Page 28 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

And then we were rising, moving through the crowd until we were on the edge of the ballroom where all those curtains were hung. My heart continued to race, my blood still on fire as he took my hand in his and pulled me into a hallway.

We were moving into a dim room, and he turned me, forcing my back against the door as it clicked shut.

He pressed me into the wood, his hips pinning me as he tipped my face up to his. I couldn't even think with the desire racing through me. His scent, the hard press of his body so close.

And then he turned me again, and I felt the softness of a cushion beneath me as he lowered me. His body hovered over me, one knee between my legs.

His breath was ragged. "I wanted to kill them for looking at you," he growled as his lips grazed my neck. "I might go back out there and do it anyway."

He raised his head from my neck and looked down at me. My breath caught in my chest at the darkness in his eyes. "Just so they cannot be out there—living with the memory of your body in their minds."

He kissed me just as my smile began to spread. His words were so ridiculously possessive. They should have annoyed me. They should have made me retort that I am not his to choose who sees my body, but I did nothing of the sort. I kissed him back, opening my mouth as his tongue slid between my lips.

He moved his hand down my side, over my hip, and along the back of my thigh, hooking my leg around him.

I could feel him rigid against me, through the fabric of his breeches.

The seam of his pants slid against the wetness that I knew would be easy to feel through the thin gown pressed between my legs.

I burned with need—need I could not have even imagined lived inside me. Need for him to touch me, take me, to be inside me. I thought I would die from the deep ache in the very center of me.

The music still pulsed. It created a backdrop of deep beats that seemed to echo his fingers as they slid around my waist, up over my belly, and then to my breasts that suddenly felt so full, aching with their own need to be claimed.

He slid the tip of one finger along the edge of the gown, down my chest until I felt the air licking across the heated flesh of my exposed breast.

I heard him exhale harshly as his thumb grazed across my nipple. I arched up to him, following the press of his fingers.

He stopped, tensing, and turned his head to the side, eyes alert.

Suddenly, I was alone as he stepped preternaturally slowly to the door.

I felt absolutely bereft, as though the air that flooded into the space he had just occupied, was wholly offensive to me.

He was listening carefully to something I could not hear. I didn't move, hardly dared to breathe. I was sure we were about to be discovered.

He turned to me, eyes sliding down my body once more before he motioned for me to come. My heart leapt as I considered that look held a fair amount of regret at the interruption.

I pushed up from the lounge, smoothing my skirts and tugging the bodice of my gown back into place. I tried to get my breathing under control.

When I was at his side, he laid a finger to his lips and took my hand. He led me from the room, heading down the long hallway. The music faded as we made our way deeper into the manor.

We followed whatever he was listening to until we reached an open door and stairs curving away into the darkness.

We stepped silently down a spiral staircase that looked like it was carved from the stones of the earth, until it opened onto a dimly lit hall. Old-style flame lanterns hung from the ceiling on rusty hooks.

The hallway was dingy, the floor beneath our feet dirt, and the walls were wet as though water seeped from inside the brick.

We stopped at an alcove and Io motioned for me to stay quiet. As though he would even need to tell me, I thought. I gave him a dry look.

He smiled faintly and reached down to tug the edge of my ridiculous gown slightly closer over the breast that had nearly popped out.

The feeling of his fingers grazing the skin of my chest sent a new round of shivers through me.

Even as we stood as intruders in the middle of what looked for all the world, like an evil villain's shadowy lair.

Voices distracted me from thoughts of him and that finger that had barely even touched my skin.

"That is not what I asked for, Merrik," someone lamented. It was a needling voice, whiny and nasal. I instantly disliked whoever it belonged to.

"Yeah, well, things have recently become a little more difficult to procure in the city, if you haven't noticed," a deeper voice said. I assumed the new speaker was called Merrik.

"The crowds should make it easier to blend it, not harder. There is no excuse for you taking my gold and delivering me a fully grown girl!"

Horror, anger, and revulsion exploded in my chest. I felt Io's grip on my hand tighten. He had a door open before I even realized there was one set back into the shadows of the alcove.

