Charlotte Boyett-Compo- WIND VERSE- Hunger's Harmattan (13 page)

“Hot damn, Harmattan,” she said, flicking
out a tongue to lick her lips.

His attention dipped to her mouth and he
growled low and deep in his throat. He slapped his hands to her hips and—as
though she weighed no more than a leaf on the wind—lifted her and slid her down
on his erection. He backed her up to the roof post, slamming into her with
force, dragging her legs up around his waist as he thrust, his cheek pressed to
her chest.

He was a rock-hard missile enveloped in
velvet as he slid in and out of her. The smell of his juices mingling with hers
added to her need. His cock was deliciously long and more than adequate in
circumference so it filled her and began to satisfy the ache that still pulsed
between her legs. Tremors of delight shot through her as the quickening came
fast and furious, following speedily by his own climax that had him pounding
her firmly against the wall. Grunting with each forward thrust, he finally
stilled as her last quiver drained him and he sagged against her, his heart
trip-hammering against her chest.

“Consummated and uncontestable,” he said
from between clenched teeth.

“What?” she asked, panting.

“Our Joining, wench,” he said, allowing her
to slide down his spent body, he held her against him until they were both
ready to move apart, each still breathing heavily. “You are mine.”

“Aye,” she said. “As you are mine.”

“Damned straight,” he panted.

She took his hand and led him to their
pallet, blowing out the candle on the table to plunge the hut into
semidarkness. “My cunt is going to be as sore as a thumb smashed by a hammer
before our honeymoon is over,” she admitted.

“Are you bragging or complaining?” he
asked, trying to hide a yawn. He enfolded her within the perimeter of his arms
and put his chin on the top of her head.

“Well, that’s one thing that is going to
stop now that we’re Joined,” she said as she lay down beside him on the pallet
and put her head on his shoulder.

“Meaning?”

“You not getting enough sleep,” she stated.
“You stay tired all the time and to keep up with me, warrior, you’re going to
need your rest.”

He yawned again, unable to stop himself.
“Wench, it’s nearly four of the morning. Don’t you think I have a right to be a
bit tired?”

“Shut your mouth and close your eyes and
don’t snore,” she said, snuggling into his arms.

“I don’t snore,” he mumbled.

“The hell you don’t,” she said. “You make
enough noise I can’t even hear the gods-be-damned waterfall behind us.”

“I don’t snore,” he repeated, and was quiet
for a few moments. “You do, but I don’t.”

Shanee jerked her head up and glared at
him. “I do not!”

“Like the proverbial buzz saw,” he said,
putting a hand to her head and forcing her cheek to his shoulder again.

“No,” she stated firmly.

Ailyn smiled and closed his eyes. He was
almost asleep when he heard her snort.

“I do
not
snore,” she declared.

Chapter Seven

He woke her as he sat bolt upright on the
pallet, dragging harsh breaths into his lungs, gulping air. He was covered with
sweat and he was trembling as though chilled. She got up and lit the candle,
turning to look down at him as he sat there with his arms wrapped around his
bare chest.

“Ailyn,” she said in a firm tone. “I want
you to tell me what you dreamed.”

He shook his head like an errant schoolboy.

“Aye, you will,” she said then came to sit
down beside him. This was not the first time he had awakened her in that manner
but usually he’d lay right back down. Tonight she had seen added trembling,
sweating and a look in his eyes that made her uneasy. “Tell me.”

“No,” he said. He met her gaze. “You didn’t
tell me what else you did while I was gone.”

“You aren’t going to change the subject,
ehemann
,”
she told him.

“Aye, I am,” he declared. “What else did you
do?” He tightened his arms around himself.

Shanee realized he was slowly rocking back
and forth as he sat there and knew he wasn’t even aware that he did so. A
portion of a conversation she’d had with Bahiya a few days before passed
through her mind.

“With Reapers, sometimes you have to
give in order to get,”
the Prime Reaper’s mate had
imparted.
“When you need to get answers from your man, give him what he
wants. Eventually, he’ll give you what you want.”

The Amazeen crossed her legs as she sat
facing him. “I helped the men build this hut.”

Ailyn looked up at the pole rafters and at
the layered walls. “You did well. What else?”

“I helped the women gather the leaves and
grasses for the pallet then stuffed most of it myself.”

He nodded but made no comment to that.

She ached to touch him, to put her arms
around him in his apparent misery but she refrained, instinctively knowing he
wouldn’t appreciate it just then.

“Oh and a scout ship landed the fourth day
you were gone,” she said, and smiled at him as he turned his head to look at
her. “They had a message for me from General Strom so I went on board and spoke
to him privately.”

“What did he want?” he asked, reaching up
to arm away the sweat that had gathered under his chin.

“He wanted to know if you were going to
return to Riezell with me. I told him you would but that you had no intention
of seeing your mother. I explained to him why you thought she wanted you back
and he said he’d already come to the same conclusion. He is agreeable to
keeping your return secret from the vice-counselor and your mother.”

“That would be best,” he said.

“Now tell me about the dream, Ailyn,” she
ordered.

At first she didn’t think he’d answer but
he hung his head, closed his eyes and began a tale that would keep her awake
the rest of the night.

“Tariq had been on R-9 for thirty years or
more when they brought the first of us there,” he began in a soft, toneless
voice. “I don’t know who the scientists were but I know they had done
experiments on him off and on over those years. He says they didn’t know what
to do with him until a new scientist arrived about six months before I was
brought there.”

She watched him get up and go to the table
to pour a tumbler of water. His hand was shaking violently and he gulped the
liquid down as though he were parched. Draining the tumbler, he poured another
and drank that as well. He seemed a bit calmer when he returned to the pallet
and sank down on it again.

