Chapter 14
The Road Back
Sahar woke to the heat of Aleksi’s thick
erection pressed against her back and his fingers combing through
the thatch of hair between her legs. She groaned as he parted her
curls and ran a fingertip along the folds of her flesh, and she
opened her legs to him with a sigh.
They had slept together on a makeshift
bedroll combining Aleksi’s and hers after she’d kicked the Wolf’s
and the Tall’s into the camp’s fire last night. The thought of
lying on any of their bedding had made her belly retch and her skin
crawl.
Now, her skin was on fire with mounting
desire as Aleksi stroked her lower lips. Dipping his fingertip into
her wetness, he drew slow, lazy circles around and around her flesh
until she was moving with him, pressing her backside into his groin
and her mound into his hand, gasping as he cupped her and began to
tap a finger inside her. Her undulations grew quicker and shorter
as he slid two fingers deep inside her and pressed her flesh to his
palm. She slid her hand over his and clamped her legs tight, riding
their joined hands until the pressure inside her erupted in
waves.
Her body still rippling with sensation, she
moaned with spent pleasure as he pushed his hard, pulsing cock
where his fingers had been, and she caressed him with her inner
muscles, squeezing and releasing as he moved in and out of her,
filling her with his pumping, throbbing heat one moment, and
dragging his glorious cock back over her tender flesh the next,
until they were both moving at a frenzied pace.
She placed her hand between their bodies, her
fingers grasping his flesh and increasing the friction for both of
them. Her inner muscles contracted and convulsed, and released in
tiny little shudders. Then Aleksi pulled his cock completely out of
her and pushed it between her fingers, spilling his seed onto her
thighs.
Her first thought was He doesn’t want to
have a child with me. Not thank the gods he had enough sense to
spill his seed on her, not in her, but instead, he doesn’t want me
to be the mother of his strapping sons with golden hair and
earth-brown eyes.
It could still be too little too late. She
could already be pregnant. Her moon flow had always been as regular
as the lunar phases, and was not yet late in coming, but she knew
that many things besides pregnancy could cause a woman’s flow to
arrive late or even dry up completely, including near starvation
and extreme stress. All of which she had dealt with since being
taken captive half a fortnight ago.
She knew she should be grateful for him
showing restraint. She didn’t wish to be forced to marry him, or
anyone else, any more than he apparently wished to be forced to
marry her, despite his proposal in what felt like a lifetime ago.
She didn’t want to become a mother, not yet. She was alive, free of
the cruel captors who had repeatedly beaten her and threatened her
with rape and death. She was safe in Aleksi’s embrace, the man she
had chosen to give her virginity to, about to be reunited with her
loving family and resume her life. Why then did she want to sob
with bitter regret rather than sigh with relief?
Aleksi nuzzled the nape of her neck, his lips
warm and tender, and she pulled away from his solid heat and stood
on sticky, shaky legs and walked straight into the river, where she
stopped waist deep in the freezing water and dropped, submerging
her entire body. She held her breath, welcoming the numbing cold on
her aching body parts, not the least of which was her heart, and
then pushed up with all her might, bursting out of the water with a
scream of pure frustration.
He bolted upright and ran to the river’s
edge, where he stopped short. “Sahar?” He spoke softly, calmly, as
one would to a hissing cat with laid back ears and a twitching
tail. “Tell me, my tigress.”
“I can’t,” she said, her voice a raw
whisper.
“You can tell me anything. Surely you know
that by now.”
She stared at him a long while and then
pressed her lips together and shook her head.
He stepped into the water and started walking
to her, one slow, steady step at a time.
“Are you worried you might be carrying my
babe?”
She laughed, short and harsh. “Of course I
am,” she said, slapping a handful of water at him.
He stopped as the icy droplets splashed his
chest. “Because you don’t wish to bear my child and marry me?”
“Because I wish to bear a child when I
choose, and to marry whom I choose.”
“Which is not now and not me.”
“Yes,” she cried. “No,” she keened.
“What is it you want from me?” Aleksi asked.
“What? Sex? I can do that. I can have sex with you ten times a day
every day from now until the day I ride away if that is what you
want. Patience? You want me to wait around, mooning over you like
some lovesick pup until you decide whether a bastard son of a king
is good enough for you? Or do you want another proposal of
marriage, perhaps on bended knee this time? What?”
