“I don’t care who the hell you think she is, or how powerful she is. Soon she will be nothing but a fat, useless cow! He will toss her aside for concubines he can feed from. His appetite has to be enormous and I plan to be included with them. In order to do that, I need to serve someone who holds his damn interest!” Zara hissed over the other feeble shushes.
Oh no she did not!
I spun around so quickly that no one else stopped as I walked back toward the negative Nancy who was too stupid to take the advice they were giving her. “Say it to my face!” I growled. She turned as white as freshly fallen snow. “That’s what I thought. You wanna be with someone who can get close to Ryder so you can crawl in his bed? Go find someone else. I don’t want some little brainless twit who can only talk shit to my back serving me. Sinjinn,” I called his name and he stepped up to my shoulder and gently placed his hand on it to reassure me. He looked relieved that I was putting an end to this.
“Zara, get to the pavilion. Synthia doesn’t wish you to serve in her entourage anymore. You may no longer serve the Princess, or any of the high standing concubines. I have seen her fight, and if I were you, I’d run. Synthia is definitely collared because she is very powerful, and very special to the king.”
“You can’t!” she sputtered as she started to get hysterical. Sinjinn and the other men grimaced at the sight. I wasn’t one to indulge spoiled little bitches and their fits.
I reached out and slapped her cheek—hard. “Sorry,” I grinned and tilted my head at her, “I was afraid you’d pass out and shit. Wouldn’t want that now, would we?”
“You bitch! I’ll kill you!” She shrieked.
“Okay, well I planned to do this the sane way. But if you insist,” I growled, balling my hands into tight fists.
“Dristan, see that Zara is sent home to her father. Make it known she threatened the king’s favorite pregnant concubine’s life,” Sinjinn interrupted, but he looked like he was either fighting off the urge to strangle her, or laugh; could have been both.
The other handmaidens stared with wide eyes and mouths that hung to the floor as Dristan genially moved to take Zara away. And then I felt it, the electrical current that was always around when Ryder was close. I turned and met his midnight eyes. “Fuck you, Fairy; find a different snack. I’m off limits at the moment,” I growled irritably, and walked into my room and slammed the door so hard the wood groaned in protest.
I didn’t wait to see if he would follow me. I kicked off my pretty shoes and climbed into the bed, pulling the covers over my head, and cried. I was tired of feeling like an outsider, and the hormones were on full overload at the moment. I didn’t need him pulling me into his arms, and making me cry harder.
Chapter Ten
I was dreaming, and Ryder was there doing sinfully delicious things to me while I allowed it. I moaned against his mouth and shivered as he glamoured my clothes away. I bit my bottom lip as a cry struggled to break from them.
Heat was thrumming through me, my entire body coming alive with it. Silk brushed against my back as he caressed me everywhere else. I could feel the raw current from him, and smell his rich unique spices. I whispered encouragements and begged him for more.
I felt him sliding down my body until he sat between my legs and then pressure consumed my mind. His hands parted my legs, and the heat of his breath fanned my sensitive flesh. I blinked, and tried to sit up, but he pulled my legs further apart. I shook my head with the realization that this wasn’t a dream.
His lips and tongue, pulled and suckled on my pussy, and I cried out as my entire body jerked from the pleasure of it. “Ryder, no,” I cried, already trying to push him away, even if it was a futile effort. His big hands came up to capture mine, and he held them firmly against my belly as his mouth continued to devour me. “No,” I said again as I lifted my hips for more.
I didn’t want this.
God it felt so good.
Ryder’s mouth continued to feast greedily from my core, until I began to moan uncontrollably from it. His hands roamed against my flesh, and I went soft against his touch. “Ryder,” I whimpered, still groggy from sleep, but he ignored my plea and continued to use his tongue savagely, leaving nothing untouched. He made slurping noises and groans of pleasure as he sucked my clit into his mouth and roved his tongue over it hard, slow, and erotically. He was a fucking God in bed. It was as simple as that. The anger faded away even as I tried to remember why I was mad. He growled against my slick flesh as his hands came up to slide under, and cup my ass to give him better access.
My body arched for more of his possession, my head tilted back on the softness of the pillows as his mouth made love to my core. I lifted my hips to give him better access, demanding he continue; not that I needed to, not that he would leave me like this. I moaned and panted with need. He was slow, steady, and determined to draw the orgasm from me.
He said nothing, just continued to ravish my pussy until he got what he wanted from it. He moaned as his tongue and lips sucked against the slick wetness he’d just created, as my body quivered and jerked as tremors of pleasure shot through my body. I was still shaking from the powerful orgasm as he moved up until he was poised and ready to enter me. His eyes met and held mine, captured by the heat burning from within his, and he kept my eyes locked with his in a silent promise of more pleasure as he slid his cock inside of me slowly.
He fed me inch after blissful inch of his hardness. He moved slowly as he rotated his hips, fucking me gently, jerking his body to the hilt, buried inside of my warmth with his eyes never leaving mine. Each thrust took me closer to the edge of sanity as he drove his engorged cock inside of me again, and again.
“I love being inside of you, Synthia.”
