Kiss of a Demon King (7 page)

7

A
re you beginning to believe I’m yours?”

As he’d done a few times before, the demon met her gaze steadily with his inscrutable obsidian eyes, but he said nothing. Sabine realized he did this when he was tempted to lie. Most people looked away in the same situation, but his eyes challenged hers.

She leaned forward. “I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be not to spill your seed. Sex must be so diminished. I bet you constantly wonder what it would be like to mount a soft, writhing female and pour your seed into her.”

At her words, his brows drew together as if in pain, his lips curling back from his fangs.

“Now you can stop wondering. Say a few words, and I’ll climb atop you and feed you into my body. I’ll ride you so hard, demon, until you can’t come anymore.” She wanted to—she was nearly as aroused as he was.

To know this at last…she’d never imagined that he’d deny her this final step.

The crown was now slick all over. As they both stared, she was finally able to read one of his thoughts, because he was silently commanding her.

Run your tongue over the head!
hit her mind like a blast of heat.

“Do it,
tassia,
” he rasped aloud.

“What does that word mean?”

“
Wicked female,
because that’s what you are. Now taste what you’ve wrought from me.”

“I want to,” she murmured in truth as she leaned down, lower, closer. Her breasts ached, her nipples swelling into tight points. “I will.”

She knew exactly when he could feel her breath on his flesh; his every muscle tensed in anticipation.

“Say the words, Rydstrom. Make me your queen.”

“Lower…put it in your mouth!”

He’s going to bloody do it again. Deny
me. She drew back and coldly said, “Your vow, demon. Or I go.”

“Never!”

As she rose up, releasing him, she snapped, “You can’t win this—you only waste my time!”

His hands fisted above the manacles. “Finish me!”

“Just a few words away!” She cast an illusion over herself of the dress she’d worn earlier. “Maybe next time.”

He reverted to his demon tongue, which she didn’t have to understand to know he was cursing her vilely. No matter. She turned for the door, leaving him digging his heels in the bed and thrusting that great shaft into the air.

Outside, her ubiquitous assistant was waiting, ready to take direction. Sabine just called her “Inferi.” She called all of them Inferi.

Though Sabine was still humming from her encounter with her captive, she attempted to sound calm as she gave out instructions.

She ordered that he be sedated once more, then made to clean himself and see to his needs for the night. After that, he was to be secured to the bed with a collar at his neck, and then have his wrists bound behind his back—just in case he decided to release any steam.

Sabine figured that if he got aroused enough, even a “little bitch” like her would begin to look like a Pollyanna.

Deep in thought, she left the dungeon, trudged to her tower, then began the six flights of stairs to her room. She knew she should be more alert to danger—Omort had cornered her on her way to her room often enough—but she couldn’t get her mind off Rydstrom’s body.

She’d never expected to be so affected by him. She’d been taught to think of herself as better than demons, and had seen this “breeding” as a mere play for power.

But aside from his inexplicable bent toward good—and the fact that he was their blood enemy—Rydstrom called to her. He was so different from the men she’d known and fraternized with that he intrigued her.

How had he gotten the scar on his face? And the ones along his shaft? Now that she’d seen most of him, there was no erasing the vision of his chest and those long, brawny arms. She’d run her greedy gaze over his large sex….

Sabine sighed. Tonight, she was going to have to make a date with B.O.B.—her battery-operated boyfriend.

Once she crossed the threshold to her chamber and bolted the door behind her, she relaxed marginally and cast off the illusion of her dress. She was tired, but then, she was getting home from a full day of work.

She gazed into her gilded mirror. Her career was everything to her.

Plots and subplots.
Sabine was notorious for them, and she was in deep with one right now.

Omort, Sabine, and Lanthe alone knew the real truth behind Rydstrom’s capture. The demon’s heir wasn’t needed to quell rebellions but to unlock the mysterious Well of Souls in the center of Tornin’s court. Sabine didn’t know how the prince would release the power of the well. Only that he would.

But what Omort didn’t know was that Sabine would see that her son unlocked it for her—alone. She was going to usurp the power from the Pravus. From Omort himself.

