Текст книги "Burned"

Автор книги: Karen Marie Moning

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

Gone are the wild, naked, primitive princes, with kaleidoscope tattoos rushing beneath their skin and mad, iridescent eyes.

They’ve civilized themselves.

In their place stand two black-haired, dark-eyed males that exude power, lust, and otherworldly magic. Torques of the royal Unseelie House glitter like diamond-crusted obsidian at their necks. I know how icy those torques are to the touch, how they vibrate with a hypnotic guttural cacophony, while the torques of the Seelie House croon an irresistible, complex symphony.

No longer do their heads swivel in an eerie, inhuman fashion; they have adopted human mannerisms and movements right down to the smallest nuance. The black wings I felt closing around my naked body as I died a thousand deaths beneath them are gone, concealed by glamour.

“I thought they were at war with each other,” I say.

Kat says, “I thought they were insane, terrifying and revolting. We were both wrong. They recently joined forces. I hear the Crimson Hag has them worried.”

“Christian,” I murmur, and try hard not to think of what he must be enduring.

“He saved us, you know. Possibly the world. Dani was hesitating, trying to decide between her sidhe-seer sisters and the Hoar Frost King. It would have destroyed her to carry the deaths of our entire abbey on her conscience. His sacrifice spared her that horror. We owe him a tremendous debt.”

“Any word on Christian’s whereabouts?”

“His uncles are searching. All of us at the abbey are eager to help mount a rescue, if they find him.”

Although it horrified me that he’d given himself up to the Hag, it also relieved me because it meant the man I knew was still in there, despite the madness. Deep down, he still cared about the world around him. I made a mental note to ask Barrons to aid in the search. He could lean on Ryodan to enlist some of the Nine to go scouting. We couldn’t just leave Christian out there, being tortured and killed over and over. We owed him rescue for the sacrifice he’d made. What he was suffering in the Hag’s sadistic hands would only drive him deeper into Unseelie madness. We needed to save him before he lost all trace of his fundamental humanity.

The princes ascend the stairs, identical but for a few inches’ height difference. I realize I’m looking directly at them without weeping blood. I glance at Kat to see if it’s just me or if she, too, can regard them directly. She can. And is – with fascination.

“They’ve fed enough to gain control of themselves,” I say softly. When they first arrived in Dublin they were like rabid animals from long confinement and starvation, and flat-out terrifying. “They’re studying us, learning from us.” I get it: pacify the sheep before the slaughter. A panicked kill makes for a soured stew. These two, the worst of the Unseelie, are now the ultimate bad boys. Women will flock to them, lemmings on a suicide march over a cliff.

These are my rapists, the ones that turned me inside out, ripped my mind from my body and shredded it. They are also, unfortunately, hot as hell.

I want them dead.

Yes, yes, yes, KILL, the Book surges to life again.

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December; and each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

The rhythm takes over. I roll the many internal rhymes and dazzling alliteration over my tongue silently while I assess the princes, building the syllables, brick by brick, into a mental wall.

My rapists are dressed like Barrons. Sleek. Masculine. Sexy. It pisses me off.

“Son of a bitch,” Kat says softly. Kat doesn’t curse. “Do you know how my girls will react to them? Cruce is bad enough.”

“Son of a bitch,” I agree.

Behind the balustrade, four long cherry tables make a square.

The Unseelie Princes take one side.

Barrons, Kat, and I take the opposite.

It’s all I can do to not lunge across the space separating us and attack them. Two things stay my hand: Barrons wants them alive, and I’m afraid I’ll black out again. Kat is vulnerably human.

After a few moments, Ryodan drops into a chair beside us, sandwiching Kat and me between a gentle hum of power. He pushes a hand through thick, dark hair, cut close at the sides, and assesses me with that clear, analytical gaze of his. I meet it impassively. His chiseled features are untouched by lines, and I’d guess him frozen in time, however he stopped aging, at about thirty, plus however many thousands of years he’s actually lived.

