Demon's Fire (26 page)

Maybe it was her imagination; she only saw the phenomenon from the corner of her eye, but she could have sworn his aura flared with curls of royal purple when Herrington glanced at him.

Interestingly, Herrington looked away, shifting in his chair as if its seat had mysteriously grown harder.

“An AI is a kind of machine,” he explained to her. “Its makers teach it to think for itself, after a fashion. They almost give it a personality. The one you stumbled into must have been an early genetic manipulator, from our people’s previous golden age. It must have been designed to enhance human females, and it certainly explains how Tou made the mark she did. I don’t know why the device took such a violent dislike to men, but perhaps over the centuries its code developed bugs.”

Beth was going to develop bugs if he and Pahndir didn’t start speaking plain Ohramese. “A machine can’t explain how Tou’s ghost came to me in my dreams.”

“Oh, there wouldn’t have been a ghost,” Pahndir said, idly rubbing the shoulder of his bandaged arm.

“No, indeed,” Herrington seconded. “Our ancestors were quite advanced. Our current scientists would weep buckets if they heard an ancient AI had been destroyed. Our forebears must have developed a technique for downloading memories. When Tou’s played out in your dreams, they would have seemed very real.”

Beth wasn’t convinced this explanation accounted for everything, but Charles interrupted before she could say so.

“Wait a second.” Charles pushed his cup and saucer away from him. “Are you saying this machine turned Beth into an early version of a Yama?”

“
Very
early.”

“But then…that would mean your people come from ours.”

“Exactly,” Herrington said, nodding in satisfaction at Charles’s quick-wittedness. “There’s always been the odd rumor that was the case, but nothing anyone dared repeat where they could be heard. You two shouldn’t repeat it, either. No self-respecting Yama wants to think we evolved from a lesser race.”

“Hey!” said Charles.

“Yes, I know,” Herrington soothed. “You’re not really lesser, just less advanced.”

“Different,” Pahndir said, his gaze coming to find Beth’s.

As the black of his pupils swelled, she felt her pulse beat closer to her skin’s surface. After all the uproar involved in rescuing him from Sahel, this was her first opportunity to think about what being mated to Pahndir meant.

Intimate,
she thought.
And good.
As if the bond between them truly couldn’t be broken.

On top of which, the crisp white cloth of his borrowed shirt looked extremely nice against his golden coloring. The bruises on his beautiful face were fading, and she remembered he’d walked to the table under his own power. Considering the significance of that caused steam to coil in her body. Yama did indeed heal quickly.

Pahndir must have sensed the drift of her thoughts. His eyes flicked downward, his lashes shuttering his feelings as he continued. “If we were convinced humans were that far behind us, we wouldn’t work so hard at restricting our technology.”

“As you wish,” Herrington said. “Humans certainly have no shortage of curiosity—or the ability to get themselves into trouble.”

That pointed remark tore Beth’s gaze from Pahndir, but Herrington didn’t have scolding her in mind. He rose from the table and looked down at her, his expression smooth but still conveying warmth.

“I expect you’ll want to leave soon,” he said. “You’ve had a scare, and Pahndir’s been injured, but I doubt either of your bodies will give you much more reprieve. And, yes, before you ask, I know all about royals and their heats, though maybe not precisely the sort of heat that Beth has been experiencing. Why don’t you use this time to make some clearheaded decisions while you’re still able?”

Beth’s cheeks flamed with embarrassment as Herrington headed for the door. Her accounts of entering Tou’s chamber and its aftermath had been edited. Although she was relieved to have the secret off her chest, she really would have preferred he not read so accurately between the lines. Then Charles distracted her by rising, too, as if he intended to withdraw as well.

Herrington stopped him with a hard, cool look.

“Don’t be a fool,” he said. “I might not approve of what you three are up to, but I damn well know how much you want it.”

It was uncomfortable to argue the value of taking risks with a man whose lover Charles had had a part in killing mere hours ago. He waited until Herrington was gone to turn to the other two. He and Pahndir had cuts and abrasions from the exploding wall, but Beth was unmarked, scrubbed and pink and practically shining in her pretty Bhamjrishi clothes.

That she had another side, one that wasn’t as clean and sweet, made what he had to say harder. He’d been wrong to think her incapable of accepting him, just as he’d been wrong to think of Pahndir as nothing but a privileged prince. Now, with no one to blame but himself, it was too late to find out where either of those discoveries might lead.

Seeing something in his face, Beth drew breath to speak.

