Here it is, September. This is the month (in North Dakota, at least) when the temps get cooler. After a long, hot summer I just *love* fall. Of course, it is not fall-like yet. The average high for today is 77 (it was 84 today) but the average high for September 30 is 64. So a big change in only a month!

Tomorrow is my 5th of 69 chemo treatments. I am getting sick of chemo. 🙁 But I should be done with it on September 20. So I just have to hang on a few more weeks. When I am done I am going to buy myself a treat. I deserve it!

Here is the next chapter in The Storm King. Enjoy!

Chapter Six

Oh, my God. She should have expected this. But who could expect any of this to be happening? Ashley gulped, thinking, I have to set him straight. “But, Jerriel,” she began, but broke off to cough some more. She cleared her throat, eyes watering from the smoke. Totally from the smoke. “I am not your wife.”

He raised one hand to touch the pearl pendant that lay over his breastbone. “Did you not give me a necklace, and did I not accept it?”

 “No, that wasn’t me. I’m not who you think I am.”

He lifted one brow. “No?”

“No, I’m not Valdis. Look, I get that this will sound crazy, but I’m not who you think I am. My name is Ashley Johnson.”

His jaw was a hard, straight line in the faint moonlight. “I know you, wife.” Fast as a striking snake, his hand whipped out, flung the corner of the blanket back and yanked down the neck of her shirt. “I recognize that scar below your collarbone. I was there the day your father gave it to you.”

Ashley slapped his hand away. He let go but didn’t step back, so she did, pulling the blanket back up. “That’s from my port. For chemo.”

But she knew what he thought it was. In her story Valdis was found alone with Jerriel by her father, who had whipped her with his belt. The buckle had swung around and cut her upper chest a little. She guessed the cut could have looked like the scar left behind after the chemo port was removed.

“Why do you lie, Valdis? Have you taken another husband? You said you had not.”

His face was cool and still, but she wondered if Jerriel was angry. “No, single here, thank you very much! That’s not why I say I’m not your wife.” She stuck her free hand into her still-damp hair and gave it a tug. “Let me explain. A long time ago I was really sick. Like, everyone thought I could die. I was too sick to do anything. I couldn’t go to school, or hang out at the mall, or go to the pool.

She peeked at his face, but it told her nothing. She hurried on.

“So I spent almost all my time in bed or laying on the couch. To entertain myself I started making up stories. Just for fun, you know? And one of the stories was about a boy named Jerriel and a girl named Valdis. He was a native prince, but he had been captured by his enemies and made a slave. She was the daughter of the governor of a colony of a distant empire who became his friend and helped him escape.” She blinked her eyes because the smoke was really irritating. The tears that welled had nothing to do with his hard expression. “And my best friend since kindergarten loved my stories. Maya. This afternoon, I mean, I guess it was yesterday afternoon… or maybe the day before?” She honestly couldn’t remember. “Well, we were on campus, and I was going to take my last final when suddenly, out of absolutely nowhere, we just, um, kinda fell through to here. I mean, to that city. And the Erabiri army was there. I didn’t know who they were at first. Because I thought you were all make believe. Because, you know, I’d written a story about you. I mean, a story about a make-believe boy I named Jerriel.”

She had to stop babbling and quit saying ‘I mean’ in every sentence. She looked up at Jerriel. He reached out a hand. A sudden flash of memory made her shudder, she saw that same hand holding a sword that lopped off heads, blood splashing over his hand and arm and puddling on the floor. His hand now was clean. The cuff of his shirt was free of blood, his fingernails neatly cut short and no longer rimmed in black. He cupped her cheek with that hand, and it was warm and gentle.

She swallowed and continued on.

“Maya and I were taken prisoner and put into a pen. But the next morning she was taken away by a man because she had blond hair and I was taken to that church building where you ki– I mean, where I first saw you. So, I need to find Maya. She doesn’t belong here. Neither do I.” Horror clamped around her heart. “And if the city is burning, then what happened to her? She could be burning alive!”

“Peace. Everyone alive was given time to leave the city.”

“But I don’t know what’s happened to her!”

“Wife.” Jerriel’s thumb brushed over the corner of her lips. “You are distraught. You need more rest.”

Rest meant a bed. The bed in her tent was narrow, too narrow for them to ‘play’ in, right? She searched his face by moonlight, all too aware of how handsome he was. Ashley was a virgin but that didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate a handsome face or bare, muscular chest. And Jerriel was the most attractive man she’d ever seen. But this was no time for that. She pulled away. “I need to find Maya.”

He stepped so close she could feel the warmth of his bare chest against the blanket covering her “No.”

“No?” Ashley was so shocked she forgot to back away from him. In that moment she couldn’t care less how handsome he was. Her voice claimed an octave. “What do you mean ‘no’?”

