I STOPPED IN FRONT OF LORD BELSHAZZAR’S bedchamber door and yawned. My pajamas whispered around my body as I stretched, the time well past midnight. I asked, “Is the Overlord back yet?”
Orin nodded while the other bodyguard remained silent, and he motioned toward the door. “He returned a few minutes ago.” The frightening bodyguard lifted a brow. “Your timing is impeccable, your majesty.”
I snorted and shrugged my right shoulder.
I had been watching the cameras of the Royal floor, thanks to a feed Harmony had set up on my phone. I knew Lord Belshazzar had returned.
The very edges of his lips tipped up in what some might call a smile. It was hard to tell really. “You may go in, your majesty. Lord Belshazzar has allowed you entry already.”
“Thank you.”
I stepped inside the lord’s room…and swiftly shut the door behind me in surprise. An unmistakable noise was coming from Lord Belshazzar’s bathroom. I locked the door just as fast as I closed it.
My eyes scanned the empty bedroom, catching on the fireplace where a roaring fire was warming the space. I sputtered a curse then raced to the fireplace and grabbed a poker from the tools beside it. A pair of pants and a thin black sweater and a pair of underwear were half hanging out of the fireplace, all on fire and sizzling close to his fur rug. I shoved at the burning mess, battling it back into the fireplace from where they had apparently toppled.
Huffing in surprise, I placed the poker back onto its hook and stepped over the hastily kicked off shoes and socks that littered the ground. My attention swung back to the bathroom where heaves of vomiting continued to be heard.
What the fuck was going on?
Using my vampire speed, I sped into the open bathroom, wind whipping my hair back, and froze in place inside the spacious restroom. Lord Belshazzar was indeed inside, naked as the day he was born, and kneeling before his toilet. His large hands gripped the edge of the toilet, and his body convulsed with each ejection from his stomach into the porcelain toilet.
I blinked very slowly as his body flicked between looking like the Overlord I knew…and the devil-looking Overlord I knew lurked inside him. His skin would flash red and black deadly horns would emerge, and his fingernails turned black, only to quickly disappear back to normal as he sucked in a large lungful of breath. The process repeated each time he spewed, the devil-lord reappearing every time he puked.
Lord Belshazzar didn’t seem to notice either, too busy in his own misery and pain as his body dispelled everything inside him.
I took a few steps further into the bathroom. “My lord? What’s going on?”
“Leave and close the door,” he barked on a hoarse voice, not turning his head away from the toilet. He lifted a stopping hand in my direction, and then flushed the toilet. Between another battle of puking, he snarled, “Get out, Gwen!”
I shook my head, even though he couldn’t see it. “Did someone poison you? Should I call for a medic?” I didn’t know what the fuck was going on! Vampires didn’t just puke!
“No,” he choked. More puking, more devil-lord showing. Another flush of the toilet. “Just leave. This’ll be done soon.”
My lips pinched. I shook my head again and marched straight toward him. “I don’t think so.”
Careful not to be in range of the lethal black horns that kept reappearing and disappearing, I squatted next to him and pulled his long, black hair back from his perspiring face and rubbed his back with my free hand, waiting whatever this was out with him.
I stated clearly, “I’m staying here with you, Bel. Take as long as you need.”
He gripped the toilet tighter, catching a glimpse of his hands as they turned red, but he couldn’t exactly argue…since he was puking again. Massive spasms of his body erupted again, his entire frame wracked with the motion. Every muscle on his well-honed body clenched so hard it had to be excruciating.
And past all that sickly smell filling the bathroom, I could scent the same sexual fluids on him that I had the night of the Blood Rite.
Ms. Olivia Francis.
He had done his duty.
I was pleased to know she would be dead tomorrow.
“Gwen…” he choked, still staring at his red hands.
“Nope. I’m not leaving you while you’re ill. Get over it.”
Frosty blue eyes lifted to mine, but he wisely kept his face pointed down toward the toilet. I didn’t mention he had some spittle hanging from his mouth. I didn’t think he’d appreciate that right now. His gaze searched mine, flicking back and forth between my eyes—finding no surprise there. His black brows furrowed in thought, even as his body flicked back to looking normal again.
Then he went back to puking.
The devil-lord reemerged, too.
Once he was sucking oxygen again, I murmured with much unconcern, “I like your horns.”
He spat into the toilet and flushed it, his brows furrowing as he stared down into the toilet water. He muttered roughly—and honestly, “I am so confused right now.”
I rubbed his back softly. “You know the necklace you gave me?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that jewel showed me something when I first touched it. A little boy on a beach finding the gem. You. With red skin, horns, black nails, and an impish grin.” I kept rubbing his back. “I’ve known since that morning. I don’t understand it at all, but I’ve known.”
Bel started to curse…but began puking again.
He was on to the stomach acid now.
He should be done soon. I hoped.
I sighed and held his hair tighter for him. “That’s pretty much how I thought you’d react. I haven’t told anyone, and I don’t plan to. You have nothing to worry about from me.”
I removed my hand from his back and flushed the toilet for him this time when he started spitting. Then the dry heaves arrived. They were worse than the actual retching, his whole body trembling fiercely still wanting to vomit. I waited it out with him, flushing the toilet again.
He spit one last time before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Bel gradually sat back, his frame shuddering with the action. I released his hair, while he evaluated me from under hooded eyelids, his dark lashes hiding his thoughts from me.
