“Must I?” she said on a long sigh as though bored.
The hem of the gown was past the wiry curls of her mons and inching toward her belly button. His middle finger twirled the pale blonde hair, dipping slowly toward the clitoral hood.
“Aye, wench,” he replied. “I believe you must.”
She turned so her back was to him and pressed against his chest. She opened her legs.
His hand slid downward until he was cupping her heat. Drawing his fingers up and down, his thumb stroking the left crease of her thigh, could feel the juices slipping from her cunt.
“Wider,” he commanded.
Khamsin shifted her legs apart, giving him more access to her moistness. Her belly clenched when the tip of one finger touched her anal opening.
“You like that?” he cooed, continuing the soft friction that ran his fingers from spiky curls to the puckered rim of her ass.
Licking her lips, Khamsin could only nod. The sensations he was causing between her legs made her blood pound heavily in her ears.
“Put your hands on your breasts, Beloved,” he instructed.
She did as he told her, massaging the heavy globes.
“Pluck your nipples.” His voice was deep, filled with passion.
Folding her fingers into her palm, she grasped her nipples through the thin cotton fabric of her nightgown and rolled them between the pads of her thumbs and the sides of her index fingers.
“Ah,” she groaned, the stimulation sending spikes of desire driving through her loins.
Lucien slipped his middle finger into the dampness between her legs and drove deep.
“Ah!” his lady cried out, pushing her hips up to meet his hand.
Flexing his finger inside her, pulling it out a ways, thrusting it back in—deeper and harder—he watched as she pulled at her nipples and worried them between her fingers. Her breathing was erratic, dragging quickly into her lungs. Her head thrown back on his shoulder, her bottom lip clasped between her teeth, her eyes closed. He could feel the tremor that was beginning in the core of her.
Without missing a beat, Lucian put his middle finger in his mouth, withdrew it then slid his free hand beneath her, wedging his palm under her butt and slid it down until he touched the rim of her ass. Although she cried out in protest—clenching her cheeks to prevent his invasion—he inserted the middle finger of his left hand into her hole.
“Lucien!” she gasped, slamming her hands to the chair arms in an attempt to pry herself from his lap.
“Put your fingers to your nipples, wench!” he snapped in a tone that brooked no argument.
Hesitantly, Khamsin returned her fingers to the erect peaks of her breasts, panting as though she had run a long, hard race.
“Pull them!”
As one long finger wriggled in her anus, another moved in and out of her with steady penetration, she plucked furiously at her nipples, feeling the beginnings of her climax shooting up from the delicious friction inside her.
He pushed hard with his right finger and held it as the ripples of her pleasure undulated through Khamsin’s lower body. She pushed against him, grinding her ass on his left hand, rising up to thrust against his right. Her choked cries of relief as the last squeeze of satiation claimed her sounded loud in the still room.
They sat in his chair with his fingers still inside her and watched as the first rays of morning speared up from the horizon. She would have moved, but he kept her where she was, thrilling to the pulse of her inner beat he could feel compressing his fingers.
Gently, he kissed the side of her neck, pressing his lips to the heavy thud of her pulse. Though every instinct in his body bid him to sink his fangs into that creamy soft flesh, he denied his nature and merely flicked out a tongue to lap at her skin.
“You need to go to bed,” she said, her voice breathless.
“Aye,” he said and before she could protect, slipped his fingers from her body. He reached across her and pulled one leg around until she was once more sitting at an angle to hip. With the last bit of his morning-draining strength, he slipped one arm behind her, one under her knees and stood, holding her securely in his arms.
“Lucien…” she began but he shushed her.
“Lie with me until I fall asleep,” he asked.
His footsteps were slow, his strength fading but he managed to climb the stairs with her. Never breaking stride for his guards automatically opened the door for him as he neared his chamber—he took her to their bed, and laid her down, practically falling atop her as the last of his vigor was sapped.
Khamsin scooted aside for him then pillowed his head on her breast as sleep reached up to claim him. She could hear his soft breathing and knew he was deep in slumber.
Within moments, she followed him down into the oblivion of Morpheus.
They dozed for half an hour then Lucien woke with a mighty thirst. Quietly so as not to disturb her, he reached out to pour a glass of water from the bedside table.
“Tired you out, wench?” he laughed to himself. He drained the goblet, poured more, and drained that, too.
As he lay down, stretching out beside his woman, he wondered why the water had the faintest taste of cherries about.
Chapter Ten
Morning brought slashes of lightning and heavy rain to pelt the windows. Thunder rumbled ominously, echoing across the mountains. It was always cool in Lucien’s room, but this day it seemed colder than usual. There was dampness, a cloying press against the skin that Khamsin found disquieting.
Easing out of the bed so she would not wake her lover, Lucien’s lady performed her absolutions in the dark bathing chamber with only a single candle to light her way. She was about to leave the stark room when the door shut quickly and soundlessly in front of her. She jumped back, blinking at the obstruction to her exit.
“Such a vile day, it is.”
Spinning around, Khamsin was stunned to see Sibylline sitting on the rim of the large copper tub, her arms folded over her lush breasts. The flickering candlelight made the Revenant queen’s face look almost beastlike with deep shadows beneath her large eyes and in the hollows of her cheeks.
“I hated venturing out on such a day and would not have if duty had not called.”
“Lucien doesn’t want you here,” Khamsin said. “You’d best leave before he wakes.”
Sibylline said nothing as the young woman stalked to the door and tried to open it. Finding it locked, Khamsin pulled on the knob, but the portal would not budge. She shook the knob, twisted it, but still the door would not open. Turning around, she looked fearfully at Sibylline.
“What are you doing?”
A pleasant smile stretched the lovely older woman’s face. “Me? I’m just sitting here, dearling. What are
you
doing?”
