She was gasping for breath, still clinging to him, but her body had otherwise gone very, very still. He heard her sniff, thinking it was to clear her tears, until she did it again. This time, slowly, deliberately, her nose twitching in a series of nuzzling rubs against his neck as she took in his scent. Reule gritted his teeth together fiercely as a wild thrill rippled over his skin, making the fine hairs of his body stand at attention. It is nothing! He told himself this as he fiercely tried to get the rampant reaction under his control. Sánge greeted each other by smell as frequently as not, he argued to himself, and there was absolutely no reason why he should feel such an erotic rush with no other provocation. This was no different from any other—
“Reule,” she sighed, her voice rough from her abuse of it, her satisfaction so damned obvious it made every nerve in his body draw taut in response.
By the Lord, she recognized me by scent. That meant she had a keen olfactory sensitivity and had taken note of his particular scent. He forced himself not to read anything more into it than that, locking off any idea of attraction or flirtation on her part. That was Sánge cultural behavior, and she wasn’t Sánge. Hell, she was barely awake! Her relief, he told himself, was what anyone would feel after waking from what had obviously been a horrible dream. He was all she knew anymore. It was as simple as that.
Still, it was a heady thing to be the sole focus of her appreciation and contentment. Strange that being the central focus of an entire people had never made him feel what being her hero of the moment did.
“You’re safe,” he murmured to her softly and he closed his eyes and turned his nose against her hair. He breathed in her scent as he spoke, finding it marked in his memory as well, the sweet musk that was unique to her beneath the light scent of vanilla flowers that Para had bathed her in recently.
“You left me,” she sobbed out achingly. “You left me and there was no one for me.”
“No, kébé, that’s not true,” he said hoarsely, her pain stirring up his guilt. “I was close all along. Para was here. And Tetra. I would never leave you alone.”
“No! No…” She shook her head slightly as her clutch on him tightened, and he had the distinct feeling that they were talking from two separate worlds.
Reule just held her tightly and let her cry herself out, let her wake further into the real world. “I’m close to you now. I will protect you for as long as you need protecting. You have my vow, sweetheart,” he whispered into her small ear. “The vow of a king, amongst the Sánge, is a powerful thing, kébé.”
“I know,” she breathed against his neck.
Reule closed his eyes again and tried to supress the shudder that the awareness of her words sent through him. Again she spoke as though she knew Sánge culture, and the warmth of her breath on his skin seemed to drive it into him like an exhilarating force of nature. What did she really know? Who is she?
“Do you dream of what happened to you, sweetheart? Is that what makes you scream?” he asked as gently as he could. He felt the reflexive dig of her fingers into his back.
“I don’t remember what happened to me,” she rasped.
Reule wasn’t so sure about that. She remembered something of it. Whether it was disjointed flashes of horror in consciousness, or full clarity in her dreams, she did remember something. It’d take time, but one day she’d come to understand what she had been through. Right now, her mind was protecting itself from the trauma. Waiting for the rest of her body to heal, perhaps, before forcing her to mentally deal with what she had suffered.
“Please don’t leave me again,” she begged him softly, her voice breaking with fear.
“I never did, kébé. I swear. I was close all along.”
“But I couldn’t touch you. I couldn’t hold you or speak to you. I couldn’t see you!”
Reule swallowed hard, clenching his teeth as guilt flushed through him again. He’d purposely distanced himself from her because he’d not been able to control his reactions to her bold, strange ways. He’d punished her for his failings. Disgusted with himself, Reule swore restitution.
“What could I have done for you?” he said, inserting the lilt of a tease in his voice as he gathered her into the cradle of his arms and lap. He turned to settle back against the headboard. “You’ve been snoring away quite peacefully for days. You barely woke to eat, and I believe you slept through your most recent bath.”
She snorted softly against his throat, a halfhearted sound of sarcasm that told him she saw that as no excuse for his absence.
“If you plan to join the waking world, kébé, I’ll be glad to attend you.”
She hesitated a moment, then lifted her head at last and looked into his eyes. That was when Reule noticed her hair for the first time. To his absolute and utter astonishment, it was a deep, dark red unlike anything he’d ever seen before on a woman. It was even more unexpected on this woman because he’d held her and bathed her and never once had an inkling that this astounding color had lain beneath all that filth. He’d expected black, or even brown…but not this deep crimson color. As red as blood, and there was no denying the comparison. Though not the bright flash of a smear, it was rather that nearly black darkness of a single fat drop as it solidified.
Nor had he realized her hair was so long. In fact, it touched her elbows, and it was lightly curled enough to form casual, wide spirals that took several inches to make a complete revolution. Unable to stop the impulse, and perhaps unwilling as well, Reule reached out and picked up one of the clean locks between two fingers so he could run the length of it through them. It was soft as silk, a little lank from being slept on, and damp from the sweat of her dreams. It was also quite beautiful, dark as it was, and Reule found it an enchanting complement to her diamond eyes.
“You like my hair.” It was a statement, albeit a slightly shy one.
“Yes. Is this a bad thing, that I like your hair? It’s very lovely.”
