As I thought it, the embers his touch stoked in my lower belly cooled. I was not the whore Roland had named me. I was once, but no more. I had already tarnished Dillon’s memory with deceit. This one moment, I wanted pure. Staring up into his wary eyes, I said, “Kiss me again.”
Self-preservation rocked Dillon back on his heels. “What part of mistake didn’t you get?”
After a hushed moment rife with disappointment, his, Isabeau bit her bottom lip and nodded.
Damn if her teeth sinking into that soft mouth didn’t make his water. His hand lifted, fingers outstretched. He snapped his arm back to his side and made it stick. Comforting her kicked open a door best left shut and locked tight. One kiss he could forgive himself. Two kisses… He checked the perimeter, almost wishing Phineas was back so he had an excuse for taking up her invitation.
“Are we going to walk, or should I find your tent on my own?” she asked his boots.
He had been quick to offer his bed to her, another mistake. He grimaced. How long had it been since the sight of a female had stirred his blood? He couldn’t remember if anyone ever had. “Come on. I have one more stop to make.” When the silence stretched for too long, he said, “There’s a market run scheduled for the day after tomorrow, but I guess you knew that already.”
Her head popped up as she stammered, “Why would I?”
“You mean besides the fact Emma authorized our city passes weeks ago?” He was tempted to tap her mouth shut with his finger. “I thought you handled all her paperwork—my mistake.”
“Oh.” Her tone held an odd note of relief.
Turning with a sigh, he paused long enough to check for her muted footfalls behind him.
“Yeah. Oh.” Her run-in with Phineas must have spooked her worse than he’d realized. Kiss me again. Her request began to make more sense. She was scared and he was here. She trusted him. She shouldn’t. He didn’t trust her. She wanted comfort. He didn’t. He wanted her. “Stupid.”
“Excuse me?” She caught his arm. He obliged her by twisting until her palms braced on his chest. Her hands on his bare skin derailed all higher brain function. Her sharp nails bit into his pectorals, the sting a sweet counterpoint that flipped some internal switch. “What did you say?”
His memory sputtered. His lips parted. Nothing intelligible passed through them.
She shoved him for all the good it did her. “I asked you a question.”
The best he could manage was a strangled, “What?”
Her brow creased, all signs of anger draining. “Are you feeling all right? You’re limping. You weren’t when you left the consulate. How long has this been going on? Only today or longer?” Her tone said his answer better be not long. She tested his forehead with the inside of her wrist. “You don’t feel feverish.” Her lips pursed. “How’s your leg? Any signs of infection?”
Blood rushed to stuff his ears as she snagged his belt. “What?” Had he said that already?
With her finger, she led him from the beaten path into deeper shadows cast by the nearest tent. Gripping his hips firmly, she angled him toward her. “Hold still.” Then she knelt at his feet.
“What are you doing?” Damn, he sounded breathless.
“Stop wiggling.” She grabbed his knees and held him still.
Dillon almost swallowed his tongue. Forget fever. Arousal left him lightheaded and weak on his feet. He fisted his hands to keep from sinking them into her hair. She wasn’t—she couldn’t be. He scrubbed his face while his imagination ran wild. His skin was tight. His head throbbed as images of her kneeling clashed with those of Eliya, turning his desire into horrified fascination.
Isabeau frowned in concentration. Eliya smiled. Isabeau patted his thigh. Eliya’s claws sank deep. He couldn’t see or tell. “Isabeau.” Please let her be here. Let them be now. “Answer me.”
“No signs of infection.” She began a slow massage of his calf. “Your leg looks fine.” Hypersensitive as his skin was, he hadn’t felt her roll up his pant leg. He hadn’t seen through the past to notice the present. Her thumbs rubbed deep. “Your muscle mass is returning.” She paused long enough to glance up at him. “It would help if you’d lower your glamour. I need to see skin.”
“You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.” His voice cracked.
A small smile. “You’ve taken good care of yourself.”
