Hers to Claim (7 page)

She did as he asked, arching up while he slid underneath her buttocks.
His use of a nickname she’d left behind in childhood surprised her, but she liked it coming from his mouth. She
felt
like a woman/child with him.

Again, his hard shaft rested in the valley between her swollen
lower lips, slipping easily in the moisture from her arousal. Now he used both hands and starting at her shoulders, ran gossamer touches across her collarbones, her breasts, her ribs, down to her hips, and across her inner thighs. From time to time, her ears caught an esoteric word whispered under his breath. Every time he rocked forward to reach her shoulders, for an instant, his hard cock slipped across her clit in an explosion of pleasure. The contact was just enough to tease her in the most brutal fashion. As her arousal built, her pants sped up and it was all she could do to remain quiet under him, accepting of whatever he gave her. If he would linger a fraction longer…

“
Don’t move.”

This time he pinched both of her nipples and the
intense pain was as if a blanket smothered the fire of her arousal—not extinguishing it, just snuffing the flames to leave the embers glowing in preparation for another fire.

“Arch your hips. I am going to sl
ide away.” She did as he asked, and he slipped his body from underneath her and then knelt upright. His cock slapped at his belly and wetness glistened on the fat head, now purple with engorgement. She could see his heartbeat pulse in one of the large veins standing out along its length. His balls had pulled up close to his cock’s thick base, where silky black hair formed sparse coils. Even there, the Goddess had favored him with beauty. Her pussy wept tears of anticipation, and she splayed her legs wider to make room for him.

“How close are you to coming?”

“Very close,” she murmured.

“Hmm.” He frowned and she watched him spit into his hand
. He took that glorious cock, the cock that she ached for, the cock she would have done almost anything to have penetrate her, and he stroked. Up. Down. Up. Down. A little faster. And faster, yet. With clenched teeth and a grunt, he came, his body jerking with every pump of cum of his cock. Breathing heavily through his nose, he staggered upright.

“You can get up now.
Put your clothes on.”

She lay stunned.
Tears of disappointment and shame welled but she refused to allow them to fall. Was her common Oshtesh body not good enough for his highborn cock, his aristocratic seed? Adonia released the now, hot, glowing crystals, letting them roll to the side, and pushed herself to her feet. Her groin ached with heavy, fierce arousal. Her gut roiled with nausea.
I will not cry. I will not.
“I don’t understand.”

Hel paused in his dressing and
turned to her. He cupped her face in one large hand and his eyes lingered on her. “No. I don’t suppose you do. Sweet Nia.” He stroked her face gently and then released her. “The diaman crystals pull energy from sexual arousal. Male, yes…but mostly female. You provide it. I direct it. This deadly trail we travel? We must do this every night. It’s why I didn’t want this route. Tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, we won’t have the luxury of relaxed, private foreplay, nor a hot thermal pool to soothe tired muscles. I want you slick and desirous at a heated glance—orgasmic at the swirl of my tongue over your clit. Understand?”

“Am I never to be allowed to come this entire journey?” Adonia swallowed her
frustration-fed anger. She had agreed, after all.

“I’ll let you come, Nia. But I decide when.
Until then, I want you to burn.” Hel turned away from her and resumed dressing.

If he wanted her to burn, he’d succeeded.
The flesh between her legs throbbed and her inner thighs were moist with unappeased desire. She threw her clothing on. Buttons remained undone—ties, untied. She simply wanted coverage. She felt naked now, when she hadn’t a moment before. She still wondered if he found her common blood repellent, but she lacked the courage to ask. When she’d put everything on, Adonia pulled her hanging clothing tighter around her and strode off to the split in the rock.

In all her years with
Klaran, Adonia couldn’t remember a time of prolonged sexual frustration. But then, her drive had focused elsewhere. If she searched her memory, she vaguely recalled occasional complaints from Klaran about her lack of interest. She’d never been a sexual creature but then Klaran had never pulled her as this man did. Klaran had been…safe? DeHelios was anything but.
What will I be at the end of this journey?
Someone different, I suspect.

