Prince of Passion (3 page)

Which made her wonder if Icere’s gray robe was padded to give him those broad shoulders.

Her distraction annoyed her. “Why are you here?”

“Ni-Saya-Luac invited me.”

“Give me the courtesy of no stupid answers, and I will assume you are more than a pretty face.”

His jaw tightened, and for an instant, she saw the shape of the man he would become. Devastating indeed.

He eased his lips into that dimpled smile he’d shown her before. “Maybe that’s all I am. A pretty face.”

She gestured toward the low table in the main area overlooking the ocean. “And all your hardware?” She’d already noticed the screens of his devices were dark. He had closed down whatever he’d been working on before he answered the door.

He shrugged, and she decided his robe was not padded through the shoulders. The strong glide of muscle over bone was only thinly masked by the gray fabric. “Even a pretty face needs his investments to earn out.”

She stared at him, hard, in a way that she’d perfected on her high-spirited, troublesome children. But Icere did not break down in babbling.

Instead, he took a drink of the teaweed while he studied her over the rim of the cup. “Why do I make you nervous, Saya?”

She should have kicked him off-planet. She was ruler here, after all. Of course, no sane ship would come for him through the storms. Perhaps she would kick him off the barge. That she could do personally.

“Can you swim, Icere?” She said his name as if she had his full dossier, which she didn’t, not yet anyway.

His eyes narrowed, whether at her use of his name or her question, she wasn’t sure. “I understand the mechanics.”

“If you can’t, just say no.”

Again, that jaw flex. “No.”

She sighed. So much for tossing him overboard. She had inherited her great-grandfather’s coral throne but not his easy cruelty. “Why have you targeted my son?”

“Targeted?” Icere straightened, and Rynn was again forced to notice he was quite a bit taller than she was.

“Whatever you want from him, Luac makes no decisions here. He is not responsible for trade negotiations or policy shifts. He does not rule here. Not yet. I do.”

Icere eyed her from his greater height. “Perhaps you should give him something to do. Then he’d have less time for pretty faces.”

Rynn sucked in a breath. Parenting criticism from this child before her?

He is no child.
The thought—or was it a warning?—whispered through her mind as she took an aggressive step toward him.

He did not back away. “I was curious about the Malac Festival. The Ni-Saya answered some of my questions and invited me to see the rest for myself. I accepted his invitation to experience ‘an island welcome,’ or so he called it. Is this what he meant?”

For an incredulous moment, she stared at him. Then she couldn’t help herself; she laughed. “Yes, actually. At least so it would’ve been under my great-grandfather’s rule. He strung up more than his fair share of outworlders, the distrustful old monster.”

Icere drained his cup and set it beside hers without even a clink. “From what I’ve read of your history, he had cause.”

Rynn grimaced. “Only because he stole the kingship and wondered who would take it from him next.”

He blinked, as if surprised she had admitted the theft. “I was thinking of those who would abscond with your planetary resources.”

“Would they steal our sheerways-renowned recipe for the Purple Passion Pacifier that our visitors drink by the bucketful? It wouldn’t be the same drunk on a beach that didn’t have our violet waves.” She stared out at the ocean beyond the window. The lights from the barge had been lowered to show off the silvery bioluminescent foam that danced in mesmerizing patterns on the storm wrack. “What is from here can never really leave.” She brought herself up short when she heard the mournful note in her own voice.

“What about the malac?”

Surprise knocked her gaze from the hypnotic ocean view back to Icere. “The malac? A delightful creature to fabricate a festival around. Vicious as my great-grandfather, unproductive, slow to mature, sensitive to environmental disturbance. Who would want them?”

“For the liqueur.”

She waved one hand. “Mostly a tourist trick.”

He frowned. “Not from what I’ve read.”

“The Malac Festival leaflets from our tourism bureau? Yes, we’re quite proud of those.” She smiled. “Got you here, and your credits too.”

He clamped his masculine lips together with the irascibility of a malac slamming its shell closed. “So the liqueur isn’t a dopamine agonist with a direct impact on orgastic potency?”

She mirrored his scowl. “I certainly didn’t approve such language in our brochures.”

“It’s not an aphrodisiac?” He bit out each word.

