Defy (29 page)

An unwanted flush of pleasure raced through
Tate at the sensation of Sparky’s warm breath drifting over the
side of her neck. His lips rested mere inches from her skin. The
heat from his body flowed easily to hers as he leaned even closer.
As furious as she was at him for making her feel so stupid and
helpless, she couldn’t deny her powerful attraction to him.

“Please don’t,” she said when he threatened
to take her weapons from her.

She hated that she was reduced to begging.
She sensed such good in him, and he was treating her like this? It
was beyond her level of comprehension.

“I just want to see them,” he countered,
stepping back and catching her gaze. “It is your choice.”

She swallowed, noting the fact that his eyes
shifted briefly to her throat at the action. She struggled to focus
her thoughts so she could refuse him…all to no avail. With stiff
and drug-influenced movements, she found herself reaching for the
small of her back and producing one of her blessed nunchucks.

Evidently impressed, he reached out and took
it, ignoring her sound of dismay. She couldn’t do anything but
stand and watch as he examined it.

She knew her weapon as well as she knew
herself. The handles were luminous to the point of appearing white,
as was the deceptively thin chain that connected them. The handles
of the weapon were marked with protective runes imbued by the
elders, though she didn’t really know how to access their inherent
power.

He stepped away from her and executed a few
forms using just the single nunchuck. Then he handed it back to
her. She hadn’t dropped her outstretched hand since giving it to
him.

“It is too small and light,” he said.

“It was crafted specifically for me,” she
replied, putting the weapon back in her harness. “I’m big, but
you’re bigger. Of course it seems smaller and lighter than you’d
like.”

“You think of yourself as big?”

She wished with another flood of
embarrassment that the tea would fully wear off so she could stop
herself from talking. She supposed she would just find what relief
she could in the fact that her tears had stopped.

The moment she could, she fully intended to
kick his ass.

“I’m the biggest female Kynzesti so far,” she
said, flushing over the words she couldn’t control.

He gave her another thorough, head-to-toe
examination that had her blood flashing with heat. Then, shaking
his head, he said, “Who is coming for you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What?” His gaze narrowed. “You are sitting
in the cold on the side of this godforsaken mountain without
knowing who is coming for you?”

“I only know a few of those coming for
me.”

“Who?”

She wanted to choke herself just to keep the
response from issuing forth, but she couldn’t control her arms
enough to accomplish it. Still, she felt herself lifting her arms a
bit, which pleased her. “Tiege,
archigos
Ini-herit and Clara
Kate.”

“
Archigos
Ini-herit?” he seemed to
puzzle over this for a moment. “Why would he be traveling with
Tiege and your cousin to come to your aid? Where is your father?
Your uncles?”

“I guess my dad is with my mom, who didn’t do
well when she thought I was dead. My uncles might be with Tiege. We
weren’t connected long enough for me to find out. And I don’t know
why
archigos
Ini-herit is with them.” The fact was, she
didn’t care why the elder was coming after her, so long as he did.
“Maybe he’s along to heal anyone who might need it. Or he could
just be trying to protect Tiege and Clara Kate from the increasing
dangers on the mainland.”

“Increasing?”

She blinked as the answer sat in her mind. It
took her a second to realize it, but she had just consciously
withheld an immediate response. The tea was largely wearing
off.

Despite the relief she felt upon realizing
that, she decided that she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t
at least warn Sparky about what Tiege had told her. If he wasn’t
informed, he could blunder into a situation that might lead to him
being harmed. She might want to rip his head off for putting her
through this, but she didn’t want to be the reason he got himself
killed. He had saved her life, after all.

“Tiege warned me about a group of Mercesti
led by some male named Zachariah. The group is preyeing on females
down here on the mainland.” He stiffened at the grave news, even as
she continued, “Zachariah murdered a female named Luvania and
apparently a number of others. Tiege is worried the group could
find me.”

“Luvania is dead?”

