The Priestess and the Thief: Kindred Tales 30 Read online

  The Priestess and the Thief

  A Kindred Tales Novel

  Evangeline Anderson

  www.evangelineanderson.com

  The Priestess and the Thief, 1st Edition,

  A Kindred Tales Novel

  Copyright © 2020 by Evangeline Anderson

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Art Design © 2020 by Reese Dante

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writers’ imagination or have been used factiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to a retailer of your choice or evangelineanderson.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Cover content is for illustrative purposes only.

  Any person depicted on the cover is a model.

  Contents

  The Priestess and the Thief

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Epilogue

  The End?

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  Also by Evangeline Anderson

  About the Author

  The Priestess and the Thief

  A Kindred Tales Novel

  A Thief who has no honor

  A Priestess who has broken her vow of chastity

  Can the two of them complete a quest at the treacherous Tenebrian Court

  Where they are required to “Mirror” the Crown Prince’s erotic activities every night?

  Read The Priestess and the Thief to find out!

  Ellilah is a priestess…but not a very good one. She doesn’t seem to have the right temperament for quiet meditation. And even worse, she broke her vow of chastity at the Christmas party after a dark stranger drugged her punch. Now she’s being sent to the Priory of Extreme Atonement—an ominous place with no windows and daily beatings.

  But Elli has always had a mind of her own. Instead of handing herself over for punishment, she goes on a quest to find a cure for the old Priestess Superior who is dying.

  Elli’s quest will take her to the Tenebrian Court and put her in great danger…which is why the Goddess sends her some help in the form of the very same dark stranger who drugged her punch in the first place.

  Roke is half Havoc—a Kindred-like race of males who refuse to bond with females. He is none too pleased at being sent to protect the little priestess, but he doesn’t dare disobey the Goddess. Once he meets Elli again, however, he feels an instant attraction to her. He goes with her to the dangerous Tenebrian Court to protect her from the predatory nobles—especially the rapacious Crown Prince who insists that everyone “Mirror” his erotic activities at supper every night.

  Will the two of them be able to complete their quest and leave the Court alive? Will Roke admit he wants to bond with Elli, even though he has sworn never to take a bride? And will Elli ever forgive herself for breaking her vow of chastity with the dark warrior?

  Read The Priestess and the Thief and find out!

  Author’s Note

  The Priestess and the Thief is a stand-alone novel but it does refer to some characters and situations which happened in the Kindred Tales novel before it, Secret Santa Surprise. In that book, Elli, our main character, drank punch that was drugged with an aphrodisiac and broke her vows of chastity with a mysterious, dark stranger. This book, The Priestess and the Thief, is her story and tells what became of her after the breaking of her vows. You don’t really need to read Secret Santa Surprise to understand The Priestess and the Thief, but if you like Christmas books, I recommend you read them both.

  Hugs and Happy Reading!

  Evangeline, December 2020

  Prologue

  It came back to her often in dreams…

  “Are you a virgin, little priestess?” he asks, his dark, unreadable eyes searching hers. They are in the small, dim closet together. Outside the clatter of the human celebration—a holiday called “Christmas”—is loud and happy.

  But in the closet with him, the sounds are muted. Ellilah can hear her own heart pounding in her ears. The drugged punch he has forced her to drink is fizzing through her veins and she can feel the hot desire flowing through her body.

  Her desire has always been a source of shame to her. She runs hot—as hot as the males in her family, she thinks. At least, all her brothers Joined with their mates young—though several of them were bonded before they got Joined—a great scandal on Torl Prime, her home planet.

  But with males, of course, the urge to fornicate could be excused. Males have needs, after all, and as long as her brothers Joined with their brides before the brides’ bellies started to show, what harm was really done?

  Of course, it’s different for a female—at last on Torl Prime. Elli knows she shouldn’t have desires at all—shouldn’t long to be touched and certainly shouldn’t touch herself at night, after lights out when everyone is supposed to be asleep. But she can’t help it—she’s always been drawn to self-pleasure…to desires of the flesh.

