Clare pulled her close for a brief, stiff hug and pressed a kiss onto her damp cheek. But though her bearing was formal, the concern in her eyes was real. “It was kind of the king to invite us.”
Confused, Maari turned to find Jude still watching from his position against the wall. The claws gripping her chest suddenly felt ice cold. She turned back to Jaarod. “Why are you here?” she asked through teeth clenched to keep them from chattering.
“Jude invited us.” Jaarod gave her a hesitant smile. “He said you wanted to see us.”
“Actually, I said you wanted to see your nieces and nephews. I asked them to bring the children, but…” On the edge of her vision, Jude shrugged, but the casual gesture belied the irritation she could read in the line of his shoulders.
“They’re too young to make a trip like this,” Clare said with an apologetic gaze at Maari. “I hope you understand, but I just couldn’t bring them.”
Maari understood. She wouldn’t have wanted the children here, in the home of the man who’d murdered their father.
She didn’t want Clare here either. And Jaarod…
“You’re not here to take me home.” A hysterical bark of laughter erupted from her throat. “I don’t know why I would think that. You made your position perfectly clear months ago.” Her hands clenched around fistfuls of her beautiful burgundy skirt. “But when I saw you, I thought—”
She’d thought the same thing when Geneva had appeared in her room, all those weeks ago. But Jarrod had no more intent to free her than Geneva had. There would be no rescue in Maari’s future. That fact was suddenly bitterly clear.
“Go home,” Maari spat at her brother, and the words ripped at her heart. Saying them felt like slamming a door she might never be able to open again. Yet she could not hold them back. “I don’t want to see you ever again.”
She spun on her beautiful, precariously high heels and stalked toward the door. And as she reached for the knob, determined to storm out with her head held high, someone grabbed her arm and nearly pulled her off her feet, dragging her beautiful heels across the slick marble floor.
Maari would have fallen—she probably would have broken an ankle—if not for Jude’s second hand wrapping around her other arm. Hauling her upright in front of him, while he glared down at her in anger like she’d never seen from him before. Not in scale—she’d certainly seen him more furious—but in…clarity.
There was no complicated pain or insult clouding his ire this time. No lust. No spark of fascination in his eyes, like when he’d watched her rage in the past, curious about how far she would push him. How much damage she dared to inflict upon her belongings.
This time, Jude was quite simply angry.
“Apologize,” he growled, his hands tightening enough to bruise her arms. “Now.”
Maari’s confusion deepened. Jude hated her remaining brother. Worse, he had no respect for Jaarod—for a man who gave in so easily to threats. Who would sell his own sister as a concubine. So why would he—?
Finally, the king leaned down to whisper fiercely into her ear. “Jaarod and Clare are our guests—my guests—and you will not embarrass me with such hysterics.”
Maari nodded, and though her hands remained steady, her insides were suddenly trembling with rage. Jude let her go, and she closed her eyes for a second, grasping for composure. Then she turned and met her brother’s gaze.
“How kind of you to come. Both of you.” She aimed a stiff smile at Clare, then her focus returned to Jaarod. “I know it’s a long trip, and I hope you will have time to see some of Loborough while you’re here. I hear it’s beautiful. You will have to excuse me, though. I’m not feeling up to guests today.” Then Maari spun and headed for the door.
This time, Jude made no attempt to stop her. “Please make yourselves at home,” she heard him say, as she stepped into the hall and marched past the guards, worried, for a moment, that they would stop her.
The double doors closed at her back, and Jude’s rapid footsteps caught up with her. He took her arm and hauled her through an open doorway into an unoccupied guest suite. “What is wrong with you?” he demanded as he closed the door. “What the living hell is wrong with every single bloody woman in my life?”
Maari tried to pull her arm from his grip, but he would not let go. “I thought—”
“I know what you thought. What I don’t know is why. Why do you have to ruin every gift I give you by wishing for something more? For something impossible? Why is nothing ever enough for you?”
“Enough? You think you haven’t done enough?” She blinked up at him, tugging on the arm he refused to release. “You’ve gone way too far. Every time I think you’ve run out of ways to hurt me, you pull something new and ruthless from your hat. Why, Jude? I told you I would try to conceive a child, so why would you go to so much trouble to remind me that I am nothing more to you than a spoil of war. Why do you keep punishing me for what Gareth did? Wasn’t taking his head enough? Wasn’t taking me enough?”
“Punishment? Ruthless?” Jude roared. “This is a fucking gift! I talked my mortal enemy and the widow of a man I executed into coming here—I flew them halfway across the fucking planet—for you! I wanted them to bring the children too, but the point is that I tried! I did this to make you happy, and you’re acting like I pissed on your fucking birthday cake!”
Maari gaped at him, incredulous. “How, exactly, did you think this was going to play out?” she demanded. “I can’t just go sit with my dead brother’s wife and eat finger food, pretending that everything is normal. That I dress like this every day. That I’m not a prisoner here, who wasn’t even allowed real clothing until a couple of weeks ago.”
“No one’s asking you to pretend anything.”
