Demon's Fire (9 page)

“But isn’t that a little close to—I mean, I know our queen’s first cousin once courted her, but—”

“Yes, we Yama find it shocking, too, maybe more than you do, for we know the dangers of inbreeding. I expect that’s why they’re here in Bhamjran, rather than safe at home. It isn’t easy to want something even those who love you don’t understand.”

He was watching her with calm silver eyes, measuring her reaction.

“Do Yama love their children?” she asked.

An emotion tightened his face, so quick and slight she would have missed it if she hadn’t been looking straight at him.

“Many do. They simply express it differently than humans.”

His gaze fell to her mouth, as if he wanted to kiss her. The lust that had been plaguing her lately burst into renewed flame, like a match set to a pool of oil low in her abdomen. No doubt sensing this, Pahndir’s pupils swelled.

“Do you want to watch with the sound on?” he asked softly.

“We can listen to what they say?”

“If you like, I can turn the volume high enough to hear their sweat plopping to the floor.”

Beth glanced at the moving silver-framed display. Charles’s jacket was gone. The Yamish courtesans were divesting him of his shirt, working together to pull it up his muscled torso and over his head. To know what they were saying would be a more serious invasion of Charles’s privacy than she’d thought possible.

“Yes,” she said, her throat as rough as if she’d swallowed gravel. “Please turn on the sound.”

“Sound on,” he said, and wrapped his hand around the fist she’d made.

His hold was probably meant to steady her, but her sex seemed to be running out of her in warm gushes. It was impossible to pretend she was anything but excited.

Feeling the demons’ hands on him was like being licked by fire. Charles’s skin was hot everywhere they touched, his prick so stiff it might have been trying to rip through his trousers.

“My name is Donjen,” said the male, his fingers hard and competent as he worked to free Charles’s front placket. “My cousin’s name is Darja. She doesn’t speak much human, but she will have to be the one who feeds from you. She has more self-control than I do. Sometimes I get caught up in the pleasure and do not stop soon enough.”

Charles gasped as his grossly thickened cock fell into Donjen’s hands. This was more information than the state of his arousal needed. The darker part of Charles’s nature, the part that would always revel in perversity, wanted to demand that Donjen take his cousin’s place.

He didn’t get a chance to do so. Charles’s gasp became a choked-back cry as Donjen ran his hands up and down the sides of Charles’s shaft. The caress was businesslike but wonderful.

“You are big,” Donjen observed. “That is good. Both Darja and I like that.”

Charles hadn’t been certain he wanted to combine this act with sex, but now he was glad Mr. Pahndir had convinced him he’d be missing out if he refrained. He told himself he wasn’t sorry he’d declined the demon’s offer to do both deeds himself. His current arrangements were as inflaming as he could handle. As it was, chills of pleasure streaked out from his groin, so powerful he wasn’t certain how much longer he could keep his feet.

He wasn’t the only one burning up. Donjen’s pupils were huge black pools as he stroked Charles, and Darja was rubbing her breasts across Charles’s back like a cat in heat.

“Can you feel my energy?” Charles asked Donjen. “Does it transfer just from taking me in your hand?”

“It does,” the male confirmed. “And I will feel it even more when Darja makes you come.”

His cousin said something in their language, apparently urging Donjen to hurry things along.

“She wants your hot human shaft inside her,” Donjen explained. “We had better move you to the bed.”

They had to help him; his legs were that rubbery. Luckily, the bed was firm and low to the ground, a simple silk-sheeted mattress on an ebony platform. Darja threw off her pale pink robes as if she couldn’t wait another second to be naked. She was pretty and delicate, her figure straight, her breasts barely there. She straddled Charles where he lay and flicked her straight dark hair behind her. As a
rohn
, she wasn’t entitled to wear it long, and it hung only a little farther than her shoulders. Charles reached for her, wanting her to enjoy this, too, but Donjen caught his wrists and held them.

“No,” he said. “Darja likes to prepare herself.”

Charles could see she did. She moaned as she ran her hands over her slender body, pulling out her tiny nipples until they turned red. Her pubis had been depilated, probably by some sophisticated Yamish means. The skin was as smooth and glossy as the sheets on which she knelt. When she ran one finger between her labia, Donjen’s hands tightened.

