The Taming Read online

  He laughed. “The water’s fine. Just washed my hands in it.”

  She rose carefully and picked painstaking steps down the shore, lifting her skirts. The dress took the light in just the right way. She might as well have been naked. Those long legs went on forever, perfectly outlined. She slipped out of her shoes and tiptoed along the river bank. The water lapped up over her ankles, and she sighed, a soft, breathy sound that went straight to his cock, cranky now in his too-tight pants.

  The water looked cool.

  His feet were hot too.

  Grumbling, he pulled off his boots and socks, rolled up his pants and joined her.

  She didn’t look at him, kept her gaze on the mountains in the distance. Her hair had come loose from its bun, long golden strands running down her back. Her cheeks were still pink, eyes bright. And those tits. With every breath, they threatened to spill over the top of the ridiculous vest contraption she’d strapped them into.

  He tore his gaze away, splashing the water around them just to annoy her. Water sprayed over them both. Blue fish darted away from his foot, and the front of her dress went completely translucent with the spray. He turned away so she wouldn’t see what was going on in his pants. “Let’s go.”

  “That felt remarkably good, actually,” she said tightly. “I’m sure that wasn’t your intention. Nonetheless, I feel much cooler. So, thank you.”

  He glanced back as she bent down, stretching out a graceful hand to cup water in her palm and bring it up to splash her face.

  Little droplets ran down her neck and into the bodice of her gown, racing over her straining tits. He didn’t even bother pretending not to look. In fact, he actively leaned back to get a better look at her ass as she bent forward and repeated the motion.

  It seriously looked like her tits were wrestling each other to get free. The dress was see-through now, and her nipples strained against the fabric.

  He wrenched his gaze from her nipples and kicked the water again, for lack of anything better to do. “If you’ve had enough of a wallow, let’s move.”

  She paused, mid-turn, lifting her foot, face twisted with indecision, and it took him a second to figure out why. If she got the powdery soil all over her feet, she’d have to shove them back into her shoes, all wet and caked in.

  “Hang on.” Feeling a thousand kinds of fool, he stomped across the sand, grabbed a towel from his bag and her shoes, and headed back.

  She took the towel from him and dried her shoes. “Thank you.” She slid her silky hand into his and leaned over to dry off her foot, using his hand for balance.

  “Those things are useless.”

  She lifted a shoulder, and those tits rose too. It must take hours for her to stuff them into the damned vest each morning.

  “For walking across a desert, I suppose they are. I don’t think the designer expected me to wear them for anything more than the odd stroll.”

  He shook off her hand and tugged on his own socks and boots. “Time to go.”

  Jasto’s black shroud stood in graphic contrast to the white soil. Except it wasn’t Jasto anymore, he reminded himself. Just bones and muscles and organs.

  A life snuffed out.

  He tugged his shirt back on.

  “Perhaps, I could...” The proximity of her voice announced that she’d followed him. “I could carry the water bag for you. So, you’d be less encumbered.”

  He jerked the backpack over his shoulders and dropped to a knee to heft Jasto’s body onto his back. “I’ll be fine.”

  6

  Oh, I’ll show you fair

  KLYM TRUDGED ALONG in Torum’s wake.

  Her shoes had long since rubbed the sides of her toes and the backs of her heels raw.

  She’d stopped briefly and put on her stockings, thinking they might help, and had quickly decided they made the situation far worse.

  That was the last time she’d dared to look, and a puddle of blood had already filled each shoe, slick and sticky.

  That had been shortly after they’d left their shady grove. Hours ago. She couldn’t imagine the state they’d be in now.

  She couldn’t bear to look.

  Torum’s rudeness again proved a boon. He’d shoved his way in front of her as they’d left, the big body draped over his back, and had barely bothered to look at her. She could stagger along, as ungainly and undignified as she pleased.

  Looking up at the sun, he paused. “Thirsty?”

  She nodded, too tired to respond.

