Consort (Beyond Ontariese 6) (22 page)

“
Now.” He gasped. “Come
now!”

Then his lips covered hers and his
tongue filled her mouth as he thrust his full length into her. She
wrapped her legs around his hips and gripped him tightly,
accentuating the subtle pulse of his shaft as his seed burst deep
inside her.

They floated together in a tranquil
haze as breath-stealing pleasure gave way to sleepy tingles. His
arms held her as snugly as her legs wrapped around him. Relaxed and
content, yet dizzy from the prolonged pleasure, she angled her head
and returned his kiss.

His tongue moved against and around
hers as she flowed through his mind. He accepted her with tender
warmth and she relaxed her mental shields. Without fully realizing
what she was doing, she drew him with her as she returned to her
own mind.

He tore his mouth from hers
and glared, disbelief contorting his handsome features. “What the
hell? You feel like a Rodyte!
”

Shocked beyond words, Indric separated
his body from Cinarra’s and untied her hands from the headboard.
All the while one thought eclipsed all others; the love of his life
was a Rodyte spy.

Currents of Air swirled around the
bed, chilling his sweat-soaked body. He crawled off the bed and
pulled on his pants, still too angry to speak. She’d deceived him.
Pictures slapped against the walls and the windows rattled within
their frames. He took a deep breath and drew energy into his body,
soothing his emotions and calming the room.

She knelt in the middle of the twisted
bedding, sheet drawn up to cover her nudity. “I tried to tell you,
more than once, but you wouldn’t let me explain.”

“
This can’t be explained
away,” he snapped. “You are a Rodyte. Our worlds are at
war.”

“
I
am Ontarian. The Mystic was Rodyte.”

Turning away from the bed, he ran both
hands through his hair. She was too distracting, with her flushed
cheeks and tear-bright eyes. “It doesn’t matter. If Eagin finds out
my mistress is Rodyte, he’ll petition the elder council to have me
declared unfit. I’ve clearly been compromised, my judgment
hopelessly impaired.”

“
So we steal his thunder.”
The hope in her tone sent another flash of pain stabbing into his
heart. “You can tell the elder council who I really am and how I
ended up in a Rodyte body. Lord Drakkin will back you up
and—”

“
What was a Rodyte doing
among the Ontarian Mystics?” He spun back around, steeling himself
against her physical appeal. Regardless of how eager the man inside
him was to dismiss the details as unimportant, this was a decision
for Indric the king. “You always refer to her as the Mystic. I
thought it was a coping mechanism, a way to distance yourself from
the sacrifice she’d made. But that’s not it at all. You don’t even
know her name.”

Her lips trembled and she lowered her
gaze as she admitted, “Charlotte and Drakkin have both tried to
find out who she was, but she’s a phantom, a ghost.”

“
A
spy
.” He let the word resonate for a
moment then he squared his shoulders and reinforced the point. “My
lover is a Rodyte spy.”

“
Your lover is Krystabel
dar Aune, sister to the High Queen of Ontariese.” She looked at him
again, anger creeping into her expression.

He shook his head as his chest ached
with loss. He had been a hairsbreadth away from telling her he
loved her and insisting that he would never be satisfied with a
causal relationship. All the while she’d known their love was
doomed, any sort of long-term relationship impossible.

“
My enemies won’t see it
that way and neither will the elder council.” Using anger to fuel
his determination, he grasped her upper arm and pulled her across
the bed. “You need to leave.”

Hurt flashed through her gaze and
tears escaped the corners of her eyes, but he couldn’t let it
matter. He needed to think, not feel. And thinking was impossible
while she was in the same room with him. A king must be willing to
put the safety and wellbeing of his people above his personal
happiness. It was a fundamental truth his father had drilled into
his head since childhood.

She didn’t resist as he pulled her
from the bed and led her toward the connecting door. “You should
have told me.”

