Текст книги "Barbarian Prince"

Автор книги: Kaitlyn O'Connor

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Chapter Eleven

Drak was stewing as he escorted Noelle back along the corridor to the stairs. He wasn’t certain who he was most pissed off with—his son or Noelle.

He supposed both.

But he was having some difficulty swallowing that his son had tried to filch his woman when Terl hadn’t shown that he was particularly aggressive and had never defied him before.

It was almost as impossible to imagine Noelle seducing his son. She’d yielded to him every time he had initiated intimacy, but she certainly hadn’t sought him out and he rather thought she would have if she was that type of woman.

She couldn’t possibly prefer a male that was barely old enough to be considered a man!

So if what he thought he’d seen wasn’t what he’d thought, what was it?

“It wasn’t what you thought,” Noelle said, almost as if she read his thoughts.

“How would you know what I think? Do you read minds?”

Noelle considered just allowing the subject to drop, but she couldn’t see doing that when it seemed to her that the incident might have caused friction between father and son. “We were studying the drawing I did and I said something and we just happened to glance at each other at the same time. I didn’t realize he was so close and obviously he didn’t either.”

“What did you say that made him glance at you?”

“I don’t remember,” Noelle lied. She glanced up at Drak to see how he took it and realized he didn’t believe her—not that part anyway. “Ok, so I said if I was still here in the spring ….”

“Why wouldn’t you be?” Drak said quickly.

“That’s what he said, but exactly how am I supposed to know how long I’ll be here when nobody told me?”

Drak stopped and looked down at her with a mixture of annoyance, amusement, and curiosity … as if he was trying to figure out how she could be so dense! After studying her for a long moment, he shook his head and resumed walking, tugging her along with him as he had before.

Noelle gaped at him as it slowly sank in that she had no idea whether or not they ever intended to return her to her people again. She didn’t know where or when or how or why she’d gotten the idea that they would eventually take her home and let her go, but it dawned on her then that she’d made a baseless assumption … because they had all assumed that the women of this species lived alone on their new colony world. And when she’d discovered there were men of the same species on the sister planet, she’d decided they must have a reason for living on separate planets and that the men must only hold the women in captivity briefly and then return them.

Otherwise wouldn’t there be women on this planet?

Faulty reasoning or not, it was that assumption that had made it possible for her to remain calm and assume a positive attitude about her situation. Not that she would’ve tried to fight anyway. That only provoked men’s aggressive tendencies and in a contest of strength between a man and a woman the woman always lost. The only option to that sort of thing in her situation was to comply and hope yielding would prevent the male from deciding to break her instead. Unfortunately, that didn’t always work, but a woman stood a better chance at soothing the savage beast than overwhelming him with superior strength.

And there was no sense in lying to herself about it. He hadn’t had to rape her.

She’d realized as soon as she’d calmed down from her original fright that he was a damned fine looking specimen and he had lulled her fears of assault both by distancing himself and by not forcing himself on her. By the time he’d gotten around to having sex with her she’d been willing. It hadn’t been an act of self-preservation. She’d been pretty damned wound up and ready to test the waters.

Her interest in him had developed into something unexpected, probably something it shouldn’t have.

Unless one considered the possibility of psychological effects from being captured.

Truthfully, as far as they’d been able to ascertain, the reaction women had of developing affection for their captors was as primitive as the male propensity toward aggression when it came to sex. Self-control was a civilized veneer that was so thin it didn’t take much to over set the balance and step over the line onto the wild side.

So she knew she couldn’t actually trust her feelings toward Drak. She did find him physically attractive and she’d seen a good bit to admire about him beyond that in the way he behaved toward others and the respect his men clearly felt for him.

But she was still a captive and her primitive instincts for survival were in play.

Maybe she truly felt an emotional bond developing and maybe it was all in her head.

In any case, all she could really do was to play and along and make the best of the situation while she waited for it to be resolved.

She couldn’t leave. She knew she wouldn’t survive five minutes on this hostile world on her own and she didn’t know that she could find the ship that had brought her or pilot it if she did. The colonists might or might not try to mount a rescue mission once they found out where she was.

