The Shadow Queen (9 page)

“And saw a memory.”

“A thousand memories.” Daemon swallowed hard. “I saw the body, but not the face. I saw the clothes, but not the person who wore them. And my own worst nightmare from those years happened. I was so completely aroused I couldn’t turn away from what I wanted. What I
needed.
It was like being thrown into the rut without any warning. And then you moved as if you were going to leave, and—” He clamped his teeth together.

Jaenelle refilled the coffee cup, taking her time as she added cream and sugar. “You scared me last night.”

He bowed his head. “I know.”

“This was more than the rut, Daemon.” She hesitated. “You know who I am when you’re caught in the rut. Last night . . . I wasn’t sure you knew who was under you—or cared.”

“I didn’t know,” he admitted. “Not until I touched you. And then . . .” The smell of last night filled the room, and every thought encouraged his body to remember what he’d done while she was under him. Every thought encouraged the part of his nature he tried so hard to keep leashed to wake up again, play again, dance with her again.

After a long silence, Jaenelle said, “Say it.”

“When I touched you, when I realized where we were and that I was aroused
because
it was you, I had one thought: This was my room, my bed, and you were . . . mine. And no one was going to stop me from having you. Nothing was going to stop me from satisfying every need.”

He reached for the coffee cup, then reconsidered and took another bite of omelet.

“Once I knew it was you,” he said softly,“all the things I had hated for so many years were the things I now wanted. I wanted your scent on my sheets. I wanted to lay in this bed on other nights and remember having you.”

When she didn’t comment, he poked at the food, eating to have something to do.

Finally she said with dry amusement,“You
were
pretty single-minded last night. Mine, mine, mine. I guess this really did jab at the possessive side of your nature, didn’t it?”

He huffed out a laugh. “I guess it did.”

She pinched a bit of the shift between thumb and forefinger. “As for this, I’m sorry it brought back bad memories. I’ll—”

“Wear it again? Please?”

She looked wary.

He touched her hand briefly, the first contact he’d made since he’d walked back into the room. “Bad timing. If I’d seen you in those clothes in your bedroom or here on any other night . . . Well, I can’t say the outcome would have been different, but the reasons I reacted to the clothes would have been.”

Which made him wonder about something that hadn’t occurred to him last night. “Why
were
you wearing that?”

She blushed. Shrugged. Fiddled with the coffee cup.

He waited, a patient predator.

“I was reading a story and when the woman wore something like this, the man . . .” Another shrug. More fiddling.

He tried to remember what she’d been reading lately, but couldn’t recall a title. “Maybe I should read that book to get a few ideas.”

“
You
don’t need any ideas.”

He was pretty sure that was a compliment.

Since he was feeling easier and the food was there in front of him, he ate some more.

“Will you wear it again?”

“To spend the night in this room or the other bedroom?” Jaenelle asked softly.

“Both,” he answered, just as softly.

A slow, mischievous smile. “Instead of negotiating about which bed to use, maybe we should just flip a coin to see who gets to be on top.”

Last night he’d dominated, possessed, kept her under his body and under his control. Now he had a sudden image of her riding him, her body a teasing shadow covered by the shift, her legs sheathed in those sheer white stockings, his fingers moving up her legs to the damp skin above the stockings, moving up to the wet heat that sheathed him.

That image stayed in his mind, but the tone changed, becoming a dark, spicy thrill when she realized she wasn’t the one in control, that he was still . . .

He jerked back, snarling, as fingers snapped in front of his face.

Jaenelle stared at him. “I don’t know where your brain went just now, but, Mother Night, Daemon, judging by the way your eyes glazed, we don’t have time for whatever you were thinking.”

They had all the time they wanted. Who would dare interrupt them?

“I’m going to Dharo today, remember?”

Leave? She was going to
leave
?

“Daemon. You have a guest, remember?”

Theran. Stranger. Male.
Rival.

Her hand clamped over his wrist. Physically, he could break the hold without effort. But her touch, her will, was the only chain strong enough to keep him leashed.

