“Are you referring to the children or the Scelties?” Daemon asked, slipping off his jacket and folding it over the back of a kitchen chair.

“Take your pick.” As he passed her on the way to the counter, Lucivar added on a psychic thread, ٭We’re going to talk about this.٭

Yes, they were. But not for the reasons he expected.

 

* * *

 

* * *

As soon as the yappy horde was fed and herded outside to occupy themselves with their own business, Lucivar followed Marian into the laundry room. When she turned to face him, he put his hands on either side of her, trapping her against one of the laundry tubs.

“Want to tell me what that was about?” he asked.

“Not what it looked like.”

“I know you, and I know him, so I’m sure it wasn’t what anyone else would assume.”

“Is he ever like that when it’s just the two of you spending an evening together?” she asked.

“Like what?”

“Completely relaxed.” She rested her hands on Lucivar’s chest, feeling the warmth of his skin through the undyed shirt with the sleeves he’d cut off to form a short cap over each impressive arm. “For some reason, this morning he trusted me enough to show me who he is without any barriers.”

“He’s potent.” Lucivar rested his forehead against hers. “It’s what made him so dangerous when he’d been a pleasure slave forced to serve the Queens in Terreille. He could turn pleasure into agony when he wanted to hurt someone. Even now, it’s the side of him a person rarely sees unless they’re about to dance with the Sadist.”

Marian hesitated, then asked a question she’d held back for a lot of years. “And when he was married to Jaenelle?”

“He gave her everything he was, held nothing back. He could do that with her.” He laughed softly. “And meeting him first thing on some mornings was reason enough to dive into a cold mountain lake.”

Her husband was here, and who knew how much longer they would be alone? Marian pressed against Lucivar and didn’t care that she probably wasn’t the reason his cock was so hard. “I know something better than a cold lake.”

He freed himself from his trousers before she could take another breath. She vanished her underpants and trousers before he ripped them off. Then he was inside her, his cock so hot it felt like a fever as his arms locked around her back and hips and he thrust into her with all the power of a warrior and none of the finesse of a lover. She wrapped her legs around his waist and dug her short nails into his shoulders, remembering just in time not to set her teeth in his neck where he’d have to try to explain a fresh love bite to the children.

Fast. Hard. Hot. Explosive. Responding like a man pleasuring a needy woman instead of a husband taking care of a fragile womb. Responding to her like he used to before the illness that came after birthing baby Andulvar had sapped her strength.

Her climax pushed him over the edge. She bit his shoulder to stifle the scream that would have brought everyone running to find out what had happened.

“Mother Night, Marian.” Lucivar balanced her on the edge of the laundry tub.

They were shaking and panting and still connected, so she was grateful he hadn’t dropped her.

“You should let go of me,” he said.

“I’m not sure I can move my legs yet.”

He made a pleased sound that was abruptly cut off when he turned his head as if listening to something nearby. “Try.”

Happy barking, which meant children and Scelties playing—and the horde could rush into the eyrie at any moment searching for at least one of them, wanting attention, snacks, something.

Lucivar pulled out of her and made sure she was steady on her feet before he grabbed a couple of washcloths from the stack she kept in easy reach and ran them under the water tap.

“We should clean up a bit,” she said, accepting one of the cloths.

“You think?” Giving her an amused look, he washed quickly, tossing the used cloth into the laundry tub before tucking himself back into his trousers. “I’ll distract them.” He gave her a light kiss and left. Moments later, she heard his voice mingling with the children’s—and Daemon’s.

Blowing out a breath, Marian finished washing herself, straightened her tunic, and called in the underpants and trousers, hurriedly pulling them on. Nothing she could do about flushed skin or the rest. The adults would recognize the signs of hot, fast sex, but hopefully the children wouldn’t notice.

As she hurried out of the laundry room, aiming to get to her bedroom and have a few minutes in private to put on other clothes and get settled, it occurred to her that she had no idea how much these Scelties might notice—and share with everyone else.

She reached one of the eyrie’s branching corridors. One way led to the master suite of rooms. The guest room Daemon and Surreal were using was in the other direction. Realizing that she hadn’t seen Surreal yet, Marian headed for the guest room and knocked on the door. “Surreal?”

No answer.

Worried, Marian opened the door enough for her voice to be heard by anyone inside the room. “Surreal?”

“Yeah.”

Taking that as an invitation, Marian slipped into the room, leaving the door partway open in her haste to reach the other woman. Surreal looked feverish, upset. And she looked like she’d been crying, which was so unusual Marian jerked to a stop. Could this be nothing more than moontime moodies, or did she need to send for a Healer?

To heal what? Her friend had been well when she’d arrived in Ebon Rih. “Should I send for Nurian?” she asked.

“I doubt she has a cure for this.” Surreal moved around the room in a restless manner.

“So there is something wrong.” There had been something wrong for months, but maybe Surreal was finally ready to talk about it.

Surreal stopped moving, her back to the partly open door. “I love Daemon. I do. And I want to stay married to him because, for all our sakes, he needs to be married. But more often than not lately, I can’t stand to be around him. Sometimes I even hate him. When he plays games with me, when he uses that sexual heat on me, I hate him.”

Marian couldn’t move, shocked into stillness. Oh, Surreal.

“I feel smothered. His heat rolls over me and I can’t think about anything except having his cock inside me. It’s a fever that has burned inside me for so many months it’s become an addiction. I make excuses to spend time away from the Hall just so I can breathe, just so I can remember who I am when I’m not a sheath for his cock. I feel so damn helpless, and it scares me. He scares me.”