Alphas of Black Fortune Complete Series (9 page)

Cressida didn’t like any of this one bit. Most of all, she disliked that she couldn’t understand what they were saying, and felt at a profound disadvantage. Even in a life lived mostly among men, she had never felt so very
different
as she did walking through this village. These people were made in so many different, vibrant colors. Browns and golds and coppertones, their hair sometimes dark like Reza’s and sometimes orange or a tawny mix. None of the men wore shirts, and she noticed none of the women really did either. More than once, as they followed Chaiya from the big hut to another smaller one, she had to elbow one of the pirates before he got caught ogling too long.

Though she herself was hard pressed not to ogle. The men were all sapling lean and hard with muscle, the women all rounded and curving flesh, the picture of fertility. And there were more people here than she had imagined. The village was very large and wholly sustained by the island itself. A secret Eden in the middle of the sea, full of gorgeous people and thriving with life. It wasn’t any wonder Reza had been so fiercely protective of it. Or that he’d so longed to return to it.

They gave them each a meal in a large, thick leaf, of rice and fruit and fish. Cressida ate it hurriedly, starving once she’d tasted food that was not salted or brined or six months old. They ate with their hands and licked the lingering flavors from their fingertips when they were done. Then they waited, Chaiya having left them, and Kelly leaned over to whisper in her ear.

“Even here, there are politics.”

She nodded, eyes low. “I see that too.”

“Do you think he will betray us?”

She looked up sharply into his face. “No.”

“He has been gone from this place a long time, Cress.”

“He won’t betray us. We made a deal.”

“
You
made a deal, I think.” He arched an eyebrow. “Didn’t you?”

“What do you want from me?” she asked him, exasperated. “One minute you want me, the next you want me to go to
him
. I made a deal with him, yes, and I gave myself to him so that he would help
you
.”

“But you wanted to give yourself to him,” Kelly fired back. “Admit it. Helping me had nothing to do with it in the end.”

“You are such a blind fool,” Cressida snapped. She got up from her seat and moved to the other side of the room, sitting back down away from him. The other pirates watched this, and Cressida could feel the weight of their attention upon her. She flushed, angry and embarrassed and uncertain. She thought she’d made the choice her heart wanted. She thought she’d made the choice her heart could live with. But she had not thought about whether or not it would be the choice that
Reza’s
heart could live with, and that left her feeling sick inside.

She resolved to get the jewel, to get her ship, and to get back to her senses and forget all of this nonsense. She had never before needed a man, any man, to fulfill her desires and affirm her happiness. She refused to believe that she needed one now. Either one. Not Kelly’s warmth and strength, not Reza’s fierce passion. Wanting them was not needing them, and she refused to find herself being passed back and forth between these men, the volleying prize they negotiated for while, really, they just wanted their own people. Reza wanted his island and Kelly wanted his den. She did not truly
fit
with either of them.

After some time, a shadow moved at the entrance to the hut, and Reza ducked inside. Kelly started to get to his feet, but Reza shook his head and sank down to a seat instead, nearer to Cressida but facing the
Oso Armonia
’s captain.

“They will not kill you,” he said, looking between them. “But they will not help you either.”

Kelly snorted. “Great.”

Reza frowned. “I had to work just for that,” he said curtly. “And I got the chieftain to agree to give you some supplies, and a map. But no guide. There are a few more details I can offer, but you will have to accomplish this on your own.”

“As ever,” Kelly muttered.

“You’re not coming with us,” Cressida realized, looking at Reza.

He shook his head and wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Politics,” Kelly murmured.

“Reza, why not?” she pressed, ignoring the pirate.

Reza shifted his shoulders, uncomfortably, she thought, and she knew that whatever he said, and whatever he’d done just to get them safe passage through the village, it was going to hurt her. And she could do nothing to stop it. Her resolve of leaving him behind fled completely.

“Most of my family died,” he said quietly. “The last time people like you came to the island. They do not blame me, but I am my father’s only son, and I have been gone. My sister has married Chaiya, who you met, the chieftain’s son. And I have agreed to wed his daughter, to unite our bloodlines in strength.”

Cressida couldn’t breathe for a moment. To have choice so swiftly taken away was dizzying. She stared at Reza, unable to look away. He’d made her choose — he’d
let
her choose him, and now he was discarding her. It was supposed to be the other way around.

She got to her feet, mind a fog of anger and heartache, and though she felt Reza’s hand on her arm, she wrenched away. And though she perceived that Kelly was getting to his feet, she just waved him off, more or less staggering through the seated pirates to escape the hut. It was too confined. It felt too small. She couldn’t breathe and she needed to be free of it.

Outside the hut, the sun was just beginning to set beyond the jungle canopy, a blaze of scarlet and orange and gold against the mountain’s peak. Villagers stopped to stare at her, a few muttering to each other, but she just turned and walked away from them, away from the village fires, towards the darkening shadows of the jungle itself. A few people called out to her but she didn’t understand what they were saying, and moreover she didn’t care.