“Her name was Perse Cean,” he told her.
“She was half Saurian and half something even more bizarre.”

Shanee had only met one Saurian and she had
been uncomfortable with the reptilian warrior. With his black, elliptical eyes,
hairless face covered in thick, shiny scales, broad and fleshy tongue that was
four times the length of a normal humanoid’s and long, spatula-like fingers,
the Saurian was the ugliest creature she’d ever seen. When he spoke with a
hissing sound, she nearly gagged seeing the pebbly warts and double rows of
sharp, spiky teeth inside his mouth.

“I overheard her and the three assistants
who came to R-9 with her discussing their homeworld. From what they said it is
where Raphian is worshiped as the primary god.”

Shanee frowned. “Where is that?”

“A place far beyond Esvaria in the Diamhair
Galaxy,” he replied. “She called it Chiaroscuro but I’ve studied every star map
I could get my hands on since I came to Theristes and I can’t find it listed
anywhere.”

“Tariq has star maps here?” she asked.

“The Burgon gave him an entire library of
information. He said he never again wanted Tariq and his people not to know
where they were in relation to others in the megaverse.”

“Makes sense,” Shanee said.

“It had been Bakari’s predecessor who
brought Cean,” he continued. “The gods only know where he found her but she was
the one who did the first Transference.”

She remembered what Tariq had told her…

“The only explanation I can give you for
what happened on R-9 is that Raphian was involved. He influenced the Alliance
to create the hell that was Riezell-Nine.”

“Were you among the first ones they did that
to?” she asked.

He ran a hand through his hair and she was
glad to see he was no longer shaking.

“When they brought me in—more dead than
alive—they threw me in a holding tank with eight other men. All of us had been
severely wounded and none of us were expected to live. There was one among us
who took it upon himself to make sure we knew who each of us was. He said we
shouldn’t die alone without having friends to mourn us. His name was Creighton
and he and I swam against one another in a couple of meets. Marcus and Damian
were about the same age as me—twenty-four, twenty-five. You’ve met them,
haven’t you?” At her nod, he continued. “Three others were older by a score of
years and the remaining three were in their mid to late thirties. When Cean and
her assistants came to take a look at us, she pointed to the three older ones
and they were taken out first. The next day they came back for the next three
and then finally the day after that for Marcus, Damian and then me.” He took a
deep breath then released it slowly. “I was the ninth to receive a parasite.”

There was no need for him to tell her about
that again but there was something he was holding back, something that bothered
him so deeply his eyes were filled with tears. She broke down and laid her hand
on his thigh.

“Tell me,” she said gently.

“It was her hands,” he said. “Her hands
were ice cold and even through the latex gloves I could feel that chill and the
roughness of those gods-awful scales.” He shuddered and a solitary tear slid
down his left cheek. “She would put those terrible hands on me, Shanee. She
would drain me and there wasn’t anything I could do about it because I was
shackled to the exam table with my legs pulled wide.” More tears fell down his
cheeks. “She would flick that long, forked tongue over me and I would scream
until I was hoarse but she never stopped until I ejaculated.” He buried his
face in his hands. “The gods help me but I couldn’t hold it.”

She scooted closer to him and put her arms
around him. “It’s over with,
ehemann
,” she said. “That won’t ever happen
to you again. Don’t think about her impaling herself on you. Think about…”

“She didn’t slither her warty cunt on me,
Shanee,” he denied, looking at her. “Oh god, I would have died if she’d touched
me like that! She masturbated me. I would lie there and come and one of her
assistants would harvest the sperm.”

That seemed worse to Shanee but she tried
not to let her revulsion show. She stroked his back and crooned to him, feeling
his tears falling on her thigh as she held his head to her shoulder.

“It is over, Ailyn,” she said. “Let it go.”

“I wish I could but I dream about Cean and
those three bastards she called the Ceannus. One of the males was the most
savage, cruel being you could ever imagine. His name was Lexis Acklard and he
really liked to hurt me. He stank like a nest of vipers—he had that odor about
him. He would scrape his hands over me and those scales would rip open my skin.
When the nightmares come, it’s as though I can feel the scales dragging over me
again, cutting me.”

She wanted to get his mind off such things.
“Where did Cean and her assistants go when that portion of R-9 was shutdown?”

He drew in a hitching breath. “When Bakari
became Burgon and ordered the Transferences to stop, the scientists received
word that he was sending in an inspection team to make sure the Reapers were
being cared for. We had all been in isolation cells all along but Tariq had
been able to keep in contact with all except three of us—the first three men
Cean took from our holding cell.”

“The older men.”

“Aye,” he said, and straightened up, moving
away from her touch. “Malachi was the youngest of them then Klaus. The oldest
was Jules.” He shrugged. “I don’t remember last names or where the others were
from but Jules was from Serenia.”

“What happened to them?”

“She had reserved a special place in hell
for those men,” he said. “She had used them for an entirely different set of
experiments than just the Transference of the parasites. She knew once he found
out what she’d done, Bakari would charge her with crimes against humanity and
so she and her Ceannus just vanished along with Malachi and Klaus. They had
gone into Jules’ cell to retrieve him too but he was in such bad shape they
didn’t want to bother with him. To cover up what they’d been doing to him, they
doused him with an accelerant and set fire to him, hoping to destroy the
evidence of their evil.”

“Oh my god, did he die?”

Ailyn shook his head. “No, he survived. His
queen healed him of the burns.” He let out a ragged breath. “He’s here on
Theristes but he keeps well away from the villagers, never allowing them to see
him. He is…” He wiped a hand over his face. “Before Cean got her hands on him,
he was a nice-looking man. Now? Now, he is not a pleasant sight.”