Lord of the Dark by Dawn Thompson Page B

dourly. “No more. Tell it if you must. It no longer matters.” Indeed, it did not. Had he been alone, he would have scourged himself for it. He’d told her the truth. He hadn’t wanted to personalize her in his mind with the familiarity of her name. He didn’t want to risk the consequences of an attraction. He had never risked that. Considering the conditions of the curse, such a thing as love would have been a catastrophe he could ill afford. Those consequences were encroaching upon him without the intimacy of first names. It was too late for preventative measures. Now he must find a cure.
    “I am called Rhiannon,” she said.
    He gave a start. “You are named for an Otherworldly goddess of myth?” he marveled. “No one remembers such deities anymore. They have faded into the mists of time. How did you come by such a name?”
    “My mother gave it to me,” she said. “She loved the old myths. My namesake endured much suffering. I think my mother knew I would suffer also.”
    “You are too young to have suffered the sorrows of your namesake,” he said. “A poor choice, though somehow it suits you.”
    “I am four and twenty summers,” she said with pride. “And although my namesake suffered, she was strong enough to surmount her trials. I will surmount mine also.”
    Gideon climbed down from the dais and strolled toward the doorway. “What does this Rolf look like?” he asked her.
    “He is tall, with angular features. His hair is dark, but not as dark as yours, or as long. He has the eyes of a snake…they shift as if he sees beyond you when he looks at you…”
    “What was he wearing when you last saw him?”
    Rhiannon shrugged. “Seaman’s garb,” she replied, “and a yellow oilskin slicker.”
    Gideon gave a start. It was only a brief tremor in his steely demeanor. He had become a master of concealing his feelings. “My home is at your disposal,” he said without missing a beat. “You may claim the chamber with the bed as your own during your stay…the one with the wardrobe where you found that kirtle you are wearing.”
    “Where will you sleep?” she asked.
    “That is not my chamber.”
    “Oh…I assumed…that is, I looked at all the other rooms. That chamber is the only one with a bed.”
    Gideon had to pass very close to her to leave the room. How very lovely she was staring up at him. Her scent drifted past his flared nostrils, sweet clover rising from her hair and moist skin. He was aroused; he had been since the pool—in spite of the pool. There was no hope for it. He was so hard against the skintight seam in his eel-skin suit he was in pain, so much pain another moment and he would have to open the crotch and expose his aching cock to relieve the pressure, just as he had done when he left the Pavilion.
    Who was he fooling? If she stayed—even for a day—he would have her. It was inevitable. He could feel her body heat. He could almost see it. He could see her aura. That ability was one of his gifts. She was on fire for him, the halo of color around her a shimmering crimson. If only she would resist. Why wouldn’t she resist?
    He recalled, as he did so often, how it was before the fall, when he had control of his urges, before the gods cursed him and made him a slave to lust. He had defied them ever since, and managed to steal what pleasures he could, only because they were nothing more than lascivious need, an itch to be scratched out of the watchers’ view. Sometimes it worked; for the most part, it failed, but that didn’t matter because the passion was purely physical, the way it was with Muriel. Heart and loins were separate segments of his complex makeup. He could just as easily pleasure himself; that was allowed. But this! This had all the potential of a nightmare of epic proportions. The attraction was more than physical. He recognized it all too well. Only once before had he felt such an attraction. It had been the reason for his fall, the reason he was cast out of