Grim

  “That is so not going to work Grim.” Turning, she walks away from him, leaving her Guard standing on the steps.

  “Two of you follow her! Agee! With me!” Grim orders, finding he can’t seem to breathe, as she walks away from him in anger. Will she leave him now? Deny him? Flat eyes meet Agee’s as he turns away, leading him to his command center.

  Grim has never have considered himself a coward but now he wonders, as he searches for any reason not to return to the Royal wing. Finally, he can put it off no longer. The guards give him a stiff nod, as he passes, neither meeting his eye. Entering the private living area, he finds lights dimmed, doors closed.

  Realizing how late it truly is he enters the girls’ room first, finding them fast asleep. Tucking their covers in close, he leans down, kissing each one, as it has become his nightly ritual. Quietly he closes the door before looking to his own.

  Will she welcome him? Demand he sleep elsewhere? Would she now look for another male? One who will better understands her needs. Agee had explained why she’d wanted to stop at the glassmakers, told him what had happened. Grim would be speaking with his glassmaker but he could find no fault in Agee’s actions. Everything had been done as Grim would have demanded, if he had been there, and there is the problem. He hadn’t been.

  He’d assured Agee that his position was secure, that he found no fault in his actions and that he had reacted properly. Now he just has to make his Queen understand what had caused him to react as he had. Pushing open the door, he finds the room empty. Striding to the cleansing room, he finds it empty also. Quickly he discovers Lisa is nowhere on the floor.

  “Where is the Queen?” Grim demands of the guards as he storms down the stairs. Both step away from the enraged King.

  “She…She is in the garden sire.” Caius finally stutters.

  “Alone!” He demands.

  “No sire. Laud and Vanya accompanied her. She made sure we realized the princess’ were sleeping upstairs.” Saying nothing, Grim moves to the garden doors.

  Chapter Nine

  Sitting on a large rock, Lisa looks up as the two moons of Luda. She came outside to escape, only to realize there is no escape. Not for her, not for her girls, they were under Grim’s control. Sighing, she pulls her legs to her chest, resting her forehead on her knees, she closes her eyes. What really happened today? Why had Grim reacted like that? The sound of approaching footsteps has her looking down the path, seeing Grim, she looks away.

  Grim nods to the guards before approaching his Queen, letting them know they can step back. Lisa looking away from him has his heart aching, several feet away from her he stops and waits…and waits…

  “Lisa…” He finally breaks the silence.

  “What Grim?” She isn’t going to let him off the hook. She’s mad. She has the right to be.

  “Why are you out here?” He forces himself to ask.

  “Because I can’t be in there right now…not with you.” She replies honestly.

  “You are leaving me?” That finally pulls her eyes to him.

  “Do you really have so little faith in me Grim?” She asks torn between anger and hurt. “That at the first sign of trouble I would cut and run?”

  “You left.” He fires back.

  “To walk in the garden! With two guards! God!” Surging to her feet, she runs frustrated hands through her hair, walking away from him.

  “I don’t want to fight with you my Lisa.” Grim says, fighting for control.

  “Well that’s too bad because I want to fight with you!” She rounds on him. “What you did today was wrong Grim! I have two children. I won’t be treated like one!”

  “I know you are not a child.” He bites out angrily.

  “Do you? Then why are you treating me like one? Why do I need your approval to go somewhere?” Grim stares at her not wanting to answer. “Answer me Grim!” She demands stomping her foot.

  “Because I wasn’t with you!” He roars, his control finally breaking. “It matters not that there was no threat! There could have been and I wasn’t there to protect you!”

  “I didn’t need you to protect me I needed you to trust me!” Lisa yells back.

  “You are mine! You will always be protected!” Grim suddenly realizes they are standing nose to nose and she is not afraid of him. He is stunned. “You are not afraid of me.” He can’t believe it…his warriors cower before his rage.

  “Why would I be?” Taking a deep breath, she takes a few steps away, missing his stunned look. “Did you know that Mark and I rarely fought?” She asks softly.

