Conquest (2 page)

“Yes.”

“You are studying food productions. And new medicines.”

She nodded. Her work was exciting to her. It had become her life, the focus of her energy, throughout her dreadful marriage.

“Still, though I am here, and though we spoke words at a mating ceremony, you have not yet shared your knowledge with us.”

“I want to,” she answered in a small voice. “The Guardians must approve it.”

“Will they allow me to learn to be an engineer? I want to build dams that will harness the power of our rivers.”

“Yes,” she whispered. They had instructed her to tell him what he wanted to hear, but really, she wasn’t sure how much they would let him learn. The Guardians, perhaps of necessity, perhaps out of desperation in their battle to survive, had become secretive and, she suspected, devious. In the first months on Jalar, when it looked as if the natives might wipe them out, the colonists had given up their freedom to the military leaders who made decisions for the good of the colony. Those leaders had become the Council of Guardians, and the Guardians still controlled the colonists’ lives. She truly didn’t know how far the present regime intended to go in honoring their agreement with the Jalarans.

“It will not be a one-way exchange of information,” Rohan said, excitement sparking his voice. “There are things we could teach you about how to live on this world. I have knowledge of plants that I will show you. And I can teach you how to get more light from the Iannar stones.”

Her eyes widened. “The stones can give more light?”

“Yes. If we cooperate, both of our races will benefit.”

“You believe that?”

“I know my people will be better for it.”

“And you and me?” she found the courage to whisper.

He gave her a direct look. “I pledged myself to you in a ceremony of your ancestors. I promised to protect you and to stand by you. I would not dishonor that vow.”

She had thought of him as a savage, but no savage would speak of honoring vows. He had taken the ceremony seriously. She was the one who had been simply mouthing words.

“I will be your true mate. Your husband, you call it.”

She felt a shiver cross her skin as she remembered that he was not in her bedroom for mere conversation.

“When I speak of mating, you are afraid.”

She sat with her hands clenched in her lap, her head bow0ed as she cast him a quick sideways glance. “I won’t fight you.”

He frowned, and the action accentuated the bony ridges in his high forehead. “Fighting is for the battlefield, not the bedroom,” he said in his smooth, deep voice. “Mating should bring pleasure to both a man and his woman. A warrior who cannot satisfy his mate is as scorned as a coward who runs from the enemy.”

She raised her head, tried to read his face. “Truly?”

“I told you I would never lie to you. You must learn to trust me.”

Could she? It seemed a terrible risk, emotionally as well as physically. He was large and strong, and if he chose, he could hurt her worse than she had ever been hurt. Yet he would possess her body, whether she liked it or not. If she did as he suggested, it would be easier for her.

“I will try to trust you,” she whispered, meaning it. Something inside her, some spark of intuition, made her wonder if, perhaps, with this stranger, she had a chance to discover something she had never found in her cold, regimented society.

“Will you tell me what gives you pleasure?” he asked as directly as he had spoken when he first entered the room.

“I don’t know,” she answered, oddly ashamed at the admission.

“Then we will learn the answer together.”

“Maybe I can’t. . .”

“Did he hurt you that badly?”

She looked at him, startled, then quickly dropped her gaze. His perception was uncanny---and decidedly not that of an insensitive, uncivilized brute. Unable to lie, she gave him the barest nod.

“What did he do to you?”

“He took his pleasure and gave me none.” She had said it. The worst part.

“There is no shame in that for you.”

She raised her eyes to his, amazed. He seemed to possess an ancient wisdom that her own people had forgotten. Or perhaps they had never known.

Holding her gaze, he said, “We have a ritual for when a man and a woman come together for first mating. It wipes away the past and allows them to begin life anew, together.

If only it were true
, she thought.

“Will you do this with me, Elena?”

She didn’t trust herself to speak. All she could do was nod again.

He reached out a muscular arm and pulled his leather case closer. Opening the fastening, he brought out a rectangular bottle and two small glasses of delicate crystal with an intricate design etched into the sides. Again, she was surprised that his culture had produced anything so finely wrought. She watched, cautiously but with fascination, as he solemnly moved his large hand over the containers, chanting words in his own language.

