The Solider and the Priestess Ch. 01

She smiled again, that strange, all-knowing smile. "Yes, captain."

He wasn't sure what to do with her like this, so full of something he did not know and could not touch. "Are you hungry?"

"Not so hungry," she said carefully, and he laughed. He spread goat's cheese across two hunks of bread and offered her one.

She hesitated. "I don't want to eat your food."

"Why not?"

"I don't want to owe you for anything."

Strange girl, he thought. "You couldn't," he corrected her. "You're my prisoner. I own all of you. I take care of what's mine."

She didn't argue, but he knew she disagreed. He hoped she'd change her mind about that. He didn't want to have to break her to prove his point.

"Eat the food," was all he said.

She did, curled in the crook of his arm all the while. Her eyelashes drooped and he knew she was tired, fighting sleep because she didn't trust him. She was right, but nothing could be done about it. She might as well sleep.

"You can rest," he told her finally, watching her blink her eyes open a dozen more times.

"Please," she said, "will you not touch me?"

Her please surprised him; indeed without it, he might have mocked her request. As it was, he just laughed shortly. "We're touching now."

"But not... here." Zara ran her hand down the center of her chest. "Or... here." She touched an inner thigh.

Slowly, Caspian put hands on both sides of her face, running them down her throat, her shoulders, her thin arms. He held her cool hands for a moment, while she remained silent and still. "You must know that you'll never return to your temple," he said at last. "If your temple is even still there. The armies may have burned it to the ground, you know. If they haven't, we won't go back. I have to go forward, find my troops. You'll come with me, as a prisoner. There is no other path."

Zara shuddered. "I can always shut myself out in the storm," she said. "That is another path."

"It won't do well for you to argue with me." Caspian felt a faint flint of rage strike in his belly. "You understand your situation, don't you?"

"Yes," Zara insisted, but Caspian felt defiance behind the word. Priestesses didn't lie well. He ran his hands over her chest, cupping her tiny breasts in his hands, kneading her flesh gently. She felt so damned good, even as she squirmed at the touch. "Should I remind you?" He pinched her nipples through the silk, twisting them enough to cause a shadow of pain. She mewed like a kitten, twisting hopelessly under his strong hands.

He tugged her nipples lightly before letting go, relishing the site of her stiffened little buds standing straight up under the silk. Zara was looking teary. Caspian pressed his body over hers, careful not to crush her under the weight. Slowly, carefully, he took her lower lip between hers. She was a statue under the kiss, but her lips were still soft, fragrant, tasting of vanilla and strawberry. He kneaded her lip delicately, let his tongue dart out to taste her silky lips. He rubbed his body up and down over hers, wondering which was more silken, her slip or her skin. He kissed under her jaw and down her neck.

Her hands had been trapped under his stomach. To his surprise, he felt them slide up to his chest, press lightly against his bare skin. He felt pure fire where her skin touched him. Pure lust. It was all he could do not to tear into her right then. She was too delicate a creature for that. He might break her.

Instead, he slid a hand over her knee, up the curve of her inner thigh. She was so warm there. His other hand was against her cheek, then sliding along the length of her copper braid. He cupped the line of her waist, the tight globes of her ass that were just as elastic and firm as he'd imagined. He wanted to dig his hands in so deeply he left marks.

He forced himself to he soft with her. He moved his lips back to her mouth, hovering over those sweet berry lips. "Let me kiss you. Let me show you what it's like to be kissed."

"I am going to be a priestess," Zara whispered.

"Let me kiss you."

"If I say no, will you stop?"

"Are you saying no?

Zara was very still. "Thank you for not letting me freeze," she said at last. Caspian kissed her velvet cheek, letting the tiniest corner of his lips brush the tiniest corner of hers. "Let me kiss you, Zara, please."

"Please?" she echoed his word, shocked. "But you are the solider who shows no mercy."

She said the words as though she had said them before a hundred times. He knew in that instant that she knew his reputation, that she knew who he was. And still she had been soft and kind with him, healed his wound, let him touch her untouched body with his own. A murderer and a virgin. Killer and saint. It felt apocalyptic. He felt so alive, as if magma was pulsing through his veins. As if her goodness was a balm on his wounds at the same time that her body was a spark to his loins. Not a spark. More a wildfire.

He slid his hand farther up her leg, to where her thighs met. He shifted his weight and heard the hiss of her gasp as she felt the unmistakable push of his hard, long cock against her leg. He could feel her breath against his lips. He let a finger slide along her smooth, hot slit. To his absolute shock, she was wet. Saturated to the point of dripping. Utterly ready for him.

Before he could respond, there was a shriek, someone out in the woods. A distinctly girlish sound, heavy with pain and terror. It was a sound that made Zara's eyes fly open, turning from sea-green to dark emerald. She was on her feet in an instant, tugging her dress over her head, wrapping herself in her cloak. Her boots were on her feet before Caspian could utter a sound.

"What is it?" he finally managed to gasp.

"That is one of my sisters," Zara cried. "Please, I must help her. Please. I'll do as you say if you'll only let me try to help her."