  “You have said what a good male he was.” Grim’s honor forces him to admit it, knowing he will equal her Mark.

  “He was.” Turning, she can see he thinks she’s comparing them and in a way, she is. “But he wasn’t perfect Grim.” He looks at her sharply and she gives him a sad smile.

  “Did I ever tell you how we met?”

  “No.” He isn’t sure he wants to know.

  “I'd just turned fifteen, he was eighteen, and my car…transport broke down.” She looks to see him nod he understands. “Mark stopped to help me. He was so nice…so handsome, that I was in love with him before he got me home." Grim sees her eyes soften at the memory and his stomach clinches. "My parents were not at all happy.” Grim can’t hide his surprise and Lisa laughs softly.

  “You’re surprised.”

  “Yes I thought…”

  “That until he got sick our life was perfect? Easy? That we never fought?”

  “Yes…you said…”

  “That we rarely fought, not that we didn’t or shouldn’t have, just that we rarely did.”

  “I don’t understand.” He gives her a confused look.

  “I know. I’d like to explain…if you are willing to listen." She closes the distance between them. "We need to understand each other Grim, trust each other, if we’re going to make this work.”

  “I would like to know my Lisa.” Nodding she continues.

  “My parents weren’t happy when Mark and I started dating.” Seeing his look, she explains. “Dating is when human males and females interact, so they can get to know one another.”

  “Alone? You were alone with him!” Grim can’t hide his shock or anger.

  “Sometimes...It’s the way things are done on Earth Grim.” With his jaw clenching, he nods jerkily for her to continue. “It wasn’t Mark they didn’t like, it was our age difference. He was nearly four years older than me but I wouldn’t give him up.” The look in her eyes has Grim’s breath catching.

  “I refused give him up because I knew in my heart he was my future, my truth if you will. I just knew. God I was so young.” She lets the memories flow over her. “Everyone tried to tear us apart. I was too young they’d say. He was too old. We were too different. Everyone…family…friends…kept telling me I was wrong that I didn’t know what I was doing, couldn’t know what I really wanted, but I did. I knew we were meant to be together but that didn’t mean we didn’t have problems, fights.” Pausing she remembers. “Maybe not in the beginning, in the beginning I was so naïve, so in love, that I thought Mark was perfect, it was only after Carly was born that I started to get upset about how he treated me.”

  “He mistreated you!” Grim can’t hide his shock.

  “Never!” He sees the truth in her eyes. “But in many ways Mark still saw me as that fifteen year old girl he met and he wanted me to stay that way. Can you understand that?” She waits for his nod. “But I wasn’t that girl anymore…I'd grown up, I was a twenty-one year old woman, a mother, and I wanted to be treated that way. One night we fought about it…all night we fought. We hollered, we yelled, we cried, we made up and in the end we grew closer, understood each other better.”

  “You stayed with him.”

  “Of course I did. It was an argument Grim, not the end of the world.” Lisa gives him a disbelieving look. “You really thought I was leaving you tonight…because of a fight.”

  “It is what…”

/>   “A Tornian female would do.” Lisa finishes for him, her anger growing once again. “I thought we were past that, damn it! I’m not like your Tornian females Grim! When are you going to believe that? They are the most self-centered, selfish people I have ever met and I haven’t even met one yet! God!” Frustrated she turns away from him.

  “Lisa…”

  “Not ‘my Lisa’?” She asks looking over he-r shoulder.

  “You will always be my Lisa but I didn’t think you would want me to say it.”

  “Are trying to please me Grim?”

  “Always.” He readily admits.

  “Don’t.”

  “What?” She sees she’s confused him.

  “Don’t. You can’t do it. You lose yourself when you try to always please someone else, I know.” He sees a deep sadness enter her eyes.

  “My Lisa…”

  “Can I finish telling you about Mark? You may not like it.” She warns.

  “It is what has made you my Lisa, I want to know everything.” Nodding she looks back to the moons…for some reason, they comfort her.

