Death's Dancer

by Jasmine Silvera

  “I didn’t know necromancers had family,” she began lightly.

  Unable to see him as her eyes adjusted, Isela felt him as a sudden wave of heat at her back before she heard him. Her body had no qualms about responding to the heat rolling through her. The magnetic attraction of skin hovering just shy of touch tingled. She closed her eyes and angled her head sideways, exposing her neck.

  “We don’t have the gift of creating life.” Azrael took the invitation, pressing fingertips to the braided hair at the base of her skull and lips to her nape.

  “Nor do we create art,” he murmured against her skin. “It’s lost as we gain power over death. This is why we envy humans. We need you and loathe you at the same time.”

  “Is that like Gregor hating me for reminding me of his humanity?”

  “Hate is a lower emotion, to be overcome. And there are many ways to make a family.”

  “So I guess we don’t have to worry about protection,” she said, her voice thick.

  Isela had the physical memory of the sweeping heat of him swelling into her womb. Her breath hitched.

  Azrael chuckled, and the length of him connected with her back. “No. And I am immune to the diseases of humanity.”

  She couldn’t remember a conversation like this ever being so sexy.

  Damn him for turning everything into foreplay. His fingers dusted the curve of her neck as his mouth moved toward her spine. When he inhaled, the fine hairs stood on end.

  “You smell like the ocean after a storm,” he said, “and the spice vendor in the market, and Isela.”

  Liquid heat made her thighs tremble. “I thought I had the wolf nose.”

  An arm snaked around her abdomen, locking her in place. She tensed, but when his palm opened at her waist, fingertips flexing, her body betrayed her again by softening. She groaned.

  She surrendered her weight to him fully. He purred satisfaction and slipped his fingers between her thighs.

  “Too hot,” she breathed at his touch. Azrael laughed again, softly, and instantly the temperature of his skin dropped.

  The ridge of him pressed against the crease of her backside as he lifted her off her feet. Pinned to him, he carried her across the room to the broad desk. His hand returned to the nape of her neck, exerting a gentle, unmistakable pressure.

  Isela angled her upper body toward the desk, pressing her hips into him.

  Any worries she’d had coming into the room simply burned to ash in the fire between them. Whatever her primitive hindbrain said about the danger she was in, just breathing the same air as the necromancer, her body had no qualms about what it wanted.

  The skin of her back prickled with gooseflesh as he bunched the sweater and traced his fingers under each of the delicate straps of the leotard crisscrossing her spine. The liquid heat of his mouth on the sensitized skin sent the blood pounding in her ears.

  His voice rumbled against her ribcage. “You will become my consort.”

  “Your what?” Isela didn’t want to think. It was energy wasted when there was so much to feel. “Is that like a chain-me-to-the-bedposts thing?”

  His fingers brushed her most sensitive bundle of nerves through the thin leggings, teasing. “That can be arranged independently.”

  She braced herself on her elbows, pressing her fists into her closed eyes to force herself to focus. His hand slipped under the waistband of her leggings. When his fingers parted her body, she tried to clamp her thighs shut, but her legs refused to cooperate. Her hips tilted into his palm, urging him deeper.

  “Are you asking me to marry you?”

  That brought him upright. He withdrew his hand. Snorted.

  “Marriage is a human ritual designed to secure property and wealth exchanges between families.”

  Isela slid away, tugging her sweater down as her senses came stumbling back. “Way to romance a girl.”

  She turned in time to see him pluck his two fingers out of his mouth as one eyebrow rose. His hair was mussed, and his expression screamed sex so dangerous it threatened to undo her completely.

  His words were cold. “Is that what you want? Shall I ask your father’s permission for your hand?”

  She couldn’t even mentally place her necromancer in Lukas Vogel’s study. On top of that, Lukas would take the request as an insult to her sovereignty.

  It was her turn to smile wickedly as she sat back against the desk, crossing her arms over her chest. “No, I’ll stick with the bed-burning sex.”

