The Taming Read online

  Gone was the fiery temper he’d anticipated, in its place fear. Fear.

  “Now you’re scared?”

  Her lip trembled.

  “I have never harmed you,” he growled. “I have wanted to, the gods know.”

  “Yet you can at any moment. This is your ship, right? Your rules. You do whatever you want, and I just go along with it because I can’t stop you. You’re big and you’re mean and I’m just stuck. You’ve already proven you can kill, maim, steal, abduct, give punishment-orgasms. What won’t you do?”

  “In all this time, have I ever once laid a hand on you?”

  “You’ve laid quite a few parts of your hands inside me.”

  “You wanted it,” he growled.

  “You’ve hardly been gentle.”

  “I’m not gentle.” He thrust his cock against her ass. “You weren’t so scared a minute ago when you threw fucking noodles at my face.”

  She cringed again.

  For a single second, he considered backing off, but a whiff of salted meat and spices stopped him. No one threw dinner at a Prime.

  This had gone on long enough.

  She was right. He was bigger and he was meaner.

  And this was his ship.

  He was done pandering to her.

  He was offering her a place on Vesta. A good place.

  A place of honor. By his side. As his selissa. She’d rule a whole country. She’d be respected and free to do as she pleased.

  Any other woman would claw her eyes out for the honor, and she acted like he was trying to sell her into slavery.

  “Maybe I should lay hands on you, maybe that’s how I would get your attention.” He tucked her hands together over her head and trapped them in one hard fist, grabbed the shirt and dragged it up, exposing that round, beautiful ass. He drew his hand back and brought it down with a loud, resounding smack that echoed in the air. He watched, mesmerized as the pink trace of his hand bloomed on her bottom and the skin jiggled in the aftermath.

  She let out a sharp sound of Klym-shock, narrowing her eyes. “Don’t spank me!”

  “I will.” He swatted her again. And when she protested, he did it again. “If you skip another meal or behave like a child again, I will spank you until you stop.”

  “Please, Tor. Don’t—”

  He did it again, until she stopped protesting and sagged against the wall, panting. The scent of her arousal was thick in the air—different from felana arousal. It was uniquely Klym, and immediately the scent of Prime rut filled the air too, in an intoxicated, humid cloud that made his head spin and instantly had his cock raging.

  He licked her neck, tasting the salt on her skin, loving it when she sighed and pushed her ass back toward him.

  It hurt to do it, but he backed away finally, admiring the art he’d left on her ass, and pulled her down the hall.

  He shoved her down on his bed. “No more silence. No more sulking. No more fighting.”

  She glared up at him, breathing furiously. When he thumbed her lower lip, she tried to bite him, sharp white teeth flashing.

  Vintalla indeed. Not even a spanking could cow her for long.

  He laughed quietly, but held her still by her neck, leaning in close to press a kiss to the corner of her clenched lips. “Do not push me, Klym. I am a violent man, and you make me angry.”

  Her breasts heaved, hard nipples clearly visible through the shirt, which was rucked up around her waist.

  He trailed a hand along her ankle. “You will behave, or I will spank you again.”

  Her face was mutinous, and that lip wobbled. She sucked it into her mouth, and he stared down, struggling to read the strangely forlorn look in her eyes and reconcile it with the scent of her arousal thick in the air.

  “Did you like being spanked?”

  She glanced to the ceiling like she always did when she lied. “No.”

  “Should I check?”

  She chewed on her lips, refusing to meet his eye, but she didn’t resist when he slid a hand up her thighs and parted them.

  He hesitated, his palm resting over hot skin, soft hair tickling him. “What will I find, Klym? Will I find you wet and ready for me?”

  She looked up at him with eyes so raw and almost sad that his heart thumped in his chest. And she nodded, hesitantly.

  He sucked in a breath. “There’s no shame in that. You’ll be my wife. It will be my foremost duty, my honor, to see to it that you are always satisfied when you feel that way.”

