“Tyronian. W-W-When did you get back?”
Tyronian almost smiled at the stutter, a sure sign that she was unnerved.
“This evening,” he said, closing the door behind him. “Care to enlighten me why you’re here and not at home?” he asked, looking down at her when he came to a stop in front of her. She licked her lips nervously, an action that made his cock twitch to life. The things he could make her do with those lips . . .
“I-I was j-just . . .” Her breath faltered when he pulled her closer to him, nuzzling the top of her head and breathing in her scent.
“You were just . . . what?” he prompted, enjoying how his proximity affected her.
“Aggod is sick, so I j-j-just thought that I’d—”
“You just thought that you would avoid me by hiding out here instead of being in bed with your husband?”
Her silence told him that he was right.
“You can’t escape me, Namoriee. No matter how hard you try. If you run, I’ll catch you. If you hide, I’ll find you.” His hands traveled down the length of her, relishing in the tremble he felt at his touch.
She gave out the slightest moan, so quiet he wouldn’t have heard it if he didn’t have his lips against her throat. Her skin tasted salty and sweet.
It was addicting.
He gripped her hips, pulling her close enough so that she could feel the bulge in his pants, his body’s natural response to her presence.
“You’ll find that the man I was before is gone. He would have let you try to avoid him without doing anything about it. He was a man who wanted someone bad enough that he was willing to wait for her to grow up without a man binding her . . . that man is dead.”
“D-D-Dead?” Her voice was positively breathy.
“Dead,” he confirmed, nipping the juncture of her neck and shoulder.
“What man am I looking at now, then?” She shivered when his tongue apologized for the nip.
He pulled back and smiled, but it wasn’t a nice smile. It was primitive, possessive, and completely venereal.
“One that has been starving for two winters, which is a lot of time to figure out exactly what he’ll do once he has the woman he’s wanted. And believe me, she’ll get just as much pleasure out of the experience as he will.”
He pulled away completely from her then, looking around Aggod’s hut. His eyes landed on the pale form of the healer, who did, in fact, look sickly. Aggod was normally a light sleeper, something she had to be as the healer of the Izayges warriors. The fact that she didn’t wake up during their exchange was troubling.
“How long has she been like this?”
“Days.”
Tyronian frowned, his concern for the healer growing. He’d have to inform Xavier.
“You can stay here for the night,” he relented. “But make no mistake, wife, come tomorrow night, and every night after, you’ll be sleeping next to me in our bed.”
Not giving her time to pull away, he claimed her lips with his. Before his self-control vanished, he pulled away from her instead of throwing her down on the floor and burying himself deep inside of her like he wanted to. He brushed one last kiss to her lips before he spun around and left.
True to his word, Tyronian made sure that Namoriee slept in their bed every night since his return. Confusingly, he hadn’t lain with her since their wedding night weeks ago, even after everything he’d said.
She refused to admit that she felt almost reminiscent with longing for his touch. Namoriee opened the door to Leawyn’s shelter and watched in amusement as she tried to wrestle Xillik into clothes. Xillik was in the stage where he refused to wear pants or his napkin diaper. It wasn’t uncommon to find him running around the tribe naked, having found some way of getting out of his cloth confinements.
“Need some help?”
Leawyn sagged with relief at the sight of her. “He won’t stay still!” Leawyn exclaimed, tears of frustration building in her eyes. “He won’t stop squirming, and I can’t, I can’t . . .”
Namoriee’s eyes rounded when Leawyn promptly burst into tears. She rushed over to her.
“I’m a horrible mother!” Leawyn wailed when Namoriee wrapped her arms around her, gently guiding her to sit down.
“You’re not a horrible mother,” Namoriee soothed, keeping an eye on Xillik, who had used his mother’s meltdown to slip off the bed.
“I am!” Leawyn cried. “I can’t even get my own son dressed, and even my husband can’t stand the sight of me now!”
Namoriee didn’t know how she went from Xillik hating her to Xavier not being able to stand the sight of her, but she wasn’t going to comment on that. Besides, she highly doubted the last part. This pregnancy was harder for Leawyn, and she seemed to be more emotional than she had been with her last.
