Sought...Book 3 in the Brides of the Kindred series (24 page)

“We discussed this last night—you know the
legend,” Deep growled. “It’s mainly going to be a lot of kissing
and tasting but there’s likely to be penetration too. It just
depends on these people’s version of the tale.”

“Will we…” Kat swallowed hard. “Is this
going to seal the bond between us?” The prospect wasn’t as
frightening as it had been. She and Deep seemed to be on better
terms now, though she wished their talk in the cave hadn’t been
interrupted. But she still wasn’t sure about the idea of being tied
to the brothers for life.

Deep seemed to sense her hesitation. He
frowned. “That shouldn’t be necessary. Though you may have to allow
us to penetrate you.”

Kat swallowed hard. “Both at…at the same
time?”

“No.” Lock shook his head firmly. “We won’t
go that far, my lady, I swear it. At most Deep and I will enter you
one at a time and then only briefly, for the purpose of the
reenactment.”

“We won’t fuck you or come in you if that
makes you feel any better,” Deep said harshly. His blunt words made
Kat’s heart skip a beat.

“Oh my God. Okay. All right.” Kat took a
deep breath. “I can handle this. I
can.”

“Of course you can.” Deep’s voice went from
harsh to unexpectedly gentle. “You know Lock and I would never hurt
you, little Kat.”

“Yes, I know.” Kat had a sudden thought.
“But won’t it hurt
you?
I mean, to be so…uh, intimate with
me if only one of you is involved?”

“As long as we’re both making contact with
you it won’t matter that one of us is touching you more…intimately
than the other.” Lock coughed. “If you know what I mean.”

“I think so.” Kat nodded.

“So if Lock has to penetrate you, I’ll be
holding you,” Deep explained. “The same way we did the night after
you ate the bonding fruit. Remember?”

“How could I forget?” Her uninhibited
behavior that night still made Kat’s cheeks hot.
But I’m about
to get a whole lot more uninhibited now,
she told herself
unhappily.
We’re about to put on a live three-way sex show here
for Chief Pervert and his band of merry men. Crap, how am I going
to do this?

“My lady…” Lock took her by the shoulders
and looked into her eyes. “It’s going to be all right,” he
murmured. “We’re going to get through this together.”

Kat saw the sincerity in his deep brown eyes
and felt a little of her anxiety melt along with her heart. Why did
Lock have to be so sweet and easy to trust? It made refusing to be
with them permanently even harder. “Yes, all right,” she whispered.
“I know.”

“And though it may strengthen the bond we
already have—the soul bond, I swear it won’t form a physical bond,”
Deep added, also looking at her. “I know that’s what you’re afraid
of, but you don’t need to worry.”

Kat wasn’t sure what to say to that. She
could feel the hurt radiating from Deep, the longing she had felt
after their first joining, when he’d asked her to stay the night
with him and Lock. Part of her wanted to hug him and give him
hope—to let him know that she was becoming more open to the idea of
bonding with them. But another part—a deeper part—was cautious.

She well remembered the times in her
parents’ marriage when her father and mother would seem to make up.
For weeks—once even for months—the constant bickering would stop
and there would be peace between them. Kat would always get her
hopes up that this would be the time they would learn to love each
other…and then everything would blow up and things would be worse
than before.

I can’t risk that,
she thought,
seeing the need in Deep’s black eyes, feeling the desire from both
of them.
I have to be absolutely sure before I let myself get
into something I can never get out of.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last, looking up at
Deep. “Really sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for.” Lock
stroked her cheek gently. “We know how you feel, my lady. And
neither of us blames you for it.”

But Kat was very much afraid that Deep
did
blame her—and there was nothing she could do about it.
He was silent, however, as he bent and kissed her forehead.

Then their guards came to the door of the
hut and motioned. “The full moons shine down. The chief awaits your
pleasure. Come do her bidding,” said the short, husky one who had
taken Kat prisoner in the first place.

Her?
Kat decided her convo-pillar
must be acting up again. She nodded at the guard, trying
unsuccessfully to smile.
God, if I
never
hear another haiku again it’ll be too soon!

