Gideon's Promise (Sons of Judgment Book 2) (42 page)

Great
, he thought, dropping his head back to stare at the ceiling, which was cloaked in thick, black shadows.

He shut his eyes and willed himself to fall asleep before his ass cheeks became too numb to bear. Donning a loincloth in some stupid attempt to pacify a moronic queen had evidently been a very bad idea.

Gideon sighed. Well, at least he’d tried. He had done what his parents had always taught him to do when in another’s home: he had been respectful and courteous and yet ... it had come around to bite him in the ass and all because of three little punks. Served him right. He should have left diplomacy to his father and Octavian. Playing nice wasn’t his game. He didn’t have the mouth for it. Magnus didn’t have the patience for it and Reggie just didn’t give a shit.

It was during his own reprimanding when Gideon heard the shuffle of feet. Part of him hoped they were bringing another prisoner down, while another, the part that worried about his ass cheeks turning blue, prayed he was being released. Something jingled. It sounded like keys and his heart jumped. He watched the door and waited as a shadow spilled across the ground on the other side.

Valkyrie stepped into view. She held a dagger in one hand and keys in the other. Gideon had never been so happy to see anyone.

“Hey baby,” he said cheerfully. “I’m damn glad to see you.”

The keys in her hand rattled as she pushed the right one into the keyhole and twisted. The hinges squealed as the door swung open. She stepped inside.

Gideon dared a glance at the steel shackles binding him to the wall, then to the leather clad woman towering over him, dagger in hand.

“I had a dream that started like this,” he mused casually. “Although, I wasn’t wearing pants and you were telling me what a bad boy I’d been.”

Valkyrie continued to study him wordlessly. Her expression was hindered by the dim glow in the chamber, but something in her posture gave him pause.

“Kyrie?” He yanked against the chains, his senses telling him something was wrong. “Unbind me.”

The dagger struck the floor first. The hilt bounced off the top of her boot and flew a few feet away. The keys went next. They hit the ground with a crack and lay silent.

“Valkyrie!” Gideon twisted against his binds to no avail.

Without a word, she swayed forward. Her boots scuffled against concrete as she closed the space between them. Gideon’s heart rampaged as one horrific thought after another invaded his mind. His very soul died a little with the need to reach for her, to sooth the cyclone of emotions he could feel coming off her. One raged louder and harder than the others. It was a violent force slamming and whipping around her like blades. Each slash cut into him until he could scarcely breathe.

It was fear. The worst sort of terror. And there was nothing he could do to stop it.

“Valkyrie, pick up the keys,” he urged, trying to keep his voice even. “Get the keys, baby.”

She didn’t move.

“Valkyrie!”

Right before his eyes, she crumpled.

“V
alkyrie!”

She hit the ground on all fours. Her dark hair swung over her shoulders to form thick curtains around her bent face. She was visibly shivering like all the cold in the dungeon were seeping into her. Gideon wondered if the cell was enchanted to keep people from leaving, or breaking in. If maybe she had walked into some magical trap and it was hurting her.

“Get out,” he told her. “You need to leave! Get up!”

The low whine of her every breath reached his ears. Her back shuddered and her fingers curled into fists.

“I ... can’t!” Her voice was low and raspy.

“Yes, yes you can!” he insisted. “Come on. Get up.”

She shook her head, making her hair swing around her face. Ever so slowly, her head lifted. Her hair fell back to reveal her pale face streaked with tears.

Gideon’s gut clenched. His temper flared. “What happened? Who hurt you?”

“No one,” she whispered.

Something had changed. Her voice was low and throaty and she was watching him in a way he was quickly recognizing as arousal. Even the air about her had shifted. The chill of terror had receded. She was no longer shivering. Her movement as she slid her frame forward was slow and confident, like a huntress on the prowl.

Leather rustled as she climbed into his lap. Her pert bottom settled snuggly over his quickly growing erection. Her eyes never left his. The pupils had expanded across the blue irises until they were nothing more than dark pits.

“What ... what are you doing?”

Her lips parted, red and inviting. “I want you,” she whispered. “I’ve wanted you for so long.”

