She should have heeded Jaenelle Angelline’s warning and instruction.

Truth, then, before Sadi and Jaenelle Saetien returned from visiting Manny and Tersa in the village.

She had loved Daemon Sadi for a long time. She still loved him. Had chosen to marry him because he needed to stay connected to the living, and he’d trusted her enough to make the commitment to be her husband. All right, if she hadn’t become pregnant, he wouldn’t have married again after losing Jaenelle Angelline, but once they’d made a child, she became his wife.

Except she hadn’t become his wife. Not the same way Marian was Lucivar’s wife. She and Sadi had a partnership—a mutual commitment to raise their daughter, to take care of the family estates and the vast SaDiablo wealth, and to rule Dhemlan. There had been a comfortable distance between them. A safe distance between them. Even when they had sex, she had been separate, independent—and always in control of how much she surrendered.

That night in his bedroom, he’d erased that distance, that safety, had drowned her sense of independence and her ability to choose what she surrendered. He’d made her need with a desperation that was almost a sickness.

But that had been in his room, in his bed. That seemed to be the key that turned that particular lock, so she would take care to stay out of his personal territory from now on.

Surreal knew the moment that the Black returned to the Hall. Minutes later, she felt Sadi approach her sitting room. Moving the folders to the sides of the table, she called in her crossbow, already primed to fire, and set it in the center of the table.

Daemon rapped on the door and took one step into her personal domain before he stopped. He looked at the crossbow, then at her, his lips twitching in what might have been amusement. Or relief?

“Is that on the table because you found out something at one of the estates that you think I won’t like?” he asked.

He just stood there. Beautiful. Tempting. His sexual heat flowed into the room, a stealthy coiling around her skin, between her legs. She’d shaken off this damn need while she’d been away, and here it was again, just as fierce, within a minute of her being in the same room with him.

“The estates are fine.” Her voice held an edge that should have warned him to back off.

“Surreal . . .” Daemon took another step into the room.

Surreal placed a hand on the crossbow. He stopped. But the heat . . . In another minute, she’d be on him, tearing at his clothes and trying to arouse him in order to get some relief.

No. She was not going to surrender to the point of being helpless. Not again. “I accept some of the blame for what happened that night—”

“Blame? Surreal . . .”

“—but I am telling you, here and now, that what happened that night will not happen again. You will not do that to me again. Are we clear on that, Sadi?”

A flash of something in his eyes—pain? regret?—before that beautiful face became a mask that revealed nothing.

“You have made your wishes very clear, Lady. I will, of course, respect them.” His voice, like his face, told her nothing. “Now that you’re home, I need to be away for a day or two. If Jaenelle Saetien pesters you about having a special cake made, the answer is no. I’ve already had this discussion with her.”

She’d been gone for days, and now he was leaving without . . . Well, Hell’s fire, she couldn’t exactly say that she needed sex, could she? Wanted, not needed.

“When are you leaving?” she asked.

“In the morning. I have some things to finish up here before I go.”

His psychic scent had an unfamiliar edge, and his physical scent . . .

As he turned away, she snapped, “Leash the damn heat!”

Daemon turned his head but not enough to look at her. “The sexual heat is leashed.” He walked out of the room.

Surreal vanished the crossbow before she did something that couldn’t be undone. She knew what Sadi felt like when the heat was leashed, and he didn’t feel like this. This was more—with something jagged and dangerous mixed in with the heat.

The man who had walked out of the room wasn’t quite Daemon Sadi and wasn’t quite the Sadist. She wasn’t sure what was happening between them, or why, and she didn’t know who would come to her bed tonight. But she was sure that if she wasn’t careful, the man who came to her bed would be something a woman might not survive.

 

* * *

 

* * *

“That’s all the immediate concerns,” Holt said as he took the signed letters.

“Good,” Daemon replied. “I won’t be gone for more than a day or two.”

“If someone needs to contact you?”

Daemon stared at his secretary. Holt had been a young footman when Daemon had first come to the Hall, but his service to the family had been invaluable. When Prince Rainier retired from the position of being Daemon’s secretary, Holt had stepped in. Intelligent and discreet, the Opal-Jeweled Warlord had never betrayed a trust.

“I’ll be in Riada,” he finally said. “Unless there is an emergency, I would prefer not to be disturbed.”

“I’ll convey that message if required.”

Daemon waited until Holt left the room before he sagged in his chair and braced his forehead against his fisted hands.

“. . . I am telling you, here and now, that what happened that night will not happen again. You will not do that to me again.”

The time away hadn’t done anything to ease Surreal’s distress about what they had done that night or her fear of him the morning after. So. The barriers between them would be reinforced to keep her safe from the full truth of what he was. Doing anything less would be cruel now that she’d made her feelings so clear.

“Leash the damn heat!”

He couldn’t contain the sexual heat more than he was doing now. Surreal should know that after living with him for so many years.

Didn’t matter what she should know. He’d made a mistake, and she was still feeling raw because of it. He wouldn’t make that mistake again, but he had to give her time to let her feelings settle one way or the other.

Daemon rubbed his temples, trying to ease the pain. Maybe Surreal was right and he wasn’t keeping the heat as tightly leashed as he should. It was hard for him to tell when the pain felt like jagged edges of a broken glass being shoved into his brain.

If the pain persisted, he would see a Healer about these headaches when he returned from Riada.

 

* * *

 

* * *

That evening, after he and Surreal had played a board game with Jaenelle Saetien and the bedtime story had been read, Daemon had been surprised when Surreal made it clear she expected her husband to join her in her bed. His headache had subsided, but the echo of pain had lingered, and he would have been content just to cuddle with her.