Alphas of Black Fortune Complete Series (22 page)

Reza entered Sajja’s hut with Kamala, and thought of the last time he’d been here. When Sajja had forced his hand to Prija for safe passage for Cressida and Kelly. It had been a week, maybe just a little more, but still it felt like forever ago.

Sajja brought them to the same low table and sat them all down on straw mats as one of the warriors brought in food and drink to bind them together in peace. As Reza settled, he caught sight of movement in one of the other rooms’ doorways, and there was Chaiya. His face was a ruin of bruises and scrapes, his one arm in a sling, and a thick poultice covered the wound on his throat. Reza’s own wounds were still quite visible. He nodded to Chaiya and Chaiya nodded back, but to Reza’s surprise, Kamala got to her feet and went to her husband, pulling him into another room while whispering furtively to him.

Perhaps he had misunderstood his sister altogether. He struggled with that thought, but had only ever wanted her to happy. In this way, maybe Cressida’s idea truly was aligned with better fortune. Perhaps this island could yet be home to him, to them all.

“You want to
share
the island,” Sajja said, glaring at Cressida once she’d explained her plan. “With
bears
.”

“Are you struggling more with the fact they are bears, or that they are outsiders?” Cressida asked.

Reza saw the chieftain’s glare turn swiftly into a scowl. “You may have been deemed worthy by the island, but they have not.”

“They are my people now,” Cressida told him. “And their alpha is my mate.” She arched an eyebrow at him. “And so is yours.”

Sajja looked right at Reza, who held his gaze. He’d won the blood rite. If
Sajja
wanted to challenge them, that was his decision, but no one could argue that Reza was
not
every bit the alpha of this tribe that Sajja denied. Had Reza’s father lived, Saija would never have been chieftain, and it would have been Reza leading the tribe. They both knew it. It had fueled Saija’s treatment of him ever since his return to the island. After a momentary battle of wills, Sajja looked away and back to Cressida.

“You will stay on the mountain,” he told her. “And you will never enter this village uninvited. From here to the beach is ours. There is food and hunting enough if the borders are maintained.”

She nodded. “Fine. And you will stay off the mountain unless we say otherwise.”

“And,” Sajja said, looking at Kelly this time, “one of his seconds will wed Prija, as is only proper.”

Reza looked at Cressida as if to say
told you
, but the expression fell right off his face when he saw the look of fury that lit into her eyes.

“No,” she told the chieftain, her voice firm and expression unyielding. “If you wish to
introduce
your daughter to any of Kelly’s men, that will be happily arranged. We will have bloody tea parties. But I refuse to agree to the marriage of any two people who haven’t met yet. That’s the last I’ll say on the matter.”

Sajja stared at Cressida, and Reza waited for the explosion, but none ever came. Instead, Sajja sat back a little from the table, and looked her over as if seeing her for the very first time.

“The previous Keeper would not accept this offer either,” he said finally, smiling a little.

“Another test.” Cressida shook her head.

“Not exactly. I wanted to know if your mind was like hers. I see that it is. I have never been to a
tea party
but perhaps you will eventually invite me to one, Keeper.”

It was Reza’s turn to look dumbfounded, as Cressida laughed. He wiped a hand over his face, trying to take it all in, and when Kelly shot him a curious expression because he didn’t understand the language, Reza just waved the question off. He had no idea how to explain it all anyway. It was too preposterous, even hilarious, and Reza had no words for what he was feeling. That Cressida had somehow just gained Sajja’s respect in a matter of moments, where for most it took a lifetime. Perhaps that too was the jewel’s power, in some way. Understanding, acceptance, the language of leadership. Reza could not have begun to say, but incredibly, this…seemed like it could work.

He leaned a little forward. “We would ask that Prija go to the sanctuary, though, chieftain. With a handful of Kelly’s men to help prepare the space for when we return with the den. We will be gone…many months.”

“Perhaps more,” Cressida agreed. “We’ve no way of knowing the wind, and it is a long journey.”

Sajja nodded. “This I will grant you, though I would have her brother there to protect her.” He nodded to Reza. “And your sister. If she means to stay with the tribe.”

