Demon's Fire (22 page)

“Who the hell are you?” Sahel demanded.

She pulled her veil down beneath her chin, which seemed to be a sort of challenge—as in,
All who see my face must die.
The chieftain had the hardest features Beth had ever seen on a woman—with cheekbones like blades and a jaw to match. In addition to the hawk tattoo beside her eye, her skin bore slender knifemark scars. Their rays formed a symmetrical crisscrossed pattern, and Beth knew she hadn’t gotten them in a fight. They were deliberate: a proof of courage. Marked or not, Sahel was striking, even beautiful if one weren’t afraid. Tou wouldn’t have been afraid, of course; respectful, but not afraid.

“I’m Prince Muto’s assistant,” Beth said.

“His assistant.” Sahel’s disbelief was obvious.

“The term does cover a lot of territory.”

“The prince wouldn’t hire a human.”

Sahel’s objections were playing out so closely to Charles’s predictions that her very doubts shored up Beth’s nerve. “He hired you, didn’t he? Not that it matters, seeing as I’m only half human. Perhaps Welland mentioned me? I’m Roxanne Herrington, his daughter.”

Sahel couldn’t quite pull off a demon’s stony face. A muscle flickered beside her tattooed eye. That flicker told Beth that Herrington didn’t know his lover had been hired to abduct his countryman, and that she wanted it to stay that way. The reaction also told her Charles’s cover story was a good idea. Sahel thought of herself as above the ordinary run of human female. A half demon was more likely to intimidate her, thus rendering her less likely to force a fight Beth and Charles might not win. No matter what the secret chamber had done to her, these were hardened warriors they faced. With Pahndir bound, they were seriously outnumbered.

They were also seriously outarmed. No less than twenty mercenaries milled about the tent. Dagger hilts and other unidentified weapons gleamed among their black clothing—and that was in addition to the arsenal hanging on the walls. With an effort, Beth tore her eyes from the display.

“I’ve heard of you,” Sahel admitted, her arms uncrossing reluctantly. “You’re the half-demon Northerner who paints pictures.”

“It sounds so flattering when you put it like that.”

Sahel didn’t return her smile. “Why are you here?”

“Just making sure you’re treating Muto’s special friend with appropriate severity. I must say, it doesn’t seem as if you are. I know he’s Yamish, but what kind of torturer can’t bring a prisoner to tears?”

Three of the women stepped toward Beth at this insult, their expressions hot and threatening.

“I wouldn’t,” Beth said, caressing her whip with a fondness that wasn’t feigned. “None of your hides have any value to me.”

Sahel ordered them off with a small hand motion. She kept her narrowed gaze on Beth. “I suppose you think you can do better.”

“Oh, I know I can.”

Pahndir made a soft, involuntary sound, his first since she’d entered. Protest seemed to lie behind it, but at a stretch it could have been interpreted as a moan of longing. Beth didn’t dare do more than glance at him from the corner of her eye. His body seemed tenser than it had been before, the muscles standing out like they’d been carved from stone. His sexual tormentor had moved away from him, more concerned with defending her leader than continuing to work on him. Left alone, his cock stood straight and unmoving, dusky, thick, the eye so dark it seemed unnatural.

Sahel was staring at Beth, clearly trying to gauge how seriously she needed to take her. For one such as the chieftain, to challenge Beth and lose would be intolerable. Beth allowed a faint smile to touch her lips as she waited for Sahel’s verdict.

“You might enjoy the show,” she coaxed softly.

The words were all the excuse Sahel needed not to press the issue immediately. She made a mocking
be my guest
gesture with one arm. Beth stepped forward…only to have two of the women move to block Charles.

“I don’t tolerate men in my tent,” Sahel explained.

“But Charles is
my
assistant. And very useful in this particular instance.”

Sahel’s lip curled in a sneer. “Prince Muto said this one liked men. The males of my harem know better than to settle for the attentions of the inferior sex.”

“Do they? Locked up by themselves in that little tent with nothing to do all day? Perhaps you’re right, but if it were me, I’d wonder.”

It was the scene in Pahndir’s parlor all over again. Beth’s arm shot out almost before she’d registered that the mercenary was rushing her. The heel of her palm caught the attacker’s chin, snapping her mouth shut and sending her stumbling back into a companion’s arms. The woman spat blood and swore, the lightning swiftness of Beth’s blow having caused her to bite her tongue.

