THE TAMING
IMOGEN KEEPER
She's a proper lady.
Pampered and prim, Klymeni finds herself trapped on a spaceship with a man she refuses to marry. Desperate to escape, she releases a dangerous prisoner. In exchange he takes her with him.
Little does she know, he has plans of his own.
He's a hardened warrior.
For Torum TaKarian, life is simple, kill or be killed. Freedom means taking whatever he wants... until he unexpectedly becomes the ruler of a kingdom on the brink of collapse. The key to his people’s future is the stubborn prissy woman who rescued him.
The line between captive and captor blurs.
When he takes her prisoner and names her his wife, she swears to hate him forever, but her own traitorous body has other ideas. It’s a battle of wills, and only one can win.
This book contains explicit sexual content.
THE TAMING
IMOGEN KEEPER
Edited by Monika Holabird
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Author’s Note
1
Escape, of course
KLYM POKED HER HEAD around the corner of the galley to peer down the main passageway of the spaceship. There wasn’t much to see. Steel surfaces, dark grated floors, and the pilots’ seats on the bridge.
And, of course, the man to whom her father had sold her.
Spiro. The back of his golden head shone under the lights as he stared through the viewscreen into space.
Their prisoner, Torum, was isolated in the rear, where they’d kept him for days, ever since they’d left his ship on an abandoned planet. Shackled in the darkness on a cot outside the engine room.
If she had any hope of escaping her unwanted Bonding with Spiro, it lay with him.
Sneakiness and stealth didn’t come naturally. Well, strictly speaking, that wasn’t entirely true. Walking quietly on slippered feet came naturally—she was a lady, after all, and quiet was similar to sneaky and stealthy—but not precisely the same thing. The intent was different.
No, sneakiness was not a personal skill. She’d been trained to converse with dignitaries, take holo-photos, organize parties and always, always, be polite—all of which was perfectly useless now.
But people could change if they needed to.
And she needed to.
So, she tiptoed, and her feet made scarcely a sound as she slipped down the passageway.
Another glance over her shoulder told her that Spiro hadn’t moved. She kept the little paring knife she’d pilfered from the galley concealed in the folds of her dress, just in case.
Her skirts whispered over the metal floor as she rounded the wall, passing beyond Spiro’s line of sight.
He was unlikely to come looking for her. He’d learned to avoid her. She’d scarcely spoken to him beyond repeating: “I will not Bond with you. I belong to another man. Please take me to him.”
He’d steadfastly refused to see that she would never accept him, however.
She had no choice.
If he’d only see reason and return her to her future-mate, her home, the life she’d been promised, she wouldn’t be forced to take this drastic step. But he wouldn’t. They’d been frozen in silent stalemate. So much silence.
While Spiro didn’t speak, Torum certainly did.
Every time she passed, he spoke. Whispers of promises. Murmurs of hope. Taunts of freedom. All of it in that dark, accented voice, like grit and gravel, and sharpening steel.
She shivered, as she always did, at the very idea of him. A bounty hunter. A Vestige bounty hunter. An alien from the most hated, feared, reviled enemy her people had ever known, the ones who’d sent the plague that had killed off nearly the entire female population, plunging their race into near-extinction. She’d heard Spiro and his brother discussing him—violent, unpredictable, an enemy warrior of great renown.
And he looked it.
Wild. Untamed. Feral.
Everything she’d ever imagined of the Vestige.
She rounded the darkened passageway, and there he was. As still and unyielding as if he’d been carved of marble. Like the statues of the ancients in the museums back home, a relic from a time when men were harder and life more brutal.
She bit her lip, hesitating.
Inky-black hair cascaded to his shoulders, and an impressive set of shoulders they were. Twice as wide as her own, and thickly bound with hard, bulging muscles that rose and fell in a thin white shirt.
A black tribal tattoo snaked up his neck.
His head was tilted down. Asleep? Do the Vestige even sleep?
There were so many rumors back home that she didn’t know what to believe, of dark deeds, inhuman and evil. Ghost stories whispered in the depths of night that sent shivers down her spine and kept her awake until daybreak.
What was one supposed to say to a prisoner? She considered clearing her throat to get his attention, or maybe returning at a later time—
“Come closer.” His voice, low and raspy, took the decision away from her. More of a rumble, really, that vibrated and tickled all the fine hairs on her body, like a feather had been stroked up her spine.
She caught herself leaning in, holding her breath, her fingers coming up to touch her pearls as she strained to catch his words. His eyes were still closed. “How did you know I was here?” she whispered. “I was quiet.”
“I can smell you.”
Her shoulders stiffened. “You cannot.”
“Can too.”
“I do not smell.” She never smelled. She had impeccable hygiene.
“Do too.” Finally, that face angled up, sharp jaw, hard cheekbones, slanting black brows, and a leer. His eyes opened, black and unfathomable. He looked... terrifying.
She took a long, slow breath.
“You smell like fruit,” he said, a little scowl forming between his eyes.
She smiled. “Thank you.”
“And pussy.”
She nearly gasped—but caught herself just in time. The knife slipped an inch in her hand.
She shouldn’t know the word. It was from one of the dirty stories a friend had sneaked into the Institute. She patted her hair in the coiled bun at the nape of her neck and pushed her chin out.
Clearly, he was nothing like her sweet Agammo. Even Spiro, as much as she didn’t want him, was too gallant to use such a word. “I’ll assume that means something polite and complimentary, and I thank you.”
Those dark eyes burned like
