Her answer widened the fissure in his temper. No child, intentionally conceived, should be unwanted. “So the child is nothing but a tool for The Aegis. A pawn. And you’re nothing but a brood mare.”
“That’s a little harsh.”
“Then soften it for me.”
She took a step back, and he moved with her, keeping the pressure on. “I volunteered to save the world.”
“You volunteered to play whore for your colleagues,” he growled, taking a perverse pleasure in her gasp of outrage. “So here’s the deal. You will remain here until you give birth, and then you’ll leave the child with me while I decide your fate.”
“Go. To. Hell.” She doled out the words like rare Neethul throwing stars, each barbed and edged with acid.
“You took my seed through trickery. You won’t take my child, too.” He got down in her face. “Was it your idea? Or when The Aegis came up with the proposal, were you so desperate for a c*ck that you jumped at the chance to f**k me? How many men have you f**ked for your job? How often has The Aegis whored you out?”
She slapped him so hard he took a step back. “How dare you?”
“How dare I?” He snared her wrists and flattened her against the wall, although he tempered his strength, unwilling to jostle her. “Are you really going to play the self-righteous, wounded party? You stole from me, Regan. You stole my virginity, and you stole my seed. You and your colleagues plotted to take this innocent baby, conceived as a means to an end, and dump him when his usefulness was over.”
“That’s not true,” she ground out. “That means to an end makes him the most important person on the planet, even if it’s not in the way we expected.”
“He’s important because if he dies, my Seal breaks. But in the Aegis’s eyes, that’s the only reason he’s important. He was always intended to be a tool, and now he’s also a plan gone wrong.”
“Things might have gone wrong, but we’ll make it right. I promise you. He’ll have a mother and father who will love him, Thanatos. I’m giving him to Kynan and Gem. They’ll keep him safe from Pestilence and give him the home and life and family I can’t.”
Well, if that wasn’t just a punch to the gut. “I will give him a home and life and family.”
“You’re joking, right? Look around you, Horseman. You live in the middle of nowhere. You killed nearly everyone on the island. Are your vampires going to be his nannies? Are the souls in your armor going to rock him to sleep? And what happens if Uncle Pestilence drops by for a visit? Do you think he’s just going to let you raise this child in peace? Every evil being on the planet is going to try to find and kill this baby in order to break your Seal, and the first place they’ll look for him is here.” She inhaled deeply, more fuel for her rant. “Or what if Pestilence somehow finds where Limos has hidden her agimortus and breaks her Seal? With two broken, the other two will break in a domino effect, right? So yours will follow. What happens to the child then?”
If Ares’s and Thanatos’s Seals broke in the domino effect following the first two broken Seals, both Cara and Than’s son would have to deal with whatever being an agimortus involved.
And chances were that the “deal with” wouldn’t be pleasant. From what he’d seen of Pestilence, evil Horsemen were eager to wipe out all evidence of their happy pasts.
“If my Seal breaks, it won’t matter where he’s living. And I can handle everything else. Including Pestilence.”
“It won’t work, Than. We’ve got to keep this baby secret and safe. He’s going to Kynan.”
“No, he’s not.”
“You blind fool,” she spat. “This isn’t about you or me. It’s about what’s best for the baby.”
“Maybe you should have thought about that before you forced me to f**k you.” He hurled the crude words at her like a weapon, and her almost imperceptible flinch said his aim was true. But a split-second later, she recovered, her chin up in stubborn defiance.
“I didn’t force you. You said you wanted it.” She blinked hard, as if blinking back tears, but he knew better than that. Regan didn’t cry. “You said you wanted me more than you’d ever wanted anyone, and that you were going to give in.”
God help him, he had wanted her. And in truth, he wasn’t upset about the sex… he was pissed as hell at the deception. But he wasn’t ready to separate the two. “I was drugged.”
“Were you drugged when we got hot and heavy in your gym? When you tore off my underwear and got me off with your hand? When you came—twice—in mine?”
A hot fever broke out over his skin at the memory, and his c*ck twitched at her words. “That was different.”
“Well, how was I supposed to know? You were all over me. And then there was that … that Horsemen erotica book. The demon who wrote it bragged about how she’d hit the trifecta with you guys …” Regan blinked again. “How did she do that if you were a virgin?”