He lifted his hands, palms out, before she could steal his nerve. “You don’t have to say it. I understand. You two are mated, or whatever the correct term is. And you care for each other. You don’t need me crowding you.”

“Charles!” Beth’s protest was sharp. “Just because Pahndir and I share a bond doesn’t mean we don’t—” She looked helplessly at the prince. “We do, don’t we? It was never just me you fell for. I’m not mistaken that you care about Charles, too?”

Despite Beth’s claim, the look Pahndir gave her was proof enough that Charles was right.
Smoldering
didn’t describe it. His nearly black eyes shone like stars reflected in pools of ink. Admiration for her infused them, and lust, and a thankfulness too deep to put words around.

“You’re not mistaken,” Pahndir said. “Or not about that.”

“Then what am I mistaken about?” Hot color flew in her cheeks, which Pahndir could not resist stroking. His touch was so tender it made Charles ache.

“I had time to think, Beth, while I sat bleeding by that car. You saved my life—you and Charles. You restored my faith, and brought me immense pleasure. But if the three of us remain together the way I’d like, your life is never going to be what it was. Please consider long and hard before you walk away from the kind of marriage your family could accept, from the kind of marriage you could have with Charles.”

“Marriage!” Beth and Charles cried in unified shock.

Pahndir’s smile was wistful. “You love him, Beth, and he loves you. I could—” He hesitated, then pressed on despite the growing raggedness of his voice. “I believe I could love you both with all my heart. I believe it would be an honor the likes of which I never thought to know again, but I cannot deny you the chance to live a safer, simpler love with him.”

“You’d give me up?” Beth appeared caught between hurt and wonder. She turned to Charles before Pahndir could respond. Charles’s heart was thudding too fast. “And you? Do you think your life would be too complicated if you tried to live out your dreams? Do you think I’m a coward? Because you’re both acting like one!”

“He is your kind,” Pahndir said, spinning her back to him.

“Is he? Is he really? Does
my kind
even exist anymore?” Beth was wild and angry…and maybe a bit afraid. “You heard Herrington. He’s doesn’t know what’s happened to me. None of you know exactly what that machine did.”

Pahndir refused to be distracted from his point. “You already love Charles. You’ve been friends for years. You can’t be sure what you feel for me. Neither of you can.”

Charles heard Pahndir’s unspoken plea as if it were his own, and, truthfully, it was.
Say you love me,
his stubborn expression begged.
Make me believe you do.
Charles himself was ready to demand Pahndir elaborate on that bit about Beth “already” loving him. His mouth opened on a breath, but no words emerged.

He didn’t dare let them. His idiocy level was high enough—besides which, Pahndir seemed to be enmeshed in his own crisis.

Beth had her fingers pressed to her lips. “Is this about your wife? Is this about Thallah?”

Pahndir shoved from the table and turned away, his fist pressed to his mouth at the impossibility of controlling his emotions the way he wished. He flinched when Beth scraped back her chair to lay one hand on his back. The table stood between Charles and the couple, but he felt as if he were willing Beth to ease Pahndir’s pain. Charles knew he loved Pahndir then. He knew it because he longed for Pahndir’s happiness as intensely as he ever had for his own.

“She did love you,” Beth said softly.

“You can’t know that.”

“I can.” She gripped his hunched shoulder. “She did love you, and she didn’t kill herself. Before he died, Muto bragged to me that he faked her suicide. She didn’t want to leave you. She thought you were a good husband.”

A long, raw cry ripped from Pahndir’s throat, an animal wail of pain. His head rocked back and then forward. Beth wrapped her arms around him from behind. Charles’s body urged him to join her, but he couldn’t move.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you like that. I know this is a private matter between you and Thallah, but you have to know I love you, too. Getting to know you better might add to the reasons, but it won’t change the fact.”

Overcome, Pahndir covered his face. “I can’t do this,” he groaned, but caught her arm when she would have pulled away. “No. Don’t leave. Just…don’t make me talk.”

Beth kissed his shoulder and, with her cheek remaining pressed against him, turned her head to Charles. Her eyes were bright with sympathetic tears, but when they met his, they gleamed even brighter. Charles realized he had a death grip on the door handle, where he’d frozen on the brink of flight.

What, he wondered, did Beth see in his face that made her tears well higher for him?

Please,
she mouthed: just that, and nothing more, so that he had to guess what she was asking for.

