Читать книгу Lyon - Elizabeth Amber - Страница 7

EarthWorld, Paris, France, November, 1823

Lord Lyon Satyr prowled the twilight streets of Paris, hunting. He breathed deep, searching the air and finding it rife with the scents of chimney smoke, dank river, and likely feminine prey. The blood of his ancestors pumped in him tonight, priming his body toward a carnal lust that was vital to the survival of his kind.

Because King Feydon had sown his seed where he should not have, Lyon would soon find himself yoked with a bride not of his own choosing. One whose name and face were unknown to him, but whom he nevertheless had journeyed here from Tuscany to find.

According to Feydon, his three FaerieBlend daughters were each in some sort of danger and time was of the essence. Nicholas, his eldest brother, had found the first of the daughters on the outskirts of Rome in a matter of weeks and quickly wed her. Raine had recently located the second daughter in Venice and brought her under his protection.

Now Lyon was left with the task of finding the third daughter here in Paris. But tomorrow would be time enough for duty. Tonight was for something altogether different.

This–his first night in Paris—could well be his last night of freedom. He planned to enjoy it.

A shout drew his attention. There was some sort of revelry commencing ahead, atop the Pont Neuf, the Seine River’s most famous bridge. The “new bridge” it was called, though it had seen completion over two centuries earlier.

Lyon veered in its direction, abandoning the row of stately town homes along the Quai de Conti for the opposite sidewalk that edged the river. As the light waned, the black-clad booksellers who lined the walk had begun to pack away unsold books in their boxes. In the depths of the channel just beyond them, the river flowed like molasses, cutting a long serpentine swath through Paris.

His hotel was expecting him. He’d sent his bag ahead and could be there himself within thirty minutes. Which meant his cock could be buried deep inside a conjured Shimmerskin female within thirty-one. No doubt his brothers would have made their way there and done exactly that in his place. It would be the wise thing to do. The careful thing.

But unlike his brothers, he craved variation in both setting and partner in his liaisons. And an element of risk.

He was on the bridge now. Kiosks in the half-round bastions that protruded at intervals from the railings were being abandoned by the costumers, perfumers, and sellers of fans, trinkets, crêpes, and fromage. These were giving way to street performers, chestnut carts, and throngs of unusually high-spirited Parisians. Pickpockets seeking prey, and prostitutes vying for custom, had come as well to rub elbows with the finely dressed.

As Lyon threaded among them, women of every rank in society turned to gaze after him, analyzing his worth and weighing the outward signs of his sexual prowess all in the sweep of a well-trained feminine eye. Taller and more muscular than his brothers and blessed with a masculine face so remarkably handsome it had actually caused women to swoon, he was accustomed to such attention and hardly noticed.

A couple passed and the lady’s skirt brushed him, wafting her natural feminine perfume to his nostrils. He took it in, closing his eyes briefly at the jolt of euphoria it afforded. It mingled with those of other nameless females, a jumble of waxy pomades, spicy fragrances spritzed from crystal bottles, and Human musk. A heady combination for a man who was already consumed with libidinous intentions.

Whispers reached his ears. Glancing over his shoulder, he was startled to note that at least a half dozen women trailed in his wake. And all were eyeing him as though he were a prime cut of meat at the local butcher shop.

Dismayed, he ground to a halt. His entourage took this as an invitation and swarmed. Prettily gloved hands petted his arm, his back, his hair.

“Bon soir, monsieur.”

“Bienvenue, monsieur.”

“Est-ce que je peux vous aider?”

A chill crawled its way between his shoulder blades and up the back of his neck. He’d never suffered from an inability to attract the opposite sex, but this level of overt attention was disconcertingly bizarre. The notion that something was very out of kilter tugged at him, but it lost out to other more overwhelming considerations. Whatever magic troubled Paris tonight would have to wait for his attention until after this soul-deep hunger within him was satisfied.

“Bon soir, mesdames,” he greeted them, for it would have been insulting to presume that the situation of any unfamiliar French female was that of spinster. He stroked a cheek, a throat, a pulse.

Carefully powdered faces returned his smiles and touches. Soft voices cajoled. Padded, shapely garments rustled and enticed. A covetous hand brushed his cock—mano morte. It could have been any one of them, pretending it was an accident.

All acted on him like aphrodisiacs sending blood coursing ever hotter through his system. The fabric of his trousers and shirt rasped the sensitized skin of his thighs, massive shoulders, and broad chest.

He needed a woman. Now.

With a brief dip of his head in her direction, he singled out a plump female in a pink dress, who stood just outside the circle of admirers. She’d been staring at him as had the others, but more shyly. His instincts told him she was a woman who’d known men. One who yearned for what he would offer. One whose body would accommodate his better than those of most Human women.

Unsure of his invitation, she touched her chest and raised her brows. At his nod, pin lights of delight brightened her mellow brown eyes and transformed a plain countenance into a pretty one. With a brusque word or two, she brushed off her young attendant before parting the crowd and moving toward him in tacit acceptance of his summons.

Though the rest of the besotted troupe must have realized he’d made a selection, they lingered, reluctant to accept it. He fanned his fingers, palm toward them, disbursing a hint of magic in the air.

“Allez,” he murmured. “Go.”

As one, they immediately dispersed to carry on with their business, seeming to forget why they’d gathered around him in the first place.

The silk gloving the hand of his chosen one slid across his work-toughened palm. She smiled shyly at him and his cock twitched, thirsting for a taste of her. He wrapped an arm around her and tucked her head to the hollow of his shoulder.

