J. Ward - Lover Avenged

Lash dropped the towel from his hips, his erection springing forward. “I love that you are a liar.”

The princess lifted her head, her shiny black hair shifting with flashes of blue. “Will you let me go? The fucking will be better, I promise you.”

“I’m not worried about how good it’s going to be.”

“Are you sure?” Her arms pulled against the steel chains that had been bolted into the floor. “Don’t you want me to touch you?”

Lash smiled down at her naked body-which he now owned, for all intents and purposes. She was his gift, given by the symphath king as a gesture of good faith, a sacrifice that was also a punishment for her treason.

“You are going nowhere,” he said. “And the fucking is going to be fantastic.”

He was going to use her until she broke, and then he was going to take her out and make her find him vampires to kill. It was the perfect relationship. And if he got bored with her or she couldn’t perform either sexually or as a divining rod? He would get rid of her.

The princess’s eyes glared up at him, the bloodred color of them loud as a curse thrown at full volume. “You are going to let me go.”

Lash reached down and started stroking his cock. “Only if it’s to put you into your grave.”

Her smile was pure evil, so much so, his balls tightened up like he was about to come. “We’ll see about that,” she said in a low, deep voice.

She’d been drugged by the king’s private guard before Lash had left the colony with her, and when she’d been stretched out on this mattress her legs had been spread as far apart as possible.

So as her sex glistened for him, he could see it.

“I’m never letting you go,” he said as he knelt down to the mattress and grabbed onto her ankles.

Her skin was soft and white as snow, her core pink as her nipples.

He was going to leave a lot of marks on her whip-thin body. And going by the way her hips rotated, she was going to like it.

“You are mine,” he growled.

In a sudden flash of inspiration, he pictured his old rottweiler’s collar around her slender neck. King’s ownership tags were going to look great on her, and so was a dog’s leash.

Perfect. Fucking perfect.

ONE MONTH LATER…

Ehlena woke up to the sound of china on china and the scent of Earl Grey tea. As her eyes opened, she saw a uniformed doggen struggling under the weight of a massive silver tray. On it was a fresh bagel capped by a crystal dome, a pot of strawberry jam, a scoop of cream cheese on a tiny porcelain plate, and, her favorite part, a bud vase.

Every night it was a different flower. This evening it was a sprig of holly.

“Oh, Sashla, you really don’t have to do this.” Ehlena sat up, pushing back sheets that were so fine and well made they were smoother than summer air against the skin. “It’s lovely of you, but honestly…”

The maid bowed and offered a shy smile. “Madam should wake up to a proper repast.”

Ehlena lifted her arms as a stand was put over her legs and the tray set on top of it. As she stared down at the lovingly polished silver and the carefully prepared food, her overriding thought was that her father had just gotten the same, served to him by a butler doggen by the name of Eran.

She stroked the fine curling base of the knife. “You are good to us. All of you. You’ve made us so welcome in this grand house, and we thank you very much.”

When she looked up, there were tears in the doggen’s eyes, and the maid hastily patted them away with a handkerchief. “Madam…you and your father have transformed this house. We are of great joy that you are our masters. Everything…is different now that you are here.”

It was as far as the maid would go, but given how she and all the other staff had flinched for the first two weeks, Ehlena gathered that Montrag had not been the easiest head of household.

Ehlena reached over and gave the female’s hand a squeeze. “I’m glad it’s worked out for all of us.”

As the maid turned away to resume her duties, she seemed flustered, but happy. At the door, she paused. “Oh, and Madam Lusie’s things arrived. We’ve settled her in the guest suite next to your father. Also, the locksmith is coming in a half hour, as you requested.”

“Perfect on both accounts, thank you.”

While the door was shut quietly and the doggen went off humming a tune from the Old Country, Ehlena took the dome off her plate and knifed up some cream cheese. Lusie had agreed to move in with them and function as a nurse and personal assistant to Ehlena’s father-which was fantastic. Overall, he’d taken to the new estate with relative ease, his demeanor and mental stability better than they had been for years, but the close supervision did much to ease Ehlena’s lingering worry.

Being careful with him remained a priority.

Here in the mansion, for example, he didn’t require tinfoil over the windows. Instead, he preferred to look out at the gardens that were beautiful even after having been put to bed for the winter, and in retrospect, she wondered if part of shutting out the world hadn’t been because of where they’d been living. He was also much more relaxed and at peace, working steadily in the other guest bedroom next to his. He still heard the voices, though, and preferred order to mess of any kind, and he needed the medication. But this was heaven compared to what the last couple years had been like.

As Ehlena ate, she looked around the bedroom she’d chosen and was reminded of her parents’ former manse. The curtains were the same kind that had hung back in her family’s house, huge swathes of peach and cream and red falling from ruched headers with fringe. The walls were likewise done in luxury, the silk paper showing a pattern of roses that matched perfectly with the curtains, as well as coordinating with the needlepoint rug on the floor.

Ehlena, too, was at home in the surroundings, and yet utterly ungrounded-and not just because her life seemed like a sailboat that had capsized in cold water, only to abruptly right itself in the tropics.

Rehvenge was with her. Relentlessly.

Her last thought before she slept and her first upon waking was that he was alive. And she dreamed about him, seeing him with his arms at his sides and his head hanging down, silhouetted against a shimmering black background. It was a total contradiction, in a way, the belief that he was alive measured against that image of him-which seemed to suggest he was dead.

It was like being haunted by a ghost.

Make that tortured.

With frustration, she put the tray aside, got up, and showered. The clothes she changed into were nothing fancy, just the same ones she’d gotten from Target and on sale from Macy’s online before everything had changed. The shoes…were the Keds Rehv had held in his hand.

But she refused to think about that.

The thing was, it didn’t seem right to run out and spend a lot of money on anything. None of this felt like hers, not the house or the staff or the cars or all the zeroes in her checking account. She was still convinced Saxton was going to show up at nightfall with an oh-my-bad-all-this-should-have-gone-to-someone-else.

What a whoopsie that would be.

Ehlena took the silver tray and headed out to check on her father, who was down at the end of the wing. When she got to his door, she knocked with the tip of her sneaker.

“Father?”

“Do come in, daughter mine!”

She put the tray down on a mahogany table and opened the way into the room he used as his study. His old desk had been brought over from the rental bed, which had been placed next door, and her father was sitting down to his work as he always had, papers everywhere.