Lord Regret's Price: A Jane Austen Space Opera, Book 3 (15 page)

He sat beside her, content to soak in her scent and presence until she leaned back in her chair. She hummed beneath her breath, no tune or melody, just a low sound as though her mind were purring with pleasure. “How interesting.”

He couldn’t resist chuckling. “Watch out, Xuanyuan. You’ve piqued the legendary Lady Doctor Wyre’s interest.”

She sniffed with distaste, but her lips twitched at the same time. “Why does everyone keep calling me that? You’re the legendary one.”

“I’m infamous. Not legendary.”

“There’s a difference?”

“But of course. I’m the man with more than a thousand marks to bloody my hands. If I were to show my face in Londonium, I’d be shot on sight.”

“So would I,” she said softly, her voice filled with an aching yearning for home.

He’d never felt homesick for the life he’d left behind. Not once. He’d rather kill everyone he’d ever known or met than face that nightmare again.

Even her?
A tiny voice whispered in his head.

Of course not
, he told himself firmly.
I’d never hurt Charlie. I love her.

But would she still love me if she knew the truth of who and what I am?

“The Dowager Empress showed me the great secret of Xuanyuan this evening. I don’t believe even she suspects the truth of what she showed me.”

Unease shot through him at her choice of words. He felt her so keenly he had to wonder how much of him she felt too. Could she read his thoughts? Maybe she’d already looked into the blackness of his soul and his worst fears had already been realized. But if she knew…

She wouldn’t sit here so calmly, her charming face open and warm. She even reached across the lacquered table to take his hand in hers. Her feminine hand in his felt like a small bird, helpless and trapped, while stalked by a dangerous beast.

“They have a hibernating dragon hidden away on a secret level of Xuanyuan. Supposedly only she knows of its existence, yet she claims that according to legend, Zijin will fall out of power entirely if the dragon dies.”

“Let me guess—she wants you to heal it because it’s dying and she fears her son will lose the Dragon Throne as a result.”

“Exactly. Preferably in time for a formal procession the Emperor must make in Bei-Jing to confirm his right to the throne. In only two days.”

“Talk about a deadline. Why doesn’t she simply go out and find another dragon to put in its place?”

“She claims they’re extinct.”

“Claims…?” He arched a brow, waiting, because he knew that tone of Charlie’s voice. That tone of amusement said she knew something that proved that Cixi was a liar. Or at least wrong.

“I took a sample of the beast’s DNA.” She lifted her gaze from their entwined fingers to his face. It was all he could do not to wince at the piercing stab of her gaze that struck straight to his heart. “It was once human.”

Still fighting to suppress his own fight-or-flight tendencies, it took him a moment to register her words. “Human? So some kind of shapeshifter?”

“Not exactly. It’s more like a human took in dragon DNA at some point and they…merged. Or vice versa. I’m honestly not sure which came first or how the injection of a different species’s genetic code happened.” She took a deep breath, her breasts moving with the intensity, as though a massive weight pressed on her chest, making it difficult to breathe. “It reminds me of what happened to the Razari. Some kind of mutation and merging of DNA.”

“They don’t have your technology.”

It wasn’t a question but she shook her head anyway. “No, there’s no foreign tech causing the mutation, as far as I can tell, and the dragon’s age has been well documented as over a thousand years old, long before we had the capabilities to develop such small microchips. It’s very strange, actually, that they’ve been able to accomplish so much, like harnessing a wormhole, yet there’s very little networking or communication that I’ve been able to tap into.

“None of the bugs I planted throughout Xuanyuan are reporting data. Only the one I left in the ship. Isn’t that odd? I wish I’d been able to plant something in the elevators between levels, but by then I was out of readily available nanobots. I didn’t want to play with my locket and make them suspicious. Somewhere in this massive floating station there are incredibly powerful mainframes, and I intend to find them. Only then will I know if Majel has already begun her attack.”

“Maybe Masters will learn something from the Emperor,” Sig said, looking down at the table but keeping his voice light. “Is he back yet?”

“Not yet.” Her voice was as carefully light as his. “It’s just you and I, as it was in the beginning. Though I love Gil dearly, I sometimes miss those early days when you came to me on Americus.”

Did she miss him, or something else? Like the sometimes violent way they’d made love.

It’d been a very long time since she’d tied him up, made him helpless and then slowly taken his life away while she brought him to climax. They hadn’t indulged that dark side of their desires since Gil had joined them.

“Is that what’s bothering you lately?” She tightened her grip on Sig’s hand, as though she was afraid if she didn’t hold him, he’d jump up and run.

He couldn’t deny that his muscles were tense, his thighs quivering. Whether with excitement or the urge to flee her questions, he didn’t know.

“You’re more distant. I understand that you’re protecting yourself, but from what? What can I do to help you, dearest?”

He wished he could explain the darkness…without admitting how much deeper that darkness went. He wished he could go back to those days when the worst thing he wanted was a little bondage. A little pain—his own, thank you very much. Not hers.

I can control it. I can ignore it. I don’t have to let that darkness out.

I don’t need it.

His stomach clenched so hard he couldn’t breathe. Fear, desire, nausea combined to make a roiling riot of emotion deep in the pit of his stomach. He did need it. He needed pain and death—to push back the emptiness spreading through his soul.

Not her pain. Not her death.

“I have everything I could possibly want,” he whispered in a hoarse voice. “I don’t need anything else.”

“Do you remember the first time I tied you up?”

He shuddered at the memory. He’d woken up in a strange place, so weak and helpless he hadn’t been able to lift his head. All he’d remembered was crushing pain, blood fountaining from his chest. He’d known he was dying, so to wake up again with her beautiful face etched with weary relief had been more than he could comprehend. Then to learn that she’d bound him to the bed to prevent him from hurting her or himself while he healed…

He’d been shocked when the realization had comforted and relaxed him instead of driving him into a killing rage.

