Prince of Passion (7 page)

He smiled at her aggrieved tone. She had decided keeping his sisters safe was more important than chasing down the raiders’ mysterious backers. She wasn’t convinced the raiders’ patron would continue with their wretched plans once the remaining crystal had been destroyed. But he knew they would not stop.

Because he knew he would not stop.

“Thank you, Béne.” His throat tightened again on the childhood nickname. Not a l’auraly word, but the memories it invoked were every bit as far away.

She studied him as if she could read his mind. And she was well-trained enough in the subtle indications of the flesh that no doubt she almost could. “Just remember, you are l’auralyo.”

“No. And never will be”

“Always,
auro’vio
,” she insisted. “I love you.”

She did not use the l’auraly phrasing for love, and he was grateful. “Love you too, Béne. I’ll be in touch.”

He double-checked to make sure the data packet had been sent then closed the link. There was no sound or sensation, but he felt as though he’d lost everything once again.

Chapter Six

In the muggy heat of the afternoon showers that presaged the evening’s storms, most festival-goers sought quiet corners with cool drinks and rested for the darker pleasures of the nighttime. Rynn always gave her staff a couple hours off since they would be kept busy until late. She could have used a nap herself. Instead, she gave security one last task before they retired.

She paced the foyer of her suite until she heard the knock. Then she realized she was pacing and made herself stop while Icere warily entered. She waved the guard away, leaving the two of them alone.

Dressed once again in his monkish blue-gray tunic, Icere looked once around the room. His gaze ticked over the exits and lingered on the ancient cutlasses crossed over the arched doorway that led to the bedroom. He’d had at least preliminary training in self-defense, she decided, and maybe now he was wondering if he should have used it against her.

His glance flicked to her hands, folded in front of her, and his wary expression vanished, replaced by a blandly polite half-smile and nothing more.

Well, at least he had thought better about trying to put his hands on her again.

Too bad.

She stifled the unruly impulse. “I’ve received preliminary reports on almost half the sheerships in orbit. So far, all appear legitimate.”

“Thank you for the update, Saya. Shall I return to my room now?”

She flicked her fingers at him in annoyance. “You are free. Luac indicated that he would be inviting you to the first festival event tonight. I didn’t want him to question why you could not attend.”

“And here I thought you unlocked my door because you believed me. But of course, if it’s for the Ni-Saya…”

“For my son. For my world. For the sheerways.” She advanced on him, one step for each of her burdens, each word feeling heavier than the last. “What are my convictions when weighed against all that?”

She expected him to take a step back. Instead, he merely tilted his head to look down at her from his greater height. “I suppose they are all you can really call your own.”

She twisted her lips in a sneer. “With wisdom like that, who needs age?”

He clicked his tongue. “Come now, Saya. I am not so young as that. I had only a year of finishing left before I would have gone to bed.”

Her head jerked back involuntarily. No, he had said
bid
, not bed. Although with an unbonded l’auralyo, she supposed the two were synonymous, thus excusing her momentary confusion.

Curiosity pricked her. “What would that finishing have entailed?”

“Advanced studies in the languages most likely to be of use to any potential a’lurily. A more pragmatic analysis of the usual political, social and economic current events. I was scheduled to meet with a renowned performer whose name you would instantly recognize to work on my skills as a vocalist. I’ve always been a terrible singer.” He canted his body toward her, just slightly, as he lowered his voice. “And I would’ve had a hell of a lot of sex.”

This time, her whole body stiffened in sensual shock, reacting to the intensity in his half-lidded gaze, the heat of his big body invading her space. How had he done that without even touching her?

Becursed and becalmed, how she wanted him to touch her.

“Not real sex, of course,” he continued in that mesmerizing low tone. “Nothing that would undercut my bid price. Just holographic practice runs so I would be ready for my first time. Very, very ready.”

With each of the last three words, his tone dropped lower on the scale until her bones seemed to hum in response. Maybe he couldn’t sing, but her body wanted to dance to his tune.

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re doing it again.”

He blinked. “Don’t you like it?”

