The Warlord Wants Forever (Immortals After Dark #1)(5)
Author: Kresley Cole

When she scooped up her clothes, opened his door, then snapped her fingers for a guard down the hall, Wroth merely watched like a bystander.

"Pssst. Minion. I need these laundered. Very little starch. Don’t just stand there gawking or you’ll anger my good frenemy General Wroth. We’re like this."

He couldn’t see her but knew she was twining two fingers together.

Once she’d foisted her laundry, she closed the door by dramatically leaning back against it – as if to say he couldn’t get away from her now – then glided over to him. As a rule, he observed, he calculated and he waited, but he’d never quite enjoyed sitting back and watching events unfurl as much as with her. Unpredictable didn’t begin to describe –

She clutched his shoulders and straddled him.

Nothing between them but his pants and a few inches. He could even feel her heat as she knelt over him. She was definitely not his Bride or he would’ve ripped through his zipper to get inside her. His heart would beat, he would take his first breath in three hundred years, and in the space of one of those breaths he would be buried so deep in her tightness, wrenching her down on him… But nothing approaching that happened.

"Now, Wroth, we need to work some logistics out. When I’m kept as a pet, my care is very involved."

His brows drew together. "I have no wish to keep you as a pet."

"You hold me prisoner. You think to order me. How does this differ?"

"You’re not a pet," he insisted. He couldn’t think – her eyes were mesmerizing, her sex was inches away from his, and her pleasing accent was lulling.

She leaned in by his ear and murmured, "What if I want to be your pet? Would you like that, vampire?" Her fingers brushed their way over his chest, unbuttoning his shirt. She picked up his hands one at a time and set them on the armrests, giving each a squeeze as if to let him know she wanted them to stay that way.

With raised eyebrows, he let her. He wasn’t about to move, and couldn’t imagine what she would do next.

"If I was your pet, you could keep me for your pleasure, and I would serve you in every way you desire." She pulled his shirt open, clearly admiring his chest. "Hard." Her voice was breathy. "Scars." She moistened her lips. "I’d endeavor to blood you so you could wake at sunset with my mouth greedy on you while you clutched my thighs to drink from. You would go to sleep at sunrise still deep inside my body." Her hand was trailing down, her eyes raptly following the jagged scar that had been his deathblow. "I am here for the taking and ache for your touch."

She reached down and cupped him beneath her before he could grip her wrist. In an instant her seductive look vanished, though she showed no surprise that he wasn’t hard. She felt around his cock, then arched an eyebrow to say, "Well, my word, Wroth. If you were hard, I wouldn’t know whether to be tantalized or terrified."

Then with blurring speed she was off him, and in the bed, lying on her stomach, chin propped on her hands. She was utterly unaffected by what had just occurred, while he was angered and…shamed that she’d felt him like this. He wanted to show her hard…

"How do you plan to keep me here during the day? An unblooded Forbearer shouldn’t be so hard to vanquish."

Vanquished by her? Amusing. "I’ll send you back to the cell. You want to be my pet? I’ll take you out and put you back in your cage at my pleasure."

She blinked at him. "You don’t want to send me back. Who will entertain you? I can deal poker and make shadow animals."

He shook himself. This was just another instance of the Lore playing with them. She was not normal. He knew that anything he’d learned about females was inapplicable with her.

If she could be unaffected, he could pretend it. "I need you to answer some questions. I need to know what you are and what your name is."

"I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine."

"Done," he said quickly. "Ask."

"Were you afraid when Kristoff stood over you?"

"I was…tired." Strange question.

"Most mortals would have been terrified to see the Gravewalker."

"Is that what he’s called?" Kristoff would find that amusing. At her nod, he said, "Well, I’d seen a lot by that time."

"What’s his agenda? Does he want to replace Demestriu?"

Wroth hesitated, then answered honestly, hoping that she would do the same. "He wants his crown back, but he doesn’t want to rule over any faction but our own."

"Uh-huh." She raised an eyebrow as if she didn’t believe him, then asked, "That was your brother in the dungeon?"

"Murdoch, yes."

"Turned vampires don’t usually have family within the Horde."

"Murdoch died in the same battle. I’ve two other brothers turned later as well."

"You’re young. Yet you’re a general. How’d you swing that?"

He was over three hundred years old. Young compared to her? "I refused the dark gift if certain conditions weren’t met."

Her eyes grew bright with new interest, and she patted the bed for him to come sit with her. He felt he was on the verge of learning something, so he complied, resting against the headboard to face her, stretching his legs out. He almost laughed. The first time he’d been in bed with a woman in centuries, and she was easily the most beautiful of any before – and he could do nothing with her. He couldn’t even drink her, though his fangs ached to pierce the pale column of her neck. Thank God he’d fed before she’d been brought up.

"Wroth, you countered with Kristoff as you lay dying?"

When she put it like that it sounded more reckless than it had been. As Wroth had lain in his own cooling blood, nearly freed of the constant struggle, the ongoing war and famine and plague, he’d told Kristoff, "You need me more than I need to live."

Kristoff had seen him in many battles and agreed. "I did counter. I was used to giving orders and would take them from no one but a powerful king. I wanted my brother turned if he was dying, and trusted compatriots as well. Kristoff complied." That wasn’t all. Wroth had asked for sixty years so he and Murdoch could watch over the rest of their living family – their father, four sisters and two other brothers.

They’d needed only three months.

"You know, I’d heard of you when you were a human. Weren’t you called the Overlord?"

This surprised him. "On kinder tongues. How could you have heard of me? Your accent isn’t from the northlands."

She sighed. "Not anymore. I’d heard of you because I’m interested in all things martial. You were quite the vicious leader."