  “So Mark and I grew, grew up, grew closer, sometimes we’d fight just so we could make up.”

  “I don’t understand? What’s make up?”

  “Make up. Forgive each other. Have sex.” She sees he’s still confused. “Join.” Grim’s eyes flare. “Make up sex can be really good Grim.” She gives him a sexy smile.

  “Make up sex.” He tries out the words.

  “Yeah.” Her smile fades. “But then he got sick and we didn’t fight anymore.”

  “You had no reason to fight.” He nods understanding.

  “Oh there were plenty of reasons to fight.” She corrects him. “He made decisions I didn’t agree with, decisions that affected both of us. I should have called him on them but I didn't, he was already struggling so much, can you understand that? His illness had already taken away so much from him…his ability to be my husband, to be male…” Lisa’s eyes fill with tears. “I couldn’t take anything else away from him.”

  “He did things you didn’t like?” Grim can’t hide his shock.

  “Yes and I would say nothing. I’d hide my anger, my pain and it would build until I either had to vent or explode.” She looks back to moons. “At first I’d break dishes, lots and lots of dishes but that only meant I had to clean up the mess.” She shrugs at the memory. “Later, when things got really bad, I’d get up in the middle of the night, go to the garage, and scream. Some nights I didn’t think I’d ever stop. I was so anger, so hurt, so alone.” Finally, she lets her tears fall for all she’d lost. “Then I’d get angry that I was angry. Can you understand that Grim? Being angry at yourself because you are angry?” She doesn’t wait for his answer. “And then Peter showed up.”

  “Mark’s brother.” He steps close gently wiping away her tears with his thumbs. Tears do not belong on his Lisa’s face.

  “Yes. I thought he’d come to help but he was only interested in helping himself.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Peter liked to live well and no longer had the means too. That’s why he was trying to take the girls that night. If he had control of them then he have control their trust funds.” She can see his confusion. “A trust fund is a lot like your diamonds, it has great value.”

  “Your Mark…provided well for you and your girls?”

  “Very.”

  “And Peter only wanted them because of that value.”

  “Yes. He didn’t love them. Hell, he barely knew their names. If you hadn’t gone back for them…” She can’t hide her fear at what could have happened.

  “They are safe my Lisa.” He comforts.

  “Yes they are, because of you but I can’t go back to being that woman Grim…that female. The one that stands back and just agrees with everything the man she loves does and says. Especially, when she knows he’s wrong. It will destroy me.”

  “I love you my Lisa. You are my life, I have to protect you.”

  “And I want you to Grim, I need you too. I’m not a fool. I know I don’t stand a chance if one of your warriors wants to hurt me, but that’s not what happened today. Today it was about me making a decision, a decision that in no way affected my security.”

  “I wasn’t there to protect you my Lisa.”

  “I know, but there will be times when you won’t be, Grim. You have to trust me, in me, and in the males you’ve assigned to protect us, that we can do what’s necessary until you can get there.”

  “I can only promise to try my Lisa.” He tells her.

  “That’s all I ask Grim.” She gives him a naughty grin. “So do you want to make up now?” Grim’s eyes flash.

  “Let us return to our Chamber, my Lisa.” He’s surprised when she steps out of his reach, a playful smile on her lips, unbuttoning her shirt.

  “Lisa!” Grim hisses quickly looks behind him. “What are you doing?”

  “Have the guards turn away Grim.” She tells him as she pulls the shirt out of her pants.

  “What?” His mind won't function as her pale creamy skin glows under Luda’s moons.

  “Unless you what them to get an eyeful of what is yours.” When he still doesn’t move she let the shirt fall revealing lace covered breasts, jerking Grim activates his comm, ordering the guards to turn around.

  “See, that wasn’t so hard.” She walks up caressing his shaft. “But something is.” She teases.

  “Lisa…” He groans.

  “You are the only male I want Grim, but I want it all, the good…the bad…the happy and the sad. I want to stand beside you, not behind. I want to be your Queen, Grim.” Grim can only watch as her pants fall away. “Here under the moons of Luda, with the Raptor watching, I want you to make me yours and only yours.”

