“No,” Kirill confirmed. “Then do you imagine I was going to dally here—taking advantage, as you suggested—with this young lady and miss that engagement?”
“No?”
“No, I would not.”
Irina tried to drum up some anger at the casual way Kirill brushed off what he’d just done, but found she didn’t have the will for it. Not when her body still buzzed so pleasantly in the wake of Kirill’s feeding. And kiss. Still…
“You are all so terribly sweet and brave,” she said earnestly, sweeping past Kirill and gathering Ivan in a hug. She turned and hugged the other two as well, looking up to find the others all hovering at various points. One by one they trudged over to her and she gave them each a hug. If nothing else, she would always be grateful to Kirill, from the bottom of her heart, for placing her with these kind-hearted men. When she stood and turned back to Kirill she found him watching her. His face was devoid of emotion, a careful mask that made her desperate to know what he was thinking.
“If you are finished,” he said finally, “we should be going.” He turned to Irina with an expectant look on his face.
“I’ll be home by the time you all are getting up for work,” Irina promised, deliberately looking Kirill in the eyes as she did so. She didn’t truly believe he meant to harm her, not as he’d so cruelly hinted he would, but she couldn’t resist prodding him just a little.
Kirill inclined his head as if granting her a boon. “By first light,” he agreed.
One of the dwarves scurried away and returned with the thick cloak edged in ermine that Irina had come to them wearing. She smiled and thanked him as she took it. Surprise lifted her brows when Kirill took the cloak and held it for her as she draped it over her shoulders.
“Thank you,” she said, offering him a small smile.
He feigned offense. “No hug for me, my lady?”
Irina’s jaw dropped. “You made a joke?”
Kirill just smiled and lifted one of her hands to his mouth for a kiss. His nostrils flared and the red glow flared back to life in his eyes. Irina’s heart nearly stopped when he ever so slowly turned her hand over to reveal the dark red semi circles from where she’d drawn blood digging her fingernails into her palms. When his eyes met hers again they were filled with a heat the made butterflies leap to life in her belly.
“Irina, you vixen,” he said softly. He straightened his spine and stepped closer to her, still holding her hand. “Are you
trying
to tempt me?”
Kirill contemplated Irina as she sat across from him in the carriage. For the first ten minutes of the journey, she’d held her back ramrod straight, her hands neatly clasped in her lap, and her gaze fixed firmly out the window. Now that more time had dragged between now and their…exchange, she slouched a little more, leaning forward with her elbow propped on the window ledge and her chin resting on her fist. For his part, Kirill had been happy to give her space. With her blood singing in his body, filling him with an almost delirious satisfaction, he wasn’t certain he trusted himself to make safe, polite conversation anyway. Not when there were so many pieces missing in this particular puzzle. He drew his tongue over a fang, savoring the lingering taste of Irina’s essence. She wasn’t human, that he’d known before. Still, he couldn’t quite place the flavor…
“I can see you licking your lips and it’s very distracting.”
The grin sprang to his face before he could stop it, but Kirill quickly wiped it away. By the time Irina turned to him, his face was its usual mask of composure. She leveled her gaze at him and he waited for her to snap. The silence drew on and the scathing comment never came. Finally she resumed her stare out the window.
The night she’d cut him at his castle, standing in his own chambers no less, Kirill had been furious. He hadn’t been lying to her when he’d said he’d spent quite a bit of time coming up with the appropriate punishment for her crime. Still, he was not such a fool that he let his anger dictate his actions. Irina had the potential to help him mend the alliances he’d broken when he’d stepped in to protect the wolf’s kingdom and that was something he could not easily dismiss. So he’d asked around, consulted a variety of spies he had woven throughout the kingdom.
Trolls were not known for their amicability. They kept to their own kingdom, focusing almost exclusively on gathering treasure and protecting the treasure they’d gathered. Very few races held any weight with them and it had taken him years to forge even a tentative treaty with King
Risi
. The monarch had enough treasure to make anything Kirill offered him an insult, and there wasn’t much else Kirill had to offer him.
But Irina.
More than one of the trolls Kirill’s spies had consulted had spoken of her, knowing her by name. Apparently, the pale-skinned maiden often wandered through the woods, visiting with the various creatures of the kingdom and offering a song to the many weary souls she met along the way. One troll had hinted that Irina had sirin blood, while another claimed one of her ancestors was a firebird. Kirill inhaled deeply, drawing Irina’s scent to him.