“Hold out your hands,” he instructed.

She did, and he carefully set the nearly weightless vessels into her palms. She tried to keep from shaking as he poured a half inch of pale green liquid into each glass, speaking more serious-sounding words as he did so. The unfamiliar syllables seemed to hold a certain power of their own, and the power was enhanced by the strong, confident tone with which he spoke them.

As he took his glass, he raised his gaze to her. “Drink.”

Carefully, she curved her fingers around the delicate glass and tipped it to her lips, smelling a tangy blend of herbs and spices in a fermented liquid. It tasted the way it smelled, full-bodied and hot in her mouth, hot going down her throat. As she finished hers, she saw that he had taken only a sip of his before setting it on the chest behind him.

The room around her seemed to shimmer as he lifted the glass from her hand. She could feel the warmth from the drink spreading throughout her body, making her limbs feel weak, yet, at the same time, energized. “What did you give me?” she asked.

“Something to make you relax,” he replied, “to open your mind---and your body---to possibilities.”

A stab of fear shot through her, and she had an urge to run from him---though she wasn’t certain she could have.

“Don’t turn away from me,” he said, his voice tingling against her heated skin. “Don’t fight what you feel. Let me touch you---your body and your soul.”

The drug had made her mind fuzzy, yet she trusted the sound of his voice, the look in his eyes. And she suddenly realized that if she denied him what he asked, she would regret it for the rest of her life. When he took her hand and carried her palm to his mouth to stroke the edge of her index finger against his full lips, she closed her eyes. His mouth looked hard, but it felt soft. Sensual. His large, white teeth closed on her flesh, biting, but not painfully. Only hard enough to send darts of sensation along her nerve endings.

Elena made a small sound, deep in her throat, a sound of pleasure that turned to one of surprise when Rohan gathered her into his arms. His mouth moved along the edge of her jaw, her lips and then her teeth. A shiver went across her skin again. This time, though, it was not a shiver of fear.

Tentatively, letting instinct guide her, she touched his forehead, her fingertips tracing the ridges that looked so alien.

“Ah, yes,” he growled, his lips blazing a trail down her neck, across her collarbone. This his fingers twisted in the fabric of her gown, pulling it up and over her head in one quick motion, leaving her naked.

Her breath caught, and as she lay exposed to his intense scrutiny, a little of her fear returned. When his silence became intolerable, she forced a whispered comment. “I don’t look like your women.”

“Not so different,” he murmured, his gaze lingering on her breasts, then dropping to her narrow waist and gently flaring hips. “You are smaller than a Jalaran woman. More delicate. Like a cresteran.”

“A what?” she asked.

“In our legends,” he replied, “she is a goddess of the forest. Rare. Beautiful. The man who sees her is blessed.”

“Oh,” she breathed.

He traced his fingertips over her breasts, her belly, then back up again. “So soft. Like the down of sea birds.”

She was caught between tears and white heat.

With great care, he bent and rubbed his cheek, then his forehead, against the places where his hands had touched. His tenderness shattered her defenses, and the quivering sensations his touch evoked soon turned to desire. The desire ran, molten, through her veins as he shifted his head and his teeth gently captured one of her hardened nipples.

She looked at his dark skin against her white flesh. He was so different from her. Yet this seemed so right.

He stripped off his clothing, revealing a considerable amount of crisp, black hair and a line of ridges, like those in his forehead, running down his spine. When his arms came back around her, she melted against his large, muscular body. Wantonly, she moved against him, the friction of her smooth flesh against the hair sprinkling his chest and legs lighting a fire along her nerve endings. It was the drug, she reasoned, causing these glorious sensations inside her and making her feel so bold.

For a time, she basked in the fervent attention he paid to her body, his lips and teeth tasting her flesh and bringing it to life. Yet, though she reveled in the new and wonderful feelings he aroused in her, something seemed to be missing. Something important.

