Shared Between Them (8 page)

Nothing about her was beautiful! Her cheeks were too pink, her eyes were too gold, her lips too red, and her teeth her were too white. She had freckles, which were disgusting, and because she was untouchable and out-casted, she could never find anyone who would touch her long enough to give her a piercing. Tattoos? She only had the ones that showed up on her fingers magically after her family died off one by one. She had nothing about her to attract any sort of a mate!

For a moment, she was sure that he was teasing her, but the more she looked at him, the more she decided that he was being sincere. They did, for whatever strange reason, think she was pretty.

“Besides, you're appearing like the type of girl who needs two husbands just to keep an eye on you,” he added off-handedly, causing the beginnings of her smile to stop in motion. He wasn't noticing; his attention was on Draevan now, who was still stomping around and muttering to himself on the other side of the room. “You okay over there, Drae?”

“
Three days
without food or water? What's wrong with these people?” was the response received. “That's it. I'm getting my war hammer. What I'll do with it, I don't know, but—!” his voice drained out as he stomped into an adjoining room.

Taric sighed and put a hand across her knee and squeezed it lightly. “Drink another cup of water,” he told her, handing her the mug she had refused earlier. “And we'll see how well you keep down the bit of orange. I want you to continue to rest and build up your strength for the journey home. I'll be back to watch over you as soon as I get Draevan to calm himself down.”

She gave a nod, and he turned his back on her to follow Draevan out to the adjoining room.

Years from now, she would still wonder what she was thinking when she pushed the covers down, tightened the belt around the robe the men had dressed her in, and looked for an escape route.

After all, if she didn’t escape, she was looking at a fate far worse than getting her clothes stripped off.

If she could only make it into the woods, she could be safe. Whether or not she could use her magic to hide herself away from them now that they were wed didn’t matter—she had grown up in those woods, and she felt she could evade anyone in the maze-like forest. It was astounding that the humans hadn’t landed themselves in the ample amounts of quicksand outside of the kingdom yet! But the problem was getting
to
the forest, and for that, she needed an escape route, and there didn’t seem to be any good ones that were readily available, save one. The window.

She grabbed at the nearest window and ran her fingers along it. She had seen other people open windows before, but she had never actually done it herself… She’d never had a window to open. Presently, she pulled up on the window pane until it creaked open from the bottom.

A flurry of wet, cold wind carrying a heavy mist blew into the room, and she poked her head outside and looked down. The stone seemed easy enough to scale down, especially after her experiences at rock and tree climbing, but she had never climbed anything that was this high from the ground. The height was enough to make anyone dizzy.

She turned and listened closely to make sure the men were still in deep conversation, yapping back and forth in their strange language. She took a deep breath then and, checking the security of her robe, she carefully reached her legs out the window and began the lengthy climb to the bottom. Not only had she decided that she’d do this, but she’d also decided she’d be on the ground before her husbands realized she was gone.

After she was a good twenty feet below her room’s window, she nearly slipped and fell to her death, because the tower was far more slippery than she’d thought it’d be, and her urgency to climb down in a hurry had made her movements jerky and clumsy. She looked down, recognized she still had over a hundred feet left to scale, and promptly felt like a fool. Hugging herself to the wall until her fingers turned white, she was beginning to grumble about how stupid she was. “
Really stupid
!” She took another step, and her foot couldn’t find another solid holding. She looked down and decided that, if she fell, she might actually go ‘splat!’ “I can’t do this!” she gasped to herself, trying to keep her body from shuddering. She could feel fear radiating from her body, chilling her even more than the air.

Sex with a couple of human men, she was deciding, on a nice cushy bed, in a nice warm room, for the rest of their lives, surely couldn’t be worse than death. Plus, she was an immortal and might even outlive them. Then again, maybe she wouldn’t after being bound together in the marriage ceremony—there was also a good probability that they now had the ability to live forever just like any other elf-kin; that’s why an elf-wife was such a good catch for a human in the first place!

