Byrne closed his eyes. That was how he would let her go. By knowing what he would do to her if he did not.

Chapter 15.

Veils of purple and white silk danced around Byrne, drawing him into the palace. From the mosaics and the archways he could see he had returned to the ancient lands, where dark men fought with enormous curved blades and kept their women locked up in seraglios.

Patchouli-scented smoke drifted around him as the intricately knotted carpet beneath his feet lifted him into the air. It flew him through corridors of golden stone and blackened woods until it gently landed in front of an arch in the shape of a woman's form.

Byrne stepped off the carpet and passed through the arch. Inside he saw a room of braziers and pillows, incense and fountains.

Stately palms grew from enormous earthen pots to spread their arching green fronds against the sun, for there was no ceiling.

He thought the room empty until he saw her in one corner, almost hidden by stacks of pearl-covered books.

Jayr?

She occupied a plain narrow bed, her long legs bare, only a soft old leine covering her body. The material was so thin he could see the dark circles of her nipples beneath it. Pearls glinted from the gores in her sleeves as she turned a page in one of the priceless books. Her hair, shadows spun with moonlight, spilled over her shoulders and trailed down to her hips.

If nothing else, the hair told Byrne he was in a dream. He moved forward until he stood beside the bed. "What are you reading?"

His seneschal spared him a glance. "Love poems." She drew her finger down the page, lingered on a line, and then closed the book and her eyes. "They speak the language I cannot."

Byrne bent and picked up one of the books, but the pages in it were blank, gold leaf polished to a mirror finish. "Is that all you do here? Read poetry books with no words in them?"

"I write the words with my eyes." She turned over on her stomach and rested her cheek against her pillow. "I read them with my heart." She smiled up at him. "You are not really here, either."

"I am not?" Byrne sat down beside her.

She turned onto her side, and the leine slipped down, exposing her breasts. "I am wishing you here." She looked down and grimaced, tugging the nightdress up to cover herself.

The front other leine had also ridden up, revealing her bare legs. Byrne caressed the long line of her thigh, feeling the muscles tighten against his palm. "What am I to do in your dream?"

She shook her head. "You are the master here. You must tell me what I am to do."

That was a temptation he could not refuse.

"You told me that you pleasure yourself, lass." Byrne's gaze drifted down the length of her body. "Show me how you bring yourself."

Her eyes went wide. "I cannot do that."

"Since you told me, I've imagined it a hundred times. A thousand." He stretched out beside her. "I would like to see it this once."

Jayr's eyes closed. "It is shameful."

"Is it now." He chuckled. "All the times I have done it, I never thought so."

She sat up, going still when she saw him unfastening the front of his trousers. "What are you doing?"

"Showing you first. You see how hard you have made me?" He tugged the curving, erect organ out and fisted it. "It took but a glimpse of your pretty tits."

"I did that?" She swallowed and stared at the reddened, swollen head of his penis. "I should send for some women."

"I don't want them. I want to see you. You will lie back and show me what you do when you pleasure yourself," he said. When she didn't move, he added, "You are sworn to obey me, Jayr."

Her expression turned anguished. "Even in my dreams?"

"Especially in your dreams. Dinnae be afraid, lass. No one will ever know what we do here." He stroked his hand up and down. "You wouldnae leave me to do this alone, would you?"

Awkward now, she reclined and stared up at the erotic tapestry over their heads. "I have never been watched."

"One night, while you are sleeping, you lover will slip into your room. He will hide himself in the shadows when you wake with his name on your lips." He ducked his head so he could whisper the rest against her ear. "He will watch as you push away the blankets and caress yourself with your hands. Show me what he will see."

Her gaze locked with his. "You will laugh at me."

"No, lass," he said, his voice going deep. "Never will I do that to you."

She took a deep breath, as if to brace herself, and then clasped her hands on either side of her neck.

"Tell me what you are thinking," he urged.

"I think of you," she whispered, stroking her thumbs across the narrow bridge of her collarbones. Slowly she brought her fingers down, raking her nails over her skin. "I pretend my hands are yours, and that you are touching me so. I feel your teeth piercing me, your tongue licking me."

