Barbarian Prince (5 page)

That was pretty much all that flickered through her mind for some time, however. Because just as she and Monica cleared the village at last, passing the few huts along the outer fringe, the gangplank was lowered and a horde of bellowing barbarians waving swords fully as long as she and Monica were tall poured out of the ship.

Her eyes felt as if they would pop from her head as she stared in horror at the thundering horde.

Monica tore loose from her frantic grip and poured on more speed as one of the barbarians—the one in the lead who seemed taller than all the rest—looked straight at them, bellowed something barbaric and completely unintelligible and headed straight for them. Screaming, Noelle tried to pour on more speed herself, tripped over the fucking hem of the oversized gown, and plowed several yards of dirt and gravel on her belly. She thought for several moments she might actually make her escape by surfing down the hill on her belly, but despite the fact that she managed to outstrip Monica in her race down the hill, something heavy landed on top of her and halted her forward progress, knocking the wind from her lungs at the same time.

Too stunned to do anything beyond grunt when the wind was knocked out of her, Noel focused on trying to breathe past the choking dirt she’d plowed up and the weight that seemed to be crushing her chest.

Monica screamed and raced toward the barbarian that had pancaked her on the ground and began pounding on his head and shoulders. He bellowed an obscenity, planted a hand on her belly and gave her a shove. She flew backwards, hit the ground and slid down the hill on her ass.

By the time the barbarian had gotten off of her and gained his feet, Noelle had recovered enough to be furious that he’d shoved Monica down the hill.

Granted Monica had been trying to beat him senseless, but that was because he’d provoked the attack to start with by tackling
her!

“
You bastard
!” she snarled in his language the minute he jerked her to her feet.

She saw a look of amazement cross his features—either because she’d insulted him in his native language or because she swung at him and tried to punch him in the face—then he snatched her off her feet and absolutely stunned her by planting his mouth firmly over hers.

She wasn’t certain what her reaction might have been under less stressful circumstances, but the natural mating chemicals he injected into her with his kiss felt like liquid fire pouring through her, scalding her lungs and scouring her veins like acid. At the same time, it sapped every ounce of willpower and fight from her, liquefying bone and flesh. Within five seconds, she was perfectly limp and barely conscious, as if he’d tried to smother her rather than kissed her completely senseless.

He tossed her across one shoulder, retrieved his sword where he’d dropped it in the dirt, threw a triumphant glance in Monica’s direction, and turned back toward his ship.

Despite his reservations about the trip, Drak felt his pulse rate shoot upward as they cleared the cloud cover and spotted the village below them.

Part of this, naturally enough, was relief that the ship had held together for the duration of the trip and anxiety about whether or not their pilot would be able to set the damned tooth rattling thing down on the ground in one piece.

His hunting/mating instincts were also fully aroused, however, by the time the ship had settled with a hard jolt firmly on the ground. Grabbing their swords in case they met resistance in the form of rogue males or determined female warriors, they lowered the gangplank and Drak led the charge to claim a mate.

Almost the moment he stepped into the opening, movement caught his eye. More specifically, this was the fragile pair of females fleeing past the ship and headed in a completely different direction than any of the other villagers.

Because they clearly weren’t villagers.

They did not, in point of fact, look like they belonged to any of the tribes he was familiar with. Beyond their coloring, which instantly leapt out at him, they were far too slight in stature to belong to any tribe he was familiar with.

Despite their size, however, they were certainly adults not children.

Because his gaze was immediately drawn to what was very definitely a generous pair of breasts churning frantically against the tops of their shifts twice as fast as their feet were churning up the dust.

The one that immediately snagged his attention, though, had the hair of a flaxen and pale skin unlike any tribe he had ever known.