Was he a fool, the way Herrington said? Was he a coward, the way Beth did? These two people desired him, cared for him, and might come to care more. Did it matter that their bodies had bound them together in a way his could not? They were, in their separate ways, his darkest and his brightest dreams come true. More than that, they were themselves: complicated and complicating but very worth knowing. Surely Charles had the courage to believe they might love him as much as they seemed prepared to love each other.

He gripped the handle of the door until his knuckles ached. Then he let it go. He was walking: one stride, two, around the long mahogany table. His knees were quicksand, his jaw clamped tight. He stopped a foot from where Pahndir was bowed over. The prince had his arms wrapped around his stomach, as if Beth’s hold alone could not provide comfort.

Do you want me to stay?
Charles tried to ask. The words wouldn’t squeeze past the awful pounding of his heart.

Pahndir’s damp, hot fingers caught his wrist in an iron grip. “Yes,” he said, rough but firm. “I want you to come with us.”

During the cab ride to The Prince’s Flame, Charles and Beth enlightened Pahndir as to what had happened at his home. The defection of his servants seemed no more than he expected, and he took it in with grave calm. He’d already absorbed so many shocks, Beth supposed he couldn’t be rattled by one more—even if it had been in his nature to react that way.

Standing straight and tall on the stoop, he smoothed his shirtfront and pulled the cord that rang the bell.

“We shall see who’s here,” he said. “And I’ll decide what needs to be done.”

Pahndir’s valet, Biban, opened the door.

“Your Highness,” the Bhamjrishi whispered, his dark eyes filling with emotion at the miracle in front of him.

For a moment, Pahndir simply met his gaze. “You have been loyal,” he said at last. “And you were the only one. I am dismissing the others and making you my manager. If you think any are worth rehiring, that will be your choice.”

It was a princely gesture, not to mention a shrewd revenge. The very servants who had tied Biban to a chair would now be obliged to curry favor with him.

Biban did his best to lift his jaw off the floor. “I sent them home,” he admitted. “I didn’t want them here if you returned.”

A breathtaking smile transformed Pahndir’s face. “If you got them to obey you, I see my trust in you is well placed.”

“Are you hungry?” Biban asked, standing back as the trio filed into the entryway. “My mother taught me to cook simple things.”

“We have eaten,” Pahndir said, “but if you would bring some claret and glasses to my chamber, I would be grateful.”

They bowed to each other, Biban deeply and Pahndir only with his head. Despite the disparity in the gestures, Beth suspected the respect they had exchanged was equal.

“Come,” Pahndir said, waving Beth and Charles after him while Biban disappeared on his errand.

He led them three flights up the long staircase, to the floor where his antique brass lantern burned beneath the cavorting deities of the dome’s mural. Beth and Charles had no difficulty keeping up, for Pahndir’s steps could only be called trudging. His interaction with Biban seemed to have sapped the last of his energy.

He opened the door for them when they reached his private quarters. Curious, Beth stepped inside. Given Pahndir’s exotic wardrobe, the rooms weren’t what she expected. They were light and airy—white, for the most part, with pale, sky-blue walls. A long gilt-framed painting of an elephant parade was all the art she saw. The furniture looked comfortable, but there wasn’t a lot of it. His bed was a large four-poster, his windows hung with billows of sheer white gauze.

Here,
she thought,
is the sense of freedom he must have done without for years.

“I’m tired,” he said, and to Beth it sounded like a confession.

“Why don’t you change into your own clothes,” Charles suggested. “Beth and I will wait for the wine.”

It seemed the right thing to say. Pahndir nodded, almost as he had to Biban, and disappeared into his large closet. Though the circumstances were somber, Beth found herself smiling.

Charles lifted an inquiring brow.

“I was thinking you know more about men than I do.”

“And for more reasons than just being one.” The quirk of Charles’s mouth was irresistible. Knowing he could joke about his past eased the awkwardness between them. This was fortunate, because Pahndir didn’t seem to be coming out of his closet. Biban arrived with the wine and poured three glasses, leaving Pahndir’s guests to settle into pale striped armchairs in his sitting room.

“He has to mourn his wife again,” Charles said.

“Yes,” Beth agreed. She set her delicate goblet on a white-marble tabletop. “I’m glad we don’t have to mourn him.”

He looked at her, possibly surprised by her acknowledgment that both of them would have felt the loss of Pahndir, that both of them had a right to. She hoped Charles understood how deeply she believed that.

Silence fell, and then, “Is this really what you want?” he asked. “You’re not just feeling sorry for me?”

She didn’t stop to think. She slid onto his lap and kissed him, deeply, softly, until their arms wound around each other and their bodies flushed. The ridge of Charles’s erection grew until it brushed her bottom, present but not pushing.

