Dark Paradise (4 page)

Then all was silent.

Saint and Satan were satisfied with the blood they had taken that night and went easily into their sheaths at her hips.

Mach walked to her and grabbed her hands. He examined her raw palms, his big hands nearly swallowing her smaller ones.

Elder holstered a short sword and stood with legs spread and arms folded, watching them. He said nothing.

She began to tremble in the cool early-morning mist and jerked her hands away.
Dammit
. Why was it that she was always fine in battle, but afterward, she lost it? “I’m fine.” Embarrassed at her whispered, hoarse voice, she turned away.

Mach wasn’t about to let her hide from him. He grasped her shoulder and pulled her back around. “We have salve for your hands.”

“I don’t need it.”

Elder frowned. “Damn you, girl, stop being so pigheaded about every kindness offered to you.”

But a breakdown was looming, and she wanted to be nowhere near them when she went from a knife-wielding warrior to a whimpering, sobbing female. “I…” But there was really nothing to say.

She turned and ran.

And even before she stumbled and fell to the ground, her sobs clawed their way past the lump in her throat and rose into the air, a sharp, horrified keening that she could do nothing about. She hadn’t the strength.

She heard the men murmuring to each other, and then she was lifted into the air and crushed in the most comforting way she’d ever known between their two big bodies.

“We’ll take care of you,” Elder whispered, and she felt herself being divested of her weapons. Strangely she held no fear that they were going to steal Saint and Satan. She knew better. A quick bond had already been forged there that night.

She had no idea where or when she’d lost her pack but had no doubts it would be safe come morning.

As would she.

Chapter Four

When they began peeling off her clothes with nimble fingers, she came alive. She managed to leave deep teeth marks in Mach’s arm and came close to scratching Elder’s eyes out before they got her naked.

She caught sight of a frightening eagerness deep inside Mach’s eyes, and a calmer, but no less dark shadow inside Elder’s blue gaze.

They were a heady combination.

Mach lost patience with her before Elder did, and with a rough, gravelly voice, he sent the other man for rope.

“Rope!” She struggled in earnest then. “No!”

Mach planted his hand between her breasts and pushed her down, holding her captive as Elder fetched the rope. “Stop.”

“You know people don’t survive long out here if they’re injured, Cin.” Elder knelt down beside her. “We’ll tend to your wounds, and then you’ll sleep no matter how many poes you’ve eaten.”

She gaped. “How did you know?”

Mach raised a dark eyebrow, but Elder answered her. “We’ve been following you since you left us at Manitua. Nothing but a recently ingested poe would generate such energy.”

“Then how did you stay awake to follow me?”

“We’re strong,” Mach said and actually thumped his big chest.

“We don’t need no steenkin’ poe,” Elder said, smiling.

They didn’t mean to fuck her? Just to heal her wounds? She swallowed hard, ignoring the fleeting disappointment. She eyed the lengths of rope in Elder’s hands. “Get away from me with those.”

He shook his head, slowly. “Nope, darling.”

Mach opened a tin of salve. “Give me your hands.”

She held out her burning palms. “How’s that for cooperation?”

“Good. Good girl.”

“
Fuck
you.”

Elder chuckled, but Mach glared and began dabbing bits of greasy salve on her hands. The numbness was immediate.

“That’s…good. Thank you.”

Mach stared at her for a second, as though unable to believe his ears. Then, he cleared his throat and looked as uncomfortable as she felt. “Welcome.”

She pursed her lips and looked away. Surely they knew the first chance she got she’d kick the crap out of them and run, because despite her attempts at being nice, they tied her anyway.

“We won’t hurt you, Cin,” Elder said.

Mach seemed unconcerned with explanations, and simply held her as Elder tied her wrists to a skinny, half-dead tree.

Then Elder went for her ankles. He managed to wrap one rope around her right ankle and attach it to a sturdy root, then sat back to look at Mach. “We have no more rope.”

Mach shrugged. “No matter.”

Fury spread through her, with a healthy dose of fear mixed in. “I don’t need tending! What are you, a fucking doctor?”

Elder looked at her calmly. “Yes. I am.”

Well, hell. She was attracted to the two, no doubt about it. Elder was a gorgeous, sexy man, and Mach was… Mach was incredible. And they were going to tie her down and look over her body with a magnifying glass and a detached gaze.

