Silver Tongued Devils (10 page)

Brom’s arms tightened around her and
she tried to scream but her ribs made breathing difficult. “Don’t
leave us, Raesa.” Brom’s words cut into her heart.

“We’ll get her to safety, but I need a
clear path. Don’t let anything get in our way.”

She was handed off and Na’varr cursed
quietly. Something warm and wet hit her face. “I can’t have another
ghost haunting me, Raesa. Keep fighting.” Na’varr’s ragged command
confused her.

Fighting? She wasn’t giving up. Not
yet. Pain fogged her mind and she let it sweep her away.

***

Raesa came to in a large bed. Above her
was a tall ceiling that didn’t match the Crimson Star. With panic
she tried to sit up but a body wrapped around her.

“Where are you going?” Brom’s voice
calmed her and she dropped back against him.

“Did we win?”

He kissed the back of her neck and she
shivered. It took a moment to realize she was naked…and so was
he.

“The traitor’s dead.” The bitterness in
his voice made her heart ache. She turned in his arms and saw the
bandage across his cheek.

“What happened?”

Brom shrugged and glanced away. She
vaguely remembered his roar before she passed out.

“Where are we?”

“On a supply carrier. I’ll let Na’varr
explain everything. He’ll know you woke up.”

“How?”

“Through this.” He caressed a black
band around his throat. It looked similar to the Isis collar she
wore.

“How long was I out?”

Brom’s arms tightened around her, but
he moved slowly as though she’d break. “Too long. Losing you would
be the end of me.”

A world of agony entered his voice and
she kissed his cheek.

“I’m right here. Nothing will ever keep
me from you.” She put all of her heart in that statement, hoping
her feelings would make it to him.

He trembled in her arms. It humbled
Raesa that a man so strong would feel so deeply about someone like
her. She loved him.

“I liked you in stripes.” His smile was
too light. It didn’t match the pain in his expression or the bags
under his eyes.

She brushed her fingers against her
face. Were they fading already? “I’ll wear them for you as often as
you like.”

Brom took her hand in his and pressed
his forehead against hers.

This close she could make out green
flecks in his golden eyes. “No matter how many times I look at
them, your eyes are stunning.”

Brom blinked back tears and she
realized, at that moment, how close to death she’d actually come.
Seeing him like this tore her heart to shreds.

“Hey, I’m okay.” She cupped his cheek.
“Can I kiss you now?”

“There are only trace amounts of the
aphrodisiac in your body.” Na’varr’s voice drew her attention, but
Brom kept her perfectly still.

She glanced back at her tiger. A shy
smile touched her lips. “Then we can kiss?”

“Try and stop me.” He took her lips
with gentle teasing licks and caresses.

The ache in her heart soothed. She
arched up and pain sliced along her rib cage. With a hiss she
dropped back to the mattress and Brom immediately let her
go.

“What did I do?”

“Nothing.” She put a hand to her
ribcage and eyed Na’varr. “Bruised or broken?”

“Bruised. He almost had you. Had Brom
been a second too slow, that would have been the end of
it.”

She remembered the solid knee to her
side. The desk. “He shot at me, didn’t he?”

“Brom hit him and the shot went wild.
Like I said…” Na’varr touched her cheek. “You were
lucky.”

“Who was he?”

“A jack-of-all trades. He was used in
all sections on board, so he had access to most areas. We don’t
know who he worked for or if there are any others on my
ship.”

“He said he found me on Sakura.” Her
father’s murderer.

Brom held her close, instantly soothing
her helpless rage.

“What happened to him?” She wanted him
gone. Forever.

“He’s dead.” Na’varr was
matter-of-fact.

Brom growled in his throat and she
kissed his nose. The troubled sound ended immediately.

“You protected me.” She wrapped her
non-wounded arm around him.

“I love you. Of course I’d protect
you.” Brom stared at her. Her mouth opened in shock.

“You love me too.” He didn’t
ask.

She grinned. “Well, of course I love
you.”

Brom jerked his chin toward Na’varr.
“You love him too and he loves you as well.”

“What the hell is this?” Na’varr threw
his hands up.

“Na’varr paced beside your bed for
hours until a nurse told him to sleep or they’d tranquilize him.”
Brom smiled. “He never left your side.”

Her heart surged with joy.

“Do you see what you’ve done? You’ve
domesticated him!”

Brom watched her with more love than
she’d ever hoped for. “You know it’s the truth.”

Raesa nodded. “It is.”

“Good. Now you have to get better. We
have a very busy day coming soon.”

“What day is that?”

“We’re taking you home. To Sakura
Outpost.”

Were they going to leave her there? Her
head began to throb. “Why?”

“Because you kept saying your father
left me something.” Na’varr sat on the edge of the bed. “Do you
know what it is?”

“Wake me when we get there.” She
smirked and let her eyes drift shut.

Brom moved to her side and wrapped
around her, comforting her with his heat and presence. Her tiger.
Na’varr kissed her lips. “You’ll pay for that when you get
better.”

She smiled. Her prince owed her an
explanation or two as well.

A light kiss brushed her forehead.
“Don’t ever make my heart stop like that again.” Na’varr’s words
were thick with emotion.

“I love you,” she murmured. Even those
three words too all of her effort.

“Gods help us all, but I love
you.”

He might have said something else, but
she drifted back to sleep wrapped in the warmth of the two men she
loved. The men of her heart.

Raesa Daw opened the phoenix engine
case and smiled in relief. It was still there. She ran her palm
along the case.

“Is that it?” Brom gently set her aside
and reached in to haul it out.

