with flecks of gold running through the pattern. A black marble tub large enough to fit
four people sat in one corner beside a glassed-in area Bevyn labeled the shower. The
necessary was a beautiful black marble fixture with a handle he told her had been cast
from pure gold. Dual black marble sinks had been sunken into a long counter with a
mirror that covered nearly one entire wall behind the golden faucets.
“It is amazing,” Lea breathed.
“Now, time’s wasting. Let’s have sex,” he said, dragging her back through the
bathing room.
“What?”
He pulled her to the bed, scooped her up and tossed her to the center of the bed,
ripping off his shirt as she bounced on the mattress. Buttons pinged against the wall.
“Bevyn!” she chastised.
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He was hopping on one foot as he yanked off a boot. “Sex,” he said. “We’re going
to have sex. No argument.”
She lay there braced on her elbows with her legs splayed, skirt hiked up to her
knees, watching him discard his clothing, and when he was entirely naked, before he
could throw himself on her, she held up a hand.
“What?” he whined.
“Why didn’t you just poof your clothes away, Reaper?” she asked, trying not to
laugh at his expression.
Bevyn’s eyebrows slashed together then he slapped his forehead with the base of
one palm. “Shit,” he mumbled. “I didn’t think of that!”
She lay down and held her arms up to him. “Come here, you bad man.”
The Reaper grinned so manically, she could not keep from laughing as he came
crashing down on her, pressing her to the bed as he fumbled her skirts up higher and
cupped her between her thighs.
“Gods-be-damned bloomers! What a fucking nuisance!” he snarled, and in one lithe
movement divested her of the offending garment, ripping them as they caught on the
heel of her slipper.
He snatched off her slippers, tore off her stockings and nudged her legs apart, his
hand going to her breast. His head swiveled toward the clock on the bedside table.
“Forty minutes. I’ve got forty minutes.”
Lea reached both hands to his face and turned his head toward her. “Bevyn,” she
said in a reasonable voice. “It only takes ten minutes to fully satisfy a woman. In forty,
you could bend our world, my love.”
“But it’ll have to last us, wench,” he said, his eyes filled with pleading. “I’ll be gone
a week and—”
“I will miss you every second you are away but when you return, just imagine how
intense the reunion will be,” she said calmly.
“Intense?” he echoed.
“Very intense,” she said. “Now slow down and make love—not sex—to your
woman.”
She could feel his heart slamming against his chest, the heated pulsing of his erect
cock stabbing against her stomach as he slid gently down her until he was lying
between her thighs, nudging her legs farther apart. His hand shook as he softly
kneaded her breast.
“I love you,” he said, his heart in his gaze.
“I know, milord,” she said. “And your love is returned a hundredfold.”
It was slow, sweet love he made to her then. Gentle, caring, filled with the most
tender expression of his emotions any man could ever express. The world and its
problems were thrust aside. His impending punishment no longer hovered at the back
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of his mind. All he cared about, thought about, wanted was to show his lady how much
he loved her and needed her and would miss her.
His lips were soft as they plied hers. His tongue was a sweet, gentle caress slipping
into her mouth to sweep across her lips and tickle her pallet, run between her bottom
teeth and lip. His breath was warm and smelled of lemon drops.
Lea’s hands were in his hair, stroking the thick curls, scratching lightly, seductively
along his scalp. She tugged playfully at the deep waves and smoothed them back from
his high forehead, meeting his needy gaze with a sultry one of her own.
“By the gods, you are my very heart, Lea Walsh,” he told her.
kissed her nipple through the fabric of her gown and chemise.
“Undress me, my man,” she said. “Let me feel every inch of you.”
He did not need a second invitation. Pushing to his knees, he knelt between her legs
and helped her to sit up, drew her dress over her head, the chemise following in a
heartbeat. His hands shook as he molded them to her lush bosoms.
“I never thought to know such happiness, sweeting,” he told her. “I never thought I
would find any kind of peace this side of the grave.”
She put her fingers to his lips and smiled gently then lay down, her hands to either
side of her head, his still on her breasts.
Bevyn stretched out atop her and took one glorious mound into his mouth, laving
the nipple sweetly, flicking his tongue across it, swirling around it, drawing it deeply
into his mouth. As her fingers threaded through his hair, he suckled her.
His weight crushed her in such a glorious way, Lea wondered how she had ever
existed without it. It was as though it was a part of her, he was a part of her, and she
would never be whole again were she to lose him. At that sweet moment of feeling him
pressing her into the mattress, his strong, muscular body imprisoning hers, she could
almost see herself accepting that part of him she found so repulsive, so she could be
with him like this for as long as they both drew breath.
