The Queen's Bargain

by Anne Bishop

  Sleep, the song coaxed. Rest.

  The nausea subsided. The headache still raged, raping his brain, but moment by moment, it felt more like a storm seen through a window—powerful and potentially dangerous but not immediately threatening.

  Sleep, the song coaxed. Rest.

  Daemon stretched out on his side of the bed and followed that beloved voice down, down, down into the Darkness, where pain was barely a memory.

  * * *

  * * *

  Surreal stared at the man so deeply asleep that her return to their room hadn’t roused him at all.

  The sexual heat was banked. Not just leashed, banked. Which just proved the bastard could control the heat if he wanted to be considerate.

  She eased into her side of the bed—and wondered if this was a new form of torture.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Marian felt the sexual heat wash over her a moment before she heard Daemon’s deep, rich voice purr, “Good morning, gorgeous.”

  Over decades of marriage, she had adapted to the heat that poured out of Lucivar. Not that it didn’t still arouse her, but she’d gotten used to what she thought of as the everyday sexuality of her man. Despite her being used to Lucivar, that first minute around Daemon was like bracing against a dangerous wind that was strong enough to knock a person off her feet. Letting it roll over her, she would acknowledge—to herself—that her body responded to that unspoken promise of sex that was as much a part of a Warlord Prince’s nature as a volatile temper and being born to kill, and then she forgot about it. He was Daemon, her husband’s brother, and he would never do anything inappropriate. Not with her. Especially with her.

  But this wasn’t the first punch of everyday heat. This was like being wrapped in layers of satin while floating safely in a deliciously warm lake. It was a heady, overwhelming feeling—and sensuous enough that she felt her nipples harden, felt the sudden wetness and need between her legs.

  Uncertain of his intentions because he hadn’t been quite himself since the headaches that had started several months ago, Marian pulled the biscuits out of the oven and set them on the cooling rack on the counter before she looked at him.

  Not seduction. Daemon looked totally relaxed, even a little bit sleepy, with nothing holding back the sexual heat he usually kept tightly leashed in any public setting—heat he kept leashed even in his own home to protect the servants, male and female, from acting inappropriately toward him and provoking a lethal response. But here, now, he had walked into her kitchen with no barriers, no chains, and she didn’t think he was aware that he’d done that.

  He feels safe, she thought, stunned by the revelation. Safe enough to let down his guard around me, to be vulnerable around me.

  She hadn’t known how much he trusted her until that moment.

  “Oh,” she said. “I have to kiss you.” She hurried up to him, grabbed the lapels of his jacket, rose up on her toes, and gave him a hard kiss on the mouth. “You’re too beautiful not to kiss.”

  “What? Marian . . .”

  She felt him pulling back and waking up, could actually feel him tightening the leash on his sexuality to lessen the impact he had on other people. Could even feel a hint of panic that she might be responding to him, might want something from him that he would never give his brother’s wife. In another moment he would pull away from her, violently, and if she didn’t say the right thing right now, he might never allow himself to feel safe or comfortable around her again.

  “But you know what’s better than the way you look first thing in the morning?” She gave him another, lighter kiss and felt his muscles tighten. “You are always willing to help me fix breakfast.”

  He didn’t move. Barely breathed. Then he let out a rough laugh so filled with relief it broke her heart. “You were teasing me.”

  “Not about helping me fix breakfast.”

  “What’s this?” Lucivar walked into the kitchen, his eyes on Marian.

  Lucivar would catch the scent of lust and know he hadn’t been the reason for it. She just hoped that when he woke up more, Daemon would assume the scent was because she hadn’t washed thoroughly enough after morning sex with her husband.

  “Daemon is making his special scrambled eggs for breakfast. You can cook up some chicken strips and beef. I’ve already made the biscuits, and I’ll get the coffee started.”

  “That will get food on the table, and we might even get something to eat before the yappy horde descends on us.” Lucivar moved past Daemon to reach the cold box and remove the meat.

  “Are you referring to the children or the Scelties?” Daemon asked, slipping off his jacket and folding it over the back of a kitchen chair.

  “Take your pick.” As he passed her on the way to the counter, Lucivar added on a psychic thread, ٭We’re going to talk about this.٭

  Yes, they were. But not for the reasons he expected.

  * * *

  * * *

  As soon as the yappy horde was fed and herded outside to occupy themselves with their own business, Lucivar followed Marian into the laundry room. When she turned to face him, he put his hands on either side of her, trapping her against one of the laundry tubs.

  “Want to tell me what that was about?” he asked.

  “Not what it looked like.”

  “I know you, and I know him, so I’m sure it wasn’t what anyone else would assume.”

  “Is he ever like that when it’s just the two of you spending an evening together?” she asked.

  “Like what?”

  “Completely relaxed.” She rested her hands on Lucivar’s chest, feeling the warmth of his skin through the undyed shirt with the sleeves he’d cut off to form a short cap over each impressive arm. “For some reason, this morning he trusted me enough to show me who he is without any barriers.”

