Demon's Fire (6 page)

Tou stumbled out of the secret chamber onto the sand, gasping for breath in the thick, baked air. Her knees gave way, pitching her forward onto a dune. Surprisingly, the sun felt good, calming the palsy that shook her limbs. She let herself roll onto her back to soak in the warmth, then tore off what shreds remained of her poorly made orphan’s robes. She wanted nothing between her and the golden radiance—never mind how infernally hot it was.

She was alive. Better than alive. She was healing. She could feel the changes inside her, despite the recurrent tremors beneath her skin.

She laid one hand over her naked breast and cupped the other around her mound. Her nipple was sharp as stone, her pulse beating hard and steady between her legs. Never had she felt such a strong yearning to be filled. Oh, she’d been taken, once by a boy she’d thought cared for her and, later, by the judges of her tribe. The men who’d cast her out for stealing food had claimed the rape was part of her sentence, but Tou had known better. They’d forced her in secret, tying the tent flap against their wives’ prying glances and gagging her so she couldn’t scream. Then they’d banished
her
as a criminal.

Tou pushed herself upward until she sat. Her tremors were gone now, her thirst, even her fear. She watched a vulture circle overhead, probably the same that had followed her across the desert these last two days. From the way its spirals widened, she knew it was no longer interested in her. She wasn’t easy prey anymore.

Ready to face what had happened, she looked back at the mouth of the buried chamber, the shadow of it black as the netherworld.

She fought a shiver.
But I’m a goddess now,
she thought, remembering what the voice had told her. Goddesses didn’t cower at the past. Goddesses were meant to rule.

I’ll rule them,
she promised.
Before I’m done, I’ll see every male in my tribe grovel.

The vow swelled inside her as if the desire were more than mere ambition. She ran her hand down her naked body, feeling how smooth the skin of her belly was, how healthy and sensitive. The sun might never have burned her, her trek through the desert never weakened and starved her down. Gaunt no more, her flesh was as firm and sleek as the pampered daughter of a village chief. Within her intimate folds, her pleasure bud stood painfully engorged with blood. It wanted more than the gentle caresses she usually gave it, more than the soft release that should have satisfied a girl her age. Groaning with need, she pinched the bud between her longest finger and thumb.

Her response was a revelation. Pleasure exploded within her, not a climax but so close to one it caused her to cry out. The almost-release was torture. Tou had to work herself harder, had to squeeze and rub and grind that little organ as hard as she could. Juices ran down her strong, tensing thighs. Perhaps she should have been embarrassed, but it didn’t matter where she was. Goddesses were different, apparently, and this goddess had to have a release or die.

Tou’s second hand provided what she needed. With a moan of profound erotic agony, she thrust two fingers into her passage and immediately catapulted into orgasm.

It was after midnight when Charles surrendered any hope for sleep. The desert night was cool, the breeze that wafted through his window pleasant, and the gauze-curtained bed on which he lay the most comfortable he’d known. Nor did the nocturnal murmurs of the city give any reason for his restlessness.

The
haveli
Herrington had bought for them to live in was a five-story merchant’s mansion in the Old Quarter. Though the area wasn’t completely residential—those who lived here still kept shops on their street level—it was one of the quietest in Bhamjran. This stemmed from so many of the great trading families having suffered financial losses when Queen Victoria brought the railroads in. The traders’ fortunes had been made through camel caravans, and only those who’d adapted had been able to keep up their old luxuries. As a result, the narrow palaces on either side of Herrington’s sat empty, though the privacy-loving demon probably preferred it that way. Charles himself hadn’t given their abandoned state a second thought until this year.

Everything struck him differently with Beth here.

He punched his down-filled pillow and turned it to its cooler side, his body tightening at the thought of her. Other females wouldn’t have changed the way they lived, but Beth was a relative innocent, despite her claims to the contrary. More to the point perhaps, she was an innocent both he and Herrington cared about.

Before Beth’s arrival, the mansion had been a place to grab a meal or a shower bath. Charles and Herrington had each kept to their own floor, and to their own business. The house had always been spotless, of course; no Yama tolerated dirt or clutter, but it had all been very masculine and civilized. Beth’s presence made the
haveli
feel uncannily like a home.

