by Anne Bishop
“Daemon? What’s wrong?”
And the one untouched thing he had left to offer, the one clean thing he had given to no one else, would be taken from him. Like everything else had been taken from him.
Because of the little bitch now stinking up his bed.
She sat up. Shifted closer to the edge of the bed. His bed. “I think I should leave.”
Leave? No, no, no. Not until he’d purged himself of some of this anger, some of this hatred, some of this need.
He raised his right hand. The Black Jewel in his ring flashed. And he saw her tense as Black locks and shields surrounded the room, trapping her inside. With him.
This was his room, the one bit of peace and privacy he could claim. That was his bed, a place he shared with no one. And her body was his to do with as he pleased.
He took a step toward the bed, delighted by the way she shivered. Not with anticipation. The little bitch had finally figured out what she found in his bed wasn’t going to be pleasure.
He took another step.
She tried to bolt, tried to launch herself off the bed.
Snarling viciously, he caught her, threw her back down on the bed, and came down on top of her, forcing her legs apart, pushing against her, taking dark pleasure in the knowledge that the moment he vanished his clothes, his cock would ram into her.
“Daemon.”
Go ahead, he thought. Plead now that you can’t control what’s coming. Could never control what’s coming.
His hands tightened on her wrists. Tightened and tightened until just a little more pressure would break bone. Her pulse hammered under his fingers. Her heart thundered against his chest.
He smelled her fear. Reveled in the scent of it.
She turned her head, as if daring to deny him her mouth.
He clamped his teeth on the spot where her neck and right shoulder connected....
And breathed in a scent that soothed and excited him. He licked that spot and tasted a flavor more heady than the best wine. And knew whose body trembled beneath his.
“Jaenelle,” he whispered, nuzzling that spot, breathing in those scents that could belong to no other woman. “Jaenelle.”
His hands relaxed, still cuffing her wrists but gently now. So gently.
“Jaenelle.” He was safe. He was safe. She wouldn’t hurt him for wanting her. She wouldn’t punish him for needing her.
He could give her this because she was the one he had waited for.
As he raised his head to look at her beloved face, he realized something wasn’t right about the room.
It didn’t smell like her. Like them. It smelled only like him.
“Kiss me,” he whispered before sinking into a kiss that was viciously gentle.
He needed her, couldn’t survive without her. And he needed the scent of her arousal, the flood of her pleasure, to fill his bed.
His room. His bed. And . . .
He looked at the woman who meant more to him than anything else, and thought, Mine.
CHAPTER 5
KAELEER
Theran looked at the man who walked into the breakfast room and thought, Predator.
Whatever mood was riding Daemon Sadi could have lethal repercussions for the rest of the males in this place. And judging by the way Beale held himself, as if a twitch at the wrong time could end with someone being gutted—or worse—the butler recognized the danger too. The difference between them was that Beale seemed to be offering something Sadi wanted, whereas he . . .
He dared give that cold, beautiful face a quick study before fixing his eyes on his plate.
In Dena Nehele, men had two ways to describe a man who had spent a vigorous night in bed: ridden hard or well used. A man who had been well used came to the breakfast table with a sated, lazy satisfaction. A man who had been ridden hard might have gotten some relief from the sex, but he was still edgy and looking for an excuse for a different kind of relief. And when a Warlord Prince went looking for that kind of relief, blood was spilled—and too many friends and families ended up grieving for the dead.
Sadi pulled out a chair and sat down across from him. Within moments Beale poured a cup of coffee for the Prince and, without asking, fixed a plate of food for the man.
“It will be ready in a few minutes,” Beale said quietly.
Nodding, Sadi reached for the cup of black coffee.
Undercurrents. Any man who lived in Terreille learned to recognize them. Even someone who had spent his life in the rogue camps.
There was concern—and understanding—in Beale’s voice. The same concern Theran had heard in older men’s voices when they’d tried to offer support to a younger man who’d been twisted up by bedroom games. And there was a moment before Beale left the room when Theran thought the butler would actually lay a comforting hand on Sadi’s shoulder.
He recognized all the signs and knew what they meant, but who in the name of Hell would be brave enough—or foolish enough—to twist up a Black-Jeweled Warlord Prince?
Sadi’s wife.
That first exchange he’d witnessed between Lady Angelline and Sadi had left no doubt that Daemon’s attention became focused exclusively on her whenever she entered a room. He’d figured it was because they were still in their first year of marriage—a time when a man’s thoughts didn’t stray too far from the bed.
Now he wondered. Who was Jaenelle Angelline? He’d heard of Sadi—who hadn’t heard stories about the Sadist?—but the Prince’s wife, the adopted daughter of the former Warlord Prince of Dhemlan, was a Queen who didn’t have a court and didn’t rule anywhere that he could tell, not even the little village just down the road from the Hall. She wore a Jewel so peculiar he’d never seen its like before. And everything about her outside of her life here at SaDiablo Hall was off-limits in terms of questions or conversation. Sadi had made that very clear when the three of them had dinner last night.
