“Bring her to me,” Lucien said, making his way to the bed. The pain was so severe he could barely walk and didn’t have the strength to remove his britches.
“Lucien, I don’t think…”
“No, you shouldn’t think,” Lucien snapped as he flung himself on the bed and turned to his side, dragging the pillow over his face. “You should just do, Petros.”
Petros saw his prince begin to tremble and knew the pain had reached a height that had to be excruciating. There would be no arguing with Lucien now so he turned and walked out of the room as fast as he could.
The woman had been taken to a holding room off the main pen. When the door was opened, she threw up an arm to shield her eyes from the bright flare of the lantern for the room was in total darkness.
“She hasn’t been cleaned up yet, Petros,” Christina argued.
Petros spun around and fixed the healer with a nasty look. “He is in agony.”
“Aye, but another five minutes won’t matter. She stinks.”
True enough, there was a ripe smell coming from the woman. Part sour sweat from her obvious fear and part musky unpleasantness from the vomiting, the stench was enough to make Petros cover his nose and mouth with his hand.
“Hurry up, then,” Petros warned Christina.
The woman balked at being manhandled out of the room by two burly guards. She shrieked and tried to claw them as they ripped her already torn and filthy gown away, leaving her naked as they dragged her to a cattle trough.
“Quite the hellion, isn’t she?” Christina asked as she and Petros watched the guards battling with the woman, pushing her beneath the water, one holding her arms behind her as the other took obvious pleasure in lathering her with soap.
“Even bedraggled like that,” Petros said quietly, “she bears such a strong resemblance to Magdalena it is uncanny.”
“The herders weren’t going to enter into the Fifth Zone last evening,” Christina observed. “They swept through there only because the trail boss had a
feeling
.” She looked over at Petros. “You think Sibylline put that feeling in his head?”
“This smacks of her nastiness,” Petros replied and flinched as the woman managed to free an arm and slam her fist into one of the guard’s eyes. “That’s going to make quite a shiner.”
“Stop being so careless, Ari!” Christina warned the guard who had slapped a hand over his wounded eye.
Screaming and cursing her captors, the woman was dragged from the water and wrapped up in a large fleece towel. Another set of guards laid hands to her to roughly dry her hair and tightly braid the waist-length mass.
There were tears of anger and pain in the woman’s eyes as still another set of guards shoved her and jerked a clean gown over her head. Her flesh—still wet in places—stuck to the thin cotton so that her breasts and nipples stood out against the fabric.
“Lovely,” Christina said with a sigh. “Wish I’d already staked claim to her before we suggested her to Lucien.”
“I wish she’d never been brought here in the first place,” Petros grumbled. “Let’s go, men!”
Kicking and twisting against the hands that held her, the woman was dragged along by the guards as they followed behind Petros. She stumbled up the stairs, not given any time to lift one foot after the other as the guards propelled her upward. By the time they reached the prince’s door, the woman’s shins were scraped and bleeding in places.
Petros sniffed, sniffed again, and then turned around to lift the hem of the woman’s skirt. When he saw the abrasions, his jaw tightened but he made no comment. He narrowed his eyes at the taller of the two guards then looked away.
Lucien’s personal guards opened the prince’s door at Petros nod and stepped aside. Neither even glanced at the woman being dragged into the room.
Petros walked up to the bed. “My Prince,” he said softly. “The woman is here.”
Lucien was trembling even worse than when Petros had left him and it was all he could do to peel the pillow from his face. Even as low as the candlelight was in the room, the glare hurt him and he was forced to squint.
“Closer,” he ordered, his teeth clicking together.
Petros turned and motioned the guards to bring the woman closer.
The woman snarled, bucking in the guards’ tight grasp and her screech of denial was so piercing Petros spun around, reached out to snag her hair, and jerked her head back.
“One more shriek like that and I will relieve you of the ability to make a sound! Do you hear me?” he hissed. “Your prince is in pain and your screeching doesn’t help!”
