“Can I check on my other men…just to be sure they’re not, uhmmm, being molested? And, maybe, let this one be untied so he can defend himself against further ravishment? Again, all in the spirit of dètente.” He shot Donovan a glance and his man silently acknowledged the look while trying to steady his breathing.
“What is dètente spirit? I don’t know this word. I have never heard of this entity.” Artemis stared at Vincent for a second and then looked away, appearing horrified and flushed by what she’d witnessed. She wouldn’t even dignify her nymph’s entreaties.
“It means relaxing the hostilities between warring nations, I believe.”
Artemis nodded. “In dètente, then, release that prisoner and feed and clothe him.”
She stormed out of the tent with her head held high and her back rigid. Cool forest air from the chilly spring slapped her cheeks and the sudden temperature drop was welcomed. A troubling heat had unleashed itself between her thighs…along with a thawed river that dampened her hotly swollen valley. She could barely take a step without a stab of need piercing her as though one of her arrows, and her breasts suddenly felt heavy, the very tips aching like bees had stung them. When the barbarian stood next to her, it seemed as though all the air had left the clearing, even taking the smallest amount that remained in her lungs with it. What was this magic he owned?
Not sure where to begin, and for the first time in her life feeling shaky, she glanced at the semi-circle of tents. Pointing toward one at random, she sucked in a deep breath, set her shoulders, and forged ahead. She didn’t care that the barbarian found this amusing. His customs were clearly very different from hers.
Closing her eyes briefly, she peeked in a tent, and then dipped her head out before the large warrior beside her could enter. She stopped him with both hands against his chest.
“Don’t,” she said, her voice a raw whisper. “I…I don’t know what has become of my followers.” She covered her mouth and then turned away.
“Allow me to inspect my men,” Vincent insisted, hoping that nothing crazy like a butchering would meet his eyes. If they all went out like Donovan, fine. But crazy people had a way of turning fun and games into something deadly.
Still on guard, he pulled back the flap a bit and peered in.
After a long pause, he let the flap fall very slowly and straightened himself, rolling his shoulders. He needed to walk away for a minute to get his mind together and to shake off the hot shard of desire that had filled his shaft. The image of what he’d witnessed replayed itself a few times like a CD with a skip in it before he could get the visual out of his mind.
“Horrible, wasn’t it?” Artemis said quietly, touching his shoulders. “Virgins since longer than I can remember and now it has come to this.” She looked up and swallowed hard. “I wish they would have never called me back here.”
For a moment, he just stared at her. Virgins? They were all virgins? What kinda insane environmental cult was this?
“Can I check on my remaining soldiers?” he asked, forcing his voice to be rough, forcing his mind to remain focused on the very real dangers these women presented…trying to get the hard-on to die down.
Artemis nodded but didn’t move. He could tell that she was giving him permission to go look, but that she didn’t want to see any more for herself. In a way he couldn’t blame her and was glad that she’d simply be staring at his back as he took a glimpse inside each tent.
“It is bad, is it not?” Artemis asked as he slowly returned to her side.
He nodded, mouth dry, and kept his gaze on the horizon. “Yeah.” That was all he could say before turning so that she couldn’t see his arousal. “I have one more man to check.”
Artemis graciously nodded as he strode away, peeped into the tent that held Jesse captive and winced. He quickly dropped the tent flap, inhaled a deep breath through his nose and tried to do math in his head to regain focus on the mission.
“The offense is grave,” Artemis murmured when Vince returned to stand before her.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “So, how do we resolve this?”
“My nymphs are in the wrong, therefore, by rights, as has always been; you may decide the punishment…even though I am a goddess. There are still laws.”
“All I want,” he said quietly, “is for the hostages to be returned unharmed, and for me and my men to be able to walk out of here alive.”
She frowned. “That you would doubt my word when I said they would be unharmed is troubling.” She turned away and headed toward her tent.
“You also said they would be unmolested, and they have been.” There was amusement in his tone as she stiffened and dipped inside her tent.
He put the safety back on his gun and watched her pour water from an urn into a basin to splash her face. “Mind if I do the same?” he said calmly, watching her from across the expanse.
“Yes, I mean no—you are more than welcome to wash the stain of humiliation from your face.”
“I am not embarrassed,” he said in a low rumble. “It’s spring.”
She dabbed her damp cheeks with a thick towel and then wound her hair up into a knot atop her head, applying the wet side of the towel against the nape of her neck. A deep rosy hue stained her cheeks and small beads of perspiration kissed her cleavage. He couldn’t help allowing his eyes to travel down her breasts and over her erect peaks, knowing that if she felt anything near what he was feeling, she was also wet.
Against his better judgment, he neared her and gently removed the towel from her hands, dipping it in the cool basin water and then dabbing her collarbone with it.
“What was the vow?” he murmured, staring at her.
“That I would remain a virgin always until the end of time…as would my nymphs.”
Her breathing had become shallow from his attention, and it had the effect of stilting his too.
“Why?” he asked hoarsely. “To what end?”
She licked her lips as they parted and the pink tip of her tongue darted out. “Because rutting males are barbarians that pillage the wilderness,” she whispered.
“But what about marriages to honorable men, and then having children?” he asked, stepping in closer. “You need us barbarians for that, right?” Then again, he thought about the advances of technology and realized that that wasn’t a given.
“I don’t understand what has happened…why this time when we were called it was so different…why they would break a vow held for so long?” Her voice was an exhausted lament as she stared up at him. “Unless they felt the decency in each of you that I felt?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, finding it very hard to keep up any ruse with her or even to think of her as the enemy. There was something completely disorienting about her the moment he stood physically close to her. It also dredged the truth, this magnetic pulse and he fought with himself not to ask, but caved to the need to. “What is it about you that the moment I’m close like this, I…”
“My aura,” she murmured in a near rasp, her eyes now heavy-lidded and her breathing shallow. “I’ve never let any male being get this close—you have one, too…an aura field that is…spectacular.”
“Really?” he asked quietly, his groin throbbing so hard that he could barely breathe. “Your nymphs, they have this, too…is that what seduced my men or were they drugged?”
“We don’t use drugs; only Aphrodite does…it is their auras, which is why we stay in the wilderness and away from humans…normally.”
He didn’t know if it was complete hocus pocus or what, but the rational side of his brain was oozing out of his ears as she began to slightly pant. Her dewy skin made his fingertips burn to touch it, but he didn’t want to take liberties that could get anybody killed, so he kept wetting the towel and slowly bringing it over the swell of her breasts and down her bare arms, teasing her neck as they spoke in dètente.