She shrugged one shoulder, ruffling her braids so that the tiny shells tinkled like laughter. “We might have said that. But what substance isn’t an aphrodisiac when consumed in paradise by the light of triple moons?”

“Chemically—”

“My sweet child, an aphrodisiac is not a chemical. It is a state of mind and body and spirit.”

He took a short step toward her, and his glower raised her pulse a notch. “Is that also in the brochure?”

Her breath hitched in a strange excitement. She marveled at the sensation. A reigning monarch shouldn’t be this giddy, shouldn’t be giddy at all. And she most certainly shouldn’t feel it. But she matched his heated glare. “Maybe you should read it again more closely.”

Just as she needed to study him more closely. There was something about him… She eliminated the remaining gap between them, her gaze fastened on his face.

Like the wyverns, he really was too beautiful to be real. The sculpting of his face hovered on a knife’s edge between a remote loveliness and an almost brutal masculinity, like a wistful girl’s dream of a slumbering prince, not yet awakened to the riotous passions of the flesh.

Despite herself, her lips softly parted.

He made a low noise, not quite a groan, and lifted his hand toward her cheek.

The warmth of his skin, hovering, not quite touching, went through her like the scent of those Purple Passion Pacifiers, heady and dangerous to the inhibitions. She leaned infinitesimally toward him, drawn just as the sailors of old had pursued the wyverns. The creatures were dangerous, but their rubidium treasure was used in the high-precision timing devices of sheerships to navigate the tangle of timespace passages that created the sheerways.

She was feeling every bit as lost as one of the very first wandering ships that discovered
here be dragons
. Which reminded her, there were other legends in the universe.

She caught his hand in hers.

Like an echo, he caught his breath when she touched him, and she managed not to gasp at the flare of desire cresting in her blood with the strength of the storm outside, whipped to a frenzy.

She wanted to bring his hand to her breast, let him feel the crash of her pulse. She wanted him to pull her close until the wild rush of their blood and breath were one. She wanted… She just
wanted
. And that couldn’t be.

Instead, she turned his palm upright. Silvery threads lined his skin, the whorls clustering at his fingertips and his inner wrist. She brushed her thumb over the pulse point and felt his heartbeat race.

He swayed toward her. “Saya.”

“You should have kept your gloves on.” She reached up to tweak aside the collar of his robe. On both sides of his neck, silver glimmered under his skin.

She ran her finger down the traceries, fascinated. The shine brightened in the wake of her touch, and he shuddered. “Saya.” That was definitely a groan.

Though the needful sound roused a hunger deep in her belly, she kept her voice stern. “I cannot have a temptation like yourself loose on my world in the middle of an aphrodisiac storm. Where is your master, l’auralyo?”

Chapter Three

Icere fought to still the shivers that wracked him at her touch.

By the last shining stone, he’d never felt so vulnerable. Even when he’d been cornered on that mining colony by three miners, each outweighing him by twice his own mass in pure muscle, he hadn’t felt this rush of dread. Because those three women, rough and ready as they’d been, hadn’t known what he was.

Not like this tiny queen who still held him by the collar as if he were a naughty pup who’d slipped his leash. The top of her braids barely reached the middle of his chest; from his height he looked down on the cinnabar-red lining of the tiny shells in her hair. Despite the luscious curves and well-toned shoulders revealed by her sleeveless dress, he knew he could lift her with one arm—though one shouldn’t tote world rulers like common baggage—but the mere brush of her fingers stole his strength in a way no holographic interface ever had, as he could never have anticipated.

And oh how he was anticipating.

Against his own sheerways-pale skin, her dusky, sun-kissed flesh glowed, only enhanced by the vermillion of the long dress that matched her naturally red lips. He wondered what other parts of her would flush so brightly.

He swallowed hard. He couldn’t stop himself, though he knew the telltale signal would only emphasize the qva’avaq shining in his skin. Damn the l’auraly impulse that made him want to lean into her grip and submit to her touch. But it had been so long since he’d been touched.

No. He wasn’t that. Not anymore. He couldn’t be, couldn’t afford it.

Hell, the universe couldn’t afford it. The universe couldn’t afford
him
either. The last l’aurlyo.

Though he knew it was too late, he tried once to dissemble. “Saya, I don’t know what you think you see, but you are wrong.”

