Bride by Midnight (12 page)

Each stroke was a pleasure that took her breath away; each thrust took him deeper, touched her where no other man ever had, or ever would. Nothing could feel better than this; it was impossible that her body could bear it. But it
did
feel better, again and again, until there was nothing else but
him
.

And then the pleasure peaked. It washed over her, unexpected and powerful. She cried out, clasped her body to his as a sharp release made her body quake. Blade experienced the same kind of release. She felt it, deep inside, physically and more. Deeper. His movement slowed, he dropped down atop her body.

Lyssa turned her head and found his lips with hers. The touch was soft, gentle and wonderful. In the distance, thunder rumbled. And then she said, “I would make a
terrible
nun.”

He laughed. Easily, spontaneously. The sound came from deep within him. But too soon the laughter died abruptly and he rolled away from her. Away and out of the bed. She could see what he meant when he said his cock was “not always so.” Now it dangled, wet and soft and very different from before. Perhaps she had been protected from the truth about relations between a man and a woman, but it didn’t exactly take a genius to figure out how this worked.

“I will sleep in the main room,” he said sharply.

“Why?” Had she done something wrong? Said something inappropriate? “The bed is very large, and I promise not to make demands of you in the night, if that is what you are afraid of.”

He looked at her, stared at her with those magnificent eyes of his, and said, “I am not afraid.”

And she knew—the same way she knew someone had been watching her from Level Two, the same way she knew Sinmora’s child would be a boy, the same way she
knew
Blade was the right man for her—that he was lying.

***

He had not laughed in four years. He
should not
laugh now.

Blade sat on a blanket before a low fire, unable to sleep, unable to still the turmoil inside him. Lyssa was a means to an end. Nothing more. And while she was here and willing, he might as well lie with her. What man would not, when she looked at him that way? But he could not allow her to touch him inside. There was no room in his life for laughter, for gentleness or affection.

Volker had destroyed him. When the bastard had killed Runa, when he’d taken away the last of Blade’s family, Volker had murdered the man Blade had once been. His sword might not have done the job, but Volker
had
killed him.

It was the guilt, more than anything else, that ate at Blade, that gnawed when he least expected it. First his mother, brutally attacked by demonic soldiers and left with child, then Runa, taken from a neighbor’s home and murdered when she’d dared to scream. He had not been there to save either one of them. He should have been, he should have been there.

The embers in the hearth before him glowed, and a new flame danced. Blade stared, he did his best to forget what had just happened and focus on the past. He would have fought the soldiers who’d raped his mother if he had not been at sea. He would have killed Volker, if the ship he’d been sailing upon had docked one day earlier and he’d been at home when Runa had been taken. One day.

That had been Hagan’s final voyage before retiring to Arthes and passing himself off as a respectable man instead of a pirate. It had been Blade’s final voyage, too. As they had sailed toward the village his mind had been on leaving the sea and marrying a pretty girl and making a home. A home for him and for Runa. He’d had no idea what awaited him...

Blade didn’t need or want that guilt to be taken away. He had no wish to be mended, and that was what it felt like when he was with Lyssa. His insides had been ripped apart, and she touched him there. She offered him more than he’d ever wanted or expected from her, and as she did, he was mended.

No more sleeping in that bed with her. No more kisses, no more laughter.

He did eventually fall asleep. And he dreamed. He didn’t always dream, but when he did, he dreamed of death and blood, of Runa’s disappointment that he had been too slow to save her. He should have been at home when the men came, but he had not been. He should have run faster, fought harder, and sometimes in his dreams he was fast enough. Good enough. Sleeping in front of the fire, closer to finishing his quest than he had ever been, he dreamed of water and kisses.

In his dreams Lyssa was there, and he laughed again.

Chapter Nine

“I don’t understand why we have to go to the shop today,” Lyssa said, trying not to sound as if she were pouting, even though she was. “A day or two to get our new home in order, to celebrate our marriage...”

