Demon's Fire by Emma Holly

striking gold-embroidered black. Within them he was oven-warm. Unaccountably, Beth found herself shivering.
    To her dismay, Prince Pahndir was too sharp to miss the reaction—or to misinterpret its cause.
    “It’s good, isn’t it?” he whispered. “That the two of us are so responsive to each other?”
    Beth wasn’t worldly enough to answer. Feeling as if she’d stepped into a more glamorous woman’s life, she watched the prince press a piece of the ivory inlay on his desk. A hidden mechanism clicked, and a large section lifted and then tipped to show its reverse side. It revealed a square of dull gray metal in a sterling frame.
    “Activate visual feed, room three,” Prince Pahndir said.
    The dull gray plate flickered to life.
    “Oh!” Beth’s scalp prickled with wonder. “It’s a daguerreotype that moves!”
    She leaned closer to the picture, barely noticing (and certainly not objecting) when her companion draped his arm around her back. Charles was in a bedroom, pacing back and forth along a flowered rug. He looked nervous, excited, and maybe a little grim. He stopped moving when the door opened. Two Yama entered: one male, one female. They were dark-haired and slender and as alike to Beth’s eyes as twins.
    “First cousins,” Pahndir said as if he’d read her mind. “They prefer to see clients as a pair.”
    “But isn’t that a little close to—I mean, I know our queen’s first cousin once courted her, but—”
    “Yes, we Yama find it shocking, too, maybe more than you do, for we know the dangers of inbreeding. I expect that’s why they’re here in Bhamjran, rather than safe at home. It isn’t easy to want something even those who love you don’t understand.”
    He was watching her with calm silver eyes, measuring her reaction.
    “Do Yama love their children?” she asked.
    An emotion tightened his face, so quick and slight she would have missed it if she hadn’t been looking straight at him.
    “Many do. They simply express it differently than humans.”
    His gaze fell to her mouth, as if he wanted to kiss her. The lust that had been plaguing her lately burst into renewed flame, like a match set to a pool of oil low in her abdomen. No doubt sensing this, Pahndir’s pupils swelled.
    “Do you want to watch with the sound on?” he asked softly.
    “We can listen to what they say?”
    “If you like, I can turn the volume high enough to hear their sweat plopping to the floor.”
    Beth glanced at the moving silver-framed display. Charles’s jacket was gone. The Yamish courtesans were divesting him of his shirt, working together to pull it up his muscled torso and over his head. To know what they were saying would be a more serious invasion of Charles’s privacy than she’d thought possible.
    “Yes,” she said, her throat as rough as if she’d swallowed gravel. “Please turn on the sound.”
    “Sound on,” he said, and wrapped his hand around the fist she’d made.
    His hold was probably meant to steady her, but her sex seemed to be running out of her in warm gushes. It was impossible to pretend she was anything but excited.
     
    Feeling the demons’ hands on him was like being licked by fire. Charles’s skin was hot everywhere they touched, his prick so stiff it might have been trying to rip through his trousers.
    “My name is Donjen,” said the male, his fingers hard and competent as he worked to free Charles’s front placket. “My cousin’s name is Darja. She doesn’t speak much human, but she will have to be the one who feeds from you. She has more self-control than I do. Sometimes I get caught up in the pleasure and do not stop soon enough.”
    Charles gasped as his grossly thickened cock fell into Donjen’s hands. This was more information than the state of his arousal needed. The darker part of Charles’s nature, the part that would always revel in perversity, wanted to demand that Donjen take his cousin’s place.
    He didn’t get a chance to do so. Charles’s gasp