Chapter 25 Rathal
twenty-five
Rathal
He felt like laughing like those old villains in the few Earth movies he’d watched some years ago. He could practically feel his ears curling dramatically. The trap had sprung and she was caught.
The many escape attempts before were done under a heavy dose of denial, but this? This was real, out in the open, fun.
Though that escape attempt in the kitchens had almost seemed like play. Or a dare.
Catch me if you can.
He’d watched her on his hololink sneak through the crowded kitchens and when she’d come to the garbage chute he’d laughed out loud as he’d realized what she’d planned.
It had startled his steward who was there trying to get him to decide on the date for the next lighting vote.
The diurnal denizens of Erral were keen to move things along.
They’d been grumbling at the time for the last ten orbits about the nocturnal votes winning for the third time in a row.
It wasn’t his fault they consistently slept through the last Assemblies.
He was befuddled that the Light had won this time.
He still couldn’t quite believe that Callie had married him.
It would be nice to have someone share in the day to day workings of running a city.
She wanted to stay, that much was clear.
He wondered if she still had lingering misgivings about the timeline of their relationship?
He couldn’t remember how long humans courted for.
He was sure things had changed since the time of the Pharaohs.
Then, fathers and mothers picked mates for their children or matches were made by either party based on merging assets or survival.
He distinctly remembered the courtships not lasting very long, though they sometimes varied based on economical status.
He studied her .
Poor darling. It must be hard to take a chance on something so unknown, so alien.
From what he knew of her, Callie didn’t do spontaneous things.
Under normal circumstances he thought she might take years to fall in love with someone.
She had chosen him, but did she love him?
Could she love him? Was this all too fast for her?
Would he have to wait years before she confessed her deepest feelings to him?
He didn’t know.
Couldn’t hurt to ask. But not yet. Not here. He would wait for tonight when the setting was more conducive for romance. He would take pity on her for now.
She was blushing, the red staining the lovely brown of her cheeks and neck in a most becoming way.
He wanted to lick where the blush spread, desperate to taste her skin.
His mouth watered and he had to curl his tongue against the roof of his mouth to keep it from lolling out in lovesick pants. She looked lovely in her new outfit.
She fidgeted under his regard, her hand coming up to rub at the back of her neck. “Uh, Rathal?”
A large part of him wanted to further tease her by continuing his perusal, but alas, he was not so cruel.
Instead, he tugged her forward, keeping her hand in his, and continued the tour of the gardens, taking her in and out of the small maze and then up long perron stairs to the great ziggurat that sat in the center of the garden layout.
Inside, were lazing pools, and hot springs and bars that during working hours would have skillful attendants doling out drinks and small snacks.
“This is cool,” Callie said, her head turning this way and that to take it all in.
“I’m glad you think so. I’ll be sure to bring you back in the future during business hours so you can enjoy the bustle.”
She came to a stop and gasped when they made it to the wide archway on the other side of the pyramid.
“Rathal…” She swallowed hard and squeezed his hand. Her scent started heating up as she came to understand just what it was that they were doing here.
Below them, spread out seemingly forever—though it did have a more reasonable end, the endlessness was an illusion maintained by mirrors strategically suspended in various places—was the main maze of the garden.
His master plan was coming to fruition. He all but dragged her down the stairs, stopping just before the gilded entrance gate of the maze.
He turned, raising her hand to his mouth and kissing her knuckles before letting go and taking a step away from her to start removing his clothing.
“Um, what are you doing?” she asked, smiling at him with a raised eyebrow. Though, he noted, she was enjoying the view. He liked when her little fangs bit into her full bottom lip like that.
He peeled off his pants, kicking them to the side, and began removing his jewelry.
“I’m stripping of course. We can't very well have a Hunt with us dressed, now can we? What a waste of valuable time. Not to mention, I’d just end up tearing your clothes and mine in my haste, and darling, I hate to ruin good clothes. ”
Callie’s smile melted into that shy, aroused look she always got when he said something that turned her on. When she licked her lips he audibly groaned in his throat.
“Oh, right. Good point. Um, so… how does this usually go? I mean, what do I do?”
Oh sweet Mother, her scent was now saturated with heat and it went straight to his cock, which hardened to the point of pain as he watched her eyes drop from his face, to his chest and then to his groin where she lingered, licking her lips again.
He growled low in warning and her lips twitched into a smile, though her gaze when it drifted back to his stayed heated. “You start by getting naked. Then I’ll give you a two minute head start.”
Callie’s hands shook when she brought them up to remove her shirt. He watched as the hem rose, revealing first her toned stomach and then finally her breasts. Her dark nipples were hard and just begging to be licked. He wondered if he could talk her into piercing them?
She tossed the shirt onto the pile of his clothes.
He darted to her when she reached for the waist of her pants, dropping to his knees before her.
“Let me help you with that, my prize,” he purred, lifting her leg to set her foot on his thigh so he could untie the straps of her sandals. He took his time, stroking over her skin with his fingers and kissing the inside of her knees as he pulled her pants down.
“How do you make taking shoes off hot?” she breathed, staring down at him.
He kissed each one of her ankles before releasing her and standing to his full height to take her naked form in.
“You are beautiful, Callie,” he whispered to her.
Her body was a testament to all her hard work. She was a sculpted work of art, hard and yet soft. Her tight curls had grown out, creating a dark halo around her head that he knew she was proud of.
His eyes inevitably fell to the crux of her thighs where a patch of black hair shielded her folds from his gaze, but it couldn’t contain the rich scent of her arousal. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that his Callie was wet for him.
“What now?” she whispered back to him.
His eyes flicked to hers and his body grew tense, his head lowering to a threat posture.
