OwnedbytheElf
Authors: Mina Carter
She was ordered to spy on the enemy, but when Tamryn wakes
behind enemy lines, tied up and a captive of the sexiest elf she’s ever seen,
far more than military secrets are at stake. Elves and faeries don’t get along.
He’s big, brutal and as sexy as the seven hells. Bane’s kisses sear her lips
and his caresses ignite a fire in her heart that won’t be denied.
Bane has never met a faery he didn’t want to rip limb from
limb, but Tamryn is proving to be the exception. Instead of secrets, he steals
kisses from her lips and finds a passion that makes him burn. Elves don’t love,
they own—but Bane may have to give his heart in the process.
Ellora’s Cave Publishing
Owned by the Elf
ISBN 9781419939198
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Owned by the Elf Copyright © 2012 Mina Carter
Edited by Briana St. James
Cover design and photography by Syneca
Model: Nick
Electronic book publication March 2012
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Mina Carter
Something was wrong. The awareness of danger reached down
through the layers of darkness and semi-consciousness to hammer on Tamryn’s
skull as if it was a woodpecker at a favorite tree. Wariness slid its cold
finger around her spine, all her instincts screaming at her to open her eyes,
meet the danger head-on with her sword in hand. But experience told her to stay
put, eyes closed and breathing deep, until she’d figured out what was going on.
She’d never come out of sleep so slowly. A member of the
Queen’s Scouts, she was one of the elite—the best of the best. The soldiers the
rest of the faery army looked up to. And the elite didn’t wake up groggy, with
a head so thick it felt as if she’d drunk the entire contents of the
quartermaster’s liquor wagon last night. As least not without meaning to and a
good head start on said quartermaster.
Keeping her eyes shut, she moved slightly to test the waters.
Pain shot though her arms, twisted behind her back, quickly accompanied by pins
and needles. She bit back a groan. Her wrists were tied behind her back and she
was face-down on something soft and warm.
Great, just fucking great.
Could have been worse, she could have been face-down in the
mud, her breeches around her ankles as the entire elven army got busy. She bit
her lip as her imagination went into a frenzy. Her mission had been behind
enemy lines, so that last was still a likely probability.
“I’m screwed.”
“Not just yet, little one. But you will be if you don’t tell
me what I want to know.”
The deep male voice slid over her in a rough caress, making
her shiver in response. The voice wasn’t that of a faery. No faery had that
rough timbre, a rumble of granite with a hint of rich darkness thrown in for
kicks and giggles. No faery should
ever
have a voice like that. It was a
voice that spoke to the darkest places within her soul and opened the doors to
her secret desires. Slamming up mental shields, she cracked an eyelid open and
looked around.
As expected, she was still in the middle of the wasted
woods. The blackened, twisted skeletons of what once had been trees before
they’d been blasted by centuries of magical fallout surrounded her, reaching
out spindly fingers greedily. She suppressed a shudder. Some of those trees had
dryads locked inside, creatures driven mad by magic and apt to seek the blood
of anyone unwise enough to get within their clutches.
The flickering light of a small fire kept them at bay, the
creatures ever fearful of the damage flame could do to their barky hides.
Within the circle she was safe, from the dryads at least. There were other
nasties that lurked in the darkness out here. Her gaze wandered over the small
blaze and she noted the tin kettle dangling from a makeshift tripod. The
bitter, smoky smell of coffee reached her, teasing and tantalizing her senses.
She smirked. Coffee or tea, every soldier’s staple
requirement. They’d go into battle with the odds stacked against them and
prewarned the situation was dire without batting an eyelid, but cut off the
brew and you had a mutiny on your hands.
She didn’t speak, her attention swept on to the figure
behind the fire.
Fuck me. Make that double screwed.
An elf sat on the log opposite. Bigger and meaner than their
faery cousins, elves were brutal and savage. They took pleasure in hunting down
and slaughtering their enemies, in particular their former allies, the fay, in
inventive and sadistic ways. Turnabout was fair play, though, since every faery
warrior she knew held the same delight in tracking down and dispatching elves
back into the arms of Mother Earth.
The two races had been at war for years. An unending war
that had started long before she’d been born and would likely carry on long
after she’d met her fate. Which, given the circumstances, might be a little
sooner than she expected.
