“Sounds good.” iAm looked at the guy. “Listen, this is none of my business—”

“Everything is your business. You’re my blooded brother.”

“Does Selena know about what’s doing with the s’Hisbe? About your … situation with the Princess?”

Trez shrugged. “I told her. A while ago. But I’m not thinking about all that right now.”

God, they were down to only a couple of nights left in the mourning period. And then …

One nightmare at a time, iAm thought. His brother was right.

“Listen,” iAm said. “I’m just a phone call away. You need anything, you hit me.”

“Thanks, my man.”

They clapped palms, and Trez offered a dead smile. “You look like Santa Claus.”

On that note, his brother left.

iAm sat there for a while, the uneven rim of the tub and the marble ledge making his butt feel like someone was hitting it with a two-by-four over and over again.

It was the saddest commentary that Trez was more focused on the funeral than the mating ceremony.

For a moment, he considered canceling his own … date. Or whatever it was with maichen. But he could just as easily wait by the phone in her company.

Naked company.

As he stood up and went to the sinks, he grabbed his Gillette eight hundred–bladed whatever and started de-Santa’ing himself. The guilt that he felt about heading off for a couple of hours of sex while his brother was suffering like this was enough to make him want to throw up.

His entire life had been in service to the male, and thinking of himself and what he wanted for his own shit was like exercising a limb that had been in a cast for decades: It seemed uncomfortable, unsure, unlikely to sustain weight.

But he felt kind of like Trez did … as if there was a limited time to enjoy what he had before everything changed and not for the better.

Trez might not want to think about it. But his time for reckoning with the s’Hisbe was going to come whether he acknowledged it or not. Their parents had been stripped of their station and their ill-gotten gains for essentially selling Trez to the Queen. There were no other levers to pull on that front—even if their mother and father were tortured and killed? Which had been brought up nine months ago? It had been no motivator for Trez or himself. And the s’Hisbe must have realized that because that was the last either of them had heard of that line of threats.

Impossible to get emotional about two people who had allowed you to be jailed your entire life—just so they could rise to be Primaries at court.

One thing he knew for certain? As the time for the ritual mating came due, the Queen was going to take things to a higher level. Which meant both he and Trez were going to have to watch their backs.

Probably a good idea to encourage any dating scenarios to stick close to home. Or, preferably, in the compound itself.

Shit, Trez was going to hate that.

“Hmmmm.”

As Trez let out a purr, Selena pivoted around in the closet. He had materialized behind her, his arms crossed over his chest, his body tilted against the jamb.

“Well, hello,” she said.

“I love what you’re wearing.”

“I don’t have anything on.”

“Exactly.”

He came forward, turning her to face him and drawing her closer. “Gimme.”

His kiss was forceful, his hips thrusting into her, his arousal a very good indicator that they were in danger of being late.

She laughed and pushed at his solid chest. “Aren’t we supposed to be at the jeweler’s in a half hour?”

“Who cares.”

As if she were going to say no?

Wrapping her arms around his neck, she let herself get loose. Or … as loose as she could become. Even with the pills that she’d taken two doses of, her joints were aching all over, her body’s battle reaching the point where her mind was being brought into the fight, the sensations no longer a figment of paranoia, but an actual, dogged drag.

The good news? The lust she felt was so loud and pervasive it overrode everything else.

Trez picked her up and carried her back to the bed. Laying her out flat, he kissed her deeply, his hands caressing her breasts and thumbing at her nipples, his pelvis pushing and retreating. When she was writhing underneath his weight, he broke off from her lips and began a slow descent down her body, lingering to lick and suck, heading for her sex.

She called out his name as contact was made, spreading herself wide for him, drinking in the sensations of his wet mouth on her core. The orgasm was a beautiful series of contractions, pleasure vibrating through her, filling her out on the inside.

And all the while, he watched her, his eyes looking up from where he was, his hands cupping her breasts.

She was expecting him to stop so that she had time to dress.

No. He kept going, licking up to the top of her sex, lolling his tongue around, giving her every opportunity to see what he was doing to her, showing off as he flicked at her, his pink flesh moving quickly …

Punching at the pillows, she stretched herself against the heat and the thrill of it.

And still he continued.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, it registered that he was doing this not just to pleasure her, but to bank the memories in his mind: His eyes never left her, his peridot stare capturing her face, her throat, her breasts, her belly.

“Trez…” she moaned, arching up.

When he finally released her core, he reared over her body and all but ripped off his clothes. As his shirt went fluttering to the floor and his pants were treated with no concern at all as he yanked them off, she smiled.

She was so ready for him.

He brought her knees up with his dark hands, bending her legs and moving them out to the sides gently. And then he gripped his erection and brought the head of it to the center of her need. Stroking her, he went up and down, glossing himself as he stared at where the two of them were about to be joined.

Pressing inside, he retreated and came at her again, his palm doing the work more than his hips. And each time he popped free, he bit down on his lower lip, his fangs compressing the flesh that had worshiped her.

For some reason, she thought about all her training as an ehros. She had been prepared to do her duty, had even been curious about the act, but these experiences with him, the choice to have him, the joy at giving herself not out of some trained obligation, but because she loved him and only him, was so much grander and more glorious than anything her station might have prepared her for.

Eventually, his control snapped and he groaned, sinking into her to the hilt. Propping himself up on his hands, he moved above her, his eyes traveling around her face until he dropped his head and kissed her.

Soon, his pumping became hard and fast, and she stretched her arms out, stroking his lower back, his buttocks, his hips.

As he started to climax, she fell still and felt him orgasm.

It went on for the longest time, his gasping breath, his groans, the sound of her name being wrenched from him as if his soul were being torn apart. And still his hips moved and his sex stroked, and then once again she was coming along with him.

When he collapsed on top of her, she wrapped her arms around him. He was so big, she could barely make it up onto his back, much less have her hands meet at his spine.

He was panting into her hair. Into her throat.

“I love you so much,” was all he said.

SIXTY-TWO

Maichen sneaked into the ritual chamber and checked on her mother before she tried to leave the palace once again. The Queen was still sitting in her mourning pose, her robes now red after having been changed by staff from those she had had on the night before.

All appeared well for another escape.

Tiptoeing across the marble, she headed for the cupboard in the corner, opening the door and—

“Did you think I would not know it was you,” came the words in the Shadow dialect.

maichen froze.

“You have fooled them all, but not me. I know my own flesh.”

Shutting the cupboard door, maichen fell into the posture of greeting, placing both hands on her shoulders so her arms crossed over her chest, and then lowering herself to her knees and prostrating her torso.

“My Queen.”

“I have allowed you your freedom around the palace.”

“Thank you, my Queen,” she said to the marble floor.

“Do not abuse my good nature.”

“I shall not, my Queen.”

“I believe you already have.”

“My devotion, as my service, is to you and you alone.”

“I can have another of you if I wish. You are as replaceable as anything else in this world of mine. Never forget that I am the sun around which this galaxy spins, and I can alter your destiny with the blink of an eye.”

Her mother’s head turned toward her, the red robing twisting around as if she were some kind of evil creature. And then AnsLai, the high priest, and the Chief Astrologer stepped into the room from a hidden door across the way.

Beneath her robes, maichen began to shake, and for self-preservation, she blocked her mind by repeating the word maichen over and over again in her head. If her mother or those two advisers got into her thoughts and recent memories, she feared not only for her own life, but for iAm’s.