The Barbarian Prince (9 page)

Ualan bowed to the King, before dragging his dazed wife from the stage like an insolent child. Morrigan stumbled behind him, her lips tingling full of sensations. Without the haze of the crystal, she was confused. Her logic told her to yell, her body told her to leap and demand he do it again. Thankfully for Morrigan’s self-respect, logic won.

Morrigan was led into the shelter of the nearby forest, glad to be away from the crowd. Led, was maybe too light a word. Ualan was practically dragging her stumbling feet behind him.

Strange yellow ferns passed under her trampling feet as Ualan followed what could only roughly be referred to as a forest path. Various woodland critters shuffled away in fright, strange creatures that Morrigan ignored in their haste. Blinking as a purple bird flew past her head, she tried to pull back.

Ualan, misunderstanding her jerking movements, thought she tried to escape him. His hand gripped tighter.

"Ow," she screeched at him. He only walked faster.

Coming to a clearing by a clear cool lake of crystal waters, he finally released her hand. Spinning on his heels, he glared down at her. "What do you think you were doing?"

"Me?" Morrigan gasped. She pulled her injured hand to her waist. The beauty of their surroundings was lost on her. She only saw red.

"If you ever try to humiliate me in public again, wife, I will break your neck, do you understand?" Ualan growled. Fury raged in his eyes, threatening his body with a shift. He resisted the urge to change, turning away from her in his effort for control.

"I am not your wife! You drugged me, you accursed gardener! With that wine and the crystal! Admit it!"

He spun on his heels to glare at her. Oh, he was livid.

Well, so was she.

"Don’t you dare to deny it!" Morrigan hissed. With red cheeks she rushed at him with a torrent of anger. Poking him in his very unmoving chest, she shouted, "I felt it as soon as I broke that crystal. What kind of sick people are you, slipping drugs on unsuspecting women?" Lowering her tone like a simpleton, she said, "Oh, here, take this drink, you’ll like it," before finishing in a furious rush, "You’ll only wake up nine months pregnant, married to a serving boy. But hey, he needed a wife."

Ualan didn’t move.

With growing heat, she slapped the dragon on his chest. "No thank you, cavemen. Not this girl. I am on the first flight back to Earth and you can’t stop me. You tricked me and--"

"You chose," he growled angrily, grabbing her by the arm and shaking her. His eyes were lava. "Your will was free. I did not trick you. The crystal showed me to you and you chose to be my wife."

"I chose to go. I told you that. You said you understood!" screamed Morrigan, trying to tear away from him and failing. Her eyes were close to spilling over with angry tears. She did not want to be stuck here on this backwards planet, forced to live in a damned tent.

"You chose to be my wife," stated Ualan. A fear overcame him, but he didn’t let her see it. His kind only had one chance at marriage. If she took it back … He shook his head. That wasn’t going to happen. "You cannot take it back."

"Wife?" spat Morrigan. Despite her anger, he was devilishly handsome. Her heart skipped when he looked at her. The whole planet must be insane. You didn’t get married after one night and less than a hundred words.

"Yes, wife," he insisted. "We have been chosen--"

"If I hear one more time that I was chosen, so help me…." Morrigan’s words cut into him like a knife to the chest. She shook her fist at him in warning. Taking a deep breath, she uttered, "We are not married. Stop saying that we are! We aren’t going to live together. I am not going to bear you children. I am not going to cook for you or rub your feet nor do any other of the mundane housewife task, you overbearing--"

"What was last night, then, if we are not married?" he asked quietly, very aware of her rising voice. His words were soft, but the hard razor-edge was unmistakable. He jerked her further into the trees, heading away from the lake. When they were in the confines of the forest, he leaned over her and kissed her.

It was a searing, probing, claiming kiss that shot all the way to her toes. Morrigan struggled, not daring to let him end the fight like that. Not again. This Morrigan wasn’t drunk or drugged. Just as abruptly as he took it he let her mouth go.

"Last night was," Morrigan hesitated, finally managing to rip free of his hands. His taste stung her lips. "It was … nice. But it didn’t mean I was signing on to be Mrs. Caveman. I have a job. I have a life. It’s a good life and it doesn’t include you. I’m sorry, Ualan, but your crystal was wrong. Go dig yourself up a new one and next year you’ll have better luck."