But it didn’t matter. A thousand years as a slave was better than going ‘splat’ anywhere.

Was it disgusting to lower herself in such a manner to a race below her own, even though she was what the elves called 'untouchable'? Well, yes, of course it was. Still, shame was something she could live with, just as long as it came without the… well, going ‘splat’.

“Help me…” she whispered to nobody in particular. She knew her husbands were too far away to hear her and come to her aid, but somehow she found herself too frightened to even make too much noise, as if a scream’s vibration would shatter the very stone she was gripping onto for dear life.

“Kyra!”

She closed her eyes, not daring to look up. It was hard enough to claw her fingers into the stone. It didn’t change that she was intensely grateful that the men had looked out the window and seen her about thirty feet down and frozen there. Possibly, if they weren't too angry with her, they might even help.

“I'm coming for you. Hold on!” she soon heard Taric’s voice promise from somewhere above her. She tried to look up but was rewarded by small rocks and dust falling into her eyes, making her look down again.

Before she could believe it, Taric was next to her with a rope tied around his waist. He moved in a way so that his body covered hers and he slowly helped her peel away from the wall. “This was a poorly planned idea, wasn't it?” he lectured darkly when she turned and latched her arms and legs tightly around him until he was nearly gasping for breath. He looked up, “Alright, Draevan! I've got her!”

The rope pulled them both up, which was surprising. Together, they must have been quite a weight for Draevan, since Taric couldn’t have been too much lighter than him, even by himself!

“You could have probably gone right out the front door,” Taric grumbled curtly in her ear. “But no. No, you're too clever for that. You had to
scale down the building
. Oh, gods. You are in so much trouble; you can’t even
comprehend
how much.”

He was half right. She didn't comprehend it right then, perhaps, since she was feeling quite relieved at not having fallen to her death. However, comprehension seeped in as soon as Draevan pulled them through the window. When she saw the dark and animalistic look in his eyes, she actually did grasp how much trouble she was in:

She was in more trouble than she could handle.

* * *

With a final heave, Draevan watched as Taric pushed Kyra up through the tall window where she crawled back into the room. Kyra, her fingers gripping the floor desperately, reminded him of a half-drowned kitten with the way the heavy mist had wetted down her robe and white hair. He nearly forgot about Taric; all Draevan could think about was how much Kyra looked like someone who needed a man’s arms around her.

He and Taric had been discussing the proper care of Kyra now that she was awake. She was already surly-tongued with them, but neither of them thought she was in a well enough state to accept any sort of discipline. She hadn't even seemed ready to be made love to!

They had been eager to punish her for running away from them when she’d promised to stay that one day in the forest, but now that they had her for their own, utterly and legally, they didn’t feel the urge. Instead of discipline, they had decided that their new wife needed understanding and patience until she could assume her role as their wife. After the ordeal she’d just been through, they figured she needed some tender loving care more so than a firm-handed pair of husbands.

It was so quiet in the next room where they thought Kyra had still been that they'd assumed she was sleeping. They might have talked even longer if Draevan hadn't felt a strange feeling inside his stomach, as if his insides had been doused with ice water. It was a horrible feeling, and when he glanced up from his own abdomen, he saw Taric press his hand against his own stomach, uncannily feeling the same way at the same time.

It had been right then that they looked at each other and knew Kyra was in trouble. How they knew, Draevan couldn't be sure, but the feeling of dread was undeniable. Then they searched through an empty room only to finally recognize a chill coming from an open window that Draevan couldn't even get his shoulders through. Even Taric had barely been able to fit himself outside.

Now, he looked at her, and he felt a warm feeling come into his chest once again. As soon as Taric was half-way through the window, Draevan dropped the rope and rushed to grab ahold of Kyra. Her body was cold from the winter night air and the misty rain, and she was shaking as he held her to him.

Taric closed the window after he'd climbed in and looked at them, flipped some of his dark hair out of his eyes, then crossed his arms over his chest.

