The Devil's Concubine (8 page)

wanted them.

She glared at the door for some time, fighting the urge to march over to it and

pound on it until somebody came. At best, such a thing would probably be useless since she doubted she could pound, or scream, loud enough to be heard over the din no doubt going on down in the great hall. At worst, it might bring Talin himself.

She moved back to the chair. The maids would come back, she assured herself, to

remove the tray. When they did, she would give them a piece of her mind if they didn’t have her gown when they came.

The food grew cold. Her anger dissipated at roughly the same rate as the heat

from the food, and without that to sustain her, weariness set in.

She’d had very little sleep, she knew, and the activities of the day before had

already strained her physically and emotionally. Realizing that she was going to nod off in the chair if she continued to sit, she got to her feet and began exploring the room.

There wasn’t much to explore. She’d already rifled through all of the chests and

not only had she not found anything in any of them of any interest, but she didn’t

particularly want to risk being caught plundering through Talin’s personal belongings.

The only conclusion anyone could draw from such an action would be that she

was searching for something to steal, or more interested in Talin than she had any desire for anyone to think.

Moving to the door that led into the corridor, she put her ear against it, listening.

In the distance, she could hear the murmur of voices, but she couldn’t hear well enough to tell what was being said.

Tiring of that fairly rapidly, she left the door and paced the room a while and

finally returned to the chair.

She wasn’t just scared anymore, she realized. In fact, at the moment, she wasn’t

fearful at all.

She was bored.

Sighing, she glanced around the room dully.

She missed her ladies. They had been chosen to serve her and she was not

supposed to encourage them to treat her as an equal rather than their superior, but she had come to think of Lady Leesa and Lady Beatrice as friends and companions. They had

filled the dark well of loneliness that had seemed an almost constant companion

throughout her childhood and banished the sense of isolation she’d felt from the rest of the world with their talk of their own lives. Even the other maids, although she had not felt the same sense of closeness, had livened her days with their idle chatter.

The quiet that surrounded her now was suffocating.

She missed her apartment--all the things she’d taken for granted, even the tasks

she’d once dreaded and found boring.

She missed her garden even more.

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33

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t her garden. Her father had had it designed and built

for her mother, who had been from a land warmer than their own and had missed the

garden of her childhood home. When she’d come of marriageable age, she had inherited her mother’s apartments, and her mother’s garden--which had been off limits to her as a child and which had gone to seed after her mother’s death.

She had filled much of her days tending the plants and coaxing them to flourish

once more, and a good part of her leisure there as well, working upon some needlework project or another and listening to her ladies talk about their homes, and their beaux.

She was never going to see her home again, or her garden, she realized with a

shock of dismay.

She would’ve had to leave it anyway, when she was wed, but she would have

been able to visit at least occasionally.

She would not be welcome there now. Her father would disown her. She’d sunk

so low, her own people would probably spit on her.

Unwilling to go there, Aliya returned her thoughts to her garden, thinking back to

what it had looked like when she’d first taken it as her own.

It occurred to her after a moment that, at first, she’d been unsettled by the fact that the garden was on a rooftop. It had seemed so very high that she couldn’t bring herself to go near the low wall that surrounded it without feeling as if she was going to plunge to her death.

She’d forgotten that.

Over time, she’d grown so accustomed to the height. She’d ceased to find it

unnerving at all!

It was a small step from that thought to wondering if she could grow accustomed

to the terrifying height of Talin’s castle.

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34

Aliya turned to stare at the thin beams of light pouring through the shutters for

several moments. Girding herself, she stood after a moment and moved to window. Her belly tightened before she’d even reached it and for several moments she paused,

wondering if it was even a worthwhile idea.

She should try, she finally decided. Perhaps, even if she did grow more

accustomed, it would mean nothing more than that she wasn’t so on edge about the

distance to the ground, but in the back of her mind she knew that as long as she was

terrified of the height, she couldn’t even search to see if there was a way to escape.

It seemed doubtful there would be. But wasn’t some chance better than none?

Wasn’t hope better than hopelessness?

Inching a little closer, she finally leaned toward the crack where the two planks of

the shutter didn’t completely meet and peered through it. Instantly, as her vision focused, her belly did a free fall and it felt as if her heart wasn’t far behind it. Her chest felt as if it was wedged in a vise that was slowly tightening and squeezing the air from her lungs.

“They’re bolted.”

Aliya jerked all over at the abrupt intrusion having been so focused on her fear of

the view beyond the window she hadn’t even heard the door open. Sucking in a sharp

inhalation of air, she whirled toward the sound, one hand lifting instinctively to the wooden panel to balance her.

A wave of dizziness went through her at the sudden movement.

Talin frowned, studying her with a mixture of anger and confusion. He could see

she wasn’t merely startled, however. She was shivering as if she was freezing.

There was something about her expression and the way she glanced back at the

window and then moved away from it that gave him pause. After a moment, he crossed

the room and stood where she had moments before, staring through the small crevice.

He could see nothing. He knew his own sight was far better than hers, so it could

not be anything beyond his view that had disturbed her. Pulling away from the window, he turned to study her for several moments and finally glanced at the view again.

Enlightenment dawned and yet he could hardly credit it.

“You are afraid of the height?”

Aliya stared at him mutely for several moments, but she could think of no reason

to deny it. “I can not fly,” she said stiffly. “I have never been so high above the world.”

