The Barbarians: Stolen Bride Read online

  That thought made her uneasy when she’d climbed into what might be some kind of ritual pool, but Galen distracted her.

  He headed straight toward her as soon as he got in the water.

  She jumped when she felt his touch, whipping a sharp look in his direction.

  He was holding a cloth, she saw, and the scent wafting from it suggested some kind of sweet smelling soap or maybe oils?

  She hadn’t noticed bathing supplies had been provided.

  Stupid!

  Instead of handing her the cleaning cloth, he began to scrub her back.

  She considered stopping him, moving away, saying something ….

  She didn’t do any of that. She stood perfectly still, breathlessly waiting to see what he would do next.

  He finished scrubbing her back and then handed her the cloth and gave her his back.

  She stared at his broad back and swallowed against the sudden dryness of her mouth.

  His back was as beautifully sculpted with muscle as his chest and that was … stunning, kegel clapping stuff.

  She wasn’t certain she could, or should, wash his back.

  He’d offered her his back, though, had washed hers.

  Maybe it was part of the ritual thing?

  It seemed to her that she’d heard of an Earth religion that had to do with foot washing …?

  She decided she didn’t give a damn one way or the other.

  Stepping closer, she lifted the cloth and settled it on the shoulder ridge. His flesh quivered at the light touch.

  “Is it cold?”

  “No.”

  His back definitely felt hot to her through the cloth, but he’d refused to complain.

  She tried to focus on scrubbing and not allow herself to dwell on the intimacy of standing waist deep in the same pool with him and sharing a washcloth. But his muscles were taut. His skin felt silken, especially when she’d smoothed over it with the wet, soapy cloth.

  She caught herself using both hands.

  He turned to face her.

  When she would have moved her hands away, he caught them and brought both to settle them against his hard, bulging male breasts.

  The light furring of hair there fascinated her. It sprinkled his breasts and then grew in a narrow ribbon along the center of his chest to his belly button.

  She wasn’t certain of whether she moved closer to him or he moved closer to her but in a few moments there was virtually no space between them that wasn’t banished with each breath.

  She didn’t know when she dropped all pretend of bathing, but she found herself looking up at him, mesmerizing by his beautiful, deep purple eyes, found herself breathless, her mouth dry, her heart galloping away.

  He was a beautiful male specimen.

  How, she wondered, could a person have just everything?

  It just wasn’t fair!

  He lifted a hand, framing her jaw with the crook between thumb and forefinger and using just enough pressure to encourage her to lift her head for the descent of his. He murmured something to her in his language as he did so, something that sounded … almost rhythmic. A poem, maybe?

  She was curious, but way more fixated on the anticipation churning in her belly.

  His gaze fixed on her lips, he moved closer, closed the distance between them until she felt her lips tingle with the brush of his breath and then skin to skin and then the weight of his mouth settling against hers.

  She was intoxicated before he breached the barrier of her lips and made a slow sweep of the sensitive cavern of her mouth in conquest—an act of claiming, an exploration of his conquered territory.

  And yet she felt as much care as desire in the way he held her.

  She didn’t question it. She was too caught up in the moment, in the blissful sensations radiating throughout her body and generating so much heat she felt like she might melt.

  It flickered through her mind to wonder if it could possibly get any better as he broke the kiss and lifted his head. She was already drunk with his taste and scent, dizzy with euphoria.

  He met her gaze for a long, long moment when she finally managed to pry her eyelids up and then he bent and swept her up into his arms.

  She didn’t experience the fright she had before when he’d picked her up as if she was some dainty thing.

  She felt … dainty and feminine and desired, things so novel to her it almost felt like she was floating through a fantasy as he carried her from the pool, dropped to his knees and carefully settled her on the bedcover he’d spread, she realized, for the two of them.

  Premeditated seduction.

  That was less threat than it should have been, she supposed, more like a promise.

  Cold air wafted around her when he settled her, but he chased it away by making a blanket of his body. She almost felt scalded in all of those places where his body pressed into hers, but then he found her mouth with his again and she was too focused on that connection to spare brain cells for recording anything else with any accuracy.

  It was almost as if he reached deeply inside of her and caressed her. The kiss seemed to connect her entire nervous system with the sensitive surfaces of her mouth so that every stroke of his tongue reached everything.

  It took her a little bit to realize that his tongue was not the only restless explorer. He moved his hands over her impatiently, testing her smooth skin and taut, athletic body with the pads of his fingertips and the faintly abrasive calluses of his palms. As he explored her mouth with his tongue and learned every delightfully sensitive spot, he found those all over her body and caressed them until a sense of desperation slowly overtook her.

  She ceased to simply lie in blissful drunkenness, enjoying the wash of sensation curling over her and around her and began to move restlessly against him, demanding he bring her to culmination.

  Either he understood the language with perfect clarity, or his own desires had reached critical mass. He urged her to part her thighs for him and settled in the cradle created there, rooting with the head of his cock for the gates. Finding it without patient and painstaking plundering, he cupped his hips and plowed past the guardian flesh, his passage eased and assured by the desire he’d engendered in her that had inundated her sex with the moisture of want.

