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

his neck. It snaked down the entire right side of his chest, along his upper arm, and even part of his rippling abdomen, disappearing into the waist of his trousers. She’d never seen a tattoo in her life, but she’d heard of them.

And scars. The man had so many scars. Small ones and large ones. One trailed down his right pectoral, and another bisected one of his abdominal muscles.

He stopped dead when he saw her, his gaze dropping to the top of her bodice. Her skin heated at the look in his eyes.

“What the he—Are you picking flowers?”

His gaze flickered over her breasts. She opened her mouth, on the edge of explaining, and remembered that she’d been commanded not to speak.

Angling her chin at him, she gestured toward the vista before them, the hills in the distance.

His brows drew together.

She smiled sweetly and gathered her clothing and flowers. Holding his gaze, she walked toward the ship’s entrance. Hauteur might be a silly defense, but it was all she had.

Besides, she wanted a bath of her own. And he was in her way.

“Where do you think you’re going now?”

Her smile never flickered. Not even when she got close enough to smell his woody, soapy, post-bath scent. He was so tall she had to tilt her head back to keep her eyes on his. She raised a cool brow, schooling her face against even the merest of flinches.

She walked right past him, and through the hissing hatch door, down the passageway with its icy blast of cool air, and slid the door of the bathing chamber shut behind her.

Only there did she rest her back against the wall. Torum was different than any man she’d ever come across. Unlike the elderly instructors at the Institute, he wasn’t kind, patient, and gentle. Unlike Agammo and Spiro, he wasn’t courteous, gentlemanly and predictable. No, Torum was something else entirely—but at least for now, she needed him. He was her only hope in the universe of getting home.

3

The meanest of kisses

TOR FLEXED HIS FISTS and cracked his neck, willing his body to relax. It didn’t. He rotated his jaw, adjusted his pants, and sent a few creative curses toward an unsympathetic sky.

Damn the Argenti and their womanless world. He’d seen far too few since he’d left home. It had been way too long since he’d had his cock in anything other than his own fist.

The woman was infuriating. He’d half expected to find her making off with his rezals and instead found her stripped down to a nearly invisible dress, with a little tit-shoving vest over it, picking flowers and taking film like she was getting ready for a picnic. A half-naked picnic.

Since he’d met her a few days ago, she’d lurked in the background in her prim lacy dress, face pinched and suspicious. And now she randomly decided to strip down.

He glared out across the dusty wasteland that surrounded them. Silent treatment. Ridiculous. A perfect specimen of her people, pampered and soft.

How his life had ended up here, he had no clue.

For the last decade, he’d chased criminals across galaxies. Before that, he’d fought in brutal battles against an enemy he didn’t understand for reasons that made no sense.

Life had been an endless parade of shifting languages, new planets, and strange customs. He’d been free to do whatever the hell he’d wanted. But one thing had been constant. He’d had his partner, Jasto, at his back.

And now, in the span of a week, he’d lost two good men, been captured, Jasto had been killed, lost a perp, escaped, and an idiot Argenti woman had hitched a ride on his ship. And she wasn’t exactly nobody either. The fucking daughter of Chief Merona. If anyone from the Alliance found out he had her, they’d come looking for him, and he did not want to have to go into hiding for her.

He wrapped his hand around the hilt of his sword. At least he had Miannya back. He always felt naked without her.

His pants beeped.

He tugged his digi from his pocket.

The message on the screen in glowing red letters was eight days old.

Urgent. Return comm now. It was from his mother.

Vaniiya migane.

He kicked a cloud of dirt in the air.

He thought about Klymeni’s tits in the tiny vest-dress and kicked up another cloud. What the fuck did happen if an Argenti woman and a Vestige Prime had sex? Primes in rut pumped the air full of pheromones that made the women on Vesta go insane with lust. And the Argenti supposedly had aphrodisiacs in their saliva and some addictive component in their own pheromones.

He’d found himself pondering the concept during the entire duration of the escape pod, wondering if his cock was hard because of some strange pheromone in the air, or if it was just that he liked looking at her.

His digi beeped again.

He hadn’t spoken with anyone from home in years. Whatever his mother wanted, it couldn’t be good. She’d beg him to come home and lay guilt heap after guilt heap at his feet.

He let his head fall back and stared up at a white-hot sky.

And this woman. What the hell was he going to do with her?

He couldn’t take her to Argentus. They’d arrest him, torture him until he gave up every last bit of information he knew about military operations and planetary defense, and then, when there was nothing left, they’d kill him.

He couldn’t leave her alone in the neutral zone—a lone Argenti woman—she’d probably stick that stupid holo-cam in front of her face and forget to look where she was going. She’d be kidnapped and sold into the sex trade inside a minute.

He couldn’t take her home. The daughter of the fucking Premier War Chief of Argentus. If the Alliance found her, they’d torture her for secrets, not that she was likely to have any, and send her back to her father in pieces. No way would he help the Alliance by giving her up to them.

He could