“My siblings and I can adjust memories. I made her think we’d had sex.”
Her breath hitched. “I didn’t know. If I had—”
“You’d what? You’d have given up your crazy scheme to take my seed?”
She stared at him for a long time before averting her gaze. “I’m sorry, Thanatos. I’d changed my mind. I didn’t want to go through with the plan,” she said, her eyes glued to the mattress. Maybe she was remembering what they’d done on it. “Not after I got to know you.”
“An attack of conscience?” He snorted. “I’d be a little more forgiving if you hadn’t run off. The truth would have gone a long way when I was lying there, exhausted and sated.”
Exhausted, yes … but now that he thought about it, sated … not so much. His virginity had been taken and his Seal hadn’t broken, so he’d been willing to go again. Hell, he’d have gone over and over if she’d climbed back on and rode him into the mattress.
“You wanted me to confess something like that after you threatened to break my neck? Telling you the truth wasn’t an option.”
Yeah, he remembered lying on the bed, pinned while his souls battled to free him from her soul-weapon, and telling her he’d wring her neck when he got free. Still, Regan could have spent a little more time explaining what had just happened.
“So your answer was to take off?”
“I admit,” she murmured, “that I could have handled it better, and if I could change things, I would, but I can’t.”
Could have handled it better? It couldn’t have been handled worse. “No, you can’t change anything, but you can make it up to me.”
Her head snapped up, her gold-spoked eyes flaring wide. “How?”
Smiling, he seized her shoulders and tugged her against him so he could speak directly into her ear. She wasn’t going to miss a word of this.
“You,” he said against the velvety perfection of her skin, “owe me eight months of life you stole from me. So starting now, you’re going to give it back.”
“I-I don’t know what you expect me to do.”
He pinched her earlobe with his teeth and inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of her nervousness and beneath it, Regan’s soft, feminine vanilla spice. The very air in his lungs turned to fire as lust surged through his veins. He might be furious with her, might even hate her. But his physical reaction to her was the same today as it was the very first time he laid eyes on her.
“You’re going to pleasure me.” He got a dark, wicked thrill from her sharp inhale. “Whenever I want. At my every whim.”
She jerked in his grip. “I don’t think—”
“No, you don’t think, do you. If you did, you wouldn’t have gotten yourself into this mess in the first place. So for the next eight and a half months, you’re going to be mine.” He nipped her jaw before soothing the spot with his tongue. “Every. Night.”
“You’re crazy.”
“No,” he said, as he released her and moved toward the door. “I’m pissed. There’s a difference. If I were crazy, you wouldn’t have nearly as much to fear.”
Seven
Every cell in Thanatos’s body was vibrating with the familiar need to gate himself to a scene of death and add to it. What wasn’t familiar was the new vibration, the one that throbbed in his groin.
He needed sex. Ares and Reseph had always been able to ease their destructive impulses by getting laid, which made sense, since their mother was a sex demon. But Than had never had that alternative, and instead of sex, he went straight for the kill.
Now, maybe, he had another option. The real question was which act—killing or sex—would give him the most satisfaction.
And the most guilt later.
He supposed it would depend on whom he killed or whom he had sex with.
You’re going to pleasure me. Whenever I want. At my every whim. Right. He should storm back into the bedroom and get going on those months Regan owed him.
Except that in the mood he was in he didn’t trust himself to be gentle… and even through his murder-lust haze, that frightened him a little.
“Bludrexe?”
Thanatos snarled, ready to take the head off the day-walker at the end of the hall. Before that happened, he clenched his fists at his sides. He demanded loyalty from his servants, and he got it because he’d never abused them. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—start now.
“What, Artur?”
“Should we prepare a room for your female?”
Thanatos was in Artur’s face before he even knew he’d moved. “She’s not my female.”
“Yes, sir,” Artur said, shrinking back.
“Fuck,” Than breathed. “I’m sorry. I’ve got a lot of shit on my mind.” Like the fact that Regan was certain one of his vampires had tried to kill her. His hackles rose at the very thought. “Regan said two of you were taken from here by The Aegis.”