Claimed By the Horde King by Zoey Draven

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Tell me about how you came to be on Dakkar,” Seerin requested, as if he knew I needed a distraction as I dipped the cloth under the water and touched it to his bare skin.

I was thankful for the change in subject given the way my pulse was fluttering in my throat.

The warm water came up to the crease of my elbow. I started somewhere safe, though my body was humming with something he pulled from it. The cloth glided over his arms as I started at his shoulders, scrubbing his skin gently.

I’d never washed another, but it was surprisingly…intimate.

I swallowed, watching the cloth drag over his body, and I said, “I was a newborn when I came here.”

“So young?” he asked, frowning.

“Jana said my father was a pilot. After the old Earth colonies fell during the war, he would shuttle human refugees across the universe, delivering them wherever they were agreed to be taken in.”

Like on Dakkar. That was why there were human settlements, because the Dothikkar had accepted gold from the Uranian Federation as payment. Allegedly.

“He died on one such transport. His ship was destroyed, leaving my mother alone. She was pregnant at the time and his death left her…Jana said she wasn’t in her right mind. She loved him very much, but I think it was the prospect of caring for a child, alone, after losing the only home she’d ever known, and rebuilding on a new planet was too painful.”

I spoke of these things as if they were stories I’d heard, as if they weren’t the events at the beginning of my life. And they were just that…stories. Stories Jana had told me because she’d been there. I couldn’t remember these things.

I dragged the cloth down his other arm, leaning over the tub, the ends of my hair dipping into the water.

“I was born in the stars,” I told him, my throat tightening.

“You are a starling?” he rumbled, his brow furrowing though I didn’t know why, wrapping his finger around a strand of my hair.

I’d never heard that term before, but I nodded. “I suppose. My mother gave birth to me on our way here, to Dakkar, on a refugee vessel. And then three days later, she decided to join my father willingly, wherever he is.”

He stilled.

“Jana was just a woman she met on the ship. They shared one of the rooms together and Jana had helped deliver me.”

“But you didn’t consider her your mother, though she took you in and raised you?” he questioned.

“She never wanted to be,” I confessed, a familiar feeling of sadness and rejection washing over me. “I loved her and I think in her own way, she loved me too. But she also saw me as a burden, another mouth to feed besides her own in an already hungry village, a child she hadn’t asked for. And so, a large part of her always resented me for it.”

His lips pressed together, but his expression was unreadable. “How did Jana die?”

“Sickness,” I said and that was all I would say. I didn’t like to think about those days I’d tried to help her. I didn’t like to remember.

“Then you were alone,” he murmured, reaching out to stroke my face, his lips turning down into a frown.

“Yes,” I whispered, a shiver racing down my spine. I moved the cloth to his chest and made little circles.

He made a rumbling sound in the back of his throat and went quiet. Water trickled and I felt the heavy weight of his eyes, but I avoided them.

Finally, he said, “The Dakkari believe that starlings are powerful beings.”

My hand paused on his chest and I tilted my head, meeting his gaze.

It was an unspoken invitation, one he answered with, “In the stars, you become everything.”

“What?” I whispered, not sure I understood.

“You feel the loneliness of endless space, but you also hear a million beings’ prayers, their hopes, their tragedies, being lifted up to you, whispered towards the sky from their homes, towards their deities. The Dakkari believe that starlings are born hearing those prayers and that they are closer to Kakkari for it. We believe that you become a thousand different species in that moment, that you would be neither human nor Dakkari, but everything.”

My breath hitched when he pressed a small, gentle kiss to my lips.

“I am not surprised to learn you are a starling, rei thissie,” he murmured against me. “For I felt your power when I first felt you taking my soul.”

My heart gave one powerful thud and then I looked at him as if I’d never seen him before.

I felt a little dizzy looking at him, my head throbbing, the blood in my ears rushing, and I wondered how we’d gone from him trying to send me away this evening…to me wondering if this was what falling in love was like. This dizzying, maddening, uncomfortable sensation that grew with each passing moment.

Swallowing, I looked back to the cloth, blinking, and I resumed the circles over his chest as if he hadn’t spoken at all.

I washed him in silence, methodically, distracted. When I reached his lower abdomen, my breath hitched as his hardened cock brushed my forearm, almost searing me with its heat. His nostrils flared and a harsh breath expelled from his chest.

Underneath the water, I saw his cock bob, the flushed head surfacing briefly. He wasn’t shy in his arousal. He never had been.

The warmth between my thighs returned in a rush and I swallowed. I found I wanted to touch him, explore him, but I didn’t know if I should or even how I would begin.

“Nelle,” he rasped.

His cock brushed against my arm again when I circled down towards his hips and I paused, my lips parting, when I felt him pulse against me. I didn’t pull away. I kept my forearm steady.

His thick swallow reached my ears and I looked up at him. Whatever he saw in my expression made his eyes flare and he gripped my hand, pushing the cloth away. It sunk to the bottom of the bathing tub, forgotten.

