“I happen to think I’m not the pretty one in this bed, wild lover-mine.” Husky, breathless words.
He held her cat-bright gaze, rubbed her nipple, once more tasted those lips that shaped such sweet words. Words that entangled, marked him, claimed him. Jason allowed the entangling, the marking, the claiming. For the first time in his life since he’d buried his mother and destroyed what remained of his father, he allowed himself to belong to someone.
Then he loved her.
*
“I can’t create light,” Jason said to Mahiya sometime later as he lay on his back with her spread possessively over him, his hand on her lower back. “Only black fire.”
Frowning, Mahiya pushed up on the muscled silk of his chest to look at him. “Of course you can—you lit up the tunnels.”
A long, steady look.
Her mouth fell open. “Me? That was me?”
“You’re very strong, Mahiya Geet, and that strength will only grow. You must work on learning every aspect of your power.”
Astonished and pleased, she sat up cross-legged beside him, her hair covering her breasts. “Will you help me?” It was so easy to ask him—she knew he’d never seek to hurt or humiliate her.
“Yes,” he said, placing his hand on her lower back again, strong and hot. “And when I’m not here, I will ask the others in the Seven to come by as often as they can, so your development does not suffer. Raphael, too, is apt to take it upon himself to check on your progress.”
That, she hadn’t expected, but then, Raphael and Jason had a relationship unlike any she’d seen Neha have with her courtiers and advisors. “I suppose I shall have to become used to having the most powerful of visitors.” Butterflies in her stomach, born of happiness not worry.
“After I’ve had time to settle in,” she said, “and Dmitri has returned with his wife, we should invite our friends for dinner.” She rather thought she would like to do such things, would like to have their home filled with the laughter of friends who were family. “Elena will enjoy the gardens.”
Jason moved his hand to play with strands of her hair, his knuckles brushing the tip of her breast with each pass. “We’ll have to have two such dinners,” he murmured, continuing with the lazy caresses that made indolent pleasure curl through her veins. “They can’t all be out of the city at the same time.”
“I knew that,” she said with a laugh, because they both knew she hadn’t considered it. “There’s so much I have to learn and explore, Jason.” Excitement bubbled like champagne in her blood.
Coming up over her as she dropped back onto the bed, Jason pushed the sheet gently to her waist, his fingers making a swirling design on her hipbone that rippled a shiver over her frame. “If you ever decide,” he said quietly, “that you wish to explore other—”
She pressed her fingers to his lips, held that storm-dark gaze. “I may have been stuck in the fort, but I wasn’t cut off from the world. Thousands of vampires and angels of all ages and levels of power passed through it in the years of my existence. Not one spoke to my heart.” Moving her hand, she cupped his face. “I know the man with whom I want to grow, want to explore the world. You. Only you.” She would have no misunderstanding on that point. “And I plan to seduce you so thoroughly, you will become my devoted slave.”
Jason’s lips curved in the most subtle of smiles, and it was a kick to her heart, a treasure beyond price. Who is to say I am not already your slave, princess? Tender amusement in her mind. After all, here I lie, my body ravaged by your passion.
Laughing softly in delight at the fact that her spymaster was teasing her in return, she reached up to trace the swirling black of a tattoo that spoke of lands of white sand and blue seas, palm fronds waving in a balmy breeze while seagulls fought overhead and jewel-bright fish darted in the shallows. “Will you tell me the story of this one day?” she asked in the intimate murmur between lovers as he settled himself between her thighs once more, his weight braced on his forearms.
“It was to remind me I was alive,” he said, the words stark. “I felt so little a part of the world at times that I wasn’t certain I wasn’t a shadow in truth, a phantom who made no impact, had no place. The pain, and the indelible mark of that pain, told me I lived, that I was a person.”
Angry sadness twisted within her, but rather than darkness, she gave him a smile. “Well,” she said, rubbing her foot over his calf, “next time you want to feel alive, come home and drag me into a bedroom.” She nuzzled at his throat, her skin flushing. I can’t believe I just said that. Truly, I am becoming shameless where you are concerned. It is most disturbing.
Bending his head, his hair sliding around his face as his body slid into her own, Jason said, I won’t tell, his quiet laughter more precious to her than a million faceted gemstones.
Epilogue