Page 36 of Hers to Keep

“It makes sense,” Willow said.“He kindled you.Your magic will always be connected to him.”

“There’s also the matter of the contracts,” Ashdei added into Mari’s stunned silence.

“Contracts?”Willow asked, voice tight.“Plural?”They looked toward Mari.“You only mentioned one.”

“I also had a contract with her father.”

Mari glared at him.“My father apparently bartered me off to be his bride.For what, I don’t know.But it doesn’t matter, because I’m not doing it.”

“He sought to make himself a Prince of the Earth,” Ashdei said casually.“But he neglected to realize that you can’t make yourself a monarch.”When Mari stared at him, he shrugged.“You didn’t ask.”

“I figured you wouldn’t tell me.”

He looked troubled by her accusation.“I won’t keep anything from you.”

Why did she believe him?None of this made any sense.“Why are you helping me?”

“Two reasons.Denying the Forest Lord his place here benefits me.”He paused and grinned wide.“And I’m trying to seduce you.”

Mari ignored that second part.“How does a conflict with him benefit you?”

“I’m already a monarch.”

She went over what he’d said again.When she put it together, everything he’d done so far made so much more sense.“You can be a Prince of Earth.”

Willow’s gasp of understanding shuddered through the room.

Ashdei nodded.“With your help.”

“Which is why you’re trying to seduce me.”

He winked.“Well, that’s not the only reason.”

“I don’t think for a single second that you actually want me.”

His smile grew sharp.“Then why are you so afraid to touch me with your magic?”

“I’m not afr—” Reaching out to him was as natural as drawing a breath, and the moment she did, his desire filled her, hot and wild.She fought the urge to move closer to him by curling her fingers into the armrests of her chair.

“You were saying?”he teased.

She tried desperately to claw back her magic so she could think more clearly, but it was impossible.It craved him like nothing she’d ever felt.“After all this time, why now?”

One silver eyebrow rose.“I’ll admit I don’t know the answer to that question.I wasn’t particularly interested in pursuing you until recently.And then when I saw you at the party, I knew I couldn’t stay away.”

“I suspect it has to do with you, Mari,” Willow said into the silence that followed his admission.“You’ve only really come into your power the last few weeks.”

He glanced toward the sphinx before returning his attention to Mari.“Six nights ago, something changed.I felt something pulling me here.”

She cast her memory back, trying to think of what might have happened six nights before that altered her magic.As if she’d summoned Dohal with a thought, the shadows in the room darkened and crawled toward her.When they danced over her skin, she shivered, remembering how he’d held her down and wrung every drop of pleasure from her.He’d emptied her only to fill her again, over and over.Her power had changed that day, as if something inside her had been incomplete, waiting for Dohal to give her what she needed.

Ashdei’s blue flame eyes flared.“What.Was.That?”

Dohal’s form coalesced out of the shadows, crouching next to her.An arm that was mostly shadow wrapped around her to settle one hand on the back of her neck.His magic seeped into her, easing her fatigue.“That was her remembering a night with me, demon,” he growled in his deepest register, making the glasses on the table shake.

Willow rose from their chair.“And that’s definitely my cue to give you the room.”They looked Mari’s way with a question in their expression.

Mari shook her head.She didn’t want the other three of her men in here right now—the situation was unstable enough as it was.And there was nothing her magic would allow them to do in any case.

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