“
I tried. You
wouldn’t—”

He placed his fingers against her lips
and shook his head. “I had a right to know. You should have made me
listen.”

Her lips tensed beneath his fingertips
then she turned and walked into her bedroom, head held
high.

He closed the door and leaned against
it, pain throbbing in his temples. He wasn’t overreacting to a
minor omission. A Rodyte. No other secret would have been more
damning, nothing harder to overcome. His anger was justified. By
keeping this from him, she had given his enemies ammunition to use
against him and his position was precarious already.

Drakkin pinged Indric’s mind, asking
permission to enter the room. Indric pushed away from the door and
snatched his tunic off the floor. Drakkin had an uncanny ability to
appear whenever things spiraled out of control. Indric wasn’t
really in the mood to talk, but Drakkin was part of this, had been
from the beginning. Indric created a small opening in the shields
surrounding the palace and allowed his friend to enter.

“
You knew about this.” It
wasn’t a question. Drakkin had repaired the Mystic’s body. He had
to have known her planet of origin. Indric pulled on his tunic as
he waited for Drakkin’s reply.

Drakkin shrugged. “It was Cinarra’s
secret to keep or share. Did she finally tell you or was the truth
revealed some other way?”

“
The details are
irrelevant.” Anger surged through him anew as he realized how long
he’d been deceived. “She’s a Rodyte, for gods’ sake, a fucking
spy!”

Without so much as a flinch at
Indric’s angry outburst, Drakkin said, “No, she resides in the body
of a Rodyte spy. There is a difference.”

“
I should have been told.
When you asked permission to bring her to my region, I should have
been told then.”

“
Perhaps.” Drakkin strolled
toward him, gaze intense and perceptive. “Would it have made a
difference? Would you have refused to protect her and the boy if
you’d have known from the start?”

“
I don’t know.” He exhaled
his frustration as longing crept back in. He’d wanted Cinarra for
so long and making love to her had only compounded his hunger. But
it was impossible now. How could he make a Rodyte his consort? No
one would trust her. They would always wonder if some portion of
the Mystic remained, lingering in the background, subtly
influencing Cinarra’s behavior.

“
Do you love her?” There
was more than a little challenge in Drakkin’s tone.

“
That’s irrelevant now.” He
made the statement as much to remind himself as to convince his
friend.

“
Love is never irrelevant.
You have waited a very long time for the keeper of your
soul.”

Indric snorted at the archaic term. No
one believed in such things anymore. “She attracts me greatly, but
the ‘keeper of my soul’? We have both lived too long to believe in
fables.”

“
It took a good friend’s
intervention to bring Aria into my life. I was attempting a similar
kindness.” Drakkin motioned toward the door connecting Indric’s
room with Cinarra’s. “If you love her, there is no obstacle you
can’t overcome. Have you forgotten Aria’s parentage?”

Not only was Drakkin’s mate of
Ontarian and Rodyte heritage, she descended from the same bloodline
as Cinarra. “How did your elders learn to accept Aria?”

Drakkin laughed. “I left them no other
choice.”

Thunder shook the room and Indric’s
gaze shot back to the connecting door. Though many in his region
could summon gusts of Air, few could create lighting and
thunder.

“
That would be Head Master
Tal,” Drakkin predicted. “If you want her now, you’ll have to fight
for her.”

Indric raced across the room. The
thought of losing her sent fiery purpose racing through his body.
He threw open the door and blinked as colorful light momentarily
blinded him. As Drakkin predicted, Tal dar Aune stood beside the
vortex, Mystic’s robes whipping about his tall body. He maintained
the portal as he waited for Cinarra to step through.

“
Cinarra!” Indric started
forward and Tal raised his hand, creating an energy field to hamper
Indric’s progress. Indric lunged through the field, assisted by a
blast of Air. Cinarra, adorned now in a simple day dress, hesitated
as she heard her name, but she didn’t turn around. After the
briefest pause, she stepped into the vortex and was swallowed by
the spinning light.

