“That definition doesn’t sound right to me.”
Dolores’ eyes gazed out over the garden with a waiting look. It was as if, within their shadows of a purple that shamed the bourgainvillae bloom, hope was hiding in the arbor.
The King watched her in his considering way. His arm stretched along the back of the bench. When convinced that she had forgotten his presence, he suddenly snapped his strong, long fingers around the nape of her neck.
With a smothered scream, Dolores tried to shake off his clutch. Never from a mortal man had she felt a touch so offensive, yet so loathsomely attracting.
“Please release me. You are so—so intense!”
“Quite too intense”—Satan drew back his lips over his teeth in a bestial smile—“and in the imperative tense. Remember, Dame Dolores, that what I want, I do not ask. I take.”
Sliding his hand down her arm, he drew her to her feet.
“Considering that, how do you like the prospect of this High Priestess job?”
“I simply couldn’t do such things as you propose,” she dared his displeasure to protest. “I should fail dismally, for I am not at heart the sort you think. You say that love weakens one, but my spirit would die, I know, if I cast love out and tried to hate. You would be disappointed in me and your plans planned in vain. If success is what you demand, choose some one stronger in hate than I—some one who——”
“Playing in form to the last!” he commented. “You are wise. There really is no comparison between this appointment and one to the Wanton’s Well or, say, the Traitors to Mothers. You, by the way, are a native daughter to the last-named state. Did that strike you the other day? According to your own account, you killed your mother before the poor thing could so much as say ‘top o’ the morning.’”