Demon's Fire (3 page)

More to the point, this man was interested in his wares—against his will, perhaps, but interested all the same.

Pahndir nodded to him, man to man, then gave his head the subtle tilt that was a universal signal to come near. The man went still, then glanced at his companion, guilt in the gesture if ever there were. He didn’t, however, seem alarmed to have been addressed by a demon. Pahndir’s heart pulsed hard in his throat as he waited to see what the man would do.

What he did was squeeze his companion’s arm, speak softly in her ear, and draw away. She watched him walk toward Pahndir’s stall but didn’t follow him.

The man stopped just within the shadow of Pahndir’s awning and removed his brimmed straw hat. Something about the way he held it before his heart, as if unconsciously shielding that organ, made Pahndir tread carefully.

For more reasons than the usual, this was a customer he wanted to reel in.

“I see you know who I am,” Pahndir said when the man remained silent. “So the question is, how may I serve you?”

The man’s face was quiet but not as quiet as a Yama’s would have been. Thoughts moved behind it, temptations he might have struggled with for years. And here Pahndir was, doing his best to nudge the stranger over the brink.

“I was wondering…” The man swallowed, nervous despite the dignity he was trying to project. “I was wondering if you offer the services of other races.”

Pahndir felt his brows draw together above his nose. Sometimes humans from one country referred to humans from another as a different race, but Pahndir sensed this was not the man’s meaning. Then comprehension dawned, and along with it another quickening of his pulse. He had to pull in a breath to speak smoothly.

“You mean, do I pander the unfortunates of my own race to my customers?”

The man gave a jerking nod, a vein now beating harder in his strong brown neck. That neck led into the open collar of his cambric shirt, the edges of which had been stained past scrubbing by the dusty golden sands of the Vharzovhin. Perhaps he was one of Herrington’s crew out on the dig. That was one demon every Yama had heard of, a famous diplomat who lived with the humans in their capital. Lord Herrington had fathered a half-demon bastard on an opera singer, and then had the cheek to acknowledge her publicly. Archaeology was Herrington’s hobby. His luck at it, or maybe it was brilliance, had made him something of a hero to both races.

Intrigued by the possibility that this young man worked for him—though not as much as by their conversation—Pahndir filed the thought away. He could see the object of his interest fighting to breathe normally.

Suddenly enjoying this very much, Pahndir smoothed his eminently
un
stained pale blue tunic down his thighs. “As it happens, I have two beautiful demons who work for me. One male. One female. You could take your pick.”

His potential customer dropped his eyes but, evidently, not because he’d been offered both genders.

“They’re
rohn
?” the human asked in a soft, harsh voice.

“They are,” Pahndir confirmed, refraining from pointing out that members of the upper class,
his
class, would hardly condescend to sell their bodies as a career; as a lark, perhaps—
daimyo
were decadent enough for anything—but not to earn their daily bread.

“Do they…” The young man swallowed as the words broke in his throat. “Do they have to be hired for sex?”

Pahndir had been leaning forward, caught up in the drama of their exchange, but this query sent him lounging back in the folding chair. He steepled graceful fingers before his chin. “You mean you’d like them to take your energy.”

The man said nothing, but the unhappiness in his eyes confirmed the guess well enough. Somehow, somewhere, this beautiful Ohramese boy had developed a fixation with being fed on by demons. To witness such shame over what was, to Pahndir, an understandable enough desire nearly shamed him as well…nearly, but not quite.

After all, if humans viewed what Pahndir was selling as a step on the road to hell, that was their concern.
He
didn’t have to consider himself the devil whispering in their ear.

“It can be done as carefully as you wish,” he said, “with whatever safeguards you desire to prevent undue fatigue. For that matter…” Pahndir hesitated half a moment, an impulse he didn’t understand spurring him. “If you preferred it, I would take your energy myself.”

