OwnedbytheElf Read online

  “Tamryn Isyrian. Sergeant. Queen’s Scout.”

  “Are you always this stupid, sergeant, or are you making a special effort today?”

  He flashed a grin she didn’t trust. It transformed his features from simply cruelly handsome to devastating, but the darkness still lurked in his eyes behind the amusement. Instinct and all she knew about elves warned her not to trust that darkness. Her feminine side, however, wanted to push just to see what happened. She was obviously out of her mind.

  They were predators…violent and argumentative…and possessive as all hells. The few prisoners who’d escaped told tales of debauchery and orgies. Males fighting to the death over the few females they had. Elves didn’t love. They owned.

  A shiver crawled up her spine, dragging goose bumps along her flesh. She had to find a way out of here and fast. Sure, he might be after information now, but as soon as he got bored with her silence, then the rough stuff would start. She knew better than to hope he’d kill her outright. Elves were way more inventive than that.

  Humiliation, pain and degradation were just a few of the things she could look forward to. Her legs started to shake, but she ignored them as she called power from the earth beneath her. She wasn’t the most powerful faery out there, but she could pull a goodly amount of power. Certainly enough to unravel the rope he’d bound her with.

  Dumb elf.

  “Brains aren’t everything,” she shot back, desperate to keep him from working out what she was doing. She had one shot at this, just one, and once he worked it out, she had to hope all that muscle and mail slowed him down a lot. “In fact, in your case they’re nothing.”

  “Brave, aren’t you? Or insane.” He chuckled and he leant back against the trunk to study her with a keen eye. The blackened bark behind him shivered, a soft, almost inaudible sigh of pleasure as he rested against it. She bit back her annoyance. Even the fucking trees found him irresistible. She had to admit they had a point.

  His smile pulled at the vicious scar over his cheek, twisting it further. She wondered who had given it to him. A faery lucky enough to land a blow, or another elf? Both were likely explanations. Looking at him, she doubted either would have lived to tell the tale.

  The rope around her wrists unraveled, the magic whispering against her skin as strand after strand worked loose. Pulling her legs up, she hid the slight movement and met her captor’s gaze levelly.

  “I was behind enemy lines. You tell me.”

  “Yeah…let’s talk about that, shall we?”

  His smile widened, became calculating. She kicked herself, hard. Talk about dropping herself in it. It didn’t matter, though. All that mattered was keeping him talking until she could make a break for it.

  She wrinkled her nose and shook her head dismissively. In her lap, another strand wriggled free. “We’ve done me, how about we talk about you instead?”

  His eyes darkened a notch. “Oh, we haven’t done you at all. But I might when we’ve finished talking. Depends if you’re a good girl or not.”

  She shot him a glare. The hells would freeze over before she’d allow an elf to touch her, even a hot-as-hells elf with a voice of pure temptation. Ignoring his comment, she looked up from under her lashes and tried to pull off cute. It was her last line of defense.

  If she could get him to think she was harmless, despite the fact that she wore the green of a scout, then he wouldn’t be expecting anything. The last thread started to unravel in her lap, the rope little more than a mass of strands. Careful not to show her amusement on her face, she gathered herself. As soon as the last knot unraveled, she had to move fast.

  “So…gonna tell me your name? Or do I have to guess?”

  He eyed her for a long moment, a strange look in his eyes. For a moment, she thought he’d felt the small tug as she called power from the earth, but then dismissed it. That wasn’t possible. Elves didn’t have the same intimate connection to the elements that the fay did.

  Finally he spoke, the deep rumble of his voice distracting her as the last knot snaked free.

  “Bane.”

  “What?”

  Shock ran through her, fear following swiftly on its heels. Bane was the elf king’s attack dog. His second in command and the most feared elf in the lands. Getting captured by an elf was bad, getting captured by Bane was a death sentence.

  She managed a small, shaky laugh.

  “Don’t be stupid. Bane doesn’t have…” She waved in the vague direction of his face.

