The Taming Read online

  But today, they did nothing. Just served a reminder that her mother was dead and she was alone.

  Agammo had been so distant. Cold. They’d known each other their whole lives since they’d been little more than pudgy children. Now, he’d accepted that they wouldn’t be together as if it were nothing more than a mild nuisance.

  Fifteen years. They’d been betrothed for fifteen years. Fifteen birthdays. Fifteen High Feast Days. Fifteen White Winters. Fifteen summers under the sun. They’d laughed together, cried together. He’d visited the Institute nearly every month.

  And now... nothing?

  She sank down onto a bed and was surrounded by Torum-scent.

  Alone. She was all alone.

  She lifted a hand to wipe at a wayward tear. Her other hand came with it because she was still tied up.

  A dark shadow filled the doorway.

  Torum.

  “What are yo—” She scrambled to turn off the holo-reel.

  He crossed the room, face unreadable, those dark, glassy eyes boring into her.

  She shrank against the wall at the back of the bed, but he was too quick.

  One of his hands snaked out and grabbed her by the calf, dragging her across the bed.

  “What in the world are you doing?” She shoved at his hand. “Let me go!” She aimed a kick at his belly, which she sorely regretted the second it collided with his hard abdomen. Searing pain tore through her foot as a raw blister ripped open.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and cried out.

  His grip tightened, and his gaze flashed to her, brows snapping low. He slid a finger into the top of her sock. Was he going to torture her?

  “I didn’t do anything wrong!” She tried to tug her foot back. “Please don’t hurt me.”

  He sent her an exasperated glare and peeled down the sock.

  Swollen, angry red flesh came into view, seeping fluids, red and yellow. Much worse than she’d imagined.

  The irritated look on his face shifted to incredulity. “You’ve been walking like this?”

  The sock dropped to the bed. He seemed disinclined to further torture, so she collapsed back on the bed.

  When the other sock slid off, he hissed.

  Cool air rushed to the exposed skin, stinging anew.

  She dropped her arm over her face.

  Her arm blocked out all the light, and just for a moment, she let herself pretend she was far, far away. Someplace safe, where she had a big, warm, loving family. Where she wasn’t alone, and she was free to do whatever she pleased.

  Any minute now, Torum would shout, and this time, maybe he really would spank her. It didn’t matter. She had nothing to do and no one to see and nowhere to go anyway. Maybe he was right, and she was pathetic and stupid and thoughtless.

  Silence.

  The bed dipped, and she flinched, preparing for whatever came. A broad hand slid beneath her back, and another under her knees, and then her body lifted from the bed, and she rested against solid warmth.

  She peeked out. Torum had lifted her. His jaw clenched tightly, brows low. It was a face of anger, but at least he wasn’t shouting.

  It was nice to be carried. She might as well pretend it was a hug and enjoy it. Gods knew when she’d next get a hug.

  She rested her head against his chest, listening to his heart, and his arms tightened slightly. Trees. He smelled of trees. If he weren’t such a beast, this would be pleasant.

  He walked down the passageway and turned into the bathing chamber where he merely lowered her to sit at the edge of the bathing pool and squatted beside her. “Put them in the pool.”

  “Oh, no, I think…” She hesitated, holding her feet off the floor with her arms wrapped around her knees. It would hurt. Badly. “Perhaps, I could j—”

  “In the pool.” He pointed, and his voice brooked no compromise.

  She made a face.

  He snagged her by an ankle and dragged her closer to the water. “It’ll sting.” His voice was quieter than she’d heard it, little more than a caress across the air in the darkened chamber.

  She took perverse comfort in that hard, unyielding gaze.

  It did sting.

  He dragged her other foot toward the pool.

  She couldn’t stop the way her face tightened, but she didn’t say a word. When she could stand it no longer, she pulled her feet out. It was bad. Her feet were swollen and discolored with infection.

  He pushed her feet back into the pool. “I’ll be back.”