“You haven’t kissed me,” she whispered.

He raised his head from her breast to meet her gaze. “I do not know this word---‘kiss.’”

She saw instantly that he was unfamiliar with not only the word but the concept. Still, as his gaze focused on her mouth, she also saw that the idea intrigued him.

“Like this,” she said, wrapping a hand behind his neck and pulling his head toward hers. Suddenly the aggressor, she pressed her mouth to his, nibbled, opened his lips with a flick of her tongue. His surprise turned to a growl of pleasure, and for a minute he simply let her teach him the basic tactics of the sensual assault. Soon, though, he was kissing her as if he’d been practicing for years.

“Elena.” His voice was rough, heavy with passion. “This kiss---it is very . . . stimulating.”

“Very,” she answered, breathless.

His mouth came back to hers, and they feasted on each other. She had never been like this---wild, abandoned. On fire.

His fingers stroked high up between her thighs, finding the core of her, and she gasped, her hips lifting involuntarily, seeking his touch, which he gladly gave her. She knew she was slick and wet and open to him, and she was astonished. It was the drug, she told herself for the second time. It had to be.

He watched her face as he stroked her, doing what he’d promised, finding what gave her pleasure, until the pleasure became almost too great to endure.

“Rohan. Please---“

“Yes. Now.”

He covered her body with his. And then he was inside her, opening, stretching as she had never been stretched before. Yet there was no pain, only a wonderful sense of fullness, of her body being joined to his.

When he moved inside her, she moved with him, urgently, helpless to do anything but match the strong thrusting of his hips.

“Don’t stop. Please don’t stop,” she called out, the words tumbling from her, over and over, as her fingers dug into his shoulders.

He said something in his own language, something that sounded like an endearment. Then his movements changed, the angle of hips shifting, and, though the difference was slight, the change in pressure was electrifying. Suddenly, all sensation seemed to gather and focus in one small spot. For an instant, every muscle in her body drew taut, and her breath lodged in her lungs. In the next instant, the kernel of tension burst open, and an explosion of intense pleasure rocked her. Taken completely by surprise, she cried out as wave after wave of sensation surged through her. Above her, he gave a loud shout that sounded very much like a warrior’s cry of victory, as he found his own satisfaction.

Afterward she buried her face against his chest, unable to stop tears from flowing down her cheeks. Never in her life had she imagined lovemaking being anything like this. And it was not, she knew, induced by any drug. It was him. Rohan. Her husband. Her warrior. She had given him her trust, and he had taken her to a place she never knew existed.

His hands stroked her hair, her shoulders. “I was too rough, and I hurt you. I am sorry.”

She couldn’t let him think it. Struggling to control her voice, she raised her head so that she could meet his dark eyes. “No. You didn’t hurt me. Not at all.”

He touched one of the tear tracks on her cheek.

“It was good, “ she told him. “So good. I never thought . . . I didn’t know it could be that way.”

Relief suffused his fierce countenance. Relief and male pride. “I said your people and mine could teach each other things,” he teased.

“Yes. Definitely, yes.”

He hugged her to him. “I did not take you to your bed, because I knew you were afraid. But would you be more comfortable there now?” he asked.

“I like it here, by the fire. It’s cozy, like the caves where your ancestors lived.”

“You have seen them?” he asked, sitting up enough to yank the coverings from the bed, spreading them over her.

“Yes. In the mountains.”

“I thought your people stayed in these fortresses, where you think you are protected.”

“Not always.” She hesitated, then added, “Some of us want things to stay the same. I know we have to change. We have to understand Jalar, learn to survive in this environment.”

“I know this, but why do you think it is so?”

“This is our home,” she said simply. “The only one we have.”

Gathering the covers around her, she stood, took his hand and led him to the small window in the thick rock wall. Through the glass she could see the planet’s four moons, three small and one large. Their combined radiance lit the courtyard with an ethereal white light.

“There is great beauty here,” she said. “our home world has only one moon. Our ancestors could never have imagined this.”