While Adonia jerked her clothes on, Hel gathered the radiant diaman crystals that lay discarded on the pelt and wrapped them in a scrap of cloth he’d brought for that purpose. When she had volunteered to serve as his partner, his immediate response had been frustration and anger. He’d tried to hide it but, from Nia’s obvious misery, he’d been unsuccessful. A sexual rite was
not
how he wanted to begin with her, and Adonia’s frustrated hurt gnawed on the raw discontent he hid. He snorted silently. He wanted to
woo
her. He wanted privacy, a bed and all the other trappings of comfort necessary to submerge both of them in prolonged erotic pleasure. If he’d had any option, he would have declined her offer to partner him tonight.

For the first time in a decade, a woman sparked his intellectual and physical interest.
She was a rarity in his world, a creature without artifice. There was no pretense or falseness in her. She was real. He couldn’t explain his physical attraction, but he’d felt its magnetic pull from the first time they’d locked eyes in the palace hall. In another world, in an earlier time, he would have won her to him with the attention a woman of her obvious high caliber deserved.

Their first time together would
have been in a warm room on a soft bed where time had no meaning—not on the rough, rocky ground in a rushed rite he’d performed mechanically, knowing their lives depended on the outcome. He would have seduced her into the erotic world his particular carnality demanded and reveled in the passionate response he knew he could draw from her. She would submit to him gladly. The Goddess had created her for it. The woman gloried in serving.

Sadly,
his world was not that world any longer. Brutal practicality stripped his relationships of any niceties and turned sex into another duty performed for those who looked to him for protection. He had done his best to make Adonia’s first time with him easy for her. He’d gone hours out of their way to find the thermal springs. It was the most he could offer her now. His present situation infuriated him. It was as if their Great Mother decreed he could have nothing for his own. He hurled the thought away on a silent snarl.
I
am
going to keep this woman.

“Adonia,
stop.” The tall brunette had almost reached the split in the rock. At his barked order, she stopped and stood, head down, arms wrapped around her waist as if she held the pieces of herself together. The glorious, walnut brown fall of her hair hid her face. Hel strode toward her and held the radiant diaman crystals in front of her, cupping the cloth with two hands.

“Look at th
is, Nia. This is
your
doing. The four of us and our mounts will sleep protected tonight because of
you
.” Hel closed one hand around the neck of the cloth and reached for her. “Adonia, look at me.” She tilted her head up and gradually brought her velvet brown eyes to meet his. “Nia…” He shook his head at the visible confusion and hurt in her eyes.
Damnation, I hate beginning like this.
He wanted to share with her his own desires and frustrations—but it was too soon. He would frighten her more. “A healer’s first duty is to save lives. You have done that. Hmm?”

She took a shuddering breath
then straightened. “Yes. I did.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, and if possible, more somber. “I’m a healer. I’ve performed my duty. Thank you for reminding me.”

“
Yes…well, we’d better get back to the others. We must set our perimeter before dark falls.” She nodded readily enough, but somehow, Hel felt he’d taken another wrong step with her.

Ramsey
was tethering three of their horses to a high-line strung between two trees and looked over his shoulder at them when they emerged from the split in the rock face. A smile began then broadened into a white-toothed grin. Ram’s eyes lit with devilry. “Hel, you’d make a stunning woman. With that face, I’ll cheerfully top you.”

Hel
gestured obscenely in response, but silently thanked Ram for lightening the mood when Adonia gave a soft huff of amusement and threw him an I-told-you-so glance. Steffania walked up with the other three horses and handed them off to Ramsey. As Ramsey secured each animal to the line above, he threw a question at Hel. “What else do we need before nightfall?” His eyes scanned the horizon. “I’d guess at twenty minutes of daylight left.”

