Red Demon

by Deidre Knight

  “Again?” she asked, inspecting him like some haughty headmistress. He pictured her with a whip in her hand, wearing nothing but a black leather bustier and thong.

  He had a sudden image of her swatting his hard-on with that feather, and that was it; he just came in thick, pulsing jets right into her hand.

  “Oh, fucking . . . fuck . . . oh, oh!” he couldn’t stop crying out, his hips surging and pumping as Jules rubbed a thumb to his base, bringing him all the way through.

  When his body had finally settled, he was soft in her hand, and damp, and he had no freaking idea how to clean himself up, not out here on the trail. But she didn’t seem to mind, because she wrapped her arms about his neck and tugged him down onto the ground with her.

  “Now,” she said, drawing him into her arms, “let’s see how Eros’s feather might pleasure me.”

  As they rolled together, wrapped in each other’s arms, he’d have sworn, absolutely sworn, that he heard Eros’s laughter ringing through the treetops overhead.

  Turn the page for a glimpse of the next thrilling romance in the Gods of Midnight series,

  RED MORTAL

  Coming April 2011 from Signet Eclipse

  “I was thirty-five at the Hot Gates. How do you reckon my years now? Forty- five? Perhaps fifty?” Leo strode toward her, favoring his right knee more than she’d ever toward her, favoring his right knee more than she’d ever seen him do before. “I suppose we could call the bet at forty-eight.”

  “You are so beautiful to me. The lines on your face, the age written across your features—it arouses me. The silver in your hair beguiles me, makes me want to touch it. Touch you.”

  He sighed and stared at his feet. “I was always too old for you.” He shook his head slowly. “Ares has now chosen to make that fact quite obvious.”

  “You are still a young man. Still strong and vital and—”

  He cut her off with a harsh laugh. “What were you, eighteen at the time of our bargain?”

  She said nothing; he was correct—to a point. . . . She’d been frozen eternally at that age by Zeus and even now was unsure exactly how many years she’d been alive.

  “As I suspected. I’ve always been far, far too old for you, Daphne.” He turned and walked slowly toward the window, seeming worn down. But savagely beautiful, still. “In the throes of immortality, we both simply chose to ignore that fact.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  He glanced back at her, dark eyebrows lifting. “Am I? Wrong that I’m old enough to have fathered you? I think not.”

  “No—about us. About us being right together. You were never too old for me, and you aren’t now.”

  “I was always almost eighteen years older than you. And now?” He laughed again, a hollow, haunted sound that made tears fill her eyes. “Well, it’s anyone’s guess how much that gap will widen in the coming days.”

  “There is only one thing that you have always been, Leo, and that is mine. I was a fool to stay away out of fear of my brother, when we could have been together. Ares may have placed this curse upon us—”

  “Upon me,” he corrected in a whisper, sadness filling his dark eyes. “He has touched me eternally once again. But this time . . . my hours are fading.”

  She searched his face, refusing to back down. “But we still have right now. What more do any lovers ever have? Look at all that Ari and Juliana have endured just to be together. Like them, we must love now.”

  “Now, Daphne? Now it is I who must protect you, who must say that we have no future. For I have nothing to offer you, love.”

  “You’re being as cruel as my brother,” she cried. “When I stayed away from you, when I said we could not be, it was to save your life.”

  He smiled faintly, love filling his entire expression. “You think my motives are not the same? You believe that I don’t love you?”

  She began shaking; she couldn’t stop the rush of shock and emotion that engulfed her. “You’d keep me here for whatever time is left.”

  “I won’t have you watch me wither away . . . turn frail and feeble. The change inside me cannot be undone; your brother cannot be thwarted in this attack. But I won’t have you see me turn, quite truly, into an old man.” He laughed grimly. “Perhaps my nickname was always a bit of prophecy.”

  She moved toward him, hands outstretched. “We don’t know how much time we have, Leo. No one in the real world ever does. You once told me that you prayed to claim me. To make love to me. To take me beneath your body and make me yours. I am willing, my lord. I am still—have always been—yours.”

  His lean body was as sculpted, muscular, and fit as it had always been, and she saw that he reacted to her with the fervor of a very young man. The khakis that he wore bulged prominently in front, betraying how desperately he still wanted her despite all his claims about sending her away. His words were one thing; his visible need quite another.

  She stood in front of him and pressed a shy, tentative hand against his groin, for the first time allowing her fingers to stroke his most intimate place. Leo jolted in reaction, clasping her wrist with a groan.

  “Daphne, stop.”

  “I see how you still react to me. I felt your manhood, your longing with my own hand.”

  He growled, dark eyes flashing in the semidarkness. “You should not have done so.”

  “You could still give me a babe, if you wanted. Several, even . . . and live long enough to watch them grow. Live long enough to love me for years, for us to have a family, a whole life together despite my brother’s curse.”

  “We do not know that.”

  “No,” she replied firmly, “we don’t know. But all you and I have ever had is the unknown.” She fell to her knees, mirroring the way she’d once begged her own brother to spare Leo this fate. “Do not send me away, Leo. Take me as you’ve long desired. Make me your mate, your wife. Whatever days we have, they will be more than enough. It will be the greatest gift, but take me, please.”

  Suddenly he was kneeling before her, moving slowly as he favored the leg he’d injured at Thermopylae. When they were face-to-face, knee-to-knee, he slid rough fingers beneath her chin, stroking her slowly. Treating her as his beloved. “Am I to let you watch me die?” He smiled softly, faint lines at the edges of his mouth. “With the way I love you, would I do that to you, sweetness? No. I would not. You must go and be young forever. That is your portion. Mine is to lead my men until I’m no longer able to do so. But not with you watching me.” He shook his head firmly. “Not with you suffering on my behalf. I can protect you in this one final way . . . and I will.”

  “Leo, don’t do this.” She clutched his arms, tears pouring down her cheeks. “We still have this moment.”

  He looked at her and instinctively she knew it was for the very last time. That this moment between them, this heartbeat, was their forever. “My fate is sealed, but you will always be young. I love you, but I am dying. And you, my beloved . . . you must live.”

  He rose to his feet without another word. Without so much as a look back, he left her kneeling in the middle of his bedchamber. She heard his heavy footfalls fade down the hallway, listened to the power of total silence that came after.

  And still she knelt and waited. Waited and prayed, supplicating every power of the universe that he would return. That he would fall before her and claim her, finally.

  But, long as she waited and prayed . . . Leonidas, King of Sparta, did not return.