Free Conquest by REBECCA YORK Page A

tightly.
    “Then take off your furs so I can see you.” He spoke her language, but with a strong accent, the words sounding like a deep growl.
    “It’s too cold,” she said. She had made sure it would be. “We have to conserve our fuel.”
    It wasn’t exactly a lie. In the season of long nights, when the blood-red sun brought only a few hours of daylight, solar energy was nonexistent. So the large public rooms and corridors of their stone fortresses were as cold, according to legend, as the winter evenings on earth. Each of the small bedchambers had a fireplace, though, and in recent years, radiant heaters had been added.
    At the moment, a small fire of solid fossil fuel burned in the grate as if it were the only source of warmth. After staring at the low flames, Rohan strode across the room, pulled aside a tapestry and found the heater control. Almost at once, the temperature rose several degrees.
    He turned back to face her and loosened the fastenings down the front of his gray fur jacket. The jacket was of takkar pelts, she noted, the large and vicious shaggy predators that lived in the eastern mountains. Only the bravest warriors dared to hunt the beasts, and only a warrior who had killed one could wear its pelt. He shrugged off his trophy and tossed it onto the end of the bed, revealing an intricately embroidered shirt that stretched tightly across his massive chest. Her surprised gaze darted over the garment; she would have considered it much too fine for his primitive race.
    Elena caught the scent of his body, recognizing it as the unfamiliar aroma that had teased her at the brief wedding ceremony. Rich and spicy, strangely appealing, it might have drawn her toward him if fear hadn’t kept her rooted to the spot.
    Casually, he untied a drawstring at his waist and shed his leather pants, tossing them after the jacket. Seeing the form-fitting leggings he wore, which revealed every muscle of his taut body, she gave a small, inaudible whimper. It was impossible not to notice the large bulge at the front of the leggings. Just as impossible to suppress the shiver that raced up her spine. She was trapped in a bedchamber with this creature---this warrior---and he was between her and the knife.
    His gaze challenged her. “You have fear of me. Why?”
    “I’m not afraid of you,” she retorted, although it wasn’t true, of course. She was afraid of him---and of any man who would touch her.
    It hadn’t always been so. Before she and Brice were married, she had enjoyed it when he touched her, though they had not made love. Then the doctors had put him on an experimental hormone treatment, hoping it would make him fertile. It hadn’t revived his dead sperm, but it had made him rough and rampant in bed. Her wedding night with Brice had been a nightmare, and the nightmare had continued, with agonizing frequency, until he was killed in a skirmish with the Jalarans. She had faced his death with a mixture of sadness and guilty relief.
    It was memories of the things Brice had done to her as much as it was fear of this huge and powerful alien that made her shudder when Rohan took a step toward her. Yet she stood her ground as he approached, and she met his gaze when he stopped in front of her.
    He took her chin in his hand---not roughly, as she had expected---and lifted her face toward his so that she was forced to look into the depths of his dark eyes.
    “Never lie to me,” he said. “And I will never lie to you.”
    “I---“ Her mouth was so dry she could barely speak.
    “Did you make it cold in here so you could keep on your furs?”
    Hesitating briefly, she nodded.
    His hand moved from her chin and found the fastening to her robe, his large fingers seeming to sear the flesh of her throat as he worked the clasp. She dropped her gaze from his as the heavy garment fell away, pooling on the rug about her ankles, leaving her standing before him in a thin white gown cut high under her breasts. She knew it hid very little.