Come to Me (28 page)

"I'll give you what you've wanted," he said, and plunged his tongue into her mouth at the same moment he slid his finger deep inside her.

The perfection of the dream left no space for pain. Samira arched her back, moaning, his fingertip pressing inside her on a sensitive spot that made her want more and more. But even as pleasure coursed through her body, part of her screamed in fury at what was being done against her wishes.

She screamed and writhed, and all of it was concealed beneath the impenetrable cover of dream.
Nicolae
, her heart cried out,
Nicolae, please stop him, don't let him do this! Nicolae
…

Nicolae looked up from his book and frowned. Samira was making whimpering noises in her sleep. He stood up to get a better view of her past the edge of the table. She was twitching and jerking, sweat dampening the hair at her brow.

What was going on? He'd never known her sleep to be so disturbed. Was she ill?

He came around the table and knelt down beside her. He could see that her eyes were moving behind her lids, as if she were caught in a vivid dream. Or a nightmare.

His breath froze in his chest. The book! She wasn't holding the book!

He stood and spun around, grabbing the demon book off the table. The moment he turned around he saw him: the incubus. A huge one, squatting naked on Samira's chest, his pale fingertips pressed to her brow, his enormous penis erect between his thighs.

"Get off her!" Nicolae shouted.

The incubus looked at him in surprise, blue eyes glowing with inhuman fire. "He speaks! And he sees. But he does nothing."

"Get off her, now!"

The incubus made a mocking, sad face. "But I'm having so much fun, Nicolae, and so is she. Don't make us stop now, just when things are getting interesting. She had to lose her virginity sometime, after all."

Nicolae felt the words like a knife to his heart. That filthy creature was having sex with Samira. It was exactly what Samira had been afraid would happen.

"
Theron
," Nicolae hissed, knowing now who this was.

Theron closed his eyes for a moment. "Ohh, she's liking this part." Beneath him, a soft keening came from Samira's throat, and a tear slipped from between her closed lids.

Nicolae stepped up to Theron and looked down into the crouching demon's eyes. Even squatting, Theron was huge, the top of his head even with Nicolae's chin. And yet Nicolae was not afraid. "One last time. Get off her."

Theron smiled, his teeth white and perfect. "No."

Nicolae dropped to his knees, gripped the book in one arm, and lay his hand on Samira.

The explosive force of two humans touching the demon book shot Theron in a screaming ball up through the roof. The blow knocked Nicolae to the floor, images of Samira filling his mind. He rolled up against her, still holding the book, and fought to retain consciousness as a storm of Samira's emotions and memories washed through him in jumbled, disjointed confusion.

He saw a world of gray and black, full of winged beings and shifting landscapes, and a bleak, unrelieved sense of loneliness. There were flashes of human men asleep in their beds; of shocking sexual deeds; of foreign peoples and unknown countries. Through it all was a sense of weary futility.

And then there was one brilliant, colorful flash of he himself in the tower room, and an overwhelming sense of longing. The flash was gone in an instant, replaced by a burst of cowering fear and the vision of a woman made up of stars and darkness. He understood without words that this was the Queen of the Night, and that she was angry.

"Get away!" Samira whimpered, and flailed weakly at him.

Her voice brought him back to himself, the visions flashing and fading from his eyes. Samira was gaping at him, her face pale and sweaty, her eyes shadowed and wide.

"Get away!" she cried again. "Theron, don't do this!"

"Samira, it's me, it's Nicolae," he said, grasping her hand.

She tried to pull away from him, scrambling weakly on all fours. "Don't touch me!"

"Shh, shh…" he soothed. "Samira, I have the book, look!"

Her wild eyes found the tome he still held. "Nicolae?"

"It's me."

Her breath caught on a sob and she threw herself at him. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into his lap and cradling her against his chest, the book a hard but comforting lump jammed into their sides.

"It was Theron. He made himself look like you and he tried to—"

"Shh," he soothed, his lips against the top of her head. "I know, I saw him."

She gripped his arms, fingers digging in like claws, and looked up at him in a panic. "He bore terrible news, Nicolae! He said—"

Theron dropped down in front of them from nowhere, fury on his face. "I said what? Are you going to spill secrets not yours to share, Samira? Perhaps I shall do the same for you. There are things your precious Nicolae should know, don't you think?"

"Leave us!" Nicolae ordered.

"I don't think so," Theron said, walking slowly around them, well out of arm's reach. He leapt lightly onto the table and squatted, looking down at them. "You shouldn't be so eager to see me gone, Prince Nicolae. There is much I could tell you—about Dragosh, and about that little demon clinging to you so prettily. We might even be able to work out a bargain, you and I."

Nicolae didn't need the fearful whispers of warning Samira was uttering to tell him that Theron was not to be trusted. Nicolae held her tight against his chest and started to chant.

A flicker of doubt crossed Theron's smug face. "What are you up to now?"