Perhaps if he could get another taste…
“Don’t even think about biting me again.”
“My lady, if I didn’t know better, I would swear you had a gift for reading minds.” He focused on her pulse, listening to the sound of it beating just under the skin of her throat. “Tell me, Irina, was my bite so unpleasant?”
There. Her jaw tightened and her heartbeat grew frantic, pounding as if it would break free of her flesh and run from her body. Kirill nearly closed his eyes in bliss as the scent of her arousal filled his senses, all spiced with the delicious tang of fear. His fangs ached and he couldn’t resist the urge to lean forward, just a little.
Irina’s brown eyes flashed and her entire body sang with tension as her muscles grew taut. Kirill froze, preparing to grab her if she tried to throw open the door and leap from the moving carriage. The second her body rose off the seat he lunged forward.
Shock slammed into him as Irina leapt toward him instead of sideways toward the door. He grunted as he crashed back against the backrest of his seat, driven into it by Irina’s body half-flying into his arms. He stared at her, dumbfounded, as she fisted her skirts and pulled them up just enough so she could straddle his waist. He was still staring when she dropped her hands on his shoulders and leaned down to put her lips by his ear.
“Is this what you want, Your Highness?” she said softly, her breath raising gooseflesh on his neck. “Do you want to sink your fangs into me again, drink my blood until I’m nothing but an empty husk lying in a pile on the floor of your royal carriage?”
Kirill pulled himself together enough to be offended at her suggestion that he would have such poor control. Before he could object, she drew her tongue over the shell of his ear, nearly causing his eyes to roll back as pleasure shivered over his flesh.
“Or perhaps you intend to ravish me on the way to King
Risi’s
celebration?
Hmm?
You could present me to his majesty with your
fangmarks
on my neck, my blood running down my dress, and my skin flushed with the betrayal of your erotic attentions? Wouldn’t that do wonders for my reputation in the eyes of the troll king?”
The troll king
be
damned.
Kirill tried to squash the wayward thought, but it took more effort than he liked to admit. Irina was so warm, so soft. Her luscious curves felt so achingly sweet against the hard planes of his body. Her voice soothed him in an almost hypnotic fashion, her decadent, taunting suggestions filling his mind with memories of how sumptuous her blood had tasted, how sweet her moans had sounded when he’d given into the wild urge to thrust against her, urged on by the passion in her blood and the breathless desire in her voice.
He dug his fingers into her thighs, pulling her closer against him. Her breath hitched and the sound fueled the fire burning inside him, urging him to take her at her word and plunge
himself
into her body in every way a vampire could. So tempting…
Scraping together every last shred of willpower he possessed, Kirill raised a hand and grabbed a handful of Irina’s black curls, dragging her head to where he could look her in the eyes.
“Your wicked tongue will get you into trouble, Irina,” he ground out, fighting his body’s desire to jerk her closer and cover her mouth in a kiss. “I require your presence at the troll king’s celebration tonight—and you’re right, his opinion of you will drop if he thinks you are merely a woman who warms my bed at night.” He bent down and placed his lips beside her ear, mimicking what she’d done to him just moments ago. He inhaled deeply, drawing the scent of her deep into his lungs. “But if you continue to push me, do not think for one moment that I won’t make you follow through on every wicked word that has passed those delicate lips of yours.”
He turned his head to look out the window, observing the shrinking distance between the carriage and the giant mountain that the troll king claimed as his own.
“We are nearly there, Irina.” He released her hair and anchored his hands on her hips. Lifting her as if she weighed nothing, he deposited her on her own seat across from him, smirking at the dazed way she fluttered her hand about her chest before sinking her fingers in her hair. “Do try to compose yourself before we arrive.”
Irina wouldn’t meet his gaze. In fact, she seemed to be trying to shield her eyes from him, keeping one hand on her forehead as she stared down at the carriage floor. In and out, in and out, she breathed with calm regularity.
A slither of unease threatened to slither up Kirill’s spine. It would be very unfortunate if she cried.
Mostly because the trolls would likely blame me for it and that would cause my plan to backfire,
he assured himself. Still, it would be best to keep her from crying.
He cleared his throat. “I am intrigued by your determination to help the humans of my kingdom. Tell me, where does this crusade against tithes come from?”