“Yeah.”

“You and your father were extremely
paranoid.” Na’varr called over his shoulder while he stood watch.
They were dressed in shipper’s uniforms and had rented a cargo ship
for this run to Sakura. Na’varr was ready to retire the Crimson
Star. His pirate persona had driven them into a corner.

“We were right to be.” The charred
remains of her home and the decimation of her father’s store and
office had slammed that bit home. All those years of training had
prepared her for this moment.

Brom dropped it in front of her. “That
was a lot heavier than I expected.”

“Sorry.” Raesa opened the keypad to
switch some connections back to normal.

Her tiger stood watch but his curious
stare made her grin.

“You can ask me, you know.”

His cheeks flushed a dark color. “What
are you doing?”

He was too fucking gorgeous. “My father
and I know the keycode. If someone attempts to force it open, the
contents are immediately incinerated. Father believed any man or
woman would eventually cave under torture so we decided to change
the connections on the keypad.”

“So they could gain the keycode but
entering it would cause an error.”

“Exactly. And everything would be
gone.” Once she finished righting the connectors, she entered the
code and it popped open.

Inside were her father’s treasures. The
log book, several files, the datapad holding the locations of
refugees, political sympathizers, and military assets he’d tracked
and rerouted over the years. At the bottom she found his most
precious gift in the form of a slim envelope addressed to one man:
Naesha Varrian. “It’s all here.”

She stowed everything in her bag and
then closed the case. It locked and she entered the destruction
code. A warning sound erupted from the unit. Raesa rose and grasped
Brom’s hand. “We need to leave just in case the pressure seal can’t
hold the heat.”

They had five minutes to be somewhere
safe. She reached Na’varr’s side and Brom moved to his right while
she maintained his left. Their captain faced the hill where Raesa’s
home once stood. “Is it all there?”

“Yes.” She took the envelope out of her
bag and handed it over. “He wanted you to have this.”

Na’varr stared down at her father’s
scrawled handwriting. “What is this?”

“His plan to return you to the throne,
Prince Varrian.” She clenched her jaw. The name sounded alien to
her. “In the event of his death, I was to deliver it to Captain
Na’varr of the Crimson Star.”

“When did you figure out who I
was?”

“Somewhere between your grief over my
father’s death and the moment you said you loved me.” She watched
him, waiting.

“My uncle and cousin are behind this.
If we take the battle to them, it could get worse. They’ll target
everything I love.”

“If that’s supposed to warn me off from
loving you, you don’t know me very well. I won’t leave your side.”
She glared at him, waiting for a contradictory
statement.

Instead, he nodded. Na’varr couldn’t
share his emotions easily. He wasn’t openly affectionate like Brom,
but he dealt with his past in a different way.

“They’re cleaning up their mess,
Na’varr,” Brom spoke quietly, but clearly. “If you do nothing, the
slaughter of your people will continue. We’ll stand with you
wherever you go.”

Na’varr clapped Brom on his shoulder
and pulled Raesa in for a tight hug.

Shock and joy made her stomach
flutter.

“This won’t be an easy life for
you.”

“I’ve been raised for this moment.
Trust me and Brom to protect you while you do what needs to be
done.” She palmed the back of his head with her free hand and
dragged him down for a kiss. “We love you.”

He crushed her against him. “Even after
all of this?”

She knew he meant her father’s death
and the loss of her former life. “They won’t win. We’ll stop
them.”

Na’varr cupped her face and kissed her.
“My love is complicated.”

She smiled and Brom winked at her. “So
is mine. Brom holds equal space in my heart and bed.”

The hybrid laughed and wrapped her and
Na’varr in his arms. “We’re going to draw a crowd, so let’s head
back to the ship. We’ve got one helluva mess to clean up on the
Crimson Star. A new crew, new identities.” Brom let them
go.

“A new beginning.” Na’varr held Raesa
for a moment longer than she expected. “I think it’s time to take
the fight to them.”

Na’varr grasped her hand and
interlocked their fingers. They walked along in comfortable
silence.

Raesa touched the collar at her throat.
They hadn’t found the key, but it no longer mattered. She would be
his. A new beginning.

Her father’s legacy had been handed off
to the only man he had trusted in this entire universe. She had
fallen in love with a prince and his commanding general. The fact
that they returned her feelings was more than she’d ever imagined
possible.

From the ashes of their pasts, they
would take back Na’varr’s rightful place and create the future her
father had dreamed of.

THE END

Tales of the Silver Tongued
Devils

By Dawn Montgomery

Dear Readers,

Brom’s Birthday was originally
intended to be a very short tale of around five thousand words.
Strangely enough, the story expanded into this lovely action-packed
novella. Brom, Raesa, and Na’varr are trying to find military grade
ore and weapons that are disappearing at an alarming rate in their
territory. Na’varr believes his uncle is behind it, but he can’t be
sure.

The pressure is on. They’re on an
isolated mining rig in the fringes of space, and they will have to
rely on one another to make it back alive.

Pirates. Love. Lust. Fear.
Adventure.

I hope you enjoy it.

Happy Reading!

Dawn Montgomery

The second sun dipped behind the
Deadgate mountain range, plunging the landscape into total
darkness. Na’varr fought with everything in him to beat back the
drug-hazed miner currently trying to take his head off. The captain
blocked a swipe from the bastard’s fingernails and punched him
three times in the kidney, rocking his opponent’s body with every
hit. The cyborg’s energy was running dangerously low. He had to
take him out now, before he got his adrenaline artificially pumped
again.