  He left his hand there for a long, silent moment, letting the heat of his palm do the work for him. When her hips lifted up, trying to get him closer, he backed away. Let her feel some frustration. Let her want him.

  Her brows drew together, tilting up in the center, her eyes wide and wet.

  “Migané, amiera. You slay me with those eyes.”

  He’d bend just a little. Let her think so anyway, so she’d stop looking at him like he was a monster. “If you can find someone in the universe who wants you enough to come get you within fifteen days, I’ll let you go. But if not, you’re mine.”

  She shivered, but a burst of hope flared. She’d never find anyone. Her father couldn’t come for her. Agammo wouldn’t. She’d never ask Spiro. There was no one. She was alone but for him. But if she needed time to get used to that, fine.

  He slid his hand up her thigh, higher, to cup a cheek of that perfect ass. It would be so easy to spread her thighs, push his way inside, fill her with his seed and make her forget who she was, but she’d hate him for real if he did that.

  “Thirty,” she said.

  “Twenty.”

  Her chin jutted forward.

  “If at any point, you change your mind and want to stay with me, all you need to do is say so.”

  Her brow wrinkled.

  “Say you understand me, Klym. Say it out loud.”

  Her chin stayed high as she shook her hair back over her shoulders. “I understand you.”

  His grip tightened, not quite enough to leave a bruise, but enough to make her flinch. “One more act of defiance in the meantime, one more plate in the face, one more sulk in the bathing chamber, one more bout of silent treatment, I fuck you. Wherever we are. And we both know you’d like it.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “That’s the deal. Twenty days from now. In that time, I keep you safe from the Alliance in my home, as my selissa. If you disobey me in that time, the deal is void, I fuck you immediately, and you are mine forever.”

  Her lips quivered, and a strange light shown in her eyes. “I left the last man who tried to steal my freedom bleeding on the deck of his own ship.”

  “A fact I remember well. But that’s because he was a man of high morals, and I am not. You won’t get away from me.”

  She kicked his shoulder, and he laughed. “You can’t just give me an orgasm every time I piss you off.”

  “Challenge accepted.”

  18

  Drool puddles

  “WHAT TIME WILL WE ARRIVE?” Klym stared at the empty bulkhead next to Tor’s bed.

  She had memorized every inch of it in the last seven days. She’d spent most of her time in that bed. Sleeping, or... not sleeping beside him.

  That first night after their fight with the noodles, he’d come back, laid her digi and her holo-cam on the side of the bed in silence, and used a warm, wet cloth to clean her between the thighs where his mess had covered her, and left her there.

  She lay in the dark for a long time, and when the silence got too hard to bear, she turned on the holos, let them spin their reel around the room, her father looking happy and normal without the pinched-nose, hard-jawed expression. So in love. A family. Like she’d always wanted.

  At some point, she must have fallen asleep, because when she woke, he was sitting on the bed, with his back to her.

  He watched the holos for a long time, his elbows resting on his knees. She’d have given anything to see his face, have a clue what he’d been thinking. After a whil
e he turned off the feed and slid under the covers behind her.

  He hadn’t said a word. Hadn’t needed to.

  She’d feigned sleep, too tired for a fight, and let him pull her body into his. If she was honest, she’d been desperate to escape her own churning mind and the desperate reality that there wasn’t a single person she could name who wanted her. So, she’d accepted his captor’s comfort because, for all he’d done, in the dark it was so easy to pretend that he cared at least a little.

  The darkness closed in like a shroud, thick with his intoxicating scent. His arms squeezed her tight, and a single, hot, open-mouthed kiss to the back of her neck was all it took for her to dissolve. She stopped pretending to be asleep, she stopped pretending to be brave, she stopped pretending she didn’t need him.

  He’d whispered in Vestigi. Words of sorrow, apologies, guilt and promises.

  She tried not to listen, but they burrowed in deep, traveling across the aching loneliness inside.

  I did it to protect you. I’ll keep you safe, abellina amiera. I’ll make you happy. We’ll make a family, just like you want.

