I allowed every trace of my hate to shine through, and he answered that hate with a smirk.
He dragged his thumb over my closed lips. “Do you remember the play where you sat on my lap, enamai? The play where your breath grew faster and faster as I slipped my fingers between your legs so slowly. You were soaking, and I couldn’t resist the temptation of your slickness, though my subjects were so close. I entered you, and you rode me—so oblivious to the presence of others. As you walked from this room, youdrippedwith the signs of what we’d done.”
I remembered.
I pressed my thighs together against how much I remembered.
And that wasn’t the only public sex we’d had. The emotions of a demon collective were powerful, and no one was immuneto them—certainly not demons in a mating ritual. “What’s your point, Carmine?”
His lips curved. “Sit on my lap as I touch you, Syera. Writhe against my fingers, and when I enter you, chase all the pleasure my cock can give you. Roll your hips in the way I recall, and then walk out of this room dripping with the signs of me.”
Fear bolted through me. Fearanddenial. Was that an order?
“Do this,” Carmine continued, “and I will grant you all the power you seek through the game.”
I held my breath, nearly sagging as some of the fear leeched away.Mother be,I’d thought he’d finally lost the battle to his icy soul. No one watching would miss how unsettled my breathing was.
The demon king leaned back in his throne, jerking his head at his lap. “Make your choice. This could all be finished in one fuck.”
I wanted fury to come to my aid.
I wanted the certainty of the woman I’d been two nights ago. But I didn’t feel like her tonight. She needed time to lick her wounds, and I should have known better than to believe Carmine would give me any time to process what I’d done in the hallway.
This was his attack. This washisplan to undo everything I battled for in the arena. He was tightening a noose that I couldn’t yet see. I’d held still under his fingers just now. Something that I wouldn’t have stood for a week prior.
He was using my desperation and uncertainty against me, but what about his? His desperation to finish this mating. His uncertainty that I would figure out how to sever our mating.
“After I learned a mating could be severed, of course that was the first question I asked my grandfather. You’re right to fear that I will do it,” I told Carmine.
I shouldn’t mess with this creature with a heart of ice. I shouldn’t, but I had to. Things were growing murkier by the second.
Carmine’s face hardened. “I will make his death painful.”
I lifted a shoulder. “Dead is dead in the end.”
“You plan to sever our mating, but not yet.”
“No.” I rose from the throne. “But I will in time. Unless you somehow convince me, of course. Whateverthisoffer is, it’s not doing that.”
Gray eyes glittered, and he didn’t adjust from his sprawled position on the throne. “I don’t need to convince you, Syera. You just need to convince yourself.”
I snorted. “Then your plan is destined to fail, Carmine.”
He looked at the play. “So says the demon who declared we would never share pleasure again. Return to your rooms, enamai. You will need your strength in the week ahead.”
I was leaving anyway, which was no doubt why he’d given the order, but I seized the opportunity to leave the royals behind.
Carmine wasn’t desperate or uncertain at all, unless he’d just made the biggest bluff of his life. If Carmine wasn’t desperate or uncertain, then he had an ace up his sleeve.
My brow cleared as the answer dawned on me.Of course.
My sister. Carmine planned to force the mating via bargaining my sister’s freedom, if he couldn’t convince me otherwise. That was how I would“convince myself.”
And I would have agreed to that once, back when I’d expected to die anyway. But now I’d figured out that I could win everythingandhave a future with Adeuto and Tempest.
So that was exactly what I intended to do.
12