She wavered. “Not like that.” Only half a lie, and maybe if she wasn’t so very, very ready herself, she could have been more truthful with the answer. “Who did you call from your room? We caught a bounce on one of our signals.” So subtle they would have missed it, but she’d been watching him. Which she wouldn’t mention. When he took a breath, she warned, “This is your chance to earn my trust.”

He gave her a sidelong glance as he turned toward the windows where even the barge’s powerful air filtering couldn’t keep all the condensation at bay. “My older sister. She and her a’lurilyo have been hunting down intel on the raiders we destroyed. I still hope to correlate some data that will point toward the raiders’ patron.” He inclined his head toward her. “Maybe with what you and your people learn.”

“Did you tell your sister you were being held against your will?”

“No.”

She studied him. He was telling the truth; she could tell by the way his jaw flexed in annoyance. As with all youth, he wanted his independence more than he wanted help. But she did not think only his youth gave him that rebellious edge. Oh, he held his mind and body and temper in check for the most part, but he almost seethed from the pressures beneath. As ruler of a world where all the life-supporting landmasses were volcanic birthed, she should know. “You would have made a terrible l’auralyo.”

He flinched. The crystal lines curling at his temples flushed silver against the spots of red high on his cheeks, as if she had slapped him. “Then perhaps it is just as well no one had the chance to waste a bid for me.”

In two steps, she was at his side, reaching for him. “Icere. I did not mean—”

He slid away from her smoothly. “It doesn’t matter.”

Ignoring protocol and courtesy, she grabbed his arm and spun him toward her. His eyes widened in surprise. Perhaps he’d forgotten she had incapacitated him once already.

She glared up at him. “You know perfectly well that your command of languages and affairs of state and even likely your mediocre singing would have earned you an astronomical price.”

He lifted his chin. “Because I am the last.”

“The only.”

He inclined his head in a regal way that she knew she had never mastered. “True. There are no more like me.”

“I doubt there ever were.” She tightened her grip; an empty threat since the neurotoxin only passed skin to skin, but a reminder nonetheless that he could not just brush her off. “You want to be more than a pretty bed partner or even a power behind a boardroom. I see the yearning in you.” She felt it, as clearly as she’d felt the waters of her world closing over her head.

He stared down at her, his gaze as clouded as the view out her window. “You don’t know what I want. If you did, you would have left by now.”

“Icere—”

He snaked his hands up inside the circle of her arms and, without breaking her hold, buried his fingers past the shells in her hair. He tilted her head—still not a regal angle, more a yearning invitation—and covered her mouth with his own.

Her fingers tightened on his biceps. Slender he might be and not yet fully grown into his height, but the swell of muscle under her fingers made her think she should not let him get too close to those cutlasses. She had bested him once and she doubted he had forgotten. She would not be able to do so again without hurting him or being hurt herself. And she didn’t want to hurt him. Quite the opposite.

He eased her closer, until she was flush against him, and she did not resist. Another swell, lower down this time, made her breath hitch at the answering flush between her own legs. He took advantage of her gasp to deepen the kiss.

His tongue traced a slow journey over the seam of her lips, stroking the tender inner lining. The heat in her belly raced outward, and her skin tingled in aftershock, as if she might spark at his touch like the bioelectric anemones that put on such gorgeous lightshows off the atolls in spring.

Clutching his slick tunic, she shuddered against him, racked by sensation, and his hands in her hair gentled. But his mouth plundered on with a strange delicate pulse. The crystal, she realized, resonated between his pounding heart and hers to create a more perfectly exquisite pleasure than even the expensive toys that had long been her only lovers. He did not need to sing if he put that tongue to such fine use.

Never tempering the intensity of his kiss, he trailed his hands down her neck to the V of her chemise. His knuckles skimmed the inner curves of her breasts. Breasts with which she’d nursed two children joyfully; breasts still bearing the faint scars where she had raked her flesh with sharpened shells after killing those children’s father, anything to release the pain.

She clasped his hands between hers and drew back.

He stared at her through half-lidded eyes. “You don’t know what I want,” he repeated, but this time the husky thrum of his voice told her he was willing to show her.

