Dark Solstice (13 page)

She was barely conscious when he moved off of her, dropping onto his back beside her and dropping an arm across his eyes. She shivered at the abrupt loss of his heat as cool air wafted over her.

He dropped his arm, turned his head to study her for a moment and finally rolled onto his side, dragging her limp form against his and curling his arms around her to hold her there. Sighing with pleasure, she snuggled closer to enjoy his warmth.

His hand coasted along her back and then stopped as if he suddenly realized what he was doing. “Remind me to steal another love apple for you, munch,” he murmured after a while, wry amusement threading his voice.

Drifting toward sleep, the comment roused her, sent a wave of confusing emotions through her. She gave in to the impulse that rose uppermost in her mind. “Promise you won’t take unnecessary risks for me, John. I don’t want anything to happen to you because of me.”

Chapter Eleven

“I can guarantee you that I cherish my hide a hell of a fucking lot more than you do,” Raathe said coldly. “I never do anything but please myself, munch.”

The transformation in him was jarring enough to rouse Rhea fully from the pleasurable lethargy that had had her drifting toward sleep. She stiffened as he did, pulling away to look at his face. He was staring at the ceiling stonily, anger in every line of his hard face and his stiff form. She looked away after a moment, tried to pull away. He ignored her attempt to put some distance between them, refusing to loosen his grip on her, tightening his hold instead.

“Be still,” he growled. “I like the pretense, munch.”

That stung more than his first comment. She desisted after a moment, though, knowing it was useless. She lay wakeful and distressed, wondering if he really believed it had all been an act on her part, wondering if that was what it had been on his part.

It seemed likely. Why else would he suspect that she’d been feigning feelings she didn’t have unless he had been?

Not that she thought he’d deliberately misled her. He’d wanted sex and it had to have been obvious that she was reluctant. No doubt to his mind he’d done nothing more than coax a reaction out of her that she wouldn’t have willing given without the persuasion.

“Then I won’t worry,” she managed to say finally.

He released a hiss of irritation. “What do you want from me, munch? A declaration of undying love?”

Rhea felt her face heat. The question made her feel stupid and naïve because it held more than a grain of truth. Not that she expected love. She wasn’t certain he was even capable of it anymore, maybe once, but not now. Affection, though, or some caring for her as a person would’ve been welcome. She needed it to feel safe. Knowing he considered her a possession of some value to him wasn’t enough because she knew how quickly and easily that could change.

He enjoyed using her to assuage his needs, but how long would that novelty last? How long would it take him to get tired of her? When she could look forward to being traded off for a deck of cards to entertain himself with, a tube of toothpaste, or something else he felt like he needed more than her?

A reviving dose of anger squelched the mixture of hurt and fear after a moment. “Of course not,” she managed to say with credible ease. “The illusion is enough to help me pretend I’m enjoying having you bouncing up and down and sweating all over me.”

He stiffened at the counter insult. “Bitch,” he muttered after a moment without heat.

“Bastard,” she responded, snuggling again and resolutely closing her mind to the argument.

“Good,” he growled near her ear just as she was beginning to drift towards sleep. “As long as we’re on the same page.”

“We are,” she murmured. “I’m safe as long as you enjoy fucking me.”

“Rhea,” he growled warningly.

“That’s munch to you, jerk. Do you mind? I’m trying to sleep.”

“Are you
trying
to piss me off? Or is it just a knack you have?”

“I’m trying,” she muttered.

“It’s working.”

“Good!”

* * * *

Rhea hadn’t thought Raathe had it in him to make her mad enough to be stupid. Obviously, she’d been wrong, because she’d pushed him a lot further than she would have if she’d had any sense, she thought wryly.

He’d gone back to pretending she was a piece of furniture.

Good! she thought angrily. That was a sight better than allowing her to dupe herself with the illusion that he was beginning to see her as a person, might actually care if she lived or died beyond her usefulness to him.

