Read A Warrior's Redemption (The Warrior Kind) Online

Authors: Guy Stanton III

Tags: #epic fantasy

A Warrior's Redemption (The Warrior Kind) (31 page)

BOOK: A Warrior's Redemption (The Warrior Kind)
8.57Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

“I know it won’t, but you still haven’t answered my question. Who is that man to you?”

There was a moment of silence and I saw big tears coursing down her cheeks as she answered, “His name is Count Sarn Nivaron. He is an important magistrate under the governor of Capeacal. When I was very young he saw my mother in the market place and desired her for his own. He tried to buy her from my father, but my father refused so he had my father killed and brought me and my mother to live on his estate as slaves. We were there for a couple of years. My mother was one of his many whores. When he got tired of her he sold us at the slave market.”

“I see my dear.” Sebastian said patting her hand gently.

“I’ll take care of the problem, but this changes our relationship I’m afraid.”

Krista looked up at him and said, “I’m sorry!”

Sebastian leaned forward and kissed her on the brow as a father would. “It was going to have to change anyway soon enough.”

Sebastian stood up stiffly. “I need to get back to the ball.”

Sebastian turned to look at me for a long moment and I wondered what he was thinking. I knew what I was think
ing. I’d like to take the confiscated knife in my hand and go back to the ball and shove it in between the ribs of the Count, where a heart should have been located and then snap it off at the hilt.

“Roric, I’ve noticed that you’ve shown a marked interest in my companion slave. I assure you this is not a common request on my part, but I need her occupied for the duration of the night and as I am needed elsewhere I give her to you to enjoy however you may wish to.”

Krista gasped loudly and cried out, “Sebastian!” in an outraged voice. I was just as shocked and stared mutely at Sebastian, as he walked out the door past me and closed it.

Standing dumbfounded looking at the closed door I was rudely interrupted by a hard knock to the back of my head. “What.…?”

Half turning I reached back to feel the back of my head as I saw an apple rolling away along the floor. Looking up towards Krista I had only enough time to duck as a glass container holding some jelly like substance smashed against the door post where I had been only moments before. The room was wreathed chokingly in the perfumed fragrance of the substance now oozing down the doorpost.

 

Sebastian heard the clatter of glass breaking against the door and a brief smile touched his lips. Melancholy soon returned however when he stepped back into the bright world of the ballroom, which was still in full swing. He quickly located his contact messenger and closed in on her. Once more back into the fray perhaps for the last time.

The familiar thrill of danger once more coursed through his old tired bones and Sebastian welcomed it. This might be his last battle, but it would be his greatest achievement yet, for God and country.

 

I managed to keep ducking most of the objects being thrown at me, as I tried to work my way through the litter of fallen projectiles to Krista. A knife whizzed past my nose by mere inches. That was it! I lunged for her.

A potted plant smashed off my shoulder in route which, in my angered rush I didn’t even consider the pain of its impact. I ducked around a roundhouse punch aimed at my head and stepped behind her wrapping an arm around to restrain her arms. She struggled violently in my hold and sank her teeth into my forearm. I jerked my arm away and in the process spun her around. I quickly grabbed and yanked both her arms behind her back and held them in one hand tightly se
cure.

She seemed even more incensed at her new found captivity and lunged for my throat with her bared pearly white teeth. My right hand shot out and buried itself in the fiery tangle of the curls of her hair. I stopped her heads advance towards my throat as my grip on her hair tightened. She gave a frustrated grunt, when her head was brought up short from its intended target.

I found myself mesmerized by the ferocity of her defi
ance, which is why I didn’t see the knee headed for my groin. Thankfully her knee was slightly off target, but it was still painful none the less. I grunted painfully and almost lost control of her hands, which would have probably been fatal for me. I gritted my teeth and pulled her close with my left arm until her stomach was pressed tight to me and she had no room to squirm, much less, knee me in the groin again.

I held her head back with my right hand in her hair. The heel of her foot came smashing down on my foot and I tightened my grip on her hair and arms, which caused her to gasp painfully and stop most of her struggling.