Beth did her best to act like she did this sort of thing all the time—as opposed to having stunned the hell out of herself.

“Stop,” Sahel barked, when another of her women prepared to charge. The chieftain crossed the tent to stand in front of Beth. She was taller than Beth by an inch or two, her eyes as flat and hard as stones. “I advise you not to try your demon tricks on me, daughter of Herrington. You’ll find you’re not so lucky against a seasoned warrior.”

Sweat trickled down Beth’s back as she schooled her face into an expression of mild humor. She knew she was treading a dangerous line. “I rarely rely on luck. At the moment, though, I’m more interested in carrying out my employer’s charge. Do my assistant and I have your permission to proceed?”

Sahel lowered her brows in warning. “You do. Just see that you mind your tongue.”

As she advanced across the large round tent, Beth could feel Charles’s tension coiling. Some of that tension was arousal. His face was carefully empty, but she could see it in the way he walked, could smell it in the musky scent that mingled a bit too appealingly with Pahndir’s. She and Charles hadn’t specifically discussed what they’d do after they’d talked their way past Sahel, though Muto’s history with Pahndir suggested the prince’s torture would be sexual.
We’ll play it by ear,
was what Charles had said. Clearly, more lay behind that attitude than a wish to be practical. He might be ashamed of his erotic interests, but he wasn’t running from them now. Two of Sahel’s women nudged each other and nodded at Charles’s crotch. Able to imagine what they must be ogling, the muscles of Beth’s sex flexed hard.

The intensity of her need for both men frightened her. If they survived this, neither Charles nor Pahndir seemed likely to be safe from her.

Obliged to ignore that fact, she stopped in front of Pahndir. His lips were parted for his ragged breathing, the gauntness of his face hard to bear. He was in pain, and not only because of his heat. She reminded herself that his race had great recuperative powers, but it was difficult for her to stand this close and not rush to comfort him.

She tapped the coil of her whip in the opposite palm, as if considering where to start. “Stand behind him,” she said to Charles, her voice as cool as she could make it. “I don’t want that pretty face of yours to get lashed.”

Charles obeyed without a word, the perfect dignified subordinate. Pahndir must have understood what was coming. His body began to move, a slow, helpless writhe against the smooth wood frame. He was like a cat trying to scratch its back, except she knew this particular cat would rather have remained still. He simply couldn’t stop himself, any more than she could stop her nostrils from flaring at the rising sting of his scent.

Her borrowed trousers seemed to cup her pubis closer than clothing should.

“Yes,” she murmured, too aware of the flooding heat between her legs. “You like the idea of being whipped by an expert.”

She said the words as part of her role, but they caused a flush to sweep in a wave up Pahndir’s throat and face. His muscle-ridged belly jerked. As clearly as if he’d said it, she knew it wasn’t an expert he wanted whipping him, it was her: the woman he cared about and was attracted to. The knowledge disturbed her even as it titillated. To be learning this intimate thing about him now was unnerving. But she couldn’t afford to be distracted. Despite the wariness he’d put on for Sahel, she could tell he knew she and Charles were here to rescue him. That he wasn’t feeling betrayed was a great relief, though it could not ease her other hundred concerns.

To her dismay, Beth realized she’d been caressing the whip all this time. She felt a little too ready to use it, a little too hungry to cause him the pain she now suspected he’d enjoy.

She licked her lips, a nervous gesture she wished she could call back. Would Sahel let her get away without doing this? Beth truly wasn’t certain she could trust herself, no matter what Charles advised about showing no weakness.

But it seemed Pahndir read her hesitation as easily as she did his arousal. He tossed his glorious black hair in scorn.

“I don’t care who you are,” he said, his voice as raw as if he’d been screaming. “You won’t make me cry with that human toy.”

He took the choice from her, forcing her to perform the very act she’d hoped to avoid. The realization hardened her resolve, made her speak as the emissary of his enemy actually might.

“I don’t have to make you cry with this,” she said. “I only have to get you ready to.”