“I believe she does,” Reza muttered, looking down. As she had not returned from the other room with Chaiya, he suspected Kamala had no intention of forsaking her people as Reza had. But they were different. He’d made his choices and she would make hers, and he would do his best not to resent her for that. He had, after all, been taken away from her and left her alone for a long time.

Sajja smiled a little. “Everything changes. I have learned that at last. If you bring this den of bears to our island, we will share it under the terms that we have discussed. You will have your sanctuary.”

“Thank you, great Sajja,” Cressida said, and smiled back at him.

They stayed another hour, drinking hot tea with the chieftain, and Reza did his best to listen and not feel completely baffled by all of it. He knew, even if Sajja wasn’t saying so to Cressida, that the tigers would not
welcome
the bears. But if Sajja thought there could be peace, he had no intention of starting a fight before that peace had even been truly settled upon. Reza suspected that Sajja simply wasn’t willing to flat-out deny the Keeper of the Jewel, because the rest of the tribe would find that equally distasteful. It would be a long, hard road, though, to true coexistence. But at least Sajja seemed willing to let the bears onto the island, where they would find enough rope to hang themselves with, or not. When they left the village, a sense of satisfaction settled over them all. Except now it was time to speak to Kelly’s bears, and prepare for the long journey ahead.

Kelly was up for most of the night, on the top deck with the den, bringing them around to the idea. At first, nearly all of them refused even the notion of bringing their families back to this island. All of them except Fat Tom, who had a clear and compassionate head on his shoulders, if a very large one, and who listened to Kelly closely when he explained it the first time. With his voice, and eventually with Cort’s, Kelly was able to convince the rest of them that the island was the best possible place. Free of people who would make them hide their true natures. Rife with natural resources and an abundance of green like the forests of their homeland. Lacking much of the comforts of the modern world, yes, but none of its hate and fear and distrust of things magical or mystical, as they innately were.

Moreover, it was safe. It was remote. No one would bother them here; no one would come to take the island away. If they could share it peaceably with the tigers, no man would dare try to claim it. A few ships to guard the waters, and they would have a veritable fortress of a home in which their people could thrive and live for generations. It could be a protected paradise, and in the end none of his beleaguered, weary crew could deny that. All they wanted was home and family. And Kelly could finally, finally give it to them. But it took a long time for them to understand it, to accept that it should come in a shape none of them could have predicted. When it was over, the lads were excited enough to take to their cups and what ale they still had on board in celebration, but Kelly was exhausted. He took himself below deck, intent on the barracks and a swinging bunk to sleep in.

Cressida was waiting for him, however, in the narrow corridor below. He smiled through his exhaustion when he saw her, a welcome vision where she slouched against the wall just outside the door to the barracks. When she saw him, she offered him a sly smile.

“I thought you’d be with Reza,” he admitted as he stopped in front of her.

“Why?” she asked.

And Kelly felt a bit stupid, mostly because of the way she was smiling at him. “Because…you were.”

“Yes, I was,” she laughed quietly. “But he needed some time to himself. And…I’m with you too.”

“I know that,” Kelly chuckled. “It’s just stranger in practice than it was in theory. I’m adjusting.”

“Me too,” Cressida said softly, and then she reached forward and hooked her fingers onto his sword belt, pulling him close.

He went with a sigh, but it was a happy one. His hands drifted down, coasting over her thighs in his borrowed trousers, and then up to her hips as she leaned back against the wall, and he pressed himself against her, bowing his head til his nose brushed her cheek.

“Right here in the corridor?” he asked softly, smiling into her skin.

“The boys are up top,” she said, hushed, breath coming a little quick already. “How long will they be drinking?”

Kelly’s smile sharpened. “Awhile yet.”

The rock of the sea beneath the ship brought them more against each other, and then eased them apart again, and Kelly felt Cressida’s hands leave his belt and instead get to work between them, unbuckling the belt altogether, and her own, until their swords hit the floor, clanking and clamoring. He kissed her cheek, her lips, her jaw, then lower, her throat, the mark, the curve of her shoulder, tasting the sea air on her skin as she kicked off her boots and shoved down her trousers.

