Alphas of Black Fortune Complete Series (10 page)

Kelly couldn’t sleep. He wanted to blame it on how Harry snored, the sound practically a death rattle, but he knew that his mind was troubled by greater things. His mind and his heart. He’d tried to go after Cressida when she’d fled the hut, but Reza had stopped him and gone himself. He’d nearly taken the man’s head off, but Cort had talked him down. It would do no good to die now, not when they were so close at last to treasure.

The hut the tribe had set them in was just one large room, bamboo partitions erected to afford each pallet the farce of privacy. Kelly couldn’t
see
Harry snoring but it didn’t make the damnedest bit of difference. He could hear every time Cort tossed and turned. He could practically smell Fat Tom’s feet. But the pallets were dry, and the room was warm, and the torchlight flickering beyond the door was something of a drowsy comfort. It felt strange to try and sleep like this, on land, with the ground firmly beneath one’s back, after so long being rocked to sleep by the waves.

Kelly closed his eyes and tried to focus on drifting off. They would not have lodgings so comfortable in the nights to come. Just what little rest they could find in the jungle as they worked their way up the mountain. He was to meet in the morning with Reza and the chieftain, to acquire their supplies and, he supposed, receive a last bit of warning before they set off. But he would heed no warnings. He would succeed in this or he would die trying, he’d already decided. Traps, monsters, quicksand, he didn’t care. He would brave it all if it meant restoring his people to a land they could call their own. In that way, he envied Reza and his tribe desperately. It was not the kind of primitive life Kelly could be happy with, but that they
owned
it was the point. That was how men were free.

He heard footsteps, soft and light, enter the hut. Bare feet, he thought, small, and then a shadow skirted the bamboo wall beyond his pallet. A breath caught in his chest as he watched Cressida sneak around the partition.

She put her finger to her lips when their eyes met, and she crept over to him. All she wore was her blouse, Kelly realized as his eyes traveled over her. Well,
his
blouse, a chemise he’d given her. It was so big it covered her to mid-thigh. Long, shapely legs and that chemise, the golden tumble of her hair. He started to sit up, but she reached down, a hand on his shoulder, and held him to the pallet.

“Cress,” he whispered. There were tear stains on her cheeks. She’d been crying; he wanted to know why she’d been crying. But then he supposed he knew why.

Then she climbed atop him, straddling him, and he hauled in a breath as she settled her weight on him and reached down, unfastening the front of his trousers. His hands slid to her thighs, fingers coursing up beneath the hem of the chemise, gripping lightly. He wanted to sit up and kiss her, tell her it would be all right, that he loved her, but she’d already pushed him down once and he knew that wasn’t what she wanted of him now. She lifted to her knees, eyes meeting his as she tugged the waistband of his trousers down on his hips.

He shifted, helping her, and realized his heart was pounding in his ears already, mouth dry with anticipation and cock hard even as she freed it from his pants. His desire for her was an ache in his heart and his loins, and he squeezed her thighs as she settled herself above him, the head of his cock at her entrance, and then sank with a delicious, maddening slowness onto his length. He let his head fall back against the pallet as she rocked her hips against his, bringing him deeper inside her slick, hot sex. He heard her gasp softly, and slid his hands to her hips, holding her there a moment before he lifted her slightly and then brought her back down again. Her hands were on his chest, at once to hold him to the pallet and to hold onto him, as she began to bounce more quickly upon him.

He started to try to sit up again, more than once, but she pushed him down, riding him, her breaths coming in short, shallow gasps as she slid him in and out, plunging herself upon his cock, and he at her mercy. He gripped her waist, her breasts beneath the chemise, biting down on a groan of simultaneous pleasure and frustration, but he didn’t fight her. He let her control this, whatever this was, and felt his lust for her all the more for being thusly beneath her.

At last she bent over him, her hair spilling like a curtain against his chest, and tucked her face into his throat to quietly moan against his skin. He took that for the cue it was and gripped her buttocks instead, holding her to him as he bucked rapidly up and into her, driving himself inside her as she lay upon him and clutched at his hair, panting in his ear. No sweet foreplay or gaming smiles this time, no taunting looks or teasing touches.

“I need you,” she whispered, breathless.

He gritted his teeth and fucked her until she had to bite down on his shoulder to keep from crying out. A flash, in his mind, a deep-rooted roar from the beast within, and as he came inside her, he lifted his head to her throat, but managed to stop himself from biting her back at just the last second. Instead he arched, growling against her, and squeezed her as he climaxed before relaxing back with her still trembling atop him.

She stayed like that for a long while. He kept his arms around her and said not a word, just let her stay slumped as she was, his length still inside her, knowing full well that she would move when and as she liked. He knew too that he was a consolation. That this was how she left Reza behind. He understood the sentiment well enough, and knew he’d never turn her away.

