The Scarlet Empress (29 page)

Teeth clenched, he drew in a breath. A feather-light sensation contrasted with her firm stroking and caused him to open eyes he hadn’t realized he’d shut. He looked down at her hand. She’d been holding a butterfly, letting it flutter against his overheated, sensitive skin. The pleasure-pain almost overwhelmed him. He felt himself move in her hand. Much more of this touching and . . .

He took Cam’s wrist, moving away her hand. With the single-minded intent of pleasuring her, he pressing her down to the grass, whispering in her ear as he moved over her, drawing out sighs with intimate compliments and erotic promises. For so long he’d been the recipient of such attention. Now he was able to give the gift of what he’d learned.

And he did, sliding lower on her long body until he found what he wanted. Gently spreading her thighs, he opened her to his attention, stroking and suckling her most sensitive places. He took his time with her, learning what pleased her, ignoring her pleas for completion until the last of her long, shuddering climax faded away.

“Sweet heaven, Kyber,” she whispered. “Oh, mercy.”

He smiled down at her. Sweat glistened on her body, and her face was flushed. “Do you expect me to move after that?”

His laughter was deep. He grabbed her wrists and tugged her up to him. “I expect you to do far more than move, pretty one.” He pulled her legs over his hips until she sat astride him. The heat of her body astonished him. Fully inside her, he cradled her face in his palms and kissed her.

Cam sighed into his mouth, holding fast to his shoulders as her hips began a slow, undulating motion, sending thick, aching pleasure radiating outward. He didn’t know whether to moan, groan, or laugh out loud with the joy of making love to this woman, this woman who had chosen to be with him not out of duty or trade but out of desire, who had the attitude, grace, and patience to take everything he threw at her, intentionally and otherwise, and the moxie to give it right back. He could be a forceful, intimidating man. He liked that she didn’t allow him to ride roughshod over her.

They swayed together, their skin moist with sweat, their scents mingling. Gradually all the barriers and reservations fell away, and they gave in to the heady wonder of the act itself.

Cam said very little. For a woman who was so talkative out of bed, she was so very silent in it. But what she didn’t express with words, she did with a full range of sighs and moans and facial expressions that vividly reassured him that she felt this lovemaking as intensely as he did.

“Cam,” he said on a harsh breath. Her hands covered his buttocks and urged him toward his release.

He expelled an explosive breath, threw back his head.

His peak was unbridled and prolonged. He heard the butterflies waking and taking flight all around them. The air stirred, rustling, an explosion of powdery wings feathering against his heaving body and Cam’s. Wrapping her arms over his shoulders, she held him close, murmuring his name and sweet endearments, kissing him until he’d settled somewhat back to earth.

For the longest time, Kyber held Cam, even after his wits had more or less returned. With his lips buried in her damp hair as she sagged helpless against him, he couldn’t help pondering the difficulty of going back to the concubines and their favors now that he’d finally learned, after countless women, the definition of the term
making love
.

The “afterward” with Kyber wasn’t anything like Cam feared. She’d half expected him to retreat from her, moody and silent, in reaction to the intimacy.

He did anything but.

After making love a second time, they dawdled in the meadow of sleeping butterflies. Her body was wobbly and exhausted, but this time she liked the reason.

Kyber stretched out on his side in the grass next to her in all his naked glory. “The first time I ever saw you was in a picture,” he said, running his fingers down her cheek. “It was one of several taken by a craft flying over the collective where you were recovering.”

“Aerial photography,” she murmured. That explained the plane she saw in Mongolia.

“You were struggling with crutches on an uneven dirt road, trying to stand after a fall. Such determination I saw in your posture. Raw willpower. It affected me somehow, seeing that in another person.” He dragged his thumb over
her parted lips. “I felt a sense of solidarity with you, even though I didn’t know you, and never expected I would.”

“And I never expected that aircraft would bring me to you,” she whispered.

A noise interrupted them. “My beeper,” he grumbled. He pushed off the ground and wrestled a small computer out of a heap of clothing. As he lifted the device to his eyes, his face formed immediately into a frown.

Her sixth sense alerted her to danger. She sat up, her bare breasts bouncing slightly. “What is it?”