He pulled back from her slowly. “All right,” he said, his eyes decided now. “I won’t be a coward about this.”

Beth traced his face from temple to jaw, going gently where bruises bloomed. “I shouldn’t have called you that. I just want you to accept yourself as you are, the way Pahndir and I do. I can’t force you to, but it’s what I want for you.”

“When did you become so wise?”

Beth laughed as he pretended to bite the heel of her palm. “Maybe I’m not wise. Maybe I’m just greedy.”

“Maybe Tou is greedy.”

Beth shook her head and smiled. “She’s not inside me, just her memories. It’s me who’s discovering I’d like to re-create a few of them for myself.”

Charles’s hands slid flat down her back, pulling her a little harder against him. “I heard she had a harem.”

“Indeed, she did!”

His eyes turned speculative. “You make me wonder if two men will be enough for you.”

“Two men I love will be. Two men to love is better than anything I dared hope for.”

“
You’re
better than I dared hope for,” Charles whispered back.

Beth broke into another hushed chuckle. “That may be, but Pahndir certainly provides you with one or two accessories I can’t offer!”

He blushed, then kissed her, an edge and force to the action that hadn’t been there before. Her underthings dampened with a swiftness that startled her.

They jumped apart when Pahndir appeared at the door, though he didn’t seem to see anything wrong in, or really to even notice, what they’d been doing.

“I am well,” he said, giving it the air of an announcement.

Beth’s eyes widened. He wore a long black robe that was a perfect match for the silky fan of his loose, combed hair. He was the image of Yamish elegance, all the trouble smoothed from his features, all the redness cleared from his silver eyes. His response to the news of Thallah’s murder had been so understandable that it hadn’t occurred to her he might not be fine. But perhaps, as a Yama, he wasn’t supposed to react at all. Perhaps he was remembering how vulnerable grief had made him before.

“We’re glad you’re well,” she said, then threw her caution aside. “Hell, Pahndir, Charles and I don’t care if you’re upset.
We
don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.”

He looked at his bare feet and snorted out a quiet laugh. When he lifted his head, his eyes were black. The sight was more potent than she could have guessed. In one lurching heartbeat, every drop of her lust raced back. She couldn’t help wriggling on Charles’s lap.

“I’m
very
well,” Pahndir said in a different tone. His hands slid down his hips, drawing their attention to the swift and sizable developments at his groin. “Perhaps you’d like to help me prove it…”

He’d said goodbye to Thallah in that closet, to the person she really was: a woman who’d loved her life, a woman who’d loved him to the very end. He’d felt empty when the private storm was over, and calmer than he’d ever been.

Then, with a single, unexpected laugh, his heat filled him up again.

He couldn’t remember the hot, hard thrust of it having been so welcome before. He’d been a young man with Thallah, eager but green. Now he took nothing for granted. Now he luxuriated in the urgent ache of his cock and balls, in the pulsing pressure of every one of his three kith glands.

His heart expanded as he took in both Beth and Charles. He had two of them to spend his passion on—two lovely, loyal, wonderfully warm humans. His eyes stung with how close he felt to loving them. Maybe he was there already. Maybe the only place to go from here was to love them more.

“Come to me,” he said huskily, his arms opening. “I want to pleasure both of you. I want to do everything I couldn’t while Sahel was watching.”

“I want us to pleasure
her
,” Charles burst out, his pupils swollen with the fantasy he was confessing to.

He was a vision with that lust-struck look in his sea blue eyes, a rich dessert Pahndir was looking forward to savoring. His tongue came out unthinkingly to lick his lips. Charles fought a shudder as his forked marking showed, the reaction every bit as delicious as Pahndir’s anticipation of tasting him. Beth bit her lip and inhaled sharply, her attention drawn from one man to the other. Her heat appeared to have rushed back as strongly as Pahndir’s. Between the three of them, the atmosphere in his chambers had gone syrupy with desire.

“Oh, yes,” Pahndir said, his approval coming out a purr. “Do let us pleasure her.”

Pahndir kissed Beth, his claiming of her mouth both delicate and insistent. The now-familiar taste of his kith set her lips atingle. She moaned, and his tongue slid deeper, wetter. Her arms seemed to lift themselves, allowing her hands to stroke and play among the cool and heavy silk of his hair.

She shivered when Charles succeeded in slipping her Bhamjrishi trousers down her legs. Crouching behind her, he eased off her slippers and gently planted her feet wider.