  She winced but left them there. The burn settled into a sullen, angry throb.

  The air currents shifted as he left the chamber. She sat alone in the herb-scented, darkened silence until heavy boot steps announced his return.

  “I can take care of it,” she said.

  His brows lifted as he sank down to a squat beside her, eying the way she gingerly placed her legs so her feet dangled over the edge of the pool. “You can’t even walk.”

  “I’ve been walking just fine.”

  Ignoring her, he pulled a towel from one of the cabinets near the pool, shifted her to lean against the wall and took a seat cross-legged facing her. “That was your mother?”

  She nodded, and the silence stretched as he lifted her legs to rest in his lap. Because she needed something to do, she pulled out her holo-cam and zoomed the lens in on the hard planes of his darkened face.

  Her face heated at the touch of his broad thumbs on the backs of her calves, and she shivered. Those same thumbs had stroked her breasts the night he’d kissed her and touched her lower lip the night of the birds, but something about this touch and the tenderness behind it made her belly dance.

  He dried her feet with the edges of the towel, carefully avoiding the sore spots. “You should have told me.”

  “Would it have mattered?”

  On the holo-cam’s screen, the dimple flickered. He sifted through the kit and pulled out a vial and a puff. The Vestigi medi kits were vastly different from the Argenti ones. He was right; she’d have had no clue what to use.

  He squirted dark-blue fluid onto the puff, intent on his ministrations, and she took advantage of the opportunity to study his face, softened in the dim light.

  “What did you think I’d do?”

  “Toss me into the waste ejector. Cut my rations. Tie me up. Bellow. Spank me?” Her cheeks heated furiously in what had to be the goddess of all blushes at that last one when she got an obscenely vivid flash of him doing just that. His broad, callused palm swatting down over her bare bottom. Her lower belly tightened.

  A flicker of a dimple flashed on one of his cheeks—so fast she nearly missed it. But it was a nice one. A good dimple.

  “Strange thing to punish someone for.” His lips curved. “Has to hurt like hell.”

  “You should try dancing shoes. A four-inch spike connected by nothing more than ribbons. I’ve had worse cuts.”

  He made a face like he doubted that. “This will sting.” He stroked the wet puff over the raw spots and blew lightly on her feet, and the air on her toes may have been cool, but everything else was suddenly very, very warm.

  This great big man with mean black eyes and hard, angry hands puckered his lips and blew on her feet. She held her breath, watching on screen.

  In the dim light, his eyes weren’t strictly uniform black. The pearly orbs floated in the center, locked on her, and she was trapped in their thrall. She couldn’t have moved even if she wanted to. His gaze drifted down from her eyes, lingered on her lips.

  He set down the puff and cradled her calves in his palms, his broad thumbs stroking circles along her ankles. “Why do you do that? With the holo-cam?”

  Klym looked down at his face on the screen. “I don’t know. I always have. As long as I can remember.” When she was little, right after her mother had died, she and her father had watched the holo-vids of her mother on endless repeat. She still did whenever she was sad or lonely. Making films with the holo-cam felt like a connection to her mother, a common link
between her and a woman who would surely have loved her.

  She swallowed thickly.

  His gaze dropped away, back down to her feet, and the strange moment dissipated, slipping away as if it had never been.

  He spread thick, pink ointment over her blisters. “You’re different than most of the people I’ve known lately.”

  “Oh?” She flinched, waiting for him to say she was stupider or softer or more useless.

  He scowled thoughtfully. “I’ve been roving rough planets for a decade, hauling prisoners to Insuractius, ranging in wilds of the Fringe.”

  She could see that perfectly. The scars and tattoos, the look on his face like he’d never be surprised again. Insuractius was said to be the worst place in the universe a man’s body could live. What would it do to a person, to spend so many years damning others to such a fate? And the Fringe. She shuddered just to think of it. “Was it awful?”

