Lover Enshrined by J. R. Ward Page B

top of the stairway, was closed off, and the foyer far below was empty.
    As she rounded the corner, the statues stretched out for what seemed like forever. Positioned to the left, they were illuminated from above by inset lights and separated one from another by arching windows. On the right, opposite every other window, there were doors that she assumed opened into more bedrooms.
    Interesting. If she had designed the house, she would have put the bedrooms on the window side so they would have enjoyed the benefit of garden views. As it was now, if she had triangulated the layout of the mansion correctly, the bedrooms overlooked the opposite wing, the one that bracketed the far side of the front courtyard. Attractive, true, but better to have architectural landscapes in hallways and vistas of gardens and mountains in bedrooms. At least, in her opinion.
    Cormia frowned. She’d been having odd thoughts like that lately. Thoughts about things and people and even prayers that weren’t always of an approving nature. The random opinions made her uneasy, but she couldn’t stop them.
    Trying not to dwell on where they came from or what they meant, she made the corner and faced off at the hallway.
    The first statue was of a young male—a human male, going by its size—who was draped in rich folds of robing that ran from his right shoulder to his left hip. His eyes were trained on the middle ground, and his face was composed, neither sad nor happy. His chest was broad, his upper arms strong yet sleek, his belly flat and ribbed.
    The next statue was similar, only his limbs were arranged differently. And the next was in yet another position. The fourth as well . . . except that one was fully nude.
    Instinct made her want to rush by. Curiosity demanded that she stop and stare.
    He was beautiful in his nakedness.
    She looked over her shoulder. No one was around.
    Reaching out, she touched the neck of the statue. The marble was warm, which was a shock, but then she realized the spotlight up above was its heat source.
    She thought of the Primale.
    They had spent one day in the same bed, that first day she was here with him. She had had to ask if she could join him in his room and lie beside him, and as they had stretched out beneath the sheets, awkwardness had been a blanket of thistles over them both.
    But then she had fallen asleep . . . only to wake up to a huge male body pushing into her, a hard, warm length against her hip. She had been too stunned to do anything but acquiesce as, without words, the Primale had stripped her robing from her body and replaced it with his own skin and the weight of his strength.
    Indeed, speech was not always necessary.
    With a slow caress, she ran her fingertips down the statue ’s warm marble chest, pausing at the nipple on its flat base of muscle. Down farther, the ribs and stomach were a lovely pattern of undulations. Smooth, so smooth.
    The Primale’s skin was just as smooth.
    Her heart beat hard as she reached to the statue’s hip.
    The tingling heat she felt wasn’t about the stone in front of her. In her mind, it was the Primale she was touching. It was his body that was beneath her fingers. It was his sex and not the statue’s that called her.
    Her hand drifted down farther until it hovered right on the top of the male’s pubic bone.
    The sound of someone bursting into the mansion ricocheted up from the foyer.
    Cormia jumped back from the statue so fast she tripped on the hem of her robe.
    As heavy footfalls stormed to the stairway and pounded up to the second floor, she took cover in a window’s alcove and peeked around the corner.
    The Brother Zsadist appeared at the head of the stairs. He was dressed for fighting, with daggers on his chest and a gun on his hip—and by the hard set of his jaw it looked like he was still in combat.
    After the male stalked out of sight, she heard knocking on what had to be the doors of the king’s study.
    Moving silently, Cormia went down the hall,