As soon as Draevan was assured she was uninjured, anger finally emerged and spread quickly through him. He pulled away from her, and she looked up at him with shiny, fearful eyes. Damn right they were fearful! She had been spanked before by him, and he knew that she wasn't stupid. She had to have known that he was going to make that last spanking look like patty-cake!

Draevan grabbed the fluffy belt around her robe and unknotted it with frustrated movements. She began to try to pull away from him, but he tugged her robe forward until she stood still enough that he could peel the robe off of her slender, pale shoulders,

To say she didn’t like being stripped was an understatement. Though they had already seen her naked, even as recently as an hour ago, she fought to keep the hem of her robe closed between her breasts. He quickly lost patience with her struggling and spun her around to land a firm, resounding slap on her round little bottom.

“Behave!” he warned her in a bark that was loud enough to startle her still for a moment, long enough for him to grab her robe and pull it straight off her body until she was standing naked in front of the fire, trying to cover her body as much as possible with her two small hands.

He was upset with her, but even so her beauty in the room’s firelight wasn’t at all lost on him. She was absolutely gorgeous naked, and he could feel his animalistic urges blister within him, but he ignored them. He would take her soon, but for now, she needed someone to lay down the law. Women needed structure and discipline; it was like his grandfather had always said. So, instead of pulling to the floor and rutting over her until both of them were sweaty and exhausted with satisfaction, Draevan grabbed her wrist and dragged her over to the bed.

Taric didn't say anything, merely trudged behind them supportively. When Draevan forced her up on the bed, she immediately tried to scurry to the far side, closing her hands around her bare, milky white breasts. “Please!” she cried. “I'm sorry! I really am! It was stupid, but I'm sorry!”

“Bend over the bed,” he growled, grabbing for his belt. “I am going to beat your ass until it
glows
!”

Her eyes rounded. “No, no!” she cried, putting up her hands. “P-please. I'll be good.”

Draevan ground his teeth as he looked up and down her body. His mind was beginning to fill with a million sexy scenarios. It was impossible for him to keep his eyes off of her; the way the lamplight reflected off of her naked skin, her flat tummy, the bend of her waist. He wished he wasn't angry with her. He wished he could just wrap his hands around her waist, push her to the mattress, and feed himself deep into her.

Unfortunately, letting her talk her way out of a good solid strapping was not a good precedent to set for their future. He pulled off the rest of his belt and doubled it over in his hands. “Bend. Over.”

“Please no, Draevan. I'm—I'm tired, and I don't feel good…” She lowered her head.

“That's what
we'd
thought! Yet you felt well enough to scale thirty feet down,” he argued, pointing towards the window.

She raised her head, her eyes shifting around nervously. She was apparently trying to think fast. She looked over at Taric, who was standing and staring darkly at her, and then back at Draevan. “Then… If I have to get spanked… Can Taric do it?”

Draevan dropped his belt-holding arm down to his side, feeling struck. A wave of emotion swept over him; emotions of jealousy and hate and anguish and self-loathing. Their marriage had barely begun, and she already preferred Taric? Draevan's shoulders slouched forward as he promptly began to pity himself that he'd already given his cousin enough of a foothold to be the more loved husband, one she'd trust more with her punishment, and probably everything else…

Draevan was sure that, when he looked over at Taric, the man would be openly gloating, raising his chin, squaring his shoulders back, and looking very pleased with himself.

That's not what he saw. When he glanced Taric's way, there was a vein pulsing from Taric's neck that he hadn't noticed in his entire life. The man was absolutely livid. Instead of being touched by her preference of disciplinarian, he had instead taken great offense.

Come to think of it now, Draevan realized that the girl, most likely, merely thought Taric to be the more sensitive and weaker one of the two.

Taric was rolling up his sleeves, his lips drawn over his teeth nearly like he was grinning. It was maniacal. “
Let me
,” Taric told him. “
Just hold on
.”