Keeper of the Heart (29 page)

Her mouth moved, but she was too terrified for words to come out. The other women were also backing toward the door, looking just as frightened. Only the general stood her ground next to Falon, more confused than fearful, even when his eyes came back to her narrowed in anger.

“It didn’t work on you, did it?” Donilla asked. “It worked on them, but not on you. How is that possible?”

“He does not understand a word you are saying, General Vand,” Dalden said, having moved to her other side. “You see, my friend here does not trust anything that is alien to Sha-Ka’an. It was bad enough that he had to travel on a Droda-cursed spaceship, as he put it, and be subjected to Transferring, which he hates above all things, but he flatly refused to listen to the Sublims on your language that Brock made for us, even though that refusal would leave Falon at a disadvantage down here. Does that answer your question?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Now do you tell us
what
did not work on him that
did
work on the rest of us.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not at liberty to explain. Only women are allowed the secret—”

“Brock?” Dalden interrupted impatiently.

“Some type of hypnotic device that each woman held concealed as she touched you, and which had you accept her words as reality. You were each told the same thing, to forget why you were here. But you, Falon, were told one other thing, that you do not want a lifemate.”

Falon growled low and immediately lifted Donilla up by the front of her uniform jacket. That he did this with only one hand and kept her dangling like that, two feet off the floor, told Donilla that whatever they had just been told, it was now time for her to be seriously afraid.

“Speak for me, Dalden,” Falon ordered in a tightly controlled tone, “and make her understand that she lives only because she is not a man.”

“Brock has told us what you attempted to do, General Vand. Falon, of course, would be within his rights to kill you for trying to interfere with his duty, yet does your sex save you from that. But best you know that he is angry enough to overlook that if you still try to prevent him from finding his chosen mate. Where is she?”

“I—I can’t tell you that,” Donilla said apprehensively. “We have agreed to give her sanctuary, and she does not wish to be found by him.”

“She has no choice in the matter,” Dalden replied. “Our father gave her into this man’s protection. That gives Falon all rights over her.”

“But who protects her from him?”

“She does not need protection from her lifemate. He would never harm her.”

“You waste your time, Dalden,” Brock interjected at that point. “The woman is hindered by a code of honor that will not allow her to betray Shanelle, and now it is not needful. I have scanned the immediate area that would have allowed General Vand to reach here in the time she did, and have located a female who matches Shanelle’s voice pattern, though she speaks in Sunderian—and in a manner that would indicate she is extremely fearful of an immediate threat.”

“Immediate threat, or is she merely aware of our arrival?” Dalden questioned.

“Immediate. Her demand to be released by a ‘sawed-off little jerk’ was what led me to her. It is amazing how much she sounds like your mother sometimes.”

“How much danger is she actually in, Brock?”

“Enough to send her emotions near the panic level. Do you Transfer now—or does Falon?”

“I do,” Falon said without hesitation, and in the next moment Donilla dropped to the floor as he vanished.

A moment later above the planet, Martha invaded Brock’s housing for a change. “It took you long enough, sludgebucket,” she complained in annoyance. “I could have done that ten minutes ago.”

“You followed them down when I Transferred them to Sunder’s surface, didn’t you?” Brock demanded indignantly.

“Of course I did.”

“And you found Shanelle the same way I did?”

“Certainly—only sooner,” Martha purred.

“Then why did you not Transfer her out of there yourself?” Brock asked.

“For the same reason you didn’t. We aren’t going to head home until those two get together. Besides, I owed the big guy one.”

“Shanelle will not appreciate how you pay your debts,” Brock predicted.

“Not today she won’t, but I’m betting on the future.”

It took Falon a bit longer than the actual Transfer to assure himself that he was in one piece in the new location. He would
never
get used to that Droda-cursed mode of traveling, and prayed he would not have to. Nor had he expected to have to experience it again, except once more to return to the ship. Yet he had welcomed the Transferring this time for its speed, for he would have gone mad if he could not reach Shanelle when she had need of his protection and he knew of that need. But now that he was there and faced with her predicament, he was not sure if he had someone to kill—or to thank.

Her wrists were cuffed to the wall in front of her. Her ankles were spread wide and strapped to the supports of a round post that she was bent over. Her clothing had been removed. It could not be more obvious that she had been prepared for a whipping.

Two men stood behind and slightly to the left of her, dispassionately observing their handiwork. That there were no marks on Shanelle’s body was the only reason Falon moved up silently behind them and merely smashed their heads together. They dropped to the floor at his feet. That easily they were dismissed from his thoughts, and he stepped over them to stand directly behind the woman he had braved the horrors of space travel to find.

Shanelle didn’t know he was there. She was listening for the door to open. The soft thumps on the floor as the Sunderians dropped had hardly penetrated her frantic thoughts.

Lanar had to be crazy. She didn’t dare actually whip her. And yet she had gone this far—what if she was crazy? Who was there to stop her if so? Those two idiot males acted like low-budget androids, programmed to do one thing and one thing only. And they’d done it, stripped her and bound her securely, and nothing else. They hadn’t touched her again. They hadn’t even spoken to her after they finished strapping her in—except to tell her the waiting was part of it.

Part of what? The punishment? Torture was what it was, to stand there bent over, exposed, those farden whips on the wall the only things she could see—and remember the ugly red marks on the slave girls’ legs, to know that women
did
get whipped in this very room, and were made to wait for it, and agonize during the waiting ...

“You are in a position ideal for two things, woman. I wonder if the one will make me forget the other.”

“Falon!” Shanelle gasped, every particle of her being stiffening at the sound of his deep voice. And then, when his words penetrated, “Falon, no!”

“You still think to tell me no? I think not.”