“I did what you told me to.” He left out how Harper had forced him into physical therapy.
“You did well.” Her approval twisted something in his chest. “I suppose you were right to leave when you did.” She readjusted his pant leg and stood. “You didn’t need my help after all.”
Oh, he needed help all right. Two seconds longer and he’d have said damn the consequences and let her inspect every inch of him. He would have dropped his glamour, taken that kiss, let her see what lay beneath and discovered if she was an Evanti. Show her mine, he wanted to see hers.
If she saw him free of illusion, what would she do? Claim him. From which there was no escape. Males might be allowed shows of possessive intent meant to deter competition, but females claimed their mates. Males were victims of feminine whims. They had no choice in the matter. Females saw, wanted and acquired. Being mated was another form of slavery. Choice ripped from his hands, freedom stolen from his grasp. He would be chained to her because of what he was, because of what she must be, because his biology demanded he cave to her desires.
The brief glimpse he allowed her during his surgery wasn’t enough to rouse her suspicions of his true nature. He’d made sure to only lower his glamour over one leg. Yeah, it meant he’d been conscious during the procedure, but the alternative had terrified him. Turned out pain was a worthwhile exchange to have Isabeau play nurse. Even now the things he’d wanted to do to her made his gut knot. All that time spent asleep on her shoulder, soothed by the sound of her voice. Some nights he still heard her reading Gobillard and felt her cheek, smooth against his forehead.
On some level, he’d assumed the reason he responded to Isabeau from that first time he saw her at the consulate was because she was what rumor hinted she must be—a female of his breed. If she had found herself alone with an unconscious, unmated prime, he could guess the outcome.
When a species teetered on the brink of extinction, it was the duty of the remaining purebloods to help repopulate the race. Hadn’t Eliya told him as much? Only she was Askaran. What she had wanted… He shifted his weight onto his left leg and swallowed his grunt of pain.
“Come on.” His voice was tight. “We should get going.”
He resumed his clipped pace and made a beeline for the hush tent. Mason had given the tent its name, because its contents were secret. Lame, yes, but it stuck. So he’d check the sled and the shipment, tuck the female into bed, alone, and then call it a night. Isabeau was leaving tomorrow. By the time they met up again… The more he considered it, the more he knew he couldn’t risk it.
Her touch clouded his brain. For an ex-sthudai, he’d been about to embarrass himself. He could just imagine explaining why he’d grabbed her by the hair and ground her face in his groin.
Somehow he didn’t think “oops” would have covered it.
If Mason were here, once he’d stopped laughing, he would have offered the same sage advice Dillon had spoon-fed him when he learned the guy was celibate and had no plans for a change in his status. You need to get laid. Granted, Dillon had been regurgitating the same crap well-meaning humans in the Dempsey colony had spewed whenever he got too pissy, but Mason had shrugged him off. Apparently his other friends had failed to sway him with the same argument.
No wonder they’d stuck together so long. Who understood better that Saturday nights were always free than a guy with the same hole in his schedule? One taste of Isabeau had Dillon ready to pen her in, permanently, but he couldn’t risk it. He’d be all but stamping her name on his ass.
“How can you tell all these tents apart?” Isabeau asked. “They all look the same.”
Someone had helped the wear and tear along. He’d been here earlier and the tent was secure, the flap sealed shut. He remembered because he’d cut his hand on the sled and bled on the laces.
“Is something wrong?” She leaned too close for comfort.
“I can’t tell without something stronger than moonlight.” He fingered the rough fabric and grimaced. Not good. Wind had swept footprints from this side of the aisle, making their direction impossible to retrace. He glanced skyward. That sandstorm sure was taking its time getting here.
Returning his attention to the ground, he skimmed, for what it was worth. Nothing struck him as unusual. The converted dune sled had been parked inside before sundown. The remaining tracks belonged to the miners who had shoved it through the larger exit flap on the opposite side of the tent in preparation for going to market. He inspected that and found no signs of tampering.
