Burning for Love Read online

  “Did she succeed?” Rissa asked curious. “I mean, did she ever marry again?”

  James shook his head, which caused the image on the wall to waver momentarily.

  “No. The diary went on for many years and I saw no mention of Queen Lola ever marrying again after her husband’s death. She was like a Kindred in that respect—we also mate for life. Well, those of us who have emotions and call a female as a bride, do anyway,” he added. “But the point is—she found a way to control her Heat Cycle and to keep from accepting unwanted suitors. Do you see why I showed you these passages, Princess?”

  “Of course I see,” Rissa said. “It’s just that…I have been taught that…that touching one’s forbidden area is so very wrong.”

  “You were taught that on purpose, I think,” James remarked. “The people in charge here at Court know that as long as you don’t control your Heat Cycle, they control your life. But if you take control of your Cycle…”

  “I’ll have more control over my own life,” Rissa finished for him. She nibbled her bottom lip. “You have given me much to think about, James. But I must consider it carefully. It is not easy to overcome the teachings of a lifetime, you know.”

  “I know, Princess.” His deep voice was grim. “Just don’t consider for too long. We need a solution soon—your life may depend on it.”

  Rissa feared that he was right. And yet, how could she do what he was asking?

  She didn’t know but she had no more time to think about it now. It was time to get ready for the State Dinner tonight and there would be dancing afterwards.

  And through all of it, she would have to be with the odious Duke Grabbington. Ugh.

  22

  “Is there something wrong with your Chastity Wire, girl? Why is it not hissing and crackling as it usually does?” Lady Mildew demanded, as she pointed the remote at the silver wire around Rissa’s waist.

  Rissa bit her lip. Though James had been able to re-lock the Chastity Wire around her waist for appearances sake, he had been unable to make it work again. In his haste to get it off her earlier, his robot hand had shorted it out completely and now it was little more than a bit of jewelry with no functional value.

  But she couldn’t let Lady Mildew know that.

  “It is hissing and crackling, Lady Mildew,” she said quickly. She winced and jerked her hips, as she always did when the wire shocked her. “Ow! Maybe you simply cannot hear it because you are going deaf,” she suggested sweetly.

  “I’m not going deaf, girl!” Lady Mildew snapped. “I know what I hear and what I don’t hear!”

  “Lady Mildew, could you please hurry and take the wire off?” James interrupted. “I fear that the Princess is overheating and you would not wish to be close to her if she suddenly combusted.”

  Lady Mildew’s eyes widened and she gave a brief, jerking nod of her head.

  “All right then—true enough,” she muttered. She pointed the remote at the Chastity Wire again and it unlocked.

  Rissa shed the wire gratefully and quickly climbed into the tub filled with icy water. She might have been pretending about the Chastity Wire still being functional, but she was deadly serious about needing to get cooled down. James hadn’t been lying when he’d said she was overheating.

  It was having to sit beside that awful Duke Grabbington at dinner and then dance with him all night, she thought resentfully, as she settled into the icy water and watched the steam rise from her heated skin. Now that she was more aware of the link her emotions had to her Heat Cycle, she knew where to place the blame for her current rise in temperature.

  I shouldn’t have let him get to me, she thought, as James scrubbed her all over with the long-handled brush. I should not have allowed him to make me so upset that my Cycle went into ‘overdrive,’ as James puts it.

  Yet, the Duke and his nasty comments had been almost impossible to ignore. The whole night through, Rissa had been speaking as little as possible to him. But her near-silent treatment seemed only to encourage the disgusting Duke in his disparaging and offensive remarks.

  “How I shall enjoy slaking your Heat, my dear,” he’d said to Rissa as they danced while he—holding her much too tightly—breathed in her face with his disgusting Port and wet cigarillos reek. “I shall strip you naked and do whatever I like to your lovely little body!”

  “You are mistaken, Sir,” Rissa had replied coldly. “Such disgusting things as you describe will never happen. I will never take you for my husband.”