Eventually he turned his face and tried to kiss her, but she pulled away with a grimace, shaking her head a little. And it was then that she separated them, tugging the hem of the chemise down, and got to her feet. She looked down at him for a moment, as though trying to decide a thing, and then without a word she turned and left the hut. He lay as he was a moment, defeated and abandoned, nerves on fire, and then hauled his trousers back up and rolled onto his side, hoping perhaps the exhaustion of the moment would ease him into sleep.

It did. But of course he dreamed of her.

In the morning, they were brought before the chieftain, and Cressida did her best not to look at Reza or Kelly. The former was difficult, because he was translating for the chieftain, but the latter was arguably just
worse
because she could feel it every time he looked at her. She didn’t want to talk to Kelly about the night before. She didn’t even want to look into his eyes and see any kind of smugness or satisfaction. She’d needed to feel wanted. She’d needed not to be alone. She’d needed to be able to pretend that one of them loved her, and he was the one she could go to. She told herself that over and over again, and did not let herself unpack the truth of it.

“Here is the map,” Reza was telling Kelly, sliding him a piece of parchment with strange markings on it. “The landmarks are noted. This will lead you up to the mountain, to the Keeper.”

“Keeper?” Kelly frowned.

“The jewel has a guardian. You must defeat the guardian’s trials to claim the stone.” He sighed. “And no one ever has.”

Kelly folded up the parchment and tucked it into his inside coat pocket. “Well, we’ll see about changing that.”

“I hope you do.”

Cressida did not need to look at Reza to know that he was speaking directly to her.

Kelly ignored it. “Is that all?”

“The shamans say that there is magic,” Reza said after a long pause. “Protecting the jewel.”

Kelly scoffed. “Well, if men who turn to beasts are not magic, then what is? If anyone can take the jewel, it’s us.”

“Don’t be arrogant,” Reza advised. “Arrogance will see you to your death. All of you.”

“Come on.” Kelly turned from the table, striding for the hut’s exit. “Time to head out.”

Outside, just at the edge of the camp where the perimeter bled into the jungle, Cressida stood aside while the men divvied up the supplies, sharing them between cloth sacks that the tribeswomen had provided.

Reza had followed her from the chieftain’s hut. “
Please
be careful, Cressida,” he said softly.

“I don’t know what makes you think
I
have developed a death wish,” she muttered sharply. “I’ll be fine. Leave off.”

“I will worry about you the entire time,” he told her.

She swallowed against a knot in her throat and finally looked at him. His gold-green eyes were sincere and troubled, his expression tight with frustration. He wore, she saw now, a wreath of leaves and baubles not unlike the one the man Chaiya wore. But Reza made it look regal, she thought. She reached out, touching one of the strange animal teeth strung along its length, one of the smaller, sharper-looking ones.

“Viper,” Reza said. “Please. Be careful.”

She let her hand fall from the wreath and nodded. “I will.”

“I’ll be married tomorrow,” he went on. “At sunset.”

She grimaced. “Well, congratulations.”

“Cressida…”

She folded her arms and just shook her head, walking away from him. “I can’t, I’m sorry. Be well. Perhaps we’ll meet again.”

And that was the last thing she said to him.

She glanced back once, saw his silhouette was still, with the sprawl of the village behind him, and then focused forward again.

Ahead of her, the pirates had fallen in line behind Kelly, and as they walked past the village perimeter and under the wide canopy of the jungle, Cressida watched as Harry, Fat Tom and Esterbrook unceremoniously began to shed their clothes, stuffing them into the cloth sacks. With some consternation, she saw them grin at each other as they shucked off their trousers and hopped out of their boots, and then she felt herself blush when Harry turned about and cast her a grin.

“What the devil?” she asked aloud, staring at them.

Kelly glanced back at her, arching an eyebrow.

And then she understood. The men bent down, and a gust of wind rustled the trees around them as each one of them transformed before her eyes from man to beast. Harry shook himself, a great black bear now. Esterbrook had turned to a bear with ruddy ginger fur, and Fat Tom was, naturally, now a gigantic brown grizzly. The bears bumped at each other, grunting delightedly, and then each picked up a cloth sack in his great jaws and carried on, trudging deeper into the jungle behind their alpha captain.

It was so easy to forget, Cressida thought, that none of them were just men. That none of the
people
around her now were just people. That they carried inside them an animal as well. She watched Kelly’s back and thought of their encounter the night before. And she thought of Reza, of his lips on hers, and then of the tiger in the ship’s brig, baring great fangs at her in a hiss. These men that she was falling in love with, they were so much more than simply men. They were these wild things, and here she’d been trying to understand them, trying even to tame them. And she realized she’d never had a hope of having either one of them. Nothing so wild could be constrained, even by love.

