Demon's Fire (24 page)

“Is your kith what I’ve been tasting?” Beth asked. “Maybe you should kiss me some more so I can be sure.”

Pahndir didn’t find her comment overly precious. He grabbed her shoulders and speared his tongue between her lips, pulling at her mouth until his cheeks hollowed. Kith was an aphrodisiac, all right. The prince looked like he was trying to swallow her whole.

That lasted for about a minute, after which Pahndir broke free again.

“Kisses aren’t enough,” he panted, though he’d been going at it pretty strong. “I need to—Oh, yes, untie your trousers. I’m dying to get my cock into you again.”

Charles’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. His passengers were changing positions, the prince moving hastily on top of Beth as she scooted down on the padded seat. Apparently, they were going to do this in front of him. Never mind that Pahndir was free, and putting on a show was no longer a strategic necessity. Beth’s pants were yanked down her legs, and Pahndir’s robes thrown open. To judge by Pahndir’s gasp, her hands had just eased his prick out of his trousers.

“Can you come again?” she demanded. “Can you spill your seed into me?”

Charles bit back a curse that couldn’t be aired in company.

“I can,” Pahndir groaned. “Just move your hand to my balls, and you’ll feel how heavy I still am.” His body jerked as she performed this investigation. “Oh, yes, squeeze harder. Oh, that’s perfect.”

They writhed together in a tangle of arms and legs. Charles felt fresh sweat trickle down his skin. To make matters worse, the prince began murmuring to Beth with an expressiveness Charles wouldn’t have thought his kind was capable of.

“Do you like it when I kiss your nipples?” he asked as Beth’s long, naked legs climbed his sides. “Do you like it when I lick my kith over them? It makes them more sensitive, doesn’t it? It makes you want me to suck them hard.”

Beth moaned in answer, her back arching. The nipples in question were being offered to Pahndir’s lips, the shirt she’d borrowed from Charles having been unbuttoned. Pahndir licked one lengthened peak, then sucked it greedily into his mouth. His effectiveness was impressive. When he released her first nipple to see to the second, the pebbled point was so red it glowed.

Charles’s own nipples were itching, but Pahndir wasn’t finished being vocal yet. His voice was hoarser than it had been in his imprisonment.

“What if I put the tip of my penis right against your pleasure bud? What if I spurted a little kith right there?”

He must have done it. Beth cried out like she’d been set on fire. She clutched at Pahndir in a panic.

“Put it inside me,” she said. “Put it inside me
now
.”

“I will,” Pahndir promised. “I want to.”

Pahndir’s hand was between them, presumably teasing his penis tip over Beth’s clitoris. Waves of heat crashed over Charles as Pahndir shifted that hand to brace against the door. His leverage assured, his hips contracted and thrust.

“Oh,” Pahndir moaned, his eyes closing. “Infinity, you’re tight. I have to take you hard now. I have to do it. Beth, please widen your thighs some more.”

Beth couldn’t speak. She was too busy thrashing and breaking out in little cries. The seat springs began to squeal like murdered cats. Pahndir seemed to be going at her with all his might, his face red and twisted with effort, his hips nothing but a blur.

Beth truly was stronger than a normal woman if she wasn’t minding that.

“More,” Pahndir pleaded. “Take it all. Take it all, Beth. Oh, yes,
yes
, that’s it.”

Charles punched the accelerator pedal with a bit more force than required. In doing so, he realized his own cock was strangling inside his clothes, the head trapped in a too-narrow crease beside the bending of his thigh. He tugged at the crotch seam, but that did no good.

“Hell,” he said, forced to pull two buttons open before he could shift the pounding thing around. Though the release of pressure was welcome, it seemed to allow his cock to swell even more.

“Hell,” he said again, in part because the lovebirds’ moaning and thumping had increased. Did the two of them think he was made of stone? But they were probably too frantic to fuck to think, a possibility that didn’t calm him at all. Nothing was going to calm him as long as they kept that up.

He was tempted to stick his hand back into his trousers and fist himself to climax. Beth and Pahndir certainly wouldn’t notice. Unfortunately, someone had to pay attention to where they were going, unless they didn’t mind him accidentally driving Herrington’s motorcar into a ravine.

Considering Beth’s and Pahndir’s preoccupation, it really wasn’t a surprise that—demon hearing notwithstanding—Charles was the only one to notice their pursuer.

