Prince of Honor (House of Terriot Book 1) Read online

  Sylvia’s heartfelt words faded to a buzzing in his ears. Or was that the warning of doors about to open? He tried to move his feet, but they seemed so far away and resistant to his will. Then he was falling, not a graceless drop but a slow descent that just kept going.

  Tucked nearly out of sight on the long bench across the end of the car, Sylvia eased down, bringing her foolish rescuer with her to pillow his head on her lap, holding him as those awful raw coughs tore through him, bringing up the choking fluid. More afraid of the unseen injury than she’d been of their attackers, she turned him onto his side to open his airway then stroked the bristle of his hair to quiet him. “I’ll get you home. Don’t worry. I’ll get you home.”

  His hand nudged hers. Clutching it tight brought a surprising relief.

  As the surreal glare of the Strip flashed by, Sylvia turned thoughts from his survival to theirs. How was she going to make good on her promise? They had no money, no one they could trust. She’d only been to Las Vegas a few times to visit the exclusive night scene high above the city, not to scuttle like a cockroach hiding in the shadows of its dark underbelly.

  Her attention sharpened as the monorail slowed for its next stop. Curling protectively over Turow, who now lay very still, she heard the doors open and waited, watching for potential threat.

  None was apparent from the aging drag queen who dropped with a dramatic sigh onto an adjacent bench. Thin, gold Spandex-clad legs stretched out below a fluffy white faux-fur coat. Beneath the heavy makeup and flamboyant peach-colored wig framing seamless mahogany skin, it was hard to tell if he’d been a handsome man, but he made a gorgeous female.

  They exchanged long stares.

  “Honey, you look like ten miles of road under construction.”

  The gentle claim cut to the heart of Sylvia’s vanity. Suddenly aware of her appearance, she glanced down at the hurried choices she’d made in the darkJames’s white tailored shirt, now splotched with fresh and drying crimson, over a black demi-bra; those freshly laundered, though no less appalling, yoga pants over the Jimmy Cho heels she’d worn to dine out and flashy topaz earrings, her welcoming gift from her benefactor cum executioner. Cosmetics smeared, hair in tangled disarray, ten miles of road closed was probably more accurate.

  “I’ve had better days,” she admitted.

  “Shalimar.”

  Sylvia frowned. “I’m not wearing any perfume.”

  “My name,” he/she corrected. “Shalimar.”

  “Pretty. Sylvia.”

  “Old school. I like it. Looks like we’ve both had a long night.”

  “You aren’t just kidding.” Fatigue trembled in her voice, making her listener’s protective instincts kick in.

  “Anything a girlfriend could help you with?”

  A girlfriend. This stranger, who knew nothing of her and owed her less, offering more compassion than any of her lifelong pseudo family friends ever had. Tired, worn down to desperate necessity, Sylvia took a risk.

  “We need a place for the night. Someplace off the radar. Do you know of any?”

  “You got money, honey?” At her hesitation, the queen sighed. “Didn’t think so.” A heavily cat-eyed gaze studied Turow’s beaten and bloodied form. “I can’t afford no trouble.”

  “Just someplace for the night. No trouble.”

  “You got the look of folks on the run.”

  “Not from the police. It’s personal. Family problems.”

  A sympathetic nod. “Dangerous problems?”

  Sylvia didn’t try to deny it. “He’s hurt and can’t go any farther tonight. Please. I can’t leave him out on the street.” Her words choked on the emotion flooding into her eyes. “I’d pay you if I could, but we were robbed and—”

  “Are those stones real?”

  Seeing him covet Turow’s Terriot diamonds, Sylvia quickly shook her head. Shalimar sighed then his stare grew speculative again.

  “What size are those shoes?”

  “What?”

  “Honey, those heels are to die for!”

  “Tens.”

  “Done.” Shalimar stood. “This is our stop. Follow me.”

  Shalimar’s grim apartment building was several long blocks off the older part of the Strip. Turow almost helpless, Sylvia was grateful Shalimar proved far stronger than he looked. All those years studying dance, he confided, only to discover he didn’t have the height it took to be in one of the better lounge shows. She didn’t ask how he earned his living now. It couldn’t be any worse than how she earned hers.

