Read Mastered By Love for Free Online Page B

flask and held it to her lips.
    “ Drink.”
    “ What is it?”
    “ Just watered wine.
Drink.”
    She drank. The liquid soothed the dry
fire in her throat and washed the bitter taste of the opium out of
her mouth. He took the flask away and held a chunk of cheese to her
lips. She opened her mouth to accept the offering. It was better to
eat and drink than refuse out of pride and make herself
sick.
    Saturnios urged his horse forward into
the night, Paolo riding behind them.
    She was too intoxicated to
mind being trussed up like a bird headed for the cooking pot.
Besides, the gentle rocking motion of the horse’s gate and the
hard, warm wall of male behind her gave her a peculiar feeling of
safety. She couldn’t stop her head from lolling stupidly against
his shoulder.
    It was a lie, of course; even in her
opium-addled state, she knew that. There was no safety, would never
be safety for her where Dario Saturnios was concerned.
    No Concordian woman could be safe with
a Saturnian. In Saturnios, the natural order was reversed, with
males ruling and women cast down as slaves. That was the fate Dario
had reserved for her. She would be the same as all those sad little
Saturnian whores she and her sister Concordians had so pitied and
despised.
    The worst of it was,
she suspected she would enjoy being Dario Saturnios’s woman. If she
hadn’t been so intoxicated, she might have screamed in rage at the
thought. Instead, she sighed and closed her eyes.
    By the time they made it to the
Saturnios encampment, the sun rode high and the opium had
completely worn off for Tariza. She roused from her drug-induced
stupor in time to see the encampment spread in red and black across
the rocky, scrub-shrouded hillside above them. Men, tiny like
insects, bustled around the tents. Armor glinted in the hard
morning sun and smoke drifted down from numerous cooking
fires.
    The loose, safe feeling dissipated as
if it had never been, leaving her with a dry mouth and a churning
stomach. The Saturnians were close. Much closer to the Concordian
border than her scouts had reported. Had they moved that quickly,
or were the reports inaccurate?
    “ Welcome to Saturnios,” her
captor murmured, urging his mount up the hillside.
    “ This is contested
territory.”
    “ Since we’re currently in
possession, and we have no intention of letting it go, I consider
it part of our kingdom. No pack of little girls playing at soldiers
is going to steal it from us.”
    “ Playing?”
    “ None of you are a match
for a male soldier. I defeated you easily. I can’t understand why
my ancestors didn’t put a stop to your ridiculous experiment
generations ago.”
    “ You only think it’s
ridiculous because you’re too stupid to know any better. Males
haven’t the brains to govern effectively.”
    He chuckled. “We’ve done
well enough for time immemorial.”
    “ Well enough? You call war,
poverty and famine doing well enough?”
    “ Concordia suffers from
those ills just as we do.”
    “ That’s because we’re
surrounded by brutish male-dominated neighbors, who nonetheless are
more than willing to trade with us because of the superiority of
our textiles. No-one on Argelia produces better silk yardage and
carpets.”
    “ That is true. Your
textiles are incomparable.”
    He’d agreed with her? He’d
agreed with her. She’d expected him to boast of Saturnian designs,
even though they were crude compared to the elegance achieved by
Concordia.
    “ Have I shocked you into
silence?” he said.
    “ I’m amazed you would admit
we Concordians are superior in anything.”
    “ I’m never afraid to speak
the truth. Concordian textiles are better than anything else I’ve
ever seen. That doesn’t mean I approve of the way you Amazons
humiliate and degrade men.”
    She gave a snort. “Men
require the guiding hand of the female. If they’re allowed to have
full freedom, they make a mess of things. They’re brutish and
violent and ruled by passing sexual