“Run.”
Callie's eyes widened before she was pivoting hard on her heel, her body little more than a blur as she ran through the gateway and disappeared into the maze.
He sat on his heels before leaning forward to spear his fingers through the pebbles on the ground and then he stretched out like one of the Earth cats to pop his spine and returned to his starting pose, this time with his hands resting on top of his thighs. He started counting.
He could hear the sound of her panting breaths, the crunch of gravel under her feet, but most of all, he could smell how scorching her scent had grown.
The heated smell of her arousal was now nearly overwhelming.
His Callie was having the time of her life.
Chase and catch, it would seem, was going to be a regular date night for them.
He was, after all, going to spoil her tremendously.
Still, her delectable smell had his heart rate too high, and his muscles far too tense for a proper chase.
A predator should be controlled, not giddy like a boy in his schooling years.
He closed his eyes and began pulling in slow, measured breaths, reaching for calm with both hands and gradually, his heart slowed and his muscles loosened. A smile formed just as his eyes opened.
“Oh, and Callie?” he called, his voice carrying over the maze, taunting and rich. “We will be doing this the old fashioned way. Without the aid of low lighting.”
The glowing stones and glittering string lights that wove through the garden died just as his words finished echoing. He heard her laughter from somewhere deep inside the depths of greenery and his smile widened.
Having counted down from two minutes, Rathal stood and howled.
His song was not the full throated roar of a Rijijtera, but an eerie, higher pitched cry of a shadow come to hunt.
It rose and rose before falling into the low humming throat clicking that was the natural calling card of his species, long before they walked on two legs and thought beyond their next meal.
He’d been told the sound was spine-tingling. The sound one might hear in their nightmares just as their demons drew close.
He hoped it made Callie run faster.
A good long hunt was rich for the soul, and he wanted her worked up.
Sweaty.
Desperate for escape.
Only then would he catch her and give her what they both needed.
He let the sound die for now, and entered the maze at a leisurely pace, taking his time.
Inside, with the lights off, it was nearly true dark, which made his vision narrow into shades of gray.
The towering densely packed hedge walls that were normally a deep purple were now as dark a gray as one could get without being black.
Only the white pebbled path stayed the same, though muted.
But Callie’s scent trail was like a glowing beacon leading the way before him.
No matter which way she turned, he could follow.
He picked up his pace into a light jog, taking the first right turn into a long waving corridor. When he got to the end, where the path split into four directions, Callie’s scent trail also split, as if she’d taken each path at once.
“Tricky, tricky, my prize. But not tricky enough,” he taunted, taking the second left path, where her scent was strongest. The others had faded a fraction, and doubled back, hinting that she’d ran down the corridor and came back to the starting point to create a false trail.
He moved faster now and started his rolling clicking call, like the hunting hounds of Egypt when they scented their quarry. The sound carried hauntingly through the twisting corridors of the maze and he heard—very faintly—a startled gasp.
His head snapped around, ears rotating to try and catch the sound, but she’d gotten control of herself. He increased the volume and frequency of his humming clicks, listening intently but she remained silent.
Tricky, tricky.
When he reached the end of the passage, he had three directions to choose from, but this was where he ran into his first major problem.
Callie’s scent had vanished.
His call cut off as he doubled back and forth, scenting the air but her scent faded and then died just before the crossroads. Growling, Rathal loped down several meters of each new corridor trying to pick her scent back up, but nothing.
Very tricky.
However did she manage to hide her scent? And who had helped her?
“Oh, for this bit of genius there will be both a reward and a punishment, my prize,” he taunted, his voice rough from maintaining his call for so long. He hadn’t used it in so long he was a little surprised that he remembered how.
Laughter floated on the breeze, husky and rich, but it was distorted—like it came from several directions at once.
His eyes narrowed.
“Who let you into the drone feed, Callie? I do believe this is cheating.” He paused, sniffing. “I’m so proud.”
“Whatever shall you do now, Rathal?” Callie sing-songed, throwing his words back at him. Her voice reverberated, echoing itself several times which meant she had commandeered quite a few of his drones for this little trick of hers.
“You understand that this means war, yes?”
More husky laughter.
“Come and get me… if you can.”
“Oh ho!” he said, laughing. “Such bravery! But let’s see how you like it when I cheat.”
His mental link exploded into action, spearing through her flimsy hacking program and seizing the twelve spy drones. He found her quickly with them and then he killed them all one by one, dropping them at her feet, leaving only one hovering at eye level.
“You still have time, darling. I suggest you pick up the pace,” he told her through the drone.
He’d marked her location—she was four corridors north and slightly to the left of him—and then cut the feed to the last drone, and locked her out of the station's mainframe. He had noted, however, the Link signature for the passcodes she’d used.
The twins would be on extra kitchen duty for the foreseeable future, the traitors.
And then he cheated further by scaling the walls.
The strain of Hafa plant they’d bred for the maze walls had thick vines that wove together so densely that they were practically a solid wall.
He was grinning like a mad person the whole way to the top and once he’d made it, he crouched like a specter in the dark and started calling again.
This time he emphasized the clicking to add a truly horrifying edge and almost broke into laughter when he heard the muffled shit from deeper in the maze.
She really should have thought this through. Cheating first was opening the floodgates. She’d married a pirate for Goddess’s sake! What a terrible, terrible misstep. He snickered in between clicks and started crawling forward on all fours like a monster out of one of Callie’s Earth horror movies.
He kept his ears in constant motion to pick up her every movement, since he still couldn’t smell her. The naughty darling.
He pushed off his heels hard, jumping and sprinting down the top of the wall.
“Come out, come out. Wherever you are.”