No Mercy - Book 2: Trek Mi Q'an Series Read online

  But her father, the only person in the world she had ever truly loved, had lingered amidst his illness for seven long years. She had cherished each and every moment she’d had with him and had done everything in her power to make his painful existence as comfortable as possible.

  There had been times when it had been difficult, times when she had sat up crying at night because she knew that no matter what she did the end result would inevitably be the same. And, indeed, it had been. He had died almost seven years to the date of his original diagnosis and had left Giselle empty, broken, and utterly alone.

  She had grieved for the loss of her father for a little over a year. And now, at the age of thirty-six, she realized that life had somehow managed to pass her by and that it was time to reclaim some of the youth she’d lost.

  Giselle was a woman of average looks, neither hopelessly plain nor heart-stoppingly beautiful. At five feet four inches in height, with a long straight mop of strawberry-blonde hair, and pale skin with a splash of freckles here and there, she didn’t feel that there was anything all that remarkable or recommendable about her looks. She wasn’t a dark-haired exotic, nor a tanned, blonde Barbie doll, nor a red-headed vixen. She was just Giselle McKenzie, an average-looking woman of average appearance.

  If there was anything particularly fetching about her, she conceded, it was her large, green eyes. Somehow, amidst her ivory skin and the freckles dusted here and there, they managed to sparkle, to make a rather ordinary face seem a bit more appealing. A bit. But probably not by much.

  Giselle, however, was not the type of woman to waste her time wishing she was somebody else or wishing that she would become a miraculous beauty overnight. She would work with what she had and hope it was enough. And Anthony’s interest in her had proved that it was enough for at least him. Not that he himself was anything to write home about, she thought morosely.

  Bloody hell! Would the man never stop drooling that ghastly spaghetti sauce?

  Her chin going up a notch, Giselle relegated all misgivings concerning what she was about to do tonight to the back of her mind. She would see this through. She would go to Anthony’s bed. She would—finally—be rid of her unwelcomed and unwanted hymen. And then she would be able to resume her country life without feeling so wretchedly inadequate.

  Whatever happened between her and Anthony after this night, or her and any other man for that matter, was up to fate. She was determined not to worry about it, to let life happen. But, she thought with a sense of inward satisfaction, at least she would be letting fate take its course sans her maidenhead. A bloody embarrassment, that.

  “So tell me more about yourself,” Giselle said, refusing to look anywhere below Anthony’s eyes lest the sight of his eating make her ill. “How long have you been the manager of the grocery store in town?”

  Anthony spoke through mouthfuls of pasta. “About eleven years now.”

  “I see. And do you like it?”

  “Yeah.”

  She tapped her nails on the tabletop, considering what else could be said. “What do you like to do for fun?” she asked conversationally.

  “Play cards.”

  “Do you win much?”

  “Yeah.”

  Giselle sighed. This was definitely the most boring conversation she’d ever had the displeasure of partaking in. It only irritated her all the more that her date for the evening, the first one she’d had in more years than she cared to contemplate, was more interested in his meal than in her. She remembered her maidenhead and plowed on determinedly. “Which card game is your favorite?”

  “Poker.” This with three large spaghetti strands dangling from his chin.

  Her lips tightened. “That sounds rather interesting. Perhaps you could teach me how to play.”

  “Maybe.”

  Bloody hell! Couldn’t the man say more than one word at a time!

  “Would you like to have sex with me?”

  The sound of Anthony’s fork clanging against his plate at least brought Giselle a feminine sense of satisfaction in knowing that she had well and truly rattled the damned man. She smiled like a woman of the world feeling terrifically smug for a thirty-six-year-old virgin.

  “Wh-What?” he squeaked out. Tugging at his tie, Anthony considered her through bulging eyes.

  “I said would you care to have sexual intercourse with me this evening?” She thought of her hymen and immediately decided she was taking no chances he’d not heard her correctly. “You know,” she said magnimoniously, waving a hand about, “have sex, make love, do the dirty deed.”

