“I might be able to help. But we’ve got to take this conversation elsewhere.”
Clearly, the princes still weren’t keen about heeding his play calls. Thank God, yet again, for Ethan and Z, reinserting themselves with determined intent.
“Brickmeister’s a hundred percent right,” Z asserted. “You might as well assume there are unwanted eyes and ears in here—besides the choad-wad obvious.”
“No offense intended, ladies and gentlemen.” Ethan spun around in a move that would turn Bruno Mars into a jealous biddy. A small clump of Arcadian females broke into instant giggles, clarifying that they’d forgotten offense was a real word. “Precautions,” the guy added, garnering himself another round of girlish titters.
Z hardly noticed. “You guys have anywhere that’s been tidied out, tech-wise?” he asked the princes.
Shiraz snorted. “We are in the middle of the Mediterranean, not Tatooine.”
“Any other time, I’d be buying you a beer for that line.” Z cuffed Shiraz on the shoulder. “Or whatever gets your rocks off around here. But right now, lead the way. Archer and I are helping you out.” He rolled his head, loudly cracking his neck. “By whatever wild reasoning of the cosmos, we have a special knack for lost women.”
Samsyn tilted his own neck. Jogged a look that vaguely resembled a curious German Shepherd. “And how do we know you are not the eyes and ears we should be wary of?”
Brick stiffened his stance. “Both these men are legit. I’ll stake my gonads on it.”
What the hell. His balls would be worthless if they didn’t find Jayd, anyhow.
Who the crap was he kidding?
If they didn’t get her back, his balls would be a pointless subject. His heart and soul would be the more questionable survivors.
Or, quite possibly, the fatal casualties.
Chapter Fourteen
When the hell will you learn?
Jayd lost track of how many times the castigation torched its way from her heart to her lips. But she let the anger come again and again, thankful for its arid fire in place of the wet stings that kept threatening behind her eyes.
When. Will. You. Learn?
Before long, it became the marching drum for her steps, as well. The interrogation her mind could no longer ignore.
But also for which she had not a single response.
It had not always been this way. Not so long ago, she had all the answers, so easily given. All of her limits were so clearly defined. Never, she vowed, would she tolerate a man who led her on. Or treated her heart—and body—as disposable. Or used his body to take over so many of her senses…and all of her control. Certainly not one who spanked her…
And made her like it. Savor it. Need it.
To such terrifying depths of her being.
Not. Ever. Again.
There. A much better chant. It was a perfect fit for her faster steps. If only she could escape the runaway train of her thoughts with matching speed. Do away with the images that took over more and more of her mind’s eye, even as she fled faster.
The first hurricane wallop of Brickham’s cobalt stare. The matching force of his hands on her flesh and her blissful inner tremors because of it. The taut glory that overtook his body when she touched him in return. How he coiled for her. Hardened for her. Swelled in such magnificent places for her.
How that glory intensified when he started entering her…
Not. Ever. Again.
It was time to push those beautiful scenes aside. To glue them into a mental scrapbook and not take them out for a long while. Not until far in the future, when they would only make her wistful instead of mournful. When she could traverse a tunnel and not stumble over her own two feet in delayed grief.
Or was this advanced anguish?
And did it matter since the result was the same?
That since her vision was so blurred, she missed the little steel lip that protruded from the ground below? And that now she was on her ass in the dark dust, tailbone bruised and outrage spiked?
“Rahmié Creacu!” The syllables were nearly hisses, turning them into verbal snake strikes. But unless she was mistaken, snakes did not keep up continuous attacks.
Or elevate those aggressions into sneaking footfalls.
Steps that were not hers.
She confirmed as much with a frantic glance down at her feet before tucking them beneath her backside. She was prepared to jolt up and run, though used her knees to scramble back into a shadowed alcove.
Until her head and shoulders bumped into something with a loud kwong.
She shrieked but then gasped, suddenly curious about the fog that her breath formed along a large plate of…
What?
Her attacker’s leg?
No. Not an aggressor. Well, not a real one…
She had just made acquaintances with a suit of ancient Arcadian armor. Ancient wasn’t entirely correct, since the kingdom was not yet three hundred years old. She deduced this had been strictly a ceremonial outfit for someone, though its thick tarnish had taken over a long time ago.
The armor’s condition matched the rest of the old spears, rifles, firearms, and devices of destruction in the chamber she had happened upon. None of it was shocking—Arcadians had been called to defend the kingdom since its inception, and a secret lagoon with an attached armory was a definite advantage to that end—but it was an odd discovery. How had she never known of this chamber’s existence before? Did that mean Ev, Syn, and ’Raz did not, either? Or Paipanne and Maimanne? And if that were the case, where exactly had she wandered to in the palais—if she was even in the confines of the place anymore?
And why could she not shake the sensation that she no longer roamed around here alone?
Which meant her adventuring mode was still stuck in idle, succumbing to mounting trepidation. Her nerves rattled harder as her ears perked and pricked, aware of more sounds than just her breathing. Sounds that seemed not normal, even for this hazy underground…
Like inhalations and exhalations that did not match her own.
And, carefully timed with each of those breaths, the pads of surreptitious feet. And the rustles of a moving body…
“Brickham?” She mouthed it more than spoke it, though it had enough air to be heard. But it was an empty effort. The man’s energy was her psychological balm. She was as sure of it as the sun on her face and the stars in her nights—and this new companion was not that.
Then who…?
Possibilities whizzed to mind. More flimsy assumptions. Requiemme or any valid palais staffer would have announced themselves already. Same, in gruffer style, for her brothers.
That left her with three choices.
It could still be her imagination. Or it was one of Samsyn’s scouts.
Or one of Trystan’s.
“Shit.”
That one remained beneath her breath too. She muffled it a little bit better by pulling her knees against her chin. But that did not prevent a deeper dread from invading her chest. Why did she sense that she might as well have shouted out the curse?
Perhaps…because of the pair of black-booted feet that slowly paced into her view?
Because of the way those feet halted in the center of this miniature armory, purposefully pivoting until their owner completed a rotation back to his original spot?
“Your Highness Jayd?”