  That earned her a flare of heat in his eyes and the hint of a smile that promised exquisite torment. She ignored the thrumming response of her body, trying to concentrate on the words. Azrael stalked forward, resting his hands on the desk edge on either side of her hips.

  “You’re the one with the fancy titles,” she said warily, leaning back.

  “To become my consort means you give yourself to me, completely,” he said, one hand going to the braid that trailed down her back. “You share my bed, and you will take no other man to yours.” The tie holding the end of her hair went up in a quick pop of flame. “And you will have the my protection of myself and that of my Aegis against any threat to you—body, mind, or soul.”

  Azrael slipped his fingers through the braid until her hair hung loose, brushing the desk. Her voice emerged, trembling.

  “Does this mean you put my soul on the shelf beside Gregor’s?”

  “No.” He buried his fist in the thick of her hair, using the pressure to expose her neck. It took a moment for her sticky, dry mouth to function as he tasted the flesh under her jaw.

  “Do I at least get a cool sword?” she croaked.

  “Gregor was right about your mouth when you’re nervous,” he said, brushing his lips against hers until electricity sparked between them.

  “I have a strong sense of self-preservation,” she said, lowering her chin.

  He exhaled sharply and released her.

  Isela pulled herself into a seat on the desk, bracing her weight on her hands. “What did you expect, Azrael? You’re talking about something that sounds more serious than just taking a job for the allegiance. People already think I’m your cat’s paw. I’m trying to understand what this means.”

  Azrael pulled back for a moment, and his eyes narrowed in consideration.

  “As my Aegis, Gregor, Lysippe, and the others exchanged their souls for a portion of my power, for strength and longevity,” he said. “They vowed allegiance, loyalty, and obedience. The weapon is the manifestation of their essence as warriors and a seal of our covenant.”

  She thought of Gregor’s black sword, as unflinching as his demeanor but also something of striking beauty.

  “They are my servants,” he went on. “A consort is a bond; more than a lover, although that can be part of it. I cannot give you strength, or longevity. But by being mine you become untouchable to the allegiance and the Queen of Diamonds, and the penalty for harming you can be exacted.” His eyes hooded. “And as a bonus, I can continue to burn down our bed as often as you desire.”

  Prickles of anticipation and anxiety raced from the nape of her neck to her low back.

  “But your Aegis will protect me now, if you tell them to?” she said, forcing herself to think.

  “Unless they perceive the danger to me as a greater threat,” he said. “If I am wounded, or unconscious, I cannot enforce such protection.”

  She thought of Rory’s words about guarding Azrael from threats he could not see and the look in Gregor’s eyes when he thought she had stabbed Azrael. She understood what the power of that protection meant. “The night in Havel’s bookstore, when you told me to run—”

  “In my state, you would be secondary,” he said. “And if I had fallen, their obligation to you would have ended.”

  Making her life meaningless to them.

  “If I was your consort. . .” She struggled with the word and the stitch in her chest that developed at the image of him lifeless. “And you. . .”

  Isela couldn’
t say it aloud. For a creature whose purview was death, she had never met someone so vibrantly full of passion. What kind of power would it take to rob him of that? She didn’t want to know.

  “They would defend you as my own flesh,” he said. “If I fell, the Aegis would be yours until the end of your days.”

  She thought of Rory’s open dislike, and Gregor’s, thinly veiled. “And they would approve of this?”

  Azrael gave a shrug that said exactly how little their approval mattered. “When they accepted me, they accepted my decisions. They will obey.”

  She snorted, thinking of how long Gregor would stick around after Azrael was dead—or how long it would take him to kill her to free himself from the bond.

  “The moment they raised a hand against you, the covenant would be broken,” he said quietly. “Their existences would be forfeit.”