Irina combed a hand through her hair, curling a lock around her finger. She studied it for a moment before finally raising her gaze to look him in the eye. “No one should have power over an entire people,” she said quietly. “Power of that magnitude breeds abuse and cruelty. This tithe that you think so little about comes from people who would use that money to put food in their mouths and clothes on their backs. What do you even use it for?”
Twenty percent goes toward running the castle, fifteen percent pays the staff, forty percent goes to maintaining the city, and twenty five is what I’ve been siphoning off from my father in secret for the last thirty-seven years.
Kirill smiled at Irina. “So much money, who can say where it all
goes
?”
“Exactly what I thought,” Irina grumbled. “You don’t need that money and your people do.”
Kirill shifted in his seat, studying Irina’s face. There was a faint blush on her cheeks. He let his gaze travel down, resting briefly on her hands. The blush rested there as well. He wondered if it covered her entire body.
The thought sobered him. He was on the cusp of repairing some serious political
damage,
he could not afford to put that at risk because a comely maiden tempted him into more carnal endeavors. Never mind that Irina’s eyes practically crackled with anger even when she was aroused. Never mind that she seemed to release some of that anger as passion. Never mind that the wench’s body was perfumed with blood from the cut in her cheek, the wounds in her hands,
the
bite on her throat…
“Aren’t you full?” she demanded hotly.
The laugh escaped his lips before he could stop it. Irina crossed her arms and scowled at him.
“It must be difficult to maintain your figure when your appetite is so clearly beyond your control,” she sniped.
“Blood is not very fattening,” he assured her smoothly. He smiled. “I can drink as much as I like and not gain an ounce.”
She looked away, the blush darkening prettily. “Taking someone’s blood without their consent is heinous and you should be ashamed of yourself.”
Kirill opened his mouth to point out that he’d been very clear that she had a choice, but something in her voice nagged at him. He paused and frowned at her. “Have you fed a vampire before?”
“No.”
He considered her rigid posture, the way she clasped her arms to her body in a protective embrace. “But someone has taken your blood against your will.”
Irina pressed her lips together and didn’t answer.
“Why would anyone want your blood?” Kirill pressed, intrigued despite himself. Perhaps this would be a clue as to the type of creature that had spawned Irina.
“There are people who believe blood is power, magic of the oldest kind,” Irina said stiffly. “Some people collect it from as many individuals they can in some mad hope of gaining more power.”
Alarm bells went off so loud in Kirill’s brain that for a moment he couldn’t think.
Blood.
Many individuals.
Power.
No, it couldn’t be. How could anyone else have learned of the prophecy, the true prophecy? No, this was no doubt just some futile attempt by an individual who’d heard the legend. No more of a threat than the King of Meropis sprinkling wine over the land or the King of Nysa sending his subjects to fornicate with virgins in the fields. Still.
“We’re here,” Irina said suddenly.
His question died on his lips and Kirill barely managed to hold in a snarl at the poor timing. He made a mental note to pursue the conversation after the troll’s celebration. It was imperative that Irina tell him who had taken her blood and why.
The carriage rolled to a stop and Kirill stood and opened the door. He took a moment after he exited the carriage to stand straight and silent, observing the trolls standing at the entrance to the mountainous court of King
Risi
.
They stared back at him with slightly bored expressions. Male trolls were nothing much to look at, thought they were impressive by sheer size alone. There wasn’t a troll in sight that was less than eight feet. They carried only simple weapons, axes and hammers mostly, but then when you had the size and strength of a troll, weapons did not have to be overly complex. Their clothing was thick leather, more than enough to slow down an enemy’s weapon long enough to crush their skulls. If it weren’t for the precious metals and jewels worked into the leather, a casual observer may have overlooked the trolls entirely. Kirill never overlooked anyone.
He offered a hand back into the carriage, not looking to see if Irina took it. A delicate hand brushed his palm and he clasped her slender fingers, helping her step down to the ground. As Irina straightened and faced the mountain, one of the trolls broke into what could almost be a smile.
“Irina,” he greeted her, stepping forward. “Have you any rocks or pebbles to offer me this evening?”
Irina scowled and Kirill had to fight to keep his eyebrows down when she stalked forward and slapped the troll on the arm. “You will never let me forget that will you? I was five years old.”
The troll threw back his head and
laughed,
a booming sound that would have caused an avalanche in icier climates.