“You’re a scoundrel, My Prime!” she accused after almost smacking him in the nose with that dangerously flailing hand.
“Aye, and you’re not the first woman to tell me so,” he countered as he watched her bend over the small girl.
“She’s badly neglected,” Para said, tsking in disgust. “Bloody bastard Jakals. The lot of them should burn to death staked in the desert sun.”
Reule folded his arms across the breadth of his chest and peered down at her. “Who said Jakals had anything to do with it?”
Her head snapped up and her dark eyes flashed with indignant pride. “I’ve eyes in my head and a brain as well, haven’t I?” She scoffed at him. “What else would keep you a day overdue and have you bringing home two victims as your only game? Really, My Prime!”
“My apologies, Pariedes,” he said with graciousness and a conceding bow. “You are right. What of my hunting trophy, Para? Do you think she’ll survive?”
“I cannot tell you that. She’s an outlander, Prime Reule. I know not what she is. She’s too fair to be Gemin or Opia, and while she’s got the build of a Jakal, she’s—”
“This girl is no Jakal,” Reule said sharply, the impulsive urge to defend her riding him hard. “I located her by sheer feeling alone,” he said more gently when Para looked at him with surprise. “No Jakal could ever feel the depth of pain and sorrow this girl was feeling when I found her. They only siphon it off others. The utter power of what she felt could have fed a troop of Jakals for a week. I’ve never—”
Reule broke off when he realized Para was staring at him with open curiosity. When he frowned darkly, she cleared her throat, quickly turning back to fuss over the young woman she now knelt near.
“Poor thing. We can hardly see you.” She tsked again and turned to Reule. “Your blade, My Prime?” She held out the flat of her palm expectantly.
Reule wasn’t in the habit of handing his dagger over to anyone, not even a Packmate. It was an unspoken tenet amongst warriors never to surrender one’s blade. Natural weaponry like nails and fangs worked well enough, but a knife, sword, or throwing star were essentials in battle and self-defense.
Reule reached for the dagger sheathed at his waist, the blue metal blade singing sweetly as it passed over the cusp of its scabbard. “With what may I assist you?” he asked with just enough formality to make her feel, without emanation, that his service was the only way she would see use of the knife.
“Cut away her garment. It’s disgusting and riddled with who knows what diseases and parasites. I’ll have it burned. Then we’ll bathe her and see if we can’t make something out of this nest of hair.”
Reule bent to his task and carefully pulled the edge of the fabric away from the girl’s throat. He could see her pulse beating in her neck and he hesitated.
Sánge, bautor mo.
The words suddenly echoed in his mind in a whisper-soft voice that seemed too innocent to know of such things. He suppressed a shudder of indefinable feeling and pressed the blade to the tattered gown. Slowly, carefully, he cut a good six inches down her breastbone before withdrawing the cutting edge. Then he sheathed the blade and grasped the fabric firmly in his fists. He yanked sharply and the weak linen shredded easily. For a moment, Reule thought the act strangely erotic. He’d never been the sort to tear off a lover’s clothes, and this child was certainly no lover, but something about the strength in his large hands destroying something so fragile to expose something even more fragile—it brought a wash of unexpected heat over his skin. He swallowed hard against the ridiculous sensation and pushed it away as he tore through more fabric and exposed a pale length of buttock and thigh.
The perfect whiteness of her skin was completely unblemished in the area revealed. Reule had never seen skin so white in all his life, and he’d been a great many places and seen a great many people. It had to be the only spot on her body that wasn’t dirty, and he found it oddly intriguing. The contrast to his own dark skin fascinated him.
Reule realized Para was watching him expectantly and he made quick work of the rest of the tear. Then he withdrew his knife again and cut away her sleeves. He was glad she didn’t move, because the blade was sharp and even an accidental brush would slice her. Another reason he’d never share his blade, especially with someone inexperienced. He tossed away the remnants of fabric and unbuckled his sheath and belt, laying the scabbard purposely near the edge of the bathing pool. When he was stripped down to nothing but his breeches, he scooped up the girl and walked with her into the pool, using the wide steps that led down into it. He didn’t immerse her all at once, though the hot water pooling around his hips made him want to dive under to soak in the heat.
