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Not answering, she simply stares at me, and I’m not sure what to say. How do I explain why we should work as a mated couple when she looks so damn beautiful? Someone has outfitted her in an ultra-feminine version of the ancient Greek goddess gowns carved into so many sculptures. Except hers isn’t the white or cream that recent history has painted over the vivid colors of old. Brilliant sapphire silk wraps her curves, and I want to touch and taste each inch of exposed skin.
“What has distracted you from…” Darnell leans around the edge of my chair to follow her gaze and stops when he sees me. “Sire?” He pushes to his feet and gives a graceful bow. “We didn’t expect you back so soon.”
Obviously not, or he wouldn’t have been wooing my mate. Something flares hot and ugly within me, sending magic to sizzle across my skin. He received her smiles, her laughter, when I only got her screams. Jealousy. I don’t do envy. It’s a pointless emotion when I hunt and seize whatever I want. Or I did, until now—until I signed a matching contract that said that, while I can court, seduce, or entice, I can’t take anything that’s not freely offered.
Darnell doesn’t need a match to save the realm. He flirts as easily as he breathes. It’s why the warlock has slept with half my kingdom. I haven’t begrudged him any of his conquests. Until Meg.
He grins and gestures toward her. If he knew the rage boiling through me at seeing him so close to my mate, he would run. I’ve learned to mask, to cloak, to conceal when perhaps I should’ve terrified instead.
“Meg wanted to know about my time in the human realm.” Darnell brushes a hand through his hair, the gesture casual but calculated to draw attention to himself. I’ve seen him use it on countless females. At least mine doesn’t glance his way.
My woman. My mate. Yet she asks about him and his history.
Fury sparks the desire that I’ve fought because I’ve been preoccupied with salvaging what I can of a failing realm. A few like Darnell could escape elsewhere and look similar enough to others that he wouldn’t be terrorized for being different. Most of my subjects can’t do that. It’s why they sought sanctuary here. I’m covered in the ashes of villages that fell in the west before I could repair the wards while another entertains my match.
Darnell keeps droning on, the man who knows no limit to his incessant talking. “I told her about my escape here a century ago, explaining how time will pass quicker here than in her world. Now, anyway.” Now that magic has fallen. “I told her how she wouldn’t need to rush back to be with her friends, family, or anyone else there.”
I should have been the one to tell her about the time difference.
Did she leave someone in her home world? The contract guarantees that a match won’t have a prior commitment to another, but Meg didn’t read hers. She could have a beloved waiting for her on the other side of the portal. All the more reason I should call Theo and insist he take her home. Except I would be left with no hope to give my people, and I won’t give her up. If someone waits in her world, they can fight me for her because she’s mine. She just doesn’t know it yet.
I want to snatch her up and haul her away from the attention of others, but before I can force my tired body into motion, Oggie prances by, a brushed ball of fluff with a new collar jingling a soft bell and his tail high in the air. It seems everyone has settled in comfortably while I’ve been away. He circles my mate’s ankles and hisses at the warlock. Good demon cat.
“Shh,” Meg whispers, stooping to pick up the kitten for a cuddle. “It isn’t nice to always hiss at Darnell.”
It seems the demon doesn’t like Darnell stealing away affection any more than I do, and I still have time to save the realm if Theo hasn’t sent for my mate or Oggie.
“Give us some privacy,” I tell Darnell.
“But the west?” he asks, the impertinent bastard.
“It remains.” Or most of it, anyway. I saved what I could. The borderlands vanished into fire, ruin, and the void that devours any place without magic to sustain it. Which means I need to hurry, or the rest of my kingdom will suffer the same end. “Leave us now.”
“Yes, sire.” With a last look at Meg, he hurries from the hall, his footsteps echoing in the quiet.
I take a breath, trying and failing to settle my temper. Unlike Darnell, I’m not gifted in small talk—or any talk, really.
When my mate sits with Oggie, I like the way she looks in my chair, her hair spilling over her shoulders and her lush curves taking up space, though she doesn’t fill half the oversized seat. Humans—such fragile, small creatures. I would prefer that she be on my lap, but with the way she glares at me, I don’t think she would appreciate me hauling her where I want her. Her irritated mood would seem to rival mine.
“Are you well?” I ask, my voice rough. Pushing my body past exhaustion and my magic past its limits has left me a raw, exposed nerve.
“Why would you care?” Her words come out callous, but her voice draws me in, and she keeps stroking Oggie’s fur. A damn demon gets all her affection, and she grants me none when I’m meant for her.
“Because the matching contract requires that you remain unharmed and healthy for the duration of your stay,” I tell her.
“I’m an obligation.”
“Yes. No.” My answer comes out a bungling mess. She’s a duty, but she’s more than that. And right now, she looks like whatever I say will be wrong. Oggie flicks a smug gleam in my direction. Damn demon knows that I’m mucking everything up.
“Release me from the contract.”
The matching contract that’s a sham? That I wouldn’t hold her to if I had any scrap of honor? “You signed a deal with a demon. You’re bound as much as I am. There’s no getting out of it.”
A spark of passion that I want to touch, to feel, to taste flickers in her expression, and I almost tell myself that I’ve annihilated whatever arguments she might’ve prepared while I was away. Could winning her be this easy?
“You don’t want this match any more than I do.” She comes close to a snarl, a venom to her voice that makes me ache for her.
“You have no idea what I want.” Desperation rises in me, a need I can’t remember feeling in my very long life.
