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

him on her tongue, but he held her still with that thumb in her mouth, his fingers shaking against her cheeks, and pushed her hand away.

“Do you want me?”

She couldn’t speak, not just because his thumb was at the back of her throat, but because she didn’t know what to say. Yes, yes, I want you. Yes, I want you to fuck me and never let me go and keep me forever, but not just because my existence infuriates your enemies, not because you feel duty-bound to protect me. I want you to tell me why you took me, the real reason, and I want it to be because you love me.

He sighed, and maybe he misunderstood her expression. His mouth hardened, and he closed his fist around the length, and she waited, worrying and wondering.

Maybe he’d hold it to her lips, slide the broad, wet head over her tongue as he’d just done with his thumb, or maybe he’d do as he said. Fuck her, claim her, and keep her.

In that moment, she’d have let him.

In that moment, she wanted him to.

But he didn’t. Stroking her tongue with his thumb, he beat out a quick, utilitarian rhythm with his other hand.

Yet, there was something so impersonal about it, except for the twin connection of his eyes, the pearl orbs gleaming in the dark, locked on hers, and his thumb gliding along her tongue, mimicking in the motion of his fist.

His hand tightened on her face, she stroked her tongue along his thumb, and because everything in her body demanded it, she pressed a finger between her thighs and touched her burning flesh.

His face contorted, his breathing grew more ragged, and his motions faster. With a grunt, he came, his hips bucking an erratic tempo, and wet heat sprayed across her chest in thick spurts.

He pulled his thumb from her mouth and dragged a finger through the fluid pooling in her collarbones and dripping down her sternum between her breasts. “Rub it in.”

“M-m-me?” She lifted her hands to her neck, ignoring the need pulsing between her thighs, and rubbed it all in, up her neck and behind her ears just as he’d done before.

He hissed out a long, low curse. “Is that what you wanted?”

She wasn’t sure what to say. “Not really.”

He touched his finger to her lower lip, and he didn’t have to ask. She knew what he wanted. She opened her lips to suck his finger inside, lapped at it with her tongue, tasting salt again, but not from his skin this time. She groaned, loving the flavor of him.

His mouth hardened, and that angry dimple flickered on his cheek in the cool morning air.

The finger left her lips. “When I come back, make your choice, Klym. I’m done playing games. If you want to go, you’re free to.”

He backed away, adjusting his clothes, picked up his bag and left her there, on her knees, with his taste on her tongue.

32

Science serum

“I KNOW YOU REPORT to your mother.” Klym made the most queenly face she could manage and stared at Janna where she sat at the breakfast table.

Janna’s mouth dropped. “I-I—”

“Don’t deny it. It ends now.” She put a hand on her hip, trying to look stern despite having to lean against a chair to remove some of the pressure from her raw feet. “Where’s Staria?”

“She’s in the dungeon. Tor had her put there as soon as she came back. She’s lucky that’s all he did.” Janna glanced around the room and leaned across the table toward Klym, dropping her voice to a whisper. “There hasn’t been anything to report, except the thing about the mark. Which I didn’t tell her anyway. She figured that out on her own.”

“What thing about the mark?”

Janna leaned across the table. “Everyone knows that he marks you the old way.”

Klym frowned. “What does that mean?”

“You’re not actually married, are you?”

“What constitutes marriage on Vesta?”

Janna inhaled and glanced around the room. “You haven’t consummated it.”

Klym’s face heated. “I thought the mark made it clear that we had.”

“It just confuses the issue. Centuries ago, when Tamminiahad nine regios and Primes fought in the streets for felanas, the mark was meant as a signal. If a Prime’s woman was violated, there’d be a reckoning. But now…” She made a face.

Klym fiddled with the bottom of her shirt. “Just how keen are your noses?”

“I can smell the ointments on your feet. And I can smell that he must have marked you again this morning. But I can also tell that you didn’t make love last night.”

“How can you…” Klym trailed off.

“Directional scenting.” Janna lifted a shoulder.

“You mean you can smell my…?” Her mouth dropped in mortification, imagining the last time she’d spoken to Tor’s brothers, or mother, or anyone. She grabbed a napkin from the table and held it in front of herself like an apron.

Janna’s face was untroubled. “It’s normal to us. We don’t remark on it generally or even think of it. It’s just like hearing. Or seeing.”

“So you do have some manners and customs?”

Her brows wrinkled. “Of course we do.”

“But if it just washes off, then why bother with the mark?”

Janna leaned back in her chair. “I’m guessing because the alternative would be to take you by force.”

Klym sat back. “So, everyone just assumes that I’ve been rejecting him all this time.”

“Haven’t you?”

She brought her hand to her mouth. He must have been so humiliated. All this time. And he’d never said anything. Never pushed for her to end that. He’d just given her time to get used to him. Time to accept him. Time to want him. The freedom to make her own choice. To choose him.

Janna was silent for a long moment. “People say he was beguiled by a foreign woman into rejecting our ways.”

“We only mate once in Argentus,” Klym said into her hand, ideas just beginning to formulate. She had to undo this. She had to make it right. Prove to his people that she hadn’t beguiled