  With the golden light of Luda’s moons raining down on them, Grim lifts Lisa, capturing her lips in a hungry kiss, wrapping her legs around her King, Lisa dives into the kiss. This is what she needs. This is the male she’s always needed.

  “Grim…” She gasps, as he rips her remaining garments away, lowering her to the ground.

  “You are mine Lisa!” He growls, tearing at his pants, he releases his engorged shaft setting it at her entrance. “Tell me!”

  Lisa looks up in awe at the male above her. He is bathed in the light of the moons, his eyes glittering like Gahan’s Raptor. He truly is the Raptor…her Raptor.

  “Tell me!” He demands again, refusing to move.

  “I am your Grim! Only yours!” With the moons of Luda as witnesses, the King claims his Queen.

  Waking Lisa reaches out to find Grim, only to find his spot cool, telling her he's been gone for a while. Stretching her arms over her head, she smiles. Grim really liked making up, insisting they make up repeatedly. No wonder she’s tired but the girls will be up soon and Gahan will be here after midday with Grim's gift. She also wants to speak with Agee about her idea for her Guards symbol, rising she starts her day.

  "So what do you think?" Lisa waits as Agee stares at the drawing she's done. It is the black medallion the King’s Elite Guard currently wears. Embellished to imitate Gahan's Raptor using Miki's crayons.

  "My Queen?" Agee looks back to her.

  "I know it's not a very good rendition, Gahan will be able to do better, but I wanted your opinion before I approached him."

  "My opinion?" She can tell she's confused him.

  "On whether you and your warriors would be willing to wear this,” She gestures to the drawing. “As the symbol of the Queen's Elite Guard."

  "You want this for your Guard?" Agee can't hide his shock. He assumed this was meant for her and the young ones, symbolizing to whom they belong too, not her Guard.

  "Well yes..." She looks at him uncertainly.

  "It has charoite in it!" He can’t hide his astonishment.

  "Uh…Okay..."

  "Charoite is an expensive gem, my Queen.” He tries to make her understand. “Even with the small amount used in the R
aptor's eyes."

  "So you’re saying the warriors won't want to wear it?" Lisa's shoulders sag in disappointment. She'd been so excited about this.

  "No!" Agee bursts out causing Lisa to jump. "No my Queen, that's not what I'm saying at all." He looks from the drawing, back to her, forcing himself to control his tone. "Any warrior would be honored to wear such a symbol! The prestige of having two charoites..."

  "Four." Lisa relaxes at his reply. "This would be for everyday and this," She pulls out an identical drawing with the addition of its rim being colored with the purple of the House of Luanda. "This would be for formal occasions."

  "Formal?"

  "When you wear your dress uniform." Lisa sees his confusion. "Am I wrong? Don't you have two uniforms, one for a day like today and then another if there is an important event, like something dealing with the Emperor or other Kings?" She sees Agee finally understands.

  "You mean a court uniform. Yes every guard would have this." Agee looks at his Queen, wondering if she truly understands what she is giving her Guard. It’s more than a symbol, it let’s all know her opinion on her warrior’s worth, which is great. It gives them a greater chance of attracting a female.

  "Good. So it meets with your approval?" She asks again.

  "My approval my Queen?" Agee can't believe she has to ask.

  "You are the Captain of my Guard, your opinion is important to me. I can't approach Grim with this, not until the Raptor is delivered. And until I talk to Gahan I’m not even sure if it can be made but none of that matters if you and your warriors won't wear it."

  "There won’t be a warrior on Luda that won’t want to wear your symbol my Queen." Agee's truth easily heard.

  "Will the King’s Guard?” She looks at him uncertainly. “I was also thinking that the King's symbol could be updated, with just the eyes for everyday and the eyes and rim for formal...court wear." She pulls out two more sheets. "It would link the guards when needed but still give them their individuality. Would they mind?" Lisa watches as Agee and the guard at the door exchanging a look. "Agee..." She prompts.