Otherwise, all she could do was wait to be released and, right or wrong, she’d convinced herself that was not just a possibility but a likelihood.

She’d figured, while she waited, she might as well make the most of her situation and further her understanding of these ‘neighbors’ both from a scientific standpoint and from a political one. They needed to understand the customs and thought processes of these people in order to promote peace between them and enable the colony to thrive.

She supposed that misconception had been bolstered by Terl’s somewhat insulting statement that Drak was trying to find some use for her since he had no interest in breeding her—that and Kadin’s earlier comment that had been very insulting.

Well, Drak himself had said he was trying to think of a use for her.

So, evidently the use he’d decided to try was to see if she was technologically savvy enough to figure out how his ‘treasures’ worked and fix any that could be fixed.

She tried not to feel insulted that he considered her brain more desirable, apparently, than he did her as a woman.

She was relieved he’d decided he didn’t care to breed her!

Because she sure as hell didn’t want to be bred by him!

She was pretty sure he couldn’t breed her even though one of the requirements of being a colonist was to dispense with birth control for the first couple of years and limit the use of it thereafter—What was the use in building a colony, after all, if they had no progeny to leave it to after them? They weren’t the same species even if there didn’t appear to be much difference physically and that made crossbreeding an unlikely possibility.

She couldn’t be certain, though, could she? Unlikely didn’t mean it was impossible.

Could she really afford to ignore that and just keep hoping for the best?

But what else could she do?

She wasn’t on the same planet as the other colonists! It wasn’t as if all she had to do was sneak out and run to the colony and bolt the damned door!

If she could get clean away, escape and actually reach the colony, even if he came after her—and she couldn’t see that she was valuable enough to him for him to do that—she’d be safe because she was sure they didn’t have the technology to breach the colony’s security features.

The question was, was there any possibility in hell that she could pull that off?

Noelle was so deep in thought that when Drak stopped her and opened a door panel, pulling her through, she was completely disoriented when she discovered it wasn’t the same door they’d gone through when they’d headed down.

She didn’t recognize anything about the portion of the castle she saw when they emerged.

But maybe it was just the different perspective?

She realized almost as soon as he turned down a narrow corridor that it wasn’t her viewpoint that was at fault. They hadn’t emerged from the same door they’d used when they’d gone down. They weren’t even on the same floor.

Apparently, she’d missed a landing.

Drak escorted her to a door that led directly into the great hall. A meal seemed to be in full swing—or possibly a party. It was hard to say. The men seemed to have been partying almost non-stop since they’d returned from the raid.

She’d assumed that from the level of noise that filtered up to the room where she’d been staying but maybe they were always that noisy? After all there were a lot of people—the room was huge but still full enough to be crowded.

Drak led her to the same area where she’d been taken before—a seat before the enormous fireplace that was used to sort of heat the room.

She actually thought the people generated as much or more of the heat.

This time, however, there was a table set up.

Drak looked around when they reached the table. Spying a chair close at hand, he grabbed it and shoved it up to the table opposite his own chair.

The unfortunate man who’d been using the chair failed to notice Drak had taken his chair when he stood up. He sprawled on the floor when he made to return to the seat and everyone within view laughed uproariously.

Noelle had a hard time refraining from joining them, but she thought her own reaction was more from shock than actual amusement.

The man scrambled to his feet with a roar of fury and whirled to see who’d snatched his chair out from under him.

The expression on his face when he met Drak’s cool look was almost more comical than the fall. It instantly deflated his anger. “My lord!”

“Yes?” Drak responded coolly.

The man grinned a little sickly. “I beg your pardon.”

Drak nodded imperiously and moved to his own chair. “Send someone to fetch my dinner and my woman’s.”

The man blinked at him rapidly and finally nodded, turned, and staggered off.

Drak propped an arm on the table, supporting his chin with his fist as he watched the man’s progress. “I wonder if he will make it to the kitchen,” he muttered.

Apparently he was sober enough to realize he’d been given a task he was expected to complete. He appeared to be lost for a little while, but he finally managed to collar a server and sent the youth back in the direction he’d come from.