“Ryder,” I whimpered as the pending orgasm built to a dangerous level inside of me. He was controlling it, holding it just out of reach.
Our breathing was heavy, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the primal need to find release together. He lowered his mouth, and claimed my lips in a hungry, demanding kiss that stole my breath away, as he fed me his own back.
When he pulled away, I cried out from the loss of his mouth and met his eyes, which now glowed with hunger. His mouth lifted into a wicked grin as his hips continued to move slowly, deliciously, while he brought me to the brink, only to stop when I was close to going over the cliff he was holding me on.
“You need to come, don’t you, Pet? Fuck, you’re so wet and sweet. I could eat this sweet pussy for days,” he grunted and pulled out to do just that, but first he took his time getting down there.
He yanked my legs until I was spread apart for him to feed. He smiled and kissed my neck before moving lower to kiss and nip gently with his teeth on the left nipple, and then the right, sucking them into his mouth and flicking them as he had done with my clit earlier.
He lifted his head and smiled with my nipple still held between his teeth before he dropped one leg, and used his now free hand to run it over the heat of my junction. I kept hold of his eyes, and watched as he ran his tongue slowly in swirling patterns over my naked skin. The heat from his blistering mouth, sending my brain into a frenzy of need, that he had full control of.
His fingers entered me, spreading me, fucking me. I closed my eyes, unable to keep them open any longer. “Open them. I want you to watch me make you come, Synthia. I want to see when desire floods through them, when the passion takes control and you give yourself over to me.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” I cried, still riding his fingers.
“I’m fucking you,” he ground out through the lust, which made his voice low and seductive. “I love your sweetness, love to be inside of it. You are mine now, Synthia, forever,” he whispered, before he moved back up my body as he held my legs spread. “Now, come for me,” he ordered.
He entered hard this time, and held nothing back as he pounded himself inside of me. His magic exploded over my flesh and the moment it did, I exploded with it. My body shook f
rom the sheer magnitude of the orgasm. I screamed his name over, and over as he continued to fuck me until his own release electrified and spread warmth through me.
He turned onto his side and pulled me flush against his body our breathing labored and torn as we both fought to control it. He didn’t say anything, and the feeding that he’d just given me made my eyes grow heavy with sleep. Tonight, I would allow his comfort; tomorrow, I would barbeque his ass.
As I drifted off to sleep, I felt his soft kiss as he rained them down on my forehead. His soft words were whispered in the ancient language that I was starting to think was part of the Horde language, and something about them tugged at my heart strings.
Chapter Eleven
I awoke to Ryder kissing me, his eyes smiling as he ravished my mouth. I moaned and pushed with my hands against his chest, trying to push him away. Not that it was working, or I had a chance in hell of managing it. I felt his mouth curve into a smile as his hand easily captured mine, and trapped them above my head.
He didn’t enter me, even though I could feel his hardness against my hip. He had taken the form I was more familiar with as he had last night, which only made what he was doing harder to resist. I pulled my mouth away from his, but he followed me and caught it easily with his, and growled his disapproval.
When he finally pulled away, he refused to allow me to use my hands. Instead, he kept them pinned above my head as his free hand stroked my stomach. I stopped moving away from him the moment his fingers grazed the skin above my navel tenderly. “Ryder,” I whimpered. His eyes met mine, as his fingers continued to explore my flat abdomen.
“You will give me the strongest, most stubborn son that the Horde has ever known,” he mumbled before his head lowered and kissed the flatness of my belly. “I won’t stop with one child. You will be the mother of all of my sons and daughters.”
“And when you marry Abiageal?” I asked, watching his reaction.
“She will be my wife, but you will still be the woman I go to sleep with and the one I wake up with. Nothing will change that.”
“Are you serious?” I snapped.
“I’m the Horde King, Synthia. They expect me to follow through with that. It’s a normal custom for the Horde King to take a bride from within the Horde. This was a contract my father made, and at the time I thought I could go through with it. Then I met you. You changed everything, but it’s not a simple thing to undo. It’s a binding contract, one I signed.”
“Then I hope you are happy, but don’t expect me to play happy whore for you. I am not willing to do that; not even for you, Ryder.”
“It’s not like I want her. I want you, Synthia Raine McKenna. She will go to the pavilion, like the others before her after I have done my duty.” he mumbled and released his hold on my hands.
I sat up and scooted away from him as quickly as I could. “You think I care if you want her? It won’t matter at that point, because I won’t be here. Your duty will include bedding her. I’m not an idiot, Fairy. I know the old customs, and I know that most come from the Fae. You will have to,” I stopped as my throat thickened with the words, “you will have to take her to your bed. That’s not something I can just look past. My feelings might make me sound stupid to you, but I can’t change them.”
“So you’d take my child and leave?” he asked in a deadly tone.
“Without a doubt,” I sneered.
“I could chain you to my bed,” he whispered as his golden eyes lifted to meet mine.
I flinched from the heat in them. Why couldn’t he see how wrong it was that he wanted to keep me and a wife? I knew he was old, and that in this world it was common, but why couldn’t he see it from my eyes? “Ryder, you can chain me all you like. In the end, I will leave you. Either by checking out mentally, or physically; I won’t stay if you marry someone else, don’t ask me to.”