  “He’s potent.” Lucivar rested his forehead against hers. “It’s what made him so dangerous when he’d been a pleasure slave forced to serve the Queens in Terreille. He could turn pleasure into agony when he wanted to hurt someone. Even now, it’s the side of him a person rarely sees unless they’re about to dance with the Sadist.”

  Marian hesitated, then asked a question she’d held back for a lot of years. “And when he was married to Jaenelle?”

  “He gave her everything he was, held nothing back. He could do that with her.” He laughed softly. “And meeting him first thing on some mornings was reason enough to dive into a cold mountain lake.”

  Her husband was here, and who knew how much longer they would be alone? Marian pressed against Lucivar and didn’t care that she probably wasn’t the reason his cock was so hard. “I know something better than a cold lake.”

  He freed himself from his trousers before she could take another breath. She vanished her underpants and trousers before he ripped them off. Then he was inside her, his cock so hot it felt like a fever as his arms locked around her back and hips and he thrust into her with all the power of a warrior and none of the finesse of a lover. She wrapped her legs around his waist and dug her short nails into his shoulders, remembering just in time not to set her teeth in his neck where he’d have to try to explain a fresh love bite to the children.

  Fast. Hard. Hot. Explosive. Responding like a man pleasuring a needy woman instead of a husband taking care of a fragile womb. Responding to her like he used to before the illness that came after birthing baby Andulvar had sapped her strength.

  Her climax pushed him over the edge. She bit his shoulder to stifle the scream that would have brought everyone running to find out what had happened.

  “Mother Night, Marian.” Lucivar balanced her on the edge of the laundry tub.

  They were shaking and panting and still connected, so she was grateful he hadn’t dropped her.

  “You should let go of me,” he said.

  “I’m not sure I can move my legs yet.”

 
He made a pleased sound that was abruptly cut off when he turned his head as if listening to something nearby. “Try.”

  Happy barking, which meant children and Scelties playing—and the horde could rush into the eyrie at any moment searching for at least one of them, wanting attention, snacks, something.

  Lucivar pulled out of her and made sure she was steady on her feet before he grabbed a couple of washcloths from the stack she kept in easy reach and ran them under the water tap.

  “We should clean up a bit,” she said, accepting one of the cloths.

  “You think?” Giving her an amused look, he washed quickly, tossing the used cloth into the laundry tub before tucking himself back into his trousers. “I’ll distract them.” He gave her a light kiss and left. Moments later, she heard his voice mingling with the children’s—and Daemon’s.

  Blowing out a breath, Marian finished washing herself, straightened her tunic, and called in the underpants and trousers, hurriedly pulling them on. Nothing she could do about flushed skin or the rest. The adults would recognize the signs of hot, fast sex, but hopefully the children wouldn’t notice.

  As she hurried out of the laundry room, aiming to get to her bedroom and have a few minutes in private to put on other clothes and get settled, it occurred to her that she had no idea how much these Scelties might notice—and share with everyone else.

  She reached one of the eyrie’s branching corridors. One way led to the master suite of rooms. The guest room Daemon and Surreal were using was in the other direction. Realizing that she hadn’t seen Surreal yet, Marian headed for the guest room and knocked on the door. “Surreal?”

  No answer.

  Worried, Marian opened the door enough for her voice to be heard by anyone inside the room. “Surreal?”

  “Yeah.”

  Taking that as an invitation, Marian slipped into the room, leaving the door partway open in her haste to reach the other woman. Surreal looked feverish, upset. And she looked like she’d been crying, which was so unusual Marian jerked to a stop. Could this be nothing more than moontime moodies, or did she need to send for a Healer?

  To heal what? Her friend had been well when she’d arrived in Ebon Rih. “Should I send for Nurian?” she asked.

  “I doubt she has a cure for this.” Surreal moved around the room in a restless manner.

  “So there is something wrong.” There had been something wrong for months, but maybe Surreal was finally ready to talk about it.

  Surreal stopped moving, her back to the partly open door. “I love Daemon. I do. And I want to stay married to him because, for all our sakes, he needs to be married. But more often than not lately, I can’t stand to be around him. Sometimes I even hate him. When he plays games with me, when he uses that sexual heat on me, I hate him.”

  Marian couldn’t move, shocked into stillness. Oh, Surreal.

  “I feel smothered. His heat rolls over me and I can’t think about anything except having his cock inside me. It’s a fever that has burned inside me for so many months it’s become an addiction. I make excuses to spend time away from the Hall just so I can breathe, just so I can remember who I am when I’m not a sheath for his cock. I feel so damn helpless, and it scares me. He scares me.”

  Mother Night. “You’ve never felt this . . . need . . . before? You’ve never seen Daemon act like this?”

  “Even when Sadi is in rut, it’s not this bad. Or it is, but it’s three days and then it’s done. This is . . . relentless.”

  How to say this? “Men relax after the Birthright Ceremony. They don’t feel vulnerable, don’t feel they could lose the right to be a father to their children, so they let their guard down, allow themselves to be more fully themselves.”

  “What are you saying? That this is Sadi as he really is?”