“That is enough! I don’t want to hurt you, but so help me, if you bite or hit me again I will put you over my knee and spank the living day
lights out of you!

The threat worked because she abruptly stopped struggling. I hadn’t really been going to do that, but she didn’t need to know that. We were both breathing hard from the struggle and I grappled with what to do. Did I release her? I might not have a face left or have the ability to father chil
dren if I did!

Curls of her hair had broken free from their elaborate containment on top of her head and draped over the sides of her face getting in her eyes. One of the stray curls lay down alongside her nose, and she tossed her head as much as she could in order to move it away. She was so breathtakingly beautiful!

I released my tight grip of her hair and combed the of
fending strays over to the side of her face. I lost myself in the stormy depths of her sea blue eyes. The radiating lines of her facial scars stood out in sharp white relief against the flushed red of her face, as she stared back at me.

Her lips were full from the passion and struggle of the moment and my head was descending towards them without any conscious thought of my own. Her expressive eyes flashed con
cern but she didn’t move away.

 

I had always wondered why people kissed and now I knew why. I wanted to do it again and again. The feel of her soft lips against mine was intoxicatingly amazing. The feel of her soft body pressed up against mine was even more intoxicating. I could do this for forever.

That thought died though when I opened my eyes. Tears were leaking out the sides of her eyes and down her cheeks. I took my face away from hers and she quickly looked down at my chest. She had the look of one who had suffered a bitter defeat and was now helpless against what came next, which wasn’t what I wanted at all to see from her!

I remembered the feeling I saw expressed in her body language well enough. The feeling of having no control over one’s own fate was the lot of a slave. Bile rose in my throat, as I writhed inwardly in self disgust.

One of the reasons I had fought so hard in the arena was so that I might never have the look that she now had. This beautiful woman must think I was no better than the men, who frequented the whore houses that I had by my own actions saved her from as a girl.

I let go of her wrists and stepped back abruptly. She looked up at me surprised and wary of my next move all at the same time. I let my hands fall to my sides and I moved further back.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to lose control like that! I’m sorry if I hurt you!”

Shocked she stared at me while rubbing her wrists. I ges
tured towards a sofa, “Will you have a seat please?”

Krista looked at the sofa and then at me not sure what to think of the change in my demeanor towards her. She moved over to the sofa never turning her back on me and sat in a corner of it, drawing her knees up under her protectively. I pulled a chair out across from her and sat down. Sweat was beaded all over my face and I searched for something to say in the awkward silence of the room, as she watched me closely.

“Do you need anything? Are you hungry?”

Somewhat hoarsely she said softly, “I am a little hun
gry. I don’t eat much during the day leading up to these events. The clothes are tight enough without having a full belly too.”

My eyes drifted down and I saw what she meant. Huskily I asked, my eyes still clinging to the well defined womanly curves, “Why does Sebastian have you dress so provocatively? He doesn’t strike me as the kind of man to show off something he val
ues to others? I know he values you very highly.”

She paused hesitantly and then looked up at me somewhat shyly, “Sebastian and I…..we don’t…..we aren’t intimate together. I’m for show, to make others think of Sebastian as a vigorous man for lack of a better way of putting it.”

She finished embarrassingly before she continued, “I help Sebastian in his work. Men will often let information slip that they wouldn’t otherwise around a……around a.”

“Beautiful woman.”
I finished for her.

She blushed
a little and nodded her head. She didn’t know how much her telling me as to what the extent of her relationship with S
ebastian was meant to me. I had felt a big sigh of relief inside of me at the divulging of that infor
mation.

“Don’t tell anyone please. I only told you because I know that you’re of Sebastian’s fam
ily and that you know of the work that he does.”

“Your secret is safe with me.”

I heard her sigh of relief. “Krista, nothing is going to happen tonight that you don’t want to happen. If you would like to, you could change out of those clothes into something more comfortable, while I get us some food.”

I could tell that the idea of taking her clothes off wasn’t something she wanted to do with me around. “It’s okay you can trust me. If you changed it might relax the atmosphere in here some. I’m admittedly male and well everything about that
outfit screams that your female with a message of come and get me.”

