Demon's Fire by Emma Holly Read Free Book Online Page B

it was.
    She was alive. Better than alive. She was healing. She could feel the changes inside her, despite the recurrent tremors beneath her skin.
    She laid one hand over her naked breast and cupped the other around her mound. Her nipple was sharp as stone, her pulse beating hard and steady between her legs. Never had she felt such a strong yearning to be filled. Oh, she’d been taken, once by a boy she’d thought cared for her and, later, by the judges of her tribe. The men who’d cast her out for stealing food had claimed the rape was part of her sentence, but Tou had known better. They’d forced her in secret, tying the tent flap against their wives’ prying glances and gagging her so she couldn’t scream. Then they’d banished her as a criminal.
    Tou pushed herself upward until she sat. Her tremors were gone now, her thirst, even her fear. She watched a vulture circle overhead, probably the same that had followed her across the desert these last two days. From the way its spirals widened, she knew it was no longer interested in her. She wasn’t easy prey anymore.
    Ready to face what had happened, she looked back at the mouth of the buried chamber, the shadow of it black as the netherworld.
    She fought a shiver. But I’m a goddess now, she thought, remembering what the voice had told her. Goddesses didn’t cower at the past. Goddesses were meant to rule.
    I’ll rule them, she promised. Before I’m done, I’ll see every male in my tribe grovel.
    The vow swelled inside her as if the desire were more than mere ambition. She ran her hand down her naked body, feeling how smooth the skin of her belly was, how healthy and sensitive. The sun might never have burned her, her trek through the desert never weakened and starved her down. Gaunt no more, her flesh was as firm and sleek as the pampered daughter of a village chief. Within her intimate folds, her pleasure bud stood painfully engorged with blood. It wanted more than the gentle caresses she usually gave it, more than the soft release that should have satisfied a girl her age. Groaning with need, she pinched the bud between her longest finger and thumb.
    Her response was a revelation. Pleasure exploded within her, not a climax but so close to one it caused her to cry out. The almost-release was torture. Tou had to work herself harder, had to squeeze and rub and grind that little organ as hard as she could. Juices ran down her strong, tensing thighs. Perhaps she should have been embarrassed, but it didn’t matter where she was. Goddesses were different, apparently, and this goddess had to have a release or die.
    Tou’s second hand provided what she needed. With a moan of profound erotic agony, she thrust two fingers into her passage and immediately catapulted into orgasm.
     
    It was after midnight when Charles surrendered any hope for sleep. The desert night was cool, the breeze that wafted through his window pleasant, and the gauze-curtained bed on which he lay the most comfortable he’d known. Nor did the nocturnal murmurs of the city give any reason for his restlessness.
    The haveli Herrington had bought for them to live in was a five-story merchant’s mansion in the Old Quarter. Though the area wasn’t completely residential—those who lived here still kept shops on their street level—it was one of the quietest in Bhamjran. This stemmed from so many of the great trading families having suffered financial losses when Queen Victoria brought the railroads in. The traders’ fortunes had been made through camel caravans, and only those who’d adapted had been able to keep up their old luxuries. As a result, the narrow palaces on either side of Herrington’s sat empty, though the privacy-loving demon probably preferred it that way. Charles himself hadn’t given their abandoned state a second thought until this year.
    Everything struck him differently with Beth here.
    He punched his down-filled pillow and turned it to its cooler side, his body tightening