"What makes you so confident that I can't make you say or do anything to be inside me?"

Because so much is at stake. Never had Rydstrom been this close to all he wanted.

He had to escape to get to his brother before he did something monumentally selfish. Cadeon was a cut­throat mercenary who had just come into possession of what he'd yearned for most in the world. "You couldn't tempt me from my duty before-and I didn't even know who you were then." Bravado, Woede.

She stood, her shoulders back. "You haven't seen everything I have to tempt you with," she said, pull­ing a ribbon at her bodice. The gown slid over her pert

nipples down her narrow waist and shapely legs to pool at her feet.

All that remained on her exquisite body was a sheer scrap of white silk covering her breasts and the tiniest panties he had ever seen.

His lips parted, and his cock felt like it could rip through his pants. With her eyes flashing, she raised her chin, well aware of her effect on him and prideful of it.

If this female weren't so evil, she'd be glorious.

In that instant, he decided, I'll claim her as my war prize when I escape.

And he would use her to get free.

L anthe shuffled to court, listening to her iPod, deep in thought.

A few months ago, she'd been off-plane, sitting in an electronics store watching coveted cable. She'd caught a show about dolphins in captivity.

When the animals got lethargic and bored, their trainers would put fish into a container so that the crea-tures would have to work to get them, figuring out how to open it.

Lanthe remembered likening Sabine to one of those burned-out dolphins who couldn't swim freely or hunt for their meals.

Sabine had been made a killer but had no one to destroy, a survivor with no calamity to endure. Which made her a burned-out sorceress. She had been for centuries.