  Like her knack with zorels, it’s not considered ladylike or proper in a female. It’s the reason she was sent to the Mother Ship to be a priestess in the first place. Or maybe her stepmother just wanted to be rid of her.

  Either way, Elli has barely been here a month and already she is breaking the rules…Sneaking out after curfew to attend the human party. Joining in their festivities when she ought
to be back at the Sacred Grove, meditating quietly instead.

  Being around male warriors at all is grounds for punishment. For she hasn’t completed her Novicehood yet. And she has yet to partake in the Ceremony of Shriving and drink the Mortem Amore which will kill, once and for all, any desires of the flesh still lurking in her soul…

  “Are you a virgin, little priestess?” he says again and this time Elli answers him.

  “Yes,” she whispers, looking up into those unreadable eyes. She wished she knew what kind of Kindred he is. He looks like a Beast Kindred, with his braided beard and shaggy mane of black hair. But his eyes are dark, not golden as he looks down at her.

  “I will not take your chastity,” he murmurs, tilting her chin up to his. “But forgive me—I must test the effectiveness of the potion.”

  Then he bends down and takes her mouth in a kiss as sweet as Elli always dreamed her first kiss would be. Well, that is until she was shipped away to be a priestess. Now she’s not supposed to be kissing anyone. But she can’t stop—even though she doesn’t know him. Doesn’t even know his name.

  But one kiss isn’t enough. As he pulls away, she reaches for him. Looping her arms around his neck, she pulls him back down. He doesn’t have to come—he’s nearly seven feet tall and immensely muscular while she’s barely five-five. But he comes anyway, allowing himself to be drawn down for more of the sweet-sticky forbidden kisses, flavored with the fruity punch he made her drink.

  “Gods, little priestess,” he murmurs, when he pulls back at last. “That punch is potent stuff, isn’t it?”

  He strokes her lightly, just over her breasts where her nipples poke against the coarse white fabric of her robes.

  The touch is barely there but Elli feels her body respond at once—lighting up for him like the strange tree in the human’s party—the one they have strung with many small, twinkling lights. Her body feels like that now—sparking, lighting, coming to life under this stranger’s touch.

  “Oh!” she gasps, her nipples peaking under his gentle caress.

  “You like that, do you?” He cups one breast more firmly and strokes her tight nipple gently with his thumb. Even through the coarse robe, his touch stirs her almost unbearably. Elli feels as though the sparking has turned to a smoldering fire which might soon burst out into outright flame. More—she wants more.

  And she suspects it isn’t just because of the punch, though that certainly helps things along. But thanks to the punch, she no longer feels any guilt or obligation to stop doing what feels good. What feels right.

  “Easy, little priestess—you’re panting,” he murmurs. After stroking her nipple through the coarse white cloth of her robe a moment more, he pulls his big hand away.

  But Elli doesn’t want him to go.

  “Touch me,” she begs, reaching for his hand and placing it on her other breast.

  He strokes it, almost reflexively.

  “I should go now,” he murmurs, almost to himself. “Clearly the punch is working.”

  “No—don’t leave me!” Elli thrusts her breast more fully into his big hand and rubs against him. Her whole body is on fire with need! “Please,” she begs, “Kiss me again—touch me some more!”

  “Mmm, but I shouldn’t, little priestess…” Still, he allows her to pull him down for another long, sweet, lingering kiss. Elli slips her tongue between his lips and explores him eagerly. He makes a low growl in his chest and lifts her up, deepening the kiss as he pulls her close.

  Elli feels like she can’t get enough. Her whole body is alight with desire and for once it doesn’t feel like a sin to indulge herself. She can do whatever she wants tonight and there is no one here to stop her. No stepmother, glaring at her and saying she ought to be ashamed, no Priestess Superior with her cold, judgmental eye. No one telling her it is wrong to do things that feel so good…so right.

  She presses against the dark stranger eagerly and then takes one of his big hands—the one not busy fondling her breasts—and attempts to slip it under her robe.

  She is bare beneath—having not been fitted for her special undergarments yet—and for a moment, she feels his fingertips brush the sensitive top of her mound. How she longs to feel those long fingers slip into her slippery inner folds and touch her secret spot—the one she’s never supposed to touch herself.