Sabine planned to take the kingdom of Rothkalina and turn it into a queendom.

By capturing the demon, she’d finally seized the means to do so. Now if she could just get him to bed her.

Rydstrom had never known such a pain existed. His cock was still in agony. He tried to ignore the pressure within it, tried to ignore the chains that bound him, but the manacles cleaved into his skin.

The indignity of this burned him inside like acid.

His mind was in turmoil, questions surfacing endlessly. Would she return tonight? How long would she leave him bound? How had Sabine learned so much about Groot’s bargain?

How long had this capture been planned?

He had to get free—but how?
No one escapes the dungeons of Tornin…
He’d need to use Sabine as hostage. Unless she could be turned against Omort. How much loyalty did she have for her brother?

The benefits of winning a sorceress like her over to their side would be incalculable.

He tried to remember what he knew about the Sorceri in general. He recalled that they were greedy for wealth, merry hedonists who lived their lives in pursuit of pleasure—and gold. But they were also secretive and paranoid, suspicious of strangers who arrived at their doorstep. Most tended to live in the farthest reaches of the earth.

Yet they weren’t an inherently evil race.
You’re just thinking this way because you want her.
Maybe, but the fact remained that it was a possibility. Right now, it was the only one that seemed viable.

He was still in disbelief that she possibly was his. The Accession often brought pairs together, seeding families. He’d secretly entertained the faintest hope that maybe he could find his other half during this one. Over the years, he’d fantasized about his female constantly, wondering if she’d have a throaty laugh. Smooth skin. A body he could lose himself in.

Rydstrom struggled to recall a single thing he’d change about Sabine physically. Her skin was glowing, her cheeks rosy. Her glossy hair had shone in the firelight. Not a single mark marred her skin.

When her eyes had shimmered a bright metallic blue with her desire…she couldn’t feign that. Nor her body’s reaction. Her sex had been wet, the soft lips
bare
. His claws sank into his palms.

After the last few weeks, this was just fuel on a blaze. There were too many conflicts within him. His mind simply didn’t work like this. Usually potential decisions unfurled in precise tree diagrams, with clear choices and predicted outcomes. Normally, he was rational, and liked things straightforward,
needed
them to be so.

Yet now little was as it seemed, or if it was, it was utterly
wrong
. He had returned home but as a prisoner. He might have found his fated queen, but she was conniving, cutthroat, and amoral. Until he could escape, his fate and the fate of his people rested in Cadeon’s hands—and that was a tenuous position to be in.

Especially now, when Cadeon had with him the woman he’d once drunkenly called “the highlight of my existence.”

Rydstrom had been there the first time Cadeon had seen Holly Ashwin, and he had sensed an energy between them. Yet Cadeon had been unable to attempt her because he’d thought she was a human.

Now Cadeon had learned Holly was actually a Valkyrie. So nothing stood in Cadeon’s way of having her.

How could Rydstrom expect his brother to not only deny himself his female but also to turn her over to Groot, a psychotic murderer who only wanted to breed with her?

The last time the kingdom had needed him, Cadeon had turned his back on Rydstrom and their family. Why would this time be any different?

Thinking of Cadeon and Holly made another suspicion creep over him. The two of them were complete opposites. Cadeon, a slob and a cold-hearted mercenary, had found his woman in a glasses-wearing, genius mathematician with a fixation on cleaning.

The obsessive-compulsive scholar and the rolling-stone soldier of fortune. A completely unexpected and absurd pairing.

Rydstrom was known as upstanding and good, Sabine as treacherous and evil. It didn’t seem to matter. He couldn’t ignore how his body had reacted to the sorceress. Instinctively he knew that should he sink into her, the seal would be broken. He would at last know the feeling of releasing his seed, and would be able to forever after.

Recently, he’d consulted the soothsayer Nïx about his future. She’d replied with a grin, “It’s a doozy.” She’d seemed secretly amused, as if from some kind of irony.

Nothing could be more ironic than Sabine being Rydstrom’s queen. This situation was precisely what Nïx would find amusing. The Valkyrie worshipped fate like a religion.

And they were the first to admit that fate was a fickle bitch.