But it was a fleeting thought as he moved to her other breast to worship the
sweetness there. She knew she would be hard-pressed to take into her body such a
revolting thing as the parasite that lived within his no matter how much she loved him.
The thought of having to drink blood, to exist on the strong drug she watched him
inject so painfully into his neck…
She shuddered.
Bevyn lifted his head, looked up in to her eyes, and at that moment she knew he
had been intercepting her wayward thoughts. “You need not worry about it, sweeting,”
he said. “I swore I would not and I will not.”
“I know,” she said, and put her hands to his cheeks to draw his mouth to hers but
her hands were trembling.
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He slid up her, luxuriating in the feel of her hard little nipples pressing against his
chest. Where they touched his flesh, they practically singed him. He shoved his hands
beneath her rump and lifted her to him.
“Then know this,” he said. “I belong only to you. No one else, nothing else matters.
I will be yours for as long as you want me.”
He slanted his mouth across hers and kissed her deeply, passionately, as he pressed
his hard cock against her stomach.
Lea reached down to wrap her fingers around his shaft, arching her hips to make
him move back so she could position him between her legs. As the tip of him touched
her core, he drew in a harsh, ragged breath, barely able to contain the pleasure driving
through him.
She slid him inside her then moved her
hand so she could cup his buttocks, seating
him deep within her. Her fingernails dug into the hard muscles of his cheeks to goad
him into thrusting.
And thrust he did. He lifted her ass up even as she scored his with her short nails
and he pumped into her slowly at first then with increased speed as their kiss deepened
and his rod grew impatient. Her folds were like warm honey around him—slick and
sweet and coating him with their combined juices. Her muscles flexed about him in
sweet little pulses that set his blood to racing.
His cock swelled inside her to such an unbelievable degree he thought he would
burst. He was driving into her with such power, such heat, such juicy thrusts, that she
was now clinging to him, making little groaning sounds as he touched some part of her
that was giving her great pleasure.
“Aye, milord,” she whispered as she tore her mouth from his and put her lips to his
ear. “Take your woman. Take her hard!”
Her words were like a prod to his ass and he felt it all the way through his lower
body and into his belly. His cock leapt then strained then began slamming into her with
such force the bed rocked beneath them.
Lea lifted her legs and locked them around his hips, her heel digging into the cleft
of his ass as he drove into her with wild abandon. She closed her eyes and held her
breath for the spasms were beginning deep inside her and she arched herself up,
bearing down on his shaft.
“Merciful Alel,” she heard him say as he became a frenzied engine pistoning into
her. The bed no longer rocked, it shook beneath them, the headboard slamming against
the wall.
“Come, my lover,” she whispered in his ear as her climax shot over her. “Fill me!”
Bevyn shot hot and long into her sweet body, his head thrown back as he howled
his release. His hips swiveled against her, pumped into her, ground down on her as he
shuddered violently with the coming, his entire body wrapped in the most intense
climax he’d ever known.
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Her legs tightened around him as she came a second time—even more intensely
than the first—and felt as though her insides would shatter with the glorious strength of
the pleasure. She writhed beneath him, lapping up the very last of his juices like a
woman dying of thirst. She moaned. She hissed. She gave herself entirely to the
experience and when she collapsed—lying as still as death with him pressed heavily
upon her—she knew she had been loved and loved well.
“If we don’t conceive a child from that, we never will,” she told him.
Bevyn lifted his head and looked down at her with such a shocked expression it
frightened her. “C-Child?” he repeated.
“Aye, milord,” she said, her forehead creased with concern. “Did you not consider
it?”
He shifted off her, pulling free of her intimate hold on his cock and practically fell
beside her, one arm draped over his eyes. She’d broached this subject the first time they
lay together and he had pushed it aside then. He wanted to push it aside now, pretend
she had not brought it up.
“Milord?” she questioned, sitting up, afraid of his reaction. “Did you not think it
could happen?”
“It never crossed my mind. I didn’t want to think about it,” he said, and lowered his
arm behind his head, looking up at her now with fear. “By the gods, Lea, women die
giving birth.”
“Aye, some do but the majority don’t.
“I can’t lose you,” he said, and his eyes filled with tears. “Lea, I couldn’t live
without you! I wouldn’t want to!”
She put her arms around him and drew him to her, his head to her shoulder and
she comforted him, shushing him as he cried, his reaction so much more alarming than
she could have ever imagined. She tried to calm him, but he would not be consoled. His
hot tears ran down her breast and down her rib cage.
