Chapter 44: Chapter Forty Four: The Sweetest of Threats

Aya’s dreams that night were a delightful little cocktail of a fantasy, expressing all of her subconscious desires. Carnen and Kareem were wrestling shirtless in the mud, and Carnen bested the arrogant demi-marquis with ease, humiliating him soundly. He then turned to Aya and scooped her up into his arms.

“What about Charlotte?” she asked him in breathless concern.

His brow furrowed in puzzlement. “You are Charlotte.”

Dream turned to nightmare, and Aya was just a ghost to him again, a woman with no voice and no true identity. She watched powerless from the sidelines as Carnen twirled Charlotte in his arms, and Kareem spat out a mouthful of dirt.

Kareem’s gaze fixed on Aya, and he eyed her up and down. “You may be just a peasant, cali, but you’re a demon at heart.” He gave a cocky grin, spreading his legs. “Forget about all others and give yourself to me, right here in the grit as the fates intended. I may even keep you afterward. I’m to have dozens of mistresses, you know.”

She awoke with cheeks burning in a mix of embarrassment and fury. Kareem read it in her expression in an instant. He had been up staring at her for quite some time already, though he was still lying right on top of her, the edges of his hair glowing a most angelic bronze in light of the freshly risen sun. His lips were hovering just inches from her own, and she could feel something hard pressing up against her thigh. Marseir’s drugs had most clearly worn off. Still, she did not deign to recoil nor draw her dagger yet.

“You’ve been making the most interesting little sounds this night,” Kareem noted. “Just what were you dreaming?”

“You were beaten in the mud by a man twice your size,” she told him honestly, and his eyes hardened.

Still, he did not pull back from her. He ran his hand up her side, demanding coldly, “And did this tank of a man feel like me when he claimed you after that fight?”

She gave a nervous swallow, admitting, “He… did not claim me. You… you told me to forget about him and… give myself to you.” Her cheeks were bright red, and she could no longer meet his stare. “Right here in the grit as the fates intended…”

She cut out with a gasp as he slid his fingers up between her legs. He was smiling broadly once again as he guided her own hand to help in sliding down his trousers.

“What happened to all your respectable talk of proper vows and purification rituals--”

“You are a cali, you can never be purified,” he cooed, and he could feel clearly how wet she was as he slid free his fingers and shifted to replace them with something far thicker. “Besides, you are a peasant.” She stiffened. “I need show you no respect. You will treat me with all reverence of course, because I have lowered myself to be with you and--”

Aya’s flush turned into a blaze of fury, and she punched him in the throat, putting instant end to his horrid words. She shoved him off of her and squirmed away with her knees pulled protectively up to her chest. “You do not lower yourself. I degrade myself by even entertaining the thought of you! Do you know how my dream ended? You told me you would have dozens of mistresses.”

“Yes, your point?” Kareem croaked, and Aya’s anger peaked.

“You will have a dozen mistresses, but my body is for you alone to enjoy?” she clarified.

“Obviously. Yes. That is the proper path for men and women.”

Aya stabbed her dagger into the earth, twisting the blade and most seriously contemplating its planting in the scoundrel before her. “Touch me again, I will cut off your balls,” she snapped, shoving her way to her feet.

Kareem’s lips hardened into an angry line, and he stalked right after her. “I knew it was a mistake to taint myself and bed a cali.”

“I am not--!”

“Your thirsts are as unquenchable as your touch is corruptive!” he shouted her down. “Just who was this other man you allowed into your dreams anyhow as I lie there right atop you--”

“Pressing up against me uninvited in a most traumatizing display,” Aya snapped. “See, you are the corrupting force, Kareem. You are the filthy demon.”

“Then we are both of us going to hell! Now who was he?” he repeated. Like a dog with a bone between his teeth, he refused to let it go. “Who was he that you deludedly believe he would best me in combat, huh? Or perhaps he was no one real at all. Perhaps it was a hundred men who then took you back to their--”

She punched him in the face, and he was far too surprised to even attempt to block. It blacked him out for a second and sent him right to the sand. Aya’s strength was fully returned to her now as well, and this spoiled little lordling was nowhere near as physically fit to challenge her as her previous suitor had been.

“Carnen Gristhm,” she said the name, and it brought back instantly that swirling tangle of yearning and hatred in her heart. “And yes, Kareem, he could break you like a toothpick. Do you want to come and see that for yourself? Because I am going to pay him a visit now, and probably drive a knife through his heart, because he abducted my dearest friend, the real Charlotte, and he is holding her captive and doing no doubt terrible things to her this entire time, because all you men are disgusting pigs!”