  Two exhausting flights of stairs later, Turow sagged, shallow breaths gurgling, punctuated by quiet moans. His face burned feverishly beneath the touch of her palm. That he wouldn’t survive until daylight became a frightful concern.

  Leaving her to handle his burden, Shalimar crossed the living space, snapping on lights, revealing what looked like a backstage dressing room with its privacy screens draped in silks, scarves and feather boas, and an elaborate dressing table where most would put a TV. Sylvia got it. That was where his fantasies came to life, not on the screen. A small breakfast bar was covered with severed foam heads topped with fantastically styled and colored wigs.

  “The couch pulls out. It’s not terribly comfortable.” Shalimar swept that surface with his arm to collect an interesting assortment of undergarments and thigh-high stockings and a few drug and sex related party favors. “It has clean sheets on it.”

  Tossing the cushions to the side, he wrestled the thin mattress from inside the frame.

  “He’s kind of a mess,” Sylvia warned, easing Turow down to elicit groans from both him and the inadequate springs.

  “Don’t worry about it, honey. Those sheets have seen worse.”

  Sylvia didn’t care to imagine what.

  While Sylvia quieted Turow, removing his boots in hopes of making him more comfortable, Shalimar slipped behind one of the screens to quickly change . . . into a truly beautiful male.

  Hair cut close, eyes faintly outlined to exaggerate their almond shape, full lips glossed, he wore skinny jeans and a thin, baby-blue vee-neck sweater over glittery high tops. He eyed her shoes and sighed.

  “Pity my feet are too sore for those tonight. Kevin would have loved them on me.”

  “Your boyfriend?”

  “One can hope.” He nodded toward Turow. “Is he yours?”

  “One can dream,” she answered without a trace of the sarcasm she’d thought would coat those words.

  “He’d be lucky to have you.”

  Sylvia didn’t waste her breath arguing that ridiculous notion. No one had ever been fortunate to share her time or affection.

  Shalimar studied the clearly injured Turow as he tossed and panted on the edge of consciousness. “Maybe you should get him to a hospital.”

  “I have to get him home.”

  “Is it close by?”

  “A world away.”

  “Honey, you get some sleep. You look ready to drop.”

  Sylvia waved off that kindness. “I have to make sure he doesn’t try to get up and hurt himself.”

  Shalimar’s solution was a small pill. “Give him that. It’s nothing too strong, but it’ll keep him cruising on a nice quiet buzz so you can rest up, too.” He curled it into Sylvia’s palm. “It’s safe. I take ′em when I get wound up too tight. My guess is he’s a pretty tightly wound fella.”

  A rueful chuckle. “That, he is.” And he also wouldn’t like her taking away that edge.

  “There’s not much in the fridge, been a tight week, but you’re welcome to anything you can find. Not much to steal, but lock up when you leave, anyway. If luck holds out, I won’t be back until after the breakfast buffets close.” A sly wink.

  Overwhelmed, Sylvia barely managed a mystified, “I can’t thank you enough.”

  “Us girls gotta look out for one another.”

  Impulsively, Sylvia reached up to remove the pricy topaz earrings. “These will look fabulous with that sweater.”

  Shali
mar’s eyes rounded.

  Sylvia pushed them on him, wanting nothing of James’s. “Take them, please. Enjoy them. I never will.”

  Scooping up the elegant drops, he ran to the makeup mirror to slip the platinum wires through his ear, turning his head to and fro to admire the flash.

  “I’m getting the best of this deal,” he proclaimed. When he turned and saw the way Sylvia’s palm moved along Turow’s arm, he grinned. “Then again, maybe not.”

  Sending a kiss her way with a wave of an acrylic-tipped hand, Shalimar slipped out, locking the door behind him. Leaving Sylvia to argue briefly with her conscience before forcing the pill down her patient’s throat with a judicious sip of water.