The young man held Pahndir in his considering sea-blue gaze, not accepting, but also not repelled. Ohramese though he was, this man knew something of what two males could do together. Pahndir’s body heated deep and low, like opium smoke curling in his groin. In his desire to find a human to help him spill his seed, he had not considered a male might do, but this one certainly made him think
maybe.
Pahndir had been with his own sex before, now and then. Royal Yama were naturally adventurous. Given the stringent limits within which their biology operated, they’d have been fools not to experiment. Pahndir knew that to drink this human’s etheric force would be a pleasure in itself—a dangerous pleasure, but he was not averse to that. What would it matter if he absorbed the human’s emotions along with his energy? Pahndir was a prince. Unlike the
rohn
in his employ, whose self-control was proportional to their class, Pahndir would get over it.

“At least take my card,” Pahndir said, offering him one. “You can decide at your leisure.”

The young man looked at the small cream-colored square, then back over his shoulder at the woman he’d come to the market with.

Pahndir had almost forgotten her during their exchange, but the reminder had his flesh humming anew, electricity flowing like a zephyr across his skin.
Her
energy seemed able to reach him across the
chowk
, like heat waves shimmering over sunbaked dunes. The effect was extraordinary. Sensual. Teasing. And that to a man whose erotic interest, by nature and circumstance, needed little encouragement to rise.

Had he ever seen anyone, human or Yama, shine this vibrantly? She stood in a sari stall, lifting a length of scarlet silk into the sun to examine it. The garment fluttered against her breasts like water, painting her in the color of sex itself. He wasn’t the only one who thought so. Again, Pahndir saw that yearning in her companion’s face, this time for a prize he seemed to think as far beyond his deserving as an emperor’s crown.

It was a yearning he was clearly used to tamping down. When the Ohramese’s attention returned to Pahndir, his expression was like carved granite. The faintest flush on his cheekbones was all that exposed his imperfect human control.

Infinity help me,
Pahndir thought, struggling to keep his reaction to this sight concealed. What he wouldn’t give to bed both of them!

“I don’t need a card to find The Prince’s Flame,” the young man said.

The comment begged a rejoinder, preferably a flirtatious one. Seeing the young man’s self-derision, Pahndir restrained himself.

“I hope you
do
find it,” was all he said, obliged to content himself with but a shade of hope as the Ohramese turned and walked off.

From the first, Beth had been aware of the demon’s gaze. The attention intrigued her but also made her self-conscious. People simply didn’t stare at her when she was with Charles.

Charles was…well, not quite a cousin, though he liked to treat her as if he were. Charles was the former ward of Beth’s older brother’s wife, a woman who had rescued Charles and his younger brother from starving on the street. Beth didn’t think of herself as vain, but Charles was the only person she knew who made her feel homely. He had the face of a fallen angel, his bitter humor as beautiful as others’ cheer.

Despite which, the demon had stared at her.

Her cheeks felt hot as she pretended the scarlet sari she’d picked up was engaging her whole interest. What were Charles and the Yama talking about? Not her, surely. That was too great a stretch. Charles had called the demon “an acquaintance,” had claimed he “ought to say hello,” but when he’d said it, his eyes had evaded hers. Obviously, this association was one of his secrets, the deep, dark who-knew-whats he thought she was too decent a girl to hear about. The attitude drove her mad. Beth might not have grown up like he did, might never have gone hungry or done unmentionable things to survive, but she was far from being as nice a girl as Charles insisted on believing.

If she had been, she wouldn’t have pestered her parents for literally years to let her travel here with Lord Herrington.

Beth’s parents—bless their well-meaning souls—wanted her to settle down and marry like her older sisters, wanted her to pop out babies and stay home. Beth understood why they felt that way. They’d worked hard for most of their lives. The fact that they’d raised daughters who didn’t have to meant a lot to them, and Beth being the baby made it twice as hard for them to let go. But Beth had never desired an ordinary life. With all her being, she craved an extraordinary one. She thanked all the stars in heaven that her family had finally given up their hopes for her.

“Excuse me,” Beth whispered to the patiently waiting sari vendor. “What is the business of that man in the golden booth?”

Fortunately, like most Bhamjrishi, this vendor spoke her conquerors’ tongue. “That is Mr. Pahndir,” she said in the lilting local accent. “He runs The Prince’s Flame.”

“The Prince’s Flame?”