  “But I shall take you for my wife,” the Duke had declared. “Why, my dear Princess—you appear to be overheating,” he had added, doubtless taking in her flushed cheeks and panting breath. “How long before your Heat Cycle overcomes you and you come begging to my door?”

  Indeed, she had been overheating, Rissa acknowledged ruefully. For no matter how she tried to let his nasty remarks roll of her back, she couldn’t seem to ignore him completely. The verbal picture he painted of their supposed upcoming marriage was so very upsetting, she could feel her emotions and her heat rising at the same time.

  She had looked desperately for James as the Duke described how he would take the upper hand in their marriage, forcing her to wait until she was nearly burned to death and begging him on her knees before he helped to slake her heat.

  “I shall hold the upper hand in our marriage, dear Princess,” he had been saying confidently, his mustaches twitching like eager tails at either corner of his mouth. “You might think to rule the planet, but I shall rule you—all by virtue of that troublesome Heat Cycle of yours!”

  James had been standing on the side of the dance floor, glaring at the Duke and watching carefully for any lapses in decorum. But though Duke Grabbington held her too tightly and whispered dirty, disgusting things in her ear, he did not actually take any liberties that would allow the big Kindred to come charging in to rescue her. So there was nothing Rissa could do but keep dancing, even as she felt herself getting more and more upset and overheated.

  He will never rule me—never own me like he thinks he will, she told herself angrily, as she submerged her soapy limbs in the water as James instructed. How dare he think he can say such horrid things to me and get away with it?

  And how could she bear another whole month of such nastiness? Not to mention, how would she keep from overheating?

  “Princess, I can tell you’re still upset about tonight but you must calm down in order to cool down,” James murmured in her ear, as he continued to scrub her with the long-handled brush.

  “What’s that you’re saying?” Lady Mildew demanded, glaring at them both. “Mind you scrub betwixt her legs, now, Sir Robot,” she continued, glaring at James. “It is the dirtiest part of her and must be punished!”

  “I would never presume to punish the Princess—and I wouldn’t think you would either, Lady Mildew,” James growled. “However, in the interest of cleanliness…” He looked at Rissa. “Your Highness, would you please spread your legs so that I can scrub you properly?”

  Rissa bit her lip. She couldn’t help remembering the way Lady Mildew had scrubbed her so hard with the metal-tipped bristles of the other brush. Though she had only scrubbed the outside of Rissa’s mound, the area was still sensitive and hurt for hours afterwards.

  But James seemed to understand what was bothering her. His blue eyes went soft and he murmured,

  “Please don’t worry, Princess—you know I’ll be gentle. I would never hurt you.”

  There was truth in his words that Rissa felt in her bones. Shyly, she ducked her head and murmured,

  “All right, Sir James.”

  Then she parted her thighs for him, just as he had asked.

  True to his word, James used the soft-bristled brush very lightly on the top of her mound and her outer lips. Instead of the harsh scrubbing she was used to, Rissa felt a gentle tickling that was somehow…intriguing. She had never felt anything but pain from her forbidden area—both in the form of the sharp shocks the Chastity wire delive
red and the abrasive rubbing of the metal tipped bristles against her sensitive flesh. So this was a new sensation indeed.

  “Is this all right?” James murmured, looking into her eyes as he continued to use the long-handled scrub brush very lightly between her legs. “I’m not hurting you, am I, my Lady?”

  “N-no.” For some reason, Rissa’s voice sounded breathless in her own ears as they locked gazes and he continued to wash her. “I…you are not hurting me, Sir James.”

  “Good,” he growled softly. “Because I would never want to injure such a sensitive area.”

  “No, no, no!” Lady Mildew exclaimed, breaking the moment that had somehow grown between them. “That is not the way to scrub that dirty girl at all! She must be punished, I tell you! She must be scrubbed within an inch of her life! Betwixt her legs is the dirtiest, filthiest part of her!”

  “I do not agree with you, Lady Mildew,” James said coldly. “And I believe this bath time is over, since the Princess is clean and her heat has been cooled.”

