Aleksey's Kingdom (A Royal Affair #2)(24)

I held him off a little. “I was being serious. Johan has hinted you could return if you—”

He thumped me back against the tree. “Stop it! What would I have there that I do not have here?”

“Friends?”

“Well, all right, besides friends.”

“Luxury in a palace?”

“This is one of those conversations where you actually can list a huge number of things I do not have, isn’t it? Oh, Niko, I call you stupid all the time, but I do not really mean it, for you are oddly wise for someone who looks as you do. But now I have to say that you are a complete simpleton and be entirely truthful. I don’t need friends. I have you. I have everything I need—is that not the very definition of luxury? Now, turn around, for your backside is the main indulgence I enjoy in my new kingdom. Ah”—he thrust in hard and deep—“is that not the very manifestation of the riches of our new life here together? Would I trade this tree for a throne? That sunlight upon the gold of your hair for a coin of real gold? Would I trade you for all the friends or subjects I had there? You do not have to answer that, by the way.” I do not think I could have. Standing up like this was always so good for me. He had now brought me to a place where I could think of nothing except the overwhelming sensation growing in my body. It was like rushing along held in a current, waiting for a great plunge, perhaps a great lifting—and there it was. I used my hand to spill against the tree as Aleksey released inside me, his teeth fastened to the back of my neck as if I were his hunting prize. Perhaps I was.

He slid his arms around me when we were done, still both leaning against the tree, our clothes spilled around us. He was still in me. Neither of us wanted to move. I could smell the sharp, evocative scent of the conifer against my cheek, the even more evocative essence of our passion, musky, salty. It made my mouth water. He was playing idly with my cock, his body heavy and warm against my back as his fingers stroked me, then wandered onto the hard warmth of my belly, and combed down, twisting hair into little curls.

Eventually, knowing our time was nearly up, he eased out with a grimace, and we dressed reluctantly. We could both hear the sound of voices coming to us from the track.

Suddenly Aleksey squeezed my arm and gestured with a flick of his chin and a smile toward the horses. I had to smile too. It was a particularly affecting scene. The little boy, David, was approaching from the trees with his bow and arrow, trying to be stealthy as a native brave. He wasn’t doing a very good job, and he had not even seen us, which was unthinkable for a Powponi child of his age. Finally he gave up his game and approached Xavier with a large handful of grass. I ruefully shook my head. Xavier was anyone’s for a handful of grass. He bent his old, trusting head down to the tiny figure, and although I saw it happening, I did not believe it and therefore did not cry out a warning.

The child dropped the grass, seized the arrow, and stabbed it at Xavier’s eye. If shock can kill a man instantly, I would have dropped dead at Aleksey’s feet. Perhaps he’d have followed me down. I heard a strangled sound of horror from him, and then we were both moving.

We were too late.

There was an ear-piercing scream, and the child was on his back, one hundred plus pounds of snarling wolf standing over him. Faelan’s muzzle was retracted so far saliva dripped in a steady stream onto the boy’s terrified face. Screams didn’t upset Faelan one bit; he enjoyed them. Xavier was bleeding, but only from a tiny slice on the side of his face just below his eye. Faelan had taken the boy down before he could….

What the fuck?

I do not swear often in my head, for it seems a waste of my new curse, but what the fuck? I had never seen such a thing. But in the confusion that then immediately surrounded us, I had no time to think this through. The mother and father came running into the clearing. They saw the child pinned beneath a ferocious wolf and began variously screaming and shouting. This drew the soldiers, and Lieutenant McIntyre drew his sword and approached the child. Aleksey made a small gesture of his hand—I’m not even sure it was that much—and Faelan just suddenly wasn’t there. He slunk back into the dark forest, silent and watchful as he had been before.

The child ran to his mother and buried himself deep in her skirts. Well he might. I would have killed him, I think, had not Aleksey been there with a restraining hand on my arm. He took over, made apologies, said it had been an accident, a misunderstanding. I could feel my fury growing. And then I glanced over at the woman. A pair of eyes was watching me from the folds of her skirt: bright, amused eyes. I swallowed and felt a chill run down my spine. I gathered Xavier and Boudica’s reins and walked them down to the track to the better light where I could see his face. He was fine. He was a warhorse and prized his scars as much as I enjoyed mine, no doubt.

Aleksey soon joined me, and we mounted in silence and rode on to find the ford we needed.

Uncharacteristically I was the first to speak. “Did you see it too? Did that actually happen?”

He nodded, his face creased with worry.

“What?”

“Oh God.”

“What? Aleksey, what?”

He turned in his saddle a little. “Remember when I told you about them all, I termed him ‘odd’? I wish now I had told you what I had seen, but I thought it was a joke!”

“Aleksey!”

“In the colony, when they were closing up their house to make this journey that… thing, that… child… had a very young puppy. He was putting it into a tiny box, and I joked to him that it was too small for it to travel in, and he said it wasn’t coming, and I said then in that case he must give it to someone who would look after it, and he said he was going to hide it in the box because he wanted to know how long it would take to die without any food or water. I thought he was joking! I thought he was being like you when I ask if you have fed the horses and you say you have left their food outside the barn to see if they are clever enough to work out how to get it, or when I ask if you have seen Faelan and you say no, but you saw some wolf pelts with a trapper… you are always doing it to me!”