“You aren’t going to lose me, Bevyn,” she said. “The goddess did not give me to
you for you to lose me.”
“She’s right, Reaper.”
Bevyn’s eyes popped open at the sound of the voice only he had heard. “You
swear?” he asked.
“There will be no children for you, my Reaper. Not by her.”
A part of him rejoiced at hearing that but another part was wounded beyond belief.
He gently probed Lea’s mind to see how she felt about children and was relieved to
know she had no great desire to become a mother. He somewhat relaxed, though her
next words raked at him with steely claws.
“Were I to conceive, we would be good parents to our child, milord,” she said.
“I know you would be,” he said, not so sure of his own ability to parent a child,
Reaper son or not.
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His eyes went to the clock and he saw he had only ten minutes left to be with his
lady. Where had the time gone? It did not seem half an hour had passed. He would
have to be up and dressed and gone far too soon. There were things he had to say to her
before then and he had to get her mind off the subject of conceiving.
“Arawn will come fetch you for lunch and supper,” he told her, lifting his head to
rake a hand through his hair. “You’ll be dining with him and the Gatekeepers each
night.”
“And Penthe?” she asked.
“I doubt the Gatekeepers would countenance that,” he said. “They’ve no love for
Amazeens.”
“So I’ve noticed,” she said.
“Arawn will give you a tour of the Citadel, if you’d like, and will show you the
solarium. It’s in the same section of the ground floor where the High Council has its
facilities. There are some of the most exotic plants in the world in the solarium.”
“That sounds nice,” she said, and had to bite her lip when he eased out of her arms
and sat up on the edge of the bed.
“Anything you want or need, just ask Giles. He’ll provide it,” he said, and stood.
She stared at the myriad scars that ranged down his back and cursed the woman
who had been responsible for marring his perfect body.
“I’ll be back in a week and then we’ll be allowed to return to Orson,” he said, and
waved his hand, his black uniform settling in a flash over his tall frame.
“I like it here,” she said.
He turned around to face her and she realized something new had been added to
his uniform. He was now wearing a tie and collar insignia.
“We’ll come here as often as we can then,” he said, “but we’ll also have our home in
the Armistenky Territory.”
“All right,” she said, digging her fingers into the coverlet to keep from crying at his
leaving.
“We’ll have our own private railroad cars now with a steward who will be assigned
to us, if you’d like,” he said.
“I don’t think I would, but whatever you decide is fine with me,” she said, and
could feel the moisture striving to break free behind her eyes.
“I don’t care one way or the other so if you don’t want it, we won’t have it. We can
ask for something else,” he said.
“Like what?” she asked, although at that moment she didn’t care
about having
anything except him in her arms, which were already feeling the emptiness of his
leaving.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll talk about it when I come back.”
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“All right,” she agreed, and drew in a breath as he turned to walk out of her life for
a week that she knew would be sheer hell for the both of them.
“I love you,” he said, his back to her, aching to rush back to her, hold her, but if he
did, he knew it would be difficult to break free again.
“I love you too, milord.”
“Take care.”
“I’ll be with you in your heart,” she whispered.
Bevyn squeezed his eyes shut and left the bedroom. Every step he took away from
her was an agony that ripped at his very soul. The coming week would be a torment far
worse than anything Kennocha’s torturers had practiced on his body. When he opened
the door to find two brown-clad guards awaiting him, his shoulders slumped. The
Shadowlords had not trusted him to come on his own and he wasn’t sure he could
have.
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Epilogue
Bevyn took the bandana from around his head and dipped it into the bucket of
water, wrung it out then retied it around his hair, pulling the ends behind his head and
tucking them up. He was stripped to the waist and sweating, his face burning from the
furnace blast of the sun’s heat.
“You reckon it could get any hotter?” Burt Gilbert, one of the men helping the
Reaper paint, asked.
“Only in the Abyss, my friend,” Bevyn agreed. His chest was streaking with white
paint and he had a smudge of it on his cheek.
“We didn’t pick the best day to be slinging paint,” Buford Gilchrist mumbled. The
sheriff had been complaining all morning.
“He don’t look none the worse for wear,” Cornelia observed as she rocked in her
chair and plied a battered wicker fan.
“He says it wasn’t bad, but he would say that anyway,” Lea said as she sewed a
button on one of his shirts.
“Suppose so,” Cornelia agreed.
“There was this look in his eyes when he came back,” Lea said, pausing with the
needle in the air. She studied her man. “It was bad. I could tell, but he didn’t want me to
know.”