“What am I supposed to do, then? What am I supposed to say to them? To Clare? ‘I’m so sorry your husband’s dead, but at least you’re not taking three cocks from the men who killed him.”
Jude’s scowl deepened. “I can’t imagine that’s the kind of small talk they taught you in princess finishing school. Why don’t you ask about her children?”
Maari blinked up at him, at a loss for words. She did want to hear about her nieces and nephews. But it wasn’t so simple. A conversation like that couldn’t take place in a vacuum. Removed from the cruel reality of her new existence.
Jaarod and Clare were once her peers. Her equals. But now…
“I can’t.” She stared up at him, his face magnified by tears standing in her eyes. “I can’t go back in there and pretend they don’t know exactly what my role is here. That I exist only to give you three someplace warm to shove your dicks.”
“That’s not the only—”
She jerked on her arm again, and finally he let her go. “You really thought this would make me happy?”
“How could it possibly not make you happy? They’re your fucking family!”
“They’re going to leave!” she cried, swiping at fresh tears. “This ‘gift’ you’ve given me is a knife straight to my heart, because Jaarod and Clare are a piece of the world I used to belong to. A world I loved. A world I want more than anything to get back to. And after this ‘visit’—after you’ve dressed me up and shown me off as if this is how I live here every day—they’re going to get on their ship and go back to that world. They’re going to leave me here. Alone. Again. It’s going to be like waking up here that first day. Like losing everything I ever had, all over again. It’s going to be like dying, all…over…again. There are many simpler ways to bring me to my knees, but you went out of your way to be cruel.”
His stunned gaze raked over her, caught between fury and confusion. Clearly trying to understand how his plan could have backfired so horribly. “That was not my intent.”
Maari sighed, wiping more tears from her face. This was obviously supposed to make her happy. Grateful. This was evidently supposed to make her fall into his arms and want to bear his children.
Instead…
“You don�
��t understand. You can’t, can you?” She shook her head slowly as she backed away from him. “I thought I was past the worst of this. I thought I’d already survived being taken by you, and Orlann, and Malac. Being abandoned by my brother. Ripped away from my family. But you’ve found a way to put me through every bit of that all over again, and somehow, you have the nerve to characterize that as a gift. To ask me to smile as you rip my heart out again. As you pillage my soul.”
“That’s what you think of my gift? Even though my intent was—”
“Fuck your intent!” Fresh tears spilled over in twin hot trails. “Fuck you, Jude. You don’t give a damn about me. If you did, you would have thought about—” Maari closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath, trying to think of a way to make him understand. “Have you ever lost anything?” Her eyes flew open again, pinning him with the intensity of her gaze. “Anything really important to you?”
“My father,” he growled, and for once, she didn’t flinch over the reminder of her brother’s part in that.
“Yes. Your father.” She grasped at that straw, determined to make him understand. “How would you feel if I could somehow bring him back and set him in front of you? If I let you talk to him one more time—reminisce about how great everything used to be—then ripped that all away again? What if I made you relive his death? Your grief? What if I murdered your father, right in front of you?”
“That’s not what I’ve done.” His jaw tightened in a familiar look of obstinance. Of outright refusal to understand. “I’m not killing anyone—”
“Me. You’re killing me, Jude.” She exhaled slowly, defeat slumping her shoulders. “You’re dangling my old life—my freedom—in front of me, when we both know you’re just going to yank it away, one more time. And I can’t survive that again. I can’t.”
And finally, Jude’s gaze softened as the thinnest layer of comprehension seemed to settle behind his eyes. “I really wasn’t trying to hurt you.”
“And yet, you have. Take me back to my room. And send them home.”
“I’m sorry that this isn’t working out like I’d hoped, but they’re here now, so I want you to—”
“No!” Maari threw herself at him, as panic made her heart race. She buried her face in the front of his suit, tears half-choking her, even as they soaked through the material. “Take me back to my suite, Jude. Please.” She clutched at his lapels. “I’ll do whatever you want. You can shove anything you want, anywhere you want it. You can spank me until you can’t feel your hand, and I won’t fight. Just please don’t make me go back in there and act like I’m still a princess, when I’m nothing more than your filthy whore.”
Jude sighed. His arms slowly wrapped around her. He buried his nose in her hair, inhaling deeply. Then he whispered, as she sobbed into his jacket. “I don’t think I will ever be able to navigate the labyrinth of a woman’s heart and mind.”
12
Orlann
Orlann rounded the corner, staring his com device. He’d spent half the afternoon yelling at Rhody’s hologram, only to discover that his cousin couldn't tell him who Stead Delayne had appointed as its permanent council member, because Stead Delayne had yet to appoint a permanent council member. Even though Jaarod had stepped down more than three months ago to take over as king of Stead Delayne after his older brother’s execution. At Jude’s hand.
Orlann tapped his device to send the strongly worded message he'd spent an hour composing, demanding that the council press Stead Delayne for an official decision. It wasn't good for two interim members to sit on the planetary council for so long. Much of the council's success depended upon the reliable dynamic of its members, and with that in flux, while Orlann was stuck in Loborough and Stead Delayne refused to name their permanent member, nothing of any significance could possibly get done.
