I should leave here. I should get to her as quickly as I can. And yet I feel paralyzed. Has someone cast a spell on me too?
“Remove your dress,” Gabreal says.
Rosomon quickly—eagerly—lifts the skimpy garment over her head and tosses it to the side. Her hips swivel. She’s aroused.
She’s going to fuck him. I can’t watch, but also can’t look away. He gestures for her to walk toward the table.
The mages break their circle, letting Rosomon and Gabreal pass, and then quickly reform it.
“Get on the bed,” Gabreal says. The platform is high, but he offers her no assistance, and I gasp as she climbs invisible steps.
The rootbound mages helping Gabreal are powerful. The thirteen have likely combined their inferior powers to create and sustain an illusion far stronger than any single basic mage could—a tangible illusion to rival some of my own.
Rosomon, sitting at the edge of the large marble table, spreads her legs and reaches toward Gabreal.
“Lie back,” he says. “Arms above your head.”
She obeys, and he fastens ropes around her wrists, securing the ends on rings at the top corners of the table. She doesn’t resist and watches him with obvious desire in her eyes.
“Spread your legs,” he commands. “Bend your knees.”
She does as he says. He slips ropes under her knees, then uses straps to bind her calves against her upper thighs, keeping her legs folded in half. Then he takes the ropes tucked under her knees, and uses those to spread her wide, fully exposing her sex, so red and slick with arousal.
“You remembered.” Her body undulates within her tight constraints as she tests them. “But this bed is hard. I’d prefer a repeat of the day we married—or something like we saw in that vampyre club. Can you change the illusion?”
I gasp. She thinks she’s with me.
An instant of relief floods my body, but it’s quickly replaced by fear. She hasn’t consented to any of this.
Pretending to be me, Gabreal is planning to rape her—or worse.
CHAPTER 33
Rosomon
Sex is still relatively new to me, and every time I’m aroused, it seems more powerful than the last.
Today is no exception. Zogar came back from his mission wild and lustful. And I’m game to go along, even though he was a bit rough with his fingers and interrupted the flow, by daring me to walk along the edge of the roof. I don’t understand why he forced me to do that. He already knows that I trust him.Doesn’t he?
I’m shocked that he put me in that situation, especially since I’m certain the railing was an illusion.Everythingup on this roof is illusion—everything, including this bed that I’m bound to.
When I complained that the bed was too hard, he made it softer, and I’m fully tied down against it, spread open and ready, but I’ve been waiting, for what feels like a very long time. Since he positioned me, he hasn’t touched me again, and the air is cooling the heat in my very damp cleft.
Instead of disrobing, he’s been circling the bed, speaking in some language I don’t understand. My gaze follows, as he makes slow cycles around me, but he’s not even looking at me.
Is this part of the marriage ceremony he skipped when we were in Lymbo? I find myself hesitant to ask, wanting to go along with this ritual, or new sexual game, whatever it is.
Crossing the foot of the bed for the seventh time, he leaps up, landing with his legs spread wide as he looks down at me, licking his lips. “Close your eyes.”
I do as he says.
“Now open them.”
I freeze in fear. It’s not Zogar looming above me. And I’m not on a bed.
I’m bound to a cold marble table surrounded by women chanting under long, hooded robes.
The man—or whatever he is—is handsome and dressed in fine looking clothes, a red shirt that’s clearly silk, and black trousers that perfectly fit his shape. The bulge at the apex of his legs is large but looks nothing like Zogar’s. In fact, absolutely nothing about this man looks like Zogar. This stranger’s hair is so golden it’s nearly white, and his features are strong, almost preternaturally perfect, like he’s been carved that way. I can’t believe I was fooled.