  Her eyes narrowed as she looked at his shocked expression, wishing that any man but this pasta-inhaling wimp would be the one who would take her virginity. The course, however, had been set. Besides, she thought bitterly, she’d just purchased two damned cats last week. Enough was enough. “Be a man,” she seethed through clenched teeth. “Take me to bed.”

  Anthony gulped nervously, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Okay,” he squeaked.

  Giselle sat up straighter in her chair, the feel of victory surging through her veins. She felt as though she’d just won the Olympic gold, climbed the highest mountain, swum the deepest of oceans. That her major accomplishment was getting the moron across from her to agree to sever her hymen wasn’t of consequence.

  What was important, she told herself staunchly, was that within the next few hours she would know the delights of being with a man. Or, she thought with down-turned lips, she would at least know what it was to be with a man. She doubted much in the way of delight would factor into the equation. That last thought caused her determination to falter a bit, but when she reflected back on her recent feline purchases she regained her rigid stance. She was so preoccupied with her thoughts that she failed to realize the bracelet that was dangling from her wrist had unclasped itself and fell to the ground. “Shall we leave then?”

  Anthony’s jaw went slack. “W-Well...”—he cleared his throat—“where shall we...”—his face colored as he lowered his voice—“have sexual intercourse at?” he whispered.

  Bloody hell! Must she think of everything!

  Giselle’s nostrils flared. “In the car, at your flat, at my house. I don’t particularly care. Let’s just get the show on the road so to speak.”

  Anthony gawked at her a moment or two before regaining his senses. He’d never had a woman throw herself at him quite so brazenly. His erection was stone-hard. “W-Well...”—he reached across the table and placed his hand atop hers as his voice went down in timbre—“the car will do fine I—ouch!” He snatched his hand back with a howl.

  Giselle shook her head, not understanding. She heard a low growl resonating in the back of her mind but, thinking it no big deal, discarded it as irrelevant. Someone must have brought a seeing-eye dog into the restaurant or something. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “You stabbed me with the fork!” he whined.

  She took offense at that. “I most certainly did not.”

  “Then why am I bleeding?”

  Giselle’s gaze fell to his bloodied hand to quickly ascertain that, indeed, the hammy thing truly was bleeding. “I’ve no notion,” she said in a bewildered voice. “I wasn’t even holding my fork.” She had brushed against it with her pinky finger, but hadn’t realized it.

  Anthony looked at her speculatively for a protracted moment, then decided she must be telling the truth. The woman had invited him to her bed, or in this case her car. Why would she stab him before getting a piece of him? He smiled. “Of course you aren’t responsible, darling,” he crooned.

  Darling? she thought.

  “It was obviously no more than a bizarre accident.” He reached across the tabletop and laid his hand atop hers once again. “Shall we—ouch!”

  Giselle watched in shock and horror as the fork that had been lying under her hand on the tabletop catapulted from its resting place and hurled itself straight toward Anthony’s eye. He turned his head at the last possible moment and the
four-pronged eating utensil lodged itself in his cheek instead. She screamed.

  The low growling sound grew wilder, frenzied, crazed-sounding. She covered her ears, her mouth hanging open dumbly as she gawked at Anthony and tried to figure out what was happening. Her heart-rate was inexplicably high. She was sweating bucket-loads even though the restaurant was kept at a cooled temperature. Feelings of primordial anger and possessiveness swamped her. But they weren’t her own feelings. They were somebody else’s. A man’s. A male who meant to punish her if she didn’t...

  “I’m hurt!” Anthony wailed. “I need a doctor!”

  Giselle broke out of her trance and shot to her feet, discarding all of the weirdness of the situation as irrelevant and focusing on the tangible. “I’ll drive you to the hospital,” she said breathlessly, the strangest feeling of fatigue overpowering her. It took her a long moment to snap out of it. “L-Let’s go.”