He couldn’t see well enough to tell if she had a lovely face, but that was immaterial when he
could
see that she had a lovely body. And she was amazingly fleet of foot and agile! He was within inches of snagging a handful of the flapping shift she was wearing when she dove toward the ground to elude him and damned near succeeded in getting completely away since her impetus in conjunction with the incline of the hill was sufficient to send her into a swift glide! Loathe though he was to follow suit, he could see she was going to escape him if he didn’t and he finally dropped his sword—which he would never have done under any other circumstance—and launched himself at her, trying to catch her and still prevent his entire weight from landing on her.

She very nearly slipped away from him because of that maneuver, but he did manage to halt her flight.

Which was when her companion whirled and flew at him like a wild
turant
, pecking at his head and shoulders with her tiny fists until he had, perforce, to shove her off before she could inflict some actual damage besides giving him a pounding headache.

Then, when he got up and lifted his ‘prize’ from the dirt, the tiny woman he’d captured stunned him by calling him every foul name she could lay tongue to and launching herself at him as if she actually stood a chance of taking him down!

Apparently, she thought she was a warrior, despite the fact that she didn’t have either the stature to take on an experienced warrior like himself or the skills.

Clearly, he needed to subdue her before she could harm herself trying to pound him into the dirt and piss him off at the same time.

He thought, given the fact that she was, beyond any doubt, not a member of any tribe he had ever encountered, he was probably as surprised as she was that the mating enchantment actually worked.

Actually, it worked far better than he was accustomed to and that was nearly as stunning as her counterattack. It went well beyond merely subduing her—which was the most effect it had ever had before in his experience.

When he had caught her at the scruff of her neck and dragged her close enough to capture her lips beneath his, she went so limp he had to hold her up to keep her from sliding down his form and puddling at his feet. She was so limp as he tossed her across one shoulder, retrieved his sword, and jogged back to the ship that he was beginning to worry that something had gone horribly wrong by the time he got to his cabin on the ship.

Had he crushed something vital in her fragile little body when he had leapt upon her to capture her?

Had he snapped her tiny neck when he had grabbed her to force his will upon her with the mating kiss?

It did occur to him that she might be feigning, plotting to catch him off guard and fight her way free, but he took no chances there. He didn’t release her until he had bolted the cabin door behind him.

Her knees were as limp as putty when he set her on her feet and she wilted. Catching her before she could crumple to the floor, he settled her on the bed and, against his better judgment, leaned over her to examine her face.

She blinked owlishly several times, staring back at him, but the blinks were enough to assure him she was still alive.

And, fortunately for him, she didn’t seem to have a knife to slip between his ribs.

He leaned back, studying her thoughtfully.

It flickered through his mind that he should leave her and oversee the raid, but he was reluctant to leave his pretty prize so quickly.

And she was pretty.

Besides, he needed to make sure she wasn’t armed since she seemed to consider herself to be a warrior.

More than half expecting her to come around from a feigned half-faint the moment he grasped the hem of her shift, she surprised him and concerned him more when she merely lay limply and allowed him to remove it without any attempt to guard herself from him.

Those thoughts emptied from his mind, however, once he had disrobed her and got an unobstructed view of her nude form because his cocks instantly sprang to attention and impeded the blood flow above that point.

She was beautifully made. Her pale skin almost seemed to glow in the dim light of the cabin.

He had no idea how long he simply stood like a statue staring at her before he was finally drawn by the blood pounding in his ears to the fact that he was beginning to feel downright faint from the restricted blood flow in his body. Sucking in a sustaining breath, he dragged his gaze from her body to her face, met her gaze for a long moment and then abruptly turned and stalked out of the cabin. His hand was shaking when he had locked the door behind him.

It annoyed him.

He almost felt as if the mating kiss had bewitched him rather than the other way around!

Trying to shake the images from his mind, he crossed the main cabin of the ship and paused at the top of the gangplank, abruptly extremely reluctant to leave since it occurred to him that she might only have been pretending to be subdued and be awaiting the opportunity to escape him. It occurred to him, briefly, to wonder if he might be better off if the strange, almost magical seeming creature did manage to escape him. He was enthralled with her already and he had done nothing more than bestow the mating kiss upon her!