Like all of Barrons’s men, he’s powerfully muscled and sports multiple scars, the most prominent running from his jaw down his neck and over his chest. He appreciates the finer things in life and pursues them without scruple. I want to know the history these men will never tell me. Although an animal exists beneath each of their skins, Ryodan hides his the best. He’s the businessman of the Nine of whatever-they-are, managing financial concerns, maintaining their vast empire.

Barrons is the taciturn, primal leader of their small immortal army, the one to whom they all answer. He usually lets Ryodan do his talking. Probably because Barrons knows he would lose patience the moment one of his orders isn’t instantly obeyed and butcher everyone in sight. Ryodan excels at chess, crushes his opposition in five or fewer moves. Barrons eats the board, with blood for ketchup.

“Got a lot of Unseelie outside the bookstore, Mac,” Ryodan says.

“Got a lot inside Chester’s,” I rejoin coolly.

“He understands our needs,” one of the Unseelie Princes says.

“They don’t trail me everywhere I go,” Ryodan says.

“Then again you understand them, too, from personal experience,” the prince reminds me silkily.

I ignore it. “Guess you don’t smell as sweet,” I tell Ryodan.

“Or as rotten,” he returns.

“I’ve been testing wards on them.” Barrons puts the issue to swift rest.

Ryodan laughs but lets it go.

The six of us sit eyeing one another in silence. There is no air in the room, only hostility and rage. I breathe shallowly of it and slide my hand to the comforting hilt of my spear. And snatch it away, assaulted by horrific images again.

“You will remove the ward that prohibits our sifting, or you will take away her spear.” The taller of the princes speaks to Barrons, but his gaze is moving, hot, sexual, devouring, over my body.

Barrons goes so motionless next to me that for a moment I’m not sure he didn’t just vanish in that stealthy way of his. I inhale shallowly, wondering if this meeting is going to end before it even begins.

Then Barrons says softly, carefully, “Ms. Lane.” I feel the tension in his body, mirroring the same tightly coiled rage in mine.

“I’m not giving you my spear,” I say just as softly. “It can deal with it.” Time was, they could weave the illusion that they’d taken it from me, but I got wise to their trick and it doesn’t work on me anymore.

“I am not an ‘it.’ I am Prince Rath of the second royal Unseelie House created,” the tall Unseelie says coldly. “My brother is Kiall, from the third. Once, you whimpered our names. As you begged us for more. Without the spear you are nothing. Human. Weak.”

Neither Barrons nor I speak for a moment. Then he says, tonelessly, “I’m not removing the wards.”

“Fine, they can leave,” I say just as tonelessly. I am nothing, my ass. They don’t know about my inner psycho.

Barrons shoots me a look. I feel it on my ear, needling me to turn my head.

“Look at me,” he commands.

I scowl but look.

You said you trusted me to protect you. If I drop the ward, others can sift in. Unacceptable risk. Do not push me. My beast wants them dead.

Well, at least our beasts are in agreement, I retort saccharine-sweet. Seething, I slip the spear from my sheath and slap it into his palm before I get any more reminders of this afternoon.

Rath and Kiall rustle and chime in the bone-chilling, inhuman fashion that had been their only mode of communication when they first arrived in Dublin, crazed with hunger. I’d felt that chiming deep in my bones, as my mind slipped away. When Barrons hands the spear to Ryodan, who tucks it beneath his jacket, they resume their polished facade.

“Right, he can have it but I can’t,” I grouse.

“He does not consider past minor insult bar to future gain. Women are weak that way. Valuing things that mean nothing at all. Lamenting events they clearly enjoyed,” Kiall says, raking me with a knowing, intimate sneer. “What was lost that night? Nothing. What was gained? An experience beyond compare. Your human women kill each other for our amusement, to eliminate the competition for the privilege of such a night with us.”

I don’t know who goes more rigid beside me, Kat or Barrons. The room is a volcano waiting to blow.