“Stay here.” He left Isabeau waiting as he ducked inside the tent. Front and center, a bulky sled squatted beneath its load. He peeled back the tarp and inspected the cargo. Silver bars glinted dull beneath a spell-crafted light fixture overhead. In the center sat a chest filled with salt.
Caravans had gotten slimmer since the raider problem cropped up. A single sled posed fewer problems than their earlier attempts at lengthier caravans. Single sleds were easier to guard too.
“Interesting.” Isabeau’s voice made him whirl at the sound. “Who’s responsible for that?”
Standing beside a sled full of the most valuable mineral in Askara, and she was asking about light fixtures? He liked her for that. “Aldrich made several of them for the mine. After the explosion, Harper wanted something safer than torchlight. The fumes were making miners sick.”
Balanced on her tiptoes, Isabeau brushed her fingertips against the suspended light’s tip. “It’s cold.”
“Want a closer look?” The words took him by surprise. Smart. His arms wrapped around her waist, face nestled between her breasts, her skimpy top the only barrier, easily nuzzled aside…
Swaying off balance, she pushed hair from her eyes. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
If she kept smiling at him that way, he’d give her the damn thing. “It comes in handy.”
“You say Aldrich created it?” Her face fell, and he wondered at the cause.
“I forgot you’d met him.” Aldrich had been the one who delivered Dillon to the consulate’s doorstep and into the arms of its resident healer. His leg had been shredded by the blast at the mine, but he’d been infection-free until escorting Harper and Emma to Rihos, right into a trap. Their extended stay in the summer castle’s dungeon, courtesy of Roland Bernhard, had sealed it.
She considered the light rather than him. “You trust his work?”
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “If you’re asking if I trust Sereians, I don’t.”
Manipulating glamour was one thing. All demons and most crossbreeds did to some extent. Evanti used glamour to alter their appearances, to better hide among Askarans or humans, depending on the realm. Even spell crafters used the core of their glamour, their magic, to fuel their work fortifying cities and roads against the relentless sandstorms and even foreign invasion.
Sereians, though, manipulated minds for sport and personal gain by robbing their victims of freewill. And there was no capping their power. Priests who were born with more ambition than power? No problem. Beg, borrow or steal a grimoire. Aldrich had escaped Rihos with seven. Of course, like all magic, there was a trade-off. Use the book and the book used you. Over time, the tomes became sentient. All living things required a food source, and they weren’t picky. The person holding the book would do as easily as the body bound on the floor, ready for sacrifice.
The line between white magic and black magic was all gray to him, and he liked it that way.
Sere was Askara’s neighbor to the east. Askara’s queen, Nesvia, had married the second son of Sere, Rideal Bernhard. Sere’s heir apparent, Roland Bernhard, had apparently been nursing a grudge since the queen made her preference for his brother known. His answer? Use Emma to lure Harper into a trap and blackmail him into granting Roland exclusive salt rights to the Feriana mine. When that failed, they discovered he’d used a trick learned from his family’s horse-breeding operation. By forcing Nesvia to consume progesaline, he managed to induce her heat cycle. Instead of waiting five years for her natural fertility cycle to roll around, Roland gave her the supplement, and she became fertile within days. If Aldrich hadn’t helped them escape, and if Harper and Emma hadn’t found where Roland had hidden the kidnapped queen—chained beneath their colony, in their mine—the Evanti’s brief taste of freedom would have died with her.
Roland was pissed Harper had escaped before signing over those salt rights. The spike of raider-on-colonist violence confirmed as much before Nesvia intervened and Roland either called them off or revealed he was bankrolling the raiders. As it was, things were quieter around here.
“You don’t care for Sereians, do you?” Isabeau peered up at him.
The female had a gift for understatement. “I don’t care for abuses of power.”
Her voice faltered. “Not all Sereians are abusive.”
He studied her for a moment. “The ones who aren’t are rare as rain in the desert.”
Her gaze lowered. “You sound as if you have personal experience.”
