"At least you remember me this time." Oops. His bitterness was showing again. Better moderate his tone. "We're making progress."
Her eyelids narrowed to tiny slits, the thick fan of her lashes making her appear coy and innocent rather than perturbed. "You can leave. The situation is h-handled."
Her eyes watered, and her chin trembled.
Was she about to...cry?
Will murder that demon.
Can't. He couldn't kill the demon without killing Cameo.
He should act, anyway. No Cameo, no weakness.
His fingers twitched on the hilt of the kris.
Never again experience the bliss of her scent, her kiss? Never again delight in her touch? The prospect horrified him.
He tore his gaze from her and focused on the Amazons. "Why are you here, inciting my wrath?"
A black beauty calmed enough to reply, "Queen Nethandra...your marriage proposal..."
His rage sparked anew.
"Hold up." Cameo approached him, her hips swaying. A mating dance. While his men and the Amazons cried out, the sweet muskiness of his woman's scent enveloped him, testing the bounds of his control. "You proposed to this woman's queen? When? Tell me! If you got freaky with me while you were engaged to someone else..."
Was his little ray of sunshine jealous?
Primal possessiveness nearly burned his control to ash. "I have no betrothed. I merely sent an envoy to inquire of Nethandra's willingness to join her house to mine."
For a split second, relief stamped out her ever-present sorrow, and he had to fight the urge to pound his chest in triumph.
"Good," she said with a faux-causal air. "If you'd made me a cheater, I would have had to disembowel you."
Adorable. "You think you can defeat me?"
Her shoulders lifted in a casual shrug. "My usual method clearly wouldn't work on you," she said, quiet so no one else would hear her, "but there are more ways to take down a man."
"True." He spoke just as quietly. "Strip, and I'll willingly drop to my knees."
He expected her to balk, curse, something. Instead, she whispered, "Thanks to you, I'm practically naked already. Go ahead and drop." The words were a dare.
His lips twitched at the corners. "Practically isn't the same as definitely, now, is it?"
"True. You're definitely a pain in the ass."
He took a step toward her. "You like me this way."
Both the guards and Amazons watched him. Hands fisted, he forced his attention on the female warriors. "If your queen truly wished to create a union with me, she would have protected my people. Would have seen my forces as an extension of her own."
She bowed her head in shame. "The mistake is mine."
"If you wish a union," Cameo muttered to him, "you'll see her forces as an extension of your own and forgive her emissary's oversight."
What, she wanted him to wed the queen now?
Lazarus ran his tongue over his teeth and snapped his fingers. Limbs shook and leaves clapped as his men restrained the women and discarded their weapons. The Amazons remained subdued, putting up zero fight. Odd.
Lazarus opened his mind...and snorted. Because they'd failed to override his forces, they planned to topple his household from within, using poison they'd acquired from Viola.
Good luck with that.
"They swallowed bags of poison," he said. "Strings are attached to their teeth."
The Amazons gave a collective gasp of shock and horror.
"Remove the bags as urgently as possible," he added. "Take the Amazons to my dungeon. All but the leader." To her, he said, "Tell Nethandra what transpired today. If her apology pleases me, I'll allow her to live. If not..."
He let his words trail off, knowing the imagination could be more frightening than a threat.
"This is where we part." Cameo took a step backward, widening the distance between them.
Denial roared through his head. Not ready to lose her. Not yet.
Tense, he motioned Cameo onward. "I'll take you to the goddess...and the portal home."
Lazarus had passed through the portal only once. After Cameo returned home the first time, and his desire for her had overridden his common sense. He'd spent weeks trapped inside a dark, endless void. He'd had to fight his way free and ended up in a fiery spirit realm.
"Thank you, but I'll be fine on my own," she said. "No need to spend time with someone you dislike."
Still smarting about that, was she? "To open the portal, blood must be spilled, a sacrifice made. Do you know what kind of sacrifice?" He shook his head. "No, sunshine. You won't be fine on your own."
Her thoughts blasted into his awareness. No, no, had to be the demon's thoughts.
He never considered asking you to be his bride. You are no one's prize.
Cameo agreed with the fiend, and a muscle jumped beneath Lazarus's eye. How dare anyone think poorly of his woman--even the woman herself! He'd seen her fight. Girl had skills. Enemies had best beware. And she was smart. No one got the upper hand with her. Not even Lazarus. She was beautiful. Exceptionally so. No one compared.
Why would the demon push such a depressing conversation past Cameo's mental shield?
The answer came easily. To incite sorrow in Lazarus.
Misery was worse than he'd realized, and this was just another reason to despise the fiend. Could kill him in seconds...
The notion calmed Lazarus, even as it disconcerted him. He could kill Cameo in seconds, too. She wasn't safe. He wanted her safe.
Fool!
Her head canted to the side. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Like what?" Like you are the reason I breathe? "Like I'm hungry, and you are a smorgasbord of desserts?"
"Yes," she hissed.
"Because you are a smorgasbord of desserts." He chucked her under the chin. "You are a prize worthy of any man."
She shook a fist in his face, an action he adored. Her anger always thrilled him. "Stop reading my mind."
"Stop projecting." He stalked down the cobblestone path, calling over his shoulder, "This way."
Cameo raced to catch up with him. They walked side by side, the close proximity an agony and a pleasure. Torches lined the path, soft golden lights painting her with irresistible radiance.
Her eyes were molten, a sea of silvery fire. The night's warmth brushed her cheeks with an exquisite pink
flush. Her blood-red lips were lush and lickable, a temptation like no other and a special kind of torture. One kiss, they said. Satisfaction awaits.
"Just so you know," she grated, "I might have desired you before, but I resent you now."
"Might?" He laughed with smug assurance. "Your passion nearly burned me alive."
She sputtered, her memory loss making her unable to refute his claim.
Hoping to encourage her irritation and displace what remained of the misery, he took the lead and pushed a flowering branch out of the way only to release the branch before she passed by. The soft flower petals slapped her in the chest.
She glared at him. "You did that on purpose."
"No need to punish me. Your voice is punishment enough."
"That's it!" She hooked her hands around his neck and jerked, using the full force of her body. A body she then coiled around him, as deft as a sky serpent. Her weight and momentum toppled him.
The action was unexpected. The only reason it worked--of course.
Upon impact, she maintained her hold and rolled, forcing him to his back. He had no time to react. She straddled his chest, unsheathed one of her diamond daggers and pressed the tip into his carotid.
Instant hard-on. No one else had ever taken him to ground.
Proof she would only ever weaken him?
Instant soft-on.
One of her midnight brows arched, her usual misery edged with smug satisfaction. "You were saying?"
Such confidence. Such cunning. Was there any woman more beautiful?
With her hands otherwise occupied, she wouldn't be able to stop what he did with his own...
He should resist. A man didn't play with temptation; temptation played with him. Their association could not end well.
In that moment, he simply didn't care.
Lazarus gripped her by the waist, grunting as skin met heated skin. "So soft," he intoned. "So perfect."
A tremor rocked her against him. His hard-on returned with a vengeance.
With a hiss, she pressed the tip of her dagger deeper, drawing a bead of blood. Her jaw dropped. "You're bleeding. And your heart...I can feel its beat against my thigh. I don't understand. You're dead. You died. Didn't you?"
"I did. I'm not sure what sets me apart. I only know I'm not considered one of the living." Otherwise he would have returned to the mortal world when he'd passed through the portal.
As a child, he remembered his father telling him, "We are the last remaining descendants of Hydra. Our kind is not supposed to die. Not by fair means, and certainly not by foul."