  He just looked at her, his face impassive. Her stomach dropped as she realized he wasn’t kidding. She was a dead woman.

  “Faery got lucky last week,” he ground out, his expression forbidding. “Bastard had a poisoned blade which foiled the healing spells. I was lucky to get away with this.”

  She caught her breath, fear for his narrow escape warring with the swift instinctive regret the faery hadn’t succeeded. What the fuck…? He was an elf, and the only good elf was a dead one.

  “Your healers did a good job. Couple of years, it’ll fade.”

  What the hells was she doing? Her hands were free, yet she was sitting around chattering.

  “So, when are you going to try to run?”

  Shock held Tamryn immobile for a second. He knew that she was free. How he knew, she didn’t have a clue, and right now she didn’t have time to care. The need to escape consumed her, excluding everything else. Energy flooded her body as she surged to her feet.

  Grabbing a handful of dirt, she threw it at the fire.

  “Nathrak!”

  The word of power cracked through the air like a whip. Flames swelled with a loud whumph, roaring to well over her height and creating a wall of fire between them. She got a glimpse of Bane’s shocked face on the other side, but didn’t hang around. Turning on her heels, she raced into the darkness.

  Chapter Two

  The fire exploded in a mass of violet flames and will-o’-the-wisps lit up the trees around him. Bane reeled back, covering his face with his arm as the things swarmed him, burning his skin with tiny pleasure-pain bites. As soon as it had started, the flare was gone, plunging the small camp into darkness. He swore, bright spots swimming before his vision.

  Oh Lady, she was good. He hadn’t expected that, not at all. He’d felt her pulling power from the earth around her, but just a trickle. Enough to deal with the ropes, but nowhere near enough to cause an explosion like that. Then at the last minute he’d felt her open herself fully and rip power from the earth. He’d never heard of a faery being able to do that. Ever.

  Rolling to his feet, he blinked to clear the bright spots from his eyes just in time to see her disappear into the trees opposite the fire. Roused by the sight of her running, the predator within him roared to life. After that little trick, she should run from him. Once he got his hands around her slender throat…

  With a roar, he leaped over the fire and took up the chase. Red mist descended over his vision and adrenaline poured into his body, energizing his large frame as he crashed through the trees after her.

  She was fast and nimble on her feet as she dodged and wove between the trunks ahead of him. He was faster. Big as he was, no one had ever outrun him, not the swiftest warriors in Briac’s army and certainly not his little slip of a faery.

  The wood thinned out ahead of her. He grinned as she shot him a look over her shoulder. Panic blossomed on her face as she realized how close he was. There was no way she could make it to the thicker trees beyond the clearing and they both knew it.

  She tried anyway, bursting into the open and racing across the open space. The moon emerged from hiding, highlighting the slender figure on a headlong dash into the woods ahead.

  Begrudging admiration filled him at her determination, despite the fact that she was headed right for the bulk of the elven army, camped just beyond the rise ahead. He liked a woman with spirit. They were more of a challenge and sweeter when he finally had them shivering in submission under him.

  He burst into
the open less than a heartbeat behind her. He was so close he could smell her panic and that elusive scent that clung to her delicate skin. She was just a hairsbreadth out of reach. His heart thundered in his ears, breath rasping from his lungs as he drove his body forward, determined to catch her. The last thing he wanted was to have to share his prize with the rest of the army.

  Her hair whipped around her face as she risked a look over her shoulder again and paled. Her squeak fed the beast inside him, the part that liked to hunt and chase. He almost had her, just a few more steps and she was his.

  She put on a burst of speed, a last desperate attempt to break away from him, but he wasn’t going to let her get away. Digging deep, he used the big muscles in his legs and threw himself into a tackle.

  He hit her squarely, wrapped her up in his arms and twisted at the last minute. They hit the ground. His shoulder took the brunt of the blow, pain flaring for a second as they rolled in the silver-tinted grass. He ignored it, concentrating instead on the small woman in his arms.