I inhale, count to ten, exhale. At some point, when I’ve mastered my inner demon, I’ll pay a visit to the gothic monstrous mess of a mansion on the outskirts of Dublin where the princes have surrounded themselves with worshippers. With my spear. And those women that chirp bright, vapid nonsense like “See you in Faery” will stop killing each other to lose their sanity in a monster’s bed.

When R’jan, the Seelie Prince who claims to be the new king, enters, the Unseelie snarl like feral beasts.

R’jan reminds me of V’lane, before he dropped the mask, revealing his true Unseelie self, Prince Cruce. Gold-dusted skin pours like velvet over a powerful body; he has the face of a stunning, imperious Archangel. Long blond hair falls past his waist, unbound. He, too, has modified himself into something elegantly human, with fawn leather pants and dark boots, a creamy cashmere sweater, a gold torque at his throat. R’jan laughs and dismisses his dark brothers with a regal, condescending wave as if shooing a bothersome fly from a banquet surely called in honor of him.

The Unseelie leap from their chairs, Barrons rises, Ryodan joins him, and for a moment all the males in the room posture, assessing, debating the pleasure to be gained from turning this room into a slaughterhouse against whatever it is they’re after that made them agree to this meeting. Just when I’m certain they’re going to succumb to savagery, Kat and I are going to be sprayed with blood and bone fragments, and I’m going to end up taking back my spear and using it after all, Barrons growls, “You will all sit. Now.”

No one moves. I laugh softly. That’s a mistake.

Ryodan is abruptly gone.

When he reappears, he’s holding R’jan from behind, a scarred forearm around the Fae’s throat. He presses his mouth to the prince’s ear and says softly, “Need I remind you what I did to Velvet.”

R’jan hisses.

“He said sit. He doesn’t repeat himself. Nor do I.”

When Ryodan shoves him away, R’jan drops down on the third side of our square, eyes blazing with challenge and hatred. Kiall and Rath slowly take their seats with elaborate indolence, as if they do so because they wish to and for no other reason.

I eye the fourth side, wondering who else we could possibly be waiting for. When our final guest walks up the stairs and sits at our table, it’s my turn to bristle.

I know the face of an O’Bannion mobster when I see one. I helped kill two of them. Our final guest is black Irish with a light complexion, thick, dark hair and eyes, and the blood of a distant Saudi ancestor in his veins. Broad-shouldered and handsome in a rugged, outdoors way, he moves with long-limbed grace.

Kat half rises, looking ashen. “Sean?” she says. “What on earth are you doing here?”

I glance between the two. I don’t need a sidhe-seer gift to know there’s deep emotion between them.

“Yes, what is an O’Bannion doing here?” I say.

“The name is Sean Fergus Jameson,” the man says in a thick Irish brogue.

“First cousin to Rocky O,” Ryodan says. “He tends to omit his surname in certain quarters.”

“Why is he here?” Kat says again, resettling slowly.

Ryodan says, “You’re looking at the three primary suppliers of goods in this city: myself, the princes, and the black market – like his fathers before him, also known as Sean O’Bannion. Seems your boy learned a trick or two working in my club, little cat. Bribed my suppliers. Got himself into the game.”

“Only because you were charging half an arm and most of a leg for a simple meal,” Sean says hotly. “We’ve women and children in our streets who’ve no way of paying such high prices. They were dying for want of milk and bread.”

“You show your true colors, O’Bannion,” Ryodan says.

“A good and honest heart?” Kat says sharply.

The look Sean gives her tells me everything: they’re lovers, and I suspect they have been for a long time. How does he think to stand his ground against this kind of competition? He’s a human among beasts.

Ryodan cuts Kat a hard, flat smile. “That’s often how it starts. Just not usually how it ends. If the two of you had been talking about any of the things you should be talking about, you’d have known.”

“You will stay out of my business,” Kat warns softly.

Ryodan leans back in his chair and folds his arms across his chest. “Start taking care of your business and I might. Business unattended is free trade.”