  He spun on his heel, and she straightened her spine. His eyes were invisible behind his dark glasses. “Are you thirsty?” The tone of his voice was just like last night.

  The night before hit her like a punch in the gut. The possessive, demanding way he’d pulled her body against him. His hands on her breasts, where no one had ever touched her before. And the confusing thoughtfulness of his actions by the water. Mean. Nice. Hard. Soft. Push. Pull. Gruff. Sympathy.

  She was too tired to keep up. “Yes. Yes, I’m thirsty.” She couldn’t look at him, so she looked beyond him, at the sea of dust and sand and nothing that surrounded them.

  “You’ll have to get it from the pack. I don’t want to put him down. We need to keep moving. Only an hour or two until dark.”

  He turned around, so the bag and the bulk of the body resting across his shoulders were right in front of her.

  She opened the flap with her pointer finger and thumb, trying not to think about what was inside that shroud. The bottle was blessedly cool in her hands as she pulled it free.

  “Go ahead. Drink. We can’t stand here all day.” His voice was hoarse. A bead of sweat dripped down his neck, his chest moving fast with his breathing, all those thick muscles shifting in his damp shirt.

  She didn’t want to stand there with him staring at her any longer than necessary. “I’ll carry it. So, I can drink as we go.”

  He nodded and continued his steady ground-eating, lumbering trudge across the dust.

  Manners got the best of her. “Would you like some?”

  He smirked, or maybe it was a sneer, and ignored her.

  No one had ever sneered at her in her entire life. Nor scoffed at her. Nor shoved her. Not once had anyone subjected her to this level of disdain and derision. And for no reason.

  And her feet hurt. And the only person in the universe who was biologically programmed to love her, her father, didn’t seem to care a bit about anything but what political clout he could trade her for.

  It was too much. Far too much. Manners be damned, everyone had a breaking point, and he’d just made one sneer too many. Besides, he insisted that she answer his questions.

  “Why must you always be so rude?” she shouted at his back, fast-limping along in his wake.

  He didn’t glance back, and she was glad because he wouldn’t see the silly, stupid tears that burned in her eyes and splashed down her cheeks.

  She dashed at them with the back of her hand. “Why? Give me one reason you hold me in such disregard. You don’t even know me!”

  He shifted the body bag on his back. “I know enough. I saw what you did to your future-mate back there.”

  “Spiro?”

  “I get why you’d be confused. There are so many of them.”

  Mocking. He was always mocking her. As if she’d chosen to have more than one future-mate.

  “My future-mate.” She picked up her pace so she could catch up to him. “Let me tell you about my future-mate Spiro. You heard what my father said. It was a political deal. I’m nothing but a pawn to them. My whole future sold away. All my father cares about is his war with your people. Spiro took me from my home, from the man I love, put me on a spaceship without so much as deigning to ask how I felt about any of it. Now, I’m on this ridiculous adventure, light-years away from everything I’ve ever known. And now there’s a dead body, too!” She shoved at a strand of damp hair that fell in front of her eyes, and pushed the broad hat up so she could see under the brim. “I owe him nothing.” />
  Spiro may have behaved with perfect manners according to their people, but that didn’t mean she had to accept his troth. Not after years betrothed to Agammo.

  “He’d have died for you.”

  “Maybe, but not actually because he cared about me. All I was to him was duty. That’s not love. I don’t want to be someone’s duty.”

  He just kept slogging over the powdery terra.

  “So you gave a knife to a stranger and left him bleeding on the floor without a second glance. For love?” His voice cut as deep as knives, tearing into every guilty thought she’d ever had about their escape.

  “For love, maybe. But also choice. Walking away from that bleeding man was the hardest thing I have ever had to do, but, yes, for my freedom, I did it. Do you know what it means to Bond with an Argenti? It’s forever. It’s a soul bond.”