  Screeching like a banshee, she became as wild as a feral cat as soon as they touched down. Blows, kicks and scratches came from everywhere at once. He clenched his jaw, gritting his teeth as he blocked furiously and tried to hold on to her. She’d become as slippery as a shadow eel, sliding out of his grasp any way possible.

  He swore, low growls in his native tongue. He could have used magic, knocked her out cold again, but didn’t. She was way more fun when she was awake, and besides, he needed to question her. He couldn’t question a sleeping woman.

  The fight didn’t last long. Taller, heavier, he was altogether meaner than her. If it had been him pinned on the floor, he’d have used every weapon at his disposal to get free. He’d have punched and kicked, bitten and tried to gouge his opponent’s eyes out. Hells, he’d have torn pieces off his enemy with his teeth if necessary. No elf wanted to be pinned and beaten in a fight. If that happened, then his ass was the winner’s. Literally. Bane wasn’t inclined that way…in any way, shape or form.

  She didn’t try anything other than ordinary fighting. No gouging, no choking…nothing challenging apart from the obligatory try for a knee to the groin. He twisted his hips to avoid that and hauled her hands above her head as disappointment surged though him. She hadn’t even tried to bite. A shiver whispered along his spine at the thought of her teeth on him, her lips over his skin.

  “Hold still,” he snarled as he used his thighs to pin hers down. Finally, she was stretched out under him, the glorious wealth of her hair spread like a fiery halo around her head.

  “Fuck you!”

  She carried on struggling, twisting and squirming under him. Pressed breast to thigh, he felt everything. Every curve and hollow of her feminine form. Lust raged through his veins to center in his cock. Thick and solid in a heartbeat, it pressed against its leather confinement and throbbed to be free. Using his knee, he forced her legs apart and ground his hips against hers.

  “You will be if you don’t stop struggling.”

  She froze under him, her eyes wide and dark at his implied threat. His feral instincts screamed at him to quit wasting time, to strip her and bury himself to the hilt in her sweet softness.

  She would be sweet. He just knew it. Leaning down, he ran his nose along the gentle arch of her neck. Her scent, floral and exotic at the same time, hit him like a punch to the gut, the arousal swirling through his body coalescing in his cock. He was so hard he could nail a hole through a fucking board.

  She was his prisoner. He didn’t have to treat her as if she were one of the elven race’s rare, prized females.

  His lips brushed her neck and she flinched. The tiny sound of fear struck a direct hit to something deep inside him. She was terrified. He was a brutal bastard…he knew that, even took pride in it, but he didn’t set out to terrify women.

  Shame burned through him with a force every bit as strong as the tempting little voice in his head. He lifted his head, shifting his hips slowly, as though his threat had been idle.

  “Good. That’s better.”

  The low, rough timbre of his voice matched the darkness in his eyes. Tamryn couldn’t look away, locked by his gaze as much as she was pinned by his larger body. His much larger body. Even his muscles had muscles, all rock-hard and pressed against her. Heat flashed through her, bringing every skin cell to shivering awareness. He lifted his hips and the heavy hardness there no longer pressed between her legs.

  She should be terrified, but all she could think of was the thick cock pressed so briefly against her. Her pussy ached, clit pulsing with need. Spread open by his strong thighs, she couldn’t even press her legs together to try to ease the ache.

  Biting her lip, she tried not to whimper, tried not to press against him and beg for more. What the hells was wrong with her? She didn’t want for lovers back in camp, wasn’t sexually frustrated, so why did his touch have her melting with need?

  He opened his mouth to say something else and her gaze riveted to his lips. Curved and sensual, they fascinated her. What would it be like to be kissed by him? Would he be as cruel and demanding as the stories said or as hard and forceful as she craved.

  He paused and a frown crossed his dark features. His eyes flickered closed as he took a deep breath, drawing it into his lungs slowly as though savoring it. When his eyes flicked open, heat blazed there, and an erotic intent so deep she could drown in it.

  “You’re wet.” His rasped words caused a rush of liquid heat from her cunt to soak her underthings. “I can smell your heat, your need.”