“You had no right to force him to work at Chester’s,” Kat says. “The debt owed was mine, not his.”

Sean gives her a quizzical glance. “Force? What debt? My working there had nothing to do with you.”

Kat blinks and looks sharply at Ryodan. “You said the price was demanded of him, not me.”

Ryodan lifts a brow and gives her a mocking smile.

“What price?” Sean says.

“I said, precisely, Katarina, that I’d had difficulty staffing lately, my servers kept dying, and your Sean was good enough to fill in. I also told you he was free to go. Both were true. From the first. When he decided to thieve on my turf, I fired him.”

His tone makes it clear how lucky she is that he didn’t kill him. I wonder why he didn’t kill him. No one takes from Ryodan and survives … unless the cool-eyed manipulator has a long-term goal that makes him willing to suffer the poor fool’s existence as Barrons does the princes.

“You pigs talk and talk and say nothing of interest to us. Too many of you here. Not enough of us. Or slaves,” Rath says. “We demand more Unseelie at this table.”

“Find another prince and we might take it under advisement,” Ryodan says dryly. Cruce is locked down and the Crimson Hag has Christian. In other words, never going to happen.

R’jan says nothing. If any of the Seelie Princes remain, he wants no competition for the Fae throne.

Sean says, “Why is Katarina here?”

I say, “As headmistress of the sidhe-seers, she’s the front line of human defense and protection.” I don’t add: and she sits on Cruce and keeps watch so he doesn’t get out. I really hope she hasn’t confided that to him. They say every person with whom you share a secret will inevitably share it with at least one more, that it grows in exponential leaps and bounds until the entire world knows what you wish it didn’t.

Sean assesses me. “Why are you here?”

Ryodan replies, “She has her uses. Any more fucking questions, take them up with Barrons. You don’t like who sits at this table, figure out how to get rid of them. But be careful, it’s not hard to figure out how to get rid of you. Human.”

Kat snaps, “You will leave him alone.”

I glance at her but she’s trying to send a silent message with her eyes to Sean. Unfortunately, he’s now staring too fiercely at Ryodan to notice.

She exhales gustily and I echo it.

The males at this table are ruthless. The only way Sean can hope to compete in business with them is to be equally ruthless. As the princes adopted a degree of civility to optimize their survival, Sean will have to adopt a degree of barbarism to optimize his.

Leaving me to wonder the same thing I know Kat’s thinking: how much of the man she loves will remain?

6

“I’m going be that n-n-nail in your coffin”

JADA

The woman moves through dark streets, thick with fog blown off the sea. Dusk cloaks her in mist and shadow as if she’s a secret the night has sworn an oath to protect. Moonlight illuminates wet cobblestones and rain-streaked windows but glances off her as if deflected by an invisible cloak.

Like the Shades, she’s a smudge in the darkness.

Born of long and unforgettable habit, she avoids the pale yellow pools of streetlamps.

Better to see than be seen.

Being heard is another thing. Sound skitters and reverberates, and unless one is a highly skilled hunter, it’s difficult to secure the target in one’s crosshairs by noise alone.

She can do it. She’s as infamous as the legendary Queen’s Huntsman. She’s never missed her mark.

Her enemy isn’t so skilled. The one she seeks tonight is sloppy, blinded by gluttonous appetite, but to lure it she’s not enough. She needs an attractive, sexually viable man.

Stiletto heels that gleam silver kick gusts of fog into lacy, sharp-edged patterns as she strides through Temple Bar toward Chester’s nightclub, where she will select her bait. She’s dressed to kill, weapons concealed: gun strapped to her thigh, knives flush to her skin, a sexy chain of a belt that distracts the male eye as it swings at her hips, a lethal garrote. The ricochet of her shoes on pavement is loud, deliberate. She knows she’s difficult to see and at the moment desires to be accessible.

Immediacy is efficiency.

Contempt for death is her way of life.

Nothing touches her.

To be touched is weakness.