“No. You will not leave me to look for a Thesswoman. We bring no Thessians back to Erabir.”

“I’m a Thessian! I mean, Valdis is a Thessian.”

He pressed even closer to her. “My wife is no Thessian.”

She stepped back so quickly she stumbled and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her arm. Luckily, it was the good arm. She tugged fruitlessly to get free. “I’m not your wife.”

His smile was chilling. “Come along, wife. It is cold and you need to rest.”

Arguing with him was as useless as trying to pull her wrist from his grip. Ashley attempted both for half a mile before she gave up. He towed her back to camp without ever even looking at her, and led her to the flap of her tent, where he spoke to the guards.

“Be sure to follow my wife whenever she leaves the tent. She is not to leave the camp.”

The guards both bowed. “Yes, Lord King.”

Jerriel gave her a cool smile, inclined his head, and left.

Curse him. Ashley pushed past the tent flap into the dim light of the lamp Jerriel had lit earlier and fumed silently. She had to find her friend. Maya was alone in this crazy world. Ashley might not want to be here in the Erabiri camp, but at least she had clothes and food and medical care. Where was Maya? Was she hungry? Cold? Was she even safe? But how could Ashley find her when Jerriel was being a jerk? A heroine in a romance novel would find a way to escape, find Maya, and get back home.

She turned the chair Jerriel had sat in back to the table and plopped down, staring blindly at the lamp. Could she escape? She mulled it over and decided that she wouldn’t be able to. If Ashley tried to do that, she would end up lost, frozen, and probably dead before she found Maya. And Jerriel had ordered the guards to not let her leave camp.

Maybe she could talk that kid Danior into letting her go back to l0ok for Maya. Or she could ask him and his friends to take her. If she got him to think Jerriel had okayed it, and she took her guards along, then it would work. Yeah, that would work. It would have to work. Maya had always been there for her. She would not abandon her.

Cold and tired, Ashley took off the shoes and pants and spread the blanket back over the bed before crawling into it. She couldn’t do anything for Maya right now, so she thought about the other big thing on her plate: Jerriel and his insistence that they were married. Her mind got stuck on his intention to ‘play’ with her. Like it was a warmup to the main event! Well, part of Ashley sat up with interest at the idea of making out with him. Who wouldn’t? He was drop dead gorgeous. The rest of her wanted to get as far away from him as she could. Handsome or not, he was terrifying, a killer, a conqueror eaten up by his need for vengeance.

Ashley thought she’d be up all night worrying about Maya and the marriage question, but she dropped off in only minutes.

The next morning, Ashley was woken way too early by a voice calling from outside her tent.

“Lady? Lady, we are ready to dismantle your tent. Lady, are you awake?”

Ashley didn’t recognize the voice. It didn’t sound like Danior and certainly not Jerriel.
She rolled out of the narrow bed, stuffed her feet into shoes, and stumbled to the door flap. She stuck her head out and glared blearily around. Several teenagers stood a few yards away, facing the two guards on either side of the door.

“My lady,” one of the boys said. Ashley thought he was one of the bathwater brigade last night. “The king told us to let you sleep another hour, but we must take down your tent now.”

She looked around again and saw that the other tents were either down or in the process of being taken down. She supposed she could argue, or waste time asking questions, but decided it would be better to get dressed before demanding answers. “Okay, give me a couple of minutes. I’ll be right out.”

She grabbed the bra and panties from the back of the chair. Still slightly damp. Yuck. And cold. Double yuck. She struggled into them, teeth chattering, and put on the pants she’d worn last night and selected a tunic from the chest. Her arm was stiff and sore, so she mixed up the painkiller and drank it down. After running the comb through her hair, she put it carefully back in its case, put the case in the chest, and hurried outside. In just those few minutes the camp had been transformed. There were wagons being loaded with blocks of canvas and chests. The larger tent beside hers was coming down. She’d bet it was Jerriel’s tent.

The trampled grass under her shoes was crisp with frost. She wished she’d grabbed the blanket from the bed. She was considering going back into the tent to get it when she saw Jerriel duck around a wagon and come toward her. Ashley watched him, struck by his lithe stride, the cat-like grace he moved with, the way his broad shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist. His hair was pulled back today in a thick ponytail that swayed behind him as he moved. His eyes were again outlined with kohl. He should have looked girlish, but he didn’t. Not at all. He wore black again, tough pants, leather boots and a vest studded with steel discs over a black shirt. A sword hilt shone silver at his hip in a black sheath. He had a bundle under his arm.

“Wife.”

She almost called him Jerriel, but there were a lot of people moving not far from around us. “Good morning, King Rodir,” she responded stiffly.