The kith Pahndir had spurted over Beth’s clitoris had made it swell and itch insanely. Of course, her entire vulva felt the same, and no matter how vigorously he pumped into her, he couldn’t rub all of it at once.

Beth was too shy to ask for help until Pahndir dropped his head and rasped in her ear. “Want my hand on you?”

She meant to answer with a word, but all that came out was a pleading groan. Pahndir grinned, wedged his long-fingered hand between them, and squeezed every inch of her burning flesh against her pubic bone.

She orgasmed with a cry that should have mortified her, but her pleasure brought Pahndir’s like an earthquake rolling up his spine. Her insides were so sensitive she could feel each individual jet of seed.

“Ohh,” she sighed, her arms twining happily behind his neck. “Do that again.”

Pahndir chuckled, his thrusts slowing but not stopped. He mustn’t stop. They both needed this to go on and on.

And then Charles called back over the seat to them. “Hey, you two, save that for later. I think someone’s coming after us.”

Though Pahndir grumbled, he pushed off her. He squinted at the rear horizon and then stiffened. “That dust cloud is moving too fast to be camels. Someone’s following us in a car.”

His face was hard, his eyes backing off from their all-black state until a slender ring of silver showed. He began to straighten his clothing.

“You, too,” he said, glancing at Beth. “I suspect that’s Muto. You won’t want to meet him undressed.”

“Muto…” she murmured, thinking how ironic that the lie she’d told might be coming true.

She didn’t have time to marvel. Though Charles had pushed the accelerator to the floor, their pursuer was gaining ground. The vehicle was still tiny, but Beth could see it was another demon-inspired jeep, and that it held two passengers. More troubling, a gun of some sort was mounted on its front bonnet.

“Damn,” said Pahndir, his vision sharper than hers. “He has Sahel riding shotgun.”

A distant banshee laugh confirmed this.

Something mechanical whirred behind her, drawing Beth’s attention to the front of their car. A section of the metal dashboard was sliding back, revealing a tiny black and green moving screen—apparently a cousin to the one in Pahndir’s desk at home. An odd, tinny voice issued out of it.

“Your vehicle is being targeted,” it said. “Please take evasive action.”

“Hard right!” Pahndir cried to Charles a second before a ball of blazing white fire demolished the left corner of their rear bumper.

“Holy God,” Charles gasped. “What the hell was that?”

Pahndir was lying on top of Beth, having forced her to the seat by flinging his body over hers. “That was a bolt from a plasma rifle. And, trust me, it’s not approved for use in front of your race.”

“Your vehicle is being targeted,” the tinny voice repeated. “State your authorization and I’ll drive for you.”

“Ignore it,” Pahndir snapped in response to Charles’s confusion. “The autopilot is programmed to respond to Herrington’s voice. Go right again, and floor that pedal.”

“I am,” Charles said as he spun the car sharply. “They’re still gaining.”

“Just do your best. They won’t blow us up until they’re closer. Muto must want to watch me die face to face.”

“Sure about that?” Charles cut the wheel to the left as another fireball exploded to the right of them.

“I’m sure. As you can see, we’re already in range.”

“Fuck,” said Charles.

“Your vehicle is being targeted—”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Charles’s curse drowned out the rest of the refrain. When Beth craned her head, Pahndir was frowning like he wished he could be swearing, too. He jerked when he saw her looking at him. His eyes were almost back to their normal silver.

“Do you have a knife left?” he asked.

Beth grabbed her remaining blade from the floor where she’d stashed it. “I hope you don’t expect me to fall on it if we’re caught.”

“No.” He braced as Charles hit a rise and all four wheels left the ground. They landed with a teeth-clacking thump. “I expect you to give it to me. Charles, when I give you the signal, I want you to hit the brakes.”

“The brakes!” Beth and Charles exclaimed in unison.

Pahndir pried the dagger from her numb fingers. “I don’t think Sahel can duck fast enough to prevent me from hitting her. Before I was married, I was a competitive knife thrower.”

“Holy God,” Charles said, apparently his special-occasion curse. His jaw was clenching, his eyes slitted on the landscape ahead. Despite his fear, Beth knew he was going to do exactly as Pahndir asked.

