10. Reina

Chapter ten

Reina

C onsciousness grips me from a deep sleep. It tastes like I mouth-breathed all night. Jasper's arms are tight around my stomach and shoulders, holding me against him. I hate that I don't hate the way it feels.

Something twitches against my backside. It happens again, and suddenly I realize what it is. I shove out of his arms and pull away.

Jasper glares at me. "What's this about not getting up before dawn?"

"You. Have. An erection!" I yell, unable to stop myself from pointing at the thick outline of it in his pants.

"What of it?" he says, his voice tired and bored.

"You…you're…" My face is getting hot just thinking about the word.

He grins. "I'm dashingly handsome? Well-hung?"

"Aroused!" My voice squeaks out of me weakly and I'm so ashamed. Where is the daughter of the rebellion who faces down death with a steady hand? What happened to the fire in my stomach that made me powerful?

Jasper chuckles. "I'm not aroused . Every man gets an erection while sleeping."

"Well, make it stop," I say, arms crossed.

His grin transforms into a leer. "Is my hard cock making you uncomfortable, princess?"

"Don't call it that! Don't talk about it. Just…put it away," I say, my mouth growing drier by the second.

"That's not how dicks work," he says, closing his eyes with a sleepy smile.

I want to punch him.

I want to punch him right in the dick.

My fists clench of their own accord, and I raise my arm to strike.

"Do it and you'll be in shackles so fast," Jasper says, his eyes still closed.

Wearing the enchanted copper manacles will be worth every second of his surprised and pained expression. I throw my punch strong and true, but Jasper captures my wrist an inch before impact.

His smirk makes my skin crawl as he says, "I can't believe you'd—"

I open my fist as hard as I can and flick him with my fingers. He hisses in a pained breath, and we lock gazes, his loaded with fury.

The manacle snaps over my wrist before I can even blink. I yelp as he drags me down to the sand and pulls me against his side. I kick and squirm, but he subdues my efforts by wrapping his legs around mine. He holds me tight with one arm, then snaps the other manacle on his own wrist.

"This is what you get, princess," he growls against my cheek. "Now you'll have to feel my erection for the rest of the morning until I'm ready to get up."

"You're vile!" I shout, twisting and turning to get out of his grasp even though I know it's useless. He's so much stronger than me.

"And your efforts to escape are only grinding yourself against me more," he says salaciously, and the shift in his tone sends uninvited warmth down to my lower belly.

"Taking pleasure in detaining me only proves you're depraved," I say, stilling myself to prevent any further arousal on his part.

"Oh, yes, I have a very specific depravity for bratty princesses being chained up, especially when they're on their knees, begging."

The visual he paints only heightens my awareness of the tension in my core. I see myself kneeling in front of him, my hands chained overhead, his thick erection straining against his pants. My legs are spread wide and I'm panting with pleasure. Why is my body responding to this wicked man?

Jasper takes a long inhale through his nose, then chuckles darkly. "What was that about not being able to get you wet, princess?"

Heat flares in my face and tightens my chest.

"You cannot possibly smell whether I'm aroused," I say, though some part of me believes he can.

His hand trails up my stomach to my chin and he turns my face to meet his gaze. His lips hover just a few inches from mine. His eyes are like liquid pearls, dancing with opalescent light. He wears a dominant smile that's edging on desire.

"Do you want to prove me wrong?"

"I will," I say, indignantly.

His eyes shine brighter, and he releases my arm. "Go ahead, then. Reach between your legs and show me your fingers."

My heart thunders but the rest of me is frozen.

I can't prove him wrong.

I can feel the slickness when I shift my hips. There's no way in the nine hells that I'm going to show him my arousal. But if I tell him to fuck off now, he'll know he's won. Why did I have to open my mouth in the first place? Why the fuck am I even aroused ?

"Are you going to show me, Rei?" he whispers. His voice is so loaded with lust that it envelopes me completely. The air feels too tight in our confined space. My chest won't fill, and I don't know if I'm breathing anymore.

Suddenly, Jasper's demeanor shifts. His face goes stoic, and he releases my chin.

"Get some sleep," he says, dropping down to the sand behind me. "If you can."

I stare at the dark canopy of our shelter and begin to breathe again.

Why did my body react to him like that? I hate this man. He has no redeeming quality—other than perhaps his beauty—but that's beside the point. Yes, maybe he taught me to fish and forage, and no, he hasn't shackled me since…until now.

That doesn't make him a good person. It doesn't make him anything of the sort and I should not be aroused by the thought of him chaining me up and having me naked on my knees begging for pleasure.

Warmth blooms anew between my thighs and Jasper sighs deeply.

"Stop thinking." His voice is muffled by my hair, and the closeness of him only intensifies my undesired yearning.

