by Anne Marsh
“Doesn’t matter now, does it?” He hauled her up against his body, turning her to face the Cats pacing toward them. Oh, gods. “You’ve got much larger problems on your hands now, love. Those Cats want you dead. Your only chance of staying alive is to do what I tell you to do, make some hard choices, and accept the consequences. Then you just might live another day.”
“All right,” she agreed. “Spell out the terms of this deal for me.”
“You’re going to agree to mate with me.”
Miu stared at him speechlessly. She had to have heard him wrong.
He hadn’t said mate.
Jafar knew damn well how she felt about the Cats and this mating business. His hand tangled in her hair, pulling her head back so he could examine her face.
“I’m waiting for my answer,” he said.
And apparently his blunt statement was all the proposal she was getting from him. Did he think she was desperate? She flinched at the ominous atmosphere in the gallery. Well, yeah, she was. She didn’t need show-and-tell to make it clear that she wasn’t going to enjoy whatever happened here. She just hadn’t been expecting a mating.
Images flashed through her mind: Amun Ra, the nameless runner in the corridor, the bells. No way was she agreeing to any of that.
“Here’s the deal,” Jafar said. “You agree to mate with me. We go through all the little mating rituals that my people have—and I do mean all—and then you take me to your thief master.”
“Lierr?”
“You take me to him, and I bring him back here. It’s time he faced a little justice of his own.”
She imagined Lierr out of her life for good. Her sister free. What choice did she really have?
“You’ve got a deal.”
Just at that moment, the Guardians approaching them moved aside, letting through a commanding male. The Amun Ra. She blinked. Was this the same man she’d seen the night before, the man whose hands had parted, played with the hot, wet skin of his lover?
There was nothing soft or forgiving—or, Heqet help her, playful—about him now. He was all business as he strode through the circle of Cats.
“Well, well,” he said. “Apparently, we didn’t quite clear the temple of yesterday’s runners. I’m not sure we’ve ever had a participant who stretched her stay quite so long. You weren’t interested in claiming a mate—nor, it would seem, the alternative prize? A dowry?”
She eyed Jafar but he seemed content to let her speak for herself. “No.” To her irritation, her voice sounded thick. Nervous. Clearing her throat, she tried again. “I didn’t come here for a dowry.”
“What did you come here for?” The Amun Ra was not quite as large as the Guardians flanking him, but he gave the impression of lean, tensile strength. If he were a werebeast, she thought with a flash of realization, he would be serpentine. There was a look of cool cunning to his eyes that made her warier of him than of the large beasts encircling him. One misstep and he would skewer her himself.
“Nothing to say for yourself? That is too bad. I had convinced myself that you would spin us an elaborate tale. You’re not the first, you know. There have been others who came here, all of you under false pretenses, wanting to help yourselves to something from the tombs or even—in one memorable instance—to cross over to Qaf itself. No one does succeed,” he confided. “You all fail. I would be curious to know what brought you here. I’d pegged you as trouble—your eyes will always give you away, my dear—but not of that sort. I rather thought you more likely to gut one of my Guardians or even to be an assassin after one of the other competitors. A thief, though? That was disappointing news.”
“Prove it,” she said.
“Pardon me?” His eyes bored into her, giving away nothing.
“Prove it,” she repeated. “Prove that I stole something—anything—from your temple.”
“A challenge.” He regarded her thoughtfully, playing his part in the drama perfectly. Miu was certain Jafar had told him what defense she would use. “Either you’re bluffing, my dear, or you’re quite certain I cannot. Which is it? I’ve the word of three Guardians that they found you in a burial chamber, the dearly departed grotesquely disturbed, and a spell-warded funeral necklace missing.”
“But no one saw me take it. And I don’t have it now, do I?”
“No.” He regarded her intently. “Jafar argues that we should release you. He has agreed to take responsibility for you as his mate. I am content with that arrangement, but I must insist on one little variation to his terms.”
The air in the chamber seemed to vanish.
Were those spots dancing in front of her eyes? Damn, she hated her weakness.