  Something about the way he said it made her think that “forfeit” was a euphemism for something painful. Perhaps worse than death. She had no idea what held necromancers and their shields to an increasingly intricate code of honor, but it seemed more powerful than either of them. She was out of her depth, with no one to give a second opinion.

  She asked the first thing that popped into her head: “What’s the catch?”

  It was his turn to echo in surprise. “Catch?”

  “You know, the strings,” she said. “I get bed-burning sex on demand and a personal bodyguard. Granted, I actually might need them because my new boyfriend probably has some pretty scary enemies. Besides that, you don’t get something for nothing.”

  This time she could not mistake the heat in his eyes for desire. She fought the urge to capitulate. He was asking, after all, when he clearly could have commanded. This must be part of the code. He could not make her accept. She had a right to know, and he had the responsibility to tell her.

  “I am. . .,” he began.

  He withdrew and she realized he was at a loss for words.

  “I, alone, will see to your pleasure,” he tried again, as if she had missed that part. “You will take no other man to your bed while we are in contract.”

  She stared. How on earth would any man ever have a chance, now that she’d had him? A glint of male satisfaction crossed his expression with uncanny timing. If she had known better, she would have thought—

  “Are you reading my mind?”

  Silence.

  “You can’t do that,” she said, furious. “Stay out of my head, Azrael. It’s not fair.”

  “Fair?” A savage look masquerading as a smile settled on his face. “You believe the world operates on rules of fairness after you’ve danced to put money into the accounts of businessmen?”

  Heat rushed to her face, fueled by hurt and anger at his words.

  “How can you expect me to be a partner,” she said, “if I can’t have the privacy to think my own thoughts and choose when I share them with you?”

  Azrael held up a finger, the humorless smile still creasing his face. “First. A partnership implies equality. If you live to be a thousand years, we will never be equals.

  “Second, everyone in this household is an open book to me.”

  Once again, her anger burned away diffidence. Isela rallied, pitching her upper body forward, raising her index finger to his face in response.

  “First. Partnership implies equity, which is not exclusively equality,” she said. “I may never be as powerful as you, and you may think you are giving me a great gift by allowing frail human me to become your consort. But I have something you need. And it’s gotten me up to my eyeballs in demons and death threats. I think I deserve to be given a little bit of privacy to think about how sad my life is going to be when this is over.”

  “Second,” she pressed. “What about your bed?”

  Azrael inhaled sharply. “My bed?”

  “Do you think I’m just going to sit back and let you fuck anything that catches your eye,” she said. “While I’m under the ‘necromancer only’ clause?”

  Azrael had too many teeth, she decided. And that smile was getting more predatory by the minute.

  “Again, your mouth shows me a lack of respect, dancer,” he murmured. “I offer you an honor which has never been extended to any human, and you throw it in my face with accusations of infidelity.”

  When he was a boy, his mother called him little Terror, the small voice in her chimed in. She remembered the way he’d faltered through the words and the distant look in his eyes. It wasn’t a story many people had heard, no matter how long he’d been alive.

  She reached out and lay a hand on his cheek, ignoring the burn of his skin against her palm. He inhaled deeply, and the heat abated.

  “And what do you give me, as my consort?”

  That caught him off guard. “My protection—”

  “All you have to do is ask me what I’m thinking,” she said to that deadly, beautiful face. “And maybe wait awhile, especially if I’m mad. It’s hard for me to verbalize sometimes until I calm down. But I promise I will tell you.”

  His nostrils flared.

  “And I will not share you. I don’t think my heart could handle it.”

  “Your heart,” he murmured.

  “I’m not going to call you ‘master,’ so don’t even think about it.” She pushed on to cover the dangerous slip of words.

  “I prefer Azrael,” he said, “or ‘my necromancer.’”

  She flushed a little. “Were you spying on me in the garden? That was a private conversation.”

  “I can’t assure your safety unless I know what’s happening to you,” he said.