She stumbled into the jungle, shoving past branches and leaves, tripping over fat tree roots and rocks, and kept the village and the setting sun at her back. She didn’t stop until she could no longer smell the cooking fires or hear the rush of the waterfall. She didn’t stop until the torches being lit on the camp’s perimeter were out of sight, and all that surrounded her were lengthening shadows and rustling vegetation. Then she sat, right where she was, and put her back to the sturdy trunk of a tree she had no name for, and burst into tears.

Cressida did not cry often, and now it poured out of her, as if a dam inside her heart had crumbled, releasing a tidal wave of anguish, gasping sobs and helpless watery moans. She put her face in her hands and buckled to the uncertainty, the loneliness, and the heartbreak. She cursed the day she’d seen the merchant clipper sailing on the horizon. She cursed herself for bringing Reza aboard the
Black Fortune
instead of leaving him to rot with the rest of the clipper’s mysterious crew. She cursed James Kelly for letting her dally with him and never telling her he loved her. She cursed her heart for being stupid and open. At last, she had lost her balance and fallen. And she didn’t have the strength to get back up.

She didn’t know how long she cried. Eventually, she hugged her legs to her chest and pressed her cheek to her knee, trying to remember how to breathe, trying to rebuild the dam inside her. When at last she opened her eyes, however, Reza was crouched across from her, a look of absolute shame on his face. She wanted to look away but couldn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “You are the flower of my heart.”

She thought that should have made her cry some more, but found her eyes had cried all the tears they could. “I chose you,” she murmured miserably.

“No.” He reached out, touched just a single strand of her hair with a fingertip. “You wanted to choose me, perhaps. You tried to. I love you. I take this wife for my people, and to assure that you have every chance at getting the jewel, but I do not love her.”

She wiped at her face and lifted her head. “I don’t even want the jewel anymore.”

He smiled, sadness in the curve of his mouth. “Yes, you do. You want your ship.”

“I want
you
,” she insisted. “I have, since the moment I laid eyes on you.”

“And I have wanted you,” he assured her. “But it is not to be. This is my place, where I belong. You belong…” He gestured to the sky, to the sea beyond the jungle, she thought.

“Nowhere,” she finished for him. “I belong nowhere.”

He sighed. “You make this harder than it has to be.”

“No, I think it needs to be
very
hard,” she snapped. “I think it needs to be the hardest thing you’ve ever done.”

“It
is
,” he said, rising to his feet, frowning. “How can you not see that?”

“Fine.” She struggled up to her feet as well. “Marry the chieftain’s daughter, whoever.” Then she stepped into him, her hands on his chest, and looked into his eyes. “And then leave with me when we get the jewel.”

She watched the conflict twist about in his eyes, his features contorted, and she knew that she had no right to make this demand of him. Before he could say no, she leaned up and took his face in her hands, and kissed him. Their lips crashed together and she felt him wrap his arms about her, felt the sizzle of desire spark between them as it always did. He pressed her back against the tree, mouth warm and wanting against hers, and she made a sound that she knew was halfway between a sob and a moan.

The kiss broke and he buried his face in her throat, breathing hard, and she blinked a fresh round of tears from her eyes and just held onto him, their hearts pounding in unison. This could not be the end of it. But she could tell he thought it had to be. He kissed her throat, the curve of her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured against her skin. “You freed me. My heart will always be yours, Cressida, but the rest of me cannot be.”

With a furious noise, she tried to push him away, but his arms were too strong for her to break free.

“It’s not safe for you out here,” he said. “Let me take you back to the village.”

“I hate you,” she gasped. “I hate you, let go of me!”

“Cressida, please,” he whispered.

But his arms loosened and she shoved away from him, stumbling against the tree and then wiping her face, breathless with anger and frustration and desire. She didn’t run from him, though, wasn’t so stupid as to go barreling deeper into the jungle where she would surely get lost and eaten by some horrible beast. She just nodded, wrapping her arms about herself.

“Go on,” she muttered. “Lead the way.”

He looked down and walked ahead of her, and did not look at her again or reach to touch her. He simply took her back to the village and deposited her in one of the huts they’d set aside for their strange visitors, a set of interconnected rooms. Cressida’s was singular; as she was a woman, she would not share her space with the men. Reza left her alone there, and she sat in the gathering darkness, on the floor of the little room, and put her face in her hands again.

It destroyed him to say no to her. Reza wanted desperately to kneel before her and promise that he would go with her, but he couldn’t. He had to think of Kamala now, and what was left of his family’s legacy. He had to stay with his people, and she could not stay with him. They both knew that. She might have been content with him for a year or two, but eventually her heart would wander and her soul would seek the tides, no matter how much she might want him. No matter how much she might love him.

