Princess of Lust (For the Love of Evil) (2 page)

Lifting the edge of her golden dragon-skin skirt, she stepped over a pile of discarded stuffed animals. While she would rather have been in work clothes, her men insisted that the people gained courage from her being their princess and that she had a duty to uphold the image of her station, even if she’d only recently learned that she was demonic royalty. “My father is meeting with ambassadors of the other high princes, and I’m his only living child. We have no other choice.” She slowed her pace as they neared Gregor. His soul brushed against hers, and she wanted nothing more than to run and throw herself into his arms. He was her concubine, bound by blood, and they shared a piece of each other’s souls.

Gregor’s normally deep red hair looked black, as it lay close to his skull with sweat. His shirt had been shed long ago, revealing a heavily muscled body built for fighting. He was something of a rarity in Hell, a human living among devils and demons. She paused and allowed her gaze to travel over him, letting him know she loved him and found him desirable. The jealousy Gregor felt over Raum sharing her bed continued to worsen, and she didn’t know what to do to make it better. Monogamy was unheard of among the royal houses of Hell, and as a princess of Lust, Natalia gained her power from having multiple partners.

Gregor came from a family of Russian drug lords who moved massive amounts of opium through the world for Belal. He had fallen in love with Natalia and paid the price, almost killed off by Belal’s minions before she’d rescued him. Now he lived in Hell as her beloved concubine and her father’s prisoner. Not an easy thing for a man used to ruling the world around him with an iron fist.

“My mistress, I need you,” he said, and held out his hand. His dark tilted eyes flashed with anger as he glared at Raum.

Raum tightened his grip and drew her into his arms for a kiss. His lips were hungry, demanding as he tasted her, but she could almost feel how he intended to annoy Gregor. Sure enough, rage and jealousy burned through the bond she shared with Gregor and she gently pushed Raum away. “For someone who is over two thousand years old, you sure act childish when you’re around Gregor.”

Shrugging, Raum didn’t even try to look sorry. “What can I say? He brings out the worst in me.”

The remaining villagers milled about, and she tried to put the confusing mess that was her personal life to the back of her mind. Compared to the destruction happening all around them, her love life seemed positively rosy. Well, maybe not rosy, but certainly not as terrible as the bubble of Chaos consuming their world…at least not yet. With a sigh, she stepped further away from Gregor and tilted her head in the direction of the crowd.

“This is neither the time nor the place. While you two are growling over me like dogs fighting over a bone, these people are fighting for their lives.”

Both men appeared chagrined and Gregor started to say something, but she held up her hand. “I don’t want to hear it. In case you’ve forgotten, I need to empty the cornerstone and I’m going to need every ounce of concentration to keep from ending up as either a dried-out husk or a drooling idiot. So Raum, if you would like to pick out a spot in my father’s gardens to bury me, by all means keep baiting him.” She caught her concubine smirking out of the corner of her eye and whirled on him. “And you, Gregor, if you want to spend the rest of your life changing my soiled diapers while I rot from the inside out, please continue to poke at Raum.”

The task ahead would call for all of her attention, all of her focus. She was about to become a vessel for her father’s power, and if she wasn’t careful, it would destroy her. While she loved her men, sometimes she really wanted to smack them upside the head. She started to walk away, but each man placed a hand on her arm at the same time, holding her in place.

“Please forgive me,” Raum said in a soft and seductive voice. She knew he wasn’t trying to be sexual at this moment, that his essential sensuality was as much a part of him as his blue skin and moonlight-white hair, but that didn’t stop the tingle of warmth in her belly.

“Us,” Gregor said from her other side and pressed her hand to his lips. “I’ll behave…until we’re safe. Then you can punish me for being so wicked by making me serve your pleasure until I can’t move.” He gave her a charming smile that made her heart beat a little harder.

“That’s hardly punishment,” Raum muttered but Gregor ignored him.

Holding each man’s hand, she hurried across the village, steeling herself as the stone came into sight.