  “I think that’s at least part of it.” When Surreal stared at her, Marian tried to find words to describe her encounter with Daemon in the kitchen. “I felt some of that this morning . . .”

  “Mother Night, Marian.” Surreal looked horrified.

  “. . . and I realized I was seeing him without any barriers. For the first time in all the years I’ve known him, I was seeing Daemon when he wasn’t leashing his power or sexual heat. It was . . . potent.” She flushed with embarrassment but pushed on. “I jumped Lucivar in the laundry room as soon as we fed the children and dogs and booted them outside.”

  “No,” Surreal said sharply. “It’s more than that. This started after the Sadist played with me one night . . . and I told Daemon the next morning that I never wanted him to do that to me again. But every time I’m near him, the heat coils around me until I can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t live. This is the punishment for refusing to play his games. That monster has gotten me addicted to sex so that he can torture me every night.”

  Marian ached for her friend. For both friends. “I don’t think Daemon would deliberately hurt you. He hasn’t been well, Surreal. The headaches. Maybe he doesn’t have as much control as he did before.”

  “It has to be more than that.” It sounded like a plea.

  “Have you talked to him? Have you told him the sexual heat is causing a problem for you?”

  “Yes, I’ve told him!” Surreal cried. “I can’t count how many times I’ve told him. He insists he has the heat leashed. I know he doesn’t. Hell’s fire, I was a whore for most of my life, so I know about sex. And I know Sadi well enough to know he’s using sex to torture me until I agree to let him do anything he wants.”

  Lucivar had told her enough about Daemon’s past—and the warning signs that indicated the Sadist had come to call—that Marian didn’t doubt for a moment that, as the Sadist, Daemon didn’t distinguish between sex and torture. But what Surreal was saying didn’t sound right, didn’t fit the man she knew.

  Assuming Daemon was still sane.

  Chilled by that possibility, Marian said, “You’re his wife. That means something to him. Surreal, talk to him before he comes to some conclusions about your marriage that you might not be able to change. Talk to him before it’s too late. Or ask someone to intercede for you and find out why things have gone so wrong.”

  “Who would dare challenge the Sadist?” Surreal said bitterly.

  Marian caught the scent of coffee and looked past Surreal. Lucivar stood in the fully open doorway, holding a mug. But he was looking back down the corridor, and Marian realized he wasn’t the one who had brought the coffee.

  Lucivar retreated, making no sound. Marian wrapped her arms around Surreal and felt the weight of her friend’s head on her shoulder as one of the strongest women she’d ever known wept like a heartbroken child.

  * * *

  * * *

  “Bastard?” Lucivar crossed the flagstone courtyard and caught up to his brother as Daemon reached the stairs leading to the landing web below the eyrie. “You heading somewhere?”

  There was nothing for him to read in Daemon’s gold eyes, and that lack scared him. It meant Sadi had retreated deep into himself, no longer allowing anyone to see what he was thinking or feeling. It was the mask Daemon had worn when he’d been a pleasure slave in Terreille.

  It was the look Daemon had worn just before the Sadist annihilated a Queen and all the bitches who served in her court.

  “Just down to the village to walk around,” Daemon replied.

  A rational, reasonable answer to the question—which didn’t mean a damn thing.

  Lucivar tipped his head to indicate the eyrie. “What are you going to do?” No need to clarify the problem. He’d found Daemon standing just outside the guest room, had seen the pain and sorrow on his brother’s face, had heard enough of what Surreal had said to understand the danger if Surreal truly couldn’t accept the Black-Jeweled Warlord Prince she had married.

  All these years of living around and with Daemon. Living around and with the sexual heat. Living with t
he cold, dark power of the Black Jewels. It surprised him—and disappointed him—that a woman as strong as Surreal, a witch who wore Gray Jewels, had lasted less than two decades around the Black. Despite what Surreal thought, she wasn’t dancing with the Sadist, wasn’t the focus of the Sadist’s cold, cruel rage.

  The chalice is breaking.

  The girl would free him to ask for help.

  Was it finally time? Was this the moment that Tersa and Karla had seen in their tangled webs?

  “What are you doing to do?” Lucivar asked.

  “Nothing.” Daemon’s voice, like his eyes, held no emotion. “It was my mistake. I’ll fix it.”

  How? “Maybe someone at the Keep could help.”

  “If the Gray-Jeweled witch who is my wife can’t stand to be around me anymore, I don’t think the Gray-Jeweled Queen at the Keep can do anything to help.”

  Not the Gray, but . . . If Tersa and Karla were wrong about the help that could be found at the Keep, and he persuaded Daemon to ask for help that would never come . . .

  “So you’re going down to the village?” he asked.

  “I am. For a while.”

  “You want some company?”

  “No. Thank you.” Daemon went down a few stairs before looking at Lucivar. “Everything has a price, and I have no illusions about what I am.” He walked down to the landing web.

  I have no illusions about what I am.

  Lucivar had never heard Daemon say anything that had frightened him more, because there had been times when he’d heard Saetan say much the same thing.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Dillon walked to his appointment and wondered how to extricate himself from a couple of arrangements now that he had a chance for the exact thing he had struggled to achieve.