  * * * * *

  “Control yourself, my friend.” Death braced his hands on either of Rem’s shoulders to steady him. He swallowed roughly as Rem cocked his head and, teeth bared and growling, regarded him with murder in his eyes. The king’s eyes, he noted worriedly, were shifting back and forth from blue to wild green, as if an electrical current was running into his head and repeatedly flicking the colors back and forth.

  He had to stop him from changing, had to bring a halt to any further devolution. By the sands, Death thought grimly, let this not happen now when we have finally found his wee bride! “We will take your nee’ka when darkness falls, my friend. Now snap out of it anon,” he barked.

  Death was relieved that the rough edge to his voice produced the desired effect and the king’s eyes began to shift back to blue. A glowing green pulsed through them once more, then flicked off completely and resumed their natural hue. He took a breath of relief.

  “I do not want,” Rem ground out, “to wait until the moon-rising to claim her.” His muscles corded and tensed as he watched his Sacred Mate scurry into some sort of metal box with the man who had dared to touch her. A moment later a primitive engine contraption roared to life and the metal box fled the parking facility altogether.

  He wanted the primitive man dead. Annihilated from existence. His teeth slowly began to bare...

  “’Tis best do we shield the primitives from the claiming,” Death grumbled, meeting the king’s eyes. “You’ve a lock on her scent. ‘Tis impossible for the wee wench to flee.”

  Rem ran a large hand over his jaw line and took a deep breath. He knew that changes had begun to take place within him. He could feel his mind cracking and slipping. He needed that wee wench and he needed her now. Being forced apart from her was sheer torture. Even waiting until nightfall felt like an eternity. ‘Twas like dangling a fire-berry in front of a starving warrior, then snatching it cruelly away.

  But he was a king. And because of that fact he knew the way of their people better than most. ‘Twas unnecessary and mayhap disastrous to alert any primitives to the existence of other humanoids. They would find out in their own time as they plotted out the course of their own destinies.

  Rem took a deep breath, calming the rate of his hearts simultaneously. His blue eyes flicked a warning green once and then, with the force of sheer will-power, he tamped down his predatory nature and saw once more through sane eyes. “We will wait,” he rumbled out, his gaze flicking toward the metal box that was making a turn and heading down some manner of paved street. He fingered the bridal necklace he was clutching. “Until darkness falls.”

  Chapter 3

  What a day! Giselle thought dramatically as she fell onto her bed with a groan. Placing a cool cloth over her eyes, she gloomily considered what had become of her intricately formulated plans.

  They had been reduced to rubbish. All of them.

  Her date had been a tiring bore, he had inexplicably been stabbed in the cheek with a fork, she had rushed him to the local hospital whereupon he had garnered five stitches for his trouble, and as if all that were not bad enough, she thought with a snarl, he had refused to allow her to pull off to the side of the road so he could quickly deflower her before carrying on to the hospital. The wimp.

  Bloody hell! What wretched luck I have!

  The sound of cats meowing in the background made Giselle’s tight-lipped expression that much stiffer. What in the blazes had ever possessed her to purchase two cats was beyond comprehension. She might as well paint the word “pathetic” across her forehead in glowing neon pink and be done with it.

  Well, she sniffed, at least she could take comfort in the love of her ever-faithful pet poodles, Bryony and Tess. They had been her beloved companions for over three years, giving her soft, sweet fur to cry into as her father’s condition had worsened. And better yet, owning poodles was in no way associated with spinsterhood. She’d have to give the damn cats away to Mrs. Hiram three miles down.

  Bryony and Tess jumped up onto the bed moments later, whining about something or another. She wrapped an arm around both of them, comforting them with her scent and touch. The dogs were nervous, she absently noted as she petted both of their fluffy sides. About what she couldn’t begin to imagine. It wasn’t as if anything exciting ever happened in dull Shoreham. Indeed, she seethed, women couldn’t even seem to lose their virginity in this damned hole of a town.

