Page 14 of The Princess and Her Mercenary

Chapter Eight

Despite the fact that they were sleeping on the ground, after having eaten in the outdoors, two things Ndari swore never to do, she would have called the night entirely perfect. If it weren’t for being woken by bright lights, loud shouts and her body being forcibly lifted off the ground. It took Ndari a moment to come fully awake and when she finally managed to pry her eyes open, she was being shoved in the back of a vehicle. The door slammed shut behind her, trapping her inside.

“What the - ?” she looked out the window in confusion.

Keane was being dragged off their shared blanket and toward another vehicle, but his retrieval wasn’t nearly as easy or graceful as hers. He was punching and kicking everything he could get his fists and feet on. Ndari watched in awe and a little pride as one man went flying through the air, landing on the hood of the vehicle. The impact rocked the SUV and Ndari was finally able to see what the men were wearing. It was the uniform of the palace guard. Her brother had found them.

Ndari sighed irritably. Well that hadn’t taken long. Trust Sally Spoilsport to ruin her grand adventure. He had absolutely no sense of fun to go along with his serious lack of humour. Keane punched another man in the jaw with a left hook that was so forceful that the man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he crumpled to the ground. She was impressed; her new man was able to throw punches with either fist with equal amount of devastation.

She tried the door but of course it was locked. She crawled from the back seat into the empty front seat and hit the unlock button. The latch clicked and she leapt from the vehicle, running toward Keane.

“Keane!” she shouted his name.

He looked at her as he threw another guy over his head and continued his path of destruction without bothering to see where the guy landed. So hot, his ability to lift that much weight with apparent ease. Ndari forced herself to focus on the task at hand, which was emptying Keane’s bag in a pile on the ground. It was all picnic and overnight supplies. She was disappointed; last time she'd looked, it had held an obscene amount of weaponry.

Before she could start checking the pockets, because who knew what a man like Keane would manage to shove in those small spaces, she was grabbed around the waist and hauled away from the picnic supplies. She looked up to find Keane’s strong jaw, tensely knotted, and his ruffled red hair. Relief slammed into her that he was safe. She was a little surprised at how much she cared that he not be hurt, but she didn’t currently have time to unpack the emotion as armed men were running toward them with ill intent. Keane flung himself on the motorbike, swinging her around to his back and starting the bike. She was deeply impressed with the smooth move, or she would have been if she hadn’t gotten a mouthful of sand when he hit the gas so hard the tires spun sand in every direction.

Ndari couldn’t see through the mini storm he kicked up with the motorbike, but she would guess that his antics were slowing down the men intent on snatching the two up. Keane tore off so fast Ndari almost fell of the back of the bike. She’d never been on one and assumed somehow people just managed to stay on top without doing much. Apparently, that was not the case. Keane gripped first her right arm and forced it around his waist, then he grabbed hold of her left arm and did the same until she was clinging tightly to his back.

They raced through the warm desert night, their enemy close behind. Ndari pressed her face against Keane’s back and held on as if her life depended on it, which it probably did. Not that she was afraid of the men following them, they were palace guards, probably sent out by her bother to find and rescue the Princess. There was no chance they would shoot at her, not unless they wanted to face Sally’s wrath.

No, she was afraid of the sand dunes speeding by at a dizzying pace. She could say with experience that it fucking hurt to hit the sand at speed, about as much as concrete probably hurt. She’d taken a spill or two when her aunt had insisted that she take horseback riding lessons. Ndari could say with certainty that horse-back riding was absolute torture, designed by sadists to force royals onto very large creatures to be paraded around. Not that she hated horses, she didn’t. She just hated the running and the falling off parts of riding.

They were starting to gain distance from the palace guards when Keane twisted around to glance over his shoulder at her and shout, “How come they ain’t shooting at us?”

She yelled back, “They’re from the palace.”

He didn’t respond as he faced forward again. She guessed he’d heard her. She felt the muscles in his back gradually relax now that he knew who was chasing them. He continued to ride through the night until she could no longer see the guards when she turned to look, only long endless stretches of dark sky pinned with bright stars.

Keane didn’t switch on the lights on the bike, so they rode in darkness. It didn’t really matter, there was very little that they could possibly run into in the dark, endless desert. She assumed he knew where they were going. He seemed far too in control to get them lost. She knew from her time spent with Jaya that Keane had worked in every kind of terrain it was possible to work in. His job as a mercenary was extremely demanding and forced him to be very knowledgeable of the countries he visited, the cultures and the people. Ndari had been impressed when she found out what a worldly person he was.

Not that it made a difference, a Princess and an ex-mercenary couldn’t be together. Not only would her brother and the rest of the family never allow the coupling, but the two had nothing in common. Except that they both always spoke their mind and the physical attraction they had for one another was off the charts. But aside from those things, there was nothing. No reason why Ndari should be falling in love with the big scarred redhead. Nothing, except for his constant attempts to give her what she wanted. Even kidnapping her Crown Jewels along with her.

Ndari clung tighter to his back, pressing her cheek against him, and enjoying the occasional ripple of muscles across his shoulders. He was truly magnificent, on a purely physical level. If he ever showed her the gentleness she craved, the utter devotion he professed to feel for her, that she’d spent an empty life searching for, she would be in very big trouble.

---