“That’s almost close enough,” Pahndir said. He clambered off her to crouch on the floor, facing the side of the jeep where Muto and Sahel’s vehicle raced nearer.

Beth could see Muto now, at least in glimpses. This was the man who had twice paid for his cousin to be sent into captivity. He looked surprisingly ordinary, as portly as a human shopkeeper, though his robes were a blinding combination of orange and lime green. When he glanced over at Beth, she shivered, something in his expression fundamentally colder than the rest of his race. Unconcerned by the character of her companion, the chieftain laughed and swiveled the demon gun on its mounting.

“I should have taken that frying pan to
your
skull,” Beth muttered, though in truth she might have. The veil end of Sahel’s turban was fluttering behind her in a long black tail, and one-half of her face was clotted over with dried blood.

“Almost…” Pahndir said, and then,
“Now!”

The jeep kept skidding forward across the sand even after Charles slammed the brakes, but the distance between the vehicles closed swiftly. Beth cried out as Sahel swung the plasma gun to retarget them. Cool as ice, Pahndir stood. Almost before Beth could comprehend that he’d thrown it, the pommel of the dagger sprouted from the center of Sahel’s forehead. Pahndir had flung the blade with such deadly force that it had sunk through the bone. Killed in an instant, Sahel jerked backward like she’d been kicked. Muto mouthed a curse the wind tore away.

“Holy God,” Beth breathed.

Charles seemed stupefied as well.

“Go, go, go!” Pahndir urged him, pushing her head down at the same time. “We can’t outrun Muto, but at least he’ll have trouble shooting
and
driving.”

“Head for Hhamoun,” Beth said, the idea coming to her as swiftly as that dagger must have come at Sahel.

“The cover would be useful,” Pahndir agreed when Charles flashed a look at him. “And maybe someone will summon help.”

Beth doubted that. Hhamoun wasn’t far, but already the shadows were long enough that the site would be shutting down. Luckily, help from the diggers wasn’t what she was hoping for.

“I’m taking over the driving,” Pahndir announced. He grabbed the bar that was all the roof the jeep had and swung over the front seat. “Beth, keep your head down while I see if I can coax more speed out of this thing.”

“Hell,” Charles said, but he let the prince take his place as smoothly as possible. Muto had stopped to shove his dead partner out of the car, but the distance they’d gained wouldn’t last.

As soon as Pahndir made it behind the wheel, he fumbled for something under the dash. “All right, where’s that goddamned manual override?”

Under other circumstances, Beth would have laughed to hear this human curse from Pahndir. In this instance, however, she could only gasp in relief as the formerly quiet engine gave a roar and shot them forward.

“There,” Pahndir said, looking downright smug. “Now we’re both using human-restricted technology.”

Whatever that meant, it seemed to have evened the velocity of the vehicles. Flames were shooting out from behind their jeep, not unlike the trail of a rocket. Pahndir’s cousin wasn’t falling back, but he wasn’t closing the gap, either.

“Wow,” Charles said. “You have got to show me how you did that.”

Pahndir laughed, the sound so joyous it clenched her heart. Boy, would Tou have loved this man, and, boy, did Beth love him herself. She was going to tell him that the minute they got out of this. She was going to—

A
ping
against the metal of Pahndir’s door cut the promise short.

“Shit,” said Pahndir, the jeep swerving as he jerked. “He’s shooting at us with a handgun.”

Beth and Charles cried out in unison when they saw the spreading splotch of red on Pahndir’s fine silk sleeve.

Refusing to give up the wheel despite his bullet wound, Pahndir drove like a demon of another sort to get them to Hhamoun ahead of Muto. As Beth expected, the place was empty when their headlamps swept over it. Ever since Tou’s bedchamber had been cleared, perimeter guards had been reduced to a thin patrol.

“Kill the lights,” she said. “Drive between the tents and park as close as you can to Tou’s palace.”

It was a sign of his exhaustion that the prince obeyed without question. Only when she demanded that he surrender his clothes to her did he protest.

“We don’t have time for this,” she said, physically yanking his outer robes down his arms. Weak from blood loss, he had collapsed beside the halted car. “I’m the strongest of us right now. Muto will be here any second. You have to let me lead him into the trap I’ve planned.”

“He’s got a gun, Beth.”

“Which he’s already shot you with.” She balled her fist and shook it at him. “Don’t make me knock you out.”