Byrne's cock twitched as he watched her gently cup her breasts. "My bite arouses you."

"As much as a kiss," she murmured, spreading her fingers over the small mounds and palming her nipples. "More so when I touch myself here. I think of your mouth on my breasts." She pinched her puckered nipples. "Suckling on me, taking my blood and soothing the aching and longing. You make them twine inside me."Heat surged through him. Her hands moved like shivering flowers. "Go on, lass."

She seemed mesmerized by the motion of his hand as he worked it up and down, her own hand unconsciously echoing his rhythm as she cupped and massaged her breast. Her left hand moved away from the ruddy peak it was tugging to inch down her side, until it lay just above the soft, bare petals of her mound.

"Sometimes I think of that day when you were under me, holding my hips and bringing me to your mouth," she said, her voice uneven. "When I do, I throb as if it were happening again. As if you were kissing me in truth." She parted her thighs and covered herself with her hand. "Here."

"Wider," he said, his voice growing hoarse. "Bend your knees. Let me see again where I kissed you."

Her breasts rose and fell on ragged breaths as her legs shifted. Her heels indented the sheets beneath her as she drew her feet up and separated her legs, so slowly Byrne thought he might go over just watching her long, tight muscles quiver. Then she pulled her hand back, tracing over the plump, slick gateway to her cunt. It had flowered open, displaying her treasures, the sheen of her need, the tip of her jewel of pleasure at the top of her sex. It swelled with tiny pulses, with her heartbeat, a sight so erotic his mouth went dry.

"I kissed you," he said, bending forward until his breath touched the soft flesh framing the jewel. "How? Where?"

"Your lips moved across me." She touched her folds, rubbing them with a gliding touch. "You pressed your tongue against me.

Inside me."

He remembered, dimly, her struggles in the pit. "Did you like how it felt?"

"It frightened me. I have never felt such a thing. Then it took me over and possessed me." Her fingertips grazed the narrow slit, making it open for an instant. "You rubbed your tongue here, against this." She edged her thumb closer to the pearl protruding from her folds. "It felt like satin brocade."

Byrne wanted nothing more than to put his mouth to her again, to fuck her with his tongue until she screamed with pleasure.

"Show me how it was. Play with it for me."

Her fingers moved, faltered. "I cannot do any more. It is too-"

"You can for me." He jerked his fist, feeling his balls drawing up tight between his own legs. "Show me."

Her eyelids fell, but only for a moment. As soon as her fingertips stroked over her jewel, a moan escaped her lips, and the muscles of her legs turned to cords. She touched herself lightly, with a circling, pressing motion that became shorter and more urgent with every passing moment. Her sex went from damp to wet, reddening and puffing as she tormented herself.

Something like a spring coiled in Byrne's groin. He straightened, using the longest, hardest strokes he could on the straining length of his cock.

"I am going to spill myself on your pretty tits," he told her, the words bursting from him. "Now you bring yourself for me. Now."

Jayr's back arched as she pressed the heel of her hand against her slit, her long body shaking with the force of coming, her hands falling limp and motionless to her sides. Byrne uttered a deep groan as his cock jerked, almost recoiling with the force of the stream jetting from it. His ejaculate painted her breasts with long, thick ribbons of cream that seemed as if they would never end, until he felt the last surge coming through him.

"So warm." Jayr's hand stroked across her breasts, rubbing his semen into her skin.

He changed the angle of his penis, spilling himself onto her cunt. As the last of his seed jetted against her jewel, her hips jerked and she cried out, shaking as he brought her again.

Byrne flung his head back, his skull slamming into cold stone. Black velvet enfolded Jayr and the seraglio, pushing him back, past the archway and the white and purple veils into the silence of the hall and the place where he sat outside Jayr's rooms.

Byrne saw the wetness spread over the front of his trousers. The dream had made him spill himself in his smalls like a boy. He pushed himself to his feet. One of his hands reached for the door latch; the other became a fist. It had been his dream, not hers.

Even if she had somehow shared it with him, he had no right to trespass on her rest. Not in this state.