When Drak returned his attention to his companion, he discovered a look on her face as she surveyed the great hall that he could only interpret as revulsion.

Surprised and vaguely insulted, he turned to study the room himself, searching for what she’d seen that she found disgusting.

He didn’t see anything in particular and glanced toward Noelle again. She was studying the table top, her hands in her lap, but as he looked at her, she transferred her gaze to the floor and then the occupants of the room, flicking a glance at first one and then another.

Still somewhat insulted and confused, he focused on trying to see whatever it was that she was looking at and, slowly, his vision adjusted until he was seeing what he generally ignored.

Filth.

And, almost as if the expansion of his vision to see what he’d previously ignored enabled his other senses to expand, he began to notice the unpleasant smells that surrounded them—and felt his ears begin to vibrate from the excessive noise.

This, he realized, abruptly feeling as if he’d stepped out of his own body and become an observer rather than a participant, was what Noelle saw, heard, and smelled as an outsider.

He abruptly fully understood why she was repulsed.

And he was angry that she had the audacity to judge them!

Who was she to judge them!

An outsider! An alien being who clearly thought she was better than them!

He was still angry enough when the boy finally arrived with food and drink for him and his companion that he it took all he could do to refrain from knocking the boy flat when he discovered the tray used to bring his food looked as filthy as the floor!

Instead, after struggling with his temper for a few moments, he dismissed it. Lifting his mug, he drank deeply.

Noelle, he saw, hadn’t touched either the food or the drink.

Feeling his gaze, she glanced at him, reddened, and then began to pick carefully at the food.

Drak brooded over it for a while, still angry, wrestling with the urge to pick a fight so that he could tell her what he thought about her superior attitude.

He was still more than a little miffed at catching her virtually in the act of kissing his eldest son if it came to that—her lame explanation be damned!

He wasn’t in the habit, however, of allowing his temper to gain the upper hand. On the battlefield, it could mean a swift and ignominious death. Politically, a habit of allowing his temper to overrule good judgment could end up costing him his realm.

Instead, he focused on his food—ignoring the dirt as he generally did, although it was harder now that it had been brought to his attention. He was also careful to go easy on the brew in his mug and not drink enough to muddle his thinking.

The food and drink soothed his temper as he filled his empty belly and as his anger cooled, he studied his surroundings with a little less bias than before.

It was filthy. There was no getting around that or even excusing it on the grounds that it simply couldn’t be helped and therefore had to be accepted. They were crowded, but that just made it all the worse that no one made any attempt to clean up the mess they made. The servants were no better. Clearly, they only made the minimum effort to serve, bringing the food and drink when necessary and collecting the mugs, plates and utensils afterward but very little beyond that.

Nothing that was spilled on the floor was cleaned up beyond what the rodents, insects, and hunting maks took care of.

He could recall his father saying all creatures needed to eat.

And his mother, who’d provoked the comment by her complaints, pointing out that they didn’t have to feed underfoot. The scraps could be gathered in another place to feed them where the stench wouldn’t be so overwhelming and disgusting.

And if the maks weren’t allowed to roam the hall in search of food they wouldn’t be pissing and defecating all over the place and adding to the stench.

Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to clean things up a little?

For his own comfort.

Noelle was torn between absolute fascination as she studied the hall and its occupants and horror and disgust. She’d heard about primitive societal behavior—from Monica—and before that from Grandmother, who’d had an interest in history that coincided with her interest in her family line. She’d even read about some of the customs and behavior of early man, but she’d never imagined what the reality of it must have been like.

Of course this wasn’t Earth and these weren’t the people who’d occupied that time. She was certain there were as many differences as there were similarities, but the filth—well, she’d read about the grossly unsanitary conditions of mankind’s civilization—and apparently mankind weren’t the only ones that had taken a while to elevate themselves from lower animals in that respect. Right up until the twenty first century, in the poor countries, diseases ran rampant because of the horribly unsanitary conditions.

