Asher chuckled. “Well that can’t be—”
A tentative knock at the door made us both jump. Our eyes snapping to the door, we turned to stare and I felt him go stiff beneath me. Muscles coiled and tense, but weak—soaked in a cold sweat and aching with fatigue.
Just as I was.
I met eyes that had gone bottomless and dark with possessive, seething rage. And unable to stop myself, I whispered what we were both thinking. “He’s here.”
19
“Asher—”
He clapped one large hand over my lips, hushing me. And then, lips pressed to my ear, he murmured, “It’s not him.”
I shivered, gooseflesh pimpling my skin at the sound of his voice. So low and husky. Soclose. But I glanced at the door and pressed my words into his palm. “You’re sure?”
With a nod, the captain pushed me off his lap and said, simply, “He wouldn’t knock.”
It was hard to argue with that.
Hard to do anything, really, but sit in a heap where he’d left me. Curled on the floor in a tangle of bare limbs and twisted fabric. Watching as he stood, clung to the desk, then moved on unsteady feet to the window and peered down at the street below.
“Surrounded,” he murmured, and pulled back from the window. Pinching the bridge of his nose with eyes squeezed shut, he pulled in a deep, controlled breath.
Exhaled in a steady stream.
And then, “Even with Colonel Viridian’s support…” He scowled at the carpet. “It’s not enough.”
Just standing there was a drain. I could feel it pulling at me, even without touching his skin. The way he yearned to sit, to close his eyes and succumb to sleep where we both might recover some of the energy I’d squandered.
Another, more forceful knock sounded at the door. Impatient now. Edging toward frantic.
The muscle at the corner of his jaw jumped, and pausing only to collect his weapon from a desk drawer, the captain moved to answer the summons.
Side arm out of sight, hidden behind his thigh.
His finger on the trigger—my veins tingling with the distant memory of pain, but not the promise.
Because there was nothing left. Not a flicker of dark magic flickering between us.
It was a bluff.
A threat that wasn’t.
Dark eyes slid over his shoulder, and the captain’s chin dipped. Just once, before he turned the knob…
… and revealed Alicia.
Her face all but bloodless. Fingers twisting around and around a crumpled envelope, the pleasure slave had her bottom lip caught between the edges of gleaming teeth. Sparkling green eyes rimmed in white gave her the appearance of a much younger woman.
“My lord,” she breathed, and rushed into the room. Taking liberties. “The general’s men are here. They say you’re to be escorted to the harem and won’t say why—”
The captain snatched the letter from her fingers and broke the seal. Inky eyes flicking over the missive as the crease between his brows grew deeper with each passing second. “Fuck,” he hissed, and crushed the offensive note in a white-knuckled fist. “Fuck!”
“The house it—it’s surrounded by armed soldiers,” Alicia whispered, wringing her hands as she took in the state of the disheveled man standing before her. “My lord—what’s going on?”
He exhaled a shuddering breath. “We’ve been summoned.” Pushing past the anxious pleasure slave, he staggered across the room and set his weapon down with a clatter of metal on wood, then stooped. Helping me to stand despite the way I swayed and clung to him for aid.
“For what?” I asked, too overwrought to pay Alicia any mind.