“You are wrong if you think you can lie to me.” Though she had the same bronzed skin as her son, her eyes were light, a pale blue like an ethanol flame from one of those thrice-damned beverages set alight. The temptation seared his resistance.

All he could do was stare at her mutely, his heartbeat banging against the back of her knuckles resting on his throat.

As if she had become aware of their intimately close proximity, she abruptly released him. When she stepped back, the temperature in the room seemed to plummet, but he didn’t bother straightening his robe. The heat of her lingered in his blood and the curling lines of his qva’avaq.

She scowled. “I heard the l’auraly homeworld suffered a catastrophic earthquake and all qva’avaq was destroyed.” Her scalding stare swept him from head to foot. “They said the handful of remaining l’auraly killed themselves in grief.”

Icere clenched one hand against the memory of lingering sorrow. Should he try to lie to her about the rest, despite her warning? She did not seem the sort to appreciate even a well-intentioned lie, and he did not need an infuriated monarch on his back. She was distracting enough even at a distance, and he had a task to complete. “Apparently our tourism bureau took lessons in accuracy from yours. As you see, the last l’auralyo is very much alive.”

When she gave him another assessing stare, he wondered why he was goading her to look him over. He had no time for games of seduction. It wasn’t as if he were craftily raising his bid price. He would never have the chance to experience the l’auraly bonding ceremony.

Though he held himself carefully still, his expression must have betrayed him because the Saya sighed and went to sit on the couch. She did not glance at the darkened screens of his devices—the way he’d seen her assess them earlier—instead her gaze remained on him as she curled onto the cushions. “Tell me.”

Her voice held a note of command, though not as a ruler or even as a mother. Instead, her expression reflected some of the darkness outside, as if somehow she saw—and understood—his separation.

He turned toward her in the l’auraly storytelling pose: hands clasped at belly height, fingers loosely interlaced, and palms exposed, displaying truth in the shimmer of the qva’avaq.

But he opened with a question. “How did you know what I am? L’auraly have been rare in the sheerways for a very long time.”

Her lips quirked. “What is a ‘very long time’ to you?”

He snorted. “You are not so old.”

“Old enough. When I was a child, a sheerways commissioner came to negotiate rethreading the passages to Saya-Terce and brought his l’auralyo for the Malac Festival. I remember the l’auralyo was patient with me when I was being a pest with all my questions about offworlder life, although I have forgotten his name.”

Icere inclined his head. “Yecho. He was my tutor after he returned to the l’auraly homeworld when the commissioner died. Yecho was always good with children, although I find it hard to imagine you as a pest.”

She gave him a look as if to remind him that she had let herself into his room uninvited. “I wanted to know how his skin glowed like our waves, so he showed me the qva’avaq.”

Icere blinked in surprise. “It is unusual for l’auraly to share their lines with someone other than their a’lurily, their bonded masters.” He studied her with renewed curiosity, wondering what Yecho had seen in her. With her legs tucked up under her and her dark braids a little more unruly than they had been earlier in the day when she’d been seated on her white throne, he thought he could glimpse the child within.

And, yes, now that he thought about it, he could imagine she had been a pest. But somehow special enough to warrant a l’auralyo’s attention.

She crossed her arms, as if warding off his assessment. “No doubt he too sought a way to shut me up. However, I was asking you to talk.”

Icere tabled that mystery for a more pressing concern. “I am sorry to tell you that Yecho was one of two l’auraly who were killed recently on my homeworld. The three l’auraly still alive besides myself—my sisters—have gone into hiding. The other l’auralya killed sought to sell the qva’avaq to mercenaries. Those mercenaries were working for an unidentified entity that intended to weaponize the qva’avaq.”

The Saya leaned forward, her expression intent. “How would they turn it into a weapon? And why? As I understand the qva’avaq, it enhances pleasure, much like…” She stiffened.

Icere waited a moment for the implications to settle in. He had to admit, the sharp glint of intelligence in her incongruently icy eyes intrigued him, rekindling the heat in his blood. Not that he needed her body when he had her brain for his urgent task. “Much like the malac liqueur. I don’t have all the information I need, which is why I am here. To find those responsible. And stop them.”