“You would pick the only
taverna
in this town with a serving girl who reads,” he muttered.
In the span of time it took the words to sink into the drunken rabble, Jared tightened his hold on her arm and sprinted out the door. A loud roar streamed behind them as the patrons stumbled out of the
taverna
, eager to make the capture and claim the reward.
Bryna held onto Jared’s hand as tightly as he held onto hers as they raced down the alley and exploded into the throng of market goers. Most people gave way, others were jostled in their flight, waving clenched fists and throwing curses after them. Bryna could hear cries of runaway slaves and calls for their capture. She didn’t dare search the crowd for Baal.
A painful hitch caught in her side and her breathing dissolved into short gasps. It was taking twice as much effort for her to match Jared’s long strides and clearly he was holding back. Oh gods, he should go on without her. She tried to release her hand, but he gripped it tighter, dodging a cart filled with melons as he made for the gated entry of the town.
Bryna could feel the danger stalking them. The whole town would soon be alerted to their presence. If they could not get through the gate, their fate would be sealed. Abruptly, Jared slowed and released her hand. She bent over in a useless attempt to catch her breath eyes squeezed shut, unable to imagine the consequences of their capture.
“Quick! Jump up!”
Her eyes flew open. Jared was mounted on the back of a decrepit horse, its coat molting from lack of care, its ribs scored against thin, gray skin. It was tethered to a wooden post, but no one cried out at its theft.
She gave him a look of disbelief.
“Are you mad? This poor nag will lead the authorities straight to us! They’ll find us sitting atop a dead carcass!”
“Don’t you ever stop arguing?” he replied. With swift, easy grace, he leaned over and pulled her up in front of him.
Bryna gasped as he spurred the horse through the portal. With surprising agility, the sorry equine followed Jared’s direction and sped out onto the road. Bryna dared a glance back to see a handful of frustrated citizens—and an angry Baal— shaking their fists at their retreating figures.
W
hat their mount lacked in looks was more than made up in stamina. Every bone in Bryna’s body rattled and her muscles screamed from the bruising pace. The only thing keeping her in one piece was Jared’s strong arms holding her against the rock hard wall of his chest. Not an unpleasant place to be, given they were fleeing for their lives.
They had been riding for two days, stopping only long enough to rest the horse, scrounge for food and catch short naps. Jared had been quiet the entire time, doing little more than giving short, curt answers to her questions or grunting noncommittally. The few times she’d tried to talk he cut her off, admonishing her to be quiet, then tightened his arms around her and rode on in stony silence. The arrogant demon had returned.
Bryna shifted forward away from the warmth of his chest, tried to ease the ache in her heart. She had actually begun to think that Jared might be human after all and wondered if the gentle man who had held her so tenderly, who had heated her blood with his touch had ever existed. Where was the man of her vision? She set her mouth in a tight line. Well, she wouldn’t be deceived again.
Jared slowed the horse to a walk before guiding it toward a stagnant pond not far off the road. Holding the ropes loosely in one hand, he lifted himself off the horse’s back and slid to the ground. Before she could do likewise he reached up, circled his hands around her waist and lifted her off. She tried to read his eyes, but he released her as if she were on fire and spun on his heel to lead the horse to the water.
Her patience had reached its limit. Bunching her hands into fists, she followed him. “Why are you angry?”
He didn’t even look at her, just started caring for the animal. “I’m not angry,” he answered curtly.
Bryna stumbled on a loose stone but caught up to him. “You are. I can tell well enough.”
The look he sent her was potent with the anger he denied. “And how is that? With more of your special powers?” he sneered. Reaching down he began to scoop handfuls of water over the horse’s flanks.
Bryna crossed her arms and answered sweetly. “Oh, that and the fact that you’re nearly skinning the poor animal with your care.” As if in agreement, the horse whinnied in protest and shied away. Jared pulled him gently by the rope and whispered soothing words into the animal’s ear. The horse quieted and began to nibble at a patch of tender, green grass. Jared continued to ignore her. He loosely tied the lead to a sapling and crouched at the water’s edge, swept away the algae and began to drink.