  And in the days since, he’d destroyed her with his tongue and his fingers, invaded her body and her mind until she couldn’t even claim that she didn’t want his kisses and his touches. She did want them.

  That was the worst part.

  He’d made her want him.

  He called to her in the place deep inside where she was a girl no one had ever loved, and with every kiss, he made her wish that he would love her.

  And he’d been true to that one promise. He hadn’t taken anything she didn’t want to give.

  He never pressed her, never took his own pleasure inside her body, though he could have done that too. In the thrall of the dangerous, gentle spell he wove, she’d have let him.

  She was pathetic.

  The bulkhead had been her constant companion. Black, and smooth, and glossy enough for her to see her own reflection now, her hair tumbling wildly across the pillow, and over the blanket that draped across her bare breasts. She looked wanton and wild, like the dominesses she’d caught glimpses of in Merentide. Elegant women who smiled as if they knew secrets that would make the stars themselves implode.

  Maybe they did. Tor had certainly made her feel as if a few stars had imploded. Under his touch, the universe took on new meaning.

  He rose behind her to rest his chin in his hand, his dark eyes probing. He stroked a hand down her spine, over bare skin. Her shiver had nothing to do with being cold. She wasn’t cold at all. She was a thousand degrees of helplessness and confusion.

  “Couple hours,” he murmured, his fathomless eyes meeting hers in the reflection.

  She swallowed. She was desperate to get off this ship. Out of this bed. Away from him.

  It was like a safe little nest, isolated from all the troubles that awaited them, and it was too easy to let herself forget that he’d kidnapped her, steamrolled her every desire.

  She shrank away from his warm body, inching closer to the cold bulkhead. “When can I have my clothes back?”

  His hand traced deeper down her spine, over the dip in her waist, around her hips, down her belly. “Soon.”

  She closed her eyes against the rush of heat that followed his touch across sensitive skin. Her body, unlike her conflicted mind, had no doubt about Tor. It revered, reveled, rejoiced in his touch. She knew so many things about him now, secret things, dark things, sexy things she shouldn’t know and would never unlearn. The flex of his skin on her teeth, because she’d bitten him in the throes of an angry orgasm, leaving a red welt on his neck that she’d have sworn he’d liked. The choked, growly grunt he made when he took his beautiful cock in his hands, the texture of his thumb on her tongue, because so often he pushed it between her lips, soaked in his delicious flavor, while he pleasured her, and like a rabid beast, she sucked it in as if obeying some unspoken order.

  He trailed his tongue along the outer shell of her ear, and that single touch sent a shiver from the top of her head to the bottoms of her toes.

  “I hate you,” she groaned, unable to stop her body from bowing against him, her bottom from thrusting out.

  He grinded his hips, and the long, hard girth of him pressed against her, so hot that she couldn’t help but imagine it doing just what nature had designed it to do.

  She’d spent far too much time imagining it. She wanted it, though she’d never say it. She wanted him inside her.

  “You don’t,” he whispered in her ear.

  They had this argument hourly, it seemed. He insisted she wanted him. Her body agreed.

  His hand slid down to palm her thigh, pulling until she rolled half over and rested her leg across his lap, opening to him fully, defenseless against the relentless draw of his body.

  His lips drifted down her jaw. She turned away, looking back toward the wall. It made it worse, seeing what he did to her. She was panting like a pathetic animal, driven by pure instinct and reckless need, writhing as if she were dying and he alone held the key to her salvation. He was a sickness under the skin, simmering in the blood.

  “You want me, Klym, just as badly as I want you.” He turned her onto her back, looming over her to trail his tongue down her sternum, over her breasts, his hair tickling over her skin.

  “I know exactly what I feel for you, and it isn’t want. It’s ahhhh—”

  When he closed his mouth over her nipple, dimples flickering in his cheeks, she sighed.

  “—loathing.” It came out long and throaty, lacking all conviction, but it was something. “And... and...”

  He chuckled, sucking harder, flicking his tongue until she was writhing under him like a woman possessed.

  “Revulsion,” she whispered.