“An emergency.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “Does it have anything to do with the people who want to kill me?”

He showed her the computer. “The source of these images is the Interweb.”

The small screen displayed an angry, surging crowd locked behind gates.

“Isn’t that the UCE?”

“It is.”

The images showed UCE soldiers walking with a woman, pushing her along. A bolt of recognition shot through Cam. Then horror. “That’s Bree!” she cried.

“Yes,” Kyber said grimly.

Cam stared at the screen, horrified. “She’s under arrest.” Bree’s posture was defiant, but she limped and favored her right arm. “What did she do?”

It was the announcer who answered her question and raised a dozen new ones. “After the most comprehensive manhunt in history, the traitor known as Banzai Maguire is now in custody.”

Traitor? Bree? “How can she be a traitor if our country doesn’t exist anymore?

“In light of the current national state of emergency, President Beauchamp has called for swift justice,” the announcer said in a Central UCE accent. “Charged with multiple counts of treason, Banzai Maguire will await trial at Fort Powell under the highest security. High treason is a capital offense.”

Cam lowered the computer. “This is bullshit.”

“It’s the way of the UCE,” Kyber explained, taking her hand and raising her to her feet. “Imperialist scum, they are. You will soon see. They’re the scourge of the earth.”

“I don’t mean the UCE; I mean you!” She ripped her hand from his fingers. “Why didn’t you tell me Bree was in trouble?”

He appeared startled by her ferocity.
Too bad.
Her job was to fly on Bree’s wing, and now her flight leader was in big-time trouble. Tact and social graces didn’t factor in.

“Cam, I didn’t know of Banzai’s whereabouts. I told you that. It was the truth. She was last seen in New Seoul. After that she left the kingdom by sea or by air with her lover.”

Lover? Cam stared at Kyber’s mouth. She couldn’t believe what had come out of it. Bree had a lover?
Good for you, lady.
What was the name Zhurihe had mentioned . . . the man Bree had saved from the dungeons? Tyler Armstrong. That was him, Cam thought.

“Somewhere along the way, Cam, just as she was warned, UCE forces caught up to Banzai and captured her.”

Cam jammed her legs into her stained pants, tugging them up to her waist. “Bree hasn’t done anything wrong.” Or had she? “At least, judging by what you’ve said, I don’t think she has.”

“She’s been consorting with rebels, and that brings with it danger. The Shadow Voice, or the Voice of Freedom,
depending whose side is doing the calling, is an anonymous rebel advocating sociopolitical change. It’s been using Banzai Maguire for months now as a symbol to motivate the colonists to rebel.”

“Well, it looks like it’s working.”

“Yes. The UCE is dancing on the razor’s edge of losing control of its colonies.”

Cam remembered what she’d learned by accessing the computers in her room: A tax placed on the Interweb in Central, the most powerful of the UCE colonies, had brought about some longtime resentment. Taxes in the UCE didn’t seem to be anything new, but this was the first time someone other than the colonists themselves had benefited from the money. And the bureaucrats hadn’t asked. They’d demanded. They’d been trying to fund ventures in foreign states. Like in prerevolutionary America, when the universally hated Stamp Act led to full-scale rebellion—and the birth of the United States, Cam thought. Central was the United States of America all over again, and the UCE was an overextended motherland in dire need of funds, just as England had been. Was the UCE stupid, or just greedy? Couldn’t they see that history was repeating itself, that the Revolution was repeating itself?

With one difference: Cam’s best friend, Bree Maguire, was at the center of the firestorm.

Dressed, she and the prince retraced their path back to Kyber’s bedroom. Outside the French doors that faced the central square, the city looked like a kaleidoscope. “Oh, my Lord,” Cam whispered. All the media screens on all the buildings around them showed the same image.

Kyber moved next to her. “It’s a broadcast we’ve allowed past our filters.”

“Your kingdom censors the news?”

“In a time of crisis, we practice self-preservation,” he retorted.

Kyber stalked to his desk and a bank of computers, taking and sending communication to what Cam assumed were members of his cabinet and staff. She avoided looking at the disturbing pictures on the screens. It wasn’t easy. The images surrounded the palace. She’d have nightmares tonight.