And he thought her stubborn. “I do not understand why you are upset. I was coming to warn you...”
He shot straight up and pinned her with a glare. “Which you would not have had to do had you obeyed me and stayed at the shop.”
Her mouth fell open even as guilt pricked at her. “If I had not been in the market, then we would not have known that Baal was there searching for us.”
Jared turned away from her, his expression one of disgust. “Believe me, we would have known. Your devoted admirer Lito brought soldiers and two very determined bounty hunters to the bake shop. I barely made it out in one piece.”
Bryna felt the blood drain from her face. “The order was too large for Aea to handle by herself. Cicero was not able and Lito was nowhere to be found...” Her voice trailed off as it was obvious where the adolescent had been. She straightened her shoulders. “My leaving did not bring the soldiers to the shop.”
Jared moved to stand in front of her. “No, but because you were not there, I had to search for you, wasting precious time.”
A different emotion flashed behind the hard brightness of his eyes. Fear? Worry? She reached out with her gift which as usual refused to show her any insight. “You searched for me?”
“I did,” he answered, inching a bit closer.
A warm spot opened inside Bryna. He could have fled, been safely away from the town, from the soldiers, the bounty hunters, but instead had risked his own safety to find her.
“You are, after all, the link to my betrayers.”
She went cold. How ridiculous for her to think otherwise. “Of course,” she replied stiffly. “I understand.” She started to walk away but he caught her by the shoulders, forced her to look at him.
“No, you do not understand. Thanks to your falling into the midst of the largest pond of scum in the Empire, I now have a wife. As if my life didn’t already have enough burdens.”
Bryna tamped down the hurt that flared in her heart, narrowed her eyes at him. “I am not your wife therefore I am no one’s responsibility but my own.”
A sneer played around the edges of his mouth, his mocking tone driving the hurt that much deeper. “Oh, but you are. Surely you have not already forgotten your own wedding, your sweet vows of fidelity, honor and love?”
“I spoke no such words.”
Jared smiled tightly. “You did. In poorly pronounced Aramic, but you did.”
A wave of disbelief chilled her insides. “You know very well that ceremony was done to keep those thugs from doing us harm. It is not a true marriage.”
“A Hebrew priest married us,” he answered evenly.
“A drunken wretch,” she replied. Her rising panic caused her voice to quiver.
“He wore the robes of a rabbi. A teacher and priest of my people.”
Bryna counted slowly to calm her temper. “It was a ruse, a way to escape...” She paused feeling nearly hysterical at the deadly serious look he sent her. “You cannot think to hold me to those vows!”
“It was a vow made before the God of Abraham, the God of my mother’s people. It is a sacred covenant”
“Why?”
“Why?” he repeated.
“Why is this vow so important to you? Will your God strike you down should you be honest and thank him for the shield of his name?”
A wave of emotions streamed from him, flooding her senses. She gazed into his stormy expression and knew that his honor would not allow him any other choice.
As if he knew her insight, he shuttered his eyes. “It is enough that I will keep the vow.”
A thousand objections to his stubborn declaration clashed within her mind. But she was so outraged, so incensed, that she could give voice to not one of the arguments. She pushed against his arms, surprised when he released her and moved away.
She needed water. The soft earth of the pond’s edge flattened beneath her knees as she leaned over and drank from her cupped hands. Another few handfuls of water she used to cool the warm flush of her cheeks. She had to think. In Eire, a man and woman could declare themselves joined in a hand fasting ceremony, their wrists tied together indicating their oneness. In a year’s time, the Brehon laws allowed their union to be dissolved if one or the other partner so wished it. She’d never given any real thought to the choosing of a mate but she was certain she did not want one that felt so obligated.
Bryna sighed. They had already been bound to one another but she had never agreed to their union. In truth neither had Jared.
Deep in her tumultuous thoughts she did not hear him approach. She jumped when he bent down on one knee and leaned into her. He whispered in her ear, “You say the laws of my God do not make you my wife.” He feathered kisses along the soft curve of her neck lingering to nuzzle and nip at her lobe. “Then tell me, Bryna, would a true wife not respond to this?”
