Come to Me (19 page)

Understanding dawned. He barked out a laugh, and then choked back his amusement in the face of her distress. She was looking up at him with wide, teary eyes, her mouth set in a grim line.

"Ah, Samira, my apologies. I shouldn't have joked with you about the creature in your gut. There was no creature."

Her red brows drew down in a frown. "No creature?"

"It was hunger you felt, that was all. Simple, human hunger."

"And that… that
thing
that came out of me?"

"What was left of any food you ate, I'm afraid."

Her lips fell open, a look of horrified disbelief on her tear-streaked face.

"But surely you knew that?" he asked, growing uncomfortable under her gaze. "All those years of being a demon, spying on humans. Surely you must have known."

She blinked and then closed her lips. He could almost see her putting the pieces together. She shook her head. "I guess I
did
see. But watching and experiencing… I am finding that they are two different things." She looked pleadingly at him. "I don't have to go through that again, do I? That thing in the shed?"

"Er, I'm afraid so. Unless you don't eat, of course."

She sat up straight, revealing her breasts in their full, buxom glory, looking as perky as the expression of hope he barely noticed on her face. "I won't eat, then!" Her breasts jiggled.

He tried, and failed, to tear his gaze away from them. "For a whole month?"

"Not a bite!"

"Best of luck to you. I would warn you that not eating would kill you, but I doubt you'll make it a day without food anyway. What did you do with your clothes?"

"I don't know. They're over there somewhere," she said, gesturing vaguely behind her. "That thing is uncomfortable. And I won't give in and eat. I will not do that shed thing again." She shuddered.

He walked past her and found her caftan and sash. He threw them, the garments landing in a heap beside her. "Put that back on." God's blood, he could barely think when she was naked. His body was trying to do all the thinking for him.

She looked disdainfully over her shoulder at the caftan, wrinkling her nose. "I do not like it."

"You seem to dislike a lot of things about being human. But you made your choice, and I'd advise you to start making the best of it. No one wants to listen to your whining."

Her jaw set rebelliously, but she dragged the caftan into her lap. "This is going to be a very long thirty days."

"I couldn't have said it better myself."

She cast him a hurt look.

"And I forbid you to do any more crying! God's blood, I wouldn't have thought demons were such weepers."

She touched her fingers to her cheek, and as her fingertips came in contact with the drying streaks of her tears her eyes widened. "
Tears
! I can cry!"

"Unfortunately." He crossed his arms over his chest, looking down at her. At least the caftan was heaped high enough in her lap that her nipples were covered.

She patted at her cheeks. "I thought it would be wonderful to be able to cry."

He raised a brow. "You don't find it so? Most women seem to make fair use of the tactic."

"It's
awful
, you insensitive, dunderheaded dolt!"

"You really have turned into a human woman, haven't you?"

"Pig! Idiot!"

"And with every word you speak…"

She let loose a stream of words in some demonic language he could not recognize, full of guttural exhortations and violent hand gestures. He was guessing by the angry contortions of her face that she wasn't being complimentary to his person. He bit the inside of his cheek, trying to keep from laughing.

Her eyes narrowed and she stood, the caftan dropping to the ground. Her hand gestures started aiming at his genitals, and his amusement died a quick death. Was she cursing his cock?

"Enough!" he ordered sharply.

She hissed out another demonic curse.

He grabbed the caftan and her hand and forced her arm into a sleeve.

"Stop it! I hate that thing!" she shrieked.

"Too bad." He turned her roughly and forced her other arm into the other sleeve, wrapped the caftan shut, and tied the sash into a firm knot.

"Ow! It's too tight!"

"And you have too much of a mouth on you. I want you to apologize for everything you were just saying."

"I will not!"

"Now."

"No! You ought to be apologizing to me!"

"Apologize!"

She folded her arms over her chest. "You can't make me."

"What are you, five years old?"

"Less than a day old, so I'll behave as I think right, thank you kindly, generous sir. And I think
you
are an ass."

"You little…" He picked her up and threw her over his shoulder, her curses ending with an
oomph
. He thwacked her on her rump, once, just hard enough to get her attention, and started hauling her back to the fortress.

"What are you doing? Hey!"

He felt her hands on his back as she tried to lift herself up, and thwacked her again.

"Ow!"

"No more trouble from you!"

"I'll give you trouble! I'll—"

Thwack!

"You're a bad man!"

He let his palm rest on her backside, fingers tapping in warning. She flopped down and let herself be carried, muttering darkly.

He kept his hand on her, holding her in place. Really, he needed to secure her on his shoulder: He wasn't as steady on his feet as he once was. He didn't
want
to be touching her there.

But despite the weight of her, he wasn't feeling the aching weakness he usually did. Instead, he felt the blood rush he used to associate with battle; the conquer-all-comers energy that used to possess him before facing an opponent. It had been a long time since he'd felt that physical invincibility; that willingness to engage in whatever challenge was thrown in front of him.