She couldn’t read his expression, but that
was nothing new. “Yes. I’m sorry. Did you know her?”

There was a prolonged silence, during which
time she struggled to read him. He was beyond a doubt the hardest
being to read when he wasn’t lying. Eventually, he said, “Your
brother is right to be worried. I have seen evidence of the group
he mentioned.”

“They’re apparently looking for something,”
she said. “I don’t know why they’re killing females, though. You
should be careful yourself, just in case.”

After studying her in silence for a long
moment, he looked around her makeshift shelter. “You are not hidden
well enough here. You must move to something with a much smaller
point of access.”

“But Tiege and the others won’t be able to
find me if I’m hidden.”

He clenched his jaw, his eyes flashing. For
some reason, he seemed infuriated. Once again, he advanced. She
backed away, her limbs returning to within her control.
Unfortunately, a hard rock surface stopped her retreat.

“How could you have such bloody little
sense?” he demanded, reaching out and shaking her hard by the
shoulders. “Your brother connected with you once to determine your
whereabouts. He will certainly do so again when he gets near. You
could hide yourself from sight and lead him right to you with your
thoughts!”

She hadn’t considered that, and felt like an
idiot for not having done so.

“You
should
feel like an idiot,” he
snapped, making her realize that she wasn’t completely outside of
the tea’s influence yet. She had obviously spoken that thought out
loud.

His hands remained on her shoulders in a firm
clasp. She had instinctively reached up and grasped his upper arms
when he grabbed her, and she felt the hard muscle of his biceps
beneath her hands. Because he was bent over her and his mouth was
so close to hers, the memory of her attempted kiss flashed through
her head. She had the unavoidable and mortifying thought that she
wished he hadn’t stopped her.

She watched his expression change as they
continued to stand there staring at each other.

“When you want to kiss someone,” he said,
making her realize she had been speaking her thoughts again, “do
not talk it to damn death.”

And then he pulled her against him and
captured her mouth with his.

He didn’t kiss her. No, that was far too
sedate a term for it. He
claimed
her.

This was no gentle brushing of lips against
lips. This was an undiluted assault of the senses. This was lips
and tongue and heat and urgent, roaming hands. This was erratic
breathing, bodies pressed together, skin touching skin, bursts of
unbelievable and unexpected pleasure. This was beyond her wildest
imaginings.

She vaguely realized that she was groping him
just as much as he was her. Her tongue was pressing just as eagerly
into his mouth as his did hers. The sounds of pleasure in the
alcove were as much hers as his. Probably even more so.

She had never known kissing would be like
this. Dear Lord, she wanted—

A burst of pain in the side of her face had
her breaking away from the kiss in startled confusion. She saw a
look of equal puzzlement on Sparky’s face. When the pain hit her
again, she gasped, lifted a hand to her injured cheek and shook her
head as if to clear it, blinking as her vision blurred. She grew
disoriented. Strangely, she felt the ground beneath her body even
though she had just been standing.

When her gaze once again focused, she shook
her head a second time. In the moonlit darkness, it seemed there
were now two Sparkys.

“Is she awake this time?” asked one of the
Sparkys as her focus faded in and out.

She managed to register that the voice wasn’t
Sparky’s. As her heart rate spiked with fear and the heavy damper
of sleep finally cleared her brain, she also realized that she was
no longer dreaming.

“Yes,” Bertram replied to Tycho’s question.
“She is awake.”

Excitement surged through them. They had done
it. They had managed to find the Kynzesti before the Waresti did.
Eirik would surely welcome them back now.

He nearly lost hope when they reached the
mountains. How could they possibly find the missing Kynzesti in
such a vast landscape? But they had flown along the ridges, anyway,
figuring they had nothing to lose.

A stray feather led them right to her. Tycho
chanced to spot the feather fly out from under a rocky alcove as
the wind caught it. When he flew down to investigate, he found the
sleeping female.