For two full heartbeats, Gideon couldn’t breathe. Confusion mingled with a sudden burst of euphoria before suspicion and confusion regained once more. His gaze flitted to the open cell door, half expecting Magnus to be standing there, grinning. Even while Gideon knew his brother was the last person to mysteriously grow a funny bone, he couldn’t help wonder if this was some elaborate joke. Although, he knew better than to think Valkyrie would simply go along with it.

Something was clearly wrong.

“You need to stop.” Even to his own ears, his resolve was weak. His voice was barely a whisper. He prayed to whoever was listening that it would be enough to jolt her back to her senses. “Valkyrie, stop.”

She stilled. Her head tilted a fraction of an inch to the side and she regarded him with a mixture of bemuse and hurt. Gideon hated himself immediately.

“You don’t want me?”

He wanted to laugh. He would have if he hadn’t been too busy trying to talk sense into her.

“I think this isn’t you.”

“Doesn’t it feel like me?” Her statement was followed by the slow roll of her hips.

Gideon hissed through his teeth. The back of his skull struck the stone wall with a dull crack that he didn’t even feel.

“Damn it!”

It wasn’t until he felt the soft whisper of her warm breath caress the curve of his chin and mouth that he realized he had closed his eyes. They snapped open and he found himself mere inches from her mouth. From her. She was so close he could count her lashes. So close he could almost taste her with every exhale she made.

“Stop.” The single whisper hummed with desperation. It barely made it to his lips.

Valkyrie seemed immune to his pleas. She continued to torment him, pulling closer until there was but a sliver between them. Gideon wondered if maybe he’d fallen asleep. If this was one of the many dreams he’d had of her. Yet he knew it wasn’t. It felt too real. Her scent was too real. The warmth of her skin, the brush of her hair against the side of his face ... it was real. She was real.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he choked out. “If you do this, there will be no turning back.”

Valkyrie closed her eyes, and he knew he’d lost her.

Then she kissed him and he lost himself.

He lost the world and everything in it.

There was no logic, no rational thought. He was a bodiless mass floating in an infinite inferno of heat and fire.

He gasped, the sweet pain excruciating. The white hot punch of agony nearly sent him plummeting into darkness had another wave of something equally scalding not taken its place, something fierce and unstoppable. It rode over him with a violence that burned through his veins. He snarled, a sound between rage and triumph. The shackles above his head rattled. The chains squealed under the force of his need, but they were dragon forged and nothing in the world could break draconian metal.

He was at her mercy.

He tried to draw away, to speak, to stop her before she did something she would hate him for in the morning, but Valkyrie would have none of it.

Her hands closed in his hair, tearing at roots as she pushed into him. She plundered his mouth as though she hated him. Something on her tongue tasted unnaturally sweet and it slipped from her into him, making him lightheaded and weak. More than that, it made his blood hot and his cock hurt with the need for release.

“Need you!” Her growl trembled with the severity of that need. Her hips bucked and rolled against the erection reaching through the loincloth for her. “Need you, Gideon!”

Lost in the madness, in her, Gideon threw himself blindly into what she was offering. Clothes were torn away. Somehow this was done without her ever leaving his lap, or his hungry mouth. Everything was a blur of anxious hands and greedy mouths. Everywhere her skin touched his was like hot iron burning into his flesh. The pain was horrible and beautiful all at the same time. The sear of it drove him, consumed him. He couldn’t stop. It was as though his very soul had been waiting for that moment and now that it had come to pass, not even God himself had the power to stop it.

Her hand reached between them. Her fingers closed around the rock hard length of his cock. His last remaining protest was swallowed by her, as was his groan when she raised her hips, lined him up with her opening and gingerly lowered herself down.

“Shit!”

Gideon sunk his teeth into the smooth slope of her shoulder as he was fed inch by inch into her tight, wet channel. Her body had gone rigid. The hands on his shoulders had tightened, the nails drawing blood. She was breathing hard and every inch of her was trembling. A choked sound of pain left her, and then he was fully sheathed within her and everything was forgotten except how warm she was and how her walls hugged him like a lover’s embrace.

“Valkyrie...”