“That’s not true,” Namoriee told her, rubbing her arm. “Why would you say that?” In her peripheral vision, she saw Xillik now trying to get out of his diaper.
“Last night he wouldn’t lie with me.” Leawyn turned to her, tears coursing down her cheeks. “Xavier never does that! Half the time, I could barely walk by the end of the day with how often he would take me. He’s never denied me before, never!”
If the whole village didn’t already know that fact, it would probably have been way more information than Namoriee needed about Leawyn’s relationship with her husband.
“Leawyn, you’re with child. He probably does not want to risk you miscarrying again.”
Immediately, Namoriee knew she’d made a terrible mistake.
“What?” Leawyn sniffled, her tears subsiding in her confusion. “I’ve never miscarried.”
Something about the look on her face must have given her away because, instantly, Leawyn’s body language changed.
“What did you mean by that, Namoriee?” Leawyn demanded.
Namoriee opened her mouth, trying to speak, to say something to cover up her error, but the words got caught. Leawyn shot to her feet (well, as much as she could while pregnant), bearing down on Namoriee with the full weight of her gaze.
“Why did you say that? Tell me!”
“I-I-I . . .” Her throat felt tight, making it impossible for her to speak around the panic choking her. “I-I didn’t m-mean . . .”
Could she really look Leawyn in the eyes and continue to lie to her like everyone else?
“Tell me,” Leawyn whispered. The fear in her voice . . . it was like she knew Namoriee was going to confirm something she felt deep inside her gut.
Leawyn’s shoulders slumped, and Namoriee knew that she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t lie to her anymore.
“It was early into your marriage,” Namoriee began with a tremor in her voice.
Leawyn slowly lowered herself back on the bed in a daze as Namoriee began to tell her everything.
“You want to do what?” Xavier asked incredulously.
Tyronian sighed. They were inside of the war hut, and he had just finished reporting back to Xavier about the small skirmish against the land poachers when he brought up his request.
“She’s struggling to accept our marriage. I think some time away together would help.”
Xavier leaned back in his chair, cocking an eyebrow at him. “Who cares if she’s struggling? She’s your wife, and you claimed her. Nothing she can do about it—you either make her accept it, or she’ll learn it on her own.”
Tyronian rolled his eyes. Xavier said it like it was the most obvious thing in the land.
Not that he could say he was surprised at his cousin’s response; it was what Xavier did with Leawyn, after all. He didn’t have much compassion, and in the rare occurrence that he did, he only bestowed it to Leawyn, or his son.
“I’m not like you,” Tyronian pointed out. It had always been Xavier’s way to take something he wanted without question. “I don’t want to force her to love me. I want her to do that on her own.”
Xavier grunted, apparently disgusted. “If that’s true, why did you marry her if your plan was to woo her?
The answer to that was simple: he hadn’t wanted to give her a chance to fall in love with someone else. He’d staked his ownership over her the moment he’d killed for her.
“I don’t need to explain myself to you.” Tyronian sniffed. “All I need is your permission.”
Xavier smirked, an expression that said he knew he was right even if Tyronian didn’t want to admit it.
“Do whatever you want.” Xavier shrugged, sitting forward to tidy up his desk. “Don’t know why you bother asking—it’s not like you cared about my permission,” he grumbled.
“True,” Tyronian grinned.
The door slammed open, and they both lurched in surprise. Xavier stood up when he saw it was Leawyn, a furious expression on her face as she marched over to him. Namoriee was quick on her heels, panic splayed across her face.
“Leawyn?”
“Namoriee?”
The names came out simultaneously.
“You bastard!” Leawyn yelled, rounding the table and slapping Xavier across the face.
Tyronian’s eyes bulged, his jaw dropping in surprise.
“You lying, good-for-nothing . . . !” she raged as she attacked him, her palm raining slaps on his face and body.
“Leawyn, please!” Namoriee cried, moving in as if to stop her. Tyronian intercepted her by grabbing her around her waist and holding her back at the same time Xavier gripped Leawyn’s wrists mid-slap and herded her against the wall.