Hel lifted the improvised cloth sack.
“I’ll take three and you take three. We’ll arrange them in a circle around us. Walk off a radius of about forty paces from center. Use our bedrolls as center.”

~~~

Adonia watched as Hel and Ramsey marched off their protective circle. Steffania came to stand beside her. “He’s very pretty, isn’t he? From the brilliance of those crystals, I’d guess there was no failure to rise to the occasion?”

Adonia choked back a
mortified laugh. “Ah, no…no failure.”

“I told you. Was it what you thought it would be?”

Adonia struggled for words while Steffania watched, a smile growing across her face. “It was nothing like I thought it would be.” Adonia flashed a look at Hel and Ramsey. She had a few more moments before the men joined them. Normally, she didn’t discuss intimate sexual details, but she was floundering and Steffania seemed a woman of the world. “Is it common not to, ah, consummate the rite?”

Steffania’s eyebrows rose. “You didn’t have intercourse?”

“Ah…no.”

“Did you climax?”

“He did. I didn’t.”

“The
radiance and color of the crystals indicates significant arousal. He could not have lacked skill.”

“Ah…no. If he’d been any more skillful
, I think I’d have perished from frustration.”

“So you could have come?”

Adonia raised and lowered her chin in one, slow nod.

“He took you to the edge and left you
teetering there?”

Adonia nod
ded—once.

S
teffania drew back and covered her mouth. Her eyes shown with sympathy and amusement. “You poor thing. You must be horny as hell. Ramsey does that to me all the time. It’s a bitch.”

Steffania’s
astonishing comment surprised a bark of laughter from Adonia, which she quickly suffocated behind a raised palm. “Yes. Yes, that describes it well. He told me not to touch myself—that part of me belonged to him. Is that normal?”

Steffania leaned ov
er and hugged her. “For men like Hel and Ramsey, yes. Come on. They want us to join them.” Steffania threw a significant glance at Adonia. “I’ll explain later.”

Adonia was glad to see
the four bedrolls aligned together—the men on the outside, the women in the center. She had zero experience with soul-wraiths. The desert of the Oshtesh was too bright and too hot for those monstrosities Hel called ‘leeches.’

The shadows from the mountains
purpled and then, like a candle snuffed, darkness closed around them. The six, diaman crystals glowed brilliant yellow-amber and an indistinct glow connected the individual stones. Gentle light illuminated the entire circle and cast shadows from the horses and the trees. All of them sat cross-legged on the bedrolls and distributed the water and food they’d brought with them.

“Have you ever seen
leeches, Adonia?” Hel broke a piece of bread apart and ate it, chewing slowly. His gray eyes, blanked of expression, held hers. Adonia slowly shook her head.

Steffania shuddered. “
Imagine a ravenous, foul miasma. Add intelligence, blood-red eyes and a round maw of jagged teeth and you have a soul-wraith. It envelops its prey in a gray fog, and when it departs, nothing remains but a desiccated corpse. They prefer human flesh, but they’ll feed on anything warm-blooded.”

“Their victims sound as if their souls are being torn from their living
body, hence the name soul-wraith. I encountered them on the battlefield of Yarudda during the Haarb wars.” Ramsey took a swig from his water bottle then raised it in a mock toast. “To the Haarb for gracing us with soul-wraiths and
fell
wolves.” Ram filled his mouth, rinsed it, then spat the contents onto the ground.

The horses stirred, uneasy on their picket line.

“And the leeches have found us,” Hel murmured without looking up.

Adonia glanced
toward the horses and froze as horror snaked down her spine. Ghosting around the perimeter of the diaman crystals were swarms of gray shadows and multiple pinpoints of red. Occasionally an amorphous shape would charge the light barrier, only to dissolve and reform. “So many of them.”

“Yes. They like the cold and the
long nights in the upper elevations. I’m not sure how we can kill them. I had hoped that re-energizing Torre Bianca would eradicate them. They cannot live in our Mother’s light, but now…” Hel shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Steffania
stared at the perimeter, her arms wrapped around her legs, her chin resting on her knees. Her casual manner reassured Adonia—until she spoke. “Those wraiths scare the shit out of me. A mission went wrong and two of my men and I floated on a raft in the Topaz Sea on the planet Aquarion. Great, thirty-foot, megaton sharks circled us for days, their black fins slicing the water mere feet from our raft. Cortez fell asleep and his foot trailed into the water. They dragged him under in seconds.” Steffania shook her head and looked away. “Poor bugger. I can still hear his screams—see the bits of flesh and body parts come bobbing to the surface. I feel like I’m back on that raft.” She shuddered convulsively.

“Vixen.” Ramsey held out an arm to her.

She stood and moved to sit between Ramsey’s legs. Ram wrapped his arms around her and snugged her close. He nuzzled into the hair behind Steffania’s ear and said something in a low baritone. 

Adonia didn’t know what Ramsey murmured to Steffania, but the woman
’s whole demeanor changed. She gave Ram a look of such love that Adonia’s heart ached. The red-haired mercenary relaxed into her husband’s arms, laid her head against his chest and closed her eyes.
Goddess, to have someone whose words would banish all fears? If only I could possess that. What would I give to be so loved?
She sighed.
Anything.
Her gaze strayed to the ravening leeches testing the limits of the diaman border and tried to suppress her fear. It would be a difficult night.