Tentatively, she lifted her hips, drawing him out. The tight ring of her core gripped him in a protective embrace before she was forcing him back inside with unsteady pumps. Her movement was quick and sloppy, but they were determined. The movements of a person who had never had sex. But whatever she was doing, it seemed to be working for her; her delicious little moans burned into his ear. Her walls were slick and growing damper the faster she rocked against him.

“Gideon...” Her whimper dipped the world in a swirl of hot flames that devoured him. “Gideon, I’m coming...”

Her head dropped onto his shoulder as her body shuddered with her release. The fierce fist of her pussy, the intense ripple of her orgasm triggered the tight bundle of his climax. He sprayed his seeds deep inside her sated body in hot squirts. Her channel greedily sucked the last drop with her lingering muscle convulsions until there was nothing left.

“Kyrie?” He skimmed her temple with his lips. “Are you okay?”

She didn’t move.

“Val?”

She remained limp and unresponsive against his shoulder. It was only the slow and even rise and fall of her chest against his that eased his mind a fraction. He stayed still, mind reeling between what they’d done and what to do next. He knew staying in the cell was stupid, but he couldn’t reach the keys.

“Fuck!” he snarled.

A scuffle in the doorway had Gideon stiffening. His hands balled into useless fists only to relax when Magnus came into view, dressed once more in his usual dark getup. His eyebrows rose when he caught sight of Gideon sitting butt naked in the corner of the room with an unconscious Valkyrie slumped against his chest.

“Really? Here?” his brother blurted.

“It’s not what it looks like ... mostly.” Gideon frowned. “Shut up and give me your jacket.”

Magnus shrugged out of his coat and walking over to drape it carefully over Valkyrie.

“No!” Gideon said when Magnus started to scoop her up. There was no easy way to tell his brother he was still buried inside her. “Undo my hands.”

Frowning, Magnus reached for the keys and undid the cuffs. Gideon shook free and reached for the woman in his arms. Carefully, he lifted her up just enough to slip free. Valkyrie gasped in her sleep and gave a shiver that did not help with keeping matters under control.

Giving Magnus a nod, he let his brother scoop the sleeping woman up into his arms, careful to keep her bundled up while Gideon refastened his loincloth.

When finished, he took Valkyrie from the other man and waited as Magnus gathered her clothes up off the floor.

“What the hell happened?” Magnus demanded as they made their way out of the cell.

“I don’t fucking know!” Gideon snapped. “They put me down there and the next thing I know, Valkyrie was all over me.”

“That doesn’t sound like Valkyrie,” Magnus mused.

“I know.” He shifted Valkyrie higher against his chest. “But no matter what I said, she wouldn’t stop.”

Magnus ceased walking. He turned to Gideon and raised a hand to lightly brushed Valkyrie’s hair off her sleeping face. Gideon watched in confusion as Magnus pressed the pad of his thumb to Valkyrie’s chin and nudged her mouth open.

“What are you doing?”

Magnus ignored him and lowered his head. He sniffed.

“Drosen.”

“What?”

Magnus straightened. “She was given drosen. It’s a drink young women are given on the eve of the awakening. It helps ... calm them and make them more susceptible to mating.”

Gideon recalled the pink drink the three punks had offered him. He remembered the addictive sweetness on Valkyrie’s tongue. He remembered the dark eyes on the draconian women, the way they’d stood on the street, waiting for a man to take them, all because of a drink.

“Valkyrie wouldn’t drink that stuff,” he murmured through stiff lips. “She must have been forced.” His arms tightened around her. “She looked so scared.”

Magnus looked away. He didn’t contradict, or pacify him, to which Gideon was grateful for. His fury was too tangible, too unstable. It wouldn’t stop him from hitting his brother if he tried to defend those people.

They walked through the castle, passing guards and party-goers in search of a quiet place to fuck. Most weren’t even bothering with rooms. Nearly every corner they passed was occupied by couples ... coupling. The sight of them, knowing what he now knew, turned Gideon’s stomach.

Magnus took them back to Gideon’s room. He shut the door behind them as Gideon moved swiftly to the bed and gently lay Valkyrie down. The coat flipped open along her hip and down one leg and the sight of it didn’t make his insides dissolve into hot ripples of lust. For once, it did the opposite. He felt cold and sick.