As she turns down an alley, mist swirls back from long, bare, lightly oiled legs, the edgy hem and neckline of a black spandex dress, the supple body of a dancer, long hair pulled back in a high ponytail, the serene face of a stone-cold killer, before enveloping her again.

She’s beautiful.

It’s a weapon.

She has suffered the worst the world has to offer.

And thrived.

She’s compiled a list of names.

And will hunt them one by one.

When at last the fog parts upon the face of her enemy, she will have no mercy.

This world had none for her.

7

“This night could almost kill you”

LOR

“Who am I?” the blonde kneeling between my legs demands.

I need to come so fucking bad my teeth hurt.

I know the answer she wants. She wants me to call her “mistress.” Like she’s the Dom. She’s already tried to get me to say it twice, sneaking it in like she thinks I won’t notice because of the mind-blowing stuff she’s been doing with her lips and tongue and that flawlessly executed glide of teeth so few women ever master when giving head.

She’s wasting her time. It’s never going to happen. There isn’t a submissive bone in my body. I’m alpha to the motherfucking core.

I pull her head from my groin and grin down at her. Hot, horny blondes are a dime a dozen at Chester’s. Riots may have sacked Dublin last Halloween and a killer freeze might have shut the city down for a while, but it’s rebounding fast. People have been flooding in, resettling both sides of the River Liffey, drawn by the thaw, restored power, and supplies, but most of all by the endless parade of sexually insatiable Fae that pack the bars and dance floors of 939 Rêvemal Street every night of the week, hunting human lovers. The hottest, most deadly nightclub in Dublin is bigger, better, and badder than ever: Chester’s is Sin Central – if you want it, we got it.

“You’re not that good, honey.” I flash her a grin. My comment is guaranteed to spark one of two things: either she’ll get up and walk out pissed or I’ll get even better head.

I know by her confidence – and the hungry way she’s been watching me all night – she’s not walking.

She laughs and runs her tongue over her lips to make them even wetter, shiny with the spit of a pro and pre-ejac. I lean back against Ry’s desk, since he’s off at some meeting for a few hours, looking forward to her amped-up performance, watching her, watching the club through the glass floor beneath my boots, loving life. As long as women walk this earth, I’ll be a happy man. If they ever get wiped out, I’m done. I’ll go in search of K’Vruck.

She slaps the head of my dick then closes her mouth over it in one long perfect slide all the way to the base … does some kind of swirly thing, then an intense suck back out.

I nearly stagger.

Son of a bitch, she’s good.

She has her hands on my ass, face grinding into my groin, my dick is down her throat, and I’m a frigging volcano about to blow. Problem is, I been ready for a good twenty minutes, but whenever I get close she mixes it up and shoves it out of reach. What was initially a turn-on has become a pain in the ass. Not to mention the balls. I’m beginning to think they might rupture. I’m dripping sweat and I’m not even the one doing the work, although I’m looking forward to getting down to it. The woman has one damn fine body.

I take her head in my hands and try to move her mouth on me the way I want.

She resists with a muffled laugh.

I pull her mouth off me and she looks up, smiling. Takes my breath away for a second. Her hair is a hot mess around her face, just the way I like it – bed-head always makes me want to fuck. Then again, pretty much everything does.

“Let me come, honey,” I say. “There’s plenty more after, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Do I look worried? I know exactly what to expect from a man like you. Who am I?” She flicks her tongue over the swollen head of my dick.

I start to hit it, I’m so close, but then she does this twisting thing with her hands and mouth at the same time, and I get needles on my dick.

Pleasure killed by pain.

Velvet of her mouth.

Needles.

It’s starting to chafe more than I like. And I’ve been known to play rough with the right woman. Or three.

“Mistress,” she purrs. “Is it really so much to ask? For what I make you feel?”