Tal shot him a furious look then
followed her into the conduit, closing the portal behind him with a
sharp hand gesture.

Indric stared at the wall where the
conduit had been, feeling utterly empty.

“
Go after her,” Drakkin
urged from the doorway.

“
Not yet.” Indric crossed
his arms over his chest as ruthless calculation narrowed his eyes.
“I’ve been given a second chance to court her and I intend to do it
right this time.”

* * * * *

Nasrin stared at the holodisplay, not
sure if she should laugh or cry. It had taken her three days and an
obscene amount of money to secure this information, but she finally
had an answer to the burning question she’d been unable to ignore.
Who was Cinarra Mazodie?

Should she tell Eagin what she’d
learned, or did it benefit her more to… No, Eagin needed to know.
This would solidify their approach to the final conflict. In fact,
it worked incredibly well with what she had planned.

“
Computer, where is
Eagin?”

“
Eagin is in the green
guestroom.”

“
Is he alone?”

“
Yes.”

Shocking. Had he worked his way
through all of her servants already? She powered down the display
and hurried along the hallway toward the room Eagin had been using
ever since he came to the Fire Islands.

Her palm scan would open any door in
the palace, but she chose to knock instead. The door slid open a
moment later and she stepped into the room.

Eagin stood beside the bed, a towel
wrapped around his lean hips. “At the risk of sounding like a
cliché, I have a splitting headache. Can we postpone this until
morning?”

“
Not to worry. I’m not here
to warm your bed.”

“
Really?” He dropped the
towel and stood there naked, giving her plenty of time to
appreciate his toned physique, before he lifted the covers and
climbed into bed.

She barely registered the appeal of
his long, lean body. It was getting harder and harder to see past
his personality, which was the primary reason she’d encouraged him
to sample the favors of her staff. “I wasn’t satisfied with the
information my sources had given me regarding Cinarra Mazodie, so I
did some digging on my own.”

Eagin’s brows drew together and he
made an impatient sound. “She’s Indric’s mistress. What more do you
need to know?”

“
Cinarra Mazodie came into
existence nine years ago. Indications of her past have been
scattered through various databases, but if you tug on any of the
frayed ends, it quickly unravels.”

“
And this affects us,
how?”

Any guilt she’d felt at her chosen
course of action was quickly melting away. How she’d put up with
this arrogant ass for so long, however, would remain a mystery. “I
ran her image through every facial recognition database I have
access to. She doesn’t exist.”

“
Again, why should I care?
She’s going to be dead in a few days, so what difference does it
make?”

“
She’s a Rodyte spy.” She
just threw it out there and waited for his practiced indifference
to fall away.

“
She’s
what
?”

“
You heard me. I had to
bribe half of the criminal elements on four planets, but I finally
found someone who recognized her face. She’s a Rodyte operative.
Her last official assignment placed her undercover on Ontariese,
but somehow she crossed paths with Indric. She had several
procedures to make her look as Ontarian as possible, but they
couldn’t fake the rotation of Ontarian eyes. In fact, if you really
look at her eyes, the bright blue Rodyte rings are still
visible.”

“
Is it possible Indric
doesn’t realize he’s banging a Rodyte?”

“
If they’ve been together
for nine cycles, it’s highly unlikely. It makes more sense that he
fell so hard for the little tramp that he’s hiding the fact from
everyone.”

He stroked his chin and gazed off into
the distance, clearly processing the possibilities. “So, do we
still kill her or is there a better way to use this to our
advantage?”

Suddenly it was “we” and “our” again.
She guarded her expression, making sure her annoyance didn’t show.
“This is perfect for what we already have planned. Rather than
rushing in after the tragedy to lead a devastated region, you will
risk your own life as you attempt to save your embittered
half-brother from his own foolishness. After Indric and his whore
are killed, you’ll reveal that she was a Rodyte spy and her
handlers were forced to kill her when she refused to follow orders
and kill her lover.”