Chapter Two

Natalia’s hand trembled as she placed it in Gregor’s, dreading the pain to come. Because she was only half-demon, born of a human mother, and had yet to make the transition to full demon, the spell she was about to perform was going to be difficult. But reabsorbing the power her father had stored into the keystone was essential. If that power wasn’t properly captured and returned to Asmodeus, it would explode at the touch of a bubble of Chaos and take a huge portion of land, and her, with it. Worse yet, the loss of that much power at once could send her father into a deep, almost catatonic sleep and leave them all vulnerable to Belal, High Prince of Hell and Keeper of the Deadly Sin Sloth, and his minions.

Standing tall, Natalia tried to emulate the effortless noble grace the ladies of the Court of Lust carried off with such ease. “On behalf of my father, thank you for staying behind to help. My guards and I will take it from here. Your families are waiting for you at the new village location. Please go with my thanks.”

Wemken, a village elder and minor devil, shook his head and crossed his arms over his narrow chest. “Begging your pardon, Princess, but we won’t be leaving until the job is done.” The other men muttered in agreement, and her heart swelled with pride and despair.

Gregor stepped forward and looked each man in the eye as he spoke. “What the princess is trying to say is this spell is extremely dangerous and she needs to concentrate all of her attention on it. If you are here, she will be worrying about you instead of the spell.” He stroked the golden collar around his neck, a visible symbol of his role as her concubine. “I know you want to help, and if you insist on staying behind, we could use your experienced eyes and hands to search every building to make sure no one is inadvertently left behind.”

Natalia let out a slow breath as the men broke off into pairs, planning how best to carry out the last sweep of the village. Gregor cupped her face in his hands and brushed his lips against hers, the warmth of his pleasure flooding her body in a rush of magic. Her protests died in her throat as he deepened the kiss, stroking against her tongue and demanding a response. Desire burned through her veins and settled between her legs, making her grow damp with need as he bit her lower lip. She could taste the salt of his sweat on his mouth and breathed in his musk. Male, he was so deliciously male.

When he broke the kiss and stepped back from her, his dark gaze burned into hers, promising a hot and savage bedding once they were alone. Images of her riding him while he was tied to her bed flashed through her mind, and she marveled at his power and control of their bond. She couldn’t send images to him yet, but Gregor had studied their bond with his usual brilliant determination and had figured out how to use it far better than she had. It came in handy when he had things to tell her no one else should hear, but was rather annoying when he used it to torment her with lustful images while she tried to conduct her duties as a princess.

Eline bit the side of her neck, making her shriek and jump. Both men laughed and she glared at them. “If you’re through trying to annoy me to death, can I get this spell done?”

Raising his gauntlet into the air, Eline motioned for the other guards to join them. The guards and her men formed a circle around her, completed as Raum and Kirin stood at her side.

“All the children are gone?” she asked as she tried to keep from fidgeting with her skirt.

The look Eline gave her was at once kind and firm. “Yes, Princess. All is ready for the spell.”

“All right.”

The four-foot by four-foot block of black-and-silver stone hummed as she stepped closer. The vibrations made her bones ache, and she tried to brace herself for what lay ahead. This would be the second keystone she’d had to absorb, and the first had left her in bed for a week as she recovered.

She whispered the words of the breaking spell, but they echoed as if she had screamed them from a mountaintop. “Come unto me, by my father’s decree.” The ache in her bones turned to a freezing burn as she placed her palms on the smooth surface of the rock and choked on a scream. Power rushed into her, racing through her body as it looked for a proper receptacle. The human portion of her soul died a thousand deaths beneath the onslaught while the shadowy, demon side of her nature turned into a bottomless pit and swallowed the energy whole.

One moment she wanted to shout her pleasure to the sky as the raw energy filled her, and the next she wanted to beg someone, anyone, to kill her. The torment went on and on as her hands remained stuck to the stone. Good thing, because the human side of her mind tried to pull her body from its grasp. She thought she screamed, but it was a dim sound beneath the roar of magic.