I consider. She is blond with big, beautiful tits. Whole world knows I got a weakness for the combo. That’s how I’d ended up in the boss’s office, leaning back against his desk, leather pants around my ankles, buck-naked brick shithouse between my legs while the bass of Rob Zombie’s Pussy Liquor—and when the hell is she ever gonna give that up? It’s one of my finest skills and I haven’t even gotten the chance to dazzle her – rumbles in the desk beneath my ass, pounding up from one of the subclubs below.

I love this place. One of our better investments.

“I’m giving you the best head you’ve ever had,” she says. “Admit it.”

Not a problem. I say so to every woman that sucks me. Women enjoy doing things they excel at, praise guarantees repeat performances, every repeat performance is more practice for the woman, which guarantees the next man even better head. Given how long I’ve been at this, and on how many continents, I’m pretty sure I’ve single-handedly improved the quality of head around the world.

“Sure, babe, you’re the best. Head. Ever.” Damn close anyway.

“Who am I?” she purrs.

I groan. “The bitch sucking my dick.” We agreed on no names. She asked me to call her bitch downstairs when we were doing shots at the bar. Said it turned her on. Later, with a laugh, she switched it to princess. Now she wants mistress. High maintenance. Some women are worth it.

She cups my balls and squeezes, then begins sucking them with exquisite precision. All the muscles in my abdomen clench and I exhale explosively. I’m beginning to think this might be the best orgasm I’ve ever had. If I ever get around to the bloody fucking thing.

“You really don’t get this, do you?” she says. Laughter tinkles and the hair on the back of my neck feels weird all the sudden. There’s a darkness to the sound that might worry me if she wasn’t so frigging hot.

Speaking of hot, I look down to see sweat running down my six-pack, dripping down my legs. I’m practically standing in a puddle of my own sweat. What the hell did Ry do? Crank up the heat in Chester’s to a hundred? I’m burning up. Light-headed, like I have a fever. Which is impossible.

“Don’t care. You’re here. I’m here. Do that thing with your tongue again. The swirly thing.”

“I’ll give you a clue,” she says, and somehow she’s smiling while she’s sucking and for a second I think I see rows of tiny needle-sharp shark teeth. Not what a man wants to hallucinate with a woman’s hot wet mouth on his dick. I blink and wipe sweat from my eyes. Trick of the light. She has perfect teeth, movie-star white, framed to perfection by smears of crimson lipstick, most of which is all over my dick and stomach. Oh, yeah, I’ll take a blonde with cherry red lipstick every day of the week that ends in y. Life is sweet. I laugh.

She cuts me a look then shoves me back on the desk and I’m cold where her mouth was burning, then she’s on top of me, slamming down onto me, and I’m pushing up into her. I’m a grenade, pin out. Feels like my whole body is going to hit it, blow apart, come from head to toe. Bloody hell, sex has never been like this. I’m on fire, so frigging hot I’d swear the desk is burning.

Wait a second, it is.

Orange flames are licking up around us, like my sweat is some kind of gasoline sloshed across the lacquered ebony. We must have spilled some tequila. Must’ve been a candle on the desk. I’m sprawled on my back in fire and can’t even feel it. She leans into me, joins me in the flames, fists her hands in my hair and we kiss.

It’s unfucking real.

I half expect celestial trumpets to blare. I feel like my skin is melting and we’re merging into each other. Strange shit. But my dick has never felt better.

“Who am I? Is it so difficult to give me such a tiny thing? A little respect. That’s all I’m looking for, honey. I can give you so much in return.”

Christ, she sounds just like me, right down to her inflection on the word “honey.” I always get them to call me whatever I want. I’m always in control. Isn’t much I like more than a beautiful woman tied to my bed while I make her come till she passes out. So what’s my problem? Like she says, it’s a small thing. What can one word hurt? It isn’t like letting a woman have the power for a change can bring about the end of my world as I know it, for fuck’s sake.

