The Warlord by Gena Showalter (free ebook reader for pc .txt) 📕

woman he can’t live without?” Lifting her top, revealing an extra glittery patch of skin, she said, “Of course, I might deny it, too, if the situation were reversed. I’m yours...but you aren’t mine.”

Literal sparks flared in his irises, blazing bright, extinguished only seconds later. “I can live without you,” he told her, his fury barely banked. “I can also guess how you left the palace. The key dangling from your neck. Which I will be taking from you, one way or another.”

Roc peered at the most defiant, exciting, challenging female to ever walk any planet and wanted only to get inside her. Once again, she made him throb. Even as she taunted him for being a black widower. Even as she eviscerated him with truth.

I’m yours, but you aren’t mine.

“Take the key,” she said with an airy tone. “I don’t care.”

He studied her. When she’d first arrived, she’d been paler than usual, her eye sockets darker than expected. Roc admitted it: he’d feared. Then his heat raised a rosy flush on her skin, and she appeared normal. Which meant she wasn’t a phantom. She couldn’t be. He’d never harden for a phantom.

“I’ll take more than the key. You’ll give me answers.” He flashed to her, latched on to her arms, then flashed again, ending his journey with his bride pressed against the wall. He inserted a knee between her legs, ensuring she straddled him, the metal plate resting upon his thigh. He covered her vulnerable throat with his fingers. With his other hand, he clasped her hip bone, his grip almost...tender. “Where did you go? Tell me!” Who did she meet?

When she said nothing, his control took a substantial hit. He raised his knee, lifting her feet off the floor, forcing her weight to balance on the needy space between her thighs, relying on his body for an anchor.

She dug her claws into the wall and grinned up at him, far from cowed. “Going to try to pleasure the information out of me? Well, go ahead. I’ll enjoy every second, and you’ll end up frustrated, learning only what I want you to know.”

Fury...passion, something summoned the stardust. Intense heat flared in his palms. Taliyah sucked in a breath. More proof she wasn’t a phantom. The fiends had no need to breathe. But Erebus did. If the god had indeed made more like himself.

“No regard for your friends in the duplicate realm?” he asked.

She bit out, “Are you going to destroy it?”

He’d boasted he would do so, and he never reversed a decision. But as he pictured her lovely, defiant features contorted with grief and... He couldn’t do it.

“The harpies are safe,” he grated. “For now.”

The response clearly surprised her. She frowned as she plucked her nails free and settled her hands on his shoulders, melting against him. “Truly? Why? I didn’t peg you as the three strikes type.”

The way her body fit his...did things to him. “With the right incentive, I can be merciful. Tell me where you went, Taliyah.”

“I... No.” She shook her head, stubborn to her very core.

His heart shuddered in his chest. Had black lines sped through her eye sockets as she’d moved?

Erebus toys with your thoughts, and you’re letting him.

Roc tightened his grip, just a little, just long enough to feel her pulse leap. “Where did you go, harpy?”

“Mmm.” A temptress to the end, she lifted her arms above her head and thrust up her breasts. “Haven’t we played this game before? Remind me, darling. Didn’t I win?”

This. This was what happened when you showed mercy to a foe even once. But no matter. He could make up for his previous mistake. Though he’d bent once, refusing to break her wrist when she’d disobeyed his command to drop the dagger, he would see this challenge through to the bitter end.

He would have her answer. And her thanks.

The decision solidified. He’d wondered what to do about his gravita. Now, with her luscious body pressed against his, he had no problem discerning the proper path. Whether he liked it or not, Taliyah was special to him. His body reacted to hers. Why not enjoy her while he could?

The callous thought jarred him. Enjoy the woman fate selected for him, receiving pleasure from her, before he struck her dead? You are a prize among prizes, Roc.

He hated himself...but he wouldn’t change his path.

“Uh-oh,” she purred. “Someone looks like he’s just made a very important decision.”

An observant woman. Smug. Challenging.

Exhilarating.

“You will talk, harpy,” he told her with a voice like silk on barbed wire. “That I swear to you.”

One second Taliyah straddled Roc’s thigh, her weight braced against a wall; the next he flashed her to the bed. He knew he seemed to flicker above her as he moved between this realm and the duplicate of the duplicate, where he’d stored her new chains. As he collected what he needed, he moved at a speed no one but another Astra could track. By the time he finished, he had her locked tight, her wrists shackled above her head and her ankles secured miles apart.

A potent mix of fury and lust kept him on edge. “Anything to say now, harpy?”

Taliyah shocked him. She got comfortable, all smug assurance and wicked fantasy. “You had these chains crafted for me, the bride you can’t resist, because you wanted to end up this way. Did you seize the first excuse to use them? Am I getting to you, Astra?”

Yes!

“If this is your version of torture,” she said, feminine power impelling her to a new level of boldness, “sign me up for a morning, afternoon and evening session every day for the rest of the month. I’m sure I’ll tell you something by then.”

Want her. “I’m going to touch you, harpy. I’m going to touch you everywhere.”

Her eyelids sank low, as if too heavy to hold up. “Is that a warning or a promise?”

Seeing her like this, a sultry seductress in chains, his stardust glittering on her pale skin, provoked a war in