He stalked slowly towards me, his eyes intent on me. He spread his arms wide and looked around. “Nowhere to go but down, Callie. Whatever shall you do?” he taunted, his voice rough and mocking.
I looked back down and thought hard. The stucco was rough against my sweaty palms and my stomach twisted withindecision. If I jumped, then what? I didn’t have the codes to open the gates. What had been my plan? Now that I was caught again, I was confused by my actions. I’d run, but to where? I knew the layout from the kitchen. Why hadn’t I turned right and gone down and around through the kitchen and back up through the throne room and out the front door? I’d turned left and gone the wrong way? Why?
“Figure it out yet?” Rathal challenged, his voice a low angry tone.
I looked back to find him stopped a few feet from me, his arms folded across his wide chest. He was giving me a look of put out patience that I didn’t understand.
“Figure out what?”
Rathal sighed, shaking his head before dropping his arms to his side and moving towards me until he held me crowded tightly against the railing, his body close enough to feel the heat rising off him. I had to crane my neck back to look up at him. He took a step closer, pressing into me and bracing his arms on either side of me, bracketing me in.
“That you like to be chased.”
I scowled up at him, a denial on my tongue when he gripped my throat—not gently, but not roughly either—and tilted my head further back, until I was unbalanced and reliant on his hips pressing into mine to keep me from tumbling over the railing. I tried hard to ignore the way my body sang at the way I was helpless. It only confused me more.
“And that you like being chased byme. You hesitated to leave on that first shuttle, darling. The gates were wide open. You could have left. Insteadyou waited for me to catch up,” he breathed, giving me a heated look, his voice a seductive rumble that stroked along my nerve endings like a physical caress.
I shook my head, trying and failing to ignore the way his thumb stroking across my cheek distracted me. Denial was ariver in Egypt and unlucky for me, I knew how to freaking swim. So the stubborn refusal to push aside what he was doing to me wasn’t working. I felt like I was grasping at the tattered remains of my morals and only catching air. I couldn’t give up yet, though, so I let the lie roll off my tongue.
“You’re wrong.”
He hissed and gripped me in his arms, lifting me and whirling around until the next thing I knew, I was on my back with him pinning me to the ground with my arms held above my head with one of his hands around my wrists. He kneed my legs apart and forced himself between them to press his hips against mine until I could feel how hard he was through my thin pants. It sent a hot bolt of shocked arousal straight through me. I shook my head until his big hand stopped me by gripping my jaw again.
“Wrong? Am I?” he hissed again, pressing his erection firmly into me, grinding until he worked a gasp out of me.
“Everything about your scent tells me I’m right. Did you know while you were fleeing you left me a lovely cocktail of emotional scents to follow and underneath the anger and frustration wasdesire. You. Fucking. Liked. It. Callie.” He punctuated his last words with shallow rocking thrusts against me and I closed my eyes tightly against the need to moan. I wanted him to stop. I wanted him to keep going. I didn’t know what I wanted.
Tears gathered behind my eyelids and I said the only thing I could, my voice hoarse. “Stop.”
I gasped at the sudden and instant absence of his body over mine, my eyes flying open to find him standing several feet away from me. He held himself stiffly and watched me with a look hot enough to burn.
“I am going to leave you now. The twins will show you to your room. The Assembly is in a few hours. I would like you to accompany me.” He gave me a long hard look. “You think about what I said, Callie.” He turned from me and walked away, hisbroad back disappearing through the doorway right as the twins emerged from the dark.
I looked back up at the nebula and tried to calm my spinning thoughts. The same denials and confusions just kept chasing themselves over and over inside my head until an ache pounded in my temples. One of the twins nudged me with her foot. I flopped my head to the side to look at her.
“Get up. Food is in your room. You can wallow on a bed instead of the dirty floor.”
I wrinkled my brow at her. “I thought you were mad at me.”
Both of them snorted. The one who stood over me nudged me again. “We are, but we understand. It is hard to change. You don’t know what is right and what is wrong. We too have been there.”
I scoffed, rolling my eyes. “You’ve been kidnapped in the middle of a war by a pirate that confuses and enrages you?”
The twin above me—I thought she could be Rixa, there was a small divot in her left ear where she might have torn it once—snorted and shook her head. “No. But our mates were not what you would say, easy. We fought against them and lost.” She shrugged her big shoulders before continuing. “It was confusing to hate and want them at the same time.”
Hassa moved around to my other side and rolled me over with her nose until I got to my feet. “We found that we did not actually hate them. We hated the weakness of wanting them. It is hard to give in. Hard to let yourself break the rules you live by.”
Rixa pressed her big body close to mine and her sister did the same on my other side, until I was supported on both sides by their warmth. Their scaled hides were much softer than I imagined they would be. “Did you? Give in, I mean.”
They herded me towards the door into the palace and down the hallway before answering. “We did.”
I raised a hand hesitantly, hovering it over the thick fur of Hassa’s haunches before sinking my fingers into it. Her fur was rougher than her scales. It reminded me of a bear pelt I’d touched once at a museum and for some reason it made me feel better. It struck me that this was the same thing I did with my horses when I was having a bad day. I’d tangle my fingers in their manes. Hassa was taller than my quarter horses so it was a little awkward but she didn’t object so I threaded my fingers deeper into her fur, my frown easing. “Was it worth it?”
Rixa huffed a short barking laugh. “It was. Though it was not easy. We had many challenges.”
I appreciated them trying to help me, but I felt my situation was a little different. This was Stockholm syndrome and I needed to get my shit together.
Rixa bumped into me, growling softly. “This is not your Earth. Remember that. Rathal is not human and will not act how you expect.”