I can deny it….

The cell door groaned open and servants entered. “We’re to get you ready for this eve.” Again powder stung his eyes.

8

W
hen Sabine shot awake, she found her bed was sitting in the pouring rain and muddy field she’d been buried alive in all those years ago.

She blinked her eyes, realizing this was a chimera scene from a dream. She’d always cast illusions when dreaming or in the grip of a nightmare. As she absently ran her fingers over the scar at her neck, the illusion faded, her bedroom revealed again….

This tower room was once supposed to have been the private chambers of Rydstrom. It was in the west tower, the one closest to the water, and had wall-size windows that she kept open to the ocean breezes. She’d redecorated it with flowing banners in scarlet and black that whipped in the wind.

She knew going back to sleep would be impossible, since she’d scarcely managed to drift off the first time—

“You didn’t dream of your prisoner,” a voice intoned from the shadows of her chamber.

She jerked back to the headboard when she spied Omort’s yellow eyes glowing in the darkness.

After hastily covering her scanty nightgown with an illusion, she made the room appear to blaze with fluorescent light.

This was why she could never sleep through a night. Omort could have bound her wrists behind her back, a simple move that would have blocked her ability to cast illusions—her only defense. “You’ve crossed a line by coming into my room, brother.”

“Wasn’t that just a matter of formality? One soon to be done away with?” He was sending his mental probes out like sonar, but she’d learned to block them completely. He often demanded others open their minds to him, but never Sabine—as if, deep down, he didn’t really want to know her feelings about him.

“What does that mean?”

“With Rydstrom’s capture, we are one step closer to…the inevitable.”

How much longer can I put Omort off?
His trespass in her room boded ill. Once she surrendered her virginity to the demon and bore the child, she would have no sanctuary to protect her. She hadn’t thought he’d be waiting like a vulture, especially not with Hettiah to tide him over.

When he approached the bed, she kept her demeanor composed. Barely. “What do you want?”

“Your covenant is still intact on the east wall. It doesn’t go well with your captive?”

“He is as determined and strong-willed as you said.”

“Maybe I should go see—”

“No! That’s not possible. He doesn’t need to be reminded of our connection,” she said, then hastily asked, “How goes the search for an oracle?” They were caught in a vicious cycle, locating weaker and weaker soothsayers. Each one invariably made mistakes and was executed. Then an even weaker oracle replaced the dead one. “Finding any talent?”

He gave her a look that let her know he’d allowed the change of subject. “I’ve selected one and dispatched fire demons to collect her.”

To collect her.
Oracle Three Fifty-Six had been a volunteer instead of an “acquisition” of Omort’s. Some females stepped up for the position, no doubt thinking they’d be smarter, better, less expendable. They never were.

“It’s critical that we have one in place as soon as possible,” she said in a measured tone. Sabine had to tread carefully with this subject, for it was a potentially enraging one for Omort.

He’d once stolen the gift of foresight from an oracle but had no talent for interpreting the visions he received. It had made him even more deranged before he’d been forced to relinquish the ability.

“And we shall,” he said absently as he crept around her room, inspecting her things, pausing to pick up a book here and there. Hundreds were stacked all over. Most were histories of this kingdom, of Rydstrom. She’d been studying him for years.

“I hadn’t known you were so well versed on my enemy.”

“I take this seriously—my opportunity to garner power for the Pravus.”

“Yes, I have studied him much as well. Rydstrom has long fascinated me.” He carelessly flipped through an ancient tome, then tossed it away. “Does he believe you’re his?”

“I think so.”

Omort smiled, revealing flawless white teeth, but the expression never reached his cold eyes. “How disappointed the demon must be.” He sat down on the bed beside her.

Calm…calm…distract him.
“What happened that night you faced him? When the kingdom fell? I’ve read what’s been recorded, but the details are hazy.”

“I’d made a secret pact with the Horde king, Demestriu. He aggressed Rydstrom, depleting his armies, then launched a surprise attack. Rydstrom was forced to journey away to defend. That’s when I captured Tornin. The castle was unprotected because Rydstrom’s heir Cadeon refused his summons to defend the holding.”