  It was still an uphill campaign to spawn. His thick lance of turgid flesh battled the soft, yielding resistance of hers for many frustrating minutes before he managed to claim it completely. He paused to catch his breath, pushing himself upwards to stare down at her for a long moment while he teased her with his flesh, pressing deeply, withdrawing slowly, and then advancing once more.

  Charly tired of Galen’s teasing assault fairly quickly.

  Lifting her hands, she grasped his buttocks on the next advance and lifted her hips in counter.

  His eyes widened for a split second in surprise. And then he dropped down so that his hair roughened chest and belly teased her with heated abrasion as he struck a rhythm, pumping into her smoothly, deeply, swiftly and then withdrawing until her mind shifted to focus only on the inner scuffing of his flesh scrubbing along her channel. It created a delightful tension that coiled tighter and tighter inside of her, generating mass until it could no longer be contained and exploded in fragments of rapture that almost seemed to splinter her soul.

  She gasped, cried out at the force of it.

  Her body gripped Galen’s and wrung his seed from him so forcefully he uttered a choked grunt.

  And then all hell broke loose.

  Chapter Ten

  The noise and the threat it implied were enough to bring both of them—trained warriors—to their feet even though Charly was so weak and wrung out in the aftermath of a fabulous climax she was too drunk to think or fight.

  She wasn’t certain Galen was in much better shape, but he was on his feet and had whipped the bed cover around her and shoved her behind him to act as a shield many moments before her brain finally interpreted the intrusion.

  The cavalry had arrived!
<
br />   Oh thank god! And what timing!

  Stupid bastards!

  Behind her and Galen, meaty thuds announced the arrival of Galen’s guards as robed men leapt from the ‘window’ openings above them and landed in a crouch, swords at the ready.

  “Oh my god!” Charly gasped drunkenly, struggling mightily to throw off the aftereffects and pull herself together.

  The frigging room totally wreaked of sex, though, so she supposed trying to act like they hadn’t been fucking like rabbits was probably a waste of time.

  Regardless, she gathered the cover around herself with what dignity she could muster, peripherally aware that they were standing between two armies and quite possibly at risk from both.

  Galen, weaponless except for the spent lance hanging unhappily from his belly at this point, glared at the group of ‘gods’ that had burst in to the sanctuary with impotent fury.

  He was relieved, though, to discover it was the gods and not his brother’s soldiers.

  “You desecrate Sanctuary by bursting in armed,” he growled after a prolonged moment of collecting his wits, finally signaling to the men behind him to stand down.

  The Star-Troopers almost seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief when the Oloote lowered their weapons.

  “Are you alright, Lieutenant Black?” Neal asked sharply.

  Charly felt her face start flashing like a neon sign. “Sure. Why would you think otherwise?”

  He gave her a look that told her he’d pretty accurately deduced what had taken place in her room back at the castle.

  “Prince Galen thought I’d be safer here after … uh … Damek made that announcement.”

  Prince Galen whipped a sharp look at her, but he seemed content enough to allow her to handle dealings with her people.

  The ranking officer stepped forward, hesitated, and then saluted.

  Charly assumed the salute was for Prince Galen since the officer outranked her.

  Belatedly, she shifted her grip on her cover and saluted.

  He acknowledged her absently, but his attention was on Prince Galen. “We have come to take you to your father, your highness. He is critically ill.”

  Charly could see the shockwave that rolled over Galen. He turned white, but it was impossible to say whether the news was just a shock, period, or an unwelcome one.

  She didn’t believe it would be unwelcome and he’d certainly known his father was dying before they left.

  The shock, she decided, was the news that his father wasn’t dead when he’d obviously believed it was only a matter of time before he was.

  Well, everyone had, her included.

  And he would’ve been by now if the fleet hadn’t arrived with a fully operational med bay.

  “He’s …?”

  Abruptly, fear traced an icy finger down her spine. She looked at Neal questioningly. He shook his head ever so faintly, but she couldn’t decide if that meant they were a threat to Galen or not.

  Was the man lying to trap Galen?

  But why would he?

  They were forbidden to interfere with the Oloote and possibly damage their natural evolution. She couldn’t think of anything that had happened that might have so drastically altered opinions that the officer would actually imprison Galen.

  In any case, they really had no choice.

  The soldiers had lowered their weapons to a less threatening position, but they were still holding them.

  And Galen had merely nodded and gone to dress, pulling on his trousers and abandoning everything else.

  She wasn’t about to drop the damn bedcover to put her panties and bra on, though, particularly when she’d gone to the effort to try to convince the men that she wasn’t kidnapped.

  She didn’t know why. It had been instinct and she didn’t have time to examine that at the moment.

  She wasn’t sure it was something she was ever going to want to examine very closely.

  For a moment, she thought Galen would walk past her. He seemed to come out of his shock sufficiently when he came even with her again, though, to realize she was still standing there. He checked and then lifted his arm in offering.

