Tempted by a Rogue Prince

by Felicity Heaton

  All would know it.

  Vail arched off the stone slab again and roared as he grasped the chain and pulled on it, felt it start to give even as his body did the same, pain ripping through his every muscle and searing his bones.

  He dimly heard her soft voice through the rush of blood in his ears and the fierce drumming of his heart.

  She spoke with the male.

  Vail fought harder, yanking on the restraints. He would kill the male and then he would claim his Little Wild Rose and she would know she belonged to him. She would never betray him again.

  Her voice came again.

  His muscles twanged and pain shot through him, tearing him apart and turning his limbs rubbery. He collapsed onto the slab, breathing hard and shaking all over, the chain falling from his weakening grip. He snarled under his breath and tried to grasp the chain and keep fighting, but he could barely shift his wrists and couldn’t move enough to pull the chain tight.

  Her light soft voice came once more, and it was clearer this time. She was close.

  “Vail.” His name fell from her lips and he sensed her warmth near his forehead.

  Not touching him, but hovering close.

  He cracked his eyes open and unclenched his aching jaw.

  “Vail?” she whispered again and he blinked slowly, lost in her glittering blue eyes. “Why did you hurt yourself? Was it another bad dream?”

  “Why?” he croaked, frowning at her, the answer eluding him. Why had he hurt himself? He had fought the bonds because he had wanted to reach her. He had wanted to protect her. From what? His jaw clenched again and he turned his face away from her, to his left and the male in the cell there. He bared his fangs at him.

  The witch looked at him too.

  Vail turned his growl on her.

  “I thought we went through this?” Fenix said. “I’m mated. I’m not interested in your female.”

  Little Wild Rose gasped and looked down at Vail.

  He averted his gaze, staring at the dirty stone floor of his cell, not wanting her to see in his eyes the reason he had lost his head.

  What was wrong with him? He didn’t want the female. She was a witch. Witches were cruel, manipulative, and traitorous. She would use the spell she had cast on him against him, forcing him to do her bidding. She would betray him.

  Hurt him.

  “I’m not attracted to the incubus,” she whispered and those words didn’t bring him pain. They brought him pleasure.

  They chased away the darker feelings that had gripped him and controlled him, but those feelings lingered in the background, lurking and waiting to make themselves known again.

  Like his memories did.

  Fenix looked at Little Wild Rose.

  Vail hissed and flashed his fangs, and tried to wrench his arms free of the cuffs so he could reach the male and teach him not to look upon his female.

  “Settle down.” A large demon male stopped outside his cell. “Or we’ll take you away and teach you a lesson until you learn to be quiet.”

  Vail paid him no heed. He growled at the incubus and kept wrestling with his bonds, attempting to break free so he could claw Fenix’s eyes out. That way, the male wouldn’t be able to look upon his female.

  A second demon appeared outside of his cell, followed by a third. The first demon opened the door and the three of them entered.

  “Leave him alone.” The witch launched to her feet, rounded him and blocked the demons’ paths to him. “He hasn’t done anything.”

  She was defending him?

  He stared at the back of her head, unable to process what he was witnessing. The witch was protecting him.

  His shock only increased when she shoved one of the guards in his bare chest, making him stumble backwards a few steps. The male turned on her with a snarl and his dusky grey horns curled, growing larger until they twisted over and around themselves and flared forwards into twin deadly points.

  “Leave her alone,” Vail snapped and resumed his fight against the bonds, putting all of his strength into it this time. Little Wild Rose was in danger. He had to protect her.

  He would protect her.

  The demon backhanded her and she grunted as she collapsed into a heap on the stone floor.

  Darkness swallowed Vail and he growled at the three demon males as her pain blazed across the side of his face and his knees.

  “Punishment time for you,” the second demon said in English and roughly took hold of her and dragged her onto her feet.

  Vail cursed him in the elf tongue and pulled harder on the chain, thrashing against it. Little Wild Rose looked over her shoulder at him and shook her head, her blue eyes imploring him to settle. He refused. He wouldn’t let her sacrifice herself for him. He was her male. He could bear the punishment for her. It was his duty.

  “Get your filthy hands off her,” Vail snarled in the demon tongue and kicked out at the second male, knocking his knees together. “Harm her and I will have your head.”

  The third male grabbed hold of Vail’s head and slammed it hard against the stone slab. Pain spider-webbed through his skull, sending his senses reeling and his ears ringing. By the time he had his faculties back, the three demons were gone, and so was Little Wild Rose.

  No. He tugged at the chains, his strength failing him as a vision of her being taken to that room, that den of torture, filled his mind. He weakly grasped the chain and shook his head, his senses reaching for her.

  She had done nothing wrong.

  She had only sought to protect him.

  He flinched with the first echo of a strike on his back and snarled with the second and her first cry of pain. It rang through the dungeon, shrill and filled with the agony he could feel in her.

  Pain that was his fault.

  He snarled with each cry, with every strike, swearing he would make amends somehow. He would make the bastard demons pay for hurting her. He would pay too for his part in her punishment. It was his fault. She suffered because of him.