“First there must be punishment. We’ll punish you and then he’ll mate you.” Dark eyes dismissed her. “Problem solved.”
He smiled slyly at Jafar, who was scowling fiercely at him.
“You swore—” Jafar surged forward, but was restrained by several other Guardians.
“Your little femi will not be harmed, merely chastised,” the Amun Ra said. “If you prefer, you may punish her, Jafar, while we watch.”
Jafar shot him a look of pure hatred, then turned to Miu and swiftly grabbed her.
This wasn’t part of their bargain! Struggling wildly, Miu tried to resist, but it was hopeless.
“Keep still, femi,” he growled softly. “Better me than one of the others.”
Jafar bent her ruthlessly over his arm so that her rear faced up. Gods, what was he going to do to her? The sharp crack of his palm sent heat blossoming across her cheeks—and heat flaring through her sex. She’d never imagined anything like the look on his face, either. Stern. Masterful. His eyes glowed with emotion, telegraphing a message straight to her sex. He was in charge here. Not her.
Plus, it felt so damn good.
Methodically, he paddled both sides of her ass until she wanted to rub the stinging cheeks—and then plunge her hand between her thighs and massage her engorged clit until she screamed. Each sharp jolt sent ribbons of liquid heat shooting through her sex until she couldn’t keep back the moan that tore from her lips.
Without stopping, he murmured: “Not so bad, is it? I smell cream.”
She creamed more. It was both embarrassing and arousing. If it had been one of the other males in the room, the casual possession in his voice would have angered her. But this was Jafar. The tough, reticent merck who’d vowed to keep her safe. She didn’t want him to stop.
Particularly not when the orgasm of a lifetime hovered just out of reach.
His large hand shaped her ass almost casually, tracing the seam. Teasing her flesh. “Spread your legs more,” he said. The harsh voice of a predator who’d spotted prey. “Show them how you cream for me.”
Gathering the robe with one hand, he pulled it ruthlessly over her head, dropping the fabric carelessly onto the floor. The silk slipped onto the floor like a lover’s sigh, pooling over their feet. The heavy weight of his hand resting on the small of her back made her squirm, silently begging for more.
“Show them,” he ordered again, and the heat built low and deep inside her. What would he do if she refused? He answered her unspoken question with a sharp stinging slap on her juicy sex.
She cried out, arching up into his hand, dark crimson shards of pleasure shattering through her. Oh, this was a male who did indeed know how to punish—and to please. He expected her to obey, but had every intention of showing her pleasures she hadn’t known existed. He landed three more stinging slaps and she could hear the graphic sounds of her own panting and the juicy sound of her sex, startlingly loud in the heated silence of the room.
Close. She was so close to orgasm. The white-hot pleasure built in harsh spasms, spilling from her very core. He could make her come like she had never come, with just one more stroke of his talented fingers.
Pleasure dazed her.
“Down here,” he said, forcing her chin up until she met his eyes, “you will obey.” His voice was a low growl.
“Yes,” she hissed.
He nodded. “We are agreed then.” What had she agreed to? He stroked his hand lightly over her sex. She was so wet and juicy that she almost came from the simple motion. She rubbed her thighs together. She no longer cared who was watching or where she was: she had to come, had to give in to the spasms.
She sensed the Amun Ra drawing closer. He grabbed her chin between his hands.
“You were a fool to enter my temple,” the Amun Ra pronounced. “Do you know,” he asked, “how long the Guardians go between females?” He did not wait for her to answer. She wasn’t sure she could have strung two words together. Desire was humming through her, and his words washed over like the surf. “It is the summer season,” he said. The heated press of male bodies around them moved closer. “The Guardians may have been set to guard this temple against the thievery of your kind, but they burn during these months. Even as the sun rises higher in the abovelands and bakes the sands to a glowing hotness, it heats them. It heats their blood, their bodies. They burn.”