Beth was here. She was
here
. And Charles was with her. The two people he most wanted to give a damn had come for him. He hadn’t been abandoned by the world again after all. Such joy suffused Pahndir at their arrival, so strong, so fierce and irrational, that at first he hadn’t recognized the truth.

Happiness wasn’t the only powerful reaction humming through his bones. Pahndir’s kith had begun to rise.

The instant Beth’s golden eyes had met his across the tent, the swollen glands in his neck convulsed, flooding his mouth with the distinctive tart-sweet taste of his body’s personal love philter. The influx dizzied him as much as the prospect of rescue.

Dizzy or not, he knew what the reaction meant. Beth could mate him. Beth could make him spill. If they kissed, his kith would flow to her, would seduce her, until she was as mindlessly wild to have and have and have him as he was to have her. After two long years of searching, he finally had his answer.

It was just his bad luck that the Universe chose this impossible moment to deliver his heart’s desire.

His stinging, all-black eyes fell to the whip he had just obliged her to use on him. He’d known he had to push her to it; Sahel would not be satisfied with less, and all the same his body shuddered, wracked by unnatural lusts he could not suppress. Nothing could be more forbidden for a Yama than to lose control, unless it were to fall in love, which made having Beth be the one acting out this dark fantasy a good bit beyond too much. The circumstances couldn’t quell his cravings: the danger, the unfriendly eyes. In truth, they were a stimulus. He did indeed want this enough to cry.

Beth’s huge eyes took in the nuances of his expression, her own cheeks flushed with sensual heat. He hoped the humans couldn’t see their color in the low light. He wanted her desire to be a secret for him alone—and not only because that was safer.

“Well?” Sahel said from a distance more than the stretch of the tent could account for. “Are you going to show us your skills or not?”

Beth’s gaze slid to Charles and then returned to him.

“I am,” she said, her voice touched by a hoarseness Pahndir suspected only he could hear.

She let her hands relax, and the whip uncoiled like a snake to trail on the floor. A shiver ripped down Pahndir’s vertebrae, ending in a ghostly finger’s touch beneath his tailbone. His kingmaster gland felt like it had tripled in size and sensitivity within the last minute, a hot, pulsing itch inside his rectum. The feeling was a familiar symptom of his heat, but with the liberation of his kith, his nerves were in overdrive. Pahndir had a second to fight the urge to grind the muscles of his rear against each other, to soothe that terrible burning. Before he could, Beth swung her arm and brought the whip alive.

He hadn’t known what to expect of her technique, and probably hadn’t cared, but the precision of the strike stole a gasp from him. The whip snapped the air a millimeter above his skin, licking it enough to sear him, though not enough to draw a single bead of blood. A moment later, the leather licked again, crossing the first mark to form a perfect X across his chest. His nipples tightened into points just above the ends of the two hot lines. The wounds the tribeswomen had inflicted felt like nothing compared to these; theirs were crude injuries, barely worth crying out over. But Beth found nerves that shot sensation to his sex in long lightning bolts, as if pain had always been designed to engender bliss, as if she had a secret road map to his body.

The effect was like alchemy. In the space of a few taut seconds, she’d transformed what Sahel’s women had done to him, showing him the difference between what he wanted and what he had received. Though it made him shudder, he suspected he was about to get a better, truer version of what he desired than he’d ever known.

Without a pause, Beth set two neat
X
s over his left thigh, then two matching ones over his right. Her eyes were hard and glittering, the eyes of a woman he’d never met before. She was breathing deeply, but not out of breath. Her lungs filled, her hard-tipped breasts expanding beneath Charles’s shirt. The whip whistled yet again. This time the tail curled like a lover around his buttock. The skin there bloomed and pulsed with flame. She laid six stripes on either side of his arse in quick succession, her motions almost too quick to track. Seeing that, he was willing to believe she was half demon.

Then she stopped and stepped back.

A smattering of applause broke out from Sahel’s women. Until he heard it, he didn’t realize how completely Beth had decimated his restraint. He was struggling violently in his bonds, writhing as he gasped for air. The single sound that tore from his throat was dangerously close to a sob.

“There,” she said. “That ought to have warmed you up for Charles.”

