“Ready to mix a little pain with your pleasure.” She made a deep sound in the back of her throat as he rubbed his thumb over her nipple. “It doesn’t have anything to do with your vampirism.” Her words awakened another memory, wrenching him back to a past that no longer seemed content to remain buried.
“Dmitri . . .” A nervous tremor in the voice of the naked woman laid out like a sacrifice before him, her breasts taut and high, her hips wide, her body all soft curves and temptation—and her hands tied to the posts of the bed he’d carved knowing she’d share it with him.
“Shh.” Lying down fully clothed beside her, he gentled her, his hand on her breast, his fingers tugging at her nipple with sensual knowledge gleaned over their courtship and marriage. “I’d never hurt you.”
“I know.” The absolute confidence of her statement would have made him hers if she hadn’t already owned his soul. “I just . . . No one ever talks about such things.”
Moving his hand down to push between her thighs, to discover her folds plump and wet for him, he touched her with leisurely strokes, felt her hips begin to rise and fall for him. “Are you telling me,” he said, “that you discuss our bedroom play with the other wives?”
Red filled her cheeks, but she continued to move against his hand, as generous with her sensuality as she was with her heart. “Of course not. I’m not sure anyone would believe me about you.”
He laughed and kissed her, this woman who was willing to indulge his need to play games that might well have driven another woman to fainting hysterics. Of course, he’d never wanted to play such games with anyone else. Only Ingrede.
Tangling his tongue with hers, he raised his hand from between her thighs and laid a soft, playful slap on that same delicate flesh. She whimpered . . . raised her hips for more. He gave it to her. Gave her everything. Because while she might have been the one with her hands tied, he was the slave.
Her slave.
“Yes,” he said, answering Honor’s question even as he curved his hand over her thigh. “The vampirism simply allowed me to refine it, indulge it to the nth degree.” As the seasons changed, as the ruin of the cabin disappeared into the mists of time, the sexual playfulness had become touched with a deep vein of cruelty.
His bedmates went home with whip marks more often than not and came back begging for more. Sometimes he tortured them in bed because it pleased him. Sometimes he did it because it amused him. But never did he do it because it gave him the same gut-clenching pleasure as when he’d tied up his wife in their simple bed in a cottage on a forgotten field where the wildflowers now bloomed.
“What was her name?” Honor sat up, raw emotion burning her throat at the terrible bleakness she’d glimpsed. “The woman who puts that look in your eyes?”
“Ingrede.” Nothing in his voice, and that was an answer in itself. “We have to get going.”
She clambered back into her own seat, reaching up to redo her ponytail. “Ingrede,” she said, unable to drop the subject, “she was your wife, wasn’t she?”
He stared out of the now-clear windscreen, but whatever he saw had nothing to do with the verdant grass beyond. “Yes.” Then, when she thought he’d add nothing else, he said, “My wife . . . and mortal.”
Dmitri’s business with Sorrow took only a few minutes, and Honor had the feeling he was checking up on the young woman more than anything else. “I haven’t forgotten,” she said to Sorrow when Dmitri stepped aside to speak to Venom. “About the self-defense lessons.”
“I can wait.” Sorrow’s expression was fierce, her eyes vivid with a ring of brilliant green. “I hope you find each and every one of the bastards who hurt you and make them scream.”
Back in the car, she turned to the vampire beside her—the vampire who had once had a wife. A wife he’d loved with such devotion that he protected her memory with vicious strength even now. His expression had shuttered the instant after he spoke of Ingrede’s mortality. It was clear he regretted telling her even that much.
His loyalty . . . it staggered her.
Honor had never been loved like that, never even believed it possible. “Venom found something?” she said, conscious he’d give her nothing more about Ingrede. Not now.
“The first one of the vampires Jewel named,” he said, his tone once again that of the most sophisticated of creatures, “has a long-term male lover and has never shown any interest in women.” A shake of his head that made his hair gleam blue-black in the piercing sunlight. “I’m not sure how that slipped past me, but quite aside from that, the vampire is far too ‘bourgeois,’ as Valeria would’ve put it, to have been offered an invitation.”
“Translation: he’s happy with his lover and doesn’t need to abuse someone else to beat the boredom.”
Dmitri gave a clipped nod. “The second individual did nothing of note while under surveillance, but from what I know of his habits, he may well have been involved. I’ve sent Illium to question him.”