“All right, we’re coming.” Deep and Lock put
her between them. Then, with Lock leading the way and Deep bringing
up the rear, they left the grass hut and followed the guards.

The sun had just finished setting and there
was still a warm pinkish-orange glow in the deep purple sky as they
walked. A soft breeze played over her face, caressing her with the
exotic scent of foreign flowers. Kat wondered where the twin moons
were— she still didn’t see anything in the sky but the white
pinpricks of the stars.

Somewhere out there is Earth,
she
thought.
I’ve never been so far away from home in all my
life.
The thought made her feel lonely and homesick so she
tried not to dwell on it.
After all, I’ll be going back soon.
Back to the Mother ship to see Liv and Sophie. As soon as we do
this little show the natives will set us free. Then we’ll find the
stupid fi-fi flower, get the meds from Mother L’rin, and I’ll be
back with the girls eating Ben and Jerry’s and catching up on the
latest gossip before you know it.

She tried not to imagine how she would feel
once she took Mother L’rin’s medicine and was truly and permanently
separated from both Deep and Lock. Even two days before she would
have felt only relief to be parted from them. Now she wasn’t so
sure…

Kat refused to let herself think about it.
Instead she looked around at the lush, Twin Moons landscape and
thought about how oddly familiar their surroundings looked. Come to
think of it, where they were looked exactly like…

“Hey,” she said in a low voice. “Aren’t we
back in the holy meadow?”

Lock looked around. “It would appear
so.”

“So this is where we’re supposed to, uh, do
our thing?”

Deep shrugged. “I guess so.”

Kat put a hand on her hip, thoroughly pissed
off. “So their precious meadow is too holy to walk on but it’s okay
to have a three-way screw session on it?”

“It’s not just a ‘three-way screw session,’”
Lock said, mild reproof in his deep voice. “The legend we’re
enacting is holy to all of us on Twin Moons—not just the natives.
It explains how we became the people we are—why we are born as
twins and need to share a single female between us.”

“Sorry,” Kat felt abashed. “I didn’t mean to
make fun of your Adam and Eve story. Or I guess in this case, Adam
and Eve and Steve. Or whatever.”

“It’s all right.” Lock smiled at her. “I
just wanted you to know that what we’re doing tonight is more than
just the chief’s erotic whim. It’s sacred to us—a beautiful thing,
if you can bring yourself to see it that way.”

Kat swallowed. “I’ll try,” she said softly.
“But I didn’t know we were performing a sacrament. I’m afraid I’d
make a lousy alter boy.”

“A
what
kind of boy did you say?”
Lock frowned.

“She’s just making a joke because she’s
nervous,” Deep said, coming unexpectedly to her rescue. “Go easy on
her, Brother. This is hard for our little Kat.”

Harder than you know,
Kat thought,
but didn’t say aloud. Their native guards were gesturing at them
now and pointing to a circular clump of bushes to one side of the
meadow. She and Deep and Lock walked over to the leafy clump and
Kat was surprised when there was a sudden rustling and three pink
skinned natives appeared from behind the bushes.

Two of them were male warriors with the
usual leaf loincloths. But the third was clearly female. Despite
her diminutive stature, she stood straight and tall, with the regal
bearing of royalty. She had thick, lustrous black hair that reached
to her ankles and she was wearing the same kind of leaf/flower/vine
dress that Kat had on. In her hand was a green wooden scepter
tipped with the deadly clear crystal all the native warriors had in
their knives.

“Behold.” Lock bowed low to the regal
female. “The chief.”

“A woman?” Kat asked doubtfully as she and
Deep followed Lock’s lead and bowed. “But I thought the chief was a
man.”

Deep frowned. “Why would you think that? We
are
a matriarchal society, you know—even the natives.”

“
Especially
the natives,” Lock
murmured softly, watching as the chief conferred with the two males
Kat assumed must be her mates. “They worship and revere their
females almost as goddesses. Which of course, is as it should
be.”

Kat shook her head. “You guys…I swear, if
more Earth girls knew about Twin Moons, your whole planet would be
completely overrun with desperate females looking to be Kindred
brides.”

“I don’t think so.” Deep’s voice was
unexpectedly harsh. “We frighten your kind, Kat. Frighten them to
death.”