He was hard before she’d even really touched him, desire couched in his heart and body, waiting for release ever since he’d felt her and Reza that morning. This was the delicate give-and-take of sharing the mark. Patience. Desire without jealousy. Unfulfilled passion without wrath. She tugged the laces of his trousers open and slipped a hand down to grasp him, and his hips jerked. He struggled not to thrust right into her hand, instead nipping at her ear as she laughed and stroked him. He got his hands beneath her shirt, cupping her breasts, and her laughter turned into a soft, pleasured moan as he brought his thumbs to her nipples, squeezing gently. The rhythmic side to side of the ship only fed their momentum, and as her flesh puckered and rose beneath his hands, his cock started to ache for her under her ministrations. He got one hand between her thighs and just the brush of his fingertips over her sex sent her to trembling. When his fingers came away damp, he knew there would be no more delay.

“Now, Kelly,” she gasped, leaning up to get an arm about his neck. He boosted her, and she wrapped her legs around his waist as he pressed her back against the wall, one hand still holding the length of him so she could guide him to her entrance.

He flattened a hand against the wall beside her, catching her mouth in a deep, heated kiss as he thrust himself inside her. It was too hasty, perhaps, and something desperate in it, but he loved her and wanted her too much to slow himself. Once he had her pinned to the wall, he let go of the near painful longing he’d been carrying in his loins since that morning, and pounded into her. She held on to him, her hair spilling back against the wall, and gripped at his shirt as he plunged deep inside her again and again, his pace steady and unrelenting. The slide of her wet sex around his cock drove him nearly mad with lust, and as it had been in the jungle between them, so it was now. No games or teasing at all, just an animal need that had to be sated. But one that came hand in hand with incredible love. He was never going to need or desire another woman, ever again. But in that moment, he had to have her, and he had to fuck her silly.

The gasps and cries and delicious little mewling noises she was making between him and the wall, however, indicated to Kelly that she did not mind at all about the ferocity of this tryst. On the contrary, she grabbed a handful of his hair and braced her back against the wall, shoving her hips to his to bring him even deeper inside her. He groaned, slamming her more roughly back, but that only inspired her to do it again. And again. He gripped her thighs, gasping against her shoulder as she began to grind her hips to his. With his head bowed to her in ecstasy, he came inside her, bucking once, and she let out a delighted cry of triumph and began to tremble in his arms.

And Kelly knew that he had been a fool ever to think that perhaps Cressida Avery would not have been enough to satisfy him. Though she was human, she was so much alive, and so much stronger than any other woman, human or shifter, that he had ever known. He didn’t regret or resent sharing her with Reza, but he knew he should have taken her for his own long ago, and that he’d only wasted time by resisting his own heart.

“You are the fire of my heart,” he told her softly as he lowered her feet to the floor and stole another kiss from her lips.

She smiled, exhausted from their efforts, and pulled up her trousers, brilliant blue eyes sparkling up at him. “I love you too.”

“I want to take you to my bed,” he told her.

Her smile dimmed a little, and she shook her head. “We haven’t figured out how that’s going to work, have we?”

He looked down, righting himself and his trousers and fetching up their rapiers from the floor. He handed hers over. “No, we haven’t.”

“We will,” she said.

“Cress, I just want to sleep with you in my arms tonight. Why is that more complicated than what we just did in this hallway?” He lifted his eyes, meeting hers.

“It isn’t,” she said softly. “It shouldn’t be. You’re right. I’ll sleep in the bed with you tonight, and then tomorrow night you’ll stay in the barracks, and Reza will stay in the bed with me.”

Kelly blinked. “My bed? In my bed?”

Cressida arched an eyebrow at him. “There’s only one bed on the ship, Kelly.”

Kelly let out a snort, buckling his belt as she buckled hers, and shook his head. “Fine. If…fine. I…hate that.”

She smiled and leaned up, kissing his cheek. “But you love me.”

“Yes. Tart.”

“Tart!” She laughed.

“My favorite tart. Who is going to clean the sheets on my bed every time she defiles them with her other mate.” He smirked. She blushed.

And then she took his hand to pull him down the corridor towards the stairs that led to the captain’s quarters. “Fine. I hate
that
. But fine.”

Kelly ceased negotiations at that point, simply pleased to get to spend the night with her in his bed—however plain it was that the bed was no longer actually
his
.