"Nice?" Ualan questioned in disbelief. He rolled his eyes to the tree branches, spouting out a lot of words she couldn’t understand. By his tone, Morrigan guessed it was better she didn’t recognize them.

She watched his stalking movements, momentarily distracted. Suddenly he turned to her, pouncing forward to trap her against a tree. The bark poked her back sharply, but it was more forgiving than the hard man pressed to her delicate breasts.

"Tell me you didn’t feel it. And be warned, Morrigan, I will know your lie." Ualan’s hand became bold on the front of her gown, rubbing at her in indecent strokes. "Tell me you weren’t begging my name with your lips."

"I was drug--"

"Tell me you don’t want me inside of you even now. I can feel your heat burning into my hand." To prove his point, he stroked her between the legs and she shivered. "Tell me you don’t want me to take you right here, to end the torment I put into you last night. I saw your passion, Rigan. I saw how you liked to watch. How you longed for me to take you the same way. I smelled you as you nearly came by my whip."

"This is not happening," Morrigan whined in exasperation. Trying to sound reasonable in an unreasonable situation, she laid a gentle hand on his arm and pushed. Breaking up had never been so hard. Ualan let her go. Through her gulping breaths, she said hoarsely, "I don’t want to fight with you about this. You will find someone, Ualan. Someone perfect who can stay here with you and bear you children and cook and clean and do everything your little barbaric heart desires. Someone who will know how to be a wife to you. I am not that girl."

"You chose me. The Gods chose you for me."

"No, you came to me," she said with logic. How could she fight cultural superstition? It was so frustratingly unreasonable. "All the rest is superstition."

"It was willed by the Gods. The crystal found you for me. You belong here. I will hear no more of this. Come, we go home."

"Ualan, don’t. I will not be forced."

"When you took off my mask and allowed me to speak freely, you chose," he said. "You chose to be my wife and you chose to come to my tent. You were not forced to be with me. Insult me again, and I will not be lenient with you, wife."

Now he was just calling her that to annoy her. Morrigan sighed heavily, her patience almost completely gone. He was forcing her to feel too much at once--anger, desire, frustration.

"Your mask?" she repeated, her voice growing weary.

He nodded once, hard.

His words from the night echoed in her brain. Quietly, she said in sudden understanding, "Choose. You meant choose you, not choose a…."

She turned red and couldn’t finish. As she hit her fist absently along her thigh, her eye camera sent a spark through her and she saw the image of him standing gloriously naked in front of her. She hit the emerald on her hand several times to get the image out. It was too late. It was renewed in her mind. Blushing, without the aid of liquor to stem her inhibitions, she stepped away from him.

Ualan took up her scent, smelling her continued desire for him. He smiled, knowingly. She might be fighting him, but she wasn’t immune.

"It’s a mistake," Morrigan whispered, unable to look at him without picturing him naked. Her cheeks flamed. She hoped he thought it was her anger. "I didn’t know what I was choosing. Surely there are grounds for divorce if I didn’t know or maybe an annulment of some sort? We didn’t do anything together--not really."

Morrigan’s throat let loose a sound of torment.

"If you will not obey your new law, then obey your old one. You signed a contract. That is why your people left you here. Now speak no more of it, I will not start an intergalactic incident over your misunderstanding. We are married, resign yourself to it." Ualan’s chin lifted proudly. Why did the Gods curse him so? What had he done?

"I am not going to be ordered about by you," she spat. Why was he being so pigheaded?

"I am your master," he growled. He stopped to sniff the air. They weren’t alone in the forest. "You will obey me."

"I will never have you as my master. If you were my master, than I would be a servant and this girl doesn’t do clean. Find yourself a new maid…."

Ualan leaned over, not listening to her continued tirade as he snatched a green plant with a yellow center from the ground. He was at her side in two seconds. Morrigan gasped, stuttering to a halt as he took her arm in his large hand and shook her. When her head snapped to him, a scream of fear and outrage forming readily on her lips, he rubbed his fingers beneath her nose, crushing the little plant. Instantly, she was out.

Chapter Seven

She was the new maid.