“Stop it, Leawyn, before you hurt yourself,” Xavier demanded angrily, his grip on her wrists tightening to keep her pinned to the wall.
“You mean before I miscarry?” Leawyn snapped back furiously. Tyronian and Xavier stiffened in shock. He looked down at Namoriee, at the terror on her face, and instantly he knew what this was about.
Namoriee had told her about the baby she’d lost, and how they all kept it a secret.
To Xavier’s credit, he didn’t react. He simply stared down at Leawyn obdurately. “You need to get ahold of yourself,” he told her calmly.
“You were never going to tell me, were you?” Leawyn’s lip quivered with emotion.
“No.”
“You snake! Let go of me!” Leawyn hissed, struggling against his hold. “You disgust me!”
Xavier was keeping his temper under control for now, but Tyronian could tell that his patience was wearing thin.
“What good would it have done you for me to tell you? Huh?” Xavier demanded, giving Leawyn’s wrists a slight jerk. “You know what it was like then. I couldn’t change the outcome, and neither could you. I saved you heartbreak.”
“I deserved to know!” Leawyn screamed back at him furiously. “It was my baby!”
Xavier and Leawyn seemed to have forgotten that they weren’t alone in the room. Tyronian could feel Namoriee shaking in his arms, her fear for her friend evident. He could do nothing but hold her against him tighter as they watched the spectacle play out in front of them.
They were both no stranger to Leawyn and Xavier’s fighting; the couple’s love was as volatile and explosive as a volcano. Their pattern was simple: they fought explosively, then made up by taking their residual anger out on each other’s bodies.
But this time . . . Tyronian wasn’t quite sure if that would work. There was a difference in the air, and Tyronian was worried about what this might mean for Namoriee.
He didn’t think his cousin would appreciate that she broke her vow of silence—even if she was Tyronian’s wife.
“You deserve to be taken over my knee and spanked for your insolence.”
“That won’t change anything,” Leawyn sneered.
“You’re mine to do with as I wish.” Xavier slid her wrists up higher on the wall. “That won’t ever change.”
“You lied to me,” Leawyn choked out quietly, blinking against her tears. “After the war, you said there were no more secrets between us. That we were going to start over. I believed you, and you lied to me. You haven’t changed, and I was a fool to trust you.”
The atmosphere thickened almost unbearably after Leawyn’s remark, and protective awareness started slithering down Tyronian’s spine, making him tense.
“Everybody out,” Xavier ordered in an ominous tone, his eyes never wavering from their war with Leawyn’s. Tyronian wasted no time and started to lead Namoriee away with one hand on her lower back and the other around her elbow, ushering her resisting form to the door.
“No, wait!” Namoriee cried helplessly. “Please don’t punish her. It was me, all me. You can punish me!”
“Shut up, Namoriee,” Tyronian gritted out behind clenched teeth, tightening his grip on her.
Angry eyes shot over to them. “Control your woman, or I’ll do it for you,” Xavier threatened malevolently.
Over my dead body, Tyronian thought. But nonetheless . . .
Namoriee screeched when he lifted her up with one arm wrapped around her waist and hauled her thrashing form the rest of the way out.
“Stop it!” he growled once the door slammed shut behind them.
“How can you just leave them!” Namoriee yelled, still wiggling in his grp. “Xavier, he—”
“He won’t hurt her, not in her condition.”
As if to prove him wrong, a crash sounded behind them, followed by Leawyn’s yelp and the distinct sound of a palm meeting bare skin.
“Much,” he amended.
Namoriee was pale as his long legs quickly ate up the distance while he carried her away.
“This is all my fault,” Namoriee whimpered woefully. “I shouldn’t have told her.”
“You are right, you shouldn’t have,” he agreed crossly. “I’ll be sure to spank you later for it.” He looked down at her when she stiffened.
“Relax, I’ll make sure you’ll enjoy part of it, as reluctant as you’ll be. Much how Leawyn probably is right now.” His grin was as smug as it was lecherous.
“You’re despicable.”
“I know. It keeps me up at night.”