She kicked a spray of sand at him, and rather than being outraged, Kareem appeared most surprisingly abashed. He rubbed a hand over his face and asked her tentatively, “What is your name, my false-Charlotte?”

Aya flushed. “You did not care to hear it earlier, and I know now that you do not deserve to hear it at all,” she muttered, turning her back.

He stalked right after her once again, falling into easy step at her side. “I will not resent you your nature, not ever again, my cali.” Her hand clenched. “And I will learn your true name.” He laid most tender hand upon her shoulder, steering her gently to face him. “I will learn your name and give most earnest apology for my behavior, failing to hold you in reverence.” She blushed, and his arms were already sliding up her back, pulling her into his chest. “I will rescue Charlotte Marseir and bring her back to you, my gem, but will you give no proper farewell to see me on my way?”

He leaned in to kiss her, and she held a firm finger to his lips. “If this is farewell, it will be me abandoning you,” she enforced, “because I am going to rescue Charlotte myself, and I do not require your aid.”

“Of course you do. You are a woman,” he derided. “And we require an entire army to stage this rescue, most clearly, so we shall return now to my father and--”

“Then go running back to your father already.” She knocked aside his hands, stalking off into the trees.

Kareem came chasing right after her, seizing her wrist. “I will not leave you alone in such hostile lands--” She ripped free her hand and twisted him around in a wrist lock, sending him to his knees. “Ow, ow, ow! Let--” He tried to stand but could not manage it without breaking his hand.

“Let go?” she mocked. Then she released him just to prove how easily she could catch him again, knocking him flat on his back the second he started to his feet. She sat straddled atop him with her blade to his throat. “I am not a weakling in need of a guard. Duke Marseir drugged me when first we met with that same toxin you felt the other night, stripping away all strength. That strength is fully returned now though, and I could all too easily break your arm, or cut your throat, and that is exactly what I am trained for. I am an assassin, not a whore.”

“No, you are certainly not a whore,” Kareem agreed, running his hands over her backside. “I am your first and your only, and you will service no other man.” Aya’s knife flickered to the side, opening stinging cuts in both his arms. He flinched, jerking back his hands. “You dare cut me?”

“You dared grope me again,” she snapped. “One more strike, you lose the hand.”

“You are the one who saw fit to mount me, cali.” He slid a hand down his trousers, and Aya quickly jumped off him with cheeks burning before he could finish easing them off. This scoundrel was even worse than Carnen, now that they were away from his chaperons.

Kareem sunk back with a sigh. “No, no. Come back down here. Just do it without the knife. I will show you true tenderness, and you in turn must not handle your lover so roughly. It is not at all womanly.”

“I should have let you drown,” Aya muttered, stalking off.

Kareem rolled to his feet and fell into step right at her side. “I suppose you are like the woman warriors of my nation’s south-most colony?”

“Something like those women, yes,” Aya muttered. Though those warriors served as wives to their sultan as much as they were his guards… Damn it, that had been a trick question. “But no, actually, I am nothing like those women, because I am not a slave and I am most certainly not going to sleep with you.”

“You will. You desire most clearly to be with me,” Kareem disagreed. “You knew it was our fate to twine together on that beach, but you allowed thoughts of other men to most wrongfully distract you--”

“I was turned off by your own words and then the pressing worry that Charlotte may be getting dragged into the chapel at Stalis and bound in marriage this very day. I have no time to waste with bedding you, Kareem, and I am most certainly no longer in the mood,” she muttered. “I have people to kill.”

He sighed. “You are indeed as deadly as you are beautiful.” Now that was a pleasing compliment, far better than the previous night’s offering of her being a gift from the gods sent to bear him sons. He wrapped his hands around her waist. Her dagger flew out, but he caught her wrist. “None of that. I am not pressing my affections. I am caving to your whim. I will march beside you, and we will not pleasure ourselves with delays until we have pulled off a successful rescue of my promised bride.”

Her eyes hardened. “She is not your bride. That was a promise always meant to be a lie and you will not give it any credence, understood? Charlotte is most certainly not fit to suffer the likes of you.”

He smiled, rubbing his hand along her back. “I will hear your case on that then, but first we must find our way to Carnen Gristhm, and I will cut off his head and show you most firmly that he is the one not fit to be yours.”

Aya might allow him to make that attempt, though a part of her felt most firmly that Carnen was her kill. No one else could be allowed to claim him.