  He slid a finger inside her, where he’d claimed her as his own, working his thumb around the hard, sensitive bud between her thighs. Her hips moved at his call, dancing to his tune, just like the rest of her. Pathetic.

  “Weird response to revulsion.” He kissed his way up her neck again, voice smug and awful. “Your old life sucked. Let yourself be free from all the cages they had you locked in, and you’ll see what we could be together.”

  “I loved my old life.”

  His eyes slitted. “You hated it,” he hissed. “The regimented food, the bodice that left welts on your skin, the worthless lessons on dancing and curtsies. Useless and you know it. You want me so badly you dream about me. You wake up hot for me, panting my name, and reaching for me.” His voice went gruff, almost angry.

  “That’s an involuntary response, like sneezing.”

  “Lies.”

  She turned her face toward him, mouth dropping open, ready to tell him that she may have hated the restrictions on her old life, but at least she’d had some control over it, but he didn’t let her. He never did. She had no control over her own body around him.

  He stopped her with a hard, open-mouthed kiss, his tongue filling her mouth until she couldn’t speak, couldn’t resist, couldn’t even think.

  Why bother fighting, anyway?

  He won.

  Every.

  Single.

  Time.

  Denying his control over her body was a wasted effort and a humiliating one as well. Better to focus on getting back to Argentus.

  She had twelve more days to find someone in the universe who wanted her.

  She let him take her away to a place where words didn’t matter, where her mind could coast, high on the way he made her body feel, and happy simply to be alive. And when it was over, he littered her skin with kisses, whispering sweetness and lies, pulling her close against him.

  Her ear rested just over the slow and steady thump of his heart, and it was easy to pretend the safe, warm bubble of closeness was back. Her eyes drifted shut, lulled by the warmth of false intimacy.

  He stirred, and she lifted lazy eyes. Her body was sluggish and leaden as she tilted her head back. The victorious look in his eyes had her lurching upright, clutchin
g the covers to her chest. Would it kill the man to just let her be, just once, let her enjoy the moment without antagonizing her?

  “You fell asleep on me,” he said.

  “I did not.”

  His lips curved on one side. “You did. There’s a puddle of drool to prove it.”

  She glanced down. There was.

  He lifted her chin with his finger so she had no choice but to meet his eyes. What she saw there was more earnest than she’d have imagined he was capable of feeling.

  “I’m not as bad as you want to believe. I’m doing this to keep you safe. If you didn’t trust me, you wouldn’t pass out on my chest naked.” His thumb stroked her lower lip.

  “I was tired.”

  He held her chin firmly. “It’s midday.”

  “I can be tired at midday.” Her voice was sullen even to her own ears. “I want my clothes. Now.”

  The other side of his lips lifted into a full smile.

  Monster he may be, but he did have a beautiful smile. She lowered her brows and jerked her chin away.

  He smiled cheerfully and swatted her bottom. “You promised to be civil.”

  “I didn’t promise to be your whore.”

  His eyes narrowed, and a dimple flashed dangerously. He pulled his hair back into a tight bun at the top of his crown, tying it off with an elastic band, muscles bunching jerkily with every motion. “No. You didn’t. If you were my whore, I’d be balls deep inside you right now. If you were my whore, we’d have spent the last seven days with your head between my legs. Not the other way around.”

  She flinched away, annoyed at the way her body clenched and pulsed at the image he conjured. “You’re disgusting.”

  He tossed the covers to the floor in an angry jerk. “It’s all good when I’ve got my tongue up your cunt, but the second I want to talk to you like a real person, you spout bullshit. At least admit to yourself that you like the way I make you feel.” He paused at the doorway. The black tattoos swirled across his torso in angry contrast with his light skin. And all those scars.

  “You’ve never met anyone like me. Not your stupid Assamo, or noble Spiro, your prick of a father or anyone else who followed your stupid manners. You have more fun fighting with me than you’ve had in your entire life. Hate me for that if you like, but at least grow up enough to stop lying to yourself.”