He was kneeling on the mattress above Charles’s head, the only one of them still dressed. His erection pushed out the front of his loose blue robes, pulsing against them in excitement.

Helpless not to, Charles wondered if the cousins allowed themselves to have sex with each other. Maybe sharing clients was as close as they got.

“She will put her hand over your heart now,” Donjen said. “You may feel a sensation of tugging at your breastbone.”

Darja’s hand was damp from stroking herself. She laid it flat across his chest and groaned softly.

Charles couldn’t doubt this was a groan of ecstasy. She clutched her breast with her other hand, the grip so tight her reddened nipple squeezed out between two knuckles. Donjen spoke to her in their language, a soothing procession of foreign syllables. Calming, Darja opened her eyes again. She looked down at Charles’s rigid penis, and then into his eyes.

“Now,” she said haltingly, “I take you.”

Though he knew no human could overpower a Yama, instinct had him struggling against Donjen’s hold. Charles hadn’t registered much sensation when Darja touched his heart, but the moment her quivering passage pushed down his cock, he felt the energy she drew from him. Her wetness could not obscure it, or the involuntary jerks with which she undulated over him. It felt like she was pulling long ribbons of etheric force out of him—not only from his heart but from his cock. Once she’d sunk down all the way, she didn’t seem to want to move except to grind around him. She began to sob, with pleasure perhaps, or from the emotions that twisted out of him through his aura.

“It burns her,” Donjen said, his voice a little husky as he watched his cousin struggle with her desire. “Your energy burns her pussy when she covers you. You should thrust now. She needs to come very soon.”

Charles didn’t know what would happen if she didn’t, but he rocked his hips up and into her. The movement reminded Darja there were more pleasures than simply engulfing him.

“Yes,” she moaned, her head lolling back. “Human, come with me.”

He was shooting toward it too fast to argue, even if he’d wanted to drag this out. Darja’s sex seemed to have more muscles than a human woman’s, and apparently she had control over all of them. She rippled over the thrusts he made into her, as deft as fingers stroking him.

With skills like that, she dragged him to the edge in half a minute, and looked just as close herself. This was fortunate, because Charles’s teeth were too tightly gritted to warn her.

“Donjen!” she wailed, riding Charles hard and rough.

Her increase in speed undid him, the idea that she was desperate for release. Donjen’s hands clenched on Charles’s just as the orgasm seethed up his spine. The male’s grip was so intense it would have been painful had Charles not been coming. Excited for a few more reasons than he needed, his energy swelled in a way he’d never known it to do before.

Both Yama cried out as it did. Darja’s pussy clamped on his cock while Donjen’s hips bucked wildly. They came with an abandon Yama rarely showed, and even in the midst of pleasure dread unfurled.

Charles was never going to forget this.

It took a moment beyond their shared explosion before Donjen released Charles’s aching hands. Darja’s slight weight sagged onto him soon after. She rubbed her cheek across his shoulder, possibly gathering a last few sips of his energy.

“Good,” she purred. “Very, very good, human.”

Her praise may have disturbed her cousin, because he lifted her away. Darja murmured a protest but did not resist. She looked drunk, her face streaked from weeping, her eyes an eerie solid black. Donjen had to hold her with her weight propped against his side.

Charles’s eyes widened when he got a good look at him. Donjen hadn’t simply come, he had come rivers. The wet spot on his robes extended all the way to his knees. If the Yama felt self-conscious over this, it didn’t show. His alien face was as unreadable as a mask.

“Thank you, human,” he said, offering him a crisp, cool bow. “You were a more than adequate partner.”

They exited with no added formalities. Darja’s head was resting on her cousin’s shoulder, the pair more of a couple—despite the vaguely illicit nature of their bond—than a man like Charles could intrude on. The reminder that he’d never been part of a couple couldn’t have been starker. Worse, their departure left him, whether he wished it or not, alone with his thoughts.

He’d finally done it, the act he’d craved and avoided much of his adult life. He didn’t think he felt any different. Not more of a monster, not less. Pleasured, yes, but certainly not
liberated
the way Mr. Pahndir said.

Mostly he felt tired, as if he’d worked too many shifts back to back. While it was happening, the sex and the feeding had been incredible. Now he wished he could undo both.

