A thrill of desire shot through me. By all hell, all I wanted to do was to yank her up from the floor so that I could claim that pretty mouth of hers for myself. But that could never happen now. Not after I double-crossed her and had Lance bind her magic. She would never forgive me for that. So instead of doing what I really wanted to do, I drank in the sight of her kneeling before me. Groveling before me. Because damn, that was a sight I would never get tired of either.
“Does that mean you will let me move into a room?” she asked, looking up at me.
“Yes, it does.”
Locking her into a cell had only ever been a temporary solution. I didn’t want her sleeping on a mattress in the damn dungeon. I wanted her to have her own room with a comfortable bed and access to a bathroom with a shower whenever she wanted. But I couldn’t tell her that. I could never, ever, let her find out that I actually cared about her. So until I could find a way to get rid of the infuriating feelings that I now harbored for this bloody poison mage, orchestrating power plays like this would make sure that she never found out about it.
“Aren’t you going to thank me for my generosity?” I baited while arching an expectant eyebrow at her.
Her green eyes flashed, and she gave me a smile that promised revenge. “Thank you for your generosity.”
“We’re gonna have to work on your manners later.” I shot her a smirk before twitching my fingers at her. “Get up.”
She pushed to her feet, but didn’t step back. Staring up at me from only a step away, it looked as though she considered doing something incredibly stupid for a moment. I cocked my head, waiting to see if she would. In the end, she just forced her gaze away and lowered her chin. I let out a dark chuckle.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Brushing past her, I strode towards the door. She followed.
Henry was waiting in the hallway right outside the door, and when I started towards the stairs, he took up position behind Audrey’s back to make sure that she wouldn’t try to run for the front door again.
I could feel her eyes burning holes in my body while we made our way upstairs. If she’d had any sort of weapon at that point, I knew without a doubt that she would have stabbed it in my back.
The wooden floorboards creaked as we at last reached the corridor where my bedroom was located. I wanted her as close to me as possible, so I had opted for the spare bedroom across the hall. It had come with the house, and since it was so close to my own bedroom and thus a potential security risk, it had never been used for anything. While I had waited for the appropriate time to pass until I could give Audrey this offer, my people had been busy cleaning that room and getting it ready for her to use.
Pulling the door open, I strode inside with Audrey at my heels. Henry stayed out in the corridor.
When her footsteps behind me fell silent, I turned to face her.
She was standing in the middle of the room while those intelligent eyes of hers swept across every inch of it. Her gaze drifted over the open doorway that led into the bathroom before she studied the bookshelf along the wall. Then she shifted her attention to the comfortable double bed by the window.
“This isn’t the room you used when you fucked that dark-haired woman from the theater,” she said.
Audrey knew full well that she hadn’t been from the theater, but that jab missed its mark because her comment made something else flare up inside me. However, I wasn’t sure what or why, so all I said was, “No.”
She didn’t seem to know what to say to that either, so she just closed her mouth again.
“Get over here,” I said.
Irritation flickered over her face at the command, but she walked across the dark wooden floor to stand at the foot of the bed.
“Henry,” I called.
Metallic rattling filled the room as Henry tossed me a chain. Grabbing it in one hand, I crouched down next to the bed while Audrey frowned at me. There were padded manacles at each end of the chain, and I locked one of them around Audrey’s ankle with efficient moves before snapping the other shut around one of the bed’s legs. I’d had the bed bolted to the floor, so there was no way for her to simply lift it to get the chain off.
After I finished locking her to the bedframe, I pocketed the key and stood up.
Audrey shot a pointed glance at the manacles before giving me a flat look. “Really?”
“I prefer my guests chained to the bed.” Brushing my hand over her jaw, I leaned down and smirked in her face. “And if I remember correctly, you prefer it too.”
A shudder passed through her body.
Alarm shot through mine as I realized that I might have taken it too far with that. The last thing I wanted was for her to think that I was planning to force myself on her. I would never do that. Ever.
Stepping back abruptly, I spun around and stalked towards the door instead. Chains clinked behind me as if Audrey had taken a step forward, but I didn’t turn around to find out. Without looking back into the room, I closed the door behind me and instead turned to face the two men waiting for me outside.
Henry was there, which I had already expected. But so was Yuito, one of my other guards.
“What is it?” I demanded.
Yuito raked a hand through his straight black hair and drew in a breath as if he had just sprinted up the stairs. “Sam Foster is here.”
I suppressed the urge to groan. That was fast. I had hoped that I would have a few more days before the other dark mages realized that I had screwed them over. But apparently, they were all far too clever for that.
“Alright,” I said, and then jerked my chin towards the chair outside Audrey’s room. “You have the first watch. Henry, you’re with me.”
“Yes, boss,” they replied in unison.
Our feet thumped against the steps as we made our way back down the stairs and towards the study.
