Vanquished by Allyson Young Read Free Book Online Page B

long.
    “Sleep well, my little warrior.
We have much to discuss and explore on the morrow.”
    He instructed the computer to dim
the lights and darkness crept over the room.
    “My name is Neira. Don’t call me
little one, little warrior, or anything else. I don’t like it and you’re not
entitled.”
    Smiling into the dark, he shifted
and fit against the back of Neira’s body, ignoring how she immediately tensed. Neira. He tasted it. Neira . But she’d always be his little warrior, and perhaps one day she would come to
ask him to call her as such.
    In time she relaxed,
incrementally, and when he was satisfied she was asleep, Vayne allowed himself
to slip into slumber.

 
    Chapter Three
     
    Neira came awake like the soldier
she’d been—sleep to total awareness. She woke from a dead sleep, though, not
from that curious near-wakeful state she shared with most of her
comrades-in-arms both on and off the fields of battle. So that meant her
subconscious had reason to believe she’d fallen asleep in a place of safety.
    But that didn’t fit with the fact
her hands were tethered, or with the immediate surge of memory relaying the
events of the following day. It certainly didn’t fit with the presence of a
large, heated body spooning her, a very definite poke of a solid erection in
the small of her back. She was in her captor’s bed, without even the slight
barrier or protection of night clothes. She thought he’d worn some kind of
undergarment …
    “You are awake.” A face nuzzled
her hair and a mouth pressed a kiss on her temple.
    Neira flirted with the thought of
flipping over and setting her teeth in the flesh of that handsome face while
bringing her knee up into that hard appendage. Instead, she inched away from
his attentions, continuing to give him her back. If she thought she might
manage to get his print on the release of her cuffs, she’d have tried it, but
the sovereign was a big bugger, and he moved well. The scar on his chest wasn’t
from some weird rite of passage, but from a knife with a big, serrated blade.
She well knew the pattern of injury, having seen a fair number over the years.
That meant Vayne Palldyn was also a warrior, not that she hadn’t heard the
stories of his military prowess. It was unlikely she’d get the drop on him.
    He’d somehow missed her dagger in
the commotion, and she’d secreted it in the wash facility upon working it free
from under her tunic. She hoped there’d be an opportunity to use it and gain
her freedom and refused to listen to the practical voice in her head that asked
how she thought she might accomplish that task. She had planned to retrieve it
after her cleansing, take it to the bed to hide it there and protect herself but was foiled by Palldyn’s presence in the room.
And it turned out she hadn’t needed it after all. He’d kept his promise,
although the feel of his hard body had been an unsettling experience. Yet she’d
still fallen asleep…
    The bunk dipped as his weight
left it, leaving her curiously chilled. As if he read her mind, Vayne flipped
the covering over her.
    “Are you able to wait until I
cleanse?”
    “Yes.” She really had to pee, but
she was damned if she’d fall victim to any kind of syndrome, aware of how a
twisted relationship could develop between kidnapper and the kidnapped, based
on pathetic need and gratitude for the slightest kindness. She would never
again fall into that trap.
    “I require your respect , little…Neira.”
    Damn. He’d just undermined her,
giving in to her request from the night before not to call her any pet names.
And she hadn’t missed the subtle, silky threat of correction when she’d sworn
at him the previous evening, either. This man—this alien—wasn’t to be trifled
with or pushed too far. She had much to learn about him. Long gone were the
days when she thought she could escape on her own or evade with merely her
physical skills. Being a prisoner of war taught a harsh lesson, and one