A strange ringing started in my ears when he guided my hand to his cock, erasing the indecision from my mind. My sex throbbed when I heard his roughened curse, when he wrapped my hand around his impossible heat.

“You can touch me however you wish, kalles,” he rasped. “Or you can stop.”

Unconsciously, my grip tightened at his words, dragging a deep, delicious groan from his throat.

“Come into the bath, thissie,” he rasped. “I need to touch you too.”

I shook my head, though my voice sounded far away and my eyes were locked on his cock underneath the water. “I’m still bleeding.”

My flow had lightened considerably since yesterday. My bleeding would most likely cease tomorrow on the fourth day, but I didn’t want to dirty the bath water regardless.

“I do not care,” he protested before I watched the column of his throat tighten and his chest heave, all because I’d ran my fist down to his base. My hand didn’t encircle him completely, but I was still fascinated—and aroused—by the reaction it wrung from him. “Vok!”

“Does it feel that good?” I questioned, tilting my head to the side, excitement winding its way to my core.

A strangled laugh came from him. “I told you to come here…and I will show you how good it feels.”

“No, Seerin,” I said, the prospect leaving me shy.

“Very well, rei thissie,” he rasped, his eyes hot and focused on me. “But when your bleeding stops, I will touch you as I please. Lysi?”

I shivered. I could only nod.

“What does rei mean?” I asked him softly. Sometimes he used it, other times he did not. I had a suspicion but I wanted to be certain.

His jaw ticked. I tightened my grip and stroked back up his shaft. His face twisted and his back bowed.

“Seerin,” I whispered, licking my lips.

“It means ‘my,’” he finally choked out, his chest heaving.

Longing burst in my chest. Longing to belong to someone and have someone belong to me. He’d been calling me his. Why did that word sound so sublime?

I squirmed on my knees, squeezing my thighs together.

“I think you care for me too, my demon king,” I told him softly.

He froze.

His expression changed, ever so slightly, but he didn’t confirm or deny my words. Suddenly, his hand was stilling my own before he unclasped my grip from around his cock, and I frowned when he stood from the bath.

His voice was cold, different, when he said, “You can do my oils now, alukkiri.”

Kneeling, I watched him with confusion as he roughly dried off his wet skin, his cock bobbing angrily against his abdomen. His dark mood had returned, as palpable as my racing heart, but I was left reeling, wondering if I’d done or said something wrong.

I hadn’t, had I?

The only thing I could think was that he was angry, or embarrassed perhaps, that he cared for me. I knew he did. But why would he not admit it unless he wished he didn’t? Unless I shamed him in some way? I’d always known that he was a Vorakkar and I was a human, but I thought that perhaps it didn’t matter to him.

But it seems like it does matter, I thought, familiar rejection tightening my chest, making it difficult to breathe.

Gone was my desire. Left in its place was an icy chill that rivaled the temperature outside. The tension in the voliki had changed from charged and exciting to heavy and thick.

“Seerin,” I said, rising from my knees, my jaw set, wanting to give him a chance to explain, wanting to believe I was only making it all up in my head.

“Neffar?” he rasped, his back to me, rummaging through something in his cabinets.

“Why are you being this way?”

“I am not yours, Nelle,” he growled. “Do not ever think of me as yours.”

“But I can be yours?” I asked, furrowing my brow, not understanding. “Why are you allowed to call me yours but I cannot do the same?”

“Believe me, I will not make that mistake again,” he rasped and I barely held back my flinch. When he turned to me, a tall, yellow bottle was in his grip. His oils.

So, this was a rejection.

I wouldn’t lie, it stung. There I’d been…thinking I was falling in love with him as he talked of starlings. My inexperience with males had never been more evident than it was right at that moment.

And he’d flipped so quickly, my words obviously a trigger, something he’d been thinking about. Why else would he react so strongly?

“I see,” I said softly.

Then a tiny flame of anger snuffed out a little of the hurt. Perhaps I didn’t hold onto pride as much as others did. Perhaps I was a little pathetic in his eyes—I couldn’t be certain anymore how he viewed me. But if he believed that I would touch him now, knowing that he was only interested in sex and repelled that I’d called him ‘my demon king,’ then he had no idea how brightly my pride could shine.

“You can start with my back,” he rasped, stalking towards me. He seemed even larger in his anger and he held my eyes, as if daring me to challenge him.

This Seerin was cold, biting. This Seerin I didn’t recognize. Perhaps this was the darker Vorakkar underneath, the one who’d ordered my punishment unflinchingly, but certainly not the one who’d been hell-bent on saving me from fever and infection.

Perhaps they were one in the same and I’d been blind to it.

“I think I will leave now,” I informed him softly, lifting my chin. His eyes narrowed. “You’re being unnecessarily callous when I’ve done nothing wrong. I won’t let you treat me this way.”

If caring for him and assuming he cared for me was wrong then he could very well go find another alukkiri, our agreement be damned. I didn’t care. Not anymore.

Something in his gaze flickered, but I didn’t wait for him to reply. My head had begun to throb, so I turned my back.

I left the voliki without another word.