Warlord and the Waif by Chloe Parker
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CALDER
AS I DESCEND to the docking bay and enter Freyr’s Fury for the first time in two hundred years, I have to remember that Portia knows better than I do.
She’s promised that she’ll find a way to convince Ella to meet with me, here in this place that was once so treasured. I’ve spent endless hours in the Fury’s archive over the centuries, examining star charts and reading histories of the places where my travels took me. Even without my translator implant, I could read ancient languages, find planets where no one had tread in millennia. This library was once a holy place.
Tonight the air smells stale, and the lights appear alien. This ship, once like an extension of my own body, is unfamiliar. And the pain in my shoulders and arms is at odds with the comfort I used to feel here. It pains me now to board the Fury, to know that I can’t pilot this vessel out to the stars.
Even if the beginning of Portia’s plan works, I don’t know what I’m meant to say when Ella arrives. The only time we’ve ever been civil with one another was when my mouth was on her cunt, and Portia told me that I need to try different methods.
I can make no promises. If this evening concludes with Ella’s sweet and shapely form spread before me on the library table, I will go to sleep a satisfied man.
I wander to the map table in the middle of the room, a large stone circle raised to hip level and lit with a soft white light. Scattered around its edges are numerous star charts, remnants from the last time I came here and dreamed of escape. They remain where I left them two hundred years ago, untouched by time on this priestess-blessed starship.
I’m looking at a map of my home galaxy, so very far from Myste’s cruel shores, when I hear Ella’s soft footsteps in the hall.
She strides forward confidently on bare feet, hesitating when she gets closer to the library. She must have realized that she wasn’t alone, and believes she’s still avoided notice. To think so is silly — I have the senses of a skilled hunter, even after years out of practice — but she moves forward slowly, finally coming into the room.
Letting her approach seems like the appropriate course of action. I can’t see her, even out of the corner of my eye, but I can hear her breathing, her heartbeat, the catch of air in her throat when she locks eyes on my back. She steps forward, then hesitates, waiting to see what I’ll do.
I grow impatient with waiting for her response.
“I know you’re here,” I murmur, not looking away from my maps. “Will you remain? Or will you return to bed?”
She doesn’t respond, and when I turn to look at her she’s watching me closely with her head cocked to one side.
“You aren’t angry?” she says.
“About what?”
“Me roaming the castle at night.”
I snort, crossing my arms over my chest.
“You can’t escape, regardless of your nighttime activities,” I scoff. “Why should I care what you do in my castle?”
A vexed scowl crosses her pretty face, Ella wrinkling her freckled nose. Still, she doesn’t tear her eyes away from mine, boldly staring me down even as I remind her of her captivity.
“Do you mind if I look at the books?” she asks.
I gesture at the shelves with a grand sweep of my arm.
“Be my guest.”
Ella doesn’t wait for any more permission, striding past me and toward the bookshelves. She scans the assorted collection, her hands reaching out to touch the spines as she examines the works I’ve acquired over the years.
She’s in nothing more than her nightdress, a slip of material that drapes around her like a shroud. It’s thin and gives her an ethereal appearance, with her wild red hair only adding to her mystique. I’ve never seen it down around her shoulders like this, other than when she was brought to the castle and her hair was still dirty from stasis.
She climbs onto one of the ladders to reach a higher book and I can see the curve of her rear underneath the thin fabric, the slip of her waist and the swell of her breast. She’s got more meat on her bones than I originally believed, and I appreciate her thick thighs and hourglass shape. Illuminated as she is, I can make out nearly her entire form, leaving her exposed in a way I’ve not seen her.
Yet.
My cock twitches at the sight, and I turn back to my maps.
Then I hear a yelp, and the sound of Ella collapsing to the floor.
She’s in my arms before I even realize I’ve moved, and relief hits me when she blinks her eyes open. A telepathic novel lies discarded on the floor just a couple feet away; she must have picked the device up and been taken by surprise when its stored images flashed across her mind.
“What…what happened?” she murmurs, but I can scarcely answer. Her every curve is pressed against me, urging me to take her in my arms and have my way with her like I wished to yesterday. The pain in my shoulders is gone, replaced with the ache of deep desire.
So I drop her unceremoniously and stalk back to the table.
“I wouldn’t recommend picking up that object again,” I growl, “Telepathic novels…they cause a flood of images upon contact. It can be quite jarring the first time, especially to a primitive mind.”
I hear her get to her feet and step toward me, and the wisp of her hands on her skirt as she dusts herself off.
“Don’t call me primitive,” she says.
I ignore her.
This was a terrible idea. Portia was wrong to believe that I could woo this woman when she angers me so. I’m either raging at her insolence or lusting for her touch; there is no in between.
“What are these?” she asks from a new place at my elbow.
I glance down to see her eyeing the ornate star charts and their pinprick lights on the table. Decorated with gold embellishments and sketches of the titans that stalk the dark places, the maps are undeniably beautiful.
I slide one of the maps into the center, into the brightest point on the table where it sends a projection of the stars upward.
“This is Kanin,” I explain with a hint of pride, “The galactic home of the Skoll, my home planet, and one of the Alpha Worlds.”
“It’s beautiful,” she muses.
I stare down at my hands in shame.
“You have known this universe only as the place of your captivity,” I say, “But there is so much beauty in the Alpha Worlds, home to the Hyperboreans, the Skoll, the Merati…”
“How many planets are there?” she asks.
I shrug. “Hundreds? Thousands? So many unexplored, all with diverse species. Now, they live under the thumb of the Hyperborean Empire, but when I sailed the stars we did battle for endless decades, parlayed, made merry and made love into the eons.”
I pause when I feel her hand cover mine.
Even the slight touch leaves me starving, wanting to plunge into her. My cock threatens to come to attention once again, but I fear that if I move she’ll flee.
“I wanted to talk about yesterday,” she murmurs.
When my eyes find her face again, she’s blushing that pretty color, her cheeks red and her breasts flushed. Ancestors above, she is stunning, and I can’t suppress the invasive thoughts of her writhing in pleasure under my touch. I turn my hand over to grip hers, and she lets out a soft gasp that reminds me achingly of her cries of desire the day before.
“Why should we talk when it is so clear what we both crave?” I growl.
She pulls away.
“You have to understand that I can’t give in to you as long as you control me,” she insists with a sigh.
“I told you that I do not control your body. Why do you deny your desire?”
“You’re my…my keeper,” she insists shortly. She paces away, her flowing gown shining in the light. “How am I supposed to know what my feelings really are when you control every aspect of my life? You decide where I go and what I do, and when I’m allowed to do it. You don’t see that as wrong?”
I do not have a satisfactory answer.
So instead of venturing a guess, I turn to shrug on my cloak, throwing it over my shoulders.
“You’re welcome to stay in the archive as long as you wish, and to return as many times as you want,” I mutter, “I should take my leave.”
“Calder, wait—”
“You will address me as m’lord,” I seethe.
She goes quiet.
“Yes, m’lord,” she finally murmurs from behind me, her tone cool and biting.
Her response disappoints me; something about her defiance always leaves me wanting more, and the fact that she obeys me now rings hollow. I leave the library angry and frustrated. How am I to woo her when she refuses my every advance?
The stubborn woman will be mine.