“Any sthudai in Eliya’s menagerie did.” His tone hardened. “The second we showed signs of independent thought or, God forbid, we refused to perform, we were palmed off on one of her Sereian pets for reconditioning.” His gut churned. “Has a Sereian used glamour on you before?”
She nodded, and he hated her affirmation.
“Then you know how they make you think you want to do whatever depraved thing they’ve asked of you. Or worse, sometimes they let you remember why you don’t. Either way, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t stop you from following their orders. You’re trapped inside your body. Things I did then…” Eliya gasped when he cut off her oxygen. His cock stirred. “That’s not who I am.”
God he hoped that wasn’t him.
“Dillon—”
Shame thickened his voice. “The old queen has fallen.” Too bad his memory hadn’t toppled with her. “I shouldn’t have said anything.” He’d never spoken of his time with Eliya, not even to Harper. Knowing Dillon had been hand-picked to sire a child and sate the queen’s curiosity? To answer the question of what do you get when you cross a purebred Evanti and an Askaran royal?
The answer was the Princess Madelyn DeGray.
If not for Dillon’s attempt on Eliya’s life, he would have fathered her child, and her consort, Emma’s father, Archer, would have gutted him instead of Zehiel, the male who had taken his place in Eliya’s bed. Talk about family trees growing twisted as hell. Harper would have been his in-law since Harper’s brother, Clayton, had married Madelyn. Seeing her on Earth during the five years they’d both called the Dempsey colony home had caused the old sore to fester and rot.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like Madelyn. He just couldn’t stomach being near her, or Emma.
Isabeau touched his arm. “I’m glad you confided in me.”
Pinpricks stung his cheeks. “Yeah, well, I didn’t mean to.”
Her fingertips trailed the hottest part of his cheek. “You’re such a contradiction.”
He cleared his throat. “I’ve been called worse.”
“With your temper, and your mouth, I can imagine.” Her thumb swiped across his bottom lip, pressed inside his mouth to wet the tip of her finger before she painted damp swirls on his skin.
He nipped her thumb. “I didn’t hear any complaints about my mouth earlier.”
Her smile twisted his insides. “That’s because you were putting it to good use.”
That twinkle in her eyes was what did it. He warned her, “I’m going to kiss you.”
Leaning into him, she was soft and willing, and for the moment, his. “All right.”
His head lowered as her lips parted. Forcing her head back, he claimed her mouth until they both panted. Grasping her hips, he lifted her, carried her to the rear of the sled and set her on the edge. While their kiss heated, his hands slid beneath her skirt. Damn filmy thing had so many layers he couldn’t find skin to touch it. He cursed. She laughed. He groaned as his fingers made that contact, gliding past the apex of her thighs and finding her bare. His lungs froze. His hand dropped. He hadn’t expected that. Arching her hips, she closed the gap. His eyes closed. “Fuck.”
Isabeau tensed beneath him.
His chin brushed her cheek. “I shouldn’t have said that.” He shouldn’t have done that.
Her response was to cup him through his pants, coaxing him to painful fullness.
Fabric ripped, or maybe it was his sanity that tore. Mated. Claimed. Hers. Too dangerous.
Isabeau’s exploration halted. “Did you hear that?”
“No.” He rocked into her hand, but those talented fingers of hers weren’t moving. “It’s probably—” Then he saw the flicker of shadows creeping around the tent’s perimeter. “Damn.”
Chapter Four
Dillon adjusted Isabeau’s skirt and eased his throbbing cock from her grip. “Stay still.” More shadows scurried to form a ring around the tent. A quick glance cast over his shoulder told him someone was making fast work of slicing the thick ties securing the rear flap, the sled exit.
“Perfect timing.” His exhale was equal parts relief and frustration. “We’ve got company.”
A familiar voice called, “Exit the tent and keep your hands where I can see them.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Dillon answered gruffly. Isabeau had him so hard walking might break something.
Eversworn: Daughters of Askara, Book 3 Page 5