  After wetting a cloth in the surprisingly modern bathroom, Sylvia sat on the edge of the pullout to gently bathe the sweat and gore from Turow’s face. Such a strong, if now scruffy, face. Her dream? So impossible now on so many levels.

  The cool rinse brought those penetrating blue eyes open, aware if now slightly glazed. He studied her for a long moment then murmured, “You’re still here.”

  “I said I would be. Why would you think I’d leave you?”

  A soft sigh. “I’ve always been easy to leave behind.” Before she could question that mild statement, he glanced about. “Where’s here?”

  “Someplace safe until morning, until you rest up and get stronger.”

  "I should be healed up enough by then." His eyes slipped shut only to open again with renewed focus. “You look tired, too.”

  “I am tired. Maybe I’ll just stretch out next to you and close my eyes for a minute.”

  His arm flopped wide, opening a spot beside him too inviting to ignore. When she settled atop the creaking bed, he drew her in close to the welcoming heat of his body, his head turning so that his nose and mouth brushed her hair. Another heavy sigh that became a low rumble which at first she thought was a moan. Until she caught a faint tune.

  “What are you humming?”

  “What?”

  “That song. What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” he muttered, buzzing nicely along with Shalimar's assistance. "Something I heard someplace."

  “I thought you didn’t like music.”

  “I like music.”

  “I’ve never seen you dance.” He’d always remained on the fringe of their family revelries, a stoic, quiet sentinel.

  “Not to their kind of music.”

  She took advantage of the moment, and the drug, to discover more about him.

  “You don’t like rock? What then? Metal?” A headshake. “Techno?” Another negative. “Country? I know. Show tunes. You like show tunes, don’t you?”

  An amused noise. “I don’t dislike them.”

  “Will you dance with me some day?”

  “Someday.”

  His lips grazed her ear and he went still, breathing softly and steadily into the lull of the drug.

  “Someday,” she repeated quietly, head nestling into his shoulder, asleep before her exhale completed.

  Sylvia woke with a start, the room unfamiliar but not the touch roving slowly over her body. Someone had certainly found his second wind!

  For a moment she just listened to him breathe, the sound soft but strong, with none of the terrifying gurgling from only hours before. Shifter males had amazing regenerative powers, able to heal sometimes as quickly as overnight. Perhaps knocking him out with Shalimar’s little helper had hurried that process along. But to this degree?

  She remained still, heart jumping to a hurried beat beneath the weight of his hand, breath shaking from the strength of a response she feared almost as much as his startling words.

  “It’s time to seal our bond.”

  Struggling with both objection and panic, she blurted, “Now? You can’t be serious.”

  But he was. There was no mistaking the proof of his intentions prodding against her hip. A sound suspiciously like a throaty growl rumbled low in his chest. His beast awakening, the change hastening the return of his strength and prowess.

  “Why? Why do this?" she demanded in a rush. "You don’t want to be tied for eternity to a female like me? I’ll hurt you. I’ll destroy you! Think about what you’re doing!”

  “I’ve never thought of anything else.” So calm, so sure. So resolute. She struck out at that finality.

  “So this is how you plan to punish me for rejecting you?”

  “I think the punishment will go both ways.”

  That quietly-spoken truth shattered her. “Please, Row. I saved your life! Just let me go.”

  “I can’t.” Then stronger. “I won’t.”

  Delay. She needed time. She needed to think of an argument to sway him from this disastrous course. “You have to do this now? When you’re half dead?”

  “Better now than before I’m all dead and can’t protect you with my mark.”

  How logical. How like Turow to find such cold practicality in the middle of a proposition.

  Two could play the common sense card.

  “Protect me?” she cried. “You fool! It won’t protect me if you’re not beside me. Cale will think I seduced you then killed you. How will that help me?”

  His palm stroked down the outline of her form, skimming her waist, rubbing over her hip, thumb catching on the waistband of her pants to slowly, purposefully pull them down.

  “Then I’m going to have to survive. Straddle me.”

  An order not meant to be refused.