  “Don’t be stupid.” She curled her lip. “Why would I want to debase myself with the likes of you?”

  Fuckfuckfuck. Why had she said that?

  The expression in his eyes hardened. “Debase, huh? We’ll see about that.”

  She had no time to react as his lips crashed down on hers. Harsh and cruel, they gave no pleasure, only demanded that she surrender to him. He parted her lips with a rough sweep of his tongue and drove inside, plundering the soft sweetness of her mouth.

  She tugged at his hold on her wrists and tried to deny him access to her mouth. His hands tightened to the point of pain on her wrists and a low growl rumbled through his chest warningly.

  She couldn’t contain the whimper that escaped. All her fears were coming true. She was about to be raped by the cruelest elf of them all and there was nothing she could do about it. A single tear welled in the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek.

  Then the world rolled. Either that or her fear had reached into the ether and tweaked existence itself. Bane shifted and his lips gentled. Instead of plundering, his tongue slid along hers in teasing strokes. Still forceful, his body pressed hard against hers, but now he tempted instead of ordered. He kissed her deeply, his lips hot and persuasive against hers as he worked on her last line of defense. Her fear.

  He nibbled at her lower lip as though they had all the time in the world, the manacle-like grip of his hand on her wrists easeing up. Instead of holding her captive, he stroked his fingertips gently down her arms.

  She wouldn’t respond. Couldn’t respond. He was an elf. She was a faery. The idea of them…together…was just wrong.

  Ohmylady, but it felt so right.

  She moaned as he nipped her full lower lip, then sucked the abused flesh into his mouth. Need was an unstoppable onslaught as it washed through her body, sweeping her ability to think straight away.

  He shifted between her thighs, using a hard knee to open her further, until one of her legs was hooked up over his. His lips burned a trail of fire along her jaw and under her ear. She gasped as his tongue swirled around her earlobe and captured it between his teeth.

  Heat and tension wound around each other low in her belly, her cunt aching as he swept a hand down her side to flirt with the waistband of her low-slung pants. Callused fingertips teased the tender skin of her stomach under the leather. She didn’t wear mail, it slowed her down too much, and now she was grateful for that fact. It
meant less clothing between them. She moaned again and turned her head to seek his lips. She needed more, needed his kiss more than she needed air.

  He seemed to catch her movement, the tiny capitulation. Surging over her, he rumbled in triumph and claimed her lips again. This time, all bets were off. He slid his tongue into her mouth at the same time he pushed his hand under her leathers.

  Strong fingers parted her folds as he twined his tongue with hers, thrusting and stroking to mimic what she wanted, needed. They both gasped as he reached the entrance to her pussy.

  “Fuck me, you’re wet.” His words were murmured against her lips as he swept the wet heat of her arousal from her cunt to her clit. She couldn’t answer, her ability to think or breathe stolen as he stroked her in tiny, maddening circles. His lips teased hers as he did so, the clever touches driving the tension in her body higher.

  Breathy moans and soft sounds of pleasure filled the darkness around them, torn from her throat as he worked her body. He seemed to know just how and where to touch her to set her on fire. How did he do that, how did he know? Elves were vicious, cruel…and so, so wicked.

  Oh Lady Goddess, that felt good. But she needed more. Much more. She needed everything. Her hips rocked against his hand, pressing against him as she sought more sensation. Tiny movements, but ones he didn’t miss. Covering her lips with his, he slid his tongue into her mouth at the same moment he thrust a long, thick finger into her pussy.

  She moaned, a low sound of pure pleasure, as liquid heat bathed his invading digit. Her hips rocked as he thrust in and out, a second finger joining the first until her toes curled with pleasure. His movements eased the ache in her cunt and made it worse at the same time.

  She ached to be filled, and with more than just his fingers, the feel of his thick, heavy cock pressed against her earlier teasing at her memory. Her clit throbbed, aching for his clever touch as the tension in her core reached fever pitch.

  She tore her lips from his and moaned, reaching for him as her body climbed to the peak.