Turning around and yanking as hard as she could on the knob, Khamsin felt her heart thudding in her chest. The door was securely shut.
Hating to slap her hand against the panel and wake Lucien, she nevertheless did so, calling out to Lucien to open the door.
“I’m afraid he can’t hear you,” Sibylline told her. “He will sleep like the undead he is until nightfall.”
Khamsin spun back around. “Let me out of here!” she demanded.
Sibylline shook her head. “You will be leaving, dearling, but it will be with me.”
There was a particularly loud crack of lightning and the air wavered around them. The stench of brimstone filled the air as another violent burst of sound shook the room.
“Truly vile weather we’re having,” Sibylline commented.
Her eyes widening, Khamsin put a hand to her heart where an intense pain had suddenly shot through her. “Why?” she asked, pleading in her shaky voice. “Why are you doing this?”
“Did you study religion in that orphanage, Khammie?” Sibylline asked, holding up her hand to study the fingernails—first with fingers crooked toward her and then palm facing away and the slender digits splayed.
Tears gathered in Khamsin’s eyes for she was terrified of what this woman might do to her.
“No?” Sibylline asked, not waiting for an answer. “No matter. I have studied this planet’s religion extensively and have memorized many of the verses I read. One says—now let me make sure I have it correctly—oh, yes! ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away’. Since I consider myself a Lordess on this backward world and I gave you to our sweet Lucien, I am now taking you away.”
“But why?” Khamsin repeated and the tears fell down her cheeks. “Are you that jealous?”
Sibylline cocked her head to one side. “Jealous?” she echoed. “Of what, dearling? Poor little you?” She laughed. “Most assuredly not!”
“Then why are you doing this to us?”
A wistful sigh pushed from Sibylline’s ample chest. “Because Lucien will believe it is Stavros who holds you, he will go after Constantine. Lucien will do everything in his power to get you back—including killing Stavros. Truthfully, I imagine Lucien will mutilate his enemy with great glee. There has always been bad blood—if you’ll pardon the pun—between those two.”
“Why don’t you just kill Stavros yourself? Why put Lucien and me through this?”
Once more, the sigh came from Sibylline. “Believe me if I could, I would have slain that troublemaker long ago but unfortunately once a Revenant turns a human, he or she loses the ability to destroy them. A bit of a nuisance, actually, but just one of those annoying little loopholes our race was saddled with millennia ago.”
Slamming the flat of her palm repeatedly upon the door, Khamsin called out to Lucien, to the guards—anyone who might hear her.
“You are no longer in Modartha, dearling,” Sibylline told her and waved a hand.
The door opened as silently as it had closed and Khamsin rushed out only to find herself in a large, vacant room surrounded by row after row of windows from floor to ceiling. Dark walls, dark marble upon the floor, shadows cast from the brilliant display of nature’s fury beyond the windows gave the room a decidedly evil and hopeless aura.
“I call it my lunararium,” Sibylline comment as she came into the barren room. “Don’t you find it beautiful?”
Lightning was flashing white death beyond the mullioned panes, streaking across the ebony skies like fiery stitching upon a swath of black silk. Thunder boomed repeatedly, underscoring the crack of the lightning and the windows shook beneath the onslaught.
“Where are we?” Khamsin cried, her heart quivering in her chest.
“Far beyond Modartha,” Sibylline replied. “Beyond any known place on your world. Where Lucien can never travel. No male has ever stepped foot in my keep and none ever will.”
As lightning flared around her, washing stark white light over her pale features, Khamsin slumped to the floor, covering her face with her hands. She rocked there on her knees, a low keening sound trilling from her very soul.
“This isn’t permanent, Khamsin,” Sibylline said with a hint of exasperation in her sultry voice. “You will rejoin him when he gets the job done.”
Khamsin lifted her head, her eyes red and swollen from her crying. “And what if he doesn’t? What if Stavros kills him?”
Sibylline waved away the question. “Well, of course he won’t die, you silly chit! He is a powerful warrior. He is the heir apparent to my throne, my Chosen One. There is no way he
can
fail!”
“There is a traitor at Mordartha,” Khamsin accused. “She…”
“She reports only what I wish her to report and does so without even knowing she is doing it,” Sibylline interrupted. “Think you I would allow treachery to lay a hand to my heir?”
“Lucien thinks she has betrayed him. The thrall…”
“The thrall who manhandled you and earned for himself a fiery death at the stake?” Sibylline sneered. “Is that the thrall you mean?”
A niggling memory tugged at Khamsin’s mind. There was a moment of squeezing pain around her breast and she put a hand to her chest. “No,” she whispered.
“Aye, the thrall mauled you and paid for it with his worthless life. No great loss I assure you,” Sibylline supplied. “Why Lucien felt you did not need to know he avenged you is beyond my ken but such is his way.”
The sound of flames crackling, an agonized scream that went on and on, and the stench of burning flesh—Khamsin shuddered.
“Lucien Korvina has a brand on his left biceps. Do you know what it is?” Sibylline asked.
Khamsin turned stricken eyes to the woman, confusion at her question and what it had to do with the situation crinkling her face.
“He was marked from the caldron during a fire-festival ritual. It was one of the rare pagan ceremonies he embraced as a boy. Do you remember seeing the brand?”
Shaking her head at the strange question, Khamsin scrubbed at her tearful face.
“It is the Greek symbol called psi and it looks like this,” Sibylline said and outside a fiery Ψ appeared in the storm-ravaged sky. “Only those young men who had shown some kind of psychic ability were invited to join and those who decided to do so had to be careful around the old priest. Lucien took his Catholic religion very seriously back then but he had an ability he wanted to learn to control.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Khamsin asked.