He shifted on the bed, trying to find a comfortable position, trying not to snarl at her for denying him the right to eliminate a rival.

She blew out a breath and kept her hand clamped on his wrist.

“You won’t be able to settle if I stay here today, and if you don’t settle, Prince Theran is going to end up dead.”

She was right, and they both knew it.

“And you need to get out of this room until it’s been cleaned and aired.”

She was right about that too. But . . .

He wasn’t Daemon anymore. Not completely. That other side of him was swimming close to the surface, wanting to dance, wanting to play, wanting to give her a little taste of fear while he aroused her body and produced a banquet of climaxes ranging from wild screams to soft, helpless moans.

He caught the back of her neck and pulled her forward gently, carefully, implacably. His mouth opened and hovered a breath away from hers.

“Kiss me.” Not a request. A purring command.

She trembled a little as her mouth touched his. As her tongue touched his.

A soft kiss. A lingering kiss that soothed with the promise of fire at the end of the day.

He eased back and shoved his brain and libido—and the Sadist—away from all the thoughts of what his body wanted to do with hers.

“Am I forgiven?” he asked.

“For last night? Yes. For eating the last bite of the seafood omelet? I’ll have to think about that.”

He looked at the tray and realized they’d done a fair job of cleaning the plates. “I didn’t drink any of the coffee,” he muttered.

Jaenelle bared her teeth in a feral smile and lightly pinched his cheek. “That’s why you still have all your fingers.”

 

Daemon stepped out of the Consort’s suite and felt the dark presence in the rooms across the corridor. He shivered as he stared at the door to his father’s sitting room.

As much as he’d told Jaenelle in an effort to explain last night, there was so much more he hadn’t said. Couldn’t say. Not to her.

For one thing, he wasn’t stable, wasn’t sure he could be trusted around her—and that scared him to the bone.

He crossed the corridor, knocked on the door, and waited for his father’s deep voice to give him permission to enter. Barely pausing to close the door, he hurried to the chair where Saetan was reading a book, and sank to his knees.

“Father.”

Saetan closed the book, then removed and vanished his half-moon glasses. “What’s wrong?”

Jaenelle’s lack of anger and her willingness to understand had helped him maintain a crust of calm, a thin layer of control, that had hidden a seething ugliness for a little while.

But here, now, he faced a man who wouldn’t hesitate to punish him if he needed to be punished, who wouldn’t hesitate to hurt him if that was needed to pay the debt. Who would understand the depth of what he’d done wrong.

“Father,” he said, his voice breaking. “I hurt Jaenelle.
I scared Jaenelle.
” Those words would mean little to most people, but Saetan would know what it would take to frighten Witch.

“Tell me,” Saetan said.

He told Saetan everything.
Everything.
And when he was done, he pressed his face against his father’s legs . . . and wept.

 

Hell’s fire, Mother Night, and may the Darkness be merciful,
Saetan thought as he stroked Daemon’s hair, the movement of his hand weaving a soothing spell around his son.

It could have been worse. Could have been much worse. This was a painful reminder that Daemon’s mind and sanity had been shattered twice—and no matter how strong the man, no matter how well he healed, there were always scars, always permanent damage. But he could help his boy deal with the fears stemming from last night.

“Are you ready to listen?” Saetan asked quietly.

What worried him was the certainty that if he told Daemon to strip and lie on the floor to be whipped until there wasn’t any skin left on his back, Daemon wouldn’t hesitate, wouldn’t question—as long as the punishment came with the promise that Jaenelle would
truly
forgive him for last night.

Daemon nodded, his face still pressed against Saetan’s legs.

“I’m here because Jaenelle asked me to come—not because she needed me, but because you did.”

“She needs a Healer,” Daemon whispered.

And you need more than a Healer.
And the witch who had the skill to mend what had been broken was currently in the suite across the hall. “I’ll see to it, and I will tell you what is needed. I’ll also find something to do with your guest.” And wouldn’t that be fun?