Knowing he couldn’t and too drained to rise, he flung his forearm across his eyes. He discovered the female Yama hadn’t stolen all his tears. One squeezed out from beneath his eyelid and ran, warm as blood, down his temple.

“Is Charles all right?” Beth asked as soon as her breath returned. “Maybe we should—”

At a loss, she stopped speaking. Going to Charles didn’t seem the right suggestion. She knew he wouldn’t want her there, and the precise nature of the prince’s relationship with him was unclear. He’d said he wanted to watch over Charles, but would Pahndir ordinarily check on a client who seemed upset?

His quiet, watchful expression offered no clues.

“Your friend isn’t ill,” he said, “if that’s what concerns you. He’s simply fulfilled a craving he fought against for a long time. That can take adjusting to. Any other effects, he’ll sleep off.”

Beth twisted around on the cushion to face her host. Prince Pahndir’s hands settled on her shoulders as if they were intimates. The move startled her, though he made no further advance. She wasn’t used to being so close to a male she wasn’t related to. This one’s proximity posed a danger to her self-restraint, but she wanted to understand more than she wanted a safe distance.

“You’re saying Charles has been wanting to feed a Yama with his energy.”

Pahndir offered her a shrug so small she almost didn’t see it. “Some humans enjoy the act more than others. I’m told it’s an acquired taste: relaxing if you don’t fight it, draining if you do. There are cosmetic effects, of course. Humans who feed Yama refine their looks.”

His lean, hard face could have been an advertisement for that refinement, its planes and angles subtly different from a human male’s.

“And your kind? Do they all enjoy our etheric force?”

Prince Pahndir’s gaze fell to her throat, where she could feel her pulse throbbing. Was he trying to judge how aroused she’d become from watching Charles? He must have been, because his eyes returned to hers, darkened. This close, his irises were mesmerizing, like flames burning behind ice.

“I’ve never heard of a Yama who didn’t enjoy a sip or two, though many fear the loss of control that comes with absorbing human emotions.”

“It appeared as if…” Beth swallowed. “For your employees, feeding from Charles looked like an aphrodisiac.”

“It is.” Pahndir’s elegant profile leaned toward her neck. “Do you know your smell changes when you blush? It grows just a whiff spicier.”

This was too much for her. Overwhelmed, she put her hands on his chest and pushed, which was as useful as shoving at a cliff. Her traitorous body found her powerlessness exciting, making her next words come out ragged. “I’m not comfortable with you sniffing me.”

“What if I were kissing you? Would that distract you enough not to mind?”

She shouldn’t have licked her lips, but she couldn’t help it. She was too hot, too soft and needy, and he was close enough to fan her face with his quickened breath. He smelled good, too, warm and spicy and very male.

“Just a kiss?” she asked softly.

Pahndir’s silver eyes took on what she thought was a teasing gleam. “Perhaps you’re right to be cautious. I’m certain if I kissed you, I would want more.”

“Because watching Charles aroused you.”

“Didn’t it arouse you? I thought Donjen wasn’t going to stop coming. Charles didn’t even have to touch him to bring him off.”

This reminder made her clench inside. “You liked watching the man more than the woman?”

She knew she shouldn’t be encouraging this conversation. She knew it even more when his eyebrows slanted in amusement.

“Oh, Beth, I am going to enjoy shocking you.”

Hearing him say her given name was enough to startle her. He ducked closer, ready to steal the kiss he’d offered earlier. Beth wanted it, but at the last second something stronger than desire had her drawing back.

Pahndir understood her reticence better than she did.

“I’m rushing you, aren’t I?” He drew one hand down her front until it cupped her breast through Charles’s shirt. “You want me as much as I want you, but I’ve pushed too fast.”

She bit her lip against the shock of pleasure the gentle pressure of his palm inspired. Even through her bindings, he had to feel how hard her nipple was. “Maybe you could let me…do things to you.”

“Things?”

“Maybe—” Helpless not to, she gave in to her urge to squirm her itch against the floor cushion. Her body felt like it was burning up, especially between her legs. “Maybe you could show me how you like to be touched.”