“Why would he do that?” From everything she’d heard about the mercenary Cadeon, he was fearless.

“Who can understand demons? I find great pleasure in knowing that Rydstrom blames Cadeon for turning his back on his kingdom. What Rydstrom doesn’t understand is that I well knew the importance of Cadeon’s presence in the castle. That’s why I had five hundred revenants waiting to ambush the prince. If Cadeon had obeyed his brother, he and his guard would’ve been slaughtered.”

Interesting. “And you personally faced Rydstrom.”

“He’s the only being I’ve ever fought that lived. Instead of merely burning him to ash, I played at honor, facing him in a sword duel in one of his strongholds. He beheaded me—the blow was true, and deadly for any other. But I rose. He used his brute strength to topple the roof, trapping me inside, and was able to escape.”

Omort’s hand was inching closer to her covered ankle. “Sabine, how much can I trust you?”

“Probably not as much as you can Hettiah. Shouldn’t you be with her now?”

“She doesn’t understand things as you do. And as much as I will it differently, she is a pale comparison to you. A dim shadow to your light.”

“Did you come into my room just to state the obvious?” Her brother’s attraction to Sabine wasn’t fueled only by her looks. She believed Omort secretly hungered for death. In lieu of that, he hungered for her, a woman who knew death so intimately.

When he grazed his forefinger over her covered ankle, his eyes slid shut and drool collected at the corner of his lips. Stifling a shudder, she hastily rose, then crossed to the seaside balcony.

This place always calmed her, like a balm for her mind. During most of her sleepless nights, she stood out here, watching the sea.

Omort moved behind her, not touching her, but standing far too close. No warmth emanated from him. He was cold and deadened like a corpse.

Rydstrom had been all inviting heat.

“You should go, brother. I have a challenging day tomorrow. I’ll need to be on top of my game to be the first to break the iron will of Rydstrom.”

“I’m glad that you’ve ceased underestimating him.”

When she could feel his cold breaths on her neck, she whirled around, hastening to her chamber’s drink service. She poured sweet wine—only for herself—then held up her goblet to Omort. “Brother, do be a dear and poison me.”

Every month, Omort gave her and Lanthe the
morsus,
literally the “stinging bite poison.” The power of the morsus was that it didn’t cause pain upon ingestion but upon withdrawal.

Weaning from the poison was supposed to be so excruciating that she and Lanthe were considered perpetually “condemned.” Without an antidote, the pain would be so great they’d eventually die from it.

The morsus kept them from leaving Omort and from rebelling. For the most part.

He exhaled as if she were putting
him
out, then rotated the thick ring on his forefinger. As he snapped open the jeweled covering of his poison cache, she stared at the ring. It held so much significance for her. It was the source of life, the enforcer of her obedience.

And the ring told her when Omort lied, as he’d unconsciously rotate it.

When he poured the black granules into her wine, a hiss sounded and smoke tendrils seeped upward. But once it settled, it would be odorless and tasteless to those who weren’t trained to detect it.

Ages ago, he’d slipped the morsus into their wine before they’d learned to identify potions by smell and taste—and before they’d learned to create their own to counter him.

Sabine nonchalantly held up the goblet. “
Slàinte
.” She drained the contents. “Now, I really need to get some sleep. Remember, Omort, I’m doing this
for us
. And I know you want us to succeed.”

“Very well, Sabine.” With a last lingering gaze, he finally exited, but not before she heard him murmur,
“Soon.”

Alone once more, she returned to the balcony. As she surveyed the tumultuous sea and breathed deep of the salt air, she mused over her current situation.

Plots and subplots.
She wanted Tornin for herself and for Lanthe. Yet after tonight, she suspected Omort would try to force her to surrender before she ever even got a chance to make her play.

She shivered. He’d been emboldened to come into her room, bringing with him coldness and misery hanging over him like a cloak. She felt pensive, unclean.

For the first time ever, Sabine’s gaze wasn’t held fast by the sea. She turned to the south, toward the dungeon tower.

The demon was such a force of nature, she imagined herself getting lost in him. Ultimately, she found her feet taking her in his direction, her heart aching for…
something.