  “Awful? No. I did exactly what I wanted when I wanted to do it with whoever I wanted. I’m not used to women like you, Klymeni.” His voice echoed around the room.

  It sounded like a peace offering, and she wanted one so badly.

  “Klym. Everyone calls me Klym.” She flinched. Everyone. She had no one.

  His face was unreadable as he wrapped a soft, gauzy length around her foot.

  “I’m not used to men like you either, Torum.” She traced her finger along a wrinkle in her dress. “I’ve been locked away in an Institute. I’ve... you were right... I’ve been very protected.”

  He set her legs on the floor and stood. She craned her neck back to stare up at him.

  “Just do what I tell you.” Those orbs locked on her again. “And if you’re in pain, tell me.”

  She nodded. “I will. I—thank you, Torum.”

  Two dimples flashed this time, and she felt like she’d won an award.

  “Tor,” he said simply. He pulled a knife from the belt at his hips and sliced it through the rope around her wrists.

  She grinned, positively giddy. “Thank you, Tor.”

  “Defy me again, and I’ll spank you so hard you won’t be able to sit for a week.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “We were having such a nice moment, and you destroy those, don’t you?”

  “Shut up, Klym.” He lifted her into his arms, and she forgot what she’d meant to say as her head came down to rest on a broad, bulging pectoral. She lowered the holo-cam.

  He’d called her Klym.

  Even her blistered toes flushed warm and cozy.

  “Where do you want to sit? I wasn’t kidding about space being boring. You can’t walk. There’s nothing to do on the ship except work out and stare into space up at the front. You could watch old holos in bed if you like.”

  “How long until we reach your... Jasto’s home?”

  “Three days.”

  Three days cooped up in very close quarters with him. Sleeping beside him. Her belly tightened, low heat spreading between her thighs. Would he still make her sleep beside him? Where else was there to sleep?

  “And after that?”

  “I can’t take you home. They’d blast my ship to shreds before we even got into the Argenti solar system.” He made a face. “There’s a peace planet called Pax-Ahora, not far from where we’re going. I’ll try to get you on a shuttle headed there. It shouldn’t be hard to book transport from there.”

  She shook off the burst of sheer terror at the idea of being alone on a planet she’d never heard of, buying transports across the galaxy. What would she do when she got to Argentus? And for what? Agammo didn’t even want her anymore. No one did.

  “Can I sit in the bridge?”

  He carried her there and set her down gently in one of the seats. “Don’t move. If you need me, shout. Your skin needs time to heal.”

  She nodded, throat too tight to speak.

  He glanced back with a flickering dimple that seemed decidedly kind. “Touch anything, and I’ll tie you up again.”

  She laughed.

  12

  Done

  TOR TURNED THE DIAL to enter the numerics for Agammo’s father’s office and waited while it established connection through the comm portals between Frigorria and Argentus.

  He waited in the silence of the bridge while Klym slept. He kept seeing the look on her face before she’d seen him in the doorway. Hopeless loneliness. She’d been staring at the holo of her mother, bright and golden, with a wide smile and a snooty nose.

  The holo feed crackled to life, and the face of Agammo’s father, Senator Franno, expanded in a crappy connection of silvery light that flickered and faded. The only resemblance the man bore to his son was in the long, thin nose and classic Argenti aristocratic bearing. Otherwise, he was broad and craggy, with a face that spoke of travel and war. “The bounty hunter, eh,” he said musingly.

  “If that’s what you want to call me.”

  “What would you like to be called?”

  “Torum TaKarian works. Regio of Tamminia, if you want to get formal. You could call me ex-Commander of the Tamminian forces if you’re feeling official. Captain of my ship for sure. Vestige warrior. Killer of Argenti.” He tilted his head to the side and half-smiled. “Abductor of their women. Take your pick. Depends how chummy you want to be.”