And what tiger or bear could love her? She was
just
a woman, a human woman, with no other half to meet and marry his own, either of them. She had no beast within her, no animal to satisfy the animals roaring in their hearts. She’d lost before she’d even realized she wanted to fight for them.

So she followed the bears into the jungle, towards the mountain peak, and tried to put aside her heart and her desire, choosing instead to lay the lot of her life on this treasure instead, and what fortune it might bring her.

Stripes and Claws

(Alphas of Black Fortune: Part 3)

By Scarlett Rhone

The jungle, Cressida realized quickly, was a living green labyrinth. The map that Reza had given to James Kelly was not in a language any of them spoke but, as he’d said, there were unmistakable landmarks. They came upon the first of them a few hours into their hike, but it was hard to be certain because the jungle canopy obscured the sun and its telling turn across the sky. The landmark was a tall, gnarled tree with a trunk as wide as two men, whose exposed roots formed a kind of sculpture. The longer one stood and stared at it, the more the tangled limbs took shape and became the image of a woman being dragged screaming into the ground. One thick root in particular had a gradient of color from green to brown that looked, Cressida thought, particularly like a gaping mouth. Reza had marked these landmarks on the map in English, and the tree was called the Wailing Mother.

From the Mother, they were meant to go east to a rock bridge built between two high cliffs, which Reza had marked as the Stone Leap. That did not sit well with Cressida at all. Any kind of a bridge that one described as a
leap
could not be good. North from the bridge, they would find a small river, the island’s only source of fresh water aside from rain. It was the same river that spilled into the waterfall by the tribe’s village, and Reza had said that it snaked all around the island. The tribe called it simply the Way, and Reza said that they could follow it to the top of the mountain.

It all seemed simple enough, but every time Cressida was tempted to think that it would be an easy journey, she realized she was walking between three giant bears, and behind one devious pirate captain, and that
simple
did not exist anymore. Or perhaps it never had, and she had been blinded to the true nature of the world, ignorant of its strangest corners, and safe. With an awareness now of creatures like these skin-shifters, and the promise of other kinds of magic, she found she could not construct a reality wherein she was actually
safe
. But there was a still a hope in her heart that she could be free, and it was that hope that motivated her now.

At the base of the Wailing Mother, they decided to rest. Harry, Esterbrook and Fat Tom lumbered a ways away from the tree in their bear skins, forming a perimeter, while Cort and Kelly and Cressida settled on the grass near the tree. Cort fished some bread and fruit from the sack he carried, divvying it up between the three of them. At the next landmark, they would take watch while the three bears had their rest.

Cressida sat herself at an even distance between the other two pirates, careful to keep her back to the Wailing Mother. She knew that Kelly had said they needed a human to acquire the treasure, but that did not make her trust them. Perhaps more to the point, however, she did not want to find herself close to, or alone with, James Kelly. She didn’t want to talk about the night before, how she’d come to him in desperation and sadness. She didn’t want to talk about how she’d used him. She’d been weak, and she knew he didn’t love her. Not the way that Reza did. But, of course, Reza was…not an option any longer.

Kelly did not press himself upon her or try to get closer, but she did occasionally catch him looking at her for long moments. He said nothing, not in front of his crew, about their encounter the night before. And if the other pirates had awoken and realized what was happening, they said nothing about it either. There were more pressing matters, thankfully, and all attending seemed focused on them.

And yet…

Cressida
tried
, but her thoughts betrayed her over and over again. One minute she was reliving the feel of Kelly gripping her hips as she rode atop him; the next it was Reza’s hot breath on her throat as his fingers plundered her. These memories assaulted her again and again on their journey, as persistent as the bugs that often swarmed in the jungle air above their heads. Sometimes, as she remembered a particularly powerful thrust or climax, she caught Kelly looking at her with interest sparkling through his dark eyes, and wondered if he
knew
somehow. But he never said a word. Though she knew that Reza was now forever beyond her reach, she still believed that these two men were going to rip her heart in half somehow if she could not find a way to protect it.

Cort got up from his seat and, after muttering to Kelly a moment, left to bring food to the bears on guard, leaving Cressida and Kelly alone by the Wailing Mother. There was a long moment of silence as Cressida pulled pieces of the bread apart to nibble on. Kelly took a long swallow from the wineskin, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I’m sorry we had to leave your tiger behind,” he said eventually.

“He isn’t mine,” she replied, shrugging. “And no, you aren’t.”

“I’m sorry for anything that causes you pain, Cress. But I’m not sorry you came to me last night instead of him.”

She felt her cheeks flush with warmth and rolled her eyes. “I was nervous about the journey and you were a distraction, Kelly, nothing more.”