He needed a stiff drink. Or a hard fuck. Or both, in rapid succession.
But what he really needed was to get the hell out of Loborough and back to Valemont. To his seat on the council. To the only thing he was good at in the whole fucking world.
Well, one of two things.
Orlann looked up as he approached his suite, and when his gaze found the man standing outside his door, he stopped cold. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Jaarod Delayne—King of Stead fucking Delayne, now—only smiled at him, crossing his arms over the front of a snug white button-up shirt tucked into formal slacks that fit him entirely too well.
Orlann glanced in both directions to make sure they were alone, and as he approached his suite, the lock clicked open, responding to the proximity of his com device. Jaarod opened the door and went inside with the subtle arch of one brow.
“I didn't invite you in,” Orlann said as he stepped into his apartment. Yet he shut the door at his back. Closing them in together.
Jaarod shrugged, walking backward into the open living area, his pale brown eyes shining. “So, call security." But he knew damn well that wasn't an option. The last thing Orlann needed was for anyone to see Jaarod Delayne in his room.
Anyone.
“How the hell did you even get here?”
Jaarod’s quiet smile broadened. “Your brother invited me.”
“Jude? Why the hell would he do that?"
“Because you three haven't managed to knock up my sister yet, and he thought a visit with her family might put her in a better frame of mind."
Fucking hell. This was Jude’s top-secret surprise?
Orlann snorted. “Well, that's obviously going to backfire.” Orlann cursed beneath his breath as he crossed the room toward the bar. “That stupid bastard thinks this is going to seduce her. Naturally, he didn't bring that idea forward for some constructive criticism before implementing it.”
“Is that any way to talk about your king?"
Another sort. “No, but lately it's the only way to talk about my brother. The man is starting to think with his cock.”
“Sounds like that runs in the family.” Jaarod’s voice was too soft. Too close. Orlann went still, his grip tightening on the neck of the whiskey bottle, as a hand slid around his side to splay across his stomach.
“Don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Fucking don’t.” Orlann twisted to shove his visitor back. “You shouldn’t be here.” He opened the bottle and poured a generous serving into his glass. “You need to go.”
“And if I don't want to?"
“If I have to call security, this could be the start of an international incident. We aren't colleagues anymore."
Jaarod shrugged, his gaze sweeping down the front of a shirt stretched tight over Orlann’s well-defined chest. “King is just a title.”
“It's the fucking title.” Orlann took a long sip from his glass. “You control a whole godsdamn kingdom now.”
“But I don't control you.” Jaarod stepped forward again, and his fingers found the buttons on Orlann’s shirt. “You were always the one in control." He slid one button through its hole, still holding his gaze. “You could be again."
Orlann took another long sip from his glass. Gods only knew, he was tempted. He removed the hands from his buttons and placed them deliberately on Jaarod’s own shirt. “Show me.”
The visiting king’s brows rose.
“Now,” Orlann snapped, and his brusque tone drew a heated smile from his guest.
Jaarod took a step back as he unbuttoned his shirt, and there they were. Arcing across the ripple of his lowest ab, just above the point of his right hip bone. Enclosing his left nipple, like parentheses. Echoing the arc of his sternum.
Bite marks.
Orlann’s bite marks.
Jaarod’s chest was a well-used canvas. An artful tribute to the Camden gift in general, as well as to Orlann’s particular dental hallmarks.
“Those are going to be hard to explain to your wife,” Orlann growled, aroused by the sight of his work. “Once you have one.”
“No reason for her to ever see them. I don’t
have to take off my shirt to breed her.”
Orlann reached out and ran his fingers over one of the familiar marks. His cock stiffened with the memory of Jaarod’s flesh between his teeth. Of the blood that had filled his mouth. Of the power that had flowed with it.
It could be his again.
Having influence over a fellow council member had proven quite beneficial, until they were both excluded from the council’s proceedings during the negotiation of peace. Having influence over a king? Over his stead’s greatest rival? Could he afford to pass up such an opportunity?
Could he afford the price it would come with?
“Why are you here?” Orlann’s hand curled around the king’s hip, tightening possessively, as the memories overtook him. “Why the fuck are you here? Why now?"
Jaarod brushed him aside and took a glass for himself from the bar. “I'm here for my sister.”
“The fuck you are. You threw her away.”
“As if you care.” Jaarod poured himself a double shot. “And I didn't throw her away. Your fuck-nut of a brother gave me no choice. Hell, my own brother gave me no choice. Is he serious?”
“Jude? About what?”
He turned from the bar to face his host. “Is he really going to march across Bannon if he can't breed her?”
“Jaarod…” Orlann’s tone held a distinct warning as he sipped from his own glass.
“Did you know?” the king demanded, crashing right through Orlann’s boundaries, as he always had, heedless of the consequences. Eager for them, perhaps.
“About the council’s ruling?” Orlann shook his head. “I was excluded from the proceedings, just as you were. For all I knew, they could have found us at fault.” Though that was never very likely, considering that the war had begun with the assassination of the king of Stead Camden. “We didn’t know they’d offer us Gareth’s head. Or one of your women.”
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