“What is
that
supposed to mean?” she
demanded in a low voice. “If you have something to say—”

His eyes flashed. “Nothing you want to hear,
I’m sure.”

“Be silent.” Lock’s voice was unusually
sharp. “The chief wishes to speak.”

“Visitors from the land beyond, we bid thee
welcome,” the chief said in a low, melodious voice.

Kat counted the syllables silently.
Good—no more haikus! Maybe because she’s a woman? Who
knows…

“Thou art indeed most welcome, though thou
camest as trespassers upon our holy soil,” the chief continued and
Kat sighed inwardly. Apparently, the convo-pillar had traded
Japanese poetry for Old English mumbo-jumbo.
But at least she’s
understandable
.
And she doesn’t sound like Yoda—that’s
always a good thing.

“We are pleased to do your bidding, blessed
one,” Lock said, bowing deeply again. “If by our sacrifice of
pleasure we can make your full moons festival more sacred, then we
gladly give of ourselves.”

Speak for yourself!
Kat thought. From
the dark look on Deep’s face, he was thinking much the same. The
two of them remained silent, however and Kat couldn’t help thinking
it was a good thing they had Lock to do the talking. He was really
sweet and kind and honest but he could also, apparently, be a
silver-tongued negotiator when he put his mind to it. It gave her
new respect for the light twin, who could be sometimes overshadowed
by his brother’s dark moods.

“Thy coming was foreordained by the stars,”
the chief said, nodding her head at Kat. “A sunfire goddess
searching for the sacred blossom, and her mates, light and dark, as
the moons above.” She lifted her hands to the heavens and Kat
looked up instinctively. What she saw nearly took her breath
away.

High above them were two huge moons. One was
a brilliant, silvery white and the other was so black it looked
like an onyx orb in the sky. Both were many times bigger than
Earth’s moon and the white one shed an eerie, otherworldly light
over the holy meadow. Kat couldn’t understand how she hadn’t seen
them before. They had either risen very quickly or she had been too
involved in the conversation with Deep and Lock and the chief to
notice. But now that she had seen them, she couldn’t look away.

“Oh,” she whispered reverently. “They’re
beautiful.”

“
Dakir
and
Lanare,”
the chief
said softly. “The twin lovers of
Nyra
, our beloved sun. But
how came the fiery maiden to choose them both? Tonight shall we
speak of these things and show them again for the pleasure of
all.”

“You mean
we’re
going to show them,”
Deep muttered, frowning.

The chief caught his words and nodded.
“Indeed, warrior. Your brother has told me of your quest. Know
this—if thou please the gods with thy sacrifice, the holy meadow
shall burst into blossom and the
fifilalachuchu
flower shall
be thine.”

“Really?” Kat looked around the meadow
eagerly, but she saw nothing except the little yellow and blue
flowers she’d woven into a crown the day before. “Where are
they?”

“They shall not bloom unless thy sacrifice
is pleasing.” The chief sounded stern. “See to it that it is.”

“Of course we shall,” Lock said smoothly.
“How do you wish us to perform, oh blessed one?”

“My mates and I shall sit here, behind the
screen of leaves.” The chief gestured to the flowering bushes
behind them. “I shall speak the sacred words and thou must act upon
them. See that thou givest proper sacrifice—the gods themselves are
as we shall be—seeing but unseen.” She nodded at them regally and
then stepped back behind the bushes. Her mates followed her and,
after a brief rustling of leaves, the three of them were completely
concealed.

Seeing but unseen,
Kat thought.
Well, at least that’s a little less intimidating than if they
were all standing over us watching. I guess if we
have
to do this—

“In the dawn of time, from the emptiness of
the great black void, was born a beautiful elite maiden, with the
curves of a goddess and fiery red hair,” the chief’s low, musical
voice began, interrupting her thoughts. “Her name was
Nyra.”

“Oh, uh…” Kat wasn’t sure if she was
supposed to act out being born or what. But luckily, the chief was
already speaking again.

“She moved through the void seeking for her
mate, seeking in all directions.”

Feeling like she was back at summer camp,
playing charades, Kat shaded her eyes with one hand and pantomimed
looking everywhere.