It had taken them a couple of minutes to
rouse her. She slept right through them examining her to ensure she
was, indeed, a Kynzesti, and then conducting an exam of sorts to
ensure she was, indeed, female—they had laughed heartily over their
humor there—as well as through them binding her hands behind her
back with several strips of fabric torn from her rather useless
cloak. She had even slept through Bertram’s discovery that her
weapons were blessed, not stirring at all through his screams of
pain as his contact with the weapons resulted in a surge of holy
light that blistered the skin on his hands.

Tycho had very wisely used the female’s cloak
to cover his hands so that he could disarm her without injuring
himself. They discarded the cloak and nunchucks in a pile on the
ground, deciding the items were useless to them. Then they set
about waking her up.

Finally, she stirred. Bertram figured she
must be especially groggy because of her prolonged exposure to the
cold and possibly hunger or dehydration. Whatever the reason, he
was glad to see her come around. They needed her in fairly good
condition to present to Eirik in order to earn the most favor with
him.

As soon as she regained consciousness, she
looked between the two of them, her eyes growing wide. He and Tycho
watched as realization set in. She shifted as if to move away from
them or perhaps reach for her weapon. That was when she discovered
she was bound.

A sound issued from her throat, but it was
hampered by the gag they had stuffed in her mouth and tied into
place. No sense allowing her to scream for aid, after all. They
might not reach Eirik’s current location before the Waresti got
close enough to hear her.

“I did not expect the Kynzesti to be such an
attractive female,” Tycho said, his eyes gleaming. “Perhaps—”

He was cut off when the female somehow flew
to her feet and kicked him in the gut in one swift move. Bertram
was still blinking in surprise as Tycho doubled over when her
booted foot connected with his body mere millimeters from the
center of his groin. Pain ratcheted through him and he hit the
ground.

She might have gotten away if she could fly.
As it was, he and Tycho staggered back up from their embarrassing
takedowns and flew after her. She managed to run and leap a fair
distance down the mountain. But a bound Estilorian on foot would
never outpace wings.

Tycho tackled her when he was close enough.
They hit the ground hard and slid along the rocky surface a number
of feet. Since the female was on the bottom, she took the brunt of
it. Still, she fought like a crazed animal. Both Tycho and Bertram
were in serious pain of their own by the time Tycho finally had
enough and slammed her head against the mountain to knock her back
unconscious.

“You had better hope that did not cause
permanent damage,” Bertram said as he rubbed his bloody lips from
where she had head-butted him and split the skin against his teeth.
He was pretty sure at least one of his ribs was broken, too. “We
did not go through all of this just to have her die before we get
her to Eirik.”

“Do not worry,” Tycho said in a hard voice as
he lifted the female for transport. His left eye had swollen shut.
“She will be fine. Eirik may have the pleasure of killing her
himself.”

Zachariah jerked awake with the taste of Tate
still fresh on his tongue. He was on his feet with his tomahawk in
hand before consciousness completely returned to his brain, his
instincts at their full height.

With the residue of pain lingering in his
left cheek, he carefully scanned his environment to see what had
caused the disruption. The wind howled off the mountains in the
distance and the night sky shone clear and bright thanks to the
nearly full moon. Although the trees around him rustled and swayed,
he didn’t sense another presence anywhere near him.

Even as his eyes shifted to focus on the dark
side of the mountain, fear spread like a fire in his gut. And that
was when it occurred to him at last what he should have realized in
the first place.

It wasn’t his pain or fear he was
experiencing. It was Tate’s.

He knelt on the ground and jerked open his
satchel. With a quick and thorough search of the bag, he pulled out
the items he thought he might need and stuffed them into his
pockets or wherever he could fit them. The satchel would only weigh
him down. As he did so, his heart raced with what he knew was
Tate’s terror and exertion. Different parts of him gave him clues
to what she was experiencing, such as the tightness around his
wrists that told him she was bound and the almost suffocating
sensation that indicated she had been gagged.