Ignorance played a huge part in that. They apparently didn’t know that living in their own filth would make them vulnerable to diseases and weaken them at the same time. She was inclined to think laziness also played a part, but that was harder to determine since survival depended on finding or growing enough food to eat and that was pretty much a full time job—not really leaving a lot of time or energy for cleaning.

She supposed that could be said to be true about this species, as well. Terl had said they were only able to grow food during a very short growing season and that meant that they must spend a lot of time hunting food to supplement. Men were prone to be more muscular—at least human men and that was certainly true of Drak so she thought she could assume it was true of the others, as well. And muscle required more calories for maintenance.

Of course, they seemed to conserve their energy when they weren’t out hunting.

But maybe that was a class thing? Maybe the warrior class was too good to stoop to cleaning? And there didn’t seem to be much of a servant class.

The women, apparently, weren’t expected to do anything but adorn their beds and breed.

“What do you think?”

Startled out of her thoughts, Noelle merely stared at Drak blankly. “About what?”

He gave her a look. “As an … outsider, what do you think?”

Noelle felt her face heating. “Actually, I’m a scientist—so even though this isn’t really my field, I’m try to just observe and collect data—and not make conclusions until there’s enough data to suggest a trend … if you know what I mean.” She smiled at him with an effort.

“Actually, no. I do not know what you mean.”

Noelle blinked at him. “Well, it’s just guessing, you know, until you’ve gathered enough facts to arrive at a … uh … factual conclusion.”

“So what are your preliminary notes?” he asked with patently false pleasantness.

Noelle cringed inside, frantically searching her mind for an escape. She cleared her throat uneasily when nothing immediately came to mind, struggling to fight down another blush of self-consciousness and trying to figure out if her observations might be construed as insulting to him or not. She supposed that depended, largely, on her tone. It could certainly be taken that way, she knew, if she wasn’t careful, but if she didn’t allow a judgmental note to enter her voice, then he surely wouldn’t think she was being insulting?

Or think she was trying to be.

“Well, as I said, this isn’t really my area. There does seem to be an issue with sanitation ….”

Drak looked at her blankly when she threw in the English word.

Noelle decided she didn’t actually want to explain it to him on second thought. She was pretty sure she’d be insulted if anybody looked at her place and said ‘My god! It’s so nasty!’

Trying to think of something to distract him, she fortuitously recalled her visit to his treasure room and the things she’d seen there. “I was wondering if I might be able to talk to that … uh … teller you mentioned that keeps the stories of the tribe? I was really interested in the legend about the two worlds. I think, if it’s true that explains the regression I see here.

“I mean this stage of development is strongly reminiscent of the medieval period on my home world, Earth, as far as I can see, but that was early in man’s development. Relatively early and it seems to me—from the technology—that your people were much more developed at one time and must have suffered a serious setback.

“I was just wondering, since it seems that must have happened a very long time ago, why it was that your civilization hadn’t caught up again.

“But maybe that’s because the women don’t live here? I’m pretty sure most of the advances we made on Earth was because of women—because women like to have a comfortable nest, if you know what I mean, and men don’t seem to care much about whether they’re physically comfortable or not. Or … uh … they’re able to be comfortable in far less … uh … comfortable circumstances.”

Oh my god! Somebody sew my mouth shut! This is getting worse and worse!

“There were similar incidents on Earth throughout its long history—nothing on this scale, of course, but that wiped out earlier attempts to build a civilization …. So I sort of have some examples to compare this with. Well, what I mean is the people who know far more about this sort of thing than I do would be able to take the data I collected and use it to come to a better understanding ….”

Drak emptied his cup and set it on the table with a resounding thunk, shoved his chair back and got up. Before Noelle could bound to her feet, he reached her, lifted her straight up from her chair and tossed her across one shoulder.

She nearly lost the little food she’d been able to consume when she landed on that broad blade belly first.

Hoot’s and catcalls followed them across the great hall and all the way up the stairs.

Chapter Twelve

Noelle had fully expected something frightening to happen once he had the leisure and privacy to exploit his displeasure over her assessment.

It was certainly unnerving.