  Franno clapped his hands and rubbed them in front of his face like he was ready to get down to business. “Let’s go with TaKarian, then. We can be chums. You want to betray your country?”

  Tor trailed his tongue along his upper teeth. “I don’t. The Alliance isn’t my government. My father recognized them. I don’t.”

  Agammo’s father leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms.

  Tor did the same.

  “What is it that you want, then?”

  Tor jerked his chin at the holo. “What’s your name?”

  “Senator Franno.”

  “Not so chummy.”

  The feed flickered and faded at random. “Call me Franno, then. Everyone else does.”

  “I heard you’re losing support.”

  “Who told you that? Merona?”

  Tor shrugged. “Why do you want peace?”

  “The war helps no one but your government and a few of our politicians. It’ll bankrupt us in a matter of decades, and it does nothing to help our population crisis.”

  Tor chewed on a nail. “Your son sucks, you know that, right?”

  Franno laughed. “He’s not so bad. He just isn’t like us.”

  “Us?”

  Franno rolled his eyes. “We know how this really works.”

  “That is?”

  “Before the plague, it would have been yenna. But now… women.”

  Tor thought about that. “That’s what this is about?”

  Franno sucked in a long breath. “Argentus needs women. Vesta has lots of them.”

  “Your soft-handed Argenti males couldn’t handle a Vestige woman.”

  “Our warriors could.”

  “I’ll never get the Primes to agree to it.”

  Franno leaned closer in the holo, and the silvery feed brightened to blue-violet. “We could establish two or three courtship posts on Vesta to help secure the peace once the Alliance is subdued. Our men meet your women. A chance. That’s all.”

  “Sounds like code for troops on Vestan ground.”

  Franno nodded. “We could do the same in reverse. Set up a Vestigi base here on Argentus.”

  “And what about Vestige who can’t find women of their own because we suddenly have an uneven ratio? Men without women tend to become ornery.”

  “So we’ve discovered.” Franno lifted a shoulder. “You could always end the harems on Vesta.”

  That gave Tor pause. The harems were a throw-back to an older time, and one he wasn’t sure they even needed anymore. The humani, like Jasto, had been increasingly fertile in the last century, and the felanas could, in theory, be serviced by a humani male as well as by a Prime. So why not an Argenti? “That may not go over well in the other coun
tries.”

  “I’m sure we can make something work.”

  “What else?” It wouldn’t be an easy pitch. The harems were deeply rooted in Vestigi culture, in which Primes ruled, humani were free, and felanas were considered little more than breeding slaves.

  “Bond with Merona’s daughter.”

  “What?”

  Franno’s eyes narrowed. “You heard me.”

  A few days ago, Tor would have said nothing surprised him. But that did. “Klymeni?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Franno’s eyes hardened. “Her father represents the staunchest support for the war in the Argenti government. It will weaken his position if his own daughter is Bonded to the enemy. And it will help assure our politicians that you can be trusted, that your heart is in the right place.”

  “She’d be my selissa?” He leaned forward. “You want an Argenti queen on the Tamminian throne?”

  “We do.”

  Tor folded his hands behind his back and played out a few scenarios. Taking Klym home, introducing her to his people, infuriating the Alliance, waking up beside her every morning, spreading her thighs and sliding deep inside, the murmur she made when he’d kissed her, her face when she’d kicked him, and the one she’d just made a few minutes ago that spoke to a loneliness so great it made his bones shiver.

  The Alliance would want her. They already knew he had her, and they were probably already looking for her. She wouldn’t be safe alone on a peace planet. She wouldn’t be safe anywhere. If she went back to Argentus, her father would force her to accept Spiro.

  He remembered her face when she’d said, I should have had a choice.

  He’d felt the same about being regio.

  Nothing is fair, and no one is free.

  Selissa rites were ancient, as sacred as it got on Vesta. Not even the Alliance could touch her.

  She’d be his selissa. She’d be safe. She’d be his.

  “Done.”

  13