The other thing that was becoming clear was that no matter how they appeared for the servants and guests, no matter how Sadi was presented as the dominant power in Dhemlan, when the bedroom door closed at night, she had a Warlord Prince by the balls and wasn’t afraid to squeeze.
Which brought him to the unpalatable conclusion that he was going to have to negotiate with Lady Angelline instead of Prince Sadi.
Then he looked up and realized those sleepy gold eyes were focused on him, had been focused on him all the time his thoughts had wandered—and he had the terrifying feeling that Sadi was analyzing him right down to the last drop of blood and the smallest sliver of bone.
A sudden chill hung over the table, along with an unspoken warning: Keep your hands, and your thoughts, away from my wife.
“Prince?”
Thank the Darkness, Theran thought as Daemon turned his head to look at the butler standing in the doorway.
Beale nodded once.
Daemon pushed his chair back, hesitated a moment, then called in a sheet of paper and dropped it on the table.
“Those are the terms for having a Kaeleer Queen go to Dena Nehele,” Daemon said. “You can look them over and give me your decision later.”
Theran waited until Daemon was out of the room before letting out a shuddering sigh of relief.
Maybe if he told the butler he was going to take a walk around the estate, he could catch the Winds and reach the Keep before anyone realized he was gone. Maybe he could persuade that Hayllian librarian to help him go through the Gate and get back to Terreille.
Maybe you can throw away the one chance you’ll have of finding someone who might be able to help your people. If you run away now, you run away from everyone. Jared and Blaed wouldn’t have run. They would have been scared—Hell’s fire, they weren’t stupid—but they wouldn’t have run.
And neither would he.
Resigned to that much, Theran picked up the sheet of paper to look at the terms.
Carrying the loaded breakfast tray, Daemon paused outside the bedroom door.
Control it, damn you.
Lock it away. Keep it leashed.
He was Daemon Sadi, Warlord Prince of Dhemlan, husband of Jaenelle Angelline. This morning, that was all he was. All he would allow himself to be.
Choked by that leash of self-control, he passed through the bedroom door and the shields still surrounding the room. When he’d crept out of the room at the first hint of dawn, he could have changed the locks and shields to Red, which would have kept Jazen out but allowed Jaenelle to leave. He hadn’t. So she was still in his bed, tucked under the covers, just as he’d left her.
Not quite, he realized as he rounded the bed and saw her. She’d gotten up long enough to pull the shift on—and, most likely, to realize that he’d locked her in the Consort’s suite.
Her eyes opened. He wasn’t sure who stared at him—Jaenelle, his wife . . . or Witch.
“I’m still deciding if I should be very pleased with you or very pissed off at you,” she said.
Cautiously hopeful, because he hadn’t thought there would be any chance of her being pleased, he raised the tray to catch her attention. “I brought you some breakfast.”
“Did you bring coffee?”
“Yes.” Of course he’d brought coffee. He wouldn’t have dared come back into the room if he hadn’t.
He waited until she was sitting up and comfortably settled before he placed the tray across her lap.
A pointed look from her had him sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed. He didn’t speak while she inspected the contents of the tray.
“Vegetable omelet and”—her eyebrows rose as she cut into the other one—“seafood omelet.”
“Took a little persuading to convince Mrs. Beale to give up some of the shrimp and cold lobster she’s using for the midday meal,” he said.
She took a bite of the seafood—and didn’t look at him. “Did you eat?”
“Wasn’t hungry.” He was so scared of what would happen now, even the thought of food made him queasy.
“I’d like an explanation,” Jaenelle said quietly.
“Sweetheart, I’m sor—”
“An explanation, Daemon, not an apology.”
He swallowed the words and closed his eyes. An apology would have been easier.
“Something snapped in you last night, in a way I’ve never seen before. I think I provoked it—or was the final shove. I’d like to know why.”
“You didn’t provoke anything,” he snarled as he met those sapphire eyes. “It wasn’t . . .” He wouldn’t let her take the blame for this, not even a crumb of blame. But how to explain? Where to begin?
She sipped her coffee and waited.
“The Consort’s room is a kind of sanctuary,” he began, choosing each word with care. “A place for a man to let down his guard. A place where he doesn’t have to perform.”
She bit into a piece of toast and chewed slowly. “Do you feel like you have to perform, Daemon?”
He shook his head. “No. Never. Not with you. But . . . for most of my life I’d had to perform, had to be on my guard except for the few precious hours each day that I had to myself. So even though things are different now—so very different now—I like having this private space. I’ll come up here sometimes in the afternoons, stretch out on the bed for an hour, and let my mind wander.” And know he was safe when he did it.
She cut off a piece of the seafood omelet and held up the fork.
His stomach cramped, but he kept his eyes on hers as he leaned forward and accepted the offering.
“Nothing wrong with wanting a place for yourself,” Jaenelle said. “The cabin in Ebon Rih is my private place and seldom shared even with the people I love. So I do understand.”
“All those years in Terreille, I had to fight hard to have a private place,” he said softly.
When he didn’t say anything more, Jaenelle poked around the tray. “Ah. There is another fork.” She handed it to him. “Eat in between the pauses.”