  The water in the bottle sloshed angrily as she threw out her hands. “Did I consider the politics? Yes, in fact, I did. And you know what I decided? I didn’t care. Two old politicians want to convene to continue a war between Argentus and Vesta? Let them use some other woman to do it. It’s not my war.”

  He made a face like he was thinking about what she said. “Whose war is it, then?”

  “My father’s war. My whole life it’s the only thing he’s ever cared about. Revenge for my mother.”

  The body rocked on his back. “I think you just saw a chance to get away and you went for it.”

  She forgot about her burning feet and stormed up to his side. “You know nothing about me.”

  “I don’t need to, amiera. I had you figured out the first minute I saw you.”

  “How exactly is that?”

  His lips curved wryly, his face shadowed by the hat, but he didn’t break stride. “You lived in a polished, pretty palace, and this is probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, right?”

  “Of course, it is! I’ve never been anywhere. Am I to be punished for having been secluded all my life? You see protection in that. I see imprisonment. My every choice was taken from me. From the moment of my birth.”

  “You made choices. You left Spiro for dead, and ever since, you’ve been playing games with me, silent treatment, picking flowers, toying with your stupid fucking holo-cam, and worrying about your hair.”

  “He’s not dead. And as you said, it was his freedom or mine. It wasn’t fair what they were asking of me.” The ship came into view, flickering on the horizon like a great black beetle.

  “Fair.” His voice was as snide as his face. “An ideal exclusive to the young and the stupid.”

  “I’m not stupid.” She wasn’t. She’d done wonderfully in school, excelled at every subject, breezed her way through all her courses. Especially filmography. Her instructors had always said she was talented. Her hand went automatically to the holo-cam in her pocket.

  “You didn’t even question what I’d do with that knife. Or how we’d get off the ship. For all you knew, I’d have dumped the lot of you in space. You risked everyone’s life on your evaluation of my trustworthiness after a two-minute conversation.”

  “But I was right,” she shouted.

  “Were you? Spiro would disagree. I still might dump you into space.”

  “And in your expert opinion, what exactly should I have done?”

  “Stayed with your future-mate like a good little girl. Safe and protected.” With the glasses on, she couldn’t read his expression, but his voice was hard and cold and merciless, jaw tight and angry.

  “You’d have me live my life as someone else’s property? That’s not fair.”

  “Fair.” He rounded on her. “Fair? You think the dead guy on my back cared about fair? You think Spiro woke up with his neck torn out and whined about what’s fair? Trust me. He won’t.” His lip curled, and his words came out like lashes, hard and cutting to the bone. “He’ll stand up, dust off his boots, and he’ll go about his life just like any other day because he’s a fucking adult, and adults don’t whine about fair and choices and freedom. You made your choice. You took your freedom from Spiro with me and a knife. So, own it. Start taking some responsibility for your life. Quit whining if I don’t like you for it.”

  “I am an adult and I do not whine.” She spat it out and reached out to grab his wrist, force him to face her.

  He threw his hand out, slapping away her touch so hard she lost her balance and nearly fell. Even with the body on his back, he moved fast, rounding in on her, his face so close to hers that their hats bumped and her insides quivered in fear.

  “If you were mine, I’d...” he bit off, mouth tight, and jerked his head away in the direction of the ship. He shook his head and let out a derisive laugh.

  She had to run to catch up to him, voice raised in frustrated outrage. “Go ahead! Finish your thought. If I were yours, you’d what?”

  He snarled but didn’t stop walking. If anything, he was moving faster now, clouds of powdery soil rising up to his knees. “If you were mine, I’d spank your pretty ass until you cried yourself sick, and you wouldn’t even try to fight me anymore because you’d understand, deep down in your guts, that you deserved it. Because then you’d understand consequences. I’d fuck you until your whole world shrank down and all you saw was me.”

  Her stomach hitched at the raw rasp in his voice.

  He moved his shoulders abruptly, shifting his grip on the body bag. “You want freedom? There’s no such thing. No one is free. Not for long, anyway. Not you and not me. Life and death. That’s all there is. You do something, someone gets hurt. That’s called consequence. That’s reality.”