Tiny shivers of heat streaked through her body as he buried his mouth against the pulse throbbing at her throat. This was not helping her think at all. In fact, it was dissolving what little rational thought she had left.
“Would a maiden, shy in her innocence, allow this?” he whispered huskily. He cupped her face in his hands and claimed her mouth, gently at first then demanding, insistent, searing her to her core.
Her mind cried out to fight but the scent of him was wondrous, a tantalizing mixture of sweat and spice, of leather and male. It left her unable to breathe.
Bryna knew nothing of this man. Nothing save he was a slave, a foreigner like herself despised by the Romans. A man filled with dark emotions of anger, vengeance, a deep unrelenting pain that haunted him, fueled his pride, fed his arrogance.
Only her own unrelenting pride kept her from crying out against the emptiness when he pulled away. She tried to turn away, but he drew her up to stand beside him.
He clasped both of her wrists in the span of one of his hands. “Bryna, look at me,” he murmured.
She closed them tight instead, refused to do as he commanded. To look into those eyes might prove her undoing.
“Bryna,” he said, shaking her hands.
There was a note of something in his voice, an emotion that reverberated through her being. There was anger, yes, but shadowed by other, more intense feelings so interlocked that it was difficult to touch on them individually. There was no way round it. She opened her eyes.
Gods, there was no mistaking one of his emotions. His topaz gaze was searing, filled with heat and dark with desire. He was male; of course she should have known that lust would be present. She could not discount the hard thump of her heart and the heat pooling in her belly as he raked his gaze over her. He wanted her and she wanted him.
The lure of those other unnamed emotions held her still for a few moments longer. Bryna opened her senses, thankful when they responded. She reached out to the thin, tangled threads of pain, despair, guilt and, thank the gods, the smallest bit of hope. Her breath caught. And love?
He has no room for such a tender emotion. He is damaged.
Bryna refused to allow her own seed of hope to wither. She pressed her clasped hands against the short, crisp hairs of his chest and pushed without success. His scent filled her, spice and wood and man and made a mockery of her resistance. His hard and erect cock pressed against her stomach. Jared captured her gasp with his mouth, using one hand to cup her breast, his thumb massaging the nipple to a taut peak through the cloth of her dress.
Bryna’s heart raced and melted all at once, a branding heat sliced through every fiber of her being. She had never felt so many different sensations spiraling through her at one time. He loosened his grasp of her wrists and did not object when her hands slid along his sides, exploring the hard edges of his torso. Gods, she loved the feel of those firm muscles beneath her fingers, the hard lines of his body. Shifting her hands around his waist she gripped his buttocks and urged him closer. Jared growled raggedly and with one fluid motion, lifted her into his arms and carried her to the shade of a tall oak where he laid her on a patch of soft grass.
Bryna raised up on her elbows, her breath catching in her throat as Jared swept his short tunic over his shoulders. She drank in the sight of him. His torso was lean and bronzed, the scars that marked him adding to his already dangerous aura. The muscles of his chest and limbs were sculpted as if from years of rigorous training. Were the Hebrews a warrior people? Surely they must be, for a physique as well-honed as this was not gotten from a few short months laboring in the fields.
Her gaze drifted to the loincloth draped around his hips. It was made of coarse linen, but his arousal was evident even beneath the thick folds of cloth. Her eyes widened as he slipped the covering off. By Danu, he was huge.
Panic welled in her chest bringing her to her knees but he knelt quickly beside her blocking her escape. Catching her lips once more, he exerted gentle pressure that sent delicious tingles streaming down her spine. His hands followed the curve of her neck, slipping beneath the neckline of her dress, sliding the material off her shoulders until she was fully exposed. Though the day was hot, she shivered. His eyes darkened as he devoured her with his gaze.
“No.” Her protest was weak and disappeared altogether as he ran his tongue over the sensitive pebbled skin of her nipples. She gripped his shoulders, felt the play of his muscles as he guided her to the ground, his mouth alternating between suckling and trailing hot kisses down the flat plane of her stomach to her soft woman’s folds.