He wasn’t sure if being required to eat was a subtle punishment or confirmation that she was more shaken by last night than she wanted to admit. Otherwise, since she was a Healer, she would have known he couldn’t eat.
He took a piece of toast, then a bite of the vegetable omelet. And swallowed hard to keep it down.
“I needed a private place,” he said. “In order to stay sane, I needed a place. My room. My bed. Out of bounds to everyone.”
She drank some coffee. Dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. “You could have asked me to leave.”
“I didn’t want you to leave.” He kept his eyes fixed on the tray of food, no longer able to look at her. “In every court, there would always be one who wouldn’t respect the boundaries, one who had to be the lesson to the others. Always one little bitch who thought I would bend in private in ways I wouldn’t bend in public. And there she would be one night, dressed to arouse, rubbing her stink on my bed.”
Jaenelle flinched.
“I hurt them, Jaenelle. Even when I let them live, I hurt them. They were violating what little peace I could make for myself, trying to create a need, a desire, a physical response that would have condemned me to a more savage kind of slavery once Dorothea found out I was capable of being aroused. And in a way those little bitches succeeded. They created a need to hurt them, a desire to inflict pain. As for physical response, they didn’t get the one they wanted, but they got one—and they lived with the nightmares for the rest of their lives.”
“Daemon,” Jaenelle said gently.
He couldn’t stop now. “Then last night, talking to Theran, remembering Jared and the last time I saw him—and the years that followed. Those weren’t easy years for me.”
“Those memories were riding you last night.”
“Yes. And then I was here, in my room, my private space, trying to settle my feelings, talking to you but not paying attention to you. Listening to you, but not paying attention while I was getting undressed, still steeped in that other time in my life. And then I turned around. . . .”
“And saw a memory.”
“A thousand memories.” Daemon swallowed hard. “I saw the body, but not the face. I saw the clothes, but not the person who wore them. And my own worst nightmare from those years happened. I was so completely aroused I couldn’t turn away from what I wanted. What I needed. It was like being thrown into the rut without any warning. And then you moved as if you were going to leave, and—” He clamped his teeth together.
Jaenelle refilled the coffee cup, taking her time as she added cream and sugar. “You scared me last night.”
He bowed his head. “I know.”
“This was more than the rut, Daemon.” She hesitated. “You know who I am when you’re caught in the rut. Last night . . . I wasn’t sure you knew who was under you—or cared.”
“I didn’t know,” he admitted. “Not until I touched you. And then . . .” The smell of last night filled the room, and every thought encouraged his body to remember what he’d done while she was under him. Every thought encouraged the part of his nature he tried so hard to keep leashed to wake up again, play again, dance with her again.
After a long silence, Jaenelle said, “Say it.”
“When I touched you, when I realized where we were and that I was aroused because it was you, I had one thought: This was my room, my bed, and you were . . . mine. And no one was going to stop me from having you. Nothing was going to stop me from satisfying every need.”
He reached for the coffee cup, then reconsidered and took another bite of omelet.
“Once I knew it was you,” he said softly, “all the things I had hated for so many years were the things I now wanted. I wanted your scent on my sheets. I wanted to lay in this bed on other nights and remember having you.”
When she didn’t comment, he poked at the food, eating to have something to do.
Finally she said with dry amusement, “You were pretty single-minded last night. Mine, mine, mine. I guess this really did jab at the possessive side of your nature, didn’t it?”
He h
uffed out a laugh. “I guess it did.”
She pinched a bit of the shift between thumb and forefinger. “As for this, I’m sorry it brought back bad memories. I’ll—”
“Wear it again? Please?”
She looked wary.
He touched her hand briefly, the first contact he’d made since he’d walked back into the room. “Bad timing. If I’d seen you in those clothes in your bedroom or here on any other night . . . Well, I can’t say the outcome would have been different, but the reasons I reacted to the clothes would have been.”
Which made him wonder about something that hadn’t occurred to him last night. “Why were you wearing that?”
She blushed. Shrugged. Fiddled with the coffee cup.
He waited, a patient predator.
“I was reading a story and when the woman wore something like this, the man . . .” Another shrug. More fiddling.
He tried to remember what she’d been reading lately, but couldn’t recall a title. “Maybe I should read that book to get a few ideas.”
“You don’t need any ideas.”
He was pretty sure that was a compliment.
Since he was feeling easier and the food was there in front of him, he ate some more.
“Will you wear it again?”
“To spend the night in this room or the other bedroom?” Jaenelle asked softly.
“Both,” he answered, just as softly.
A slow, mischievous smile. “Instead of negotiating about which bed to use, maybe we should just flip a coin to see who gets to be on top.”
Last night he’d dominated, possessed, kept her under his body and under his control. Now he had a sudden image of her riding him, her body a teasing shadow covered by the shift, her legs sheathed in those sheer white stockings, his fingers moving up her legs to the damp skin above the stockings, moving up to the wet heat that sheathed him.
That image stayed in his mind, but the tone changed, becoming a dark, spicy thrill when she realized she wasn’t the one in control, that he was still . . .