  Every blow and every whimper tore at him, driving him madder and pushing him towards the brink of losing control. He clung to awareness of her and to his sanity, refusing to let the darkness seize him while she suffered. He had to remain steady for her, even when he wanted to rage and lose himself to the darkness living within him. She could sense him as he could sense her, and he could feel her reaching for him.

  Vail opened the connection to her, allowing her pain to flood him, holding no part of him away from her. He closed his eyes and mentally wrapped her in his embrace, cocooning her in the only way he could, sharing her pain to lessen her burden.

  In the midst of her physical pain and the connection between them, he discovered something that rocked him.

  Little Wild Rose held pain inside her, pain that was tearing her apart. He couldn’t discern the source or the reason for it. He could only feel it was there, a constant presence. It was something she lived with and tried to bear, just as he lived with and tried to bear his sins.

  Vail pulled her closer, used their connection to calm her and give her strength, and steal what pain he could away. He would bear it all for her if he could, and the revelation shocked him and awakened the part of him that had been waiting for his defences to slip.

  Inky darkness swirled around him, curling up his legs to pull him down into the abyss. It whispered insidious words, ones that struck deep, embedding themselves in his heart and threatening to tear it to pieces.

  She was a witch. Witches deserved pain. They deserved to suffer. He had vowed to destroy them all.

  He would destroy her.

  He knew it. He could see it playing out in his mind. She would turn on him. She would use his weakness against him, the soft feelings he had dared to have for her and the shred of hope that his future held something good, not eternal darkness and death.

  She would take it all and she would destroy him, and in turn, he would destroy her.

  Vail growled as she slipped from his grasp, oblivion swallowing
her.

  He clenched his fists, bowed off the slab and roared until his throat burned, his anger pouring through his veins like acid.

  He had lost himself and knew she had felt it. He had been wide open to her, no part of him remaining hidden, and he had thought of her death at his hands.

  He flexed his fingers, clenching and unclenching his fists, shaking his head the whole time. She couldn’t see that part of him. She couldn’t see how dark he was inside. Ugly. Wretched. A vile animal.

  She couldn’t.

  Someone stopped outside his cell.

  The scent of her sweet blood hit him with the force of a tidal wave, knocking him so hard he half growled and half whimpered as his gaze sought her.

  She hung limp between the two large demon males, her upper arms held by them. Her knees almost touched the floor and her head lolled forwards, her fall of blonde hair obscuring her face. Red coloured it in places and stained her fair skin too.

  Vail snarled and tried to launch himself at the bars, filled with a need to pull her away from the two males and into his arms where she would be safe.

  The demon males laughed and one grasped her hair, yanking her head up. Vail’s stomach turned, rebelling at the sight of her face. Her right eye had swollen shut and her lip had split. Blood trailed down her chin to her jaw and still trickled from her nose.

  Little Wild Rose.

  “Bastards,” Vail growled and again tried to shove off the slab and reach her. His left arm twisted behind him, his shoulder socket popping as his arm snapped free of it. He growled through his pain and kept trying to reach her, his heart burning at the sight of her and the knowledge it was his fault.

  He hadn’t needed to kill her with his own hands. He had condemned her to death at the hands of these men by trying to protect her.

  “Leave her be,” he snarled and wrenched on his left arm, twisting it in the cuff, on the verge of gnawing his hand off to free himself so he could reach her. “Give her to me.”

  The demons laughed again and dragged her away.

  Black inky spots dotted his vision and he roared, the sound dark and feral, a growl more beast than elf. His fangs lengthened further and he twisted on the slab, and unleashed a snarl as he grabbed his left arm and shoved his shoulder back into place. The dark spots began to swamp his vision, obscuring it as he gave himself over to the mad beast eating him from the inside out.

  His remaining sliver of consciousness tracked Rosalind, clinging to her. The demons didn’t take her to her cell, or the torture room. They dragged her beyond the sphere of his senses.

  Vail stared at the ceiling, as still as a statue, and just as cold and void of emotion.

  The demons would pay for hurting her.

  He would take his Little Wild Rose from this place and no one would hurt her, never again. She would be free of the demons.

  He would kill them all for her.

  Starting with the king.

  The incubus spoke, dragging Vail back from the brink of insanity and making him realise he had been speaking aloud.

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Rosalind woke surrounded by darkness and the scent of damp and dead things. She blinked but the darkness remained, inky black and so thick that no light penetrated it. She felt over herself. Physically checking her body had become a habit in this place, a process that gave her something to focus on. She reached her shoulders and head, and frowned.

  No injuries.

  There was only one way that was possible. The king had used one of his dark witches to heal her. Why?

  She wrapped her arms around herself to keep the chill off her skin and pondered the answer to that question, and the other one that had plagued her before the guards had come and taken her from the elf’s cell.

  Why had they taken her to his cell in the first place?

  When they had pulled her from her cell, she had expected to find him injured and in need of her healing spells. He had been asleep and unharmed, but the demons had pushed her into his cell and had ignored her questions. The incubus across from him, a man named Fenix, had told her a little more about her companion.