But, once Drak had closed and bolted the door, she discovered he had something way more exciting to do to display his mastery over her.

Instead of tossing her onto the bed as he had before when he’d carried up the stairs, slung across one shoulder like a hunting trophy, he merely allowed her to slide down his broad chest until they were nose to nose and covered her mouth in a kiss that was electrifyingly, savagely, possessive.

It could have been hurtful if he’d been of a mind to harm. Instead, it was punishing only in the intensity of it, in the heat it produced inside her that scoured her nerve endings like acid. There was great hunger in the way his mouth moved so possessively over hers and he conveyed that to her, lit her on fire for his touch even though doubts still fluttered darkly at the back of her mind.

When he finally broke the kiss and allowed her to slide the remainder of the way to floor, her toes touched and her legs turned to the consistency of rubber. She thought she would have wilted limply to the floor if left to her own devices. Instead, he swung her into his arms and carried her, climbing onto the mattress on his knees and sprawling over her.

They were both still fully clothed. Worse, Noelle had the damned cloak he’d given her tangled around her. She thought she was going to pass out from the amount of heat he generated that was captured within the cloak and baking her.

Pulling away after a second devastating exploration of her mouth, Drak shrugged out of his tunic. Noelle untied the cloak from around her neck and did her best to fling it off. She was only partially successful, but she managed to shed it enough to give herself a little breathing room.

They wrestled with clothing and limited access. Noelle broke a sweat just trying to get her fingers into the waist of Drak’s trousers to explore him with her hand.

Drak ground his teeth when she accidently found him with her nails, levering himself away from her long enough to unfasten the opening and then reaching for her clothing to peel it away before she could wedge a hand into the opening to grasp his cock.

Noelle began to feel a desperation to be naked and have Drak in that state. She felt her desire peaking and dipping like a roller coaster as they wrestled to position themselves and caress whatever small patch of skin they could uncover.

Sweating from effort wasn’t helpful. The clothes began to cling to their skin, making it that much difficult to remove.

Finally, they rolled apart and removed tunics and boots and trousers. When they collided again in embrace, it would’ve been difficult to say who was more desperate to connect fully.

For her part, Noelle felt she’d had all the foreplay she could handle.

Drak didn’t seem to think she had. He fought off her efforts to mount him, pinioned her to the bed with his lower body and his great hands and thoroughly explored her breasts and belly and mound with his lips and tongue and teeth.

Noelle had sucked in gasping breaths until she nearly hyperventilated and passed out. She was almost too limp and drunk with desire and over-oxygenation to identify his cock and grab it when it came within reach, but fortunately, he surged over her at just the right moment and basically placed it in her palm.

She managed to maneuver one thigh from under him and spread her legs wide enough to plug the massive staff between her thighs, but she could get no further and no amount of wiggling lined her up the way she needed to be.

Huffing for breath, she went limp to collect herself and try to get a decent breath of air into her lungs before she passed out.

Drak seized the opportunity to gnaw on the throbbing nipples of her unprotected breasts.

Uttering a squawk, Noelle grabbed his cheeks and levered his head upward so that their gazes met.

“Put the damn thing in!” she growled.

A jolt went through him, but he surged over her, grabbed the anaconda and began trying to shove it into her pee hole. Noelle tried tilting her hips back and forth a few times to ring it with the hole, but he was determined to stick with the spot he’d chosen.

Damn it!

She began shoving at his shoulders. When he rolled over, she climbed across him, straddled him and then lined up with his lance. She felt the skin on her knees pull with the effort to engulf it, but she couldn’t seem to make any progress.

After a moment, he tossed her onto her back on the bed, grabbed her legs and parted them, then dropped into the V and covered her clit with his mouth. Noelle came up off the bed as an electrifying jolt traveled all the way through her and short-circuited her brain.

Drak planted one plate sized hand in the middle of her face and shoved her down again.

By the time Drak was satisfied he’d lubricated the area enough, Noelle was screaming. Coming up on his knees, he rang the hole and fell over her in the same motion, thrusting. The head embedded itself within the opening and hit deadlock so that his thrusts merely shoved her across the bed.