Her frantic heartbeat thudded against their joined hands, and the erotic throb of the qva’avaq sped to match. To have that in the deepest heart of her…

She loosed her grip on him and instead reached up to undo his braid. Though he’d been poisoned and unconscious and lashed by the first stirrings of the malac storm, still only one lock of golden hair had unraveled from its tight plait. But now the fastening sprang apart at her touch, as if it had been waiting for just this moment, waiting just for her touch.

“A trick,” she murmured.

The braid loosened as he shook his head. “L’auraly tricks are as dead as the last crystals.”

“It’s still in you.”

“Tricks or the crystal?”

“Both.” She combed her fingers through his hair. Freed, it cascaded down his shoulders in soft waves, like a calm morning ocean. She drew the strands forward. “Ah, the only way to put hair on your chest.”

He stepped into the space she had opened between them, half threatening pirate, half elegant wyvern. “Do not mock me, Saya.”

“I would not dream of it.” This, though…this she would dream of for a very long time.

She curled his hair through her fingers and pulled him down to her kiss.

No toy or simulation kissed as he did, with his whole body and every impulse therein. She swore even his golden locks between her fingertips shivered as he strained against her.

He reached for the simple tie of the chemise between her breasts. She did not stop him. In fact, she might have taken a breath to lift herself to his hand. He plucked the tie and slipped his hand inside the fabric to widen the neckline. His big palm skimmed past the scars to settle over her breast, and her nipple hardened, a shameless reaction. He slid his hand lower, cupping the mound, lifting it lightly, and he thumbed the hardened peak.

Echoing heat branched like lightning through her, following lines as diverse as his qva’avaq, if invisible. But he seemed to know those paths anyway, and he circled his thumb around the puckered skin of her aureole, summoning another sensual storm. And all the while his mouth worked hers with a power every bit as elemental.

She clung to him. His pretty hair tickled her throat teasingly, but his breath was as ragged as hers and his shoulders under her hands flexed with whipcorded muscle.

“Saya,” he whispered against her lips. “Rynn…”

And she wanted to hear what he would say, so she didn’t hear the sound of the door opening.

“…But with the storms kicking up so early, the malac will be—Mother!”

Rynn gasped again, not so much in pleasure this time, as Icere jolted out of her arms.

Behind him, she met her daughter’s stunned stare. Behind Kylara, Luac’s dark eyes narrowed at once, and he sprang forward to swing on Icere with a clenched fist.

The attack was obvious and clumsy, and Icere fended him off with a sweep of his forearm. Luac swung again from the other side, with more ferocity than efficacy. Slanting one fleeting glance at Rynn, Icere let the punch land.

The blow knocked him backward and he landed in a sprawl.

“Stop!” Rynn jumped toward them, blocking Luac’s path to Icere with an extended arm. She would have held back her son, but her other hand was holding closed her chemise.

Kylara stood with a hand clasped over her mouth. But her eyes—blue as the natal seas of old Earth—danced.

Rynn glared at her. “Did I not teach you two to knock?”

“We did,” Ky mumbled. “Twice.” She lowered her hand part way, but her fingertips hovered at her mouth, pushing her lower lip up into a pout as she studied Icere as she would some particularly fascinating equation. “You must not have heard us because you were…”

“What
were
you doing?” Luac’s growl reverberated in the room and in Rynn’s head.

What
had
she been doing? It was one thing for her liqueur-loosened guests to frolic under the triple moons, but what did it say about her that she so easily fell under the same spell? Without the liqueur even?

From his spot on the floor, Icere said, “I was kissing the Saya.” As if that explained everything.

Luac leaned in, his fists still clenched. “Why would you do that?”

Rynn sidestepped to keep herself between them.

“Because I wanted to.” Icere flashed that distracting dimple, though his gaze was cool and unwavering. “Because she is desirable.”

The
she
in question felt her skin heat as every eye turned to her, assessing this reply. She wished she could refasten the tie, but the bow took two hands and she was afraid to leave an opening between the two young men. “Icere, get up.” She didn’t try to keep the asperity out of her voice. “Luac, Ky, if you two would step out for a moment—”