Caspian somehow found himself dressed and on his feet. "It isn't safe," he warned.

"I know," Zara answered grimly, her lovely face pained. Caspian broke through the snow for her, letting her out into the clearing. It had stopped snowing, but it was still bitterly, hopelessly cold. Zara didn't to notice. Although the snowdrifts were higher than her head and despite the fact that she was running for what was almost certain danger, Zara was running at a full tilt towards the source of the scream.

Around the bend, there was a huddle of figures against a wall of rock. Caspian saw only gray and scarlet—the colors of Zanthar. There were at least ten soldiers—ten of his men. In the time it took him to see what was behind the men, Zara's scream was piercing the air, a sound of pure and utter heartbreak that seemed to make the entire world hold its breath.

At the feet of his soldiers lay the bodies of four priestesses. Their white dresses were bloodied, their limbs at odd angles. They were young and beautiful and their blood was so very red on the white snow. Worse than this, though, was the fact that a fifth priestess was being restrained, her arms held behind her back, while one man forced his thick cock into her mouth, while another soldier was behind her, slamming his cock hard into her pussy, his hands buried so deep in the flesh of her round ass that he left hand-shaped bruises every time he shifted their position.

When they saw Zara and Caspian, four of the men turned, their faces wicked and grinning. "Captain! Bring her over here!"

Zara, to his surprise, didn't run from them. Instead, she ran smack into one man's arms, still trying desperately to reach her fallen sisters.

"Don't touch you, don't you fucking touch her," Caspian spat out. "She's mine."

The man who had caught Zara was surprised or intimidated enough that he let go. Caspian grabbed her waist and threw her behind him, hearing the shocked gasps still trembling from her lips.

Behind the first soldier, some of the others were dumping the fifth priestess's still body to the snow, where it lay unmoving with the others. The men were looking at Caspian strangely, confused at his reaction.

"She's a prisoner of war," one of them stated at last, "She belongs to the Zanthar army."

"I saved her life. I own it." Caspian's voice was like concrete.

"There weren't enough girls to go around," one of the soldiers complained. "Only fifty, and six hundred guards."

Fifty. Behind Caspian, Zara was aghast. There were only fifty priestesses, plus the high priest. Surely they couldn't have all been discovered. She tugged desperately at Caspian's pant leg, scrambling to her feet. "Please," she sobbed, "please, tell me if anyone survived? Please, Caspian, ask them."

"How many of the girls in white were there?" Caspian asked.

"Fifty," a few of the men shouted out.

One of the men sighed, running a hand down his filthy beard. "So beautiful, too. They didn't last long."

"How many are still alive?"

"Zero," one of the men admitted. "Well, one. There's that one behind you still. Some of them put up something of a fight. We didn't have much of a choice. Usually we would've kept prisoners, of course. But the general ordered no survivors. Apparently there was a massacre in Zanthar this morning. He just received word. Wanted revenge."

Caspian could feel Zara's energy coursing through him, so full of panic and heartbreak that it was tangible. "This one's mine," he said coldly.

The men moved closer, prowling like hyenas.

"She's a pretty one. Look at that red hair." "So young, look at her." "One of the prettiest, wouldn't you say?"

Zara was shaking, but Caspian felt her steady herself behind him, setting her feet wide. As if she intended to fight.

There was the sharp clang of metal on metal as one of the soldiers drew their swords. "Surrender her, Captain."

The next sound was the sound of metal on flesh, on bone, as Caspian sword sliced the man's head clean from his neck. And then it was mayhem. One against nine, and Caspian was trying to protect Zara as well. He killed three, but took a rough blow through his shoulder doing it. He could feel the heat of his blood as it gushed down his back. And then he heard Zara scream as hands were grabbing at her. And then it was those men who were screaming. There was blood everywhere. The air tasted like death, metallic and cold.

So much death. The snow was melting from the heat of it. Zara was screaming, and there was a man with his hand around her neck, his other hand tearing at her dress, scratching for her skin. Caspian's sword was buried in that man's back when the other man—the last of the soldiers—attacked him from the other side. He couldn't fight them both. And then someone Zara's hands were coming down hard on the one man's chest, and he could see the handle of her little jeweled knife sticking out of the hollow at the base of his throat, blood spraying across the snow, across Zara's white dress, against Zara's horrified face.

And then Caspian's sword was coming down one final time. And then it was over. The clearing was full of bodies. The echoes of screams still danced faintly off the rocks. Zara was looking up at him, her face splashed with wine-red death. "Thank you for fighting for my sisters," she whispered, tears washing clean streaks down her bloody cheeks. She was kneeling there in the snow, kneeling to him, and Caspian suddenly wished she wouldn't. She believed that she belonged to him now, and while that had been all he wanted an hour ago, now he missed the time when she thought she had somewhere else to belong.

And so he kneeled down beside her and took her hands, and kissed her bloody knuckles. "I didn't fight for them," he told her, like a sinner confessing to a saint, like he was seeking an absolution. "I fought for you."