Dreams of a Dark Warrior

he’d looked down at a woman like this. He cast his mind back, trying to remember the last time. …
    The night of his torture.
    At once, fury drowned out his lust. He shoved himself off her. “Do not touch me again, detrus.
Never
touch me.” He ran his hand over his face, then returned to his desk to call for Vincente. “Come remove her.”
    Apparently unaffected, she rose. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I should be going.” She feigned a yawn. “You’ve gotta head back to work and I’ve gotta head to jail. Big night for me. I’m planning to shiv someone for a bar of soap. I think we might have enough time for a quickie, though.”
    He cast her a withering look.
    “Nothing can stop us from sleeping together. We’re like magnets pulled to each other.”
    That was the thing about magnets—they didn’t get to choose what they were attracted to. “Valkyrie, you’re never going to have sex again. Not before you’re executed.”
    “Way to kill the mood there, Paddy.” She sidled closer, gazing up at him. “Now, Chase, I hope you won’t let this spat color your judgment about me. I’m usually good times. In fact, if you keep the terms of our deal, maybe I’ll tell you the dirty details of how you claimed my virginity in a berserkrage. How you tore off my dress and tossed me on a bed of furs to do things to me that I couldn’t even have imagined.”
    “You’ll tell me a story and I’ll spare you? You think I don’t see what you’re doing? I’ve read
Arabian Nights
.”
    “Call me Scheherazade, baby! Actually, she’s one tricksy bitch. Who, by the way, still owes me twenty gold pieces and a pound of sesame.” The Valkyrie had inched even closer until he could perceive the heat from her body, that addictive electricity. “You know I’m giving you good information. We could continue later, and I’d promise to behave for you. Or be your common whore. Gentleman’s choice.”
    Declan recalled Webb’s missive.
If I can’t torture her, then I have no choice but to see her again.
“I thought it was forbidden among your kind to talk to outsiders?”
    “You
are
one of us.”
    “Can you possibly comprehend how much that insults me?”
    “The truth cuts like a knife, boyo.”
    Vincente arrived, showing no reaction to the fact that the Valkyrie’s cuffs were now in front of her—or that she was blowing Declan a kiss good-bye.
    “Take her from here.”
    Without a word, the man escorted her out. But then, it wasn’t Vincente’s place to react, to do anything more than follow commands. And the man owed him.
    Months ago, Declan had caught him making repeated contact with a particular succubus. Since the Order provided no nourishment for her kind, she’d been withering away from sexual hunger—using everything in her power to lure him to free her. So she could rape the man and feed.
    Instead of erasing Vincente’s memory, Declan had held the lapse over the man’s head, ensuring his loyalty. At the time, he’d marveled that Vincente would risk his career over a female—much less a detrus.
    Now I was just rutting over a Valkyrie, desperate to see her breasts.
    When the door closed behind Vincente and his prisoner, Declan strode into his bathroom to stare at the mirror. Christ, were his eyes lighter?
    No, she’s got me imagining things. She’s a detrus—everything about her is foul, wrong.
    Yet still he was hard for her. He waited for the strain to hit him full-force, would relish the misery as an earned punishment.
    Waiting …
    Just thinking about taking her would be enough tosend that old anxiety skyrocketing. So he envisioned ripping her jeans down to her knees and shoving his cock into her tight little quim.
    Waiting …
    Nothing? He was tense because he needed to fuck, but there was no more anxiety than usual.
    In fact … it’d
lessened
.
    He choked back a crazed laugh. For whatever reason, be it entrancement or not, the strain had all but disappeared.
    Right time, right place, right … girl? Except for the fact that she wasn’t
human
! No, she was a murderer and a blood foe who would run screaming the minute she saw his unclothed body.
    Not to mention that he was duty-bound to imprison and eventually execute her.
    His shaft didn’t seem to care about all that. He scowled down at it. If he did stroke off now, then she would win. He refused. She was one of them. An abomination.
    They lure mortal men from their purpose. From
my
purpose.
To help him remember it, he tore off his