naked and wet with desire. Although Duni was six seasons older, she wanted her with every ounce of her youthful passion and impulsiveness.
Kizo snorted. “If I looked at a woman that hard, she’d be pinned under my spear by nightfall.” He made an obscene gesture with his hips and their brothers laughed.
Ny punched him in the side. “You are not funny.”
She scowled at him although she knew he was right. She had no business panting after someone’s wife. After another quick look at Duni, she turned her back on the women and followed her brothers through the gates of the high stone wall surrounding their village.
In the surrounding forest, Ny and her brothers found plentiful game. Grunting bush pigs nosed through the underbrush while pythons slithered on high branches and monkeys screeched, flinging themselves from tree to tree. This was also the place where they found the freedom from the watchful eyes of everyone in the village. Even though her parents had taken great care to shield her from the malicious gossip, Ny knew the villagers thought she was strange. The sixth child of her parents, the only girl, and too pretty, some said, to be running wild without a husband lined up to rein her in so close to her coming of age. But she didn’t care what they thought. Her family—and her mother in particular who had lovingly spoiled her from day one—didn’t see anything wrong with her, and that was all that mattered.
She walked silently between her brothers, the five of them fanned out across the forest floor, talking quietly but also keeping an eye out for prey that could turn predator. Ny carried her spear easily in one hand, her gaze roving around her.
“But seriously, sister, you must be careful.” It was Hakim, the other twin, who spoke. “If not for your sake then for hers. You haven’t officially said you’re onek epanga, but everyone already knows you’d rather marry a woman. You can take a wife of your own but not someone else’s.” Like Adli, he was vain, but wore his hair big and wild around his face. He loved it when his women oiled his scalp and played in his hair.
Ny made a dismissive noise. Why did she have to make an official declaration of what was already obvious? That archaic system always seemed stupid to her. Her brothers didn’t have to stand in the middle of the village and tell everyone they preferred girls so why should she? Ny turned to Hakim. “I don’t want to take her. I want her to come to me freely.”
“We know you’re beautiful. We’re your brothers so, of course, you take after us.” Hakim grinned, but the humor did not reach his eyes. “But chasing after someone else’s wife is asking for trouble.”
“Even if she’s only a second wife and everyone knows he hasn’t bedded her in months.” Nitu, the gossip, shoved Ny lightly with his shoulder. He was the least handsome of her brothers, but attracted the most women because of his unusual eyes, one obsidian black and the other leaf brown. “He could divorce her and leave her with nothing if you take this any further than just looking.”
Ny’s brothers had had this conversation with her before, often when they caught her openly pining after Duni who seemed to barely know she existed. The girl was beautiful and seemed committed to her life as the second of six wives. But Ny said the same thing she always did: “I haven’t done anything.”
Kizo, the closest to her in age and her favorite, gave her a teasing look. “You boys are acting like virginal grandfathers. Ny’s not going to run off with Duni or anything that stupid. She’s young but hasn’t lost her mind.” His teeth clenched down on his chew stick.
“Are you so sure about that?” Hakim asked. “Her eyes look a little glazed. Sure signs of madness.”
“Bah!” Ny dismissed them with a wave of her hand, an affectation she picked up from her father. “Are we hunting or are we gossiping like children?” She aimed a pointed look at Nitu.
He thumped her between the shoulder blades, making her stumble. The others laughed.
The wind moved through the thick jacaranda trees, bringing the scent of far-off rain, jasmine from blooming flowers, the sweat of her brothers. Their mother had asked for a gazelle for the evening meal. Her brothers didn’t think they could find one so near birthing season, but Ny had made the promise without hesitation. Her mother didn’t often ask for something, but whatever she wanted, Ny would get.
She and her brothers broke through the thick forest to the wide plain that was little more than tall grass and sudden boulders, pale and massive, laid out under the sun. They clambered up to sit on one of those tall rocks, one overlooking the river that wound lazily around half the village before spilling south toward the sea. Although they hadn’t seen much of the world, Ny and her brothers agreed that their village was the most beautiful. They’d traveled with their father who sometimes filled the role of ambassador to nearby villages, and had seen no other equal to it.