  “I was talking to Kyle,” she said. “He’s my best friend. He would never hurt me—”

  She paused, and her head angled slightly.

  “You’re jealous,” she said.

  Maybe it was being so close to death, but she couldn’t help it: she laughed. Only when she saw that his countenance didn’t lighten, and he looked even more brooding and fierce, did she realize whatever this consort business was, it was very serious.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, biting down on a grin. “It’s just. . . Kyle is taken.”

  “Some men do not think that is an obstacle in the pursuit of a new conquest,” he spoke carefully.

  “Yes, but the fact I have breasts is an enormous obstacle,” she finished, changing the subject. “How long does the contract last?”

  Again, Isela seemed to catch him by surprise in a way that pushed him toward anger. “So eager to be free of me?”

  She sighed, weary now of the minefield that lay between them. “I’m sure your last consort understood the terms perfectly, but I need a little help.”

  “No.” His hands closed on her hips, dragging her to the edge of the desk.

  “No. . . what?” She suddenly had the urge to weep. How was it possible that one man could send her swinging between desire and frustration so quickly? “No help? How do you expect me—”

  “No other consort,” he said in that same emotionless tone. “I have never offered it to anyone before.”

  “Oh.”

  Azrael’s hands settled on her legs. Warmth radiated into her from his palms. His thumbs pressed against the sensitive skin inside her knees, and without thinking, she spread them, creating a cradle for his body between her thighs.

  The thin fabric of her leggings was a flimsy barrier between him and the most intimate part of herself. She quaked, and her thighs clenched reflexively against his hips. How quickly he took her from wanting to run away to craving his touch, and what a particular effect the transition had on her libido.

  He grunted satisfaction as his hands slid to her waist, pulling her closer.

  His pants strained against him. It looked painful. She slid her hands down the impossibly firm plane of his chest, under the thin T-shirt, to the waistband of his pants. He caught her fingers on a mission of mercy to his zipper. His mouth hovered over hers, breath a hot, cinnamon sweet wind on her lips.

  “I’m going to
have to think about it,” she whispered, tongue darting out to lick his lower lip in invitation.

  Isela felt his stillness, but her passion took her beyond fear. She nipped his lower lip, squeezing it between her teeth like ripe fruit.

  “I mean, thank you. I’m flattered.” She flattened her chest against his, craving the heat of his body. “And I will consider your offer—”

  His hand slipped to her wrist, pinning it to the small of her back. He trapped the other hand before she could reach for him, joining it at her spine. She gasped, eyes blinking wide, but she was still too taken with her own arousal to protest.

  Now his smile was a terrible thing, full of possession and lust. Isela wondered if it was possible to orgasm from a look.

  “You will. . . consider,” he said with a light tone that belied the thunder beneath it, “my offer?”

  She strained against him, ignoring the discomfort, and pressed her lips to his jaw. The restraint only aided the arousal sharpening to a physical pain in her core.

  Azrael had both her wrists in one long-fingered hand, the other pinched her chin in his fingers and drew her mouth away from him. His face hovered a few tantalizing inches from hers, but he kept her from touching him. He revealed a new edge to his smile, cruel in its sensuality, turning the lines of his face into stone.

  “Perhaps you think me like one of your admirers from the Academy,” he said. “To be toyed with.”

  He released her then, and pried her thighs from around him, crossing the room so swiftly Isela braced herself on the heels of her hands to keep from tumbling backward.

  His name left her in a breath so full of longing she could see his shudder across the room. Instead of answering, she watched him retreat deeper into his stillness. The heat in his eyes was snuffed out. She shivered, and her arms slipped around her body, palms rubbing her biceps.

  She snapped before she could catch herself. “You want me to hand myself over to you, to have my mind picked apart whenever you like, and my body—”

  “I cannot be other than I am, Isela,” he said. “You must accept that.”

  “And if I can’t?”

  His eyes, a quicksilver shine as deadly as any blade, were her answer.