“I don’t think that’s all it was,” he said in a low tone.

“Think whatever you like,” she snapped. “That’s all it was.”

She was staring at the ground between her boots, and then she heard him move. Suddenly he was sinking down beside her, and before she could scoot away, he’d caught her arm in a tight grip, his face close to hers. She found she couldn’t look away from his eyes—or perhaps she didn’t want to. Her heart beat fast in her ears. She felt her color rising.

“When we have the treasure and we leave this place,” he said, his voice soft and velvety, “that doesn’t have to be all.”

“I’ll not be your galley wench,” she hissed through gritted teeth.

“Not like that,” Kelly insisted. His grip on her arm loosened, and she told herself to pull away from him completely but didn’t move fast enough before he’d gotten his arm fully around her waist and hauled her close against him. His fingers curved over her hip. “I would have you be my mate, Cressida. The captain of my heart and its sole possessor. Always.”

Her mouth fell slightly open with surprise. But as she gazed into the deep brown depths of his eyes, she could not find a flicker of deceit or any hint of manipulation. Just a fierce desire for her, which she felt swelling inside her for him as well.

But was desire love?

What about Reza? She’d sworn she would let him go, but was that truly possible?

Before she could form words of acceptance or denial, Kelly kissed her. It was a searing kiss, passion flaring, and as his hand lifted to cradle her cheek against his palm, her mouth answered his and her mind reeled. As her lips parted against his and their tongues met, his arm around her tightened and he lifted her out of her seat, spilling her instead to the grass beneath him. Her hands found their way onto the back of his neck, tightening a little, and she heard a noise escape his throat, that same desirous growl as always, but something more desperate to it now.

He tugged the collar of her chemise down to expose her shoulder, then the swell of one breast, and kissed from her lips to her jaw, then to her throat, ever downwards. She bit down on a soft moan and he settled himself between her legs, his hips rocking against hers, and even through her trousers she felt his erection press against her, sparking a twinge of pleasure between her thighs. He kissed her collarbone, the top of her breast, and took the edge of her chemise between his teeth, dragging it lower until he could lay his mouth upon the stiffened peak of one nipple, sucking urgently.

She arched her back, gasping. “I haven’t said yes, Kelly.”

He sucked harder, and it drove her nearly to another moan, but she firmed her grip on his hair and yanked his head up til their eyes met. They were both breathless, flushed. The determination she saw in his expression made her knees quiver slightly on either side of him.

“You don’t have to say yes to being my mate right now,” he managed at last to say. “But I want you right now, Cress, right here. And no denying it, you want me too.”

“We haven’t time,” she insisted. “The others…”

“We have time.”

He gripped her by the hips and rolled her over onto her belly on the grass, hooking his fingers into her trousers to yank them down, exposing her bare ass to the jungle. She thought to protest that Cort could return at any moment, but to her surprise that knowledge only made her want it more.

“Quickly,” she begged, fingers curling into the grass. She pushed down with her knees, lifting her backside as she heard him unlace the front of his trousers and shove them down on his hips. She couldn’t have said if she was begging him to finish quickly or to just hurry up and get inside her. Probably a little of both.

He took the direction either way, and she felt his hands sliding up her back as he positioned himself at her entrance and then hastily buried himself inside her. She had to press her face to the grass not to groan, the feel of him filling her thusly delicious and hot. There wasn’t any time for teasing or toying with each other. As soon as he was inside her, he began thrusting quickly. The sounds of the jungle around them faded away until all she could hear was his pleasured grunts behind her, and her own breathy panting as it stirred the grass, the slap of their bodies meeting, and the creak of her leather trousers stretching against her widened thighs. She clenched her eyes shut as he withdrew and drove into her again and again, his pace quickening, and her climax began to mount, tingling first from her sex and building up through her belly, forming in her throat, his name on her lips.

Another thrust. Another. His hips bucked rapidly into her, his fingers holding her tight as his cock slid in and out of her, and eventually she couldn’t stop herself from crying out in ecstasy.

“Kelly,” she gasped. “Oh god…”

She shoved up onto her hands and knees as she came, pressing back against him, taking him as deep inside of her as she could, and he reared up to meet her, hands landing on her shoulders as she sat back. He managed another few thrusts before his arms came around her, catching her as he climaxed as well, and they toppled, shuddering and entwined, to the ground.

He trembled, lifting his head to kiss at her throat, her jaw, and she lay breathless against him, heart pounding as the languor of the moment blanketed her. He remained inside her a little longer, and she felt her sex throbbing around him, but eventually he pulled himself from her and started tugging her trousers back up to her hips.

“I told you we had time,” he murmured, laughter riddling his voice.

She smiled in spite of herself, and tried simply to enjoy the moment, instead of wondering after the greater repercussions of it.