Ny stretched back on the sun-warmed rock to stare up at the sky, Kizo at her side while Hakim and the others scouted from the trees high above. Kizo stuck his chew stick at the side of his mouth and belted out a raucous song about a boy from Arabia. Ny laughed as each verse grew more and more ridiculous. When the lyrics came to a close, she rolled over on the rock, laughing at him.
“You wish you would meet an Arab boy that flexible.”
Kizo laughed along with her. “Sure enough.”
Although, like her, he saw himself potentially ending up in an infertile marriage and marrying another man, he also enjoyed spending time with women. His brothers called him greedy and bet each other all the time that he would outgrow this phase and choose one or the other, just like Ny had done. Although, she never bothered to remind them, she had never liked both, had never found a man she wanted to enter into a marriage pact with, a boy to dive naked with her into the river.
“Do you ever wish you could travel to the lands you’re always singing about?” Her brother got his songs from the seafarers, men and women who’d traveled on giant boats to China and Arabia, even the barbaric white North Anglia.
“What would I do there except find some acrobatic boy to bend for my spear?” He shrugged, but it was an empty motion. “My whole life is here. Except for their amusing songs, I don’t have any interest in these other people.”
His light-filled eyes twinkled at her. Like their mother, Kizo rarely asked for what he wanted. Despite his words, Ny knew he longed to see the world, to travel to far off places just like her. When they were children and traveled with their father, they sometimes talked about letting their father return to the village while they continued the journey on, going to the East, maybe even to Pompeii as a cousin had done. But all that talk stopped as they grew older. Kizo knew his reality was to stay in the village. He had accepted it and allowed the dreams to die. But sometimes she wished the younger Kizo still existed, the one who believed in the impossible.
“If I could leave here, I would,” she said.
Kizo feathered the ragged end of his chew stick across his front teeth before sticking it back in his mouth, a regimen that was part of his obsession with keeping his teeth gleaming white and his breath fresh. “Even if Duni would agree to be yours?”
The thought of Duni being truly hers punched a breath from Ny’s chest. The nights they could spend making her wet-thighed fantasies come true. The love they would share, maybe even a love as deep as the one her parents enjoyed.
She turned to Kizo, shocked into giddy laughter with the images rampaging through her mind. “Well, maybe I wouldn’t have to make a choice.”
“There are always choices to be made, little sister.” The chew stick dipped between his lips as he spoke. “Never forget that.”
A sharp whistle cut through the air and Ny looked up and up to see Nitu high in the tree above them waving in their direction then pointing. He’d spotted game for the kill. She jerked upright on the rock
, her pulse pounding with eagerness in her throat.
“Let’s go.” She grabbed her spear and nudged Kizo.
They waited for Nitu and the others to clamber down from the tree before making their way through the high grass to a small herd of resting gazelles. The animals were beautiful and sleek, soft-looking in the sunlight with their graceful legs and slender throats. The nearly waist-high grass rippled gold in the breeze around them.
One heavily pregnant female rested beneath a flowering tree. The thick white blooms drooped low above her head while another female stood nearby with a newborn foal. A male wandered farther from them, his horns long and beautiful, dark against his golden brown face as he nibbled at the grass at his feet. He was the perfect size, but was too far for Ny to bring down. She looked at the females again, a tightness in the back of her throat. They were so beautiful, it seemed sinful to roust them from their rest.
“Is your womanly softness giving you second thoughts, sister?”
Adli whispered from her right. She hadn’t heard him come closer, but she kept her eyes on the prey. When his question came, she made her decision. “Is yours, brother?”
Ny hefted her spear and struck. The male gazelle cried out as he fell, blade buried in his flank, blood blooming on the pale brown pelt. Not a killing blow. The male jumped up, a mooing cry, and hobbled into a run with Ny’s spear still stuck in him. His struggle was pitiful, but it gave the resting females the chance to escape. And they took it, darting quickly across the high grass despite the wobbling newborn and pregnant foal.
But Ny didn’t watch them for long. Quickly, she yanked her knife from her belt and ran toward the wounded gazelle. The blood pumped in her ears, feet pounded across the hard ground, the smell of trampled grass and fresh blood rising swift and fresh. The buck’s screams scraped the air.