That thought brought with it a crushing since of loss, however, and sparked a possessive anger that seemed as alien to him as she did.

Mayhap she was one of the tiny magical people the old ones wove tales about?

He shook that thought. She was undoubtedly a rare find, but he had never been a superstitious man and he was not going to allow fanciful thoughts to fill his mind now!

She might
try
to weave a spell around him! But she was flesh and blood woman, not a mythical creature, and he would have her and he would not release her until he had had his fill!

He paused again at the foot of the gangplank and looked around for his men. He spied one of the younger men in the group heading back, his head bloodied and a thin stream running down the side of his face.

The woman he had flung over one shoulder was steadily trying to kick him in the groin—and had succeeded at least once if the sickly pallor of his face was any indication. “Tabor! I have locked my prize in my cabin. Take care she does not escape!”

Tabor leaned over and puked at the foot of the gangplank, but Drak didn’t take that in bad part. He’d already deduced the lad was nauseated from a groin kick.

The female he had captured didn’t take it too well when he dropped her in the middle of it, however. She screamed profanity at him and punched him several times before Drak grabbed her by the scruff of her neck. “You had better hope you did not permanently disable his little soldier, woman! Else I might be tempted to launch you from the port
after
we take off!” he snarled.

He held her until Tabor had recovered enough to recall the proper way to subdue a woman.

Drak had some doubts about the effectiveness of the mating kiss after emptying one’s guts on the ground, but either it was effective or his threat was. The woman settled down and allowed Tabor to herd her up the gangplank.

Shaking his head, Drak strode briskly away from the ship. He paused when he had surveyed the progress of his men in rounding up women and supplies for their trip back and turned to search for any sign of the dark female that had been with his woman.

Monica spent the first half of her trip back to the colony focused completely on the possibility of pursuit. She wasn’t able to maintain a full run, but she did her best to keep her pace between a jog, a sprint, and a fast walk. The end result was that she was able to see the walls of the colony come into view before dusk.

Her emotions flipped at that point from terror to relief—and fury that the bastards sitting safely behind the walls hadn’t made any attempt to launch a rescue mission.

She had to stand outside the gate for a good fifteen minutes while the security robots surveyed the entire perimeter to make sure she wasn’t a lure the barbarian’s had used to fool them into opening the gates. Finally, the gates were opened a narrow crack to allow her to squeeze through and then they were sealed once more.

Monica was surrounded at once by security bots and escorted to a quarantine area where she was to be observed, poked, prodded, questioned and monitored for a solid month while they waited to be sure she wasn’t carrying any alien contagions before she was allowed to mingle with the colonists again.

Noelle was still basking in the heated, liquid pleasure that had suffused her the moment the huge, brawny and beautiful, but terrifying barbarian had pressed his hard mouth against hers. She thought she’d been more stunned to stillness, at first, than anything else.

She’d been too terrified to spare a lot of time for thought—like why the barbarians were attacking and what their objective was. The women of the village were fierce in her book, and if the flying barbarians frightened them, then they must have something really horrible in mind.

Not that she’d actually formed those thoughts into anything coherent, but they’d been whipping around her mind while she’d been running and screaming her head off.

Then, instead of ripping her in half, he’d snatched her against a rock hard male body and kissed her—sapping every ounce of energy from her body and completely scrambling her wits.

It had almost seemed as if she was floating away when he’d carried her back to his ship and inside, as if she floated downward to land on the bed like a feather.

Only limp.

Heated desire had ramped up the stoked furnace inside of her when he’d peeled her dress off and tossed it aside.

And then … nothing!

Confusion pierced her ardor as she watched him leave.

She stared at the door for a time, willing him to return, hoping he would come back and put out the fire he’d started.

When he didn’t, the heated bubble began to deflate of its own accord. Slowly, her focus shifted from the throbbing of unrequited passions to utter puzzlement and then a healthy mixture of confusion and fear as the strange paralysis wore off completely.