"I hate you," I say, to remind him—and me—that I should not be feeling aroused.

It's painfully obvious that neither one of us sleeps another second for the rest of the early morning. I do my best not to let my thoughts wander to where they shouldn't be. I think about escaping him and returning to the rebellion, about Alyse and whether she's all right, and about my mother, whose life I must take when I get home.

Pink hues infiltrate the shelter and Jasper shifts behind me.

"Time to get up now," he says as he unchains us.

I pull away the second I'm free and lurch out onto the beach. The crashing of the surf and spray of the sea cools some of the heat in my stomach. I cross my arms over my chest against the breeze. Despite its warmth, I'm getting gooseflesh.

I hear Jasper's footsteps through the sand behind me. "Eat something," he says, holding out the stick of smoked fish he prepared yesterday.

"I'm not hungry," I lie.

"It's not a debate, princess. Eat. Now."

I snatch one of the crispy blue fish off the stick and mechanically shove it in my mouth. Jasper watches me as he eats his own fish, as if he needs to confirm I'm swallowing it. He goes back to the shelter and grabs the coconut bowls full of rainwater.

"Drink, too," he says, thrusting one into my hands. "We have a long, hard day ahead of us and we won't get many opportunities for breaks. The next island is three miles south, and our paddles are substandard. It will take several hours to get there."

I drink the water from the coconut shell and then show him the empty bowl.

"Happy?" I ask with a sneer.

He chuffs. "Very."

"That makes one of us." I turn away from him and look at the sea.

The island in question looks a lot bigger than this one, and suddenly I'm realizing the gravity of the situation. We'll be trapped together for weeks before we reach any kind of city. We have to depend on one another to survive until then.

More realistically speaking, as he said, I have to depend on him .

"Let's get moving," Jasper says as he walks back to the shelter. "Take care of your morning business and then help me re-string these paddles."

If I'm going to get back to civilization in a timely manner, I'll have to work with him.

Fucking.

Wonderful.

I do as he says, and we modify the paddles by wrapping them with some of the broad leaves. This will give us more leverage to push the water, he says, but the leaves will also likely rip by the time we reach the next island. We secure a few more coconuts to our raft and push it out into the water just as the sun fully emerges from the sea.

Paddling is harder work than I was expecting. My arms are already tired after just ten minutes, and Jasper looks completely unfazed by the physical effort. He has me switch sides with him to change dominant arms and that helps a little, but my muscles have never shaken like this before. I wish I'd been training my body more, but Mother would've noticed a change in my physique.

She needed to keep me weak and docile.

"Break for a moment," Jasper says after another twenty minutes.

I instantly collapse back onto our raft, panting.

He cracks open one of the coconuts and holds half over me. "Drink. It'll help with your recuperation."

I take it, unwilling to put up a fight when my throat is so dry. I drink gulp after greedy gulp of the semi-sweet milky liquid, taking deep, gasping inhales through my nose. My heart thunders and makes my vision pulse with it.

"Never done anything like this, have you?" he asks casually as he strips off his boots.

"Never," I say, my voice hoarse.

"A lot of firsts for you on this trip," he says.

"Not my first abduction, but certainly the longest so far," I reply.

"Oh?" he asks, dangling his feet in the water.

My legs are warm, so I do the same. "When I was four, a woman picked me up in a crowded market and walked away with me. It was an honest mistake; she thought I was her daughter. I should've stuck closer to my guard. I should've been wearing my royal signet. So many ‘should'ves'."

"What happened?" he asks.

"I kicked and screamed. She put me down within a block and then apologized when she realized who I was. My guard discovered us and told my mother she was trying to take me. I tried to say otherwise, but she wouldn't hear it. I was only four, after all."

"And then what?" he asks gently.

My chest aches as I see the black-hooded man walk her to the gallows in my mind. She's sobbing. Her little girl is wailing from the arms of her husband. I'm not allowed to cry. Crying is not something a princess of House Hilden does in public, no matter their age.

The rope knot is slipped around her neck and she prays to Zephrom for my mother's mercy. The queen nods to the executioner, and I must watch as the support drops away from the woman's feet. She falls, but her neck doesn't break. Her legs kick and she struggles, desperate gurgles coming from her pinched throat.

I didn't eat for days in protest of my mother's cruelty, and thus began her restrictions of me. No educating myself beyond the necessities. No reading for pleasure. No training in the arts. I had too much spirit, she said.

"Rei?"

I suck in a gasp as my eyes refocus on the water.

"It doesn't matter," I say, paddling my feet and wiggling my toes. My pedicure is beginning to chip and fade already. It's only been a few days, but they've been hard. Will I chip and fade, too?