Trembling almost as violently as Lucien, the woman kicked out with her bare foot, catching Petros on the shin and as he bent over with the unexpected pain, she lifted her knee and tried to drive it under his chin. She would have succeeded if the prince’s hand had not shot out to shove Petros away.
“You conniving little bitch!” Petros snarled and threw his hand over his shoulder, his intent obvious to everyone in the room.
“No!” Lucien ordered and the backhand that might well have broken the woman’s neck had it connected with her face froze in mid-swing.
Petros lowered his hand. “This one is nothing but trouble, my Prince. Let me get rid of her. I…”
Lucien pushed himself up in the bed and stared at the woman struggling between the guards. Her long braid whipped back and forth as she twisted in their grip. Her lips were skinned back from her teeth. Although her hysterical crying sent daggers of agony through his forehead, he was mesmerized by her face. There was a feral light to it that caught and held his attention even more than her eerie resemblance to his dead wife.
“Who are you?” Lucien asked in much the same tone Petros had used when first he’d laid eyes on the woman.
“I am diseased!” the woman shouted. “I have the plague! I have the plague!”
Petros looked quickly at his friend. The loud shout had caused Lucien to squeeze his eyes shut to the volume, but when Petros started to reach out to the woman to silence her babbling, Lucien shook his head.
It was that motion, which sent the prince into convulsions and turned his body rigid as he fell back to the bed, his entire body in spasm.
“Get the healer!” Petros yelled. He quickly unsnapped the leather gauntlet on his left wrist, rolled it into a tube, and put his knee on the mattress in one motion. Bending over Lucien, he pried the prince’s jaws apart and dragged the leather between his teeth, making sure Lucien’s tongue was pressed down to keep him from swallowing it.
The woman was dragged back and out of the way. Her eyes widened as men poured into the room and fanned out—two to each side of the bed as they climbed upon the mattress to hold down the bucking man’s limbs.
“What happened?” Christina snapped as she came running in.
“Seizure,” Petros said unnecessarily for the entire bed was trembling beneath the force of the prince’s convulsions.
“We need help here!” the healer ordered and the two guards holding the woman reluctantly let go of her and hurried to the bed.
The woman stood where she was for a second or two, watching one of the guards who had been holding her so brutally take the struggling man’s head and turn it to the side as the healer bent over him with a syringe. No one was watching her as she slid sideways toward the opened door, her watchfulness never leaving those gathered around the bed.
From the corner of his eye, Petros saw the woman slip like a shadow through the door. He pushed one of the guards with his crooked elbow. “Get that bitch,” he ordered.
Hearing the running footsteps rushing toward her, the woman grabbed the hem of her skirt and tried to outdistance her pursuer, but the guard was quicker, better fed and longer of limb than she, and before she could gain the stairs, she was grabbed from behind and crushed against a rock-hard solid chest. When she tried to struggle, fingers clamped onto her neck and the lights faded out in the space of a breath.
Chapter Two
When Lucien woke, he was flat on his back, a cool cloth plastered across his forehead. His neck stung from the potent narcotic Christina had administered and his head—though still filled with terrible pain—felt filled with cotton. He reached up a heavy-feeling hand to drag away the cloth, sliding it down his cheek and onto his bare chest.
“Thirsty?” Petros asked softly.
“Aye.”
There was the squeak of the old rocking chair as Petros got up followed by the shuffle of his feet across the carpet. Every sound was magnified a hundredfold in Lucien’s brain, especially the trickling of water from the carafe into a goblet.
Petros gently slid his hand under Lucien’s hot neck and lifted his head. He said nothing as he brought the rim of the goblet to Lucien’s lips and tipped it. When Lucien had taken his fill, he carefully lowered the hurting man’s head to the pillow and withdrew his hand.
“Where is the woman?” Lucien asked, his voice weak.
“At the foot of your bed,” Petros replied. “Chained like the bitch she is.”