What the hell had just happened?

And where was the barbarian taking her?

The surveyors hadn’t discovered any cities advanced enough to account for the flying machine these ‘barbarians’ had arrived in.

It hadn’t detected any males, for that matter.

It had been a good raid, Drak thought with satisfaction as he stood by the gangplank and counted heads. They hadn’t lost a single man—as least not yet, although there were a couple that had had to be helped back to the ship—and it appeared that at least half the men had managed to capture a mate.

They’d had strong incentive.

There was not enough time to search out another village. This was a one time, hit or miss sweep and they all knew it. If they failed to capture a mate it would be another full year before they got another chance since they only took women in the winter. The spring trip was for returning them.

That thought brought his mind back to his own captive. In truth, it hadn’t strayed far from the strange female in his cabin since he had taken her onto the ship.

Arousal, never far from the surface since the moment he’d taken her, was almost instantaneous and both gratifying and irritating.

On the one hand, he enjoyed that heat pumping through his blood, the sense of anticipation, the excitement.

The distraction annoyed him, however.

He had a healthy appetite, but there was a time and place for everything and he wasn’t accustomed to being distracted from important matters by pleasures of the flesh—or anticipation of enjoying them. He prided himself on his self-control, on ruling mind and body rather than being ruled by his desires.

He was no spoiled, self-indulgent creature of whim! He was a man of intelligence, education, and reason!

Honor and duty above all!

That was his family’s motto and he had always taken it and his birthright as ruler of Alvarone very seriously.

He was still distracted as the last of his men boarded the ship for home and he followed them up the gang plank. After struggling for some moments to focus on seeing to it that all of the captive women were secured in the hold and that the injured men were attended to by the medicine man and made as secure and comfortable as possible, he finally turned control of the vessel over to his captain and headed to his cabin.

He wasn’t surprised when he entered to see that his captive had recovered from the kiss, dressed herself, and vacated the bed, but he was surprised that she hadn’t found a weapon and she didn’t even attempt to catch him off guard and attack as he entered the cabin. Instead, she was standing by the porthole looking out and apparently completely calm.

She didn’t even verbally assault him when he came in.

He halted abruptly in his tracks and surveyed her curiously. “We are about to take off,” he said finally. “You will need to secure yourself.”

She studied him for a long moment, almost as if she was mentally interpreting what he’d said. But maybe she was only considering if it was some sort of trick? “Where?”

Nodding, he crossed the cabin and pressed the button that opened a pair of chairs concealed behind a panel. Opening them up, he gestured for her to take a seat so that he could secure her harnesses.

“
I can do it,” she said stiffly.

Mild! A very mild rebuke considering! Shrugging, he took a seat in the other chair and fastened his own harness, merely looking hers over when she had finished to see if she had done it correctly.

He was surprised to discover she had.

“
You have a name?”

She studied him with a bland expression that revealed very little—certainly not the hostility he was accustomed to!

“
Noelle. I suppose you must have one, too?”

He was almost tempted to chuckle, but then the question was impertinent and disrespectful! He did not think he should encourage her to behave in a way that would set up the backs of his subjects, to say nothing of his advisors. “Drak, Prince of Alvarone. I am called Drak the Fair.”

She looked like she was struggling not to laugh, which thoroughly pissed him off. She cleared her throat. “Fair as in just? Or … uh … pretty?”

He felt a blush suffuse his cheeks and it did not help his temper. “Of color,” he said tightly. “My sire was Drak the Dark.”

Noelle considered pointing out that she would’ve been more favorably impressed if he’d said it meant just, but she decided against it.

Truthfully, he
was
fair in the sense that he was a handsome monster, but the keyword was monster. He was a giant beside the average human male, and possibly even beside his own people. She didn’t know. She hadn’t actually seen any males … that she knew of for certain. The savage that had given her the lustful once over may or may not have been male. She’d thought it must be, but he was no taller than the females of the village if that was true, and probably at least a half a head shorter than this specimen.