"Remove your legs from the water." The commanding edge in Jasper's voice has my heart thundering for a different reason.

I retreat farther onto the raft. "What is it?"

"Something very large is in the area," he says as he removes his legs too.

"I thought you said bigger creatures hunted at night?" I ask, my blood zipping through my body at double speed.

"They often hunt at night. It doesn't mean they won't come out in the day. But this might not be hunting. It might just be passing us by."

He sticks his hand in the water and I watch as an opal pulse ripples out into the sea. He's quiet for a long time. Too long.

"Well?" I ask.

He glances over his shoulder at me. "How good are you at controlling your power?"

"Like I'd tell."

"This isn't the time for your theatrics. This creature most definitely thinks we're an afternoon snack, and it will be upon us in moments."

My stomach drops. "I-I'm not that good. I didn't get to practice. Mother's orders."

He moves toward me. "Have you soaked up enough sunlight to get in a few quick practice rounds?"

I hadn't told him that I need to absorb sunlight to fuel my magic.

He grins, but it's laced with nerves. "I'm very observant."

"Yes, I have. How much time?"

"Maybe two minutes."

"Fuck."

I come up to my knees. There's nothing around us for me to target as practice, so I train my eyes on the land mass ahead of us.

"Okay, I'm going to shoot the island," I say, holding my left wrist with my right hand. I focus on the same feeling I had when I blasted the cave ceiling apart, then channel my magic into my palm. All at once, a torrent of blue flame erupts in a wide cone. It projects a few feet, then dies out.

"Squid ink," Jasper mutters as he covers his mouth.

I try again, concentrating on the feeling of building the pressure, of withholding it until the last second, then allowing my magic to flow to my hand. The blast from my palm pushes me down to my back. My arm goes wide and the beam of fire blasts into the air, but cuts off quickly.

"We can work with that," Jasper says as he helps me up to my knees. "I'm going to shift into my octopus form and hold the beast steady for you, okay?"

I nod.

Nerves jitter in my stomach and out to my fingers. If I fail, we both get eaten alive.

He squeezes my shoulders. "You can do this. I know you can."

"Uh-huh," I mumble as my vision narrows on a massive dorsal fin sticking out of the sea not far off.

Jasper looks where my gaze is pointed and curses. He grabs my chin and puts his face in front of mine so all I can see are his eyes. "You can do this. You are not helpless. Say it."

I swallow hard and bob my head. "I'm not helpless."

"Deep breath," he says and I comply, sucking down a long, deep breath of air.

He smiles. "Good girl."

The moment he releases my chin, my confidence wavers.

He gives me a broad grin. "You know, now would be a perfect opportunity to watch me die a horrible, painful death."

Without giving me a chance to reply, he dives off the side of the raft into the water. I gasp and crawl to the edge. His body morphs and contorts, seeming to turn inside out under waves of opal power. The water swells beneath the raft, pushing it back as Jasper becomes the massive octopus.

The dorsal fin turns and makes a wide circle around the raft. My palms are sweaty as I take aim at the water where the creature is. Jasper swims under the raft but stays close enough to it that I can still see him.

My outstretched hand trembles so hard my fingers blur in my vision.

"Deep breath," I remind myself.

I work to calm my racing heart as the monster gets closer. Jasper paces back and forth in the water, waiting for it. I don't let myself get distracted by his movements, keeping my aim trained on my target.

Suddenly, the dorsal fin dips under the water and disappears. Jasper darts forward and leaves my line of sight, too. My ribs feel like they might crack from how hard my heart is beating.

I breathe deep and slow, chanting to myself, "I'm not helpless. I can do this."

The water explodes thirty feet away and a massive gray face full of teeth with big black eyes bursts to the surface. Jasper's white tentacles are wrapped around its chest, pushing it out of the water.

I try to get that feeling back in my palm, but a wide stream of fire comes out instead that does absolutely nothing to the monster. Jasper and the monster fall back under and the water splashes from their thrashing.

"Fuck!"

Jasper wrestles the creature below the surface as it draws closer to the raft. I might get one more chance…

The pressure builds in my palm and I hold it in, gritting my teeth and tightening my shoulders. My hand shakes from the strain of power, but I keep holding it, keep building it. The raft rocks from their disturbance on the sea and I clench my thighs to keep myself upright.

Jasper's white body comes into view again and my heart stutters when I see blood. He pushes on the monster and its head comes up out of the sea with one of Jasper's tentacles dangling from its mouth.

I don't wait, releasing my power before the raft can change positions from the rocking sea. The beam blasts out and my arm flies back, dragging me off the raft and into the sea. The water closes around my head and dampens sound as I tumble end over end, leaving me with a single, chilling thought.

What if I missed?