“So you wondered where I was?” she whispered as she leaned into him. Her mouth brushed his throat and the touch of her lips burned his skin. The lipstick she wore was made out of crushed peppers, carefully calibrated to sting. “You worried about me. Ached for me.”

“Yeah. That’s it,” he said, because she would get off on the lie.

“I knew you did.” The Princess sank down onto her knees and leaned in. The instant her lips met the head of his cock, the burning sensation from that lipstick made his balls squeeze up like fists. “Ask me.”

“For what. A blow job or the why of the reschedule?”

“I’m thinking you need to beg for both.” She took his arousal and pushed it up against his belly, then her tongue snaked out and teased the barb at the base of his erection. That barb was the part of him she liked best, the one that locked into place when he came and kept them linked. Personally, he hated the thing, but damn, it felt good to have it played with, even with the pain that came from what was on her mouth.

“Ask me.” She let his cock fall back into place and took him deep into her mouth.

“Ah, shit, suck me,” he groaned.

And holy hell, did she ever. She opened that throat of hers and took as much of him as she could. It was great, but the burning was a killer. To pay her back for her little Chanel No. Nightmare lipstick, he grabbed onto her hair and shoved his hips forward, making her choke.

In response, she dug one of her nails into his barb deeply enough to draw blood, and he cried out, tears spearing into his eyes. As one came out onto his cheek, she smiled, no doubt liking the color of the red against his face.

“You’re going to say please,” she said. “When you ask me to explain.”

He was tempted to tell her to hold her breath for that, but instead he repeated the plunge into her mouth and she repeated the dig, and they did that back and forth for a while until they were both panting.

His sex was on fire at this point, raging with heat, pulsing with the need to come in that god-awful mouth of hers.

“Ask me why,” she demanded. “Ask me why I didn’t show.”

He shook his head. “No… you’ll tell me when you want to. But I will ask if you’re just wasting our time here, or are you going to let me finish?”

She lifted herself up from the floor, went over to the window, and braced herself on the sill with those horrible hands. “You can come. But only inside me.”

The bitch always did that. Always with the inside.

And always with the window. Clearly, even though she couldn’t know for sure that he’d come with backup, on some level she knew they were being watched. And if they fucked in front of the panes of glass, his sentry would be forced to see.

“Finish inside me, damn you.”

The Princess arched her back and lifted her ass. The netting she wore ran up her legs and in between her thighs, and he was going to have to rip part of it open to get into her. Which was why she wore it. If her lipstick was bad, the mesh shit on her body was worse.

Rehvenge moved in behind her and dug the fore- and middle fingers of both his hands into the mesh at the small of her back. With a yank, he split the weave free from her ass and her sex.

She was glossy and swollen and begging for him.

Looking over her shoulder, she smiled, revealing perfect, boxy white teeth. “I’m hungry. I saved myself for you. As always.”

He couldn’t hide his wince. He couldn’t stand the idea that he was her only lover-it would have been much better to be part of a grounds crew of males, so that what happened between them didn’t loom so large. Plus the parity nauseated him. She was his only lover, too.

He shoved himself into her sex, knocking her forward until her head banged into the glass. Then he grabbed onto her hips and slid slowly out. Her legs quivered in a series of waves, and he hated that he was giving her what she wanted. So he pushed slowly back in, stopping halfway to home so she didn’t get all of him.

Her red eyes spit fire over her shoulder. “More, thank you.”

“Why didn’t you show, my lovely bitch.”

“Why don’t you shut up and finish?”

Rehv leaned down and ran his fangs across her shoulder. The mesh was coated in scorpion venom, and he felt an instant numbing of his lips. That bad shit was going to be all over his hands and his body after the fucking was done, so he was going to have to shower at his safe house as soon as possible. It wasn’t going to be fast enough. He was going to be viciously ill, as usual. Since she was a full-bred symphath, the venom didn’t affect her; to her it was like perfume, an enhancement. To his vampire nature, which was especially susceptible, it was straight-up poison.

He slowly pulled out and eased back in a couple of inches. He knew he had her good when her three-knuckled fingers dug into the old, weathered wood of the sill.

God, those hands of hers, with their trio of joints and the fingernails that grew out red… they were something from a horror movie, the kind of thing that wrapped around the lip of a coffin before the undead came out and killed the good guy.

“Tell… me… why… bitch…” He punctuated the words with his rhythm. “Or no finish for either of us.”

God, he hated this and he loved it, both of them struggling to maintain the power position, both pissed at the concessions they had to make. It was eating her alive that she’d had to come around to see him jerking off, and he despised what he was doing to her body, and she didn’t want to tell him why she was two nights late, but she knew she was going to have to if she wanted to get off…

And around and around the merry-go-round went.

“Tell me,” he growled.

“Your uncle grows strong.”

“Does he.” He rewarded her with a quick, nasty penetration, and she gasped. “Why’s that?”

“Two nights ago…” Her breath sawed out of her mouth, as her spine torqued to accept him in the deepest way possible. “He was crowned.”

Rehv lost his rhythm. Shit. A change in leadership was not good. The symphaths might be stuck in that colony, isolated from the real world, but any political instability there threatened what precious little control of them there was.

“We need you,” she said, reaching behind her and sinking her nails into his ass. “To do what you do best.”

No. Fucking. Way.

He’d killed enough relatives.

She glanced over her shoulder, and the scorpion in her ear stared at him hard, its spindly legs pinwheeling, reaching out to him. “I’ve given you the why. So get on with it.”

Rehv put his brain on lockdown, focused on the scene of the beach, and let his body do its thing. Under his pounding rhythm, the Princess orgasmed, her body gripping him in a series of pulses that were like a fist twisting his cock in a vise.

Which was what made his sex catch hold of her inside and fill her up.

He pulled out as soon as he was able and started on the slide into hell. Already, he could feel the effect of the venom on that damn mesh. His body was tingling all over, the nerve endings in his skin blinking on and off in spasms of pain. It was only going to get worse.

The Princess righted herself and went to her gown. From a hidden pocket, she took out a long length of wide red satin, and with her eyes locked on him, she threaded the cloth between her legs and tied it in an elaborate series of bows.

Her ruby eyes gleamed with satisfaction as she made sure not a drop of him escaped her.

He hated that, and she knew it, which was why she never complained when he pulled out fast. She knew damn well he wanted to shove her in a bleach bath and make her wash until the sex was gone from her as if it had never been.

“Where is my tithe?” she said as she drew on her gown.

His vision was doubling up from the venom as he went over to his jacket and took out a small velvet bag. He tossed it over to her and she caught it.