  She had to jog to catch up, wincing the whole way. “Reality. I was born on a planet where nearly ninety percent of the women died. My mother died just after I was born. And you’re right, this is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. Being lost and disowned and stuck a hundred million miles away from the only place I’ve ever known, with you of all people.” Her dark glasses had slid down her nose, and she shoved at them. “And I have been spanked. And it didn’t make me any wiser!”

  He slanted her a look at that.

  She realized she was screaming, loud and rather shrill, and immediately lowered her voice. “I have never done anything or been anywhere or been free to choose anything because gods forbid I got sick and died and couldn’t help rebuild the Argenti race. Even my diet was carefully crafted to encourage fertility. No one talks about it because it’s ugly, but that’s what I was. A breeder. With one value. All the babies I could pump out.”

  It was true.

  She’d never actually said it aloud before. Never even really thought it in such stark, opaque terms.

  No one had ever looked at her and seen anything more than the value of what she could do for the planet’s population.

  “If that were the case, they’d have had you strapped to a gurney and bred you as soon as they could.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “Yeah. And they didn’t do that.”

  She curled her fingers into fists and looked away. The ship was closer now, shimmering in the heat. Not too far now.

  “Nothing is fair, amiera. And no one is free.”

  She breathed deeply through her nose, trying to calm herself. Amiera. Amiera. Amiera!

  She knew what that word meant, and every time it grated. It was as insulting as everything else he’d ever said to her. She glared at his massive form, hulking under the weight of a dead body. It was all too much. She couldn’t handle any more hatred. Not today.

  “I’m not a princess!” She kicked the back of his kneecap, right where she’d seen in the holo-flicks. It worked perfectly.

  His leg went out from under him.

  His knee hit the ground, and the body bag toppled forward over his shoulder.

  “And I’m not stupid.”

  She didn’t stop to see what else would happen, just took off running, slipping on the blood in her slippers, to the hatch door of the spaceship. Behind her, he roared.
<
br />   She pushed the release button, and the seal hissed as it popped open. She darted inside.

  He was barreling after her, the body left in the dust where she’d kicked him.

  She pushed the close button on a wall panel beside the hatch.

  Torum got closer.

  The door was moving too slowly. Far too slowly.

  And he was too fast!

  He was bellowing. The hat had fallen off. His arms were pumping. Dust flew up in his wake like miniature tornados.

  Too fast.

  She shoved at the hatch, putting her entire body into pushing the sliding hatch door. It wasn’t moving fast enough.

  Torum was only a few yards away.

  She shoved harder.

  The hatch snicked.

  He slammed against the hull.

  With a deep breath, she activated the lock.

  His furious face filled the tiny porthole. His massive fist pounded on the door with harsh, metallic bangs.

  “Sorry, Torum,” she shouted through the porthole. “Is this not fair?”

  His teeth bared in a snarl. The bangs grew louder.

  She turned away from the rage on his face.

  7

  Oops

  KLYM HAD ALWAYS had an impulsive streak. It was true.

  There was the time during her eighth year, when she’d thrown her stylus at Tutor Heilani’s head. He’d made her so mad, though. She just hadn’t been able to stop herself. It had bounced off his big, bald pate, and he’d turned puce.

  She’d been confined to her chambers for two days, even for meals, and sentenced to three raps on her bottom. The raps had never been hard, but they’d been embarrassing, administered by the old grump at assembly for all to see.

  And then there was the time she’d absconded with Malina. They’d climbed over the Institute’s walls and watched the sun set, orangey-pink over the sound, listened to the harpist in the piazza outside the courthouse, and eaten fruit icies they’d purchased with the cred chit Malina had stolen from her father when he’d come to visit. The punishment had been a good deal more severe for that. She winced just thinking of it. It had been so worth it, though. A whole day of freedom.