After almost a week of his stony silence, though, Rhea had begun to wonder which was more stupid—continuing to push until she broke through the walls he’d built around himself, or letting him continue to shut her out. Either way, it seemed to her, she lost, so it became a question, not of what was the smart move, but what she could stand herself. The answer wasn’t hard to arrive at. She had needs beyond the physical. She felt as if her own soul would whither and die without even the modicum of companionship Raathe had allowed her before.

He woke her with one of his nightmares several nights later, the first he’d had that she knew of since she’d first been imprisoned with him. There was equal parts frustration, fury, and desolation in his expression as he struggled with his demons. Half afraid to wake him, Rhea still couldn’t resist the effort to try to soothe whatever it was that haunted him. She moved closer instead of away from him, trying to anchor him with her weight to stop his thrashing, stroking him soothingly until he jerked all over as if he’d fallen and stiffened and she knew he’d awakened.

He lay panting for breath for several moments and finally thrust her away, rolled out of the bunk and moved to the lavatory to splash water over his face. She tried not to feel rejected but with indifferent success.

She’d known he wouldn’t appreciate any attempt to offer comfort, she told herself. There was no sense in allowing it to hurt her when she knew how he was.

Knowing he would take the inside edge of the bunk when he returned, she moved to the outer edge, studying him in the dim shadows as he crossed to the bunk again and climbed over her as she’d expected. He slipped an arm around her, dragging her back against his length, which she hadn’t expected.

For a while, she lay stiffly within his embrace, struggling with the urge to ask him questions she knew he wouldn’t welcome or answer. Finally, when she couldn’t stand it anymore, she yielded to the urge.

“Who’s Amy?”

He didn’t answer at once. She might have thought he’d drifted off to sleep again except for the tension radiating from him. “My CP,” he responded finally, his voice harsh and unwelcoming.

The answer was staggering, sent Rhea’s thoughts into chaos. Raathe was the last man she would ever have suspected to have been mad enough about any woman to form a contractual partnership. In her mother’s day it had been pretty much the norm. Few people bothered with such a thing anymore, though, when it was far easier and less complicated to simply agree to cohabit. Even when they considered themselves in love, no one really wanted a legal binding that would tie them to another for a specific length of time when it could create all sorts of legal headaches if they discovered they simply couldn’t cohabit and get along, certainly not unless they planned to have a child together.

Which meant he must have.

She searched her memory, but it was useless. She’d already struggled for weeks for anything she’d heard about Raathe that might help her figure out who the mysterious Amy was and had come up empty. She knew, absolutely, though, that there had never been mention of a child and that meant there wasn’t one. The media would’ve been all over that.

“What happened?” she asked finally.

“She died.”

The answer only filled Rhea’s mind with more questions, but she tamped the urge to voice them, knowing the answer was something terrible. He relaxed when she didn’t prod him for more information. After a time, the hand laying limply beside her found its way to her breast. She shifted around to face him readily. He hadn’t wanted her to comfort him but he would accept sex as a distraction and she was more than willing to offer it, leaning close to caress the hard muscles of his upper chest with her lips and winding a path upward to throat. He stilled, lying passively beneath her caresses.

Not entirely passively, she mentally amended, though not particularly welcoming either. It was almost more as if he was waiting curiously to see what she would do.

She pressed her hands against his shoulders until he rolled onto his back and continued to explore him with her lips and hands, warmed at first by her discoveries and then feeling a burgeoning of desire. He might be a man flawed beyond redemption in some ways, but not physically. In that sense, he was beautiful, a heady perfection of manhood that couldn’t fail to thrill.

Thin ridges of scar tissue from countless battles gave evidence of a life of violence, and yet they didn’t detract from the sense of perfection in any way. She coasted her lips lightly over any she found just as she did the smooth flesh stretched over hard muscles, and the hair roughened skin along his male breasts and the center of his chest and belly. She’d been denuded of body hair herself—the fashion—though she wasn’t ordinarily much given to following the herd. It offended her sense of femininity, though, which made it unsurprising that she found him all the more masculinely exciting for the hair that roughened his body. It seemed the perfect compliment, nature’s balance.