His hands came to rest on her backside, proving that nothing she could say was going to stop him from doing what he was going to do. But what was he going to do? One of two things? Oh, Stars, she didn’t have to ask what they were, and both terrified her. Punishment or joining, she wanted neither at his hands. And the whips were right there . . .

No, he wouldn’t whip her. Warriors didn’t hurt their women, and he considered her his—at least Kan-is-Tran warriors didn’t hurt women. But Falon was a Ba-Har-ani, and she still knew next to nothing about those eastern warriors—except their punishments did differ from what Kan-is-Tran women could expect. Perhaps he considered her desertion worth a whipping. And what did it matter? Even a spanking would be horribly painful from a man of his tremendous strength.

“I hear no words from you, Shanelle. Are you sorry you left Sha-Ka’an?”

“I’m only sorry you found me.”

Her eyes flared wide at the immediate stinging smack on her bottom. “That was the wrong answer,
kerima.
Do you care to try again?”

“Falon, let me go!”

“I will—when your responses please me.”

“Do you want me to lie to you?” she cried.

“No, it is honesty I want, so let us find the responses of your body instead.”

His words confused her, until she felt his hands move around her hips to her stomach, and then slide slowly up her rib cage to her breasts. Shanelle sucked in her breath, trying to ignore the sensations aroused by his touch, but it was impossible. Despite her fear, which was very real, he could still bring her body to life. Her nipples hardened beneath his palms, her insides swirled in anticipation, her pulse quickened. How could this happen every time he touched her?

His body bent over hers suddenly, giving her the feel of his leather
bracs
against her bottom, the bare skin of his chest against her back. And then his arms wrapped around her middle and gently hugged her as his cheek pressed against her spine.

“I missed you, woman. Thoughts and imaginings of what I would do to you when I found you are all that have kept me from despair—and from going mad in the confines of that metal machine I was forced to travel in.”

Shanelle dropped her head in near defeat at those words. But she couldn’t let his feelings get to her— or her own. And he hadn’t said the words yet that
would
defeat her and make her his lifemate. Until he did, there was still the chance that she could keep it from happening. And she still didn’t want it to happen. He just wasn’t right for her, no matter that he had become her father’s choice for her, no matter her body’s response to him. She knew it. Why couldn’t she make him accept it?

“Falon—?”

“No,” he cut her off curtly. “Your words rarely please me. Best we let your body speak for you now.”

The post only reached the top of Shanelle’s thighs, rather than her waist, as it was designed to do. Falon’s fingers were able to slip between her legs from the front of her, so he did not have to lift himself away from close contact with her back. This he did now, finding and igniting her heat, drawing a groan from deep in her throat. She still fought it, pulling on the clamp in the wall she was cuffed to. But she’d tried that earlier, and even this new desperation didn’t give her the added strength to break her bonds. She was at Falon’s mercy—a warrior’s mercy. They had none.

She dreaded it, expected it, and it happened. The fight swiftly drained out of her. The simulation of joining that his fingers were enacting was too pleasurable to ignore. She even forgot that pain was going to follow.

She didn’t want to be taken at all, but particularly not like this, where she couldn’t even move. But her body didn’t give a damn what she wanted, any more than Falon did. And he knew it. Her tiny moans were telling him. Later she would feel humiliated about letting him know how much she really wanted him, but right now she just didn’t care.

Shanelle was nearing the point of begging when Falon leaned into her further to reach the clamp her wrists were attached to, and with little effort yanked it out of the wall. She straightened as he did, but more slowly, and felt one of her ankles cut loose before she stood erect, the other freed a moment later.

As she slipped the cuffs off the broken clamp so she could at least separate her arms, she experienced a moment of gratitude that Falon wasn’t as merciless as she had thought him. It wasn’t the kind of release she was expecting, or needing at that point. The kind she did need now was still in control of her senses, and when she turned around and got her first look at Falon since he’d entered the room, it escalated.

The sight of him always did have the strangest effect on her. This time it joined with her need, and without the slightest hesitancy or encouragement from him, she practically leaped into his arms, wrapping hers around his neck and pulling his head down to press her lips to his. It was so compelling, this desire to taste, to touch, to give him anything he wanted. It so overwhelmed her that it was a while before she realized Falon wasn’t returning her enthusiasm, let alone her kiss.

When she leaned back to look at him in confusion, he set her away from him. “Is this honesty at last, Shanelle, or an effort to avoid punishment?”

That was as good as a bucket of ice water dumped over her head. And she realized suddenly that that was exactly his intent.

“You had no intention of joining with me here, did you?” she demanded.

“When I take you, woman, there will be a bed— one that does not move—and privacy I can be assured of.”

“Then why did you make me want you?” She fairly shouted the words in her frustration.

“You needed reminding of your true feelings, those beneath your fear. And finally you have spoken the truth. You still want me.”

“Not anymore I don’t, you farden jerk!”

She turned away from him and nearly stumbled over the two unconscious Sunderians. It occurred to her then that Falon had actually rescued her, come to her aid when she desperately needed it— or thought she did. She still didn’t know what Lanar had intended doing, not that it mattered now. But because of her, Shanelle was back where she started, stuck with a man impossible to handle or reason with, and who got his point across in ways she wasn’t likely to ever forget. She would definitely like to repay that Sunderian witch for that.

Falon’s latest “point” was still affecting her. If he would touch her now in an intimate manner, she’d probably melt all over him, and that absolutely infuriated her. How
dared
he do that to her, make her want him and then not do anything about it...? Oh, Stars, that was one of the reasons she hadn’t wanted a Kan-is-Tran warrior for her lifemate, the very thing Tedra suffered whenever Challen found it necessary to punish her! It hadn’t been as bad, certainly. She hadn’t been brought to the screaming point. But she had still just been treated to what she had thought Ba-Har-ani warriors didn’t practice.