Deamon's Daughter Part 24

He flinched at the contact, then wrapped his hand around her wrist to keep her from pulling away. "There's more than one. I've been wanting you like this for hours. When you started watching me stroke myself, I thought I'd explode."

Her gaze rose to his and held. Too emboldened to hesitate, he guided her finger around his crown. From rim to rim he drew her, then around the center opening. A fresh wash of rose stained her cheeks. She could feel how slippery he'd grown.

"I want you," he said, for the pleasure of saying the words. "Let me come inside you before I die."

"Adrian."

His name was a rush of breath. Taking this as permission, he clamped his hands on her waist, lifted her, then let her weight ease her down his shaft. Feeling his hardness reach its limit was pure heaven. She was wet for him, and hot. Her thighs gripped his hips and held tight.

"G.o.d," she said, her head thrown back. A droplet of sweat rolled down her graceful neck.

He loved the look of her, the feel, but they couldn't stay like this for more than a few heartbeats. They had to rock their hips together, then pump them, then twine their fingers into knots of strain. Everywhere around them, statues flaunted the shapes of s.e.x. b.r.e.a.s.t.s and bellies. Mouths and c.o.c.ks. Stone hands locked in seductive rituals of l.u.s.t.

Adrian tipped her back onto the heated floor and wors.h.i.+pped her living flesh.

"Oh!" she cried as he lowered her, her hands sliding greedily up his ribs. He had more purchase then, and he used it. Her body shook with the increased strength of his thrusts. "Oh, Adrian, yes."

Even this approval wasn't enough. He changed his angle, running his crown and shaft across the tender upper wall of her sheath, over and over, steadily, firmly, taking care to jar the bud of her pleasure each time he sank home. With every stroke, she tightened around him more, intensifying his pleasure as well. Neither of them could bear so much sensation. Her eyes slid shut as he lengthened dangerously inside her. Her teeth bit her lower lip. Then she caught her breath and came.

Her climax triggered his like flame set to a trail of gunpowder. His thigh muscles locked him in as deep as he could go. His b.u.t.tocks clenched, the air kicking from his lungs in a rumbling groan. He came with a force he thought she must feel, hot pulsations that didn't seem to want to stop.

They did, though, and that was a pleasure, too: a release even from release. He eased free and lay on his back on the hot dry stone, deliciously replete, wonderfully calm, though he knew every challenge they'd faced before they'd come here remained.

In unison, he and Roxie sighed, two notes of a single chord. She chuckled softly, then rolled toward him and put her head on his chest. Her fingers played with the hair just above his heart.

"I love you," she said, and that was the nicest finish of all.

Roxie found her s.h.i.+rt again and pulled it on, though she wasn't ready to get up yet. The world and its problems waited outside this golden oasis. A few more moments of peace were irresistible.

As she settled back against him, Adrian stroked her hair. "I know you're curious about Christine."

"You don't have to tell me about her now."

"Maybe not, but I doubt you'll trust me until I do."

He was rubbing his wrist against his ribs as if it itched. Roxie stopped him, turned his forearm over, and kissed the spot where his implants lay.

He drew a lengthy breath and let it out. "When I first got these," he said, "the men at the station took to calling me demon boy. "Where are your horns, demon boy?' they'd ask. 'Better watch your tail in that door.' I tried to ignore them, but sometimes my face would give me away. They'd scold me for being annoyed, tell me it was just a bit of friendly teasing, that I ought have a better sense of humor.

"I was still a sergeant then, a uniform. We had lockers to store our civilian clothes. The men liked to jam mine shut with all sorts of things, hoping for a show of demon strength. Finally, I got tired of calling the janitor to unscrew the hinges and ripped the door off myself. Then, for good measure, I threw a bench across the room with one hand.

"That stopped the teasing, but not the fear that lay behind it. From then on, men who'd trained with me from my first day found it impossible to meet my eye. I'd never been one to spend hours at the pub with my a.s.sociates, but after that I might as well have been a leper. When I was promoted to inspector, it got worse. Jealousy was no cure for suspicion."

"I'm sorry."

Adrian's chest moved with his sigh. "There's nothing to be sorry for. I made my choice, in part because it seemed the quickest route up the ladder. I didn't have friends in high places. h.e.l.l, I barely had friends in low ones. I don'ta have a gift for that."

Roxie kissed his shoulder, though she wasn't sure he wanted sympathy.

"The thing is," he went on, "after dealing with my fellow officers all day, I'd come home to Christine. Her family was poor gentry, mine middle working cla.s.s. She'd married down for mea"not a lot, but enough to matter. One of the things I'd hoped my promotion would do was salve her pride. She didn't complain, but it wore on our relations.h.i.+p. We didn't have much to hold us together. She wasn't comfortable with my family, and she'd never been interested in s.e.x. She didn't want me to try to make it pleasurable. When I realized this wouldn't change, it disappointed me, but I concluded she was too refined to want what other women did. In a lot of ways, I wasn't much more worldly than she was.

"After I got my implants, she couldn't even stand to kiss me. Said she couldn't help thinking about demon tongues. Yama were depraved, according to her, and she couldn't believe I'd done what I did without asking her."

This made Roxie lift her head. "You didn't discuss it with her beforehand?"

"I wasn't allowed to. The procedure was untried and extremely controversial. I was their test case. If anything went wrong, Securit wanted to be able to deny they'd had anything to do with it. Even now, I doubt there are more than a dozen of us on the force."

"Did you ever try to contact the others?"

Adrian shrugged. "I don't know who they are. After my experience, Security took more care to keep their ident.i.ties secret. I guess I knew Christine might object at first, but I never imagined how deep her aversion ran. I thought she'd adjust when she saw how much better our life could be on an inspector's pay. At last, she could have some of the luxuries her friends took for granted."

Roxie rubbed her cheek against his chest. His heart beat steadily, only a little faster than normal. Maybe, after all they'd been through, he was too tired to worry what she'd mink. "When did you finally decide to end the marriage?"

"The day she told me she didn't want to have my children, that she was afraid they'd be tainted, too. I should have ended it sooner. I knew being around me made her miserable. She was relieved when I let her go. I simply couldn't bear to admit I'd failed."

"I'm not sure you did fail, Adrian. I think perhaps she did."

"Oh, I failed," he said, certainty in the words. "I failed the day I asked her to be my wife. She was a pretty girl, and sweet-natured, but looking back I'm not sure how much of my choice was love and how much was prideful pleasure that a gently bred girl like her would want to marry me. She'd never made any secret of her feelings. Chased me a bit, G.o.d help her."

"I'm sure you're weren't a bad husband."

He shook his head. "I was a bad husband for her. That's all that mattered in the end. To tell the truth, I don't know if I could stand letting anyone down that way again."

You don't have to, she wanted to say. You can choose a wife who's strong enough to stand on her own no matter what you do. It seemed too forward, too much like she a.s.sumed he would marry her. She wished she could make that leap of faith but, as yet, he'd hadn't given her a reason to.

Christine had chased him, and so had Roxanne. The parallels weren't pleasant to contemplate.

Chapter 25.

The press are a scourge to any thinking society. If they didn't occasionally amuse me, I'd ban them all.

a"The Collected Sayings of the Emperor Through a fog of sleep, Roxanne was muzzily aware that the door to her room was creaking open. Adrian lay beside her, warm and quiet, so it wasn't him returning from the bath.

A maid? she wondered, but after a brief pause, a smalla"and in no way light-footed bodya"hurtled itself across the carpet and onto the bed.

"Wake up, wake up!" Max squealed as every nerve Roxie possessed jumped beneath her skin. "Roxie's in the paper."

"Stop bouncing," Adrian said in a soft, if froggy, morning voice. He had jolted up as soon as Max landed. "Let Roxie rest."

At this, Max switched to his most ear-splitting whisper. "What are ya doin' here, Adrian? Didn't Grandpa give you abed?"

"Oh, G.o.d," Roxie groaned into her pillow. She needed only one guess to know who'd suggested Max call Herrington that.

"Roxie and I thought we'd share," Adrian said calmly enough. "Since we like each other so much."

"Oh," said Max, sounding oddly satisfied with that answer. "Want to see the paper?"

Roxie was doing her best to squirm into a silk-lined robe while still under the covers. She was glad now that the maid had left it. When she wriggled over and sat up, she was decent.

She found Charles standing awkwardly in the door. Even wearing pajamas, the boy looked as crisp as a new pound note. Though he must have known what was going on between her and Adrian, he appeared more discomposed than Max.

"Sorry," he said, raking back his smooth fair hair. "He got away before I could stop him."

"That's all right," she tried to say with Max flapping a newsprint sheaf in her face.

"Read," the little boy insisted, forgetting not to bounce. "There's a picture and everything."

Roxie exchanged glances with Adrian over the boy's bristly head. Adrian's grimace of response could have meant anything. Resigned to seeing for herself, Roxie unfolded the paper.

"Long Lost Daughter Found," screamed the Courier's front-page headline. "Explorer-diplomat claims he couldn't be happier."

Pictures did indeed accompany the story. A playbill sketch of La Belle Yvonne sat next to a grainy daguerreotype of Herrington. In it, he stood among the diplomats who'd negotiated the Awar Accord. A more heroic image was provided by a pen drawing of him swathed in desert robes as he trekked through the rocky pa.s.s toward Boral Lake. There was even a recognizable picture of herself, though the Lord only knew how they'd obtained it. She was gazing at the unknown and unremembered artist in supercilious amus.e.m.e.nt.

The mattress s.h.i.+fted as Charles sat hesitantly at her hip.

"The article is rather flattering," he said as Roxie turned. "Intrepid orphan s.n.a.t.c.hes herself from the jaws of poverty. Redeems her unsavory past with hard labor. Makes you sound better than a two-penny heroine. Everyone knows what muckrakers the Courier's writers can be, but this almost obscures the fact that you're, you know, half-demon. Lord Herrington must have paid a pretty penny to have the story go out like this."

"I'm half-demon, too!" Max chortled, obviously overcome with excitement. He had rolled onto his back and was waving both arms and legs.

"You're not a demon," Charles said. "I explained that."

"Am, too," Max shot back with a stubbornness that made Roxie roll her eyes. "I don't care if I'm only 'dopted."

He crawled into Roxie's lap, looking for support, but she was too befuddled to referee the boys' dispute.

"Why would he do this?" she asked Adrian. "The press will be all over it for weeks. You'd think he'd be embarra.s.sed. Daimyo are supposed to be above consorting with humans. Being caught fathering a daughter with one must be a disgrace."

Adrian dragged his knuckles along his shadowed jaw. "I expect he wanted the attention. If the world knows who you are, and anything happens to you, it won't happen unnoticed."

"Hmph," Roxie snorted, her regret at having been cruel to Herrington swept away. "If that was his motivation, why not warn me ahead of time? I expect he's hoping to get more influence in my life. Aedlyne law gives fathers certain controls over their daughters, even when they're adultsa"especially if those fathers are filthy rich and famous."

"Maybe," Adrian conceded, but Roxie doubted maybe had anything to do with it.

Herrington wasn't sure how his daughter got past Albert, but she confronted him in his private office, wading through the clutter with surprising precision. He shut the almanac that hid his communicator screen. The call he'd just received had his nerves stretched thin.

h.e.l.l, he thought. Though he'd been expecting this, he didn't feel prepared.

Roxanne's face was flushed with fury as she slapped a copy of the Courier on his black marble-topped desk. Even after thirty years among the humans, the strength and openness of their emotions hadn't lost its power to shock.

"I presume," she said in a low, tight voice, "that you fed this story to the rags."

"I did," he said.

"Because your a.s.sociatea"pardon me, your rivala"The Dragon is after me."

"It will be more difficult for him to act if your existence is public knowledge. I know you might find the process repellent, but I advise you to speak to any members of the press who ask. The more sympathetic a figure you become, the less likely your government will be to disown you."

The supremely practical counsel did not calm her. She was wearing the blue plaid dress he'd told the maid to leave, but the acceptance of his gift gave him little pleasure. Her shoulders went up and down with her shortened breaths until he feared the outfit's corset might induce her to faint. He needn't have worried. Far from being overcome by feminine weakness, a second later, she let loose a string of oaths he would have been hard-pressed to translate into his own, more decorous language.

He had spread his hands on the polished stone of his desk on either side of his almanac. He'd meant to appear calm and nonthreatening, but at some point during her tirade, his pose became more like a fisherman who grips the sides of his boat to prevent it from capsizing. Her anger made him feel disturbingly off balance. When she finally slammed her hands beside his, the break in tension came as a relief.

"That man," she said, "that Dragon should be brought to justice, not maneuvered around as if this were a game of chess. What he tried to do to Max, and perhaps to other children, was unforgivable."

"I agree," Herrington said.

"Then do something!" She grabbed the newspaper back off his desk and flung it against his bookshelves. A small volume of sonnets thunked to the parquet floor.

"I do what I can," he said, pulling his framed portrait of Louise farther out of reach. As he recalled, Roxie's mother had had a fondness for the music of shattering gla.s.s. "I'm simply concerneda""

"You're concerned with protecting yourself," his daughter accused, a barb he supposed she couldn't know how little he deserved. Sometimes he thought all he'd done since meeting her was endanger his standinga"maybe even his life. Despite his innocence, his face felt curiously hot and stiff. "You're concerned with controlling me!"

"I'm concerned with protecting my power," he said evenly. "Without that, I cannot ensure anyone's safety. If my government suspected the respect with which I regard your racea""

"Respect!" Her laugh was sharp with disbelief. "You abduct my ward. You probably got my lover dismissed from his joba"or helped it along, at the least. Adrian's superintendent might not have fired him if he hadn't been getting pressure from 'higher up.' And now you don't even do me the courtesy of warning me I'm about to become the public's latest penny-dreadful heroine."

"I hardly thinka"" he began crisply, then surprised them both by not finis.h.i.+ng. She'd guessed more of what he'd done than he expected. Perhaps he'd underestimated the subtlety of her mind. If he had, the situation demandeda"no, deserveda"a change of tactics.

"You're right," he said. "I should have consulted you before going to the papers. I know it is the human way. Though I'm obliged to convince my superiors I find your existence distasteful, if I wish you to regard me as your father, I must make concessions to your upbringing."

She leaned closer over the desk, her body vibrating with pa.s.sion. "You need to stop interfering with those I love. People have a right to chart their own course."

He disagreed with her in more ways and for more reasons than he could enumerate. Those with power had the privilege and the responsibility to exercise it on behalf of those in their care, especially family. Herrington had grown up with those beliefs, had accepted them into his bones, and yeta how often had he seen those tenets abused or even ignored in the name of ambition or expedience? He knew some humansa"male ones, anywaya"believed precisely as he did. He also knew that the most private, least-disciplined reaches of his heart thrilled to the implication of her claim.

Didn't he secretly wish to be free?

"Perhaps I shouldn't have suggested your friend ought to be released from his position," he admitted gruffly. "I will try to refrain from similar acts from now on."

His words made her step back. She pressed her hand to her chest, as if to protect the organ that beat within. The gesture made him wish he were as adept at reading human auras as some of the rohn.

"You're serious," she said, her rage replaced by slow wonderment. "You'd compromise your 'superior' Yamish traditions to have me in your life." She pulled a nearby chair to his desk and sat, her blue dress a striking contrast to its yellow silk upholstery. "You really do care about me."

"I thought I'd made that clear."

She put her chin in her hand and smiled. "You made it clear you cared about your bloodline."

"There's no shame in caring about that."

"There's no shame in caring about me as a person."

He found himself tugging his waistcoat defensively, exactly as a human would. "You have an admirable amount of spirit. From the first, you reminded mea"" He stopped, unable to say the words.

"Reminded you of what?" she asked softly.