He would wait until she awoke, and then it would be his turn. He would show her. He would show her everything.

After waking from a long and terribly erotic dream, Jayr found that rest eluded her. She gave up chasing it shortly after noon and rose to bathe, then sat and sifted restlessly through her poetry diary. One long and solemn verse she had thought nearly perfect now seemed contrived and hollow. After several attempts to inject life into the lines, she ripped out the pages, crumpled them, and threw them at the fireplace.

The paper ball bounced off the hearthstones and rolled out of sight.

Irritated with herself, Jayr went to retrieve it when her mobile rang. It was Harlech, sounding cool and distant as he related a problem with the supplier in town.

Jayr couldn't leave the Realm during a tournament, and she wouldn't trust herself until Alexandra Keller reversed the effects of the treatment. God only knew if it had been responsible for making her dream like a wanton. "Send Rain to deal with it."

"Rain is gone," her second told her. "So is Viviana."

"What?"

"From the looks of things they ran off together last night," Harlech said flatly.

"Damn." She pressed her fingers against her eyelids. "Harlech, Rain would not do this. He is devoted to... another. Viviana loves you. There has to be an explanation."

"Farlae has gone to track them." Harlech sounded as if he didn't care if they were found. "These matters in town must be attended to, Jayr."

"Send someone else. Anyone."

"I fear I am needed at the stables. Which reminds me-the stable master says the rye and oats that were delivered are inferior.

The feed order for next month will have to be adjusted and the delivery moved up two weeks."

Something Jayr would have to do in person, as she had opened the account. She would have to go or they would run out of grain for the horses. She could also check to see if Rain and Viviana had been seen by any of their human friends. "What else do we need from town?"

Harlech gave her a list of errands that would keep her out for hours.

"Have the truck brought out to the front drive," she told him. "Someone will have to attend to our lord while I am in the city. Is Dr. Keller in the infirmary now?"

Harlech confirmed that she was, so Jayr went to see her before leaving for the city. She found Alexandra sitting and peering into a microscope."Doctor."

Alexandra lifted a finger without raising her head from the scope. "Give me a sec."

The time drew out to several minutes before it became apparent to Jayr that she was being ignored. "I will return another time."

"Hold your palfreys, kid; I'm almost finished." She groped for a pencil and began jotting down figures on a pad filled with them.

"Forty-two, twenty-three, and eighty-seven, and I'm done." She straightened and smiled at Jayr. "I didn't want to count them all over again because I'm lazy. Ready for the next injection?"

Jayr's eyes widened. "After what happened to me last night? You must be jesting."

"What happened?"

"My lord and I... and then I dreamed-" She stopped. She couldn't tell Alexandra these things; they were too private. "It matters not. I have to go into the city. I need you to reverse the treatment. Will you do it now?"

"Sure, not a problem. I whipped up a batch of Jema Shaw special last night." She switched off the microscope's light and went to retrieve a syringe.

Jay felt taken aback by her reaction to her demand. "You do not object?"

"You want to play Peter Pan forever, that's your business." She plunged the needle into a vial of liquid. "No skin off my nose."

"I cannot serve my lord in this state," Jayr told her. "I do not even trust myself to be among humans." Or go to sleep, for that matter.

"Hey, I understand. Things like tits and a sex life and being a normal woman aren't as important as looking like a guy and waiting hand and foot on Byrne." She patted the exam table. "Come on. I don't have all day. Night. Whatever."

Suspicion made her eyes narrow. "You are trying to shame me."

"You think?" Alexandra set down the needle and folded her arms. "Quit worrying about his lordship for two seconds. What do you want, Jayr?"

Last night Byrne had come to her, had seen her looking at herself. Jayr had not been ashamed that he had seen her. Catching him watching her in the mirror had thrilled her.

And dismayed her, for there had been nothing for him to see.

"I want to be like other women," she admitted. "But-"

Alexandra's hand whipped up. "No buts. Be a kid or a woman. Decide. Now."

"Very well." She scowled as she went over to the exam table. "Can you speed up the process?"