Freeing the Prisoner_A Kindred Tales Novel Read online

  “They whipped you? Why?” Dani demanded.

  He shrugged painfully, wincing as it pulled the torn skin of his shoulders.

  “Don’t know. They said…said it was the will of the Monarch.”

  “What? Oh, no!” Dani’s big eyes filled with sudden tears. “Oh Ky, this is all my fault! I tried to talk to my father about you this morning and he got angry with me. He must…must have taken it out on you.” She put a hand to her eyes, as though she couldn’t bear to look at him, couldn’t bear to see what had been done to him. “All my fault,” she mourned.

  Ky cursed himself for a fool. He never should have let her know the guards had been acting under orders from her father. Never should have put that guilt on her.

  “Hey, little girl, don’t cry,” he murmured, nudging her with his cheek. “It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay.”

  “No, it’s not!” Dani looked at him with wet eyes. Her long black lashes were matted with tears, making her eyes shine like black diamonds. “When I came in here and saw you hanging there all bloody I thought…I thought you were…d-dead,” she got out at last. “It’s not all right that my father had his guards treat you this way! I don’t understand—he’s never been a cruel man before.”

  Maybe not to you, Ky thought. But in his experience, any male who was willing to order the torture of another creature probably wasn’t innocent of cruelty in his past.

  “It’s all right,” he repeated again. “I’m better now that you’re here.”

  “No, you’re not! There’s a kit for small wound treatment in my father’s bathing chambers. I will go and get it if you’re strong enough to sit up.”

  Ky would have liked to stay the way they were, with his cheek pressed to her soft breast forever. Feeling her near him, her lush body close to his, seemed to give him strength and comfort. He wanted to be near her more than he wanted food or water or first aid. But he realized they probably had a limited amount of time.

  Reluctantly, he nodded. “Yeah. I think I’ll be okay, little girl.”

  “All right.” She released his head gently and somehow Ky found the strength to straighten up, although it pulled at the wounds in his back to do so. “I’ll be right back,” Dani promised.

  She ran lightly through the corridor that connected his cell to her father’s bed chamber and in a moment she was back with a small silver basket containing a variety of tubes and sprays and bandages.

  “My father is old and his skin is easily torn,” she explained, setting the basket down beside Ky. “He prefers to treat the wounds himself rather than always having the Royal Physician bothering him.”

  Ky kept his mouth shut. Better to say nothing at all about her father, the male who had ordered him whipped until he bled. It was clear Dani loved him, despite what he had done. He would only alienate her if he spoke badly of the Monarch.

  “Now, let’s see,” she was musing as she picked through the basket. “Some disinfectant spray first, I think. And then some wound heal ointment and bandages…”

  “You can’t bandage me up, little girl,” Ky objected. “If you do, the guards will know somebody has been in here.”

  “Oh, right…” Dani wrinkled her brow in obvious frustration. “Well, the spray and the ointment won’t be so obvious. But it’s going to be interesting trying to reach you.”

  She was standing close to him, bending over his shoulder to see his back as she spoke. Her soft body pressed against his, clad only in the see-through dark green dress she was wearing. Being so close to her was making Ky’s shaft rise despite the pain of his wounds.

  “You could let me go—free my hands, I mean,” he suggested quietly. “Just long enough to treat my back.”

  Dani pulled away, her lush lower lip caught between her even white teeth.

  “Kyron…”

  “It’s all right,” he said quickly. “I understand. You still don’t know me well enough to be sure I wouldn’t try to get away…although I do hope you know I’d never hurt you.”

  “I…I know,” she whispered. “And I’m sorry…so sorry…” She shook her head. “It’s not that I don’t want to let you go. I don’t want this to happen to you again, but I’m afraid—”

  “Don’t be sorry or afraid little girl,” Ky murmured. “Just do what you can. Look, I’ll lean forward as much as possible so you can reach me.”

  Dani ended up standing on the stone bench he was sitting on and bending over to reach all of him in order to treat his entire back. This put the V of her legs quite close to his face and Ky couldn’t help inhaling her sweet feminine musk and eyeing the neatly trimmed triangle of curls at her center.

  Gods, how had these people decided that females should wear transparent garments with no underclothes beneath them? Dani was completely bare under her gauzy gown. She didn’t even wear a breast-band to hide her nipples or a pair of panties to obscure the soft little slit of her pussy. And the fabric of her dress was so thin and silky it was barely there at all. Ky was certain if he was to lean forward a little more and place a kiss on her pussy lips she would feel it as though there was nothing between them at all…

  Feel it and then perhaps spread her legs a little more, opening herself for him, parting her pussy lips for his tongue. Gods, he could just imagine licking her through the thin, silky fabric…feeling the wet heat of her inner folds against his mouth as she moaned and tugged at his hair, begging for more…

  Such fantasies kept him from minding the pain as Dani treated his wounded back, first with a stinging disinfectant spray and then with healing ointment. The ointment was the worst—it felt like lines of liquid fire when she first applied it, but eased the ache in his back considerably as it settled in and started to knit the flesh together.

  “There,” she said at last, stepping down and wiping the ointment from her fingers with one of the unused white bandages still in the kit. “Your skin should heal quickly and cleanly now. But I don’t think the guards will be able to tell anything has been done—for all they know Kindred are just fast healers.”

  “I thank you,” Ky said formally. “And as a matter of fact, we are fast healers. I feel better already.”

  He didn’t tell her that being so close to her had made him feel better than either the spray or the bandages.

  Dani bit her lip and let one small hand drift up to his bare shoulder.

  “I’ve never seen a male whose skin wasn’t blue before,” she murmured. “But your blood is as red as ours.” Her eyes lifted to meet his. “I suppose…suppose that my skin color is as strange to you as yours is to me.”

  “Actually, no,” Ky told her. “On Earth, the planet we Kindred of the Mother Ship are currently protecting, there are lots of females with skin tones like yours. In fact, Earth girls come in many different shades—but all of them are lovely.”

  “Oh?” Dani’s breath seemed to catch in her throat for a moment. “And these girls, the ones with skin the color of mine…do you find them beautiful?”

  “Very beautiful,” Ky growled softly. “So exotic and lovely it makes me ache to look at them.” As he spoke, he kept his eyes locked with hers, letting her know how gorgeous she was…how much he wanted her.

  “I see.” Dani’s creamy brown cheeks grew rosy with a blush. “You know, I never thought I could find a male with tan skin attractive but, well…you are very well made, although you are so big.”

  She gestured at his bare chest and arms which were on display since the guards had ripped off his shirt, and her blush got even darker.

  “You’re well made yourself, little girl,” Ky growled softly. “So full and lush. Back on Earth they would call you ‘full-figured’ or ‘plus-sized.’ But I just call it gorgeous.”

  Gods, he wished she would come over and press against him again. Those minutes while she was treating his back had been some of the best of his life.

  As though reading his thoughts, Dani frowned and said, “Oh, I think I missed a spot on your shoulder.”

  She