It was with heavy heart and throbbing regret that he left her in the hut, but Sajja had been quite clear. He could see them on their way, but his priority now was to the tribe, to rejoining them completely, and to preparing for his wedding to Prija. He only had vague memories of the girl; she’d been but a child when he’d left the island, preoccupied with giggling and flowers and creating jewelry, singing and running through the jungle chasing butterflies. Reza had already been a man grown, too self-absorbed and grown-up feeling for such silliness. He hardly remembered what she looked like, so much more interested in besting her brother with spear and bow than he had been in choosing a wife. That would have been his father’s purview anyway, and back then he’d had no care for it.

Now that his heart was a raw wound in his chest, he had even less interest in wedding anyone. Anyone but Cressida. But Sajja had been clear enough that he would have her and the pirates put to the spear if Reza did not comply. This was, Reza knew, Sajja’s way of establishing his power as chieftain. The son of Ruang Sak would be seen to do as he was told immediately upon his return, and then Sajja’s rule was solidified for good. Of all the things Reza had thought about when he’d thought of coming home, being forced into a political marriage on the spot had never once entered his mind.

But there was Kamala, at least, a gentle consolation. He left Cressida’s hut and traveled across the village, memorizing its layout and the differences now, and passed by the waterfall on his way to his sister’s hut. Though she shared it with Chaiya, of course, he would be back with his father, planning the wedding. Sajja said he wanted it to happen in two days, at sunset. The celerity of it was not unexpected, but Reza felt himself reeling with all the changes. He needed to hug his baby sister and remember what family felt like.

He knew the hut by the markings above the door. Chaiya’s name interwoven with Kamala’s, inscribed there to protect them and to welcome their guests.

“Kamala?” he called as he ducked inside.

“Reza!” She flew to him. She must have heard that he had returned, and it was so like her to have just been standing in the middle of her hut, waiting for him to come to her. She all but tackled him in a hug and he laughed, something in his heart soothed, and got his arms around her to hug her tight.

“Hello, salamander,” he murmured into her hair.

“I can’t believe you’re back!” she cried, squeezing him. “I can’t believe it! This is so wonderful! I’ve missed you!”

“And I you.”

He thought he’d have been content to stand there and hug her for hours, and he was relieved to find that marriage and the death of their parents had not changed her bubbly personality. Kamala was built of smiles and sunlight, ever the brighter of his parents’ children. He had never resented her ability to find happiness in the strangest places, only envied it. He let go of her and took her shoulders, easing her back a step so he could look at her.

Wide brown eyes, ringed with gold, inquisitive and shining. The same huge smile and lovely little face. He smiled, satisfied. “You’re beautiful.”

“And you smell like a bog,” she laughed. “You need a bath.”

He nodded. “I definitely do.”

“Hello, Reza.” He turned, having not even realized there was someone else in the hut, and a breath left his chest at the sight of her. Certainly not. This couldn’t be…

“Prija?”

She smiled. She was stunning. Tall for a woman, among his people. Full-figured and dressed in a light sarong of vivid blue, one heavy breast exposed as was their custom, along with a wealth of richly tan skin. Her orange hair was woven back from her face in a braid, decorated with flowers and little baubles, bits of seashell from the shore. Wide-set green eyes sparkled at him, and she smiled with pouty pink lips. A scraggly little girl no longer. Not at all.

But nor was she Cressida, and Reza found his mind comparing the two, unbidden. His eyes wandered over her figure, from a lush thigh exposed by the sarong to a curving hip, the delicate peak of a dark nipple and the valley between her breasts, draped with a chain of dried flowers. He tried to imagine Cressida wearing the adornments of his people and couldn’t make the image work in his mind, though of course instead he simply thought of her naked underneath him, and desire caught him up unawares. He cleared his throat and looked away from Prija, back to the suddenly wry expression on his sister’s face.

“I’m so glad you’re home,” Kamala told him.

“So am I,” he heard Prija say, but he dared not look at her again.

It should not have been that he was unable to let himself look upon his future wife with want in his eyes. But it still felt like a betrayal, that his lust quickened so immediately for her. Or was it lust brought on by his thoughts of Cressida instead? The confusion was worse than the wanting itself.

“I need to lie down,” he told Kamala. “Do you have a pallet for me, salamander?”

“Yes, in the back,” she told him, nodding. He caught her glancing at Prija, but then she just took his arm and led him into another room.

He bedded down, listening to the women move about, watching their shadows flicker as the torches were lit and night settled thickly across the village. He heard them whispering to each other but could not make out the words, and settled for simply enjoying the lilt and song of his own language, so long removed from his ears. When exhaustion finally overtook him, he passed into dreams of pale hair and fiery blue eyes, though they twisted and turned, dancing back and forth, and sometimes he held an orange-haired woman in his arms, and sometimes he was sinking his teeth into the flesh of a white neck. His sleep was fitful, but deep.