“Our home is in fine order, and ours is not a real marriage, so there is nothing to celebrate,” Blade said, his voice as sharp as his name. He held her hand lightly, but she knew it was not because he wanted to touch her but because he wanted her to hurry along. She tried to keep her quick steps to the higher, dryer parts of the path, avoiding the puddles left by last night’s rain.

He had not looked at her, not really, all morning. Even though the beard was gone and his hair had been neatly pulled back, and the clothing he wore was respectable—though she could not say whether or not the black trousers and plain white shirt had been stolen, as the sentinel’s uniform had been—he looked as rough and primitive as he had the night they’d met.

And he was walking too fast! She practically had to run to keep up with him, and running while avoiding the puddles was difficult. She was huffing and puffing, almost entirely out of breath, before she decided she’d had enough. She planted her feet on a small, almost-dry rise and came to a complete stop. The move surprised Blade. Their hands separated, and he took another step before turning around to look at her in an accusing and angry way. One would not know, from the way he stared at her, that last night they had shared incredible pleasure and he had laughed in their bed.

Lyssa crossed her arms and glared at him. “Why are you so anxious to get into the palace?”

“That’s not your concern. Now come along.”

Come along? Perhaps if she’d married at seventeen and had known no better, she would have allowed her husband to order her to
come along
. But she
had
not, and she
would
not. “No.”

He took a short step toward her.

“And if you think you can walk into Papa’s shop with me draped over your shoulder—kicking and screaming, by the way—and get him to trust you enough to work in his store and make a delivery to the palace, then you’re in for a rude awakening. If you want my father to be happy, then you must make
me
happy.”

Blade knew she was right. He didn’t like it, but she could tell that he knew. For the first time in a long while, Lyssa felt entirely in control. She liked the feeling very much.

“What do you want?” he snapped.

“I want you to tell me why you need to get into the palace.”

For a moment he hesitated. He pursed his lips, and his eyes went colder than ever before. He closed the distance between them, leaned down slightly, and lowered his voice. “The man who murdered my sister is in that palace. I intend to kill him.”

In an instant she realized why Blade had left her bed last night, and her heart broke for him. His heart had been broken when he’d lost his sister, and he had given up everything to find justice for her. He did not want to find pleasure with a wife, and to laugh in bed, to share that kind of intimacy while his sister’s murderer slept so close... “I’m sorry.”

He did not want or accept her apology. “You didn’t kill her. You have nothing to apologize for.”

“Who did, then?”

“I won’t tell you that,” he said, and he meant it. She saw the determination in his eyes. “You’ll know when it’s done.”

“It’s not Emperor Jahn, is it?” She liked the emperor and his family, and she didn’t think Blade would kill anyone other than a
very
bad man, but she had to ask.

“No.”

That was a relief! “Does this man who killed your sister deserve to die?” Not a question she would have ever expected to ask of anyone, but it seemed... appropriate.

“Yes.”

“Is there no other way?”

“No.”

Blade did not elaborate, and she knew better than to ask him to. “And you will find a way to see it done whether I help you or not?”

“Yes.”

If she didn’t help him, he not only wouldn’t make it into the palace, he certainly wouldn’t make it out alive. Not if he was intent on murdering a palace resident. Worst of all, she suspected that he didn’t care if he survived or not.

She walked to him, hooked her arm through his and looked up. “I will help you.”

He started to shake his head. “I don’t want your help. I simply want access.”

“I
will
help you,” she said again. “It’s what a proper wife would do.” She did not tell him that she intended to make sure he got out of the palace alive and that he stayed with her, becoming the husband neither of them had ever imagined he might be. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Not here and now.
Not yet
.

They walked toward the shop more slowly, leaving the quiet street where they had stopped for a brief conversation and joining others on the main street. Women heading to market, sentinels hurrying toward the palace for the morning changing of the guard, children scurrying to make it to school on time. Lyssa smiled and waved at those she knew. Very few of them would have heard yet that she’d married, but soon everyone would know.