  Lady Mildew was still angry and spluttering as he got Rissa out of the tub and dried her off thoroughly with a large, fluffy towel. But since James continued to ignore her old chaperone, Rissa was determined to do the same.

  “Have the goodness to reattach my Chastity wire, please, Lady Mildew,” she said coolly, stepped in front of her and holding open her towel. “I am most fatigued from tonight’s ball and I would like to get some sleep.”

  The sour look on the other woman’s face would have curdled fresh milk, but she finally snapped the silver wire back in place and pointed the remote at it to turn it back on. Which of course, it failed to do since the device seemed to be permanently broken.

  “Oh! Ouch!” Rissa gasped, pretending that the wire was shocking her. “I must still be damp from the bath—that’s hurts!”

  A look of satisfaction came over Lady Mildew’s face.

  “Serves you right, you dirty girl!” she snapped. “Now get to bed. And mind you don’t reach between your legs, as I’m sure you’ve a mind to!”

  “I couldn’t even if I wanted to!” Rissa protested, forgetting for a moment that the Chastity Wire no longer prevented her. “Why do you always think the worst of me, Lady Mildew?” she demanded.

  “Because you are the worst, dirtiest, filthiest girl I ever encountered in my whole long life!” her old chaperone snarled. “Now, I must go. Get to bed and try to keep your hands where they belong.”

  Then she stumped out of Rissa’s rooms, leaving her feeling almost as bad as she had after dancing with the Duke.

  23

  “Princess, you can’t listen to her.”

  It was clear to James that the old female’s words had deeply affected Princess Ka’rissa.

  She looked up at him with wounded eyes.

  “But what if she’s right? What if I am a dirty, disgusting girl?”

  “You’re not,” James said firmly. He wished there was a way to get rid of Lady Mildew completely. It made him so angry when she upset the Princess and made her feel bad about herself!

  Then he realized what he had just thought—angry? Was he having an emotion? Was his damper failing him?

  Surely not, he told himself. I’m just trying to protect the Princess—that’s my mission. Of course any threat to her mental wellbeing is unacceptable.

  “Have you considered,” he said to Princess Ka’rissa. “That the reason you’ve been taught that you are ‘bad’ or ‘dirty’ is to keep you from touching yourself, thereby keeping you under the thumb of the people who are trying to control you through your Heat Cycle?”

  Ka’rissa nibbled her bottom lip, her big, amber-brown eyes filled with uncertainty.

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I think it’s highly possible,” James said grimly. “Or it could be that Lady Mildew is simply raising you the way that she was raised. Maybe she was taught to believe that a female is inherently dirty between her thighs—while nothing could be farther from the truth.”

  “Really?” The Princess still looked uncertain. “What…how do the Kindred view that…that area?” she asked softly.

  “With great reverence,” James answered seriously. “My people believe that a female’s sex is one of the most beautiful parts of her.”

  “Beautiful?” Ka’rissa shook her head. “Really?”

  “Beautiful inside and out,” James assured her. Though he had almost no physical experience with females himself, he was, at his core, Kindred. It was in his DNA to revere females and appreciate their feminine beauty—something he found very easy to do where the petite, curvy little Princess was concerned.

  “Beautiful inside?” She was still looking at him with a mixture of both skepticism and hope. “But how can you be sure that I would be beautiful inside, James? I do not even know what…what I look like there. Inside my…my nether lips, I mean,” she added, her voice dropping to a shameful whisper.

  Again, James felt himself getting angry—it was a feeling that rose in his chest and made his hands ball into fists and his eyes feel hot and red. It was the same feeling he’d gotten while watching that bastard, Duke Grabbington, holding Ka’rissa too tightly on the dance floor.