“You could call me husband,” he suggested. When Ashley stayed stubbornly silent, he smiled. It made him even more handsome, and somehow even scarier. “The days are growing shorter and colder. Even now, you shiver.” He lifted the bundle and let it unfurl. It was a thick cloak of chocolate brown wool with metallic gold embroidered bees in flight down the front edges and along the front of the hood. “For you.”

It looked luxurious and she was cold. Ashley loved the embroidered bees. She let him step behind her and put it over her shoulders. The weight alone made her immediately feel warmer. He stepped in front of her to fasten the gold clasp at the neck. Ashley froze as he smoothed his hands over her shoulders. He might have been smoothing the fabric, but it felt more like a caress. She stepped hurriedly back. He followed, hands still on her shoulders. The sensation of his thumbs stroking over her throat got Ashley’s blood pumping. She didn’t really need the cloak anymore; she was plenty warm now.

“Thank you for the cloak. The bees are really cool,” she blurted. “Why are the tents coming down?”

“We are moving camp.” He didn’t move away, nor did he lift his hands from her shoulders. “The horses have grazed the grass to the roots here. We need to move to fresh grass. This afternoon you will ride with me so that we will have time to learn one another again.” His voice dropped to a sensuous whisper. “Wife.”

Ashley had tensed when she thought they would leave the city behind, then relaxed when he said the horses needed better grazing. But his purred ‘learn one another again’ made her even more tense than before.

“I’m not your wife. I’m not Valdis.”

The early morning sun lit his eyes, showing they were not solid black but a very dark brown iris around a black pupil. Just as she had described them in her story. They were beautiful and scary staring into hers.

“I don’t know why you lie to me, but I command that you stop.”

“I’m not lying! Jerriel—”

“Hush. Not another word.”

Beautiful and scary was a good description for him. The Storm King. She swallowed and changed the subject. “So we’re not going far?” Going away from here would be bad. She couldn’t sneak back to the city to find Maya if they went far.

“Not far. An army loaded down by wagons and loot doesn’t move fast. We will not reach Erabir for nearly a month.”

Unease cut through her. “We’re not leaving the city behind?”

“We are. My business here is finished. I look forward to having you home in Erabir with me.” Those cold black eyes heated.

Ashley froze again for a split second because she remembered what he would do to her when they reached his home. “But Maya,” she began.

His face hardened. “You still harp on her?” he snapped.

Ashley almost cowered but stood firm. “Yes! She’s my friend and she’s alone here.”

Jerriel stepped so close his front leaned against hers. Ashley wavered for a second but didn’t step back, only lifting her chin to glare up at him. His icy gaze bored into her for a long minute. She made herself stand her ground. It was hard. She was just about to collapse when Jerriel spoke.

“Very well, wife. Let’s make a trade.”

“A trade?”

“Yes. You stop lying to me, and I will send some of my men to find your friend.”

Ashley opened her mouth. Closed it. So many thoughts bombarded her she couldn’t keep them straight. She wasn’t lying. She wasn’t Valdis. But if they were headed back to Erabir she would never be able to get away to find Maya. Agreeing to this bargain would be agreeing that she was his wife. Not agreeing would leave Maya to fend for herself in this crazy world. Ashley gripped the edges of the cloak so hard her knuckles hurt.

“They will find her and bring her back to me?”

Now Jerriel was silent with his thoughts for a minute before dipping his head. “Will you agree to accept my right to touch you as a husband would?”

Heat flared inconveniently between her thighs. “First base is okay. Second base is okay. Nothing else.”

He looked blank. “First base?” he growled.

Was she actually going to do this?  Is steam rising from my cheeks? I am probably redder than a tomato. “Um. Kissing. Some petting. Above the waist, I mean. No, um, no touching below my waist.”

He considered, and all the while his thumbs were caressing the sides of her neck. He looked as cool as a cucumber. She felt like someone had dropped her into an overachieving sauna. “I will be able to touch you above the waist whenever I please.”

“Not in public!”

“Of course not. When we are alone. And when your friend has been found and brought here, then I will touch you below the waist.”

“N-n-no,” Ashley stuttered.

“With only my hand.” His smile mocked me. “Do you want your friend found?”

“That’s blackmail!”

“You dicker like a merchant trying to get the best bargain. This way we both get what we want. But I will get what I want eventually, wife, regardless of any bargain we make.” His smile was cold. Ashley hated that smile. “Agree, and this will be much more pleasant for you.”

Regardless of any bargain? More pleasant for me? What did that mean? Would he rape her? Ashley shuddered. The boy Jerriel would never have acted like this with Valdis. Maybe this stranger with Jerriel’s name thought being married to someone gave him the right to force sex on her?

Ashley stiffened her spine. “Will you rape me?”