They ate together now, without their noses buried in newspapers, sometimes at a pretty table in the courtyard’s shade. Herrington ordered flowers to decorate the mansion’s fancy niches. Walls were painted rather than just repaired, and the number of Yamish conveniences multiplied. They had hot running water these days, electric lights, and an automated clothing sterilizer for whatever garments didn’t need sending out. Charles knew the permits to keep these amenities in Bhamjran must have cost the moon, but Herrington acted as if he and Charles had always lived this way.

Herrington didn’t say so, but Charles suspected Beth reminded him of his own half-demon daughter when she was Beth’s age. Roxanne had kept her father at arm’s length for a good long time, fearing—with some cause—that he would try to run her life. Today Herrington and Roxanne were close, but Beth must have been a reminder of old mistakes. Herrington knew Roxanne would no more tolerate him crowding Beth than she would tolerate him crowding her. He was obliged to be very canny in his quest to protect Beth
and
her sensibilities.

Despite how intimidating the autocratic Yama could be, Charles had to smile at the lengths to which he went to shield their new roommate. Though Herrington was no monk, with Beth in residence he no longer brought women here. The man who’d faced down empires snuck out like a boy instead.

The crunch of rubber tires on the street beneath Charles’s window suggested his employer might be sneaking out tonight. Charles debated remaining where he was, but curiosity got the best of him. He’d heard rumors that the “Red Fox” had bagged himself a tigress this season, a leader of one of the Vharzovhin’s mysterious mercenary tribes. Charles had never met a female chieftain, and even if Herrington’s lovers weren’t his concern, he couldn’t resist the chance to see this one.

Throwing off his sheets, he crept to the deep-set window of his room. The
jali
screen that fronted it suggested these chambers had been designed to house males. Sandstone lacework extended over the opening to a height above his head, enabling him to see out without revealing his presence. Had he been a member of a harem, no one but his mistress would have been allowed to see his face. Finding that thought a bit too interesting, he kneeled on the window seat and peered down. There he saw his guess was correct. Herrington was stepping out of an electrified motorcar: a jeep, as he called it. Its headlights were the only illumination in the empty street.

As if she were a shadow herself, a tall, lean woman glided out of the darkness cast by the opposite row of homes. The auto’s headlights lit her well. She wore trousers like a local, and her long over-robes were black. More black turbaned and veiled her head, a narrow slit between the wrappings all that bared her eyes. She was taller than Beth, her strides even less feminine. A leather strap secured an array of knives across her chest. When she pushed her sleeves farther up her arms, the wiry muscles that emerged suggested the wicked-looking weapons weren’t just for show. Almost as barbaric were the stacks of golden rings that gleamed on her long fingers. They seemed calculated to draw attention to her knuckles, which were as battered as a pugilist’s.

Stopping a foot from her paramour, the chieftain tugged her facial veiling down. The gesture bared features that were as hard and lean as the rest of her, not beautiful but dramatic. A tattoo formed of dark-blue dots followed the contours of one cheekbone—depicting some bird of prey, Charles thought. Above it, her eyes were narrowed to wary slits.

“Herrington,” she said, her voice a cool challenge.

Herrington inclined his head. “I am honored you have come, Sahel.”

Sahel laughed softly. “Does a demon know how to be honored?”

To Charles’s surprise, the usually undemonstrative Yama took her face in his hands. His height and size made his partner seem smaller than she was. Charles couldn’t help wondering if this was part of his appeal for her. Given how Sahel lived, she couldn’t have been accustomed to meeting males this commanding.

Powerful or not, Herrington knew how to play suitor. His thumbs swept her cheeks gently. “Any man would be honored to spend time with you.”

“You knew I couldn’t resist your invitation.”

“I dared to hope. Our last encounter did seem worth repeating to me.”

The chieftain laughed again, just as dryly as before. “How polite you demons are! Kiss me, Lord Herrington. I feel the need for a reminder of why I’m not sorry I gave in.”

Despite the icy fronts they liked to present, as a race the Yama were highly sexed. Herrington’s response proved he was no exception. He kissed Sahel with a curse that let Charles know how much he wanted to devour her.