He felt Samira playing at the hem of his shirt, and then her hands suddenly snaked down the top of his hose and grasped his buttocks.

"
Yeeeee-ohhh
! What the hell—" he screeched, lurching forward in surprise. Demonic little hands were squeezing and fondling, then reaching lower, between his thighs… He stumbled, and then with twin shouts of alarm they both tumbled into a heap on the grass, one of Samira's hands still down his hose, his head somehow up her caftan and lodged between her soft thighs.

For a long, stunned moment Nicolae was motionless, lost in the dark, warm, faintly musky world beneath her caftan. Then Samira moved, and he felt her sex against his cheek and lips, and panic took over. He batted frantically at the skirt of the caftan, struggling to find the daylight, Samira's own struggle to right herself hampering him. At last he unwound himself from the fabric and popped his head into the open air.

Andrei was staring down at him, black brows drawn censoriously over his too-knowing eyes. Constantin and Petru were behind him, swords drawn and uncertain alarm on their faces. And behind even them, staring at him in disapproving shock, was his older brother Radu, whom he had not seen for half a year.

Samira sat up, using her hands to push her hair out of her face. A glance showed Nicolae her skirt was hiked up to her groin, and he reached over and jerked down the hem.

"Is everything all right here?" Radu asked, his voice catching the others by surprise and making them turn.

His dark eyes missed nothing, and Nicolae felt a spurt of embarrassment that he should be caught in such a situation. Radu had always been the most duty-bound of his brothers, with a cold heart and little imagination.

Nicolae cleared his throat. "Quite all right, Radu, thank you. It's a pleasure to see you. What news do you bring?" As nonchalantly as he could, he got up off the ground. "I tripped, that is all."

"It's a good thing you found such a soft landing. I didn't know you had a wench staying with you."

To Nicolae's horror, Samira took that as an invitation to pipe up. "He doesn't like his buttocks squeezed."

Constantin, Petru, and Andrei grimaced in unison, sending warning scowls to Samira. She seemed oblivious, her eyes only on Radu, who was scowling at her.

"He jumped as if I'd stuck him with a knife," Samira cheerfully explained. "His skin is very soft and smooth, though. I wouldn't have expect—"

"That's
enough
, Samira!" Nicolae barked.

"Soft and smooth?" Radu said.

Petru chortled. Constantin's face colored with the effort of keeping his features stern. One corner of his mouth wobbled.

Now his men were laughing at him. This was not good. Samira scrambled up off the ground, talking all the while, ignoring his order to be quiet.

"He's as soft as my own skin. Are you all like that?"

"She does not mind you very well, brother," Radu said.

"Samira! Silence!"

She turned to him, blue eyes wide. "Are you soft everywhere?"

Could she
not
shut up? "Samira, go to your bed!" Nicolae pointed back at the monastery. "Go! Now!"

"Where is my bed?"

"At the base of the tower stairs. Go! And you'll stay there until I tell you otherwise."

Her lower lip thrust out in a pout. "I don't know why you're so upset. I was just curious. I didn't hurt you."

"Go!"

She wrinkled her nose at him, turned with a flounce, and marched back toward the monastery, bare feet stepping high, arms swinging like a soldier's.

Nicolae ground his teeth, and looked back at his men. "
What
?" he barked.

"It looks like you have more than you bargained for with that one," Radu said, before any of Nicolae's guilty soldiers could answer.

"I can handle her."

"Yes, I can see that you handle her just fine. She certainly knows her place."

Nicolae growled low in his throat and then tried to swallow his anger, turning away and heading back to the fortress. Of all people to see him with his head up Samira's skirt, why Radu? It could only have been worse if it were his father, Bogdan.

Radu fell into step beside him as they returned to the fortress. "I thought you had plans to break God's laws and become some manner of devil-worshipping magician. Have you given up on that already, then, in favor of wenching? You do know that Father has said he would rather have a wenching, useless son than a damned son who practices the black arts."

"I'm damned in Father's eyes no matter what I do." He wasn't going to explain Samira to Radu, though, and have it get back to his father that he was living with a demon. He did care what his father thought, no matter that he so rarely followed Bogdan's direction. His inability to obey was a fatal flaw in a son. "Tell me what brings you here. Lac Strigoi has been graced by your presence only twice before."

"I can only stay a few minutes; my troops are encamped an hour to the south. I thought it my duty to let you know, though, that the southern regions are under attack by Vlad and Dragosh, and their numbers are much greater than we originally thought."

Nicolae felt his heart sinking. "Will we be able to hold them off?" He felt his helplessness anew. Here he uselessly sat in the middle of a lake, when he should have been leading troops into battle against the invader.