She blinked those sparkling eyes up at him. “I like your hair as well.” She reached to touch his hair and Reule stiffened reactively. She felt it with all of her body and she stopped just before touching his hairline. “Do you dislike my touch so much?” she asked softly, a combination of curiosity and hurt showing in the tilt of her head and brows.
“No,” he said on a rough exhale. “Your touch…” He cleared his throat. “Your touch is an astounding pleasure, kébé. Sánge hair…our scalps are one of our most sensitive erogenous zones.” Best to be blunt with her, he thought. She seemed to understand things better that way. To prefer them that way. Frankly, so did he.
“Oh,” she said softly, slightly lowering her hand. “I remember things about the Sánge so clearly sometimes, but I didn’t remember that.”
She had no way of knowing how that statement tore at him. So, she remembered the Sánge in bits and pieces, did she? Granted, she seemed better informed than most, but it explained why she had disjointed ideas about the Sánge.
“We’re a complex people,” Reule said to her kindly, making certain to banish any hint of disappointment and frustration from his voice. “But we’re not the beasts we’re accused of being.”
“Beasts!” She jerked into a sitting position, her hands coming to wrap around his biceps. “That’s ridiculous! You, Para, and Tetra are angels! Kindness personified! Taking in a stranger rank with dirt and troubles when you could’ve easily left me to wither and die!”
“Never!” His sudden, savage growl seemed to take them both by surprise. Reule’s hands had fallen to her narrow waist where they now circled her lower rib cage. He held her so tightly that she was afraid to draw a breath for fear she wouldn’t be able to. “I’d never leave even the lowest animal on this planet to suffer as you were suffering,” he explained awkwardly. “Y-you were crying out to me. I could never ignore so sad a plea.”
She felt desperation in his hands as he held her, a tremor riding through his muscles as he suppressed a tangle of emotion. This man who seemed so gruff and powerful struggled t
o tamp down his emotions so no one would see them. Or see them as a weakness, she added to herself as she cocked her head. How must that feel? To experience emotion so deeply, yet never feel comfortable sharing it because there was an image to be maintained? It would be confining and lonely, she realized in an instant. Far lonelier than being in a strange world without even a name to ground you. She at least was free to feel and say and think whatever she wished. More so than anyone else, because she had no society or rules to follow at the moment. Although, as she began to examine her mind and instincts, she suspected that those things remained ingrained within her, whatever they were.
“Reule,” she said gently, running both hands over the hard contours of his muscular arms, up to his broad shoulders, “you are no beast. I know it with all of my instincts and with all of my spirit. And I have a feeling I’m the sort of woman who is always right.”
A startled laugh barked out of him and she smiled brightly. His hands left her waist and she soon found her head enveloped between them, his callused thumbs sliding over the crests of her cheekbones as he stared hard at her with his eyes of multicolored greens and golds. She knew she was small, but trapped between his hands like this, she felt incredibly fragile. The calluses told her that this was a man used to hard physical work, the muscles beneath her fingers giving more evidence of that. He could probably crush her to dust if he wanted to.
“You have a beautiful smile, kébé,” he murmured in a tone so low it rumbled a vibration through his hands and into her facial bones. It tickled. His thumbs dropped to her mouth where they brushed lightly against the smooth surface of her bottom lip. “You’ve healed remarkably well,” he noted.
She had no mirror to look into, save his eyes and the expression on his face. She knew just by looking at his appreciation and steady regard that the bruises were probably gone and her chapped lips healed. She smiled and reached to brush her fingertips against the warm skin of his neck.
“May I ask a favor of you?” she asked him, enjoying the feel of her lips moving against his thumbs as she spoke.
“Ask,” he commanded simply.
“You cannot keep calling me ‘foundling.’ Or at least not solely. Perhaps we should choose a name for me until I can recall…Why, whatever is wrong?” She widened her eyes when she saw the tautness that came over his expression and radiated down into the tensing of his fingertips. There was a sudden shuttering of his hazel eyes.
“How did you know kébé means ‘foundling’?” he asked quietly, a sickening feeling of doubt and suspicion once again crawling through his belly.
“Reule…I don’t know. I just do. I can’t explain these things. I swear to you, I—”
“Your pardon,” he said quickly, pausing to try to clear the rough rumble from his tone that made him sound like the predator he was. “I meant no accusation.” It was part lie, part truth. Reule didn’t know what he meant anymore. All he knew was that she baffled his senses and his thoughts like no other could. “Have you already given thought to a name? Do you have a preference?”
“I…I thought you might suggest something.” Her tone was subdued and Reule could feel her confusion and her uneasiness.
His moody behavior made no sense to her, and wouldn’t to someone completely free of ulterior motive. He believed that she had no nefarious purpose. At least at present. He reminded himself there was no possible way for anyone to spy on the Sánge, considering the power of their telepathy. A deceiver would be discovered easily, would they not? Especially under Reule’s nose. The castle was all but overrun with his Packmates, the most powerful men of their breed.
