Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1854: A Bad Liar

"You are a liar, Black Fang."

Black Fang did not move, and neither did the man holding her chin.

Snow had quit the garden and the coals had quit the brazier, so the only light left in the dawn dojo came off the moonlit drifts outside and the thin violet burning in her eyes.

His fingers stayed where they were, her palm stayed flat against his chest, and the cold went on pouring off her into a hall that had already given up everything it had to give.

The accusation stood between them, spoken twice and not once denied.

"I am done waiting," Black Fang decreed suddenly. "We settle everything once and for all."

"Everything...?" Quinlan’s eyes began to blaze, like banked coals given air. Did ’everything’ include that bet of theirs?

"Yes," she replied, eyes locked onto his. "Everything."

"Where’s the rush?" His thumb stroked her chin. "A few more weeks and you win by default. You’ve been patient for centuries. A month is nothing."

"A month is not nothing."

Her free hand rose, and two fingers touched her own cheek, absently, checking.

"My pill will expire within hours, and I’ll begin aging again. You say I was patient for centuries but..." Her fingers had drifted back to her cheek, to the same spot she had checked before. "That was only because I had no other choice."

Her chin lifted a degree inside his grip. "I do not intend to let my body begin aging again while you flounder through a courtship you can never land."

Quinlan stood there in the cold and listened to the most dangerous woman on the continent explain, with citations, why a seduction wager needed to be settled tonight for reasons of pure accounting, namely the possibility of wrinkly skin, and his face began to swim with amusement.

’Women,’ he thought, from the very bottom of his soul, ’are truly amazing creatures.’

"Stop looking at me like that."

"Like what?"

Her hand left his chest, rose, and took his chin in her fingers, his own grip reflected back at him, and the two of them stood locked in the dark hall, each holding the other’s face, neither owning a single step of retreat.

"Like that."

The teasing drained out of him. What stayed behind was older and stiller, and it looked at her without one gram of play.

"I would’ve won the bet, just to be clear. But so be it. How do you propose we settle it?"

Black Fang looked away.

Half a heartbeat. The violet slid off toward the snow garden and hauled itself back by force of will.

Quinlan’s mouth opened by degrees.

"Wait." His voice dropped low. "Don’t tell me. You want to..."

"I am stronger." The scoff arrived on schedule, flat as a filing. "I gave my word I would not attack you to extract your seed. Goading your bottomless hubris into open combat would be an attack wearing a disguise. That type of... duel is not an attack, and I get to stop decaying while you waste my time." Her head tilted dangerously. "It is the only structure that makes sense."

"A duel."

"Stop repeating my words back to me, I’m not mentally disabled," hissed Black Fang, suddenly looking far too adorable in Quinlan’s eyes.

His joy climbed to elevations previously unrecorded.

"By the way, I couldn’t help but notice." His eyes twinkled. "You really are sure that you’re still stronger?"

"I am."

Zero hesitation. Not a blink of it, not a breath. And deep in Quinlan’s chest, the primordial competitor came up off its throne with murder in its heart.

Then he sat it back down.

’Not tonight,’ he informed it. ’Priorities.’

"Stop looking at me like that," Black Fang said again.

"I’m not looking like anything."

He released her chin. She released his one finger at a time.

And then, because he was who he was, a proper gentleman, Quinlan stepped back into the open floor, raised one hand, and called water.

It answered out of the night air, a ribbon first, then a sheet, warmed as it gathered, curling around his arms and down his chest and sluicing the long night warfare off his skin in lazy spirals.

A second finger flicked sideways, and a thread of flame crossed the hall into the dead brazier, where the coals caught, thought about it, and crawled back to red, burning only because she allowed it.

It was important to set the right atmosphere.

He washed unhurried and shameless, attending to himself as if in a private bath instead of a wrecked dojo, fully aware of the starving violet eyes tracking every pass of the water, and charging no admission.

Black Fang watched the whole performance, and her eyes were narrowing.

He washed at his own tempo, prepared at his own tempo, rolled his shoulders at his own tempo.

She had watched him do exactly this all night, to her sister, one comfortable degree at a time, until the entire battlefield ran on his clock.

Her eyes finished narrowing.

She crossed the floor without sound and shoved him.

Flat palm, center mass, measured to the ounce. The water lost its shape and rained across the boards as Quinlan went down easy, rolling through the fall like a man settling into bed, and by the time his back met the floor she was already astride him, one knee planted on either side of his hips. The bathing session was concluded, by executive order.

He looked up at her with zero shock and a rising quantity of everything else.

"What are you doing?"

"I am going on the attack," said Black Fang. "Naturally."

Madness had begun to swirl in the violet, slow and shining, the dangerous kind, the kind men with a certain taste like Quinlan wrote love letters about, and it looked obscenely good on her.

"Solid strategy," Quinlan allowed. "Aggressive, as is right. The Villain’s Fang cannot be an indecisive woman."

"Shut your mouth."

"You could let me finish washing. I was doing it for you."

"For what reason?" Her hands went to the sash of her under-robe and began, without hurry, to work it loose. "My sister’s fluids are already on me. Your sweat does not bother me." The knot gave, and the silk loosened off one pale shoulder. "And why would I wait, and let you set the pace?"

She undressed while mounted on him, spine straight in the firelight. The buckles came next, then the bindings, each piece drawn off and laid within reach in the order she would want them back in an emergency.

From the seams and hems, needle-fine pins slid free one by one and joined the pile in a neat row, emergency tools she had carried everywhere since the cell. The wrappings unwound from her forearms. The last pin came out of her hair, and the hair came down after it, black spilling loose past her shoulders.

Quinlan, flat on his back beneath all of this, raised one finger.

A thread of wind slipped across the dojo, collected a cushion from beside the ruined seating, and delivered it under his head, angled for a long show.

He settled in, folded his hands on his stomach, and watched his own ambush unfold with the composure of royalty at the theater.

Then, because watching was good but participating was better, he reached up to help with the tie of her last binding.

Both wrists were caught and put back down, pressed once against the boards with a pressure that closed the discussion, and released.

Her eyes stayed on his through all of it, territorial down to the last candle of violet in them.