He dragged her back and thrust again. That time he had the forethought to grab her shoulders and pin her to the bed. He nearly buckled her spine, but his cock slipped a little deeper and when he withdrew again he managed to gather enough moisture to shove her womb through a lung when he drove into her again.

She panted for breath. They were both so slick with sweat by that time that their skin clung when they didn’t want it to and slid when it was least helpful.

Huffing for breath, Drak slipped his arms beneath her shoulders and got a good grip before he began to set the rhythm Noelle, at least, needed to complete her journey to nirvana.

Well, the second one. Despite every effort to fight him off, he’d sucked her clit to ‘get her ready’ until she came … and came and came until she was screaming.

The lack of a good stiff cock in the right place while she was coming had left her feeling a little hollow, however, and she hadn’t actually managed to come down from the mountains while he was struggling to mount her on his staff. When he finally set the thrust-retreat rhythm she’d been waiting for, her body surged upward in a new race for completion.

Great shudders began to wrack Drak’s body.

Noelle knew what that meant.

He was going to come and leave her with an interrupted one.

Tilting her hips, she wrapped her legs around his hips in an effort to control the depth and speed of his thrusts.

It was a fortuitous move, placing her g-spot in just the right position to get hammered by the head of his cock. It set off her second, mind-blowing climax and fried every circuit in her brain. She could barely hold on to him until he’d begun to come, but as soon as she felt the heated wash of his semen, she gave up the effort to cling and melted into the mattress of the bed, struggling to catch her breath.

Drak lost all muscle tone when he’d expended himself and sank heavily on top of her.

It was surprisingly gratifying.

Until he sank heavily enough that she began to have trouble expanding her lungs for a breath of air.

She lifted one hand and shoved weakly at his shoulder. “Air,” she managed to mutter faintly, drunkenly.

She thought for a few horrifying moments that Drak had lost consciousness on top of her. Thankfully, after a few moments he seemed to gather himself, shoved himself upright and fell off of her, rolling onto his back.

And let that be a lesson to me, Noelle thought with drowsy satisfaction. I’ll have to be really careful about pissing him off again!

Drak didn’t realize he’d lost track of his objective until he woke the following morning. He wasn’t certain he would have then except he was suffering a hangover effect from having spent most of the night fucking.

It had, in fact, taken a strenuous effort of will to leave Noelle sleeping and get out of bed without waking her for another bout.

As he stepped under the near scalding hot water, though, he abruptly recalled Noelle’s comment about the primitive, filthy conditions.

Not that she’d used those precise, insulting terms, but it had certainly been close enough he was sure he had a good understanding of her feelings.

He might have been enraged at the comments instead of just insulted and moderately pissed off if he hadn’t recalled that his mother had had a similar opinion of the situation on Aiper in general and his father’s main holdings in particular.

He hadn’t actually spent a great deal of time on his mother’s home world, but he couldn’t recall from his many raids that the people of K’naiper lived a more comfortable existence—not of their own devices. The planet itself enjoyed a far milder climate, which allowed the inhabitants to spend a great deal more time outside and also a growing season that made it possible to keep a good table all year round. But he didn’t recall that they had many things of comfort. In point of fact, they moved from one place to another and carried only the essentials with them. They still lived in the temporary shelters devised for them so long ago, directly after the great disaster, when their ancestors had taken the ships that were still able to make the journey and carried the women and young children to safety.

Obviously, the place where Noelle was from was different from both, her home world at least and very likely this new colony she spoke of. He didn’t recall that she’d said the village was better.

He shook that thought and the anger that still simmered each time he thought about it. He knew she hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true. He also conceded that she hadn’t said it as if she felt superior or was being judgmental.

He’d insisted upon having her opinion and she’d been brutally honest instead of mouthing polite lies.

The anger rose from his conviction that she was right. She had only to point it out to make him see everything through her eyes and recall that his mother had complained of how miserable it was in the castle—the cold, the damp, the drafts and on top of that the filth from so many people living virtually on top of one another for more months out of the year than they were able to leave the castle and move about freely.