He cursed in his own language, then covered her mouth with his. It was a swift, devastating kiss, his tongue curling in to claim her softness, his lips tugging hers to him. When he broke away, he blew out a hard, rough breath.

Those few seconds had her mouth buzzing.

“Why do your eyes go black like that?” she whispered. “What does it mean?”

He seemed startled by the question, taking a moment to answer. “My eyes go black when I’m very,
very
aroused.”

Oh, he just made it worse and worse. She could barely squeeze her next question out. “You’re aroused by me?”

“By you, sweet Beth. By the thought of your hands on me.”

He lifted each one to kiss its palm, and then captured her mouth again. This time the kiss was deeper, longer. His arms came around her, drawing her to her knees and over his lap. She’d been kissed before and had enjoyed it, but those kisses had never turned her spine molten. His lips were satin on their surface and firm beneath. His hands moved slowly up and down her back, gentle but arousing.

The moment was unbearably intimate—the stroking of his tongue against hers, the closeness of his body. She sank into the pleasure, barely minding the vulnerability of her legs being spread apart around his thighs. Though the prince was silent, she couldn’t keep her sighs inside. Moaning, she pushed her fingers through the night-dark silk of his hair.

The brush of skin on skin must have been too much. Pahndir pulled back with a quiet gasp. He cupped her breast again, looking down to where the peak pulsed wildly beneath the pad of his circling thumb. His tongue came out to bare its forked marking, and Beth immediately thought of places she wanted it.

It was embarrassing, really, how much she craved every part of him.

“Creation,” he said, his voice a trifle husky on the demon curse. “I think we need to put our hands on each other.”

“I want to touch you first,” she insisted, not sure what she’d do if he touched her. The lift of Pahndir’s brows reminded her that she was contradicting royalty. “I mean, if you wouldn’t mind, Your Highness.”

He let out an actual laugh, brief but unmistakable. “I only used my title to get past your employer. Pahndir will do for you. We’ll make you the queen tonight. Nothing will happen that you don’t wish.”

His promise was enough to flush her from head to toe.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Beth confessed ruefully.

The fact that she’d made him laugh again was disturbing. Pahndir shouldn’t have been this loose with her, this aroused. He’d brushed up against human energy before, casually and otherwise, but none of the paid companions with whom he’d performed his previous experiments had stirred him up half so much. He could have been two days from his heat, instead of two full weeks. Touching Beth had made his skin nearly crawl with pleasure, and kissing her…

That would have knocked him to his knees if he hadn’t already been there. Her taste alone would have been enough to weaken him, but there had been more. Though her responses weren’t without innocence, it was clear she’d wanted to kiss him back, and that she’d known how.

“You’re frowning,” she said.

Pahndir wiped the expression from his face. Disconcerting though his reactions were, their intensity was cause for hope. She’d made his eyes go black, and he definitely found her scent appealing: both indicators that a match was possible. After all his searching, he might have found a human who could give him the relief he craved. He wouldn’t know for certain until his cycle peaked, but in the meantime, they could certainly enjoy themselves.

“I’m concerned,” he said, the evasion as natural as drawing breath. “Despite your obvious daredevil streak—which, believe me, I’m grateful for—I don’t wish to frighten you off.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to work harder to do that. My sisters don’t call me Fearless Philips for nothing.”

He didn’t fight the amusement that curved his lips, or the urge to tuck a lock of gilded auburn behind her ear. That the simple touch called color into her cheeks delighted him. Instantly addicted, his next demand was guaranteed to deepen it.

“Tell me what you know of Yamish sexuality.”

“Well—” She fidgeted, and not just with nerves. The scent of her juices was enough to clench his jaw. “I know you’re stronger than humans and, er, very controlled. And, generally speaking, humans and demons can’t have children. I know you—That is, I assume you have essentially the same parts.”

“Essentially.” He cupped her beautiful warm face. “Have you ever seen a naked man?”

As he’d known it would, her skin flamed deliciously under his palm.

“Not completely naked, unless you count picture books. Are you volunteering to undress for me?”

He had to squelch another laugh at her hopefulness. With no wish to disappoint her, he rose and began unfastening his outer robes. Her eyes were avid, her hands pressed flat to her slender thighs. He dropped his outer garment, leaving only a tunic and lounging trousers made of thin gold silk. At that point, his arousal couldn’t be hidden. Clearly fascinated, her gaze dipped to where his erection pushed out the cloth.