For all that, the barbarian Prince was well proportioned. Unlike ‘abnormal’ human specimens that were either way above or way below average and tended to be disproportionate, he looked like a very well built human male—perfectly proportioned—just giant sized.

Nor was there anything the least bit ‘monster-like’ about his face. He was well above average in that respect, as well—the average human, that is—in handsomeness of features.

But he was a savage and she was afraid that was where the ‘monster’ would come in. She thought that probably meant that she wasn’t going to like her little adventure and she would, in fact, be lucky to survive it intact.

Maybe that had been a touch of hysteria that had prompted the ill-timed amusement she’d felt when he’d told her he was known as Drak the pretty? Uh … Fair?

She was struggling to think of something she could say that might have some hope of smoothing the feathers she’d ruffled when she heard and felt the engine come to life.

The sound wasn’t reassuring and that had nothing to do with her realization that they were taking off with her. No surprise there! She’d figured that out when the savage had lugged her aboard across his shoulder and dumped her in the cabin. And, if she hadn’t, his order for her to take a seat and strap in had certainly been a huge clue!

What bothered her—a lot—was that the sputtering and choking noises of the engine reminded her of old automotive combustion engines and, for something that was supposedly leaving the ground, that wasn’t very reassuring.

The engine finally ‘warmed’ up to a less phlem-like rumbling, though, before she felt the sensation of movement.

She gripped the arms of her seat a little more tightly.

The barbarian Prince was gripping his as if he thought he was going to fly out of it and that did
not
make her feel any better.

She realized in the next instant that he had the death grip for a damned good reason! He was anticipating what came next and she hadn’t had an f’ing clue and she wasn’t braced nearly well enough!

The sensation of simply rising abruptly shifted to nearly unbearable pressure as the vessel shot away from the ground, pressed her so hard into her seat that she felt like a giant fist had punched her—well slammed into her and was trying to push her through the back of her seat. The ship around her took on a more haunting, frightening comparison to an old rattle trap combustion engine vehicle as it pulled unbelievable g-forces. The engine only coughed and sputtered and backfired a couple of times on the way up, but it felt like everything on the ship was disintegrating, being systematically shaken apart.

Noelle’s teeth rat-a-tat perforated her inner cheeks painfully until she managed to push the flesh out of the way and clamp her jaws together.

She thought when all the screaming and shaking abruptly ceased that that was exactly what had happened—that the ship had blown apart around her and she was going to feel it any second.

Then she felt herself begin to float upward in her seat!

She flicked a horrified/terrified look at her captor, saw he was looking a little green and swallowed against her own stomach—which felt like it was trying to climb out of her throat.

Thankfully, that sensation was extremely brief. Something like artificial gravity kicked in and her stomach settled back into her belly.

The barbarian threw off his harness, bounded out of his seat, and abandoned the cabin.

Noelle watched him depart with a mixture of relief and anxiety.

With shaking hands, she struggled for a few minutes and finally managed to untangle herself from her safety harness. On shaky legs, she stumbled toward the porthole to look out.

It was just as she’d feared! The crazy barbarians had taken the rattle trap ship right out of orbit! She could see the world she’d been sure would be her home forever more disappearing rapidly into the darkness of space!

“
Oh my god!” she gasped. “Where the hell are we going?”

Meal time came and went, punctuated only by her growling stomach. Noelle was torn between embarrassment and disbelief that her inner clock was still demanding food—at a time like this!—and resentment that no food was brought so that she could scorn it.

She hadn’t had a lot to eat since she’d been captured by the first group of savages. For one thing, whatever it was that they’d been given to eat didn’t appeal in either appearance or smell. For another, they were still eating rations they’d brought from Earth. They hadn’t had time to either acclimate to a new/different/alien diet or check the food to discover which foods would be safe for humans to eat and which weren’t.