Tension.
It filled the dense air in the coach, packing it into the cramped space until there was little to do but sit in it. To bask in the total discomfort of Asher’s heinous mood, and Carina’s heroic efforts to ignore it.
And darkest of all, Marco’s seething silence that had replaced his jovial, never-ending good spirits.
“You know,” Carina purred, letting one shoe slip off her foot so she could trace the captain’s inseam with her perfect, manicured toes. “There’s no reason we can’t get a head start on our duty to the crown today. Viridian’s girl did her magic,” she added, and licked red painted lips. “Apparently I’ve”—she tittered and leaned in, voice dropping to a low, sultry whisper—“gone into heat.”
“Sounds uncomfortable,” the captain replied, tone flat and cold as he stared out the window, and made no effort to rebuff or engage.
“Here. Slave,” she barked, and flung her wrist in my direction without peeling her eyes from the captain’s profile. “Do your whore magics. Tell your master what you sense.”
I blinked. Remembering what it was to taste the woman before me, however briefly. To know her energies, her desires and pain… everything. All of it mine, at the slightest whim. A danger she apparently had no memory of, or she wouldn’t be so giving. So… trusting.
My mouth watered and I swallowed,hard.
From my peripheral, I saw Asher move. Felt that inky glare where it burned the side of my face. His attention prickling the edge of my awareness, bypassing my wrists and throat, his awareness was in my blood. A threat poised on the edge of action. Silently daring me to take Carina’s hand. To test his temper and restraint.
Daring me to see what might happen if I just… did as she asked. Took her fingers in mine… just to see if my leash had any slack. To test if he really could keep me from indulging my darkest impulses. If his control was absolute or an illusion.
Wetting my lips, I reached—
Asher snatched my wrist before I could make contact. “Mila’s gifts are not available for use.”
“Nonsense, Asher,” Carina purred, and leaned in further still. “Don’t be such a prude. The girl wants to learn, doesn’t she?”
I watched her posture and preen. Aware of her every tiny movement, I was still. Lured by the shift of insidious hunger as it was awakened. Hardly breathing.
She relented with a sigh, but pressed in closer still. “I’ve never understood the point of owning a pleasure slave,” Carina said, flippant and coy. Oblivious to the silent battle being waged right in front of her, she looked me up and down, lip curled, then shrugged. “But I suppose I can be taught. So keep her in your bed,” she murmured, and elegant bejeweled fingers found Asher’s knee. Trailing up. “Let her watch. Let her practice her technique on me as she cleans up your mess.”
Fingers dimpling my forearm, Asher’s grip grew tight enough to bruise as he watched her without so much as a blink.
Creeping fingers found their mark, and sinking pearly white teeth into the lovely bow of her bottom lip, Carina stroked the front of the captain’s trousers. “I think,” she said, and her wrist rolled in such a way that drew my eye down at last, “with enough…convincing… I could come to enjoy seeing your golden priestess between my knees as you ride her barren cunt. Shame,” she added with a click of her tongue. Her wrist rolling and flexing, working in his lap as an all-too-familiar nausea bubbled at the back of my throat.
“And what’s that?” the captain asked, forcing the words between his teeth as a terrible storm built where she could not see it.
“That you can’t breed her, of course!” A tinkling laugh peppered the dense air with holes—holes that promised to vent the captain’s temper at last. “It would’ve been nice to have a powerful blood-bound servant for our sons. And to think of the profits we might have made on leasing the rest out.” She tisked again. “I’m sure it won’t be long before they’re able to reverse that nasty little side effect, and until then…”
Fingers still keeping me shackled to his side, the captain leaned in. “Carina—”
Marco threw the coach into park, and the jarring shift almost unseated all three of us. “We’re here,” Marco barked.
Adjusting her hair, Carina pouted. “Why not have your boy take her for a few hours?” she cooed, and worked her fingers toward Asher’s belt. “We’ll have plenty of time to break her in after we’re married—”
“No!” Marco said at the same Asher snarled, “I said ‘no’, you vile cunt,” and seized her wrist in that bruising grip at last, stopping her advance without flinging her away. Shouldering me aside, he put himself between us.
“Oh,” she gasped, and I watched her pupils dilate as she licked her lips. “Oh. I do love a man with a firm hand.”
He pulled her in close. Lips hovering scant inches away from hers. “You’ve out-played me, Carina,” he murmured, and slipped one hand behind her neck. Fingers tangling in her luscious, artful curls of glossy dark silk, he wrenched her head back and forced a primal gasp from between her lips, only to press closer still. Whispering, “A commendable manipulation,” against the tender pale skin of her throat. “And after we’re married, I will do my duty,” he added. “I will drop a few wretched bastards in your haunted cunt. I’ll smile and wave for the emperor, but make no mistake,” he cooed back at her, tone deadly cold. “Mila ismine. Her bed is the one I will seek, if only so I might forget the horrors I’ve been forced to endure in yours.”
At long last, Carina’s mask fell away to reveal what really lurked beneath all that flowing, ethereal beauty.
She smiled.
And it sent barren winter winds howling through my heart.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way, my darling Asher. In the meantime,” she rasped, “you’ve a rather tarnished reputation to uphold. One I amtryingto repair to the best of my considerable abilities. So lose yourself in the little whore’s bed. Love the girl, if you’re weak enough that you truly cannot help yourself,” she said with a sniff of pure disdain. “As long as it’s in the privacy of locked doors and drawn curtains, I simply do not care if you beg her to whip your ass bloody whilesheridesyourass, just so you can sob yourself sick in her tender embrace. But in public, she walks inourshadow.”
Nostrils pinched white, Asher’s eyes flicked between Carina’s.