When I once more stepped across the threshold, my eyes were drawn to the spot where Audrey had been kneeling only a few minutes ago.
“Well, hello, you double-dealing double-crosser,” a voice said lightly.
I snapped my gaze to the guy it belonged to.
Sam Foster had drawn himself up on my desk and was sitting on top of it with his legs dangling over the side. His blond hair looked almost golden in the light from the afternoon sun, and there was an amused sparkle in his gray eyes. He didn’t look nearly as pissed off as I had assumed he would be.
“Sam,” I said in greeting.
“So, you screwed us over and took Lance for yourself?”
I moved closer to Sam while Henry took up position by the door. “Yeah.”
“Huh.” Sam scrunched up his eyebrows and blew out a breath. “I really thought that I had prevented that by making you and Audrey team up. I was so sure that you’d be able to keep each other in check so that neither one of you would be able to disappear with Lance on your own.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“No worries.” He leaned sideways and peered around me towards the door. “By the way, where is Audrey?” Before I could reply, he sat up straight again and gave me an exasperated look. “Let me guess… Dead in a ditch somewhere?”
“No, she’s upstairs. But she’s a bit tied up at the moment.” I shrugged. “We actually reached an agreement and decided to partner up.”
“You and Audrey?”
“Yeah.”
“Partner up?”
“Yes.”
Sam blew out a long breath and dragged a hand through his hair. “Wow. Out of all the worst-case scenarios I had considered, that one was so outlandish that it didn’t even make the list.”
I just shrugged again. “Turns out she’s actually really good at what she does. And we figured that by teaming up, we’d be able to wield considerably more power together.”
“Huh.”
Silence fell. For a while, Sam just sat there atop my desk and studied me with an unreadable look on his face. Clothes rustled faintly as Henry shifted his position somewhere behind me.
“So…” Sam began at last. “Are you going to use Lance Carmichael to bind my magic or to threaten me into submission?”
“You?” I shook my head. “No. Never.”
He tipped his head from side to side as if considering. Then he shrugged and jumped down from the desk. “Then I don’t really care one way or the other that you took him.”
A surprised laugh escaped my throat as Sam strolled up to me with a casual smile on his face. Then he stopped before me, and his eyes turned serious.
“A word of advice, though,” he began. “The others are not happy.”
“Yeah, I suspected as much.”
“I mean it. Malcolm is furious, so tread carefully.”
“The hell is he so pissed off for? We break agreements with each other all the time.”
“Yes, but this time there’s a Binder involved.”
“Fair enough.”
“So yeah, that’s why I came here to warn you.” He flashed me a mischievous grin. “Actually, no, that’s a lie. I came here because Grant paid me a lot of money.”
I frowned at him. “Grant?”
“Yes. Malcolm is angry and Sienna is still a wildcard, but Grant wants to negotiate. He paid me to come here and invite you to a meeting at his house.”
Huffing out an amused breath, I rolled my eyes. “As if I would walk into a trap like that.”
“He thought you might say that, but he really just wants to negotiate. I will personally guarantee that both you and Audrey get there and back home unharmed.”
My eyebrows rose. Grant was clearly more desperate than I had assumed. Since Sam was the only dark mage that we all collectively protected from any and all harm, he was also the only one whose word we all trusted. If Sam guaranteed someone’s safety for a meeting, it meant that if the person who hosted the meeting broke their word and hurt their guest in any way, Sam would forever withdraw his services from that person. And a dark mage who couldn’t pay Sam to heal them wouldn’t survive a month out here, which was why no one ever went back on their word when Sam had given his guarantee of safety.
“Fine,” I said, and released a long sigh. “When?”
“Tomorrow evening.”
“Alright, we’ll be there.”
“Fantastic!” Sam flashed me another smile and then gave me a cheerful salute before strolling towards the door. “Then I can go home and play with my new stacks of money.”
Laughing, I shook my head at the strange dark mage as he disappeared out into the hallway. I knew that the others would be on edge when they found out that Lance was in my possession, but I was glad that Sam had just taken it in stride. If Malcolm and Sienna decided that they wanted to fight me for possession of the Binder, I would need Sam’s services to survive it. At least until I could break Lance and use him as a weapon.
I rolled my shoulders and blew out another sigh. Lance was tougher than I had expected, and breaking him to my will would take more time than I had hoped. So I would have to find another way to make sure that Malcolm, Sienna, and Grant didn’t decide to push their luck before then. Which meant that I needed this meeting with Grant to go well.
Tearing my gaze from the now empty doorway, I shifted it to Henry.
“Get someone to wash and iron that fancy gold and green dress that’s in Audrey’s pack.”
“Yes, boss.”
After nodding to myself, I followed him out the door.
Now, I just had to make sure that Audrey did as she was told.
That might require a bit more persuading.
And threats.