Some of the tension eased from Talin at that comment, and the roiling, sick anger

that had been eating at him eased slightly.

He was almost tempted to smile. One look at her face was enough to assure him

that would be poorly received, but he was relieved beyond measure that she had not,

apparently, reserved that look of sheer horror for him. Frowning, he thought back over it and realized that she had hardly even glanced at him before when she was so terrified, and she had certainly shown no compunction about fighting him when he’d brought her

to the tower again.

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35

That had been because of her fear of the view, he decided.

Perhaps not all of it, he thought wryly, remembering what she’d said to him when

she had discovered the door and windows were covered. She had seemed relieved about

the shutters, but no more receptive to him.

He supposed it was something, at least, that she was more afraid of the height

than she was of him.

Inwardly, he sighed. He was not generally such a numbskull, or so impulsive. If

he had been a man child, she would have every reason to fear and loathe him for stealing her away. The fact that he was not only made it worse, not better, for he knew the man children despised and feared those they called the unnaturals. He felt a sense of

hopelessness for the situation. No matter what he did now, he could not take back the way they had begun. The best he could hope for was that she would grow accustomed

and come to accept and even that was bound to be an uphill battle.

She was attracted to him, even though it was obvious she loathed herself for it.

He hadn’t imagined that. As innocent as she was, she had responded to his touch readily.

Dismissing that thought abruptly when he felt the blood begin to surge through

his veins, he focused on what he’d come for--a change of clothing.

At least he hadn’t been so hardheaded, and stupid, as to press her right away,

though the look of her naked form had sapped much of his sense straight down to his

cock. Even thinking of it now made his blood surge and his cods tighten painfully. He glanced at her full lips with an insatiable hunger, then looked away and gathered his thoughts, steeling himself against the desire to take her.

It had taken distance from her to gain that much brain function, but he had

realized that it would probably make things easier between them if he gave her time--at least a few days--to get over the worst of her fear and distrust.

He wasn’t certain his patience would outlast more than a few days of being

around her. She was his, regardless of how she might feel about that now, and his

knowledge of that made it very difficult for him to control the beast inside of him that was clamoring to claim her in every way.

He’d stripped before it occurred to him that, as an innocent, his nakedness might

discomfit her. When he glanced at her, he saw it had.

Her eyes were wide as saucers and she’d backed away until she’d come up against

the wall. Frowning, he glanced down at himself, wondering if that look denoted interest or revulsion. He could see nothing about his man body--save the paleness of it perhaps--

that she might find unappealing. His body was lean and not excessively hairy. He was not scarred. His muscles were well developed, perhaps a little too much, for they bulged, forming hard knots in some places and long ropes in others, but it was a warrior’s body and she had wanted a warrior.

His man tool was flaccid. She could not be intimidated by that, although he was

pleased himself to see that, even sleeping, it was a powerful looking beast and well

proportioned to his body--maybe a little over large, but not freakishly so and he rather thought he preferred to err on size in that direction than the other.

After some consideration, he finally decided that she appeared more shocked than

anything else--which meant that she had either never seen a naked man, or she was

stunned to see he looked much like any man.

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36

The last wasn’t a particularly pleasing thought. It was disappointing only to see

that glazed look in her eyes when he would’ve preferred to see admiration and lust, but he supposed the blank look was better than horror.

Sighing, he squatted in front of the chest at the foot of the bed, found the clothes

he wanted and closed the chest again. She hadn’t moved, he saw. Dropping the clothing on the bed, he headed toward the table that held the washbasin. To his surprise, Aliya slipped along the wall until she met up with the table and then turned and moved along the table, effectively blocking his access to it.

He paused in front of her, looking down at her upturned face with a mixture of

desire, irritation, and amusement. The urge to tease her came out of no where. Dipping his head until his lips were no more than a hair’s breadth from hers, he murmured, “Do you mind?”

She blinked. Her lips parted ever so slightly in surprise.

His mouth went dry. He swallowed with an effort, trying to decide if she was

actually offering her lips to him. Deciding finally that she wasn’t, that it was only wishful thinking on his part, he grasped her shoulders in his hands and set her to one side.

When he’d washed his face and teeth and dried himself, he glanced at her again

and discovered she’d sidled down the wall in the other direction. She didn’t look frozen, however. She looked embarrassed.

Resisting the temptation to tease her any more, he returned for his clothing and

dressed. He was about to leave when she stopped him.

“My ladies? You did not harm them?”

He turned to study her, frowning slightly. “You saw that I did not.”

Aliya’s brow creased. “I thought--but I was not certain. I am … very fond of

them. Even if I was not, I would not want them to be hurt,” she added hastily.

His lips flattened. “I do not harm those who can not defend themselves. And, in

any case, I would not have harmed them for trying to defend you.” He seemed to think it over for a moment. “I was pleased that they did. It told me much about you that I had heard was true.”

Aliya looked at him questioningly, but he didn’t elaborate. When she saw that he

would go, she stopped him again.

“That … uh … the guard, Reyhan?”

“What about Reyhan?”

“Is he … is he … did he survive the whipping?”

His brows rose in surprise. “Of course. He is back at duty, but he will not soon

forget the lesson.”

Aliya frowned in confusion “He was whipped?”

“Yes. I ordered it.”