Nicolae didn't break the flow of the spell, his only response to Theron a small lift of the eyebrows, as if to say, "Wait and see." It was a show of confidence he didn't necessarily feel; what weapon had he for attacking an incubus, after all? What did an incubus fear? There was only one thing he knew for certain.

"
Aska ma douska, ooska ma diiska
!" he declared with a dramatic flourish.

Theron looked down at his body. Nothing had changed. He looked back up at Nicolae and grinned. "Very good, wizard. You've accomplished absolutely nothing."

Nicolae smiled back, and slowly turned his head toward the window on the east side of the tower. "Have I not?"

Theron followed his gaze, as Nicolae had hoped he would. The incubus's eyes widened in horror, and he scrambled backward on the table. "You can't have—"

"You don't know of what I am capable. I've learned from Samira how fogged is the vision of those of the
Night World. Nothing you think you have seen or understood compares to what is seen in the clear light of day."

Theron gaped at the window. A yellow shaft of sunlight suddenly pierced it, shooting past Theron and burning a bright target upon the wall behind him. "Damn you!" Theron shrieked, arching away from the shaft as if it would burn him. And then he was gone.

Nicolae stared in surprise at the place where the incubus had been an instant before. It had worked! "Is he really gone?" he asked Samira.

She peered around his shoulder, then looked up at him in amazement. "Yes."

Nicolae laughed softly in disbelief. "The light couldn't have hurt him."

Samira reached up, putting her hand in the path of the sunbeam. "There's no warmth."

"It's an illusion."

She smiled slowly at him. "He thought you had called the dawn. He thought he was about to be torn into a million pieces by the daylight." She laughed. "You used his own fears against him and scared him off!"

He stood, pulling her to her feet as well. The light was still pouring in the window. He looked at it in amazement. "Nothing is going wrong."

"No. I knew you could do it."

He shook his head, not understanding why it had worked this time without ill effect, although there was a faint inkling in the back of his brain about what might be happening. The idea was too nebulous as yet to take form, but he sensed its presence.

Samira suddenly wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him, her face pressed into his chest. "Thank you for getting rid of him. Thank you for… stopping him." She shuddered, and then began to shake with soft sobs.

"Hey, hey there," he said, awkwardly patting her back.

She hugged his waist harder, squeezing as if afraid to let go.

He let his arms settle around her and kissed the top of her head. "Hey. It's all right. He's gone, and I won't let him touch you again."

"P-promise?" she sniffled into his shirt.

"He won't come within a league of you." There must be spells of protection in that demon book somewhere, or perhaps he could find a charm she could wear. He'd have to find such a spell. Or he'd keep the sunlight illusion going for as long as Samira was here. One way or another, he wouldn't let her fear that Theron would return for her.

"I know it was just a dream, but it was as if he was touching me, in places that only you ever have."

He stiffened, his arms tightening around her.

"He made himself look like you," she said into his shirt. "But he was so cold while he did it. He knew every move to make, but I knew it wasn't you."

"How far did he go?" he asked hoarsely. There was a strange, consuming fire of possessiveness burning to life in his chest. He felt as if something had nearly been stolen from him—not just his likeness, but Samira's innocence, as if that belonged to him as well.

"He had his hands everywhere.
Everywhere
. But you stopped him before he could take my virginity." She rubbed her face on his shirt. "It was just a dream, though. Even if he had done it, it was just a dream; it wasn't really happening."

She sounded as if she was trying to convince herself of that, more than him. But Theron had been real, and what matter if it was in the flesh or in the perception of flesh that he played his games? The memory of Theron's visit was probably sharper in Samira's mind than the aborted lovemaking he himself had engaged in a week earlier.

She was soft in his arms, and she wanted him.
Him
, not a demon pretending to be him, with a demon's cold, heartless skills of perfection. She wanted Nicolae the scarred outcast, the fumbling magician, the prince without a kingdom, and she returned again and again to his side, no matter how bad-tempered or difficult he had been.

All his reasons for holding back, for pushing Samira away: Did they mean anything at all? All his fears of damnation, of falseness, of hurt; all those intangible fears for himself seemed as nothing against the truth of the woman in his arms, who came to him for solace and protection and believed in him with a depth no one had ever matched. If she had been a demon before, so what? If he were to be damned, he would as much be damned for using magic as for choosing Samira as his beloved. She was a truer companion to him now than any man or woman he'd ever known. She'd seen more of his heart than he had seen himself, and still she came to him with open arms.

And now that spawn of the devil Theron had almost taken from Samira what she had offered to him, Nicolae, first. Theron had tried to take her, when she was not Theron's to take. Samira was his, Nicolae's, and he wasn't going to leave the memory of Theron's touch in her mind.

He cupped her cheek in his hand and raised her face. "I'll erase his memory from your mind."

"You have a spell for that?"

In answer, he lowered his mouth to hers.