It was humiliating. She redoubled her efforts to gain her release but only succeeded in rubbing half the skin of her burned palms. “Leave me alone, fucking jerks!”

“Do you think she has it?” Elder looked at Mach, his hands hard on her arms.

“Maybe.”

She stopped struggling, confused. “Have what?”

They stared down at her. “How many humans have you seen in the last six weeks, Cin?”

She tried to shrug, remembered she was bound, and glared instead. “I don’t know. Two?”

“You probably haven’t heard then. There’s a nasty virus spreading through all the mining moons, not just Ripindal. No one knows yet where it started. It’s deadly. The Gamlogi have sent in housekeeping.”

She felt dread start low in her belly. “Housekeeping is here?”

Elder’s hard grip gentled on her leg. “The only way to halt the virus is to kill those affected, honey. And you really don’t want housekeeping to do it. We’ve been told some pretty nasty things are going on. If you have it, we’d give you a quick death. It’d be a mercy.”

“But I’m not sick.” Her dread had turned into full-blown fear. She’d heard some nasty things about the Gamlogi’s housekeepers too. “I’m not at all sick.”

“We’ll check.” Mach’s voice was uncompromising.

“How?”

“The disease presents with small, almost unnoticeable, raised black pimples on the skin. That’s the beginning,” Elder said, his voice soft.

She sighed, relieved. “I have no such markings. I would have noticed.”

“We need to check you, Cin. You can’t see your own back.”

“Fine then. Just…un-fucking-
tie
me so I can turn over.”

Mach’s gaze never wavered, but Elder looked away. “If you have the pimples, we’ll have to end you. We’ll untie you once we’ve finished the inspection and find you healthy.”

Inspection
. “You’re a fucking robot, mister.”

He said nothing, but his lips tightened. He glanced at Mach. “Let’s roll her over.”

“Wait!”

They stared at her. “Well?”

“Why didn’t you…
inspect
me when you first saw me?”

Elder laughed. “You had a couple of badass knives and a suspicious attitude, honey. We didn’t want to have to hurt you. We knew there’d come a better time.”

She swallowed hard, trying to ignore the fact that she was naked and helpless before them. Elder, the more gentlemanly of the two, kept his gaze from wandering lower than her chin. Mach, however, didn’t even try.

She caught him with his hot stare on her naked breasts, and automatically she jerked at the ropes that held her wrists. “Bastard!”

But he let his gaze wander lower. “You shave.” He tilted his head in puzzlement, a movement she was already becoming familiar with, and frowned. “Why?”

“None of your fucking business,” she said. “Asshole.”

Elder lost some of his courteous attitude and joined Mach in his rude but completely clinical commentary about her personal hygiene habits. “Under her arms, even.”

“Oh my God,” she said. “Unbelievable. Just go on and kill me now. Put me out of my misery. Assholes.” But she could feel her nipples hardening and the moistness gathering between her legs as they continued to stare at her shaved pussy.

Shit
. She’d always been a bit of a freak, and knew she had some kinky weaknesses when it came to sex, but she’d learned fast it was best to keep some things to oneself.

Mach suddenly jerked, his nose in the air, sniffing.

“Mach?” Elder asked, his voice soft.

“Check her.”

Cin watched as the two men stared at each other, the silent communication passing between them so thick she could have taken a bite of it. “What? What is it?”

Finally, the two men moved. Mach pulled her toward him as far as he could, while Elder checked her back and despite knowing she was disease free, she held her breath until Elder murmured, “She’s clean.”

A sharp stick snapped beneath her body when they pushed her to her back once more, and she grimaced. “Ouch. Okay, enough. I’m not sick. Untie me. And if I was sick, wouldn’t you idiots catch it from me, being this close and everything?”

“Mach can’t catch it, and I seem to be immune as well. We’ve already been exposed.”

But Mach still watched her, his eyes narrowed and black, his nose still twitching. What the hell was he, an animal? “What the fuck are you sniffing?” She tugged on the ropes, eager for freedom. “Are you some kind of dog or something?”

But once again, Mach looked at her bare pussy, and she clenched her legs as heat shot through her.