He was huge—the biggest damn elf she’d ever seen. He was clad
in leather and mail, with a vicious scar running across one cheek and his hair
shaved close to the scalp. She should have been pissing herself in terror just
at the sight of him. Instead, she was caught by the color of his eyes. A
beautiful moss green.
Eyes widening, she ignored the pain in her shoulders and
arms to roll to her side as fear did a jig down her spine in hobnail boots. It
might not do her much good, but it meant she had her legs in front of her, so at
least she could kick him before he slit her throat.
Her head swam when she moved, the forest around her spinning
as bile rose in her throat. Groaning, she rested her head down for a second,
not caring that it put her in a position of weakness. He was an elf. If he’d
wanted her dead, she would be already.
Breathing through her nose, she opened her eyes again. A
starburst of gold lines decorated her stomach and danced before her eyes. She
sucked a breath in, recognizing them instantly. Spell impact. Shit. She’d
walked into a spell-mine. Since she was still breathing and had all her limbs
attached, it had obviously been designed to incapacitate. Elf ordnance was
never designed as nonlethal. So why now?
Her legs began to shake as the lone dancer on her spine was
joined by a full team, this time with bells and sticks, to continue the
dancing. Lifting her chin, she gave him a challenging look.
“I’m telling you nothing, elf scum.”
The last word slipped out on a sneer before she could stop
it.
Way to go, Tam,
she berated herself.
Just antagonize the walking,
talking, killing machine, why don’t you?
He didn’t move, still sat with his forearms rested on his
knees. A vicious broadsword crossed his back and a smaller, if no less lethal,
curved dagger found its home at his lean waist. Leather and mail completed the
look, the leather worked with elvish sigils as if to underline the fact that he
was an elf. As if she could miss that.
“Elf scum?” He lifted an eyebrow, amusement flitting across
his expression. “Last of the original thinkers, aren’t you? Let me see…now I
should threaten to rape and murder you, then defile your pretty little corpse,
shouldn’t I?”
He was laughing at her. Anger rolled through her and washed the
fear away.
“Defile? Just you touching me is enough, you bastard.”
She struggled against her bonds, wriggling on the furs over
the sparse grass. There had to be some give in them, a way for her to escape.
Her life couldn’t end this way, tied and defenseless. But the knots were tight,
no slack for her to use and wiggle free. Realizing she was just wearing herself
out, she gave up and looked up at him, a small huff escaping her lips. Through
it all he hadn’t moved, just watched her with interest.
“Finished?”
“Untie me and I’ll show you how finished I am.”
He laughed, a rich roll of sound, and surged to his feet.
Standing, he was huge. Intimidating. Her heart stalled as he loomed over her,
then slammed against the inside of her rib cage in a rapid tattoo. The stories
of how elves treated prisoners of war ran rampant through her mind.
Torture, rape and death were the more pleasant options. This
was it. He was going to kill her. Or worse. She flattened herself against the furs,
trying to evade his grasp. If she could, she’d have made like an earthworm and
burrowed into the dirt.
His hands grabbed the front of her tunic to haul her
upright. She bit her lip as pain shot through her arms. She wouldn’t show any
weakness, not to her enemy.
He hauled her up his solid body to eye level. She tried not
to whimper. He was huge and solid, her softer, feminine body molded itself
against rock-hard muscles. Her tunic lifted, allowing the heavy mail across his
chest to bite into her bared stomach. Amusement warred with another, darker
emotion as he looked into her eyes.
Fear bit deep, a ravening beast that clawed at her as a gold
circle appeared around his irises. The color of elvish magic, the last thing
many a faery saw.
“No!” she gasped, throwing herself back, anything to break
the hold of his gaze. She wouldn’t die this way. Not so easily.
“Sleep,” he commanded, and her world descended into
darkness.
She was a pretty little thing. Bane, Commander of Briac the
Bloodthirsty’s Army, stood in the middle of the isolated little clearing just
behind the front lines and looked down at the unconscious faery in his arms.
The pull of attraction was surprising. Instantly he rejected the notion. She
was a faery, and he couldn’t be attracted to a faery. No way, no how. He had
some standards. Not many, admittedly, but some.
The fay were distant, very much inferior cousins to the elves,
and he’d killed so many over the years that he’d lost count. Men and women. He’d
never once looked at one, and unless he needed information, never felt anything
apart from an overwhelming desire to rend him, or her, limb from limb.