Charles should have moved away from the window then, should have given the couple their privacy, but the instant intensity of the embrace held him where he was.

There was more heat in that one kiss than he had ever seen his employer show. The pair looked ready to climb into each other, to damn possible watchers and do it in the street. Sahel was clawing at Herrington’s shoulders and, though Charles’s human eyes couldn’t see it, her energy had to be running into him. Clearly affected, Herrington groaned and lifted Sahel, turning to press her body into the side of his open-roofed motorcar. Sahel’s legs parted easily for his weight, her head falling back in mute surrender as he nipped her throat.

“Do it,” she said, her voice a shade away from a moan. She caught the hand that had gripped her waist, urging it beneath the leather strap that sheathed her knives. Charles’s breath stalled in his lungs as Herrington’s hand disappeared into the folds of black robing above her heart. This was where her strongest pool of energy lay, the chakra most Yama liked to feed from.

“Take what you want from me,” she said

Herrington broke from her at the demand. Sahel frowned as he let her slide down the jeep onto her well-scuffed boots. Though she couldn’t have had much experience with being thwarted, she didn’t try to wrest away, probably because Herrington held her arms too tightly for her to succeed. He was breathing hard, his eyes glittering like jet as he took in her angry flush. She couldn’t hide how much she wanted him, no more than Herrington could hide how much he longed to do as she asked.

Watching them, Charles’s hands had tightened into sweaty fists. He couldn’t have looked away to save his life, not when his darkest fantasy was so close to being acted out in front of him. A rim of silver was all that prevented Herrington’s alien eyes from going black, and Charles knew very well what this signified.

The Yama was aroused but not out of control yet.

“I want to fuck you,” Herrington said, his trademark demon coolness harshened to a rasp. “All night if you’ll let me, with every scrap of power I have. If I draw off your energy now, you’ll be too weak to stand up to that.”

The chieftain tossed her head in anger, but Herrington did not relent. “I mean it, Sahel. Like it or not, you’re only human. You’ll never be as strong as I am.”

“I should kill you for saying that. I should cut off your balls where you stand.”

She sounded like she meant it, but Herrington grinned at her, an expression so human it startled. “I hope you won’t, Sahel. I’d far rather put my balls at your service.”

Sahel snorted, her anger turning to humor. “That’s not all you’ll put at my service, demon. That golden tongue of yours is useful, too.”

She squirmed away from him, vaulting neatly into the passenger seat of his motorcar, where she waited like the queen she obviously thought she was for him to drive her where she wished to go. Herrington shook his head, but followed the unspoken order with a faint, lingering smile.

Clearly, he considered the cost to his pride worth paying for a night with her.

Charles closed his eyes as the electric engine hummed to life. He should have closed them sooner; should, in fact, have never watched at all. Now he was so hard he hurt, the blood beating hot and thick through his stiffened cock. His fist was close enough to touch it, but he forced his hand away. Bad enough he’d played the voyeur. He didn’t have to reward himself for it.

I need a shower,
he thought.
A long, icy one.

The best bathing chamber was on the floor above. This was Beth’s floor, though, thankfully, the bath wasn’t next to her bedroom. As he padded up the servant’s stairs to reach it, his erection bobbed inside his loose sleeping pants, seeming not to realize the castigation it was in for. Every step, every brush against the cotton thickened it. This shouldn’t have felt so much like pleasure, but he couldn’t deny it did.

With a tight shiver of arousal, he saw Sahel’s hand again in his mind, dragging Herrington’s to her heart. How many times as a boy had he seen some demon in an alley doing exactly that? How many times had he turned away, shuddering with relief that the human donor wasn’t him? Now he wondered if his relief had been the birth of fascination. Had he secretly wished he’d had the courage to sell his soul to the enemy?

In those days, enemies were how they’d all thought of the Yama, despite Victoria’s attempts to paint her benefactors as allies. Demons were smarter, stronger, richer—the poorest of them flush enough to buy the very essence of human life. Humans like Charles, who lived in the underbelly of the queen’s empire, knew their continued existence depended on the demons’ whims. They could crush his race any time they chose.