“I keep wondering if I’d never tied you to the bed if we’d find ourselves here. That innocent attempt at safeguarding your health opened a door I didn’t even know was inside me. It must have always been there, but I had no idea, no desire to explore such things, until you.”

Her words destroyed him, even while his body thrilled to her admission. In many ways, this darkness was his alone to bear. “It’s my fault.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.” She squeezed his hand harder, her eyes narrowing on his face. “The seed was there in me, Sig. It took you to make it grow. So that seed was inside you too. I made it grow in you, but the seed had already been planted and sprouted, hadn’t it?”

That poisonous fruit had been planted in him as a boy. The first time he’d been forced to watch his mother punish his father. At first, she’d just humiliated him, verbally beating him down with words about how useless he was.
Useless dreamer
, that’s what she’d called him.

Then one day her insults hadn’t been enough. She’d struck his father in the face, and he could still see the flash of supreme pleasure on her face. All too quickly, the slaps had become fists. A hairbrush. Her riding crop. Each time she’d indulged that twisted need, it’d grown bigger, darker and more violent.

“Sig,” Charlie’s low voice made him flinch. He didn’t dare look up at her face. He didn’t want to see pity or, worse, revulsion. “I need to know what happened to plant that first seed.”

“No,” he ground out. He pulled back, but her grip was surprisingly strong. She stood and moved around the table. Before he could stand, she was in his lap, and he didn’t want to hurt her by dumping her onto the floor. That’s what he told himself, at least. He could have set her aside and strode out of the room, but Charlie had always had him wrapped around her delicate pinky.

Her fingers worked on his cravat, loosening the elaborate linen strip at his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut, determined to keep the ugly beast inside him chained so that she wouldn’t be hurt. “What are you afraid of?”

“You think you know me, but you don’t, Charlie.”

“Try me.”

“You know nothing about me.”

“I know you’re from a prominent Britannian House. Which one, I admit I don’t know, but I don’t care either. I know you’re the most infamous assassin in the galaxy. You like bondage and pain with edgy sex. I love you and you love me. What else matters?”

“I’m…damaged,” he finally forced out. “You have no idea.”

“I do. We’re all damaged by our pasts. Our love…”

“You don’t understand,” he broke in, finally opening his eyes to let her see the ragged darkness spreading in his gaze.

Her eyes flared and she drew in a sharp breath. Her fingers stilled on his cravat.

“You see?” he whispered, hating the look on her face, the way her bottom lip trembled. The legendary Lady Wyre was never shocked or scared. She certainly never cried. Yet her big eyes shimmered and her heart was beating so loud and fast that he could almost taste her pulse in his mouth. “I can usually kill to keep the darkness at bay, but it’s been too long since I’ve had a contract.”

Her fingers returned to loosening his cravat, opening up his shirt enough that she could slip her hand inside to stroke his chest. “How does killing a mark make you feel better?”

“It doesn’t make me feel better. I just…feel.”

She pressed her hand over his heart. In answer, a surge of power pulsed through that damaged organ, making it leap in his chest, as if every lady-created nanobot flooded toward her touch on his flesh. “You don’t feel this?”

“It’s not the same. It doesn’t sink into me. It’s like my skin is numb and cold and dead. It doesn’t touch my heart.”

She wasn’t offended by his words. In fact, a wicked smile curved her lips and she settled deeper into his lap with a wiggle of her hips that made his breath snag in his throat. “I see. Perhaps an experiment is in order. I must understand this anomaly. Shall I bind the subject for experimentation?”

He didn’t answer, but she didn’t need words. She must have noted the way his heart beat faster beneath her palm, how rapidly his eyes blinked and how hard he was beneath her.

Pulling the linen from his throat, she stood and moved around behind him, slowly enough that he could tell her to stop. Or he could simply rise and excuse himself with an exaggerated yawn. She was too polite and well mannered to even think of forcing anyone to do something to which they objected.

Yet he didn’t move a muscle. He couldn’t. It’d been weeks since he’d been entirely helpless for her. Since she’d held his life in the palm of her hand and decided whether he would live or die. Now, that was feeling, the ultimate feeling. Nothing felt as good as tiptoeing that fine line between life and death with her.

Wasn’t that what it came down to in the end? Each time he accepted a contract, he decided whether the person would walk away or never breathe again. That power was his. He could take the life—and the resulting money, although that didn’t provide motivation to him—or he could simply walk away. Unlike his spineless father who’d never walked away from his mother.

Unfair, he knew, especially considering the price his father had paid to save him.

He ought to walk away from her now, while he still could. He could save her from this. He could leave before he hurt her.

What was it that Cixi had said before?
Every man has his price.
Charlie had always been afraid someone would offer him enough money that he’d be persuaded to assassinate her. What would she think if she suspected it wouldn’t take a contract? As she bound his wrists together behind him, he shook with the knowledge that someday he might go too far. His need went deeper than he’d ever suspected.

I’m more damaged than I even feared.

Untying her wrap, she moved back in front of him but didn’t sink back onto his lap. “Do you know why I think you like to be bound and helpless?”

The silk wrap fell to the floor, revealing her luscious body. He’d kissed and stroked every inch of her, yet he’d never get his fill. His pulse thudded in his ears, reverberating through his skull in a deafening thunder that made it impossible to think or respond.

“You say I don’t know you, Sigmund Regret, but I do. You think you’re so dangerous that it’s safer for me if you’re bound.”

He flinched as if she’d struck him. “You’ve always been afraid of me.”

“Not exactly. More wary and respectful, as if I’d encountered a dangerous predator or a poisonous viper.”