Pahndir expected her to find his body acceptable. Health and beauty were built into his genes. Still, Beth’s reaction pleased him. He didn’t think he’d ever seen quite her combination of avarice and awe.

“You touch me when I say,” he warned her. “Not before.”

“You’re large,” she said, her eyes refusing to move.

“I am in proportion to my height.”

He’d only meant to be accurate, but the explanation caused her to laugh. The sound fluttered through him like butterflies. Wanting to be naked, and quickly, he made short work of pulling off the rest of his clothes. Her reaction to this was just as priceless.

“Oh,” she said, her fingers to her mouth. She scooted across the leather floor to him on her knees, perhaps unaware of how provocative her position was.

Not that it mattered, he sternly told himself. He wasn’t going to ask a neophyte to take him in her mouth.

When his cock jolted higher at the tantalizing thought, she almost touched him, pulling her hand back only at the last moment. Her big honey-brown eyes looked up at him in question. “You have no hair on your sex.”

“We remove it. The women, too.”

Evidently, she hadn’t watched his employees closely enough to notice this. The omission flattered him…until he realized her attention had probably been on her friend. He didn’t like the way that supposition felt, but before he could convince himself it was unimportant, she spoke again.

“You are larger than a human here,” she said, indicating his scrotum.

Pahndir fought the urge to dig his nails into his palms. “It seems you didn’t waste your time with those picture books.”

“I memorized them,” she confided with another laugh.

It was too unnerving, and too tempting, to have her sit before him like a supplicant. He returned to his knees in front of her, sitting on his heels to bring their heads level. “How good are you at keeping secrets?”

“Very.” Her tone was sure, her face serious.

“I hope that’s true, because I need to tell you another before we go further. I
am
larger than humans, and other Yama, too. Royals are different, Beth. Royals have extra needs.”

“
Extra
needs?”

He took her hand and wrapped it gently around his balls, almost wincing at how good the contact felt. Possibly, the pleasure was addling him, because sharing a secret most of his own kind weren’t privy to took shockingly little internal debate.

“Royals only ejaculate once a month, and only with partners who are biochemically compatible: those with whom we’d have strong children. We can have sex any time we like, but until we hit our heat, our orgasms are dry.”

Her mouth had fallen open. “Once a—Are you in heat now?”

“Thank you for the flattering suggestion but, no, I’m not.”

“Oh, God!” she exclaimed on a gust of air. “I feel like I am!”

Lust rolled through him in a hot, molasses wave. How could he behave as a respectable Yama should with a woman who said things like that? Speaking politely was a true struggle. “Would you like me to give you a release now?”

She shook herself, or maybe shuddered. “No,” she said, her fingers shifting restlessly on his scrotum. “I think I trust your control more than mine.”

No one, Yama or human, had ever said such a thing to him. His eyes pricked strangely. “You may safely enjoy yourself with me. I won’t do anything you don’t ask for.”

She smiled as slow and sweet as a spring sunrise. “The way I feel, I’m afraid I’ll ask for everything, and I’m not sure I’m ready to get it.”

He did his best to hide his disappointment. No doubt she was a virgin, and not yet prepared to give the condition up.

“As you wish,” he said, then jerked when her hand contracted on his testicles. She seemed to know she hadn’t hurt him, because she repeated the testing squeeze. Though he wasn’t as full as he’d be in a week or so, the pressure felt wonderful, her human energy warming him deep inside.

“Are you larger here because your seed is storing up?”

“In part,” he said, his breath somewhat difficult to retrieve, and never mind his concentration. “Blood flows to those tissues when I’m aroused, so I’m slightly swollen and tender.”

“Good tender or bad?”

“Good,” he said, a fraction short of a gasp. Giving in to impulse, he shifted his knees wider. Her fingers had begun to play more surely over him, and his eyelids were sliding shut as if they were weighted. “All Yama like to have their balls massaged. It loosens us for later. Makes our ejaculations easier.”

“I know about massages. They’re my big sisters’ favorite bribes for not tattling.”

She must have paid them off many times. She was swiftly turning him into a puddle.