He gave his head a hard shake, his nostrils flaring. “Fuck.”

Elder leaned toward Mach, his voice tight. “What is it?”

“Her, Elder.
Her
.”

Elder’s brow knitted as he glanced at Cin. “What about—” Then his face cleared. “Ah. I see. It’s not just us.”

Mach shook his head back and forth, slowly. “No.”

Elder smiled, but it wasn’t a smile that made her feel calm. On the contrary. The men knew something, and suddenly she realized what it was they knew. Mach had scented
her
. Her desire, her need, her want.

She groaned and closed her eyes. “Get the fuck off me.” But she knew better.

Mach grabbed her free ankle and pulled it away from her restrained leg, opening her so widely it was, for a moment, painful. “You want us the way we want you.”

He dipped his fingers into her wetness, rubbing her own liquid into her flesh. His long fingers pinched at her clit, plucking it and massaging with a force that wrung from her a shrill cry of denial.

But he knew what she wanted. He’d smelled it on her. “Are you a fucking
dog
?” she asked again, almost unable to breathe or even think.

“Don’t fear your needs,” Elder whispered, suddenly lying beside her, his deep voice in her ear. “Don’t be ashamed of your desire.”

“How did he know?” she asked. She meant the words for Elder, but her stare was on Mach.

He knelt above her, dark and dangerous and full of energy, and plied his fingers between her legs with an expertise she’d seldom felt.

The night of violence and blood and fear had left her in need of a washing in the nearest creek, but the miners of Ripindal grew accustomed to such circumstances. Her body would not disgust these men, any more than theirs would disgust her.

Still, she was a woman and would have preferred a perfumed bath in the hot springs, with a sharp knife at hand to slice off whatever stubble had grown out, and a minty cream to wash out her mouth.

But Mach ran a finger inside her and began a tormenting exploration, and thoughts of bathing fled. Elder slid his hand over her ribs and squeezed a breast until it bulged from his hard grip, then lowered his head and licked the distended nipple.

She groaned at the mix of pain and pleasure, at being so helpless and bound and forced to submit to their hard caresses. She was somehow sure they would stop if she asked them and was afraid to find out.

Mach moved quickly to kneel between her spread legs. Meeting her eyes for a brief second, he ripped loose the rope that held her ankle, then slid his hands beneath her ass and lifted her lower body off the ground.

Her legs bent at the knee and fell open farther, and she gasped as his heated gaze seared her throbbing flesh. For a long, torturous moment, he merely stared at her bare sex. With a quickness that made her scream from the shock of it, he rammed his mouth against her throbbing pussy.

She was unaccustomed to such eagerness, such
passion
. There was no tenderness in his attentions—he did not tease her or ease into it. He charged into his eating with a wild abandon that amazed her, even as her orgasm exploded.

But if he was an animal, so was she. She screamed and pulled at the ropes that held her arms over her head, arching her back and pushing her nipple more deeply into Elder’s warm mouth.

She wrapped her legs around Mach’s neck and held him prisoner against her. He gave her no respite, and she wanted none. “Harder!”

He didn’t seem to need her demands; his mouth was scarily fierce on her tender, swollen flesh, but she urged him on anyway. She beat at his muscled back with her heels, her voice hoarse, angry.

Mach bit at her smooth lips and sucked her clit with so much force she was afraid. But the fear added fuel to the fire of her need, and she screamed as another orgasm ripped through her. As she writhed, her voice catching in her raw throat, he pushed his tongue inside her, swirling and stabbing and tasting.

He pulled his mouth from her pussy, replacing it with his fingers. He rolled his thumb over her throbbing clit. “Come, little one.”

She did.

When she was spent, they left her tied and naked on the ground, and not once did she think to demand otherwise. Relaxed, she drifted, the poe’s energy spent with her wild rush of fighting and climaxing.

She felt one of them freeing her arms from above her head and then retying her wrists in front of her. It was more comfortable that way, and she didn’t open her eyes or try to fight. She was too tired. Too…content.

Seconds, or minutes, or hours later she felt a soft brush of fingers on her sex and was coaxed into a long, slow orgasm. She kept her eyes closed and embraced the pleasure, the helplessness, the safety. She could relax.

But only for a little while.