She smiled as she held Blade’s arm and walked forward at a leisurely pace, even though inside she was distressed. The only reason he had married her was so he could get into the palace and take his revenge. She should not be surprised. Theirs had not been a love match; each had had their own selfish reasons for marriage. They were still all but strangers, and she had no right to expect anything of him.

If she managed to save him, if he did what he’d come here to do and lived, would he stay with her or would he leave?

This marriage had not been intended to be a permanent one. She had always planned to dissolve the union eventually, and he... She now realized that Blade had never planned to survive long enough for a dissolution ceremony to take place.

***

Lyssa’s father was wary of his daughter’s new husband being so anxious to assist in the family business, but it didn’t take him long to warm up to the idea. Cyrus Tempest was getting on in years—despite Lyssa’s protests that her father was
not
old—and he’d been more than happy to have his son-in-law there to unload the shipment that had arrived that afternoon, and to assist a delicate and moneyed customer with her heavy purchases. Blade was determined to make himself not only useful, but invaluable. And quickly.

Naturally the old man was suspicious of his daughter’s sudden marriage, but he was more relieved than wary. Since Lyssa seemed to be happy—hell, maybe she
was
happy, for now—her father had accepted the marriage more readily than most caring fathers would have, given the unusual circumstances.

Blade was surprised that Lyssa had so easily accepted his reasoning for wishing admittance to the palace. They hadn’t spoken of it since that morning, and if he had his way they would not speak of it again. Apparently as long as he wasn’t intent on assassinating the emperor, she had no qualms. Then again, maybe she did and she knew better than to let him see her true intentions. Maybe she would try to stop him when the time came.

He wouldn’t allow that to happen.

After a busy day they walked home together. He carried a small satchel that contained more of Lyssa’s things. Dresses, combs, perhaps another nightgown. Home, for the moment, was a vine covered stone structure set back from Hagan’s finer house, which was a surprisingly large house for one man and two servants. Blade wondered what Lyssa would say if she knew that their host, one of her father’s best customers, had once been a pirate. Privateer, Hagan had preferred to be called, but no... pirate was a more accurate word. Blade had sailed with Hagan for a while, first as a young man excited to take to the sea, then as an older man looking for better wages than a shipbuilder’s apprentice could earn. Both times he had left his family behind to make a life of his own.

If he had never gone to sea, he would have been at home to protect Runa. If he had gone home one day earlier... one day...

It was an old refrain, a way of torturing himself.

As they walked, Lyssa babbled about the day’s work, the customers, the need for new inventory,
nonsense
, while Blade’s eyes were on the house ahead. If he had his way, it would not be home for long. He would eventually find a way to ask Hagan to allow Lyssa to remain there after he was gone, if she desired to do so. But not yet. He didn’t need the two of them putting their heads together and trying to stop him from doing what had to be done.

Before they reached the house and turned onto the path that would lead to the guest cottage, Hagan—who’d obviously been watching for their arrival—opened his front door and waved them over.

“My girl has prepared more than enough supper for three. Please, join me.”

It was on the tip of Blade’s tongue to refuse, but Lyssa was quicker to answer. “Lovely! I did not prepare or plan anything for supper, and Blade worked so hard today that he needs a hearty meal. Such a horrid wife I have made thus far. I must learn to be more efficient if I’m going to help my father in his shop and make a home, as well.” She headed toward Hagan, and Blade reluctantly followed. As much as he dreaded small talk over a dining room table, he
was
hungry.

Besides, he was quite sure Lyssa could talk more than enough for the both of them.

***

Lyssa had never eaten supper at such a fine table, or had servants to bring one course after another and set it before her. A couple of days ago she had been all but prepared to move into a nunnery and now here she was, married, bedded, and eating a fine meal in a fine house. It wasn’t her house, but still... she was a guest here, and she liked it.