  She knows she shouldn’t touch herself there—and she certainly shouldn’t let a male touch her there—but somehow, since she drank the punch, it seems all right. It seems perfectly fine to indulge the hidden desires she’s had for so long, the ones she only takes out and examines in the privacy of her own bed at night…

  The male’s fingertips slip for just a moment into her slit and she feels him brush over the tingling button of her secret spot. Goddess, it feels so good!

  But then he is pulling away—drawing back—a frown on his dark features.

  “Forgive me, little virgin priestess, but I must go before I do something we both will regret,” he rumbles.

  “Wait—no, please don’t go!” Elli begs him. But he is already gliding noiselessly out of the door and through the human party. No one sees him go—wearing the red hat with the white furry ball at the end, he blends in with the other Christmastime revelers.

  Only Elli is left, standing alone, feeling as though her entire body has been plucked like a lyric-harp string and then left wanting and alone…

  One

  Elli woke up with a gasp, her hands going automatically to her breasts and sex—the parts of her that always tingled with need whenever she had the dream. She looked around but she was alone in her narrow cot in the priestess’s quarters, which were on the level of the Mother Ship directly beneath the Sacred Grove.

  She gave a sharp sigh of frustration. She’d taken the antidote to the drug the mystery male had put in the punch. But though it had dispelled her depression, which was apparently the after-effect of the drug—it hadn’t stopped the dreams or caused the incessant desires they brought with them to lessen a bit.

  Then again, she had always had wrong and illicit desires, Elli admitted to herself. The drug and the dream hadn’t caused them—they had only made them worse…more visible. They had exposed her secrets and made her vulnerable to the Ascending Priestess Superior, just like she had been vulnerable when her stepmother caught her touching her secret spot after the lights were out and everyone was supposedly asleep…

  Elli had thought it was safe. She was in her room alone and the whole house had gone to bed. That was the only reason she had dared to take all of her clothing off and lay on top of the covers in the first place. Well that and the fact that it was a dreadfully hot night. She’d had the window open and a cool breeze had been blowing in. It felt delicious against her naked flesh and it made the tight little peaks of her nipples tingle as it brushed along her skin.

  The tingling in her nipples had awakened another kind of tingling ache between her thighs. She had spread her legs and just for a moment allowed her hand to drift down to cup her mound. Somehow her fingers had slipped between her slippery nether lips—she was wet there, as usual—and started to stroke around and around her secret spot.

  It had felt so good that Elli hadn’t even heard the soft, sneaking footsteps outside her room. So she had been completely surprised when her stepmother had flung open the door and caught her doing the unthinkable.

  Why you filthy girl! How dare you lay here as naked as the day you were born and abuse yourself like this? Have you no decency? No honor? You have shamed yourself and this whole family!

  Her stepmother’s voice echoed in her memory and Elli pressed her fingers to her temples, rubbing hard to try to drive it away.

  “I’m sorry!” she muttered. “I’m sorry…I’m sorry!”

  The old shame writhed inside her like a poisonous serpent and Elli writhed with it, turning over in her narrow cot to stare at the blank white wall as she kept massaging her temples. The priestess’s sleeping chambers were more like cells than actual living spaces. Ba
re and white, their only furnishings were a single cot and a tiny kneeling mat for meditation and prayer in the corner.

  Lately, even Elli’s mat had been removed so that during meditation she was forced to kneel on the hard metal floor without it. The punishment was meant to make her reflect on the sins of the flesh she had committed. But to be honest, what she mostly thought about after kneeling for hours, was the pain in her knees. They were black and blue with bruises—not that anyone would notice with her long white robes in the way.

  At that moment the lights came on all at once—a blinding flare of brilliance that meant it was time to start her morning.

  The day of a priestess started much earlier than that of a regular person living aboard the Mother Ship. They rose hours before anyone else to worship the Mother of All Life, first meditating in their cells, and then going out to the Sacred Grove to have a communal Veneration of the Goddess.