Two men stood facing each other in a stone chamber. They did not, at first, look alarmed. The taller one just raised his hand and snapped, "Wrong room!"

"No, I think I have just the room I'm looking for," Io said almost breezily. He led me to the side, stalking around the edges of the chamber.

"Get the hell out of here," said the taller man, the one I was sure was Merrik. The shorter one, the one I now knew had been complaining about his purchase, had the good sense to look afraid. He began to edge toward the door.

"Stop," Io commanded. The man obeyed, his face bleeding of color.

The other man, Merrik, turned. His hand began to go to a short sword hanging from his hip. I felt icy fear as I realized Io did not have a weapon.

But Merrik's eyes went wide. The hand going for the sword froze, and he began sliding backward across the floor, his feet dragging through the dirt. He slammed into the wall. The impact forced a strangled cry from him as his hands were pinned over his head.

I could feel it, then—the magic—the weight of something like thicker air that spread through the chamber.

Io released my hand, and I backed up a step.

"Where is she?" he asked, casually. He put his hands in his pockets and stepped in front of Merrik, totally at ease.

The other man was shaking, trembling in place. I saw his eyes dart to the door, ready to make a run for it. When he didn't move, I began to suspect that he was also frozen in place by Io's magic.

When he was just in front of Merrik, Io reached up and removed his mask.

Whatever the man saw on Io's face made him scream, but the sound was choked off in a strangled grunt. Then, the only sound in the chamber was Merrik's urine hitting the dirt under his suspended feet.

When Io spoke again, his words were low and heavy, as though they bore far more weight than simple language should convey. The sound sent a shiver over me that had nothing to do with desire. It was the sound of menace and nightmares. "Where...is...she?"

"I'm in here, sir," came a muffled voice.

I shot my eyes to the side to a small door set into the wall. I had assumed it was no more than a cupboard or a closet.

Io motioned to me.

I hurried to the door and pulled it open. A girl was seated on a small wooden stool with blood trickling from her nose. She wore rumpled, filthy, clothes, and she was looking at me with what could only be described as comical irreverence.

"Many thanks, good lady," she said cheerfully as she ducked under the edge of the door frame. She started to survey the room, caught sight of Io, and gave a small bow. "Good sir," she said.

Then she turned to the man against the wall. "May I?" she asked Io, reaching into her pocket.

"By all means," Io said, stepping aside with a flourish of his hand.

Before I could even wonder what she was doing, she had plunged a dagger into Merrik's chest, pulled it out, and plunged it in again. And again and again and again, until blood coated the man's front and his eyes were vacant, his mouth hanging open in a silent scream.

The girl pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and began to wipe her face. When the cloth came back clean, she looked at Io curiously. "Ah," she said, leaning her head back. "Thank you for that as well."

He'd used his magic to shield her from the blood.

"I suppose I shouldn't have done that," she said, motioning to the now very dead man hanging against the wall as she used the cloth to clean her knife. "I'm sure you could have gotten some good information from that one. But well, my temper does sometimes get the best of me."

She hadn't looked even slightly ill-tempered through any of it, even as she killed him in such a blood-thirsty way.

She turned to the smaller man as she pocketed her blade. "That one deserves to be tortured slow and long and good, though. That one likes to hurt the little ones."

The man's eyes went wild, darting back and forth between the girl and Io.

"That ought to get you the same information you could've gotten from old Merrik there," she said, kicking at the man's limp foot where it lay against the wall. "He's just a go-between, and I'll wager you want the head of this particular snake."

I wanted to ask her how she knew any of this. I wanted to ask her a thousand questions, the first of which was, how did she manage to maintain her calm and not be in tears on the floor after apparently being beaten and sold into slavery to a disgusting old pervert? Instead, I asked her name.

"Rae," she said. "Though some called me Iris in another life." She reached out and shook my hand quickly as I wondered how anyone that young could have another life.

She turned back to Io. "I'll answer what questions I can if you'll help me with a tiny bit of a task."

"Of course.” He opened his mouth, presumably to ask those questions, but she cut him off.