Scarlet Nights. Lucinda Betts
just this way.” The Temple Virgin’s voice was as sultry as the incense. She did nothing to ease him. In fact, she didn’t seem to recognize how hot his anger simmered.
“What’s this way?” Axel’s antagonism clipped his words. For a heartbeat, he wondered what would happen if he and Kamir simply turned and left. If the guards were as soft and weak as this woman, leaving the palace would be simple.
But then Axel remembered the soldier Solstice had been fucking. There’d been no weakness in him. “Where are we going?” Axel asked.
“You wish to know our destination?” The Temple Virgin flicked a look over her shoulder as she walked. The sensual movement made the light from the sconces glitter in her black hair. Her lips gleamed. “I’m sure the bath attendants explained. We’re going to the Ritual Chamber, of course.”
“Oh, of course,” Kamir said.
If the Virgin recognized the sarcasm, she didn’t acknowledge it. “We’re very close.” With the ease of a cat, she exuded carnality. Her hips swayed as she walked, and when she looked at him, her eyes were half closed. Her lips had been painted blood red, and thin, red fabric clung to her curves. Her long black hair hung in ringlets down her back. Following her, Axel could see the cleft of her ass through the thin silk.
“This is the land of heathens,” Kamir whispered to Axel. “Carnality.”
“It’s true,” Axel said.
“She’s the proof.” Kamir nodded at their guide.
“Yes.” Axel could only agree. Still, something about their guide made Axel wish he had had a few minutes to talk with Solstice before they’d taken her away. She’d seemed so comfortable in that stranger’s arms, under his naked body—but Axel pushed that thought away. He didn’t agree with the choices she’d made, but she had known him as a child. He couldn’t say that about many people.
Solstice was not the same as the harlot leading him to his punishment, whatever that was.
“We’ve got to escape this place,” Kamir said.
Axel didn’t agree. The measured way the queen had assessed him left him wondering: what did she know? “We’ll bide our time for now.”
“What are they going to do to you?”
“I don’t know.” Axel kept his voice low. “But the Supplicant Queen has honored her word so far. She brought you to me, fed the horses, let me bathe. She said I’ll be free in the morning.”
“Leading the lamb to the slaughter.” Kamir clicked his tongue in disapproval. “You can’t leave if she kills you.”
“I expect she’s telling the truth.”
“She’s going to release you whole and hale?” Kamir clicked his tongue again. “Remember Lord Bentre?”
“Kamir, you’re not helping.”
“Lord Khar released him in the morning,” Kamir said without pause. “Although ‘released’ is a funny thing to do to a man after you’ve cut off his feet.”
Axel shrugged. “I don’t know what the queen plans.” He hadn’t been to any land where he could trespass into the queen’s palace after smashing her shrine and expect to get off easily—but he hadn’t been to any place where the palace staff looked like the Temple Virgins either. This seemed like the land of weak women, as far as he could tell. “But I don’t see any people here missing hands or feet or eyes.”
“Maybe because they’re in the dungeon.”
“Kamir.” Axel didn’t take his eye off the Virgin’s back as he spoke. “You’re overreacting.”
Kamir didn’t answer at first, and then he shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. They’ve let us keep our weapons, for one.” His voice was low, but he touched the handle of his dagger.
“Yes.”
“None of this makes sense to me,” Kamir said, walking at Axel’s side. “I just wish I knew what they had in store for you.”
As they followed the Virgin around another turn in the labyrinth, Axel wished he, too, knew more. But he was a tracker, a man who knew how to find clues in the shifting sands of the desert. The fact that he couldn’t get words from these Virgins didn’t mean he knew nothing. “Whatever it is,” Axel said, his voice low, “I don’t think we’re going to like it.”
“What is it?”
“Be quiet for now.”
He’d seen the contraption the Virgins planned to use for the punishment—the bath attendants had ensured he’d seen. When he’d viewed the rows of shackles and whips, his heart had lurched. The Supplicant Queen might have many ways to make a man pay for his sins.
Thinking of the passageway through which he’d chased the slavers, something in Axel hardened. The people of Marotiri thought they had a champion in the queen. Ha.
He’d have to make certain the queen paid for her sins too—and his method of payment didn’t involve soft women in scarlet robes.
As if sensing his unspoken thoughts, the Temple Virgin offered her first unsolicited words. “You’re not from this land, are you?” She gave Axel a sultry glance from under her lashes as she looked over her shoulder. “I’m not.”
“From which land do you come?” She walked with a dancer’s grace.
“Greenhaven.”
“I see.” Disdain flickered across her face before she turned away. He could just see her imagining the masses of white-skinned folk all living free in some uncivilized outpost.
“Greenhaven does fall under Marotiri’s rule,” Axel found himself saying.
“Something might fall under something,” Kamir muttered to him under his breath.
A need to defend his land to this harlot made Axel speak. “Your Lady Solstice is from Greenhaven, too.” And Solstice’s skin was as dark as the Temple Virgin’s.
“We’re here,” the Virgin said. If she were impressed, she gave no sign.
Silently, Axel followed the woman into the main room, glad to have something to look at besides her silk-clad ass.
His relief was short lived, however. The dark hall gave way to a well-lit chamber with a ceiling higher than ten men, and the dome was painted with a scene right out of a raunchy adolescent’s dream.
Men pleasured men. Women, in various states of undress, pleasured women. Two women pleasured one man here, and over there two men pleasured one woman.
“By the One God,” Kamir said softly.
“Yes.” Axel could only agree. Was sex all these people thought about?
Like swans on a pond, people floated around the gilt room. Each woman wore a suggestive gown that showed off her ass and breasts. They’d piled hair high on top of their heads to display long, dark necks. Each man wore trousers that flattered muscular thighs and chests. Eyelids of both sexes glittered, and lips gleamed. Teeth shined behind lust-induced smiles.
Axel knew enough about himself to realize he was uptight, and to him, this room and the people in it seethed with carnality.
“So, what is this punishment, exactly?” Kamir asked the Virgin. From the dread in his tone, Axel knew Kamir had been equally intimidated.
“You’ll see soon enough.” The woman flashed a smile of white teeth behind red lips.
“What will it be? Stocks?” Kamir asked. “Flogging?”
But the Virgin didn’t answer the question. “You may sit here.” Her eyelids were coated in something that shimmered in the candlelight, and even though Axel knew the One God wouldn’t approve of lustful