Eyes narrowed, he surveyed the bridge, quickly locating an area of isolation and leading her toward it. She went unquestioningly and within a few steps, they’d quit the thick of the crowd for the shadows behind the equestrian statue that lorded over the center of the bridge. Other couples had already congregated there along the railing, their heads close. Surreptitious hands moved busily under clothing and covert encouragements warmed the air. Intent on their own gratification, the current residents paid the new arrivals no attention.

“Madame?”

Lyon’s head whipped in the direction of the speaker and saw it was a servant, who took a nervous step back at his fierce expression. Apparently, his lady’s maid had decided to trail after them, trying to dissuade her mistress from folly.

He reached out and touched the girl’s cheek, sending a Calm over her. The concerned expression on her young face instantly eased and she returned to the place on the bridge where he’d first seen her, prepared to placidly await her employer.

Lyon looked down and found the woman’s gaze on him. He ducked his head close. “Bon soir, Madame.”

“Bon soir,” she whispered.

He pressed her back against the base of the statue—against inscribed words which explained that it was a bronze King Henri IV who rode majestically above them—the very monarch who had seen this bridge finished.

“Ici? Here?” His lover’s rapt attention had never once left his face, but now an uncertain frown puckered her brow and she glanced about them.

He touched the underside of her jaw with two fingertips, lifting her to his kiss. His hand slid into her hair, his palm so broad that it encompassed the back of her skull. “No one will see. Nor care,” his husky voice promised against her parted lips. “Just enjoy.”

His body crowded hers flush against the gritty stone and still he spoke to her—low reassuring words that warmed her ear and readied her for what was to come. Here, he would take his clandestine pleasure of her under sky and, later, star.

Her body was Human and would require considerable time to adjust to the size and strength of his. Even then she would be unable to take all of him in as well as the half-Faerie he’d come to Paris to find might have.

Annoyed that thoughts of that duty had intruded, he shook them off. Still, it was true that women in EarthWorld were frail and he could safely join himself to this one no more than a half dozen times here in this alcove. It would have to be enough.

With gentle lips, he brushed the tendon that ran from her ear to the hollow at the base of her throat. His pawlike hands roamed lower, gathering and lifting the front of her skirt and petticoat in great fistfuls, baring her to the cool air.

Her bosom rose on a sharp indrawn breath and her fingers fluttered to clutch the chiseled muscles of his shoulders. He leaned in, surrounding her with his body and scent.

Long, knowing fingers slipped under her skirts—first warming a thigh, then sliding between them and roving even higher to thread through soft, feminine bristle. A strangled moan escaped her as the first finger brushed her clit. At the second brush, she closed her eyes on a sigh.

He stroked her again and again, knowing all the while that it wasn’t a kindness he would be doing her in this act. Far from it. For after this night, a remembrance of their joining would remain with this woman, a new constant in her physical makeup. Though he would wipe the specifics of the hours they spent here from her mind, a small part of her would hereafter always pine for him, not knowing why or for whom she longed. And though this was a hurt he was reluctant to give her, he needed her too badly to let her go. The least he could do was to make sure that any impression he left was an extremely pleasant one.

She was panting now, emitting a tiny whimper each time he caressed her. Her arms had gone lax, hanging on either side of her hips against the stone. Slender wrists were turned upward in a pose of vulnerability, a sign she’d placed herself at his mercy.

His desire to possess her ratcheted higher. Heat pooled in his scrotum, tightening his balls into fists and thickening knotted blue veins that corded the length of his cock. He drew one of her hands to his groin and taught her the shape of him. She groaned against his neck.

His middle finger pressed urgently at the brink of humid feminine folds that gated what he sought. She was wet. Ready. He pushed her hand aside and found the fastening of his trousers, releasing himself.

Gods! Relief could not come soon enough!

Abruptly, an eerie crooning broke the air around them, reaching him even through a haze of lust and the surrounding din. A breath away from his sweet goal, he faltered. His head lifted and cocked to better listen.

The song came again. Eyes narrowed, he tipped his face in the direction from which it had issued. The river.

It came yet again familiar and feminine.

Nymphs. From the sound of things, they, too, were out hunting tonight. And they’d scented his presence. Voracious lovers, their bodies would be well able to handle all he had to offer. And they were noted gossips as well, a fact that might prove beneficial to his purpose in coming to Paris. Perhaps they’d gotten wind of the whereabouts of a certain female with a mix of both Faerie and Human blood in her veins.

He glanced at the willing woman before him. Her soft, experienced fingers warmed his cock. His body urged him to take her, to finish what he’d scarcely begun. But some latent sense of compassion impelled him to let her go. Now, before they mated and he gained a lasting hold over her.

Biting off a curse, he tamped his need and lay a palm against her cheek to bespell her. Silently, he commanded her to go. Willed her to forget her desire for the act they’d left unconsummated as best she could.

Tugging her hand away, he refastened his trousers. For long seconds, her brown eyes only blinked up at him, wounded and confused. He stepped back and her skirts swished into place again, covering thighs, dimpled knees, then ankles.

Her flushed face was a picture of reluctance, but she nevertheless straightened and turned away as he’d bid her. As she retraced her steps toward her waiting servant, her eyes followed him. Within hours, the particulars of their encounter would fade, but a vague yearning for him would remain with her for far longer, like a bruise on her heart.

Thoughts of her already fading, Lyon took the worn stone steps on the Pont Neuf’s north side two at a time. Descending to the brick walkway on a level with the river, he then veered under a wide arch, passing the clochards—harmless beggars who huddled in the nooks and crannies of Paris.

Behind him stretched the bulk of the island called Île de la Cité. Ahead of him, at its western tip lay the Parc Vert Gallant, a triangular spