Lora Leigh - Primal

All amusement left Rimmon. In a blink the look in his eye was as cold as his origins, the light glinting off it providing a glimpse of the power he’d once commanded. “Come,” he said, turning his back and walking away.

He led them past rooms where men and women engaged in sexual acts while others watched, past those with rail-thin humans who favored the touch of an opium pipe against their lips to flesh or food, and still more where the occupants crowded around gaming tables.

They passed through an area serving drink and vicarious violence via television before entering a private room, a parlor decorated in furniture to match the age of the Victorian, though Addai doubted the view through the glassed wall would have been common in any house save a brothel.

“Your private dungeon?” he asked.

“Ecstasy achieved through the redemptive power of punishment—surely you can understand how such a thing might appeal to me.”

Addai guided Sajia to a couch upholstered in French silk moiré, urging her to sit and taking up a position next to her. He draped his arm along the couch back in a casual gesture, though he felt far from calm at having Sajia with him in this place and this company.

Rimmon claimed the chair across from her, pulling it closer and making Addai ball his hand into a fist against the urge to call his sword to him. With privacy restored, Rimmon probably intended to taunt with a slow visual study of Sajia, but his eye settled on her arm and the vampire scarring there, then lifted to meet Addai’s. “You keep interesting company.”

Addai didn’t rise to the bait. Instead he said, “What’s your price for access to Saril? I have need of a Finder.”

The emerald green eye narrowed, pulling on the scar tissue around it before the sly smile returned. “Seeing you makes me think of another of my recent visitors. Tir, he called himself. There’s a certain similarity in look.”

Rimmon’s eye flicked to Sajia. “And situation. A brother of yours, perhaps? Though it could be argued we are all brothers even if some of us have so much further to fall and become forgotten. When last I saw him, he wore a collar of enslavement. I wonder if you believe his punishment fits his crime.”

“He is free of it now.”

“Ah. That explains how you know of Saril. He healed her in exchange for something I could provide. And now you want something from her. Divine intervention, I wonder? Or the vagaries of fate?”

Rimmon lifted a hand to his scarred face. “Had my daughter’s life not hung in the balance between life and death, I might have asked Tir to restore me to my former glory. But from you . . . I have never heard it said that you offer anything but death.”

His good eye returned to Sajia, this time undressing her, clearly imagining her in his bed.

Addai wasn’t able to stop himself. He opened clenched fingers and his sword was there, hungry for the blood of the Fallen. “Death is still mine to offer.”

Rimmon’s smile was victorious, as if goading Addai into acting had been part of his price. “So she is aware of your nature. Good. Then let us discuss terms.”

He paused, a silent command for Addai to put away his weapon before they continued. Addai complied, jaw clenched.

“One search,” Rimmon said. “Assuming of course that Saril agrees to perform it for you. Done in my presence. And in return, I will give you a choice of payments.”

He gestured to the room on the other side of the glass. “If death is still yours to deliver, then show me one given with pleasure and survived in ecstasy. Strip your companion and bind her to any piece of equipment, then attend her until her screams cease and she falls silent in la petite morte .”

Addai’s cock throbbed at the images Rimmon’s words created. Desire burned through him, and he fought against revealing just how much he longed to join his body to hers. What Rimmon described was tame compared to the fantasies he harbored, the things he wanted to do with Sajia.

Next to him she sat ramrod straight, bristling with resistance and rebellion, seething in her silence but managing to keep her promise to allow him to negotiate with the vice lord. Had Rimmon’s terms allowed for privacy . . .

She was safe from this particular bargain. He would never allow another to look at her naked form or witness her in pleasure and live to dream about it.

“And the second choice?”

“If you don’t prefer pleasure, then there is only one other. Pain. The terms for access to Saril are the same, only it will be you who is bound, and your companion who selects which of my toys will be applied to your back.”

Sajia jerked in denial, a small sound of distress escaping. Addai’s hand moved from the back of the couch to her arm, his fingers lightly tracing the vampire marks, reminding her of what there was to lose if something happened to the scion, or if he decided to end their truce and risk her hatred by taking her back to the chalet and holding her there.

“How many strikes?” Addai asked. Compared to the agony of Sajia’s death so long ago, physical pain was easily endured.

“As many as it takes for your back to resemble the bloody mess of mine when flesh and wings were burned away.” Rimmon leaned forward abruptly, the cold eye alight with fire. “You are no less guilty than I was judged to be, and I would argue that your transgressions are greater.”

“True enough,” Addai said, following it by restating the terms, modifying them. “And for this, there will be one search, done before sunset on this day, in your presence and accompanied by your vow not to use what you learn in any way, or reveal it to another.”

“Agreed.”

Addai stood, and with a thought his shirt disappeared. “Let us begin then.”

No! Sajia silently screamed as Addai tugged her to her feet. But she couldn’t force herself to give voice to it, not with the lives of her family, and possibly Corinne’s, at stake.

Rimmon touched a place on the wall, and it slid open to reveal a doorway into the dungeon. He didn’t bother to close it after they entered.

She hadn’t been able to see it from her seat in his parlor, but one wall was done fully in mirrors, and anchored to it was a saltire. Though she had never been bound spread-eagle for punishment, carnal or otherwise, she was well familiar with its use. No vampire estate housing servants or progeny was without one. In private or in public, in play or in deadly seriousness, vampires enjoyed torment and drawing blood.

“Perhaps you’d like me to assist you in choosing the best tool for the task,” Rimmon said as he led them to a wall where whips and floggers and paddles hung from hooks, while canes and switches lay in narrow, ornate cradles.

Sajia shuddered at the thought of applying any of them to Addai. Of willfully cutting his skin and making him bleed.

Her reaction didn’t go unnoticed. Rimmon laughed and said, “It’s not too late to choose pleasure over pain.”

Addai reached out, plucking a cat-o’-nines from the wall. Sajia’s heart cried out at the sight of the thin strips of leather, the tails braided to form sharp edges.

“Use this one,” he said. “It will make our stay here shorter.”

Rimmon laughed again. “But far more painful. I’m not sure whether to feel pleased or cheated by your choice. But if you’ve made it, then we’ll adjourn to the crux decussata .”

He preceded them to the St. Andrew’s Cross. The single eye shone like a multifaceted gem as he turned it on Sajia. “You’ll have to do the honors of binding him.”

Sajia’s heart pounded in her chest, horror building there as Addai faced the mirrored wall. At the chalet, she’d claimed the past had no relevance, but as he lifted his arms and allowed her to place a manacle around his wrist, the first tender shoots of love took root in her soul. It humbled her that he would subject himself to such torment all because they’d once lived as man and wife.