“But you are too strong to seek that kind of escape, Lukos. I would not have chosen to be the one to guide you if I did not believe so.” She took his arm. “Come with me now. For you are soon to be a demon born. And I know that you will be the strongest yet. You will make me proud, Lukos. You will give me the world.”
As she led him, he clung to her, the only thing he could trust in his newly dark world. He would have given her anything she asked for. If she’d wanted to cut out his heart, he would have let her.
He could taste the magic through her skin.
Zayan pressed his mouth to the Englishwoman’s delicate hand. Magic thrummed through her, snapping within her, raging inside her. He could sense she was resisting it. She was not willing to accept the unearthly power within her. It frightened her.
Through the contact between his lips and her silky skin, he could sense all these things. He’d had one glimpse into her thoughts before she had somehow shuttered them to him. He had seen a lavish bedroom, filled with white silks and fluttering lace curtains. Another young woman, a brunette, lay in the bed, pale and drawn, smiling a weak smile. Miranda, the fragile inhabitant of the bed had whispered, I feel so much better today, and I think it is because of you.
He felt in Miranda, the woman whose hand he was kissing, a love he had almost forgotten—a feeling of tenderness heightened by the need to nurture.
In an instant, the image had vanished. But now he knew the name of the dainty innocent-looking woman who possessed the strongest magic power he had felt in decades—in centuries.
Miranda.
He turned her hand and kissed her palm. Miss Miranda rewarded him with an unwilling shiver of pleasure. Now he understood what had intrigued Sebastien de Wynter about Althea Yates, the vampire slayer—it was all that sensuality trapped behind such rigid propriety.
As much as he hated Lukos, he had agreed to the game of seduction as an amusement, something to pass the time with their pretty captive. Something to distract him from the urge to kill the vampire who had once tried to destroy him.
Now he knew Miranda was much more to him than just a game. All that magic in her could be his last hope.
He needed it.
Which meant he had to dominate her. And now that he knew she was no an ordinary mortal, he would have to find a different way to do that. Even now, she was staring at him with narrowed blue eyes, and he felt her resistance to his seduction. She was fighting him with everything she had. And at the moment, she was winning.
Zayan admired her strength, though strong women could not be trusted. If they chose to be deceitful, they were more destructive than any army. More vicious. By the gods, he had seen women cut down their own men with axes when the males had retreated from battle.
If he wanted to control this woman and her magic, he would have to try harder.
Expertly, he dabbed his tongue in the center of her palm and made her whimper. Slowly, teasingly, he flicked his tongue over her wrist. He sucked her skin and felt the magic throb beneath his lips, along with her pulse.
Miranda moaned. He felt a surge in her power as she struggled against the desire he ignited. Suddenly, he realized how incredible she would be in his bed, in a bout of resistance and magic and surrender.
Years ago, he made a bargain with the red power. To bring his children back to life, it had demanded magic—it devoured every kind of power. It wanted the magic of youth. The energy released in sex. It had demanded the power of other magical beings. In that decade, before he had been banished into imprisonment by Elizabeth, one of the vampire queens, he had drained the energy of some foolish angels and a few demons, and like a slave, he had turned that energy over and waited obediently for his dream to be realized.
What a damned fool he’d been.
He had quickly understood what the red power intended to do. It would always hold his children as a prize, as a lure to make him serve it. But it would never give him what it had promised.
But now he knew a way to take control of the red power. He could take Miranda’s magic and use it to first tempt the red power, then blackmail the red power into giving him what he longed for—his children.
He ached to see them. He yearned to hold them again.
But to claim her power, he had to bring three words to her lips: I love you. It would open her heart and break through her defenses. In that moment, he could take her magic force and make it his own.
This was more than just a physical seduction, more than a game. He had to break through to her heart.
Miranda kicked out wildly. “Y-you can force me to feel pleasure, but you will never seduce me!”
Zayan jerked his attention upward to see Lukos stroking his fingers along the neckline of her pelisse. Miranda opened her eyes wide. They locked with his. Hers were vivid blue—the brilliant shining blue of the waves that lapped at the southern shores of Italy.
She didn’t look frightened. She looked…hopeful. It shocked Zayan so much, he straightened from her wrist. Strangely, he could not draw away from her steady, determined gaze.
“You won’t seduce me,” she said again. “No matter what you do. But I want to touch you. I believe I can return your soul, Zayan.”
Did she really think she could save him, the naïve child? His answer was harsh. “You can’t, angel.”
“Let me touch you,” she said.
He had not expected this. She spoke to him as his wife used to. He was the general, but his wife had spoken sharply to him, had expected him to obey her command.
Zayan jerked back as the woman’s hand struck his chest, her fingers splayed wide. Heat surged through his pectorals, a hot spear through his muscles, a fiery grip around his heart. Her power held him transfixed. He couldn’t move.
By the gods, she was strong with magic.
Far more than he’d guessed.
His temperature soared; heat raced through his veins as though he were being consumed by fire. Could she make him burst into flame? Could her touch make him explode, burn to ash?
“Oh! Oh!” she cried. Her body was convulsing. She moaned. She moved her hips in the fierce bounce of a woman caught in the throes of a powerful orgasm. Her lips opened wide as she rode out the pleasure.
Zayan’s nostrils flared at the tang of her juices. He could scent her cunny becoming wet and creamy. Lukos could scent her, too, he knew. Lukos could shift shape and become a wolf, which made the demon even more primal about sex than Zayan was.
“What in hell is she?” Lukos growled.
Still enduring the blasting heat, Zayan could barely speak. “Not a demon,” he managed. “Not a vampire.” He drew in a deep breath as the heat began to ebb. He wasn’t going to go up in a ball of flame. “An avenging angel?” But he didn’t think so.
Miss Miranda slumped back against the seat. Her chest rose and fell. Zayan saw the horror in her eyes. The stark fear. She stared down at her own shaking hands.
She didn’t understand her own power. He read it in her thoughts before her intense emotions became a blur that he couldn’t understand. He’d never had that happen before. The only minds that could shutter themselves from him were those of vampire queens, and demons who had been Lucifer’s apprentices. But he had glimpsed the most powerful emotion Miranda felt—she was afraid of herself.
You don’t know what you are, do you? he asked softly in her thoughts. He tried to shield them from Lukos but doubted he was successful. Zayan was