She turned to Kyber, who sat at his desk with a stunned expression on his face, and asked, “Isn’t there anything the Kingdom of Asia can do for her? It’s not right what the UCE is doing, setting her up as an example.”

“No. It’s not our fight.”

“We share the same planet, Kyber. That puts us all in the same basket.”

“Look at the people out there, Cam. The citizens of this country. They’re well dressed, well fed. Do they look unhappy? Yet there are forces afoot who would challenge the Hans because they don’t believe autocracy is a legitimate form of government. Some around the world may look at what’s happening in Central and decide they are repressed, too. Some, even here, may try to fit the square peg of democracy into the round hole of this country.”

“It sounds like you view democracy as a threat.”

“It’s not so much that democracy itself is a threat, but that it won’t form a strong enough glue to bind us together, we the many different people and cultures of Asia. Yes, we have a single language, but without a strong hand, a
royal
hand, keeping us together, this vast land will fly apart into chaos and war.”

Once more she gazed outside the huge French doors at
the square below that was by day filled with adoring subjects hoping for a glimpse of the acting emperor, the prince who until tonight had kept his distance from her.

She needed Kyber. She needed him now.

She turned. “You’re the most powerful man in the world. Talk to the UCE president—to Beauchamp. Help free my flight leader.”

“Our differences run deep, Cam, his country and ours.”

“Good God, Kyber. Can’t you put that aside to right a terrible wrong?”

His expression darkened. “Maybe I should explain why he has every reason to despise and mistrust us. Once this empire was a league of Asian nations linked by an economic trade agreement: the Asian Economic Consortium. Years of the West’s outsourcing high-tech jobs to us brought wealth and power that no one anticipated. The newly formed UCE wanted those riches. They wanted us. When the UCE tried to tax what we, the consortium, gave to the world, my ancestors declared independence—and bled mightily to achieve it. The Bai-Yee Wars. The fighting ended generations ago, but the circumstances surrounding it remain a polarizing force in the world. Did you know that to this date, the UCE has never conceded defeat? The peace treaty still sits in an airless case in the very Royal Museum we visited tonight with a blank signature line above the words, ‘The United Colonies of Earth.’ ”

“It’s horrible what happened, I agree, but it’s the past, Kyber. It’s unhealthy for anyone to remain stuck there—an individual or a nation.”

Something she said must have hit a button; she saw a flicker of pain in Kyber’s gaze. Saw him flinch.

“If you don’t do something about this, I will. I don’t know what yet, but I can think outside the box.”

Kyber pushed to standing, his knuckles bearing the lion’s share of his weight. “The same people who captured Banzai will be coming after you next. Nowhere but within the gates of this city are you safe. Leave, and they will find you—and then they will kill you.”

“You make it sound as if I’m fixing to run off halfcocked! If I operated that way, I’d have crossed the mountains in Mongolia for here months ago. I’m going to think this through.”

“You may find you’ll not want to make your existence known when you see the stakes against Banzai.”

“You underestimate me,” she answered coldly. “When I fight, I don’t base tactical decisions on my emotions.”

“Banzai did.”

“I am not Banzai.”

“No, you certainly are not,” he said in an intimate tone of tenderness that she felt clear to her toes.

“Isolationism helps no one,” she pleaded, quieter.

“We will remain behind our borders as we always have, geographically, socially, and politically.”

“Because of the Bai-Yee Wars.”

“That and more.”

“How do we know that what was best decision back then is still the right choice now?”

Kyber’s gaze turned inward, as if her words had touched a chord, maybe something he’d never considered. Then, just as vividly, she saw him seal off that line of thought.

She walked to where he stood at his desk, taking up a strategic position directly opposite, the thick, gorgeous slab of mahogany between them. “My father was a threestar
general. He always told us that being endowed with great power, as he was and you are, brings even greater responsibility. He wasn’t a particularly religious man, but he had a plaque he hung in every office he ever occupied. It was a passage from the New Testament. ‘From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required, and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.’ The world needs you, Kyber,” she said quietly.