As Reuel rolled from the table and landed on his feet, she swung again. Again, he met the swing, parried it, but he made no attempt to follow it up. He moved to one side, trying to force her to move further into the opening. She wasn’t falling for that one, however. She held her position, attacking once more in a flurry of strikes that forced him back.
The numbness in her arm from that first hit had subsided, leaving pain in its wake. She shifted the blade to her other hand, hoping the pain would recede enough that she could switch back. She was almost as good with her left hand as her right, but almost, she felt sickeningly certain, wasn’t going to be good enough.
Parrying her strikes, he shifted again, moving to her other side. Again, she faced him, refusing to allow him to work her out of the corner, but his new position made it necessary for her to switch hands again.
He’d seen the weakness, she realized with dread, switching, gritting her teeth and trying to ignore the pain. This time, instead of merely meeting her thrusts, he launched an attack. Dalia met the flurry of strikes, but she was forced to give ground inch by inch. At almost the same moment she realized he’d forced her into the corner, she lost her death grip on her saber.
He swung, she parried, but the shock wave that went through her arm paralyzed her fingers. Her blade went flying across the room. She watched its path, expecting to feel the bite of his blade any moment.
Instead, to her surprise, he tossed his sword aside, grabbed her arms and pinned them behind her back. He was breathing almost as heavily as she was, but she had the distinct feeling it had little to do with either fear or exertion. His expression was as black as a thundercloud.
“Secure the weapons,” he growled through clenched teeth without bothering to turn his head. “The next man I see wearing one is a dead man.”
Securing both her wrists in one hand, he urged her forward by lifting up on her arms until she had to lean forward, or move, to ease the pressure.
“Do I make myself clear?” he demanded in a growl as he faced the others.
The two nearest the door saluted and left abruptly. The two who remained collected the sabers from the floor, saluted, and departed behind the others. Without a word, Reuel pushed her toward the door and down the corridor. When they reached his cabin, he dragged her over to the locker at the foot of his bed and opened it. The scrape of metal against metal caught Dalia’s attention. She turned in time to see him pull a length of chain from the locker. On either end was a manacle.
The moment he clamped one around her wrist, she wrenched free of him and swung the chain, which had a manacle on the other end, as well, at his head. He caught it mid-air. Wincing, he grasped her around the waist and tossed her backwards. She landed on the bed with a bounce. The mattress, soft and yielding, cushioned her fall, but it also hampered her effort to gain a stance that would allow her to launch another attack. Before she could right herself, he launched himself at her. The impact laid her out flat, stunning her.
Straddling her, he sat upright, grasped her free hand and clamped the manacle around it, then caught the chain in the middle and secured it to a bolt in the bulkhead above the head of the bed.
Dalia jerked her head upward to stare at the bolt, tugging on the chain, but she had a bad feeling that both the chain and the bolt had been made with her in mind and that she would have little chance of freeing herself from it.
Reuel grasped her face in one hand, pinching her cheeks as he forced her to look at him. “Do not... ever ... try ... anything ... like ... that ... again,” he said through clenched teeth, enunciating each word slowly and carefully.
“Afraid it’ll make you look bad in front of your men?” she spat at him as the shock wore off and anger and frustration surged through her again.
“Because I am afraid you will hurt my child, you little fool,” he ground out.
Chapter Seven
Dalia stared at Reuel blankly while dozens of questions crashed in on her, too many and too rapidly for her to give voice even to one. “Yours?” she gasped, feeling the shock give way to fury. “Yours! You son of a bitch!” she screamed, heaving upwards suddenly in an attempt to buck him off.
She caught him by surprise, surprised herself when she succeeded and he fell off of her sideways. Drawing her knees up, she kicked at him, landing both feet flat in the middle of his chest and shoving him backwards on the bed. He caught himself as he rolled toward the edge, grabbing her ankles ... or rather the legs of her trousers. To her surprise and his, the trousers slipped from her waist and he rolled off onto the floor, taking her trousers with him.
Growling, he leapt to his feet and dove for her again. She managed to get one knee and one foot planted against his chest, but it was an awkward position and didn’t give her enough leverage to launch him. He grasped her knees, forcing them apart and wedged himself between her legs.
Panting, she glared at him in furious silence.
He glared back at her.
“That’s what he meant when he said it wasn’t human,” she said tightly, discovering to her horror that she suddenly felt curiously close to tears.
Some of the anger left his face, but the emotions that flickered in his eyes confused her--hurt, relief, and pride in quick succession. Before she could question him further, he shifted upward, covering her mouth with his own in a kiss that was both possessive and angry.
Surprise held her still. A confusion of sensations immersed her in an unbreakable grip, undermining the anger that lingered, or perhaps magnified by the adrenaline pumping through her that her anger had produced. His mouth was hot, seductive, as was his tongue as he forced it between her surprised lips and raked it across her own, inducing a response that encompassed her entire body as his taste and scent filled her. She struggled against it, fought to hold to her anger and supplant the temptation to fall under his spell, writhing and bucking against him, trying to twist her face away and break the kiss.
Her efforts only seemed to incite him. He ceased his exploration of her mouth and began to thrust his tongue in and out rhythmically, mimicking the thrust and retreat of the sexual act with his tongue and her mouth. The motion, his taste, and the imagery he evoked, combined to drown the last ounce of willpower from her, supplanting her anger with a growing sense of desperation. She closed her mouth around his tongue, sucking him.
Her response shattered the last vestiges of his control. Wrenching his mouth from hers, he grasped the neck of her tunic with both hands and parted it as if it had been no more substantial than paper. Dalia gasped. The moment he covered her breast with his mouth, however, she completely lost track of any protest she might have thought to make. The heat of his mouth, the teasing nudge of his tongue evoked much the same response from her body as his fingers had when he had teased her before, except many times over. Her head swam. She had to struggle to draw breath into her lungs. Her awareness narrowed to focus on the sensations rioting through her and little else.
Frustration surfaced, briefly, when she discovered her restraints prevented her from either holding him to her or thrusting him away, and she was of two minds about which she wanted worse. The powerful sensations tearing through her as he moved his mouth from one breast to the other, teasing her, lathing her with his tongue, nipping her with the edge of his teeth were almost beyond bearing, but neither did she think she could stand it if he stopped.
“Reuel,” she gasped his name, in supplication, reaching a point at last where she felt she would die if he didn’t stop so she could catch her breath. “Don’t! Please!”
For a moment, she thought he was deaf to her pleas. Slowly, he lifted his head and his gaze locked with hers. She swallowed with an effort, feeling her body cry out with demand the moment he ceased to tease her. “Oh god! Don’t stop!”