I open my mouth and suck her tongue deep, grinding in, sliding out. I feel my dick inside her, and I also feel what she’s feeling: me filling her, giving her all she wants except for this one tiny little thing that is so important to her for some reason. Maybe some man treated her like shit and now she needs to be called mistress to get back some of her own. Maybe I’m part of the healing. Maybe it’ll make her come as violently as I know I’m going to. I like women. I want them to feel good. It’s practically been my mission in life.

“Who am I?”

I try to shape the word twice and still fail. I’d honestly like to give her what she wants but submission just isn’t the stuff I’m made of.

She clamps down on me and … aw, shit, she squeezes! She has muscles that could milk a herd of Holsteins dry. I buck and nearly get off but then she’s soft again and I get the feeling she could do this all night if she wants. And this crazy babe might just want to.

“Mistress,” I manage to growl. “Now make me come or get the fuck off me ’cause I’m jacking off.”

“Tell me you want me more than life itself,” she croons, all soft and sultry.

“Sure, honey.” I’ve gone this far. If Ryodan ever finds out I called some babe mistress, I’ll never hear the end of it.

“Would you die for me?” she asks breathlessly.

I’m beginning to see no matter how hot this woman is, despite her plentiful talents, she has serious-ass issues. Looking for some big strong man to play hero for her. Who the hell isn’t? Every woman downstairs. I excel at the role. And I need to come. Simple enough exchange.

I grab her ass, grind up and drive deep. “Protect you. Rescue you. Guard your frigging honor if you have any left by the time I’m done with you, woman. Now squeeze.”

“But would you die for me?”

I don’t tell her I might kill her if I don’t come soon. I might turn. She’s kept me on the brink too long. I’m getting edgier than is safe with a woman. “Sure, honey. Whatever.” She doesn’t know I can’t. She doesn’t even know my name.

She pulls back and smiles down at me with rows of needle-sharp shark teeth.

Blond hair darkens to blood-black.

Red lips fade to white. Then ice-blue.

Flames leap up around us. Takes me a second to process – also blue.

Aw, fuck.

I stare up, a little slow to get it.

I’m too close to coming to think real fast. Hell, her tits are too far in my face for me to think real fast.

Unseelie. The bitch is Unseelie. I can’t believe I didn’t pick up on it. I’m not easy to fool. Well, sans blond hair and curves enough to happily smother a man.

She’s dark Fae. Twisted buggers, one and all, some more than others.

And she wanted me to call her Princess …

Unseelie. Princess.

I narrow my eyes, staring up at her.

Nah.

The dark king never got around to making them. They’re a myth. They don’t exist. Damn good thing, too. The Unseelie Princes are problem enough.

Oh, honey, she purrs in my mind, we certainly do. Trapped in a library for a small eternity. One of yours let us out. Good thing, too. Men have too much power on this world. We will fix that.

“Get the fuck off me.”

You called me mistress. You said you would die for me. I own you.

I laugh. “Yeah, right. Try pursuing that thought.” I shove her off me but my hands go the wrong way, fly up over my head, and abruptly I’m slammed flat on my back, with both wrists manacled to one end of the desk.

Links snake around my throat.

My waist. My ankles.

Fuck me.

I’m chained.

I lunge up, testing the links, snarling. Magic doesn’t work on me. Neither does glamour. Yet both seem to be. What the hell is going on?

We are a singular recipe. His final creation. Improved by the Sweeper. She smiles and there are those frigging shark teeth again.

I’m immobilized, pants at my ankles, dick sticking straight up, and this bitch has shark teeth. I’m beginning to think this might not be one of my finer nights.

“Say it again,” she says, but now she’s all icy, imperious princess. “Who am I?”

No way I’m saying it again.

Ever.

My mouth opens and it says, “Mistress,” offending every goddamn fiber of my being. I think my balls actually shrivel.

She slaps me. Hard across the face.

“I’m going to kill you, you crazy motherfucking bitch,” I say tenderly. My kind doesn’t get loud when we’re about to annihilate. We go soft and gentle. See us like that: worry. She doesn’t know I’m one of the few in existence that can actually make good on that promise. She doesn’t know who or what I am.