“Ohh!”
She got up quickly and I got up too.

“I’ll change while you’re gone.” She said quickly.

Nodding awkwardly in response I headed for the door but her voice stopped me.

“Could you help me with something before you go?”

I turned back to find Krista’s back turned to me and her hair pulled out of the way expos
ing a row of tiny buttons in the middle of her back. “Could you undo these please?” She asked softly.

I swallowed hard and walked up behind her looking at the tiny buttons. My big fingers fumbled trying to unhook the impossibly tiny buttons and eventually they all came undone and the fabric pulled apart revealing the skin of her back, along with the faint white scars she bore, as evi
dence of time spent in the firan cane fields. Her back may be scarred, but it looked soft too.

“There you go.” I said thickly stepping back towards the door trying to blindly find the handle with my hands as I continued to gaze at the soft skin I had exposed.

She looked over one shoulder at me and softly said, “Thank you”.

I nodded not trusting myself to frame words.

My hands found the handle and I quickly stepped outside the room and closed the door resting my head against it for a moment, to collect my rampaging thoughts, before I headed for the kitchen to steal some food for us.

 

I knocked on the door briefly and heard a muffled reply to enter. Not only had she changed, but she had done a quick cleanup of the room to and was now sitting curled up on the sofa again.

Oh darn it all! She looked so desirably cute in the shape
less oversized robe she was wrapped up in. It didn’t matter what she wore she was simply irresistibly attractive to me. It was going to be a long night to say the least.

I sat the food trays down in front of her and watched her descend on them with a healthy appetite, while I sat back and let my eyes feast on her instead. Glancing up she saw my gaze on her and her eating slowed down to a halt.

Wiping her mouth free of crumbs she cleared her throat slightly before asking, “Why did you stop? Sebastian was serious when he said you had his permission to enjoy me however you wished too. I know that you want me.”

She was still so beautiful even in her shapeless frock, it hurt to look at her and do nothing. Pausing as I tried to collect my passioned thoughts and find the words that I needed to I said, “I’ve been a slave. I know what it’s like to be held against your will and taken advantage of. I promised myself I would never treat anyone like that, least of all you.”

 

Krista grappled with the shocking admission that he had been a slave. He was nothing like any slave man she had ever encountered. He had nothing of a subservient nature about him at all.

It must have been hard for him to be a slave. Remembering his emphasis on her in the last part of his statement she asked, “Why me in particular?”

He was looking back at her steadily out of strong brown eyes, when he said the words that brought memories of the past streaming back into her consciousness.

“I was the one who gave you those.” He said indicating the scare lines on her cheek.

Her breathing froze as she stared at her childhood rescuer from years ago. Speechless she stared at the boy who had become a man. So that was what the familiarity had been with this man. She had known he was different from the other men somehow and now she knew why. She relaxed inwardly and dropped her eyes from his.

“What is it like to be free?”

 

Thinking about it for a moment I responded. “In some ways it’s great and in others it feels overwhelming. Would you like to hear my story seeing as we have some time to kill?”

She gazed back up at me and smiled a little, “I would like that.”

“Okay, then let’s see… I was born.”

Krista smiled outright at the silly beginning to my story and I was glad to see her fully relaxed. It was easy to talk to her as she keenly listened and showed interest in her face throughout the telling of my story. I talked on and on, giving her a synopsis of my life.

I talked of my parents, my days in the arena, my new found faith and the Valley Lands. I no
ticed after a while that her eyes were getting heavy and her posture had slumped slightly into the sofa. I kept my tone modulated and even and before long I watched her eyes close all the way shut. I stopped talking and simply watched her sleep. She was so beautiful that all I wanted to do was reach out and touch her to see if she was real or not, but I knew that wouldn’t be a good idea.

BOOK: A Warrior's Redemption (The Warrior Kind)
8.57Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Sudden Desire by Lauren Dane
Project Passion by Dusty Miller
Friends: A Love Story by Angela Bassett
News of the World: A Novel by Paulette Jiles
The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly
All For You by Kate Perry
Some Sweet Day by Bryan Woolley