“And you’d stay if I refused to marry her?”
“Maybe,” I said. Yes, I’d fight to stay with him with every fiber of my very being.
“Yes or no, not that it matters. You are having my child. Leaving isn’t an option at this point.”
“I’m having our child, ours. He’s inside of me, not you. You are so wrong if you think you can pull what you did yesterday in the front of your Horde on me again. You don’t get to do this to me. Not when my entire life was shaped because of a choice you made before I was born. You stole my life, Ryder. If you hadn’t demanded a contract, I would never have left Faery, and my parents would be still alive and would never have had to go through what they did.”
“If I hadn’t made that fucking contract, you’d be a very different girl than you are now. You’d have been mine either way. Danu chose you for this. She thinks you’re something special. She thinks our child can fix this world, and when I find the relics, I hope she’s right,” he hissed.
“But you don’t think I’m special?” I asked, crossing my arms uncaring that I was naked. Besides, it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen it all many times.
“I think you’re a scared little girl who doesn’t know what the fuck she wants. You have no home, you have no friends, and you have no one who is willing to walk in here and fight me for you. And trust me, Syn, Adam and Adrian are not that stupid nor would Vlad or Kier allow for them to come here and challenge me.”
My chest and throat burned from unshed tears. I closed my eyes and felt one drop. I shook my head and looked up into his gorgeous face. This was my Knight in shining armor, this was my savior. Right, I was such an idiot. “Feel better? Does it make you feel better to point out that I have no one left? No fucking options?”
“Syn,” he said, sliding his fingers through his hair.
“Get out,” I seethed, straightening my spine and reinforcing my courage. He might be the Horde King, but I was the Blood Princess, and I wasn’t some weak ass bitch who would cave to this. I may not have what I had a few months ago, but he was wrong. I had options. I wasn’t down and out yet.
“Synthia,” he warned.
“Get the fuck out, Fairy! Get out! Get out!” I half screamed, half cried as the feeling of everything crashed down on me. I felt pain shoot through my midsection as if the fires of hell were tearing through me. I hit the floor hard and landed on my knees before I bent over and everything went black.
*~*Ryder*~*
“What is wrong with her?” I demand and watch as Eliran shakes his head.
“No idea. You said she screamed and then fell?” he asks, and his eyes fly to mine as if he can sense my guilt.
“We were arguing,” I divulge, and listen as Ristan snorts.
“Dizziness and fainting are very common symptoms during pregnancy. She looks stable, but I’d like to keep her down here for tonight,” Eliran continues.
“No. If you want to monitor her, you will do so from my chambers. She is emotionally unstable. I’d rather you keep an eye on her from a distance. She needs to feel like she has some control of her life. I took her from her world, and according to Sinjinn, she’s already made one enemy he had to send packing for threatening her life.”
“Synthia doesn’t make enemies without good reason, Ryder. Did you question why the girl verbally attacked her?” Ristan muses and meets my eyes as if he knows Synthia better than I do. As if. I know every fucking curve, every inch of her beauty personally.
“She said something Syn didn’t agree with. The girl was removed, but the fact that Synthia’s not adapting to her place here is not acceptable. I won’t let her walk away from me.” I meet his eyes, daring him to argue.
“And the child?” I finally ask, after noting everyone is staring at me.
“It’s fine as far as I can tell. I retrieved medicine for the nausea, and vitamins to ensure that she and the babe stay healthy. My only concern is that she wasn’t all of the way out of Transition when she conceived and is still not fully immortal. She’s delicate, no matter how strong she seems right now. She needs to take it easy until the child is firmly planted in her womb.”
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“How in the fuck do we manage that when she’s walking around hitting people? She’s not like the other women here; she’s explosive.”
“When she is around you,” Ristan points out, not even pretending to care that I was even now glaring murder in his direction. “She was fine when I was with her, Ryder. She’s been through hell and not even you can deny that. She has plenty of reasons to hate us, and yet she doesn’t. Nor have I seen her hating us. You, well she tries very hard to hate and yet she caves to your whims. You may not want to hear this, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Stay away from her unless you plan on apologizing for whatever shit you probably dropped into her lap. Give her time to breath, to heal, and for your child to be secured in her belly. I’m just saying give her time to acclimate.”
“You don’t think I have fucking tried? I let her walk away to marry someone else! I’ve given her up once, Ristan. I will never do it again.”
“I’m not saying to let her go. You couldn’t, anyway. She’s carrying your child. I’m saying that if you want her to be willing to stay, give her time to adjust. Two months ago she was a human with normal…well, she was a Witch, but my point is, she had normal problems. She knew what she was, and what she had to do. She was active, and needed. Now, she is trapped in a pretty cage and the only thing she has to do with her time is to sit around and think. We took a fucking assassin and we cut off her arms. Took her swords. We took her purpose from her, and gave her what? This is Synthia we are talking about. She’s a fighter, Ryder, and everything she has ever known is gone. It’s all changing at a rapid rate, and she’s coping by lashing out…not to mention she’s got some raging hormones that are taking over. Just ask Eliran.” He motions to the healer, who nods his head solemnly.