Then Barrons joins him and eclipses the notion. His eyes are brilliant, his body emanating heat and power. If I pressed my ear to his chest, his heart would be thudding, slow and strong.

“How do you know what’s happening in there if you can’t see inside?” I ask Ryodan. The two-way glass is dark from the outside, transparent only from within.

Ryodan places his cell phone on the floor and slides it across the slick glass floor. It stops at my feet. “Tap the Skull and Crossbones app.”

Of course, he has an app for everything. Figures he’d be able to watch the central hub of his universe from the phone that shouldn’t work, via an otherworldly Wi-Fi network that doesn’t exist.

I open the app, blink once then forget how to. “Oh, my gosh, he’s … that can’t be … holy cow.” My face gets hot.

“Give me a break,” Ryodan says irritably. “And give me my phone back.”

I want to keep it. See what else is on there. I’ve heard rumors there’s a level in this club reserved only for the Nine.

Barrons snorts. Barrons has reason to snort. I got the best one. I glance up and give him a charged look.

Yes, you did.

“Quit procrastinating,” Ryodan says. “And get rid of the bitch. My phone.” He extends his hand.

Not a chance. Not when I’m not sure how the princess will react to me.

I place my palm on the wall and the door whisks aside with a faint hydraulic hiss. Sex slams me in the face, scorching, drugging, volatile.

“I said, my phone.”

I stand at the threshold and look in. The princess has her back to me, and Lor is beyond noticing anything. Ryodan and Barrons are another matter. They’re too observant by far. There is also the small matter of the enormous possessiveness I feel where Barrons is concerned.

I step inside and place my palm on the interior panel.

Two males roar in unison.

“Ms. Lane, you will not close—”

“Mac, you will give me my fucking—”

The door hisses closed behind me.

12

“We are family, I got all my sisters with me”

MAC

Once I would have thought what was taking place in Ryodan’s office was no more than what it appeared to be: an Unseelie of the royal caste subjugating a human, getting drunk on the pleasure they siphon from our souls. Immortal, jaded, void of anything that passes as passion, Fae royalty is incapable of emotion, but they can experience it through a human vessel. Especially during sex. Or torture. Preferably both at the same time. They either use the human up completely and kill it or leave a shell of a sex-starved slave. Death is the better option there.

But the Unseelie Princes just shocked the hell out of me, proved themselves to be ambitious and goal-oriented, willing to adopt a mien of civility to achieve their aims, and channel what used to be a maelstrom of uncontrolled hunger into deliberated action.

Considering the Fae have always been matriarchal, I have reason to assume the princesses are no less driven or capable of evolving than their dark counterparts. I wonder where they’ve been all this time. Feeding in private? Learning self-discipline and -control? Plotting to take over our world?

She’s not throwing off the whirlwind of insanity and insatiability with which the princes first razed our world when freed from their prison, nor does she seem bent on the vicious, obsessive hunt of the Crimson Hag determined to complete her gut-gown. She appears composed, even dispassionate. I consider that perhaps like human women, she’s not as governed by hormones, or whatever passes as Fae motivation, as the males. Perhaps the genders of any species share certain traits. As far as I know, it’s the female Fae that bears what few young they manage, and may be biologically more pragmatic, to ensure their offspring’s survival. I hope so because I don’t want to kill her. Not now, not here with so many humans in the vicinity. As much as I want her dead, I have to find another way.

Then arrange a safer place to hunt her.

I take a deep, slow breath and release it. “We could cut to the chase,” I say to her beautiful back. Iridescent, sparkling tattoos shimmer on each side of her spine, furling and unfurling as if caressed by a sultry Fae breeze only she can feel. They vaguely resemble wings.

Silver embellishments glitter along her backbone as if she’s adorned her spine with metal piercings, with more of them on each side of her neck. Though immune to Fae thrall, watching Lor do what he’s doing to her is getting me hot and bothered in a purely human way. No wonder the blondes keep lining up at his bed. He’s a massive, lethal lion of muscle, sex, and power. He growls as he grinds up into her, and the sound is so rough and ready, so freaking hot and sexy, that my heart begins to hammer in the back of my throat and my mouth goes dry. I swallow hard and wet my lips before I continue, “What do you want?”