  This new, strong emotion—if it was an emotion—wasn’t directed at the Princess, of course. He was angry at Lady Mildew and the whole society of Regalia Five which taught that a woman was somehow less than a man, that she was dirty and disgusting in the spot where she was actually most beautiful and feminine. It seemed wrong to him—wrong and reprehensible—to make a female feel ashamed of something that should be a natural, normal part of her body. Not to mention shaming her and making her feel guilty for wanting to explore that part and bring herself pleasure.

  “James?” Princess Ka’rissa touched his arm, pulling him out of the strange new feelings that seemed to be swamping him. “Are you quite all right?” she asked softly. “Your face…it’s so very grim.”

  “I just want you to be all right,” James told her. He took a deep, calming breath, centering himself and reminding himself that he was a Dark Kindred, with no illogical emotions. All these sensations were just a result of his desire to protect the Princess, that was all.

  “I am all right,” Ka’rissa whispered, but she sounded doubtful. “I…that is, I think I am,” she added.

  “Are you?” James demanded, frowning at her. “Are you really well, Ka’rissa?”

  “No,” she admitted at last, in a small voice. “No, I…I guess that I am not.” She sighed deeply. “The things that awful Duke Grabbington was saying to me tonight—”

  “What was he saying?” James’s voice dropped to a low, ominous growl and his hands began to curl into fists again.

  “Just that he would rule me through my Heat Cycle and make me beg him to slake my Heat,” she said quickly and made a face. “Ugh—I can’t stand him! I really would rather go up in flames than let that disgusting man touch me!”

  “I would rather you didn’t go up in flames,” James told her, frowning. “I think it would be much better if you took control of your Heat Cycle yourself, Princess.”

  She bit her lip, looking up at him with shy hope in her eyes.

  “Do you really think I can?”

  “I know you can,” James said firmly. “But you have to forget the lies you’ve been told your whole life and take charge of your own body.”

  “I want to, James.” Her voice grew stronger. “I really do—especially after dealing with the Duke all night long. I’d go mad if I had to truly take him as a husband. But, well, I hardly know where to start. Could…” She looked down at her hands. “Would you help me?” she asked at last, shyly.

  The anger was gone and now James felt as though something was filling his chest with warmth and sunlight. The thought that she trusted him to help her—that she wanted him to touch her… Well, he had no words to describe it. He only knew that he wanted to be gentle with her, to not scare her, to help her take control of her Heat Cycle and learn to discover her
feminine core—that part of herself that had been so maligned her entire life.

  “Of course, I’ll help you, Princess,” he murmured. “Come on, let’s go to the bedchamber where we can get more comfortable.”

  24

  Rissa wasn’t sure what to expect as she followed the big Kindred into her bedchamber. He took something from her dressing table and then settled himself against the padded headboard and spread his legs.

  “Come here, Princess,” he rumbled, patting the place between his thighs, which were slightly spread. “Sit with me and let’s see what we can do.”

  Rissa bit her lip.

  “Should…should I put on my nightdress first?” she asked, uncertainly.

  He shook his head.

  “It will only get in the way. You can keep the towel on, if you want to, but we’re going to open it up so that I can reach you and you can reach yourself.”

  This felt both naughty and dangerous to Rissa, but she trusted the big Kindred—trusted him with her life and her reputation too. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt or ruin her, she was certain of it. And she had asked for his help.

  “All right,” she said and climbed into the bed with him.

  “Good, now lean back against me,” James patted his broad, muscular chest invitingly. He had taken off his shirt and boots, which meant that he had on only his tight black leather trousers. His bare chest was mouthwatering, Rissa couldn’t help thinking. Keeping her towel wrapped around her, she leaned back against him, just as he had asked.

  “What…what are you going to do to me?” she asked, turning her head to look over her shoulder at him.

  “Nothing you don’t want me to,” James rumbled reassuringly. “First, I want to introduce you to a part of yourself you barely know at all. Princess, will you please open your towel and spread your legs for me?”

  Rissa’s heart was hammering but not with fright. There was another emotion filling her, though she hardly knew how to name it. At the tips of her breasts, her peaks were getting warm and tingly and between her legs she felt the same thing.