Tense quiet ticked by. Slowly.
Neither one of us said anything.
I had only my imagination to afford me what he might be thinking, from the good to the bad. He didn’t give anything away.
Eventually, I couldn’t take the strain any longer.
I cleared my throat and pointed at his shower, thinking of anything to stop the silence. “Perhaps you’d like to clean up?”
Bel dipped his face toward his body, his eyes never leaving mine, and sniffed once. His face scrunched in revulsion. “Yes, a shower sounds good.”
I stood to my feet and started walking out of the bathroom. “I’ll find you something to wear and set it on the sink.”
He hesitated a moment, then stated, “Thank you, Gwen.”
“You’re welcome.”
The shower turned on inside the bathroom as I rifled through his drawers. I found a pair of underwear first and then searched for his pajama pants. Everything was so perfectly in place inside his chest of drawers that it didn’t take long.
I returned to the bathroom and set the clothes down but didn’t dally in there. I rubbed my forehead and went to lie on his bed, trying to understand what had made him so violently ill. Vampires didn’t get sick…but I had no clue what the fuck he really was. I stayed on ‘my side’ of the bed as I slipped under the covers and turned on my side, facing ‘his side,’ and waited for him to finish.
I listened to every sound. The water splashing against his skin. His contented groans at being clean. The towel that scrubbed along his skin as he dried off. The brush of clothes being pulled up. His feet walking over the tile. The sink turning on as he brushed his teeth. The drip on the floor from his hair still being wet. An anxious sigh as he hesitated behind a wall next to the bathroom door. The crack of his neck when he finally decided to enter his room again.
He stepped into his bedchambers while he pulled his hair up into a bun at the top of his head. His body visibly relaxed seeing me lying in bed—and the fact I still had my pajamas on.
I flicked a finger at ‘his side’ of the bed, and stated gently, “Sleep, Bel. Neither one of us is in the mood for anything more tonight.”
He grunted. “I’m fine now, Gwen. Quit worrying.”
But my lover didn’t argue for more either—confirming my assumption—while he went to his bedroom door and used his thumbprint to bring down the steel security to cover the wooden entrance. He even took a long pull of whiskey straight from a decanter before he snuffed out the fire and turned out the light.
He tapped on his cell phone, and then set it on the nightstand. “My alarm is set for the meeting tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you. I left my cell phone in my room.”
Bel crawled into bed, stuffed his legs under the covers, and rolled onto his side. His chilly blue eyes stared into mine in the darkness, neither one of us hindered by the dark. With the quirk of one of his brows, he asked, “Do you plan to sleep over there all night long?”
I lifted my own eyebrow. “Do you want me to?”
His lips thinned. “No.”
“You want me to sleep next to you?” I asked, trying to keep the shock from my tone. “Are you sure? You never want to start out sleeping next to me.” Even if he didn’t mind it by morning when he was half-asleep.
Bel’s words were soft. “Tonight, I think I do.”
“Okay,” I responded gently. I scooted under the blankets until I was next to the heat of his body, so much heat I shivered in pleasure and relaxed even more. My head sank into the edge of the pillow next to his, our faces close together. “Better?”
“Much.” Bel wrapped an arm and a leg over my body and pulled me snug against his muscled frame. His lips quirked up at the edges, and he kissed the tip of my nose softly. “That’s even better, though.”
I snickered and ducked my head under his chin, pressing the side of my cheek against his warm chest.
Bel ran his fingers up and down my back in the quiet, and asked, “You’re really not going to ask any questions?”
I shook my head as much as I could. “You’ll tell me when you’re ready to.”
“You are…an interesting creature, Gwen.”
I snorted on a laugh. “Pot. Kettle.”
His chuckle was deep and quiet. “Touché.”
I tapped my fingers against the smooth skin on his chest. “I actually do have one question for you, and it doesn’t have to do with what I witnessed in the bathroom.”
Bel hummed softly in thought. “All right. Ask.”
“When you were crowned king, you stated you were from Ota’ano.”
Harmony had gotten back with me. We’d been right about the name. But neither technology nor vampire historian (multiple historians), knew of a place called that. I had even researched it for most of the night, waiting for Bel to return to his room.
More than muddled and flabbergasted to even ask this question—about a place I never believed existed—I continued, “Is Ota’ano a city in…S’Kir?”
Ever so slowly, Bel shook his head. “No. My origin of birth is not in S’Kir.”
Exasperated, I grumbled, “Well, then, where the hell is Ota’ano? Because it doesn’t exist in history. And I know you wouldn’t have lied at your crowning.”
His fingers ran in soothing circles against my back. “I’m sorry, Gwen, but I’m not ready to talk about where I was born yet.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
I huffed. “Will you ever tell me?”
“Yes.”
“That’s very kind of you,” I grumbled sarcastically. “Fine, keep your secrets for now.”
“I will.” No apology whatsoever in his tone.
Not. An. Easy. Lover.
I sighed, then closed my eyes, and lay my palm flat over his chest. His heart beat like any other vampire. That was reassuring, at least.
Done with this day, I yawned wide and snuggled further against him, getting as close as I could to his scrumptious body and warmth. “Good night, Bel.”
He squeezed me carefully, gifting me a small hug. “Good night, Gwen.”