He groaned, his dread and arousal not remotely a sham. His dignity meant nothing then. He was on fire, inside and out. He wanted Charles’s cock inside him, driving over and over his tormented kingmaster gland, wanted Charles’s hips slapping the brands Beth had put on him. He wanted to be hurt as much as he wanted to be pleasured, wanted to be erased and remade with lust. Most of all, he wanted to be overwhelmed.

Please,
he thought, biting his lip against begging aloud.
Please do it now.

“Take him,” Beth ordered Charles. “And, for God’s sake, don’t be nice.”

When Charles had worked at the top hat club, he’d sometimes performed in front of customers, but none of those occasions had affected him like this. Lord in Heaven, he was
hard
, so stiff and hot he couldn’t keep his hands from shaking as he unbuttoned the stretched front of his trousers and peeled the sweaty cloth apart. The role he was playing, the role
he’d
made up, had settled over his skin too easily. To be answering to Beth’s orders, to be preparing to torment Pahndir at her behest, had his cock throbbing in agony.

The prince was at their mercy, very nearly broken by lust. The knowledge sizzled through his brain like a sexual drug.

Charles was fortunate he’d already taken advantage of the crowd’s distraction to slip the pocketknife from his boot. He doubted his presence of mind was up to palming it now. Grimacing, he hooked both thumbs into his trousers and pushed the garment to his hips.

His cock bounced free from its constraints, heavy and alive. Voices murmured in admiration, but he ignored them to step closer to Pahndir. The heavy frame the prince was tied to gave Charles full access to his back. As if he sensed Charles approaching, muscles twitched beneath his smooth, pale gold skin. His narrow buttocks were knotted, heat rolling off his body as if from a fire. When Charles took hold of his cheeks to part them, a soft, pained sound broke from the prisoner.

Charles suspected it wasn’t a reaction to the stripes Beth had put there.

“He’s going to take him anally?” one of the desert women asked, startling Charles but hardly putting him off. She sounded more intrigued than horrified.

“Yes,” Sahel said. “Muto tells me royals have an extra gland in their rear passage. When they’re in heat, rubbing anything over it drives them mad, especially since they can’t ejaculate without a proper mate.”

This talk of heat and glands was news to Charles, but when he glanced at Beth, she didn’t appear surprised. Looking genuinely autocratic, she motioned with her fingers for him to go on. Maybe she really did intend to make Pahndir cry. Maybe a demon’s pride seemed a small price to pay for his freedom. Charles had no inclination to object, though that shamed him.

His marching orders clear, he continued pulling Pahndir’s cheeks apart, finding the little opening tightly furled. Pahndir’s hairlessness inspired a frisson of surprise, followed by a stronger shiver of interest. Lines of perspiration gleamed on the rounded, satiny flesh, joined by fresh ones even as he watched. Pahndir was nervous, but not from lack of desire.

He’d be dry, of course, and sweat wasn’t lubrication enough. Charles would hurt him if he took him now, something Beth—in her inexperience—might or might not know. Discovering he’d rather not rip into him, even for the sake of verisimilitude, he went to his knees and drew his tongue up that warm furrow.

Pahndir bucked in shock, a moan of pleasure dragged unwilling from his heaving chest.

“My, my,” Sahel said. “Isn’t your assistant the considerate one?”

“We have our methods,” Beth said just as dryly.

Charles continued licking until Pahndir was wet, until the Yama trembled with more eagerness than he could hide. Caught by a dark compulsion, he probed the puckered entrance with the tip of his tongue. Pahndir cursed in his own language. Then, using Pahndir’s waist for support, Charles pulled himself up.

Pahndir was taller than Charles, but with his legs splayed the way they were, Charles’s cock rose to exactly the right height. He discovered he could have forgone the tonguing. He was so excited his penile slit was weeping pre-ejaculate. All the same, he couldn’t regret what he’d done. It was worth it to have stirred the prince so violently. Pahndir jerked when Charles pressed the head against his anus. Charles didn’t give him a chance to fight, but pushed the flaring crest straight inside.

He wasn’t certain which of them choked back a sound of bliss. Pahndir was hot and silky and tight, clutching him so snugly Charles was forced to penetrate him with extreme slowness. As gently as he thought he could get away with, he slid his hands up Pahndir’s clenching arms, as if he were in need of a handhold. As soon as Charles got the chance, the pocketknife would be in the right position to cut his restraints—though Charles was hoping the chance wouldn’t come too soon.