Morrigan flinched, not daring to wonder who had changed her into the plain gray tunic and white apron she wore. It felt like she was out for only a second. But, when she opened her eyes with a gasp of anger and ready to fight, she was lying on the couch in the middle of a large open suite--without Ualan.

At least it wasn’t a tent.

The home had a gorgeous floor plan with a lot of space. Morrigan frowned, wishing the man lived in a hovel she could at least tear apart and ridicule him for. Maybe it wasn’t his home. It would make sense. Ualan the caveman didn’t seem like the cultured, refined type.

The walls were of red stone, which were covered with blue and silver tapestries. Shivering, she turned her head to look away from the gruesome battle scene depicted on the wall hanging. She recognized the Qurilixians by their bulging muscles on one side of the battle, but she didn’t want to think about the scaly, upright beasts on the other side, running from them.

"Let’s just hope those things are a myth," she murmured. They would have to be. The Qurilixian men wore no armor in the depiction.

"My lady?" asked a servant, his gaze following hers. He tried to hide his frown of disappointment, but she saw it.

Morrigan froze, almost having forgotten about Mirox. She recognized him from the feast the night before as the servant with the scar across his nose. He seemed younger than the rest of the men, but was still respectably large in size. Sheepishly, she said, "Nothing."

It was a large room with high vaulted ceiling like a cathedral. At the very top there was a domed glass window, with a switch that drew blinds over it to block out the light of the three suns. It was the only window and the main source of light. There were torches on the walls that would fire up with a push of a button if more light was needed. They were kind of like lamps. Mirox explained that they had no need for lighting, as all but one day a year was shrouded in sunlight.

On the first level, where she found herself sleeping, there were two circular gray couches surrounding a gigantic pit fireplace in the middle. The couches parted at each corner so one could pass through. Blue throw pillows with the embroidered insignia of a dragon lay neatly on the suede material. The black grates in the center surrounded a fire that was left burning. Morrigan looked, but she couldn’t see any wood in the bottom of it.

In the corner was the longest row of curving stairs she had ever seen. Climbing their marble steps, she reached the top, only to discover a huge bed. It was rectangular in design, set atop a large fur rug on the marble floor. A gigantic mirror acted as a headboard. Morrigan gasped, turning a little red.

The upper level was much bigger than what she had seen from the first floor. It pushed way back with its own smaller globe ceiling to let in light. There was a barren fireplace in the wall. It too was oversized. Looking around, she suddenly realized how large Ualan actually was. It made her shiver.

A black dragon was again embroidered on the gray coverlet of the bed. A hall led through a walk-in closet, half full of Lord Ualan’s belongings. He mostly had tunics, many pairs of leather boots, and some vicious weaponry. The other side was empty, except for her bags. She slipped the ring off her finger and took the opportunity to get the itchy eye camera out before moving on.

At the end of the hall was a viewing platform. When she pushed a button, wide curtains swept back to reveal the mountainous forests of Qurilixen. The platform was very high, above a steep cliff. If she leaned to the side, she could see the platform where she had been introduced to the royalty. Funny, she had not seen this balcony from the ground. Next to the platform, the rows of pyramid tents were being dismantled. She quickly turned, not wanting to remember the night spent in the campsite.

The main level had three doors. One led to a bathroom, whose shower looked more like a rocky waterfall than a shower. Set next to the waterfall was a natural hot-spring tub, which she was told bubbled constantly with hot water and automatically cleaned and renewed its water supply. It had something to do with the mineral from the mountain the home was built upon. Mirox was happy to inform her that the natural springs were all over the planet.

The toilet, she didn’t even want to think about. It wasn’t a spaceport, but actually required the flushing of water to get the ‘undesired waste’ from the marble bowl.

Morrigan shivered. That was so twentieth century Earth--yuck! She understood wanting to live simply, but there were definitely some things it would be wise for this backwards race to adopt.

The second door led to a large kitchen. It took on the look of the rest of the house and did not have a food simulator. The kitchen had a marble sink with running water, a matching marble countertop--both in creamy white--with the black insignia of the dragon inlaid on the top. There was a stove, an oven, and a variety of appliances she would never know how to open, let alone use.