Slowly, Lucien turned his head but he could see nothing save the bulk of the mattress upon which he lay.
“Did you hurt her?”
“I wanted to,” Petros answered. “But no. Ari did that nerve compression thing on her neck and she went out like a light. She’s still out.”
Lucien frowned. “Is she all right?”
Petros craned his head around and looked down at the woman curled on her side, her left leg shackled to the footboard. “Aye. She’s breathing normally. Want me to wake her?”
“No. I couldn’t fuck her if my life depended on it,” Lucien said with a sigh. “Leave her be.”
“You’ve slept a long time, Lucien,” Petros said. “Dawn is less than an hour away.”
“Go to your room,” Lucien ordered. “I’ll be back to sleep before you lay your head to the pillow.”
Petros glanced slowly at the window where he had already pulled the thick draperies close together. “What of the girl?” he asked.
“The guards will see to her,” Lucien said and already his voice was thick with the lethargy radiating from the imminent rise of the sun.
Petros’ steps were slow, as though his feet were mired in thick mud as he headed for the door. He spoke quietly to the guards, warning them to watch the woman carefully.
“Petros?” Lucien called out.
“Aye, my Prince?”
“What is her name?”
Petros shrugged. “We don’t know. I’ve been calling her Alecto for it seems to fit her sweet and gentle personality.”
Lucien smiled grimly as sleep overcame him once more.
Petros footsteps lagged as he dragged himself over the short distance between his room and his friend’s. As the Lord of Security, he was always close at hand, never more than a hundred feet from Prince Lucien at any given time. Not only the prince’s friend but his personal bodyguard, Petros was in charge of his leader’s safety.
“Alecto, the worst of the Furies, the unrelenting,” he mumbled as he tiredly pushed open his door and staggered to the bed. Already, the rays of the sun were reaching like fiery fingers upward from the eastern horizon and Petros’ world was slowly shutting down.
Dragging the covers over his chilled limbs, Petros wrapped himself up in the cocoon of his blanket and huddled down so that no stray emission of daylight could find him.
“One of the damned Furies she is,” Petros mumbled.
“Are you just going to turn over and go to sleep, Petros?”
Despite his weariness and the encroaching lethargy caused by the rising of the sun, Petros opened his eyes and looked over his shoulder. His companion of seventeen years glared back at him and he sighed.
“Do you know what time it is, Alexa?” he asked, his lethargy cocking a tiny little head to pay attention.
“Time for you to service your woman,” she said and snaked out a hand to grasp his cock.
Sighing again, Petros turned to face his lady. Her fingers were squeezing his cock, her fingernails grazing his balls.
“Alexa…” The lethargy was definitely paying close heed to the fingers plying his tool.
She was up and over him, pushing him flat to his back, her shapely legs straddling his. He was stiff in her hand as she settled her cunt along his hard length, stuffing him inside her like sausage into a casing. Withdrawing her hand from between them—took hold of both his nipples and twisted lightly.
“Ah…” Petros said and flung his arms out wide as though being sacrificed to Alexa’s need. His lethargy raised its little hands in surrender, an itty-bitty little tongue began to waggle with interest.
“Who were you talking about?” she asked as she began rotating her hips.
“Hmm.” Petros was fast losing himself in the velvety warmth of her moistness.
“Who were you calling Alecto?” she demanded as she stretched out atop him and flicked her devilish tongue into his ear.
Petros shuddered. “We found a woman for Luc,” he said and wrapped Alexa in his brawny arms.
“Oh,” she said then slid her tongue from his ear to his lips. She claimed his mouth, thrusting her tongue between his teeth.
Alexa’s cunt was as tight as a virgin’s, and had been all the time Petros had known her. She wielded it as a warrior would his finest weapon and with an expertise that brought a shiver to her lover. Petros had often commented to Lucien that it was like having another set of lips nibbling at his rod as she rode him.