Right or wrong, taking Pahndir this way had to be one of the most intense pleasures Charles had ever felt. Knowing he needed to do it to save him—and that guilt was utterly pointless—had waves of exultation crashing through his nerves. He wanted to store up each sensation, each sight and sound and smell. He didn’t see how doing exactly what he wanted would ever be this wonderful and right again.

And then the sensitive tip of his cock hit a swelling he didn’t expect, presumably the “extra” gland Sahel had mentioned. Charles had felt men’s prostates before, but this was not the same. This was bigger, hotter, and quite obviously a potent trigger for delight.

Pahndir hissed in a breath as the rim of Charles’s cock slid over the bump. That, apparently, made him want more of the same. His spine arched, the muscles gathering before he shoved back with his hips as hard as he could. The effort drove Charles more directly over the swollen gland, all the way across it instead of just to the edge. The pressure felt phenomenal to him, pure carnal enchantment against the upper curve of his glans. He had to clench his jaw against a too-swift rise of his own excitement. Pahndir might not be able to ejaculate, but Charles certainly could. He wouldn’t look like much of a torturer’s assistant if he shot his store in two strokes.

Though it was to all their benefit to convince Sahel this was real, Pahndir didn’t appreciate Charles’s pause. Grunting with frustration, he writhed backward again, unexpectedly driving Charles to the hilt. He only stayed there a moment. The full penetration had widened Pahndir’s inner muscles enough to move freely. Obviously liking that, the prince was growling behind clenched teeth, working himself over Charles’s cock as if he had some itch only the hardest friction could ease. His fervor left Charles at a loss for how to respond.

“Let him,” Beth said, seeing his dilemma. “And thrust yourself if he stops. He’ll be all the hotter for a few dry orgasms.”

She’d moved closer than Charles realized, and had curled one hand over the tensing muscles between Pahndir’s neck and his forcibly outstretched arm. Her eyes met Charles’s, the air that connected them seeming to ripple like a heat mirage. Was this Pahndir’s energy he was seeing? Was it theirs? And just how insane was it making their mutual victim?

Quite, it looked like. Pahndir’s head dropped back with a louder groan, his Adam’s apple straining. Charles wasn’t the only one moved by his urgency. Beth’s pupils were huge, her respiration shallow. The big wood frame creaked with Pahndir’s desperate struggles to achieve release. The apparatus’s legs were staked deeply into the ground, but Pahndir’s agitation was testing their stability.

“I’m going to cup his balls,” Beth said, though for whose benefit Charles didn’t know.

He remembered the whip marks Sahel’s women had left on Pahndir’s scrotum, the exaggerated swelling a blind man could not have missed. Blood spurted harder into his cock.

“No,” Pahndir breathed so softly it was as if the air itself whispered.

“Yes,” Beth said, her smile curving half a second before Pahndir screamed.

He didn’t mean to scream, but—Infinity help him—Beth couldn’t know what she was doing by playing with his testicles. All Yama loved that, but royals especially. A good, deep massage loosened up the seed that accumulated over their cycles, and Beth’s strong, slim fingers were really digging in. The sting of the healing whip marks only made it worse, the perfect blend of pain and pleasure—or, at least, perfect to him.

Pahndir shifted his weight in sensual anxiety. His balls were so fucking heavy, like someone had turned on a hose. He’d have no chance at all of holding back ejaculation, not if she slid her sex over him. The chemistry of her cream would trigger reactions no amount of self-control could stop. Sahel would know something wasn’t right if he spilled his seed. He was supposed to suffer. That was the entertainment Muto had promised her. She’d probably kill them all if he—

The train of thought escaped him in a sudden deluge of bliss. Beth had put her second hand on his balls and was now squeezing him with both palms. His breath
whoosh
ed from him as his insides seemed to liquefy. Oh, fuck, she knew how to work him, her instincts superior to many women’s years of practice. Her manipulations were so good, his muscles went too lax to thrust. Not that this did him much good: Per Beth’s orders, Charles took up the job. He ran his thick erection over and over Pahndir’s third kith gland, the thing so sensitive it was more than ready to make him come.