  A traitorous part of her, that part beating insistently within her chest and between her legs, didn’t want to deny his command.

  She wiggled free of her bottoms and slid tentatively astride him. There was nothing unhealthy about the thick ridge she rode. Palms braced on either side of his head, she leaned over him, mesmerized by the hot blue flame of his stare, suddenly afraid of him as never before. This wasn’t the steady, patient Turow who accepted but never demanded. This was a Terriot prince determined to claim his due. And by her vow, that was her.

  “Free me.”

  Helplessly, she lowered an unsteady hand to draw down his zipper, feeling him pulse with an explosive power beneath her palm. She sat back to bare his hips and impossibly massive sex. What the hell had inflated him to such alarming proportions?

  Her eyes adjusting to the low light, she realized this was a Turow she’d never seen or lain with before. Power, harsh and animalistic, pounded from him, bulking up his already amazingly cut build into something frightening. His attractive, square-jawed features began to change, heavy brows lowering, cheek bones broadening, jutting, facial hair thickening. This was the beast lying dormant inside their males until times of battle rage or claiming lust.

  And he terrified her.

  A stranger’s growl. “Kiss me.”

  She trembled as she obeyed, tasting a familiar pleasure on his lips until the feel of lengthening canines had her drawing away in apprehension.

  His hands cuffed her forearms, preventing her from escape. That rough voice promised, “I won’t hurt you,” but she knew better.

  “That’s a lie. I know what you’re going to do.”

  He was going to pulverize her insides with that mammoth thing between his legs. He was going to tear her flesh with the sharp fangs now showing between his parted lips. There’d be pain and blood and mutilation of her unblemished skin, and worse, the surrender of her freedom, the humbling of her will.

  Her mother had warned her, had cautioned her to never lose control of who she was to the whim or wants of any male.

  But if she tried to escape this . . . him . . . would he chase her down and take her where she fell? After teasing him for years with what he could never hope to have, was this to be his revenge?

  His thumbnails drew slowly, lightly up her thighs, quickening an inner tremor as they skimmed her belly, skirting her ribcage on their way to the straps of her bra. Slicing through them to free her breasts for the palming of huge hands. She shuddered involuntarily.

  “I’m n
ot going to take you against your will,” he told her

  in that scary, deep voice. “You’re going to come to me.”

  She almost laughed at the impossibility. Until he lightly pinched her nipples to attention, sending a shiver to her core.

  “Come to me.”

  Cautiously, curiously, she let her fear fall away. This was Turow Terriot who’d stepped beyond the boundaries of his shyness and restraint to ask for her. Who’d endured a torment of ridicule and conscience to protect her questionable honor and preserve her life, had fought for her and now, again, left the choice to her. He wouldn’t take it from her.

  She’d have to submit willingly.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Syl.”

  He was the only one other than Cale who shortened her name that way. Before, it had always annoyed her, the familiarity stripping away the distance she preferred to keep between herself and others. Now, that intimacy did the opposite, drawing her closer, to where outside influence held no sway.

  “Syl, let me protect you. I swear, on my life, no one will ever harm you.”

  She believed him.

  And she surrendered.

  She touched his face, his bold, beast face, reveling in the strength she’d always known dwelt within him. She touched his mouth, first with her fingertips, feeling the fierce cut of his teeth beneath the yielding softness of his lips, then with her own, slowly, prudently, until his tongue touched and mated with hers. A fierce vibration shook through him, harsh, hungry. Exciting. Oh, he was exciting, barely restrained, dangerous and hers to control, if she could.

  But of course she could.

  “Turow.”

  The whisper of his name brought both heat and tenderness to his fiery gaze, calling him on his promises, pledging her compliance. Speaking of her desire for him.

  She was unprepared for the clamp of his hands on the backs of her thighs.

  “I need to taste you.”

  With that rough growl, he yanked her up and over him, to feast ravenously on her female flesh, tongue lapping, thrusting, devouring the last of her inhibitions until she came wildly, noisily. Gloriously. Rattling the couch springs the way he shook her to the soul.