He caught her wrist when she curled her fingers around his turgid shaft, exploring the length and thickness of it. She paused, lifting her head to study his shadowy features for a moment and finally leaned closer, opening her mouth over just the head of his cock and sucking at it experimentally. He let out a hiss that sounded more pained than pleasured, his grip tightening briefly before he seemed to force his hand to relax and release her.

She settled lower, testing the limits of her jaw and mouth with his flesh. It seemed bigger even than it had when he was inside her, maybe more of a challenge than she could handle, but she’d started and she was determined to finish. Forcing her jaw to relax, she took as much of him into her mouth as she could, stroking the flesh she couldn’t envelop with her hand and set a rhythm she hoped would bring him to release.

He shifted restlessly beneath her. His breath hitched in his chest and then he expelled it raggedly enough to encourage her. She discovered it was surprisingly arousing to her to give him pleasure, felt her own heat index rising proportionally to his. He caught her skull between his two palms, tightened his fingers and then eased his grip, over and over, mindlessly. Moisture gathered in her sex as she felt his growing excitement. She moved faster, sucked harder as her own exhilaration grew, became so wrapped up in her own enjoyment that she forgot her objective was to give him pleasure.

He stopped her abruptly. Dragging her around on the bunk and burrowing his face between her thighs, he caught her clit between his lips and sucked it. A hard jolt sizzled along her nerve endings, almost bringing her to climax right then. Gasping, she caught his cock and covered it with her mouth again, pulling on him greedily as she felt herself rising swiftly toward release.

It blindsided her, hit her so forcefully without warning that she groaned around his flesh. His cock bucked in her mouth when she did. He stiffened as she had, then began licking and sucking at her tender flesh almost frantically as he came. She echoed his response, feeding on him as hungrily as he did her, sucking and stroking him until his flesh went flaccid in her mouth.

Pleased with herself, she released him and lay back, panting for breath. Neither of them moved for some time. Finally, Raathe sat up and grasped her, dragging her around and fitting her comfortably against his chest.

* * * *

Rhea didn’t think she’d really expected a complete transformation in the way Raathe behaved toward her, but she also hadn’t expected to find him as coldly distant the following morning as he had been before. She was halfway through the consumption of the horrible mess fed to them each morning before it dawned on her that she’d intruded on a part of Raathe’s life that he obviously never shared—with anyone.

He’d appreciated the BJ she’d given him, but he hadn’t forgiven her for gouging at his wound by demanding to know what had caused it.

She was torn between irritation and guilt when she finally realized why he’d shut her out again. He didn’t want anyone touching his wound and he probably appreciated the fact that it was her less than he would’ve anyone else.

She was just his munch after all.

They didn’t return to the cell after they’d finished in the mess hall—
very
appropriately named, she thought in disgust, considering ‘mess’ was all they served. It was, she discovered, one of the free half days they were allowed roughly once a week—roughly because sometimes they were allowed and sometimes not, without any apparent rhyme or reason.

She hadn’t been outside the cell before, though. It was unnerving enough that the cell door was left open and everyone else’s, as well. She would’ve been much happier if Raathe had walked her to the cell even if he’d left her there. Instead, he paused when he reached the wide corridor where everyone was mingling and surveyed the men through narrowed eyes—something few could do as easily as he could since very few of the men matched him in height. After a few minutes, he grasped her upper arm and began moving purposefully through the throng of men.

She had no idea where they were going until he finally halted before two surprisingly wormy looking men that weren’t a lot taller than she was. Both men looked up at Raathe and turned white. “Keep an eye on my munch for me,” Raathe said coolly, releasing his grip on Rhea’s arm.

Rhea and both men gaped at him. The darker of the two licked his lips and dragged his gaze from Raathe long enough to look her over. “You gonna let us have some munch if we do?” he asked in a whining voice.

“I’m going to let you breathe a few more days if you do a really good job,” Raathe responded coldly. “Will that do it for you?”