He slapped a hand around the thick, hard length that pushed upward from his loincloth. “Our flesh burns,” he said in a low, dark voice, “and there is very little ease belowground. We wait until one of your kind is foolish enough to seek us out, to seek out our treasures and to pilfer. Then”—a slow, dark smile spread across his face—“then, we do find ease from the burning. We find it here.” He turned to Jafar. “Finish it.”
Jafar’s thick fingers parted her soaked flesh. Oh, Heqet save her. With Amun Ra and the entire pride watching, he stroked and teased and penetrated her. Spreading her wide, he stabbed first one finger, then two, three, into her dripping sex.
With a scream, she finally came in great spasms, riding Jafar’s fingers for all to see.
CHAPTER TEN
Her Cat had gotten his point across.
Loud and clear.
Miu had never done anything like that before. Heqet knew, she’d never contemplated making such a public exhibition out of herself.
Such a public pleasure.
But before she could even plumb the true depths of her humiliation, one of the Guardians stepped forward, breaking the silence. His eyes crawled over her, dissecting and dismissing what he saw. She could smell trouble brewing.
“I challenge your right to mate this female,” he growled.
“Don’t do this, Hebon.” Jafar’s eyes were cold. Clearly, he didn’t care for the challenge.
“She ran with the Hunt yesterday.” Hebon’s gaze was making her skin crawl. “No one caught her. She wears no bells.”
Jafar nodded shortly. “Not yet,” he amended. “But she will. Now that this misunderstanding about the necklace is cleared up. You heard the Amun Ra.”
The Amun Ra came closer.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “I believe I hear fighting words.”
The rest of the pride cleared a space as the two males squared off against each other. In the next moment, the tall Guardians were morphing into enormous, growling lions ready to tear each other’s throats out.
***
Jafar could see Hebon’s anger: the Guardian’s aura was a rich crimson. Hebon wanted blood. Fine with Jafar. Lose this battle—and he lost Miu.
He knew why Hebon was so angry at Jafar’s defense of the femi. Hebon remembered what had happened the last time Jafar had let a thief go. Eventually, that thief had died, but not before he’d killed Hebon’s mate. No, Hebon had every right to question Jafar’s decision.
Jafar couldn’t afford to be wrong this time.
“Can’t trust her, mate.” The male’s eyes met his fiercely, his voice thickening as he spoke through the Cat’s mouth. “She’s got you running in circles.” Hebon didn’t bother adding like last time, but Jafar heard the words anyhow.
“Not the same,” he bit out. His paws found the familiar rhythm of the sparring circle, gliding smoothly over the marble as his eyes watched his opponent’s body. Sooner or later, Hebon would betray his next move.
“What makes her different?”
Miu hadn’t come through one of the Doorways between the realms, for one. She was no Qaf dweller. He’d bet his life on that. And he didn’t think she’d plunge a dagger into a man—or his mate—just because she could. Oni had taken the knife in her throat, the smooth edge slicing open the white skin straight through to the ivory knobs of her spine. Even as Jafar had gutted her murderer, as he should have done when she’d first appeared, he’d known it was too late for Oni.
“Oni’s dead,” he said, but Hebon shook his head, striking out with lethal claws. Jafar rolled quickly to one side, sweeping a foreleg out as he did. His paw struck Hebon in the vulnerable skin behind the joint.
Hebon rolled, coming fluidly to his feet on the opposite side of the circle.
“Shift,” Hebon demanded. “Meet me male to male.”
Less safe that way, but it was the man’s right. Challenges were usually conducted in Cat form because injuries were less likely to be fatal, but it was the challenger’s right to choose. Jafar shifted.
“Maybe Oni is dead,” Hebon spat. “And maybe not. She could be a death spirit. There might be some way to bring her back. And even if there’s not”—his blade crashed into Jafar’s with jarring force—“I’m not letting one of your ‘finds’ make history repeat itself. Your female needs to die, Jafar.”
The blows landed with devastating force.
And yet Jafar knew they were both holding back. Had been friends for too long, despite the bitter words. Even now, he wanted to disable and not to cripple. It was an even match.