  Thoroughly unfamiliar with and confused by the gesture, it took Charly a moment to realize it was an offering of escort … or maybe support?

  Maybe both?

  She could feel her face reddening with discomfort, but she reached for him.

  He tucked her hand in the crook and looked at the commanding officer expectantly.

  The officer looked more uncomfortable than Charly felt, but he nodded and turned to escort them out.

  There was a ship in the courtyard.

  They headed straight toward it, entered by way of the gang plank, and found seats to settle in.

  Unlike the one that had brought her and her crew, this was a shuttle—short range. But then she’d known immediately that they must be with and a part of the main fleet that patrolled the sector.

  And that meant there was a mother ship in orbit around Bacsheer.

  Or a battleship, more likely.

  It would have to be whatever was close enough to respond to the threat in the least time possible, she realized. The trip by beast had been arduous, and it had seemed she was on the back of it for days upon days, but she knew it couldn’t have been nearly as long as it seemed.

  So from the time when she’d disappeared maybe seventy two hours?

  And that was if the fleet was contacted immediately.

  Which they might have done.

  Neal was supposed to meet her in her room, after all, to get the tranq, so it would have been discovered very quickly that she’d been taken.

  She had no idea what had transpired after that discovery. There were any number of things that could have happened.

  Neal was reluctant to speak to her in front of Galen, she quickly discovered—which meant he probably suspected Galen understood English perfectly well.

  He would have to or she wouldn’t have been able to communicate with him, at all, during their entire flight, which meant she couldn’t have known he’d taken her to protect her otherwise.

  “It’s ok,” she said at the look he divided between her and Galen. “Yes, he does understand and I’m pretty sure there isn’t much that he hasn’t heard or figured out.”

  Still he hesitated, but finally he seemed to shrug.

  “Prince Damek obviously suspected something was up. I was waylaid before I could get to your room. Then they discovered you were missing and decided we’d somehow managed to get in and out without them knowing it—using some of our god magic, I have to suppose. They rounded everybody up and hauled us down to the dungeon.

  “I sent out a mayday alarm as soon as I knew we were in serious trouble. Which was a damned good thing because we weren’t able to get a signal in or out once they threw us in the dungeon.

  “Luckily for us, Admiral Hendry doesn’t give a damn about politics. He sent the closest ship to extract us immediately.

  “I say luckily, because they discovered Nldick’s body in a hidden passage off the King’s chamber and suspected us of having a hand in his death.” He fixed Galen with a hard look. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that?”

  Galen returned his look with a hard, narrow eyed look of his own. “As it happens, I do.”

  A jolt went through both Charly and Neal at that calm admission.

  Galen glanced at Charly. “He was about to give something to my father. He claimed, when I stopped him, that it was something that would help him. I took the tranq and stabbed it into his neck and pressed it.

  “I could not see that it helped him in any way.”

  Charly and Neal both gaped at him in shock. Clearly, he felt not one iota of remorse.

  Not that Charly had a problem seeing his side of it, but it must have been gruesome.

  He was a barbarian, though, said a little voice in her head. He was likely more accustomed to killing than she was and less effected by violent death.


  Oh course, she was a soldier. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to it herself.

  She’d been involved in a few life or death situations where she’d had to shoot to protect herself, but it damned sure wasn’t something that had become so commonplace that it didn’t bother her.

  On the other hand, she had never been in a position where it was a matter of preventing the death of a loved one by using deadly force.

  In all honesty, she doubted it would bother her a hell of a lot to kill under those circumstances.

  And, although he undoubtedly suspected as much, it couldn’t be said that he’d actually expected it to turn out the way it had. After all, Nldick had claimed the shot would help his father.

  Uneasiness wafted through Charly after that procession of thoughts, though, a fear she wasn’t accustomed to.

  Galen had done nothing but prevent Nldick from finishing off his father, but would the Confederation see it that way? And would they feel within their rights to pursue it?

  The prosecutors were notorious for demanding the opportunity for ‘justice’ by trial. They weren’t going to be happy that Nldick was beyond their reach and it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that they would target Galen since they couldn’t get their hands on the one they wanted.

  She jumped as she felt the brush of skin on her hand and whipped a look at Galen as he closed his hand around hers and squeezed it gently.

  Surprised, she stared at him for a moment, then looked at their joined hands, her face creasing in confusion as she met his gaze again.

  That was when she knew two things.

  Galen thought she was afraid for herself. He didn’t realize it was him she was afraid for.

  She found that realization very unsettling herself.

  But not nearly as unnerving as the sudden suspicion that there might have been more to the wild and wonderful sex she’d enjoyed with Galen than she’d considered.

  Because there was an air of possessiveness to his body language that she hadn’t noticed before.

  Chapter Eleven

  There was an awkwardness when they docked in the bay of the Confederation warship, the UCP ‘United Confederation of Planets’ Obama that Charly hadn’t felt before. She couldn’t actually put her finger on the feeling then. It was just a strange sort of feeling, almost as if she didn’t belong in the ship … with the fleet, as if she’d become an outsider.