The pressure wasn’t as bad as the first time, but she still wept in gratitude as the torrent of energy faded to a trickle. The new pathways the blast of power had burned into her hurt, and she moaned as someone gathered her into their arms. Her face pressed into a warm chest, and she knew right away by the smell of his skin and the deep comfort enveloping her that Gregor held her.

Voices yelled in fear and a heavy pounding seemed to come from all around, forcing her to open her eyes. “What’s going on?” she cried in a ravaged whisper.

“It took a long time for you to empty the stone.” Gregor looked at her, the whites of his eyes big with fear. “The Chaos is almost upon us.”

Her head weighed a thousand pounds as she strained her neck to see. On three sides, the Chaos hovered less than a dozen steps away. The keystone had been reduced to pile of dull gray sand.

“Oh, God,” she said and turned back to Gregor. “Get us out of here.”

He backed up with her in his arms and growled, “We’re trying. The bubble has us trapped. The only way out is through the side of a brick house. Unfortunately, the brick has wards on it and breaking it down is taking precious time we don’t have.”

Strength began to return to her, quicker than before, and she raised her head up to look. Raum, Kirin, Eline, and a half-dozen guards were tearing at the wall in a frenzy.

“Why don’t they open up a portal?” she asked. A small hole appeared in the wall where it was being battered by the pommel of one of the guard’s swords.

Gregor stared at the men, then said in a voice laced with distrust, “Raum said we don’t know if the Chaos can use portals, so he didn’t want to give it an opening to your father’s palace.”

The thought of her new home being unmade caused a shudder to race through her. “No, that would be horrible.”

“Bring the princess,” Kirin shouted, and her world lurched as Gregor sprinted with her in his arms.

Eline went first, squeezing and pushing past the edges of the hole as the other guards worked to make it bigger. Sunlight streamed from the other side, and she barely had time to register what happened before she found herself pushed into Eline’s arms and past the shattered brick. They were in the abandoned kitchen of one of the homes. Broken plates and abandoned cutlery crunched beneath Eline’s boots as he shifted his hold on her.

“I have you,” he said, and backed away from the hole in the wall.

On the other side, darkness framed the remaining men as Raum ordered them through one by one. Kirin and Gregor were the last to come out into the kitchen and the bubble of Chaos seemed to be right on top of them. The last bit of earth disappeared from her view beyond the opening as Raum grasped the broken edges of the wall to pull himself into the home.

An instant before he did, she got a clear mental picture from her bond with Gregor. In it, Gregor pushed Raum into the Chaos and a fierce joy tinged with regret and guilt raced across his thoughts. Time seemed to slow as Raum hung on the precipice, scrambling to get through the hole when he had nothing behind him to step on.

Gregor held out his hand to Raum and Natalia tried to yell out a warning, but she was afraid if she did, Raum would lose his concentration and fall. With their bond still wide open, Gregor’s anger poured into her as he caught Kirin’s pleading gaze. With a muttered oath, Gregor hauled Raum through the opening hard enough that he landed on the floor with a
thump
.

Profound relief took the little strength remaining in her legs, and she leaned her head against Eline’s hard breastplate. The tears she had been holding at bay coursed down her cheeks as she realized how close Gregor had come to killing Raum, and how badly she had misjudged his ability to share her with the other man.

Chapter Three

Natalia spent the ride back to the palace alone in her carriage, claiming exhaustion after the draining of the stone. In reality, she couldn’t stand the sight of either Raum or Gregor.

For the past eight months she’d been in Hell, scrambling to learn as much as she could about being a demon princess and trying to help her father retain his power. The fight became more dire by the day, and as her father’s only living child, she had a vital role to play in protecting their people. The last thing she needed was two of the men she loved being a breath away from killing each other.

What she’d thought were just some bad feelings between Raum and Gregor had changed into true hate. Even now, with her shields shut down as tight as she could get them between herself and Gregor, she could feel his seething anger at not killing Raum and his self-disgust for his momentary weakness. Her concubine truly, deeply loved her but he was human and had been raised and groomed to be a powerful mafia lord, not, in his words, a “kept man.” Sharing the woman he loved with another man, or in this case demons and a damned soul, went against everything he’d been taught about how a man behaved.