He wasn’t the priority here.
He carefully began to introduce her tightly coiled body into the water. Para watched anxiously for the first minutes until she was satisfied he wasn’t going to foul up his responsibility to treat her gently. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her lord and master, it was just impossible for Para to believe anyone could care as much as she did. Reule easily forgave her that because she was right more often than not.
Reule worked his way back to the stairs, seating himself on the second-to-last step with his charge resting in his lap. Para took the opportunity to hurry from the room to do whatever it was she needed to do. He couldn’t remember what instructions he’d given her. He realized then that he hadn’t eaten or slept properly in three days. He was feeling that lack now that he was cocooned in the relaxing heat of the water. Even his patient was relaxing, her small body unfurling in increments. He held her as she unwound, the water rushing over her entire body held in the cradle of his lap and arms. Her head finally lolled back, her hair tumbling into the water as he allowed all but her face to soak.
At last, her arms fell away from their protective cross over her chest. Finally, he could see her entire body. He started to skim assessing eyes over her for damage done to her by the Jakals, but they soon widened in surprise. Small she might be, small she definitely was, but while she was smooth-skinned, as the young ought to be, there was nothing childlike or even adolescent about the curves of her unfurled body. Reule blinked, trying to reconcile the woman he now held with the girl he’d thought he’d been holding until just moments ago.
Hair still obscured her face in a net of webbed strands. The heated water had soaked away much of the dirt soiling her skin. Reule brushed his fingers against her to assist the process, hoping to determine the extent of the abuse she had suffered. It quickly became clear that his mild efforts weren’t enough, and he reached for a cloth that was soaking in a bowl of soap solution at the edge of the bath. It was a man’s scent, the one he preferred because it reminded him of the mountain valley in which he lived: crisp, clean, and natural. It would do for his purposes. The solution was viscous and clung to the cloth even when submerged in water, so he was soon able to produce lathering swipes against her arms and shoulders. He was rewarded with clean skin…
And livid bruises. Ugly discolorations hiding under the dirt and grime. As he worked over her neck and throat and upper chest, cuts, scrapes, and abrasions joined the list of injuries. An awful idea began to form in his head and he sat her up so her chest was flush with his, her face tucked against his neck as her head nestled on his shoulder, while he dipped the cleaning cloth in fresh solution. He balanced her now-heated body against himself to free both hands, sliding away her straggling mop of hair to expose her back to the approaching cloth. Her skin was nearly black with grime, but it was soon clean as he coasted over her shoulders, down her ribs, and along the path of her spine.
Reule’s gaze was steady and watchful as soap and soil fizzed away in the current of the water and left a clear picture of the damage to her back. His fist tightened reflexively in her wet hair. More bruises, more cuts, but there were also wide swaths of abrasions at her shoulder points and the prominence of every vertebra. Burns, as though she’d been dragged over a surface…or repetitively scoured against one.
By the Lord, he thought fiercely as he squeezed his eyes shut and touched his forehead to her collarbone in gentle sympathy. Had she been gang-raped by those monsters? It had to have been unimaginably violent to have left such awful damage behind. If that was the truth of it, then the bastards had died pitifully easy. Reule’s fury boiled his blood and he swore softly as he tried to vent it with deep, controlled breaths. ’Twas no use letting it rip him up; what was done was done. They were dead and she was alive and safe now. That was all that mattered.
Reule lowered her away from his body to continue the chore of assessing as he gently cleansed her, forcing himself to clear the persistent red haze of emotion that dwelled in his vision. He once again found himself faced with the curves of a fully fledged woman. Of most prominent note, and next in his path, were her sweetly rounded breasts. He ran a cloth-covered hand over the swell of her right breast, feeling the partial peak of her nipple rippling under his passing fingers. Partial altered to full rigidity by the time he was done, the reaction so quick that he found himself needing to clear tightness from his throat. Confusion soon followed when he realized unblemished, perfectly pale skin, as well as those taut pink buds, was becoming visible through the water. If she had been sexually abused, her breasts would have suffered badly from mauling and manhandling, wouldn’t they? What male bent on degradation and sexual gratification wouldn’t take advantage of the opportunity to molest such lush, enticing breasts?