~~~

Adonia sat up in disgust and almost accused those sleeping around her of shifting every pebble and stone to beneath
her
bedroll. After what seemed hours of non-productive tossing and turning, and determined not to disturb the other three, she stood and gathered her blankets together to move. She glanced toward the perimeter. Ravenous eyes stared back. A flurry of shadows hurled themselves at the diaman crystals’ barrier only to fall back, dissipate and attack once more. She shuddered in fear at their relentless pursuit.

“Healer.”

At her feet, Hel lay on his side, an arm holding his blankets open in invitation. “Don’t look at them. Your fear incites them. Come here.”

She paused for only a moment before crawling into the shelter he offered and settling along his length.

He lay back down and covered them both. “The diaman crystals will hold them at bay. The wraiths’ evil finds the pure energy of our mother planet abhorrent. Trust me. I won’t let anything happen to you. You are too valuable to me.”

A
s a healer and partner in the rites.
For some reason, just as in the grotto, the thought did not satisfy as it should have. She lay snugged to his body, listening to the regular
thump-thump
of his heart. Its dependable rhythm finally lulled her to sleep.

~~~

Adonia craned her head and turned in a circle, trying to encompass the stunning landscape of a valley lush with grass divided by a clear, wide, swiftly moving stream and framed by towering, snow-capped mountains. They had startled a herd of graceful, lyre-horned
chital
grazing in the early morning light and, after handing off the packhorse and extra mount, Hel and Ramsey had given chase. Dismounted, she and Steffania stood and let their animals graze, waiting for the men to return. 

Adonia
watched the horses pull up huge mouthfuls of long green grass, clods of dirt and roots hanging from the sides of their mouths. Bit by bit, the dirt and roots fell away, while the good grass remained. A horse’s ability to separate the dirt from the edible green always amazed her.

Steffania glanced over at her. “Did you get
 any sleep last night?”

Adonia shuddered
, remembering. “After I curled up next to Hel, yes.”

Steffania grinned. “The big louts are good for making a woman feel protected.” Her grin broadened. “Among other things.”

“What did you mean yesterday? When you said ‘for men like Ramsey and Hel’?”

Steffania wrinkled her brow as if replaying their conversation. “Oh! You’d asked if it was common for—”

“Yes, that question,” Adonia interjected. She didn’t want to hear it voiced again. She’d felt awkward enough the first time she’d asked. “You are ferocious—a deadly fighter. You command a mercenary squad of elite killers and yet…” Adonia lifted her shoulders helplessly.