Around them, the Cats pressed closer. The air was still and tense with anticipation. Heat built until sweat dripped from the torsos of the circling fighters, making the floor a slippery death trap. One misstep could spell the end.
There. Opportunity. Jafar’s blade tore through Hebon’s chest, ripping
into muscle and lodging against the bone. Blood poured from the wound.
“Change,” Jafar growled. For a moment, he thought Hebon would refuse, would allow himself to bleed out onto the floor of the temple.
Then, with a snarl, Hebon changed, the man’s wounds slowly closing as the lion slumped onto the floor.
Jafar brought his blades up to his chest in a gesture of respect. Inclining his head toward the Amun Ra, he stepped deliberately out of the circle.
“No kill?” The Amun Ra regarded him over steepled fingers.
Jafar grunted a negative, already striding toward his mate. He didn’t need to compound his mistakes by killing a friend.
The Amun Ra reached out, laying a pale hand on Jafar’s arm. “Wait a moment.” Jafar’s head swung around, lips peeling back in a grimace. Now that he’d won the right to bell her, he wanted his mate. Miu.
“If you have something to say, say it,” Jafar snapped.
“Manners, Jafar.” The Amun Ra smiled slightly. “She’s all yours, but a piece of advice: Keep a close eye on her. We both know she’s less innocent than she appears. Catch her with her fingers in the pie again and there’ll be no rescuing her. Whatever she really came here for, she’s leaving without it. Anyone who removes that necklace from the temple is under a death sentence.” Power surged around him. “Got it?”
Oh, Jafar did. Very much so.
His little femi still looked stunned at all that had happened. No doubt she was also apprehensive of what was to come.
He felt a moment’s regret at the punishment he’d been forced to mete out. But it had been the only way to save her life, he reminded himself. What the Amun Ra commanded had to be carried out.
In the aftermath of Miu’s disciplining, the raw sexuality of the Cats was a shimmering haze of need rising from the gallery’s occupants. It was critical that he claim her. Now. With the mating bells.
Just the thought of placing them on her body—in her body—made him bite back a groan. The few women in the gallery above wore bells around slender throats, or dangling from ears. Others wore them in less
obvious places. Depended on the woman, Jafar knew—and her mate.
As he approached Miu, he considered each tempting spot where he might place the bells: the delicious curve of her ear; the sweet indentation of her belly button; the plump, inward curve of her sex. The bells should always brush the skin, a sensual tease and a mate’s promise. Just as she would never escape the bells’ presence and would come to crave the soft brush of the metal, so, too, would she come to crave her mate.
Bending his head, he took her lips in a hard kiss. The males around them raised their own blades in their right hands, pressing them over their hearts. When Sanur hesitated—perhaps his pride brother also worried about the wisdom of Jafar’s decision—Jafar glared until Sanur pulled his own knife. He would have their acknowledgment—and he would have it now.
“I claim the female,” Jafar repeated. “She is my mate.”
Now she pulled against his grasp, but he had woven his fingers so deep into her hair that she had no choice but to keep still in his grasp. He lowered his head again. Half the males there would expect him to screw her in the sparring circle in a public display of possession, but he had no intention of taking matters quite that far.
Her teeth biting down on his tongue startled him. The copper taste of his own blood filled his mouth and he pulled back, swearing.
“I am not your mate,” she hissed. Her eyes glittered with unfamiliar emotion, but it was her feet that he should have been watching. Her left knee swung smoothly upward, driving toward his chest in a powerful roundhouse kick. “But you can be mine.”
He blocked her kick effortlessly. Amun Ra had been right: her eyes betrayed her. They were a seething pool of emotion.
“Not the deal we made, love,” he whispered against her ear. “But feel free to try to persuade me otherwise when we are alone. Right now, it’s time to pay the piper.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Run,” Jafar growled into her ear.
His fingers rubbed the smooth skin of Miu’s shoulders, kneading the tense muscles. Part of her wanted to lean into the caress, but that was the crazy part. The part that whispered she wanted more of this male.