  Apparently, he had returned unharmed from his meeting with the king, and the two of them had talked before Vail had suffered one of his episodes and had passed out.

  Had they brought her to him as another perverse form of torture?

  Her presence disturbed him, awakening whatever dark things haunted his soul and were his reason for despising her kind. If they had used her as a method of hurting him, driving him mad and sending him sinking into his wild state, then she wished pain upon them. He was broken and tormented enough as it was, without their perverse cruelty adding to it. Having her brought to him just to make him lose his mind was sick and twisted.

  It was bad enough that they had teased him with the threat of walking naked through the castle. Their threat had sent him dangerously close to losing his grip on his sanity again and she hadn’t been able to bear the feel of him suffering and sensing his desperate urge to fight or beg for the clothes, to retain a tiny scrap of pride as they tried to strip him of it. She had shouted at them before she could consider the consequences. No man deserved that sort of treatment.

  Tonight she had reacted to their tormenting him again, hurling herself between him and three demons. She had wanted to protect him.

  He wanted to kill her. She had felt it in him before she had passed out from the pain of her torture. She had sensed him with her, knew that it had been the bond between them and that for some strange reason he had wanted to comfort her and take her pain.

  To torment her?

  Was he torturing her just as the demons tortured him, teasing her with something she desired only to take it away and watch her crumple?

  In the wake of his kindness had come cruelty.

  A colourful, explicit vision of her death at his hands.

  She laughed to herself. Perhaps that death was what her grandmother had seen. It was the mad elf prince who would kill her.

  Rosalind shook her head and buried her face in her knees. No. She couldn’t allow herself to believe such a thing. She wasn’t going to die. He wasn’t going to kill her.

  She couldn’t deny that he wanted to hurt her, to make her suffer for some reason. She could see it in his eyes at times, and could feel it in him through their bond. He fought those desires, but they were there, and they frightened her. Something haunted him and drove him to want to harm her, and whatever it was, it had something to do with sorcery and witches.

  Fenix had been about to tell her when Vail had awoken and had tried to break his bonds.

  Because he had been jealous.

  She clawed her hair back and shook her head again, her mind and heart going in circles. She lost track of time, getting nowhere as she tried to unravel the mystery of Vail and decide what she should do.

  There was only one thing she could do. She had to protect herself and that meant she had to distance herself from Vail. Down here, Vail and the demons posed the biggest threat to her. If she could just keep her distance from Vail, and could be on her best behaviour for the demons, then she stood a chance of escaping one day and returning to her life.

  She wasn’t sure she knew how to live that life anymore, but she wanted to go back to it and leave this madness behind her.

  She wanted to live.

  She would do whatever it took in order to make that happen.

  Even trick Vail into thinking she was his mate so he would help her escape, and then leave him at the first opportunity.

  Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside her cell and a sliver of light cut through the darkness. She stared at the glowing line across the bottom of the solid door, her breath hitching in her throat. A shadow caused the line to stutter. A key grated. The door creaked open.

  A towering demon male snorted down at her. “Prince Vail has demanded to see you.”

  Demanded? She stared at the demon. Since when had the demons b
een obeying Vail?

  The demon grabbed her by her left arm, digging his claws in, and dragged her from the cell. She stumbled along behind him, her head reeling as she tried to figure out where the demon was taking her. He wasn’t taking her to the elf’s cell, or her own. He was taking her up.

  He shoved a door open with the flat of his hand and stomped along a corridor. Stone arches cut into the wall on her left revealed the courtyard of the castle. Her heart pounded and she looked ahead, towards the main towering dark building. Vail was there now?

  Mother earth. What had happened while she had been unconscious?

  The demon led her up to the first floor and pushed her ahead of him into a large richly decorated room.

  Her heart stopped dead.

  Vail lounged before her on a huge day bed covered in colourful velvets and furs, conversing with the demon king, as if they were best friends. He leaned against a mound of pillows, his hands still cuffed but the chain between them gone, allowing him to prop his left elbow on the richly coloured cushions while his right hand rested on his black leather-clad thigh. Gone too was his overlong blue-black hair, shorn into a neater length around the sides and back but left in tousled wild strands on top, and the beard that had been growing in. The sight of him clean-shaven and bathed left her speechless.

  Mother earth, he was gorgeous.

  And he looked every bit the dark prince as he lounged before her in a Devil may care sexy slump, his honed bare torso on display for her eyes to devour and his long legs clad in tight black leather that accentuated their lean muscular form.

  Sin on a stick and she wanted to lick him from head to toe.

  His appearance also made her acutely aware of the state of herself—dirty, unshaven, and in need of a good hot bath. Maybe they could bathe together and he could scrub her back for her, among other things.

  Rosalind caught herself and shut down her dangerous feelings, forcing herself to look at Vail with clear eyes and at those who surrounded him.

  The women draped all over the king twittered at something he said, lavishing the demon with their attention, all of them naked and beautiful.

  Vail’s cool purple gaze slowly drifted away from his companions and settled on her.