“Now,” he said, giving Daemon’s hair a tweak, “you need some rest, so I want you to wash your face, strip down, and get into my bed.”

He felt the jolt, recognized the reason. A Warlord Prince was what he was, and letting another male in his bed for any reason was an unspoken testimony of love. His bed had been forbidden ground, but every one of his boys had been allowed to have a nap there when they were feeling shaky or heartsore. Sometimes he had joined them, had held them while they whispered their little hurts and secrets; sometimes he sat in a chair by the bed, reading. Either way, his boys knew they were safe there, protected there. And sometimes knowing that was all they needed.

“Really?” Daemon asked, with just enough doubt to rip at Saetan’s heart.

“Really. I’ll even read you a story after I take care of a couple of things. Go on, now.”

Daemon got to his feet, unable to hide how shaky he was physically and emotionally. He swallowed once, twice. Then he rushed to the bathroom and slammed the door shut.

A moment later, aural shields went up around the bathroom to hide the sounds of Daemon being violently sick.

Sighing, Saetan went across the hall and knocked on the door to Jaenelle’s sitting room.

Fresh from a bath, she was bundled in a robe, her golden hair still damp. He saw no fear in the sapphire eyes that assessed him, but he did see worry.

Using Craft, he floated a footstool over to her chair and sat down in front of her.

“How is he?” Jaenelle asked.

“First things first. Was this rape?”
Am I going to have to execute my son?

He saw the shock in her eyes, quickly followed by anger. “No.”

“Are you saying that to protect him because he’s your husband?”

“No.” Her voice was icy and knife-edged. “I’m saying that because it wasn’t. He gave me a choice, Saetan. He asked me to stay, but he told me I could go. I chose to stay.”

Sick relief washed through Saetan. Daemon hadn’t remembered giving her a choice, and even though the word had remained unspoken, the fear that he’d crossed an unforgivable line had been in every word Daemon
had
said.

“You need to see a Healer, witch-child.”

“I
am
a Healer.”

And a Black Widow and a Queen. One of the three witches in all of Kaeleer who had a triple gift.

“Then I need an accurate list of your injuries.” Jaenelle was his adopted daughter; Daemon was his son. More than that, he had been her Steward. This wouldn’t be comfortable for either of them, but they
were
going to have this conversation. “Before you try to shrug this off because you’d rather not be frank with me, you should keep in mind that whatever broke in Daemon last night may stay broken unless it’s fixed in a hurry, and if it stays broken, your husband may not be able to do more than imagine making love to you again.”

“Does he really know what happened last night?”

Saetan frowned. “I had the impression he explained some of this to you.”

“Yes, he did.” Jaenelle studied him for a moment, then pushed back the sleeves of her robe and held out her wrists.

Ugly bruises. His own wrists ached in sympathy.

“That’s the worst of it,” Jaenelle said, smoothing the sleeves back down. “There are a few other bruises from love bites, but considering where they’re located, I’m not going to show you.”

On the basis of Daemon’s fears, he’d been prepared for something far more serious, and he found himself comforted by Jaenelle’s tone of amused snippiness.

“I’m a bit sore, but that has to do with quantity, not his temper, and at any other time, he’d be smugly sympathetic about that,” Jaenelle continued. “And between the exercise I got with Nighthawk
and
Daemon, my thighs are sore enough that I’m not interested in riding anything for a couple of days.”

Saetan gave in to the smile tugging his lips. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

His smile faded. Couldn’t be all of it. “He scared you. That’s the sticking point for him. He scared
you
.”

“Yes, he did,” Jaenelle replied quietly. “He didn’t know who I was, Saetan. He didn’t know
where
he was. He was caught in some twisting memory, and when I realized that, I also realized that if he really tried to hurt me, I was going to have to hurt him, because he would be able to live with a physical injury much easier than he could live with the knowledge that he’d done more than give me a couple of unintentional bruises.”