“Don’t close your thighs,” he said.

The soft-spoken order sent a lash of liquid heat whipping through her sex. Pahndir groaned at the scent of it.

Their lips parted, ending the kiss for now. Pahndir removed her arms from around his neck, but only so Charles could peel her tunic over her head. Charles undid her braid as well, twist by twist, his fingers combing through it until it fell in auburn ripples down her arms and back.

Pahndir waited, breathing with deliberate deepness, tense with his need not to wait at all.

“You now,” she said once she was naked.

He untied the belt of his robe and let the garment fall, baring the tall, muscled grace that was his body. The sight of his fading whip marks, marks
she’d
placed on his skin, caused her breath to catch. Pahndir’s eyes grew hotter at the sound. He knew what she was thinking. He traced the
X
she’d scored on his chest with a fingertip.

“I still bear your brand,” he said softly. “I wonder if you know how much I treasure it.”

She should have been shocked, but the air in her lungs had turned to fire. She spoke with an effort. “If you wish, when it heals, I’ll give you another.”

“Perhaps I’ll mark you. You might enjoy a good spanking.”

Behind her, Charles made a small, pained noise that trailed out just long enough to qualify as a moan. Beth and Pahndir quivered together to realize they weren’t the only ones aroused by the idea.

“Of course, no one needs a spanking now,” Pahndir said with a tiny devilish slant to his mouth. He rubbed the unmarked plane of his abdomen, where his well-defined muscles filled the lower legs of the whip marks. Beth’s gaze followed the invitation. She loved that he was shaved, that no part of him was hidden. His erection thrust aggressively before him, the skin around its thickness satiny smooth, the skin that covered it as red as ripe berries. The head was large and shiny, the small dark slit issuing a slender line of fluid.

“Let me lick you,” she whispered.

He inclined his head in princely acceptance and helped her kneel on the area rug. For Beth, the view from there was even better.

She took just the tip of him into her mouth, sucking up his juices, laving that melting silkiness round and round with her tongue. His kith was even richer here than in his mouth. As she absorbed it, her blood seemed to seethe with heat, her pulse beating wildly inside her thickened sex. The noises Pahndir made, so deep, so appreciative, overcame any hesitation she might have felt in her inexperience with this act.

“Take her,” Pahndir said to Charles, when he could stop moaning long enough to speak. “Take her while she sucks me in her mouth.”

Charles knelt behind her, naked now as well, his hard, lean body pressing warmth up against her spine. She moaned herself as the head of his penis searched through her folds and nudged her opening. Her entrance found, Charles surged inward, gasping at the pleasure of her creamy flesh parting for that most responsive of male organs. He was thick and hard, long enough to make her writhe when he was fully in. His hands slid up her undulating torso to cup her breasts. He held them up, offering them to Pahndir with the nipples squeezed long and red between his knuckles.

Her head fell back with boneless yearning, onto Charles’s broad shoulder. This left Pahndir to follow the suggestion Charles was so blatantly making. Pahndir steadied his shaft beneath the flaring girdle, between his thumb and two fingers. Gasping, he rubbed the slowly dripping crown around each nipple, spreading the shine of his kith across both of them. He grew firmer with every pass, breathing harder, more ragged, until neither of them could bear more torment.

Beth cried out and ducked her head to swallow him just as Charles’s fingers reclaimed the beaded tips of her breasts. He pulled them out, stretching them, rolling them, causing licks of electric feeling to race down her nerves. He’d begun to thrust inside her, slow and strong, and Beth found herself imitating his rhythm to sink down and up Pahndir’s shaft.

“Oh, yes,” Pahndir sighed, his hips cocking forward to intensify her suction. “Oh, yes, make your lips pull tight.”

His fingers were in her hair, massaging delicious circles into her scalp. Beth was almost hypnotized by pleasure: giving it, receiving it, feeling it more than triple with the three of them. She fisted one hand at the bottom of Pahndir’s shaft and wrapped the other around his testicles. Their heft radiated fire into her palm.

“Oh,” Pahndir said. “Oh,
Beth
.”

But for once his balls weren’t where he wanted the pressure most.

“There’s a spot,” he panted, the strong, corded muscles of his thighs jerking. “Beneath the slit of my penis. Where your tongue is. Yes, there. Put your thumb there while your mouth is still on me. Put your thumb there and rub a nice, hard circle.”

The groan he rewarded her with was unforgettable: tortured and grateful at the same time. His entire body tensed and relaxed in waves. Even his toes were curling into the floor.