The Taming: Book 3 in the Tribe Warrior Series by Imogen Keeper (romantic novels in english TXT) 📕

their kings, a man she knew to be worse than her darkest fears.

19

A chair for the lady

And a table for her plant

TOR PUT HIS HAND on the small of Klym’s back, just above her lace-covered ass, and pushed her toward the door where she’d meet the first of his family.

She slanted him a look like death but didn’t move away.

She wouldn’t. Not with their deal on the line. Nor with people watching.

And people were watching. Had been since they arrived. Customs officials and Alliance bureaucrats had poured from the woodwork like cockroaches, seething around them since the minute they’d docked at the edge of the hangar, their eyes darting back to Klym at irritatingly regular intervals, checking her holo-cam and digi.

It wasn’t every day someone came to Vesta with blond hair, golden skin, and pale eyes, let alone an Argenti woman. It didn’t speed up their immigration at all. It took longer than it needed to.

So he spent the time fucking with the officials, demanding a chair for Klym—they brought out a crappy folding one, but she didn’t seem to mind it. And then some water for her. And then a table for her plant. And then some water for the plant. Because why not?

Right at the end, after hours of delay, a man came by the name of Pijuan, with a thick mane of carefully styled hair, a snub nose, and a set of chiseled biceps he’d clearly gotten working out in a gym. The sword on his belt was strictly decorative.

Tor recognized the name. This was the Emissary of the Alliance, the man who was making a move on taking over as regio.

“So, this is the errant Argenti bride.” Pijuan stood, with his hand on his fancy fake sword, ten Polizei at his back. “Klymeni Merona. Daughter of a War Chief.”

“My selissa.”

Pijuan’s button-round eyes drifted over to Klym. “Selissa?” His gaze probed down Klym’s body. His nostrils flared.

Her mouth tightened, and her chin came up. She must have felt the slime in Pijuan’s eyes too because she left her crappy chair and stepped closer to Tor.

Tor rubbed her hip with his thumb. “She is indeed.”

“I don’t believe Tamminia has ever had a foreign-born selissa.”

“It does now.”

Pijuan’s gaze finally left Klym and shifted to Tor. “Tell me, then, what does happen when an Argenti and a Vestige mate?”

Tor forced a smile to cross his face as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He leaned in closer like he was about to share a deep secret.

Pijuan leaned closer.

Tor forced the smile to stretch into a grin. “Did you just ask about my wife’s cunt? Or about my cock?”

Pijuan coughed. “Neither. Of course. Neither.” He rocked back on his boots like he’d been slapped, his gaze flicking to Tor’s sword, and after a long moment, his fingers unwrapped, one by one, from the carved handle of his sword. “Welcome to Vesta, regio.”

With his hand riding Klym’s waist, Tor moved her toward the door to the tarmac, where presumably by now, one of his brothers was waiting with a hover to take them to the Roq.

As the door slid inward, a rhombus of rosy light spread across the floor, and she sucked in a long breath.

The sky was a masterpiece.

She smiled the first genuine smile he’d seen since Frigorria. Big and wide and breathless. And for just a second, she made the exact face she made about five-and-a-half seconds after she came. He pulled her against him so her back touched his chest, and rubbed his nose in her hair, breathing in that damned capricious fruity scent that always made his balls clench.

The sun hung low on the horizon, fat, ruby red, and rippling, and the entire sky blazed in an inferno. Vesta, coy and sultry, in all her shameless glory.

A balmy breeze, rife with tammin and sasprilla spices, tugged at his hair. Home. He’d forgotten how much he loved this miserable place.

“You can admit it, abellina. That’s the best sunset you’ve ever seen.”

She jerked her head slightly, bumping it against his chin. “It’s okay.”

“Just okay?”

“Just okay.”

“You’re cute when you lie.”

“You aren’t,” she said, and he could tell from her muffled words that she was speaking through a bright, fake smile.

He wrapped his hand around her upper arm and propelled her toward the waiting hover, and the man beside it, the sun at his back. The household guard stood behind him.

The man’s features were in shadow, so he couldn’t see his face. Big, though, tall and hefty.

“No sunset like a Tamminian one, eh?” the man called, gesturing grandly at the riot of bright color behind him.

The voice at least was familiar from childhood, if not the body.

Tor squinted. “Gaspart?”

“In the flesh.”

As a boy, Tor had idolized him. The ready grin was the same, but everything else had changed. Beneath his customary togata, his legs were still strong, but the bare arm was flabby, and the belt around his waist was barely visible beneath a great, round gut.

He smacked Tor’s back hard enough to make him rock on his boots. “Vaniiya, you’ve gotten big.”

Gaspart had always possessed a talent for making people comfortable with a combination of grinning and so much talk they forgot to be wary. All the while, though, he was watching and calculating.

“Abyssenyo, brother. You don’t do things by half.” Gaspart looked at Klym, and Tor had to grit his teeth.

It would be a while before he got used to people looking at his wife. “No.”

“The Alliance is already making threats.” Gaspart clambered into the hover. “Is she worth a war?”

Tor lifted Klym onto the hover and climbed up beside her. “Yes.”

She looked up at him sharply as he said that, her brows drawing together.

“What happens when you cross an Argenti and a Vestige?” Gaspart guffawed happily.

Tor rolled his eyes at the old joke.

Tor introduced them, and they chatted as the hover lifted from the ground, Gaspart doing his thing where he put Klym at ease, and Klym doing her thing with manners where she