The older woman’s earthy amusement might have been invented by her countrywomen. Certainly, they’d perfected it. “The Prince’s Flame is a pleasure house. It is expensive but very clean. I’ve heard he runs it honestly.”

Beth’s mouth abruptly felt glued shut, unable to say a word.
A pleasure house.
And Charles had called the demon an acquaintance. Beth was embarrassed to find she could be shocked. But it was none of her business what Charles did along those lines. No matter what her silly private daydreams—which a female would have to be dead and blind not to entertain—she and Charles were not romantically involved. She was twenty-four, for heaven’s sake, old enough to know what went on in a pleasure house, old enough to be married, had she been inclined. People her age had sex, and those people included Charles.

The vendor must have sensed her inner battle, because she smiled and spoke again. “You do know that pleasure houses in Bhamjran serve women as well as men?”

“Of course I do,” Beth said too quickly, having forgotten that entirely.

The vendor laughed softly. “Perhaps The Prince’s Flame would be worth the price for you.”

Beth blushed as hotly as if her cheeks had been steamed, but she had to ask. “You don’t suppose that demon…”

The vendor joined her in regarding the man Charles was talking to. “I haven’t heard whether Mr. Pahndir takes customers. We don’t get many Yama in Bhamjran, but it cannot be denied they are a handsome lot. And they’re stronger than humans. More self-controlled. I’ve heard their males can go all night.”

Beth had a reasonable understanding of what they could “go all night” at, though this was not a phrase she’d heard before. Her legs felt weak of a sudden, her upper thighs prickly and warm. The demon sprawled in his chair as arrogant as a prince, his long legs stretched, his hair a cloak of raven silk spilling down his arms. Beautiful blue highlights gleamed in it. He
was
handsome, in a strange, foreign way—exotically attractive, like the curving silver daggers desert tribes employed. That she couldn’t read his expression sent a pleasant shiver coursing down her spine. Lord Herrington, the only demon she knew personally, had lived among humans for so many years he’d gone a bit native. This one was the genuine, undiluted article. This one wasn’t even sweating in the desert heat.

I’d like to make him sweat,
Beth thought out of the blue.

The impulse startled her. However not-nice she thought she was, she knew she couldn’t begin to fathom the forbidden thrills that being alone with this Yama would entail.

The vendor drew her attention by touching her wrist. “Your young man returns,” she warned.

He’s not my young man,
Beth began to say, but considering the conversation they’d just had, it seemed easier not to explain.

Charles’s face was serious as he wended back between the market’s slowly moving crowd. Beth was sorry to see the change in him. She enjoyed his playful side, something only she and his younger brother, Max, seemed able to bring out in him.

Mind you, Charles wasn’t like a demon. He had deep feelings. He adored his adoptive family; respected Beth’s older brother, Adrian, probably more than Adrian’s blood relatives; and treated his job as a chef like a religious calling. Easy, however, was not a path he knew how to walk. On that score, an icy, emotionless demon had a considerable advantage over him.

“Ready to leave?” he asked as soon as he reached her.

Beth put the scarlet sari back on its table. “If you wish.”

Charles’s expression flickered. “Forgive me. You’d like to do more shopping.”

“I don’t need to.” Concerned, she laid her hand on the rumpled linen of his coat sleeve. She wished she dared ask what the demon had said to him. “Charles, are you all right? You look rather grim.”

“I’m fine.” He shook his head as if to fling out unwelcome thoughts. “Everything is fine. We can stay or go, as you please.”

“I think I’d rather go.” She turned to the helpful vendor. “Thank you for your time. I hope I may return another day.”

As the vendor nodded, Charles offered Beth his elbow. The gesture was politeness rather than care. Preferring the latter, Beth curled her fingers over his, grateful for the heat that drove more gently born females than she to go without gloves.

At the touch, he looked at her, a sweep of stubble glinting on his lean, sharp jaw. The prickles were one shade darker than his sun-bleached hair. “I’m fine, Beth. Truly. I have work at camp.”

Beth made herself smile at him, unconvinced but understanding he was doing his best not to subject her to his darkened mood. “I do as well,” she said as lightly as she could. “I expect there’s a thousand notebook sheets to scan by now.”