But if someone was going to be a successful spy, wouldn’t they know the native language and appear in just the sort of way that would cause them to be brought into the very midst of the workings of Sánge government? How much better if the spy’s mind could be altered so that even they were ignorant of their purpose and the value of the things they were seeing? That would allow her to move without suspicion among them, her thoughts free of duplicity, free from detection. Then later she could be somehow recovered and…
Reule sighed, reaching up to rub at an ache in his temples. He was beginning to sound paranoid. But didn’t he have cause to be? Growing up as he had? Watching a third of his people die of starvation, exposure to the elements of the lands they’d trudged over, and victims to beasts both two-and four-legged. All in two decades. It had more than taken its toll on him. He’d vowed to never allow such a horror to befall his people again. He’d kept that promise, and he’d done it by being sharp, shrewd, and even paranoid through the years.
He was lost in these grim thoughts when he felt the skim of warm, rough fingers sliding around his. His attention swung to the hand holding his, comforting him when he was so obviously distressed. However, the gesture inadvertently upset him even more because he could see the tattered state of her nails and the healing wounds on her palms and knew the damage had been inflicted as she had crawled across a wilderness. What right did he have to persecute her without even the slightest shred of proof? Even Darcio’s very personal and taxing invasion into the history of her body had revealed nothing to prove she meant any of the Sánge harm, and it wasn’t like Reule to bear prejudice against anyone, not even Jakals, until they gave him cause.
However, he rather suspected that part of the problem was the uncanny way she had of disrupting his steady, long-familiar calm. She had barely been in the keep for three days. What would he suffer throughout a long winter, should she remain here with them?
What did it matter? To treat her poorly because of his own inadequacies was reprehensible. Reule determined to get himself under control. No matter what she had been before this, right now she was innocent and she was frighteningly lost and alone. Given time, the mystery surrounding his foundling would begin to unfold.
“Mystique,” he said abruptly, the name snapping out of him unexpectedly. The moment he said it, he knew it was perfect. If he went by the smile spreading with pleasure over her face and in her glittering eyes, she agreed.
“Reule, it’s beautiful. Thank you.”
Reule decided he liked the name very much himself. “But,” he said with a playful grin overcoming him, “I think perhaps I will still call you kébé from time to time.”
“You, My Prime, may call me whatever you wish,” she said with a soft uptilt of her lips and her eyes smiling with delight. “So long as it is complimentary and full of praise,” she stipulated with a sly glance from under her lashes.
Reule had to laugh. It wasn’t until just that moment that he realized women didn’t usually tease him like that. Oh, his Packmates mocked him incessantly, the practical jokes between Packmates the stuff of legend. Lately, though, Reule had withdrawn a great deal from their antics as his position as Prime pressed him into the responsibility of running a successful city. “I will make a bargain with you,” he said as he eased her from his lap and went to stand up away from her. She held on to him, but he smiled as he grasped her reluctant hands. “I will make every effort to be a fount of praise and compliments, so long as you promise to let me step away before Para comes in the room. She is coming up the stairs as we speak and I have no desire to be scolded for my improprieties with you. I think she sees you as a chick she needs to protect.”
Mystique hardly thought a Sánge Prime had any reason to be swayed by the views of a servant, but she realized with pleasure that Reule was making the effort simply to please Pariedes, whom he clearly felt respect and affection for. She released him as he’d requested and settled back in the bed just as Para came bustling breathlessly through the door.
“Oh! Well! Lady bless you, child, you’re awake at last!” Pariedes gasped as she shut the door and shifted her eyes between her lord and her charge very slowly and with some apparent thought. “I knew the Prime would quickly set you to rights. Are you roused enough to get dressed today? We can draw a bath or go downstairs to the springs. If you’re up to it you can have a meal at table. Well”
—Para fluttered her hands before tucking them under her apron to contain their nervous gestures—“you decide, of course. I must say you look very well.”
Reule followed Pariedes’s assessing gaze as she evaluated the compact and beautiful girl a dank attic had given birth to. Reule’s eyes slid over Mystique’s waist, hips, and legs, the soft curves he realized he knew very well even after so short a time. Once she began to eat well, he imagined she would fill out more in those places, transforming simple curves into delicious lushness that would make her even more of a temptation than she already was.
“We have chosen a name for me,” she said with delight, eager to share with her first companion. “Mystique!”
“My, that is very lovely. And apropos. I approve,” Para said with a firm nod.
“Reule chose it.”
“Our Prime is a clever and surprising man,” Para said with a lilting sort of smile that earned her a scowl from him as he tried to figure out what that was supposed to mean. “My Prime, I believe Amando was hoping you would return to the caravan as soon as you were able?”
Reule lifted a thick black brow at Pariedes. He was being summarily dismissed, and there was no doubt about it. The smothered giggle from the bed didn’t please him and he tried to figure out who deserved his darkest look of warning more. They were both gazing at him so innocently and so completely expectant that he’d meekly accept the directive…that he did exactly that.
“Mystique, if you’re well enough and would enjoy it, I’d like your company at my table for dinner. The entire Pack will dine together tonight because Amando is about to make his way along the final trade route of the season and we like to send him off with luck, a full belly, and memories of his companions waiting for his return. They would be honored by your attendance and would be pleased to see you looking so well. I will also understand if you feel it is too soon…”