She narrowed her gaze on his, her anger as
cold and sharp as the blade she had once threatened to geld him
with. “I want you to go fuck yourself.”
Sahar dismounted from Lasair and stretched
her legs and back as the sun dipped low in the sky turning it a
dusky gray. They’d made good time despite their late start that
morning, after she’d told Aleksi to go fuck himself. It was a
Northern seaman’s swear word that she’d heard her grandfather use
when he was spitting mad, which was what she’d been this morning.
It was also a swear word her mother would cuff her for using if she
ever got wind of it, but the release Sahar felt when hurling it at
that cocksure ass would still have been worth her mother’s
censure.
Aleksi hadn’t known the exact meaning of the
word, but he knew exactly what she’d meant by it. He hadn’t cursed
or shouted back at her, but had gone as stiff and silent as stone,
and had remained that way throughout the day’s journey.
For the best, really. As she led Lasair to
the stream, she couldn’t think of what they’d have to say to each
other that had not already been said. That they were drawn to each
other physically had been apparent from the start. Equally apparent
was their penchant for needling and challenging each other to the
point of constantly arguing.
That she had been the one to push them to
have sex was on her. She could easily try to blame it on his
constant, not-so-subtle pressure, or on the trauma the Wolf and his
curs had put her through, but she knew it was her doing. As much of
a strutting stallion as he was, he would’ve never forced himself on
her. He would’ve continued to behave in a princely manner. She had
acted more like a wanton harlot than a virginal princess, a
reckless, foolish strumpet who hadn’t taken any precautions against
becoming pregnant until this morning, and even then, it had been
Aleksi who had shown common sense and restraint, not her.
Which made her what?
One of a world full of women trapped by the
laws of nature and the social mores of men.
Not that she disagreed with the tradition of
marriage when children were involved. From what she had seen,
children always did better with a mother and a father raising them,
as long as both parents were good, decent people. As angry as she
was with him, she couldn’t deny he was good and decent. Or that his
experience growing up the bastard son of a king had given him a
unique perspective.
The first day they met, he’d told her he
wanted a wife of sturdy body and easy temper who could bear him
sons, and she understood his unwillingness to knowingly bring a
bastard into this world. She may never have been a woman of easy
temper, and her bruised, half-starved body was far from sturdy
these days, but she didn’t understand why it hurt so much knowing
he no longer wanted her to be his wife and the mother of his
children. Especially when she swore she didn’t wish to be
either.
Lasair nosed Sahar’s shoulder, nudging her
back to the here and now, and she walked her horse over to where
Aleksi had strung a rope and tied off the mare between Zolotoy and
the two geldings that had belonged to the Jackal and the Tall. She
left them to graze as she started to pull supplies from the saddle
bags for the night.
“We need to build a lean-to.”
Those were the first words Aleksi had spoken
to her since that morning. “What?”
“Rain is coming.” He pointed up to the
gathering clouds in the darkening sky. “We need to build a lean-to
for shelter.”
He looked around and walked over to a spot
under two trees with thick canopies that wove together overhead.
“We’ll build it here.” He handed her his short sword. “Cut at least
ten and two leafy branches yea by yea big”—he indicated with his
arms out—“for the roof, while I find some base poles.”
Whacking small branches from trees and piling
them next to the frame he was building turned out to be exactly the
release she needed. By the time the lean-to was complete and he’d
moved the horses and tied them off under the tree’s canopy, her
muscles were warm and her head clear of the thoughts that had been
swirling round and round without end.
She laid out their bedrolls inside the snug
den, one on top of the other. There was no room to lay them side by
side. She tossed the dried meat and dates from the Wolf’s store
that would pass as their supper onto the middle of the makeshift
bed, trying not to think about what would happen when they lay down
together for the night.
It would likely be their last night alone
before the search party her father would have sent found them.
Their last night to be free of the princess and the bastard, to be
only Aleksi and Sahar, stallion and tigress. Despite everything
that’d happened, everything they’d said and done, everything they
were and weren’t to each other, all she wanted this night was to
burn with him, to raze him to scorched earth and have him rise
again.
Aleksi sat cross legged on the bedrolls and
picked at the pile of dates and dried meat, resigned to a cold
supper and a cold bed as the first fat drops of rain splatted on
the ground beyond the trees’ shelter. If it had not been for the