He’d certainly never felt the need to check if a faery was
breathing after he’d hit him with a spell. To be fair, there usually there wasn’t
much left to check other than a wet, bloody smear on the battlefield, but this
time he’d only used a sleep command. Just enough to put her under. He hoped.
It was easy to make mistakes calculating how much force to
use with a faery. They weren’t as robust as the average elf. Too little and you
barely tickled them. Take it up a notch and their heads exploded. Some fought
back, as she had. But without the aggressive magic of his race, she’d had no
chance against the sort of power he could call.
Carefully, he adjusted his hold and hefted her gently into
his arms. The rise and fall of her chest under the green tunic made him release
a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. She was okay, just deeply
asleep. Asleep was good, even if he did miss the quick flash of fire in her
eyes.
Even half terrified, she’d challenged him.
Him.
Bane
the Terrible. Bane the Destroyer. Bane the…bloody confused over why he was mooning
over a mere slip of a faery girl.
“I need my head checked.”
Shaking his head, he laid his little captive gently on the
spread furs of his bedroll and flipped her over. Her red hair spilled over the
dark fur, sparkling like garnets in the light of the fire.
He reached a hand out as though to touch it despite himself.
Elves didn’t have hair the multitude of colors the fay had. They had shades of
black, and that was it. Nothing even close to the rich, warm tone of her
hair…like the red of autumn leaves. Autumn had been his favorite season as a
child. The rich colors, the crisp bite of the approaching winter. That had been
before he’d gone to war… Now any season was good for killing.
He shouldn’t keep looking at her, but he did anyway. Her
eyelashes were dark, fluttering against the pale skin of her cheeks and her
lips. They fascinated him. Small and plump, with a full curve to the lower one
he wanted to nibble on.
She was his. His prisoner. He could do whatever he liked to
her. Torture her to amuse himself until the battle in the morning. Kill her.
Strip her naked, spread her out on his furs and take her.
Heat raged through his body like wildfire, finding its home
in his groin. His cock ached, hard and ready for action in a heartbeat.
Gritting his teeth, he ignored the physical discomfort and stood up. She was a
faery, his prisoner, and he needed just one thing out of her.
Information.
Stomping around the fire, he relit the dying embers with a
flick of his wrist and a burst of power. The pit burst into bright green-tinged
flame, drawing sustenance from the air and Bane’s own power. He snorted and ran
his hand over his close cropped hair as he dropped onto the furs next to her.
He’d like to see any faery do that.
Pathetic creatures, they had no power resources of their
own. Instead of building strength, they drew power from around them. Earth,
Air, Fire, Water… Each faery had an affinity for one of the elements and used
it to draw power for their magic. Alone, they’d never have held out against
Briac’s army, but then those bastard dragons had thrown their lot in with the
little winged freaks and they’d become a serious pain in the ass.
He glared at the figure in a small heap on his furs. The
green fabric of her tunic was unbroken over her back. No gaps for wings. But
then, some wore their wings as tattoos on their skin. Hidden until they were
needed. Some didn’t have any at all.
Unable to resist, he reached over and pulled the fabric up
slightly to check. Nothing, her skin was unmarked. He shuddered, thankful for
that. As appealing as she was, the mere thought of wings made him shudder.
As though she knew he was thinking about her, she fidgeted
in her sleep. Her brow creased, her lips forming a small pout as though she
didn’t like the content of her dreams.
Bane smiled a cold smile.
“Stay in dreamland as long as you can, little faery,” he
advised softly. “Because when you wake up, you’re going to tell me anything I
want to know.”
“Fucking
hells!”
The next time Tamryn awoke, she
burst out of sleep with all the fury she could muster. “Fucking elf
bastard
!”
“Actually my parents were married. For seven hundred years.
But I’ll agree on the second and I’m more than happy to go with the first.”
Rolling to a seated position, she glared at the elf on the
other side of the fire. He was still tall, and still impossibly handsome,
despite the scar. She glared some more, just for good measure. There was no way
in all the hells she should notice how good-looking he was. He was midden scum.
Lower than midden scum. He was an elf. There was pond life out there that
should be higher up on her list of attractiveness.
“Yeah? I’ll bet they were siblings, weren’t they?”
She twisted her wrists experimentally. He’d retied her hands
in front of her, but any hope that he’d been sloppy died a quick death. The
bonds were just as tight as they’d been before. The knots were expertly tied
and designed to tighten if she struggled.