  Giselle harrumphed, deciding that whatever had the girls spooked was liable to go away. Perhaps a rodent had scurried by outdoors or something. Whatever it was it would go away if it knew what was in its best interest. She was, after all, in no mood to be bothered.

  Giselle’s eyebrows shot up from below the damp cloth when it dawned on her that her nightgown was coming undone. Not just undone, she thought in shock, but it was also being...ripped to shreds?

  Tearing the cloth off of her face, her eyes shot open and clashed with a glowing blue gaze. She could not move, could not speak, felt helplessly paralyzed as the man’s form drew nearer to the bed and moonlight revealed a giant so huge that she damn near fainted.

  The man’s eerie gaze held her steady, immobilized. Sweat broke out onto her forehead as her nipples stabbed upwards and puckered from the chill in the air. The giant seemed to notice her body’s reaction for he reached out and plucked a hardened nipple between his overly large fingers, then rolled it around as he continued to stare into her eyes.

  Giselle gasped, in so much shock she began to feel hysterical. That condition, coupled with the bizarre paralysis she was feeling, caused her to go numb. She tried to look away from him, tried desperately to reclaim her body, but she couldn’t. It was as if that man, that...giant...held all dominion over her.

  His hand released her nipple and he sat down on the edge of the bed beside her. Those bizarre blue eyes raked over her hungrily as the fingers of one hand splayed through the thatch of strawberry-blonde curls between her thighs. She gasped again, her breathing growing labored.

  She couldn’t see much of the man, could just make out his exceedingly tall and thickly muscled form. And the piercing blue eyes. God in heaven, she thought hysterically, what kind of man possessed eyes like that?

  Giselle began panting as the giant’s hands came toward her neck wielding some sort of a bizarre necklace that pulsed in vibrant colors no words could describe. Did he mean to strangle her with it? she thought hysterically. Would he kill her right here in her own bed?

  Unable to endure the suspense, her eyes rolled back into her head as she slowly swooned into oblivion. Her last thought was that after she’d come so close to having sex with Anthony tonight, she was about to die a virgin. Or worse yet, die a non-virgin who’d been raped by Paul Bunyon.

  Bloody hell! What a wretched day!

  * * * * *

  After barking at Death to make haste to the gastrolight cruiser with his nee’ka’s yipping animal friends, Rem picked up the naked body of his sleeping wee wife and hoisted her up into his arms.

  He smiled. Actually smiled. ‘Twas the first time he’d done so in more Yessat year
s than he cared to contemplate.

  ‘Twas done. And she was his.

  After years of searching the galaxies only to be defeated at every turn, he had at last acquired the only woman in existence biologically capable of completing him. He held onto her naked body tightly as a current of gastrolight beamed the King and Queen of Sypar up into the belly of the ship which hovered on the far side of the moon, safely undetected by the primitives.

  ‘Twould take but a few moon-risings to reach Tryston and present his pani bride to his family. And then, he thought with a predator’s satisfaction, ‘twas but a mere consummation feast that stood betwixt their joining.

  Rem bent his neck to sweetly kiss the tip of her nose. ‘Twas spotted, he noted in awe, spotted just as the images of the goddess Aparna were spotted. His shaft so erect it was broaching pain, Rem walked faster toward their bedchamber aboard the cruiser, eagerly wanting to examine his new prize with all haste.

  When he reached their rooms he laid her out carefully upon the bed, then hoisted himself up beside her. Summoning off his warrior’s garb, he sat on his knees next to her and ran his trembling hands all over her. Her hair, her face, her breasts and nipples, the soft thatch of hair between her thighs...’twas all his.

  By the goddess, he thought reverently, his wee pani bride had been worth the hellish years of waiting. Never had he beheld a woman more beautiful. ‘Twas fact that his elder brothers had mated with women possessed of rare skins, one an onyx and the other, like Rem’s nee’ka, with the coloring of a sekta pearl. But neither of his brothers could boast of having claimed a sekta pearl wench with spots.