Reule was slowly circling soap around the buoyant globe on the opposite side, his eyes fixing on the way the pink of her areola gathered up into a tight ring. It sent the tip of the attractive nipple pointing outward in tempting invitation. He felt her flesh brushing against his bare chest, luxuriant and slippery with soap. The resulting quickening of his body ought to have been predicted, but it took him by complete surprise. All he knew, as a man of honor and conscience, was that he shouldn’t be feeling the discomforting rush of blood to his groin for an unconscious and defenseless woman. Last he checked, he wasn’t into such callous perversions.
His gaze and hand sought more neutral territory, traveling on to the gaunt curves of her ribs, which hinted at the duration of her neglect. In his lap, her hips and bottom were well rounded and soft, proving her not too far gone to starvation. Though her legs were slim and long for her build, they were a little too thin at the knees and calves. Her ankles were pronounced even through the water, just like the wrists at the ends of her skinny forearms.
Reule rubbed away dirt on her gently hollowed belly, finding more bruises, these already healing. Then, very carefully, he washed over her pale thighs. Her hips were a mess of cuts and contusions. Had she been pinned down? Her flesh was scoured over both hips, but there was hardly even a bruise on the top sides of her thighs. Her knees were only a little dusky with damage. Yet he could see angry red and mottled blue in livid circles coiling around her ankles to nearly a third of the way up her calves.
Bound by her feet, but not her wrists? Reule was more perplexed than ever. His eyes drifted to the triangle of protective curls at the juncture of her thighs, the indeterminable color dark while wet. He found himself swallowing hard against a swell of struggling emotions. Rage. Worry. Empathy. Fear.
It was because of the fear and his inability to bear the keenness of it that he turned to a safer emotion. Or so he thought. Curiosity. They were the lightest dusting of little curls he’d ever seen on a woman. Without thinking, he reached to touch the pale inside of one thigh, fingertips sliding against wet, silk-soft skin. Reule didn’t even realize he’d dropped the cloth. Those sparse curls, were they as soft as they looked, or more coarse like a Sánge woman’s? Did the friction of mating make her more sensitive? Would it be easier for his fingers to slide between her folds in order to seek out the moisture of—
Reule shocked himself with his own thoughts and he jerked his hand out of the water as if he’d been burned. He was stunned to realize he was breathing hard and that his cock was ferociously rigid with arousal. Reule was mortified. What in hell is wrong with me? He’d been sitting there, furious at the prospect that she’d been torn up inside by those miserable Jakal bastards, and here he was thinking about touching her himself! He might be Sánge, but contrary to popular outlander belief, he was no beast!
In the heat of his upset, Reule forgot that there was a huge difference between thinking and acting. For a telepath, it was the hardest and most important lesson to learn. A mind could concoct great fantasies, majestic schemes of both sinister evil and beauteous good. However, actually acting on those fantasies was another thing entirely. It was unfair to hold someone responsible for every stray thought. Reule neglected to forgive himself for basic inclinations of the mind.
Reule also forgot how hard his emotions could strike out at others when they emanated out of his control. He was harshly reminded of it when the woman in his arms awoke with a traumatized gasp and a forceful jerking of her body. It sent him off balance as he tried to hold her slippery body and keep her head above water simultaneously. Her bottom settled in his lap again, giving him some leverage as he verbally and mentally tried to calm her frantic flailing.
“Shh. Be easy, kébé. You’re safe,” he assured her, emanating a feeling of security to her, hoping to replace his hostile emotional disturbance of a minute ago. The rush of sorrow he’d come to associate with her assailed him once again, but he found it was fueled with fear as well this time. “Hush, kébé,” he soothed. “Hush, I will keep you safe.”
Then, all at once, she seemed to hear him. To comprehend. She went abruptly still, reached up, and shoved the wet mass of hair off her face so roughly that he heard strands tear and snap. Then she looked directly at him, allowing him to see her face for the very first time. For a long minute, during which every muscle in his body seemed locked in a mystical paralysis, all Reule could do was stare at her.
It was her eyes that had the greatest impact. They were so unreal, so brilliantly unusual, that he couldn’t quite take them in for a moment. He doubted he’d ever see anything like them ever again in his lifetime, and that was quite a monumental concept considering how long-lived his breed tended to be.
How to begin to even describe them? he wondered.
They were colorless.
No. That was inaccurate. They were far too enthralling to be a null. They were clear as crystal, yet white and silver all at once. They looked exactly like, and sparkled like, diamonds. Faceted, beautifully cut, clear and precious gemstones, with a platinum setting behind them to enhance every movement they caught in the light. She blinked thick, black, curved lashes over them, and that’s when he broke away from her eyes and saw the rest of her face. It was shaped in the delicate curves of a heart; soft bow lips chapped from thirst and neglect were tucked into a permanent but enticing little pout, and she had a slim nose that ended in the slightest uptilt. She had bruises across both cheeks, some old and yellowed, others fresher, but they did nothing to hide the sweet structure of her bones, and her skin promised to be flawless when free of battering. She was youthful, but clearly a woman; unbelievably pretty, but sorely misused. Those diamond eyes looked at him in utter confusion for several heartbeats.
Then, like electricity flooding a dark room, recognition of some kind lit up her features and she smiled so wide her delicate lips split and began to bleed a little. Wet hands lifted out of the water and framed his face and he started in surprise as her palms rubbed over his three-day beard and her fingers curled over his ears.
“Sánge,” she breathed, the single word full of excitement such as he’d never heard before from anyone who knew he was Sánge. Not unless they were also Sánge. It stole his breath even as he tried to convince himself it was a mistake, that she was just in some sort of shock.
“Yes, Sánge,” he agreed, pausing to clear the hoarseness from his throat. “What, and more importantly, who are you, little kébé?” he asked as gently as he could, afraid a rough male as big as he was could be frightening for her in s
pite of her strangely enthusiastic greeting. After all, there was no telling who had done what to her. To suddenly wake naked in the arms of a stranger…
She didn’t answer his query. She only studied his face with an expression of utter fascination. She reached up to map his visage with her fingers in slow, gentle strokes that sent electric pulses straight to his spine. Reule wouldn’t allow himself another opportunity to disrespect her, so he reached to cover one of her hands with his own, gripping it lightly. He had to steady her with his other arm, so that left her with a hand free, which she promptly threaded deeply into his thick hair. He could’ve grabbed hold and locked both her wrists in a single hand, but he feared upsetting her with such a maneuver. She didn’t know he wouldn’t hurt her, although her behavior indicated otherwise at the moment. He was incredibly curious. The sorrowfulness that had drawn him to her was subdued as she smiled.
She shifted in his lap, sitting up straighter and closer until he felt both of her pointed nipples rubbing through the hair on his chest. The explosion of awareness and sexual heat was like being doused in gasoline and lit with a flame. He sucked in a hard breath as his hand slid unintentionally down the line of her back. She leaned so close that her nose nudged up against his. She touched him with quick, delighted strokes of her fingers all over his face, hair, neck, and throat; she behaved like a child after opening a splendid gift. Her eyes devoured and examined him as though he were a prized confection she coveted for her tongue.
The imagery made him groan as sweat rolled down the back of his neck and his snug pants became brutally uncomfortable. Not to mention the fact that she was sitting right on him and couldn’t possibly be ignorant of the state of his body. Any minute she would see him for the pervert he’d never known he was, and the touching fingers and eager smile would disappear forever. The idea of it had a devastating effect on his emotional calm.