In the Flesh Read online

  “Don’t look at her!” The queen’s beautiful face contorted with hate and jealousy. She rounded on Sapphire, hissing pure venom. “I thought the prince would kill you. I was certain of it. How could he resist? You, the lover of his enemy and daughter to Erikson. Instead, he married you. The idiot.”

  “I take offense to that,” drawled a deep voice from the doorway.

  Sapphire pivoted to face Wulf. “You shouldn’t have come. It’s too dangerous.”

  Wulf’s emerald gaze remained locked on her. His long legs ate up the distance between them. “We’re going to have to have a long talk about obeying orders.”

  “How did you get in here?” the king barked.

  Wulf snorted. “As if anything could keep me out while my wife is here.”

  “Guardian!” Gunther bellowed.

  “I’ll kill you just as soon as look at you,” Wulf warned with deadly softness, “and leave here without a scratch on me. It’s your choice, but if I were you, I wouldn’t call the guards.”

  The queen’s smile was spiteful. She glanced back at her husband. “I admit the outcome is not as I intended, but regardless, she’s permanently out of your reach.”

  “You would have seen her killed, Brenna?” the king asked, clearly astonished by the thought.

  “You have no notion of the things I’ve done to win your regard.”

  As Wulf drew to a halt beside Sapphire, he wrapped his arm around her waist. She felt the combat readiness he hid beneath the casual façade.

  “Care to explain to us how and why I ended up in my wife’s possession?” he asked.

  The queen gave a brittle smile. “You’re stepping into the conversation belatedly, Prince Wulfric.”

  “A brief refresher is all I require. I catch up quick.”

  The queen moved to the dais and sat regally upon her throne. “After I realized my husband had no intention of sharing my bed, I understood that drastic measures were necessary. When the patrols reported a disturbance just across the border in D’Ashier, I dispatched several of my guards to investigate.”

  “Without advising me,” the general muttered.

  “I knew you had no knowledge of it,” she said, “and I hoped that my handling of the matter on my own would please Gunther. Tarin Gordmere was captured and—”

  “You said nothing of this to me!” The king resumed his fevered pacing. His hands clenched into fists.

  Brenna shrugged. “I intended to tell you. I thought you’d be pleased that I’d caught the bounty hunter, especially since his men offered me Prince Wulfric in exchange for his release. You had agreed to retire the karimai from her contract. I was thrilled, thinking this would be a new beginning for us, then I saw how distressed you were over her loss and realized you loved her.”

  The queen settled back in her throne with both arms laid elegantly atop the armrests. “Until that point, I’d believed that luring you back to my bed was all that was required to win your heart, but your love for the mätress would never allow that to happen.” Her smile turned feral. “The solution came to me in the form of Prince Wulfric. He would rid me of the mätress and take all of the blame for her demise. I, of course, would console you in your grief.”

  “You heartless, conniving bitch!” the king spat.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Wulf said. “It’s deviously clever, considering the information she had to work with. I can’t find it in me to be too angry, since the end result is my marriage.”

  The king paused, his robes swirling to a halt around his legs. “You truly love him?” He directed his question to Sapphire.

  “Yes,” she replied. “Very much.”

  He winced. “Why?”

  “Who can say how these things happen, Your Majesty? It was simply meant to be this way.”

  “I thought you were angry with me for releasing you. I thought we could get past this and be together again. I love you; it never occurred to me that you didn’t feel the same.”

  “There was a time when I wanted to love you,” she admitted. “But you saw only what you wanted to see in me and disregarded the rest.” She leaned heavily into Wulf, exhausted. “I wish our contract had ended amicably. Now thousands of people will suffer.”

  “It’s nothing we can’t—”

  “Nothing?” Anger gave her strength. “Good men died tonight and I nearly lost my husband.”

  “I didn’t plan the attack.” The king turned away and sat in his throne next to the queen. “I trusted the details to Gordmere.”

  Brenna gasped. “Tarin Gordmere?”

  “Yes. I hired the bounty hunter to find Sapphire.”

  “He found me,” Sapphire said grimly. “He nearly killed me.”

  The horror on the monarch’s face was clearly genuine. “That was never my intent! Gordmere was only to bring you to me, unharmed. I urged him to make haste because I knew Prince Wulfric had you. I’d hoped you would find it romantic that I would go to such trouble to rescue you. I knew nothing of the attack on the D’Ashier encampment until it happened.”

  “You lie!” she accused him. “You insisted on the summit.”

  “I thought Gordmere meant to find you without incident,” he protested. “I was attempting to distract Prince Wulfric. That was all. I would never hurt you. You must know that.”

  “If you don’t want to hurt my wife, leave her alone,” Wulf growled. “Forget she exists.”

  Gunther’s fingertips beat a rapid, agitated staccato on the armrest. “You say it so simply, as if I weren’t tearing my heart out and giving it to you. Imagine having her in your bed for five years, then returning her to me. What would you do? How would you feel?”

  Wulf’s chest rose and fell in rapid rhythm. He glanced down at Sapphire, then his gaze swept around the room. It returned to the king. “We’re leaving.”

  He gripped Katie’s elbow. “Did you get the answers you were looking for?” he asked her.

  “I’m not leaving until everything is settled.” She looked at the king. “What will happen to my father?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” the general answered.

  “He’s in no danger,” the king replied, but the tone in which he delivered the pronouncement set her on edge.

  Grave crossed his arms over his chest. “I won’t lead a war over this.”

  “There won’t be a war.” Gunther ran a hand through his disheveled hair. “There are ways to cover this up.” He looked to Wulf.

  Wulf inhaled sharply. “We’d have to withhold the information of what happened in the desert from our peoples. The fallen soldiers’ families would have to be misled. They’d insist on vengeance.”

  “But the survivors will know,” Grave argued. “They won’t understand why they’re being asked to hide the knowledge. Rumors will spread. We can’t contain it fully.”

  Gunther waved his hand carelessly. “We have no other choice.”

  “I hate lying to my men,” Grave raged. “They deserve better!”

  Wulf turned his gaze to Grave. Neither of them said anything, but Sapphire sensed a silent communication flowing between them. Later, she’d question Wulf about it.

  After a long moment, her father nodded. He came to her, wrapping her in a tight embrace.

  “Come with us,” she whispered.

  “I can’t.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. “They’ll never let you leave if I don’t stay. I’m their new leverage.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Whatever I have to.”

  She rose to her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “You and Mother aren’t safe here.”

  “We’ll be fine. I can’t say more.” He crushed her to him. “But trust that nothing will come between us, Katie. Ever.”

  She felt him stiffen against her and his breath hissed out between clenched teeth. Alarmed, Sapphire pulled back.

  Wulf’s hand rested on her father’s shoulder. “My apologies, General,” he murmured, tilting his hand to Sapphire to reveal a tiny injector cradled in his
palm. “My ring was damaged in the battle and has a sharp edge.”

  A nanotach. Her lower lip quivered as she looked at her husband, loving him more in that moment than she’d ever thought possible.

  “I’ll take care of her,” Wulf promised.

  “You damn well better.” Grave’s dark eyes were filled with warning.

  Sapphire linked hands with Wulfric and tugged him backward toward the door, her glaive-hilt held at the ready in front of her. “It’s been lovely, but we have to go now.”

  The queen smiled with pure malice. “Until we meet again.”

  Chapter 22

  Wulf stood in the darkness in his room, staring out the window at the sparkling lights of the city below. At the moment, everything seemed peaceful, but he knew the illusion was fleeting. Tomorrow was another day. More work to be done, alliances to be made.

  Satin-skinned arms encircled his waist the moment before lush breasts pressed to his back. He wrapped his arms over Katie’s with a pleasured sigh, his cock hardening just from the touch and scent of her.

  Her warm breath gusted across his skin. “We still have to find the person responsible for hiring Gordmere to capture you. I won’t be able to rest until I know who it is and what they want with you.”

  “We can’t ever lower our guard around you either. The King of Sari is like a petulant child, and I’ve stolen his favorite toy. He’s the type who would prefer that the object he covets be broken, rather than allow anyone else to have it.”

  Turning in her embrace, Wulf gazed down into Katie’s luminous dark eyes. His back blocked the light from the window and cast her beloved features into shadow, but the lack of illumination didn’t matter. Her face was forever etched in his mind.

  “As long as he lusts for you,” he continued, “the queen’s hatred will fester.”

  “I worry about my father.” Her voice was small.

  Wulf rested his cheek atop the crown of her head and drew her tighter against him. “As do I. His nanotach signal is being monitored, but in the morning, you and I will have to plan a better way to protect him. Knowing your father’s location is only half the battle, and he’ll fight us the rest of the way. He loves you, but he’s wary of me. He’d remove the nanotach if he knew it was there.”

  Katie sighed. “No happily-ever-after, you said.”

  “No. Probably not.”

  Pressing her cheek against his heart, she said, “I don’t have any regrets.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “None?”

  He smiled into her hair. “I wish I’d proposed to you sooner.”

  “What will you do to make up for your delay?”

  His cock swelled eagerly between them. With a wicked grin, Wulf lifted her and descended into the pillowed seating area. “I’ll spend the rest of my life pleasuring you.”

  “Umm…Sounds promising,” Katie purred, welcoming his weight with open arms.

  As he settled between her spread thighs, Wulf’s heart ached with love for her. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

  Author’s Note

  Some readers may remember this tale as one formerly known as Sapphire’s Worth. Written in 2004, a few brief excerpts were posted on my Web site and they were never forgotten—I’ve been receiving e-mail about Sapphire and Wulf for the last five years! I hope you find that the wait was worth it. This story was my second completed novel and although I have written many more since then, this one holds a special place in my heart.

  With love,

  Sylvia

  (writing as Livia)

  Return to Sapphire’s world as the trilogy continues…

  Once the beloved concubine of the King of Sari, Sapphire is now royal consort to Wulfric, proud and arrogant Crown Prince of the rival kingdom of D’Ashier. Wulf and Sapphire’s union is one of great passion and even greater risk. For theirs is a love destined to bring countries to ruin and change the face of a planet forever.

  Coming soon from Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  ZEBRA BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2009 by Sylvia Day

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Zebra and the Z logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 1-4201-1044-6

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Copyright

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Author’s Note