Chapter Ten
CHAPTER
TEN
“Damn her! Damn that prava bitch to the eight hells and let her burn!” the finia raged.
“Damn that trega whelp! He will get nothing from me for his failure! You should have known better than to trust a half-breed whelp!” Braxia glared at the fortunary.
“And now there will never be another chance to get at them that way. They will be especially cautious. We must do something before they get further entrenched in my kingdom!”
“Then that only leaves us the choice of a slip blade,” Wizol said, making certain to bow low to her. In her present state of temper it was wisest to remember his deference. It wasn’t beyond her to beat a servant within an inch of his or her life. Luckily, he was needed.
“Then do it!” she screeched. “Do it, do it, do it!” She swung out and cuffed him hard on the head. “Send that trega whelp to do the job and tell him if he fails me this time it will mean his life!”
“Surely you don’t mean to send him to do it,” Wizol ventured, making certain he remained in a low bow. “This requires an expert hand, beauteous one.”
“Then find me one! Now! Meanwhile, that trega half-breed can redeem himself by killing the prava. She dares to sleep in my bed and defies our plans to win back our kingdom? She is an abomination, plain and simple, and she should be killed. Make sure the boy understands. Kill the prava bitch and he will have his gold coin.”
“Yes, mistress,” Wizol said in a quiver of words. Then he picked himself up off the floor and scurried out of the room.
Dremu met up with Wizol shortly after the fortunary left the finia’s rooms. Wizol relayed the new orders and left Dremu shaking in indecision.
He did not know what to do. He was in danger either way.
If he disappointed the finia, he was certain he would meet his death.
If the trega were to discover what he had tried to do, he would be killed for certain.
The invader brothers were ruthless soldiers, killers to be sure.
There would be no forgiveness there. Dremu was afraid he had made the wrong choice when he chose to poison the brothers.
He should simply have joined their army.
He was not a soldier, not a killer, but surely there was something a willing man like him could have done.
Again he faced an impossible choice, if he did as the finia asked, he would become a killer.
He had no future otherwise. But how would he kill the prava female?
She had already foiled his last attempt and she was a creature of mystery to Dremu.
It was said the prava had great mystical powers.
How was he supposed to get close enough to her to kill her? And how does one kill a prava?
Dremu scurried into the first dark hiding spot he could find—an alcove full of brooms and buckets.
He crouched down into a quivering ball of flesh, curled into himself, and closed his eyes.
He needed to think and to sleep. No one should bother him here.
No one should be able to see him behind the brooms. He would sleep and he would think.
Oh sweet gods, was he actually going to do this terrible thing? Was he going to kill a woman? And how would he do so without alerting the brother she bedded with? Oh, by the gods, there had to be a better way. There had to be!
Despite his upset, the exhausted Dremu finally found it within himself to fall asleep.
Jileana was well loved.
Her physical body was, in any event. She was lying in bed, her limbs languorous and exhausted, her eyes trained on the magnificent body of her lover as he went about, getting dressed.
“Must you leave?” she asked, trying not to sound too demanding of him. She recognized he wasn’t the type of man who would care to have a woman make demands of him that he wasn’t readily willing to give in to.
He smiled though, his gaze sliding over her naked body as it lay on display in his bed.
She was on her stomach, a pillow pulled up under her cheek, her fanny exposed, and her crossed ankles lifting up toward her backside and then dropping back down onto the bed, lifting and dropping as she bent her knees rhythmically.
“I want little more than to stay in bed with you on our last day together, but I cannot risk letting my responsibilities slide. I must spend this day with my brothers, coming up with the proclamations that will put this city at ease and hopefully settle the matter enough to dissuade any more attempts on our lives.”
“Proclamations will not make the Krizans love you.”
“No. But it is a start. And over time they will come to appreciate my rule. I hear the finia was something of a tyrant.”
“Indeed she was. I have heard many tales that would shock and appall you.”
“Nothing shocks me any longer.” He frowned. “You would think they would be more grateful, then.”
“Change is not easy. And you are right; they have no idea what your intentions are. For all they know you will be worse than their former leader.” She lifted her head from the pillow. “How will you begin to engender trust?”
“I don’t know. It is different for every city.
Usually in a city run by tyranny it is best to hold open days of hearing disputes and begin to make fair and equitable solutions to common troubles.
Word of these things will spread and eventually the people will come to realize they will be dealt with fairly. ”
Jileana smiled. “That is a brilliant maneuver! I am most impressed.”
He chuckled as he belted his trousers. “Hopefully the Krizans will be just as easy to impress as you are.”
“I have every faith that they will come to love you.” She smiled as she turned, rolling over slowly onto her back as she ran an inviting hand up from her hip to her waist to her ribs and eventually to embrace her breast. “They will feel just as stimulated by your attentions as I am. They will know what a very good man you are.”
Jaykun growled. “Stop that,” he scolded as he snatched up his shirt. “I must go to my brothers and you know it makes me mad with lust when I see your hands on your own body.”
“Do I?” she asked archly. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Jileana,” he warned.
“All you have to do is get dressed and leave. I am not stopping you.”
But she was stopping him and she knew she was.
He was overwhelmed by his lust for her in a way he had never experienced before.
With Casiria it had been about love and devotion more than it had been about lust. In truth, Casiria had not enjoyed bed sport as much as Jaykun might have wanted her to.
Oh, they had had their intimacies, but never had it reached this level of insatiability.
Jaykun pushed the comparison aside with irritation.
Why did he keep comparing Jileana to Casiria?
They were nothing alike. Casiria had been fair, blond, blueeyed, and pretty.
Jileana was a dark, sultry beauty nearly half a foot taller than his diminutive Casiria had been.
Jileana was strong and vital; Casiria had been fragile and delicate.
He had treasured Casiria and protected her at every turn.
With Jileana, it felt as though she were the one doing the protecting.
She had certainly saved everyone at the dinner table from terrible deaths last night.
When he thought of how she had scrambled down the table, tipping over bowls of soup, he knew Casiria would never have made such a spectacle of herself.
She had been a lady, demure and modest, everything opposite of the bold Jileana.
Casiria also would never have lain naked in bed trying to tempt him back into it by touching her skin as Jileana was now doing.
He watched as she pinched her nipple, pulled on it a little, tempting him with the memory of how she felt under his touch.
She was so hot, her skin the softest and smoothest he’d ever felt.
He found himself quite addicted to the feel of it.
Then her free hand came into play. It began at her other breast, then slowly progressed down the length of her torso until her fingers were scraping through the curls on her mound and then slipping between her nether lips. She gasped softly at the sensation and her eyes rolled closed.
“Go on,” she breathed. “Be on your way if you must. I have plenty to keep me occupied without you.”
Jaykun was rooted to the spot, his cock hard and throbbing since the moment he’d first seen her touching her own skin.
He could hear his pulse in his ears, and his hands had halted in the action of putting his shirt on.
Now all he could do was watch raptly as she touched herself, her long body sliding restlessly amongst the bed linens, every curve curving, every arch arching.
Her hair was a dark cloud beneath her head; her lips flushed red as sounds of welcoming pleasure moaned from between them.
He ejected a sound of frustration as his body locked with tension and outright craving.
Damn her anyway! He should be tired of the tempting little witch by now!
Instead it seemed his need for her expanded exponentially.
Every time he had her, he had to have her again.
It was too much. It was frightening. He could not afford to lose himself like this with a woman.
Not now, not ever again. And not just because of the pact with his goddess, Weysa, who expected him to devote himself completely to her, but because he had learned the lesson long ago, that to lose oneself to one’s passions was a dangerous, deadly road.
A painful one he had no intention of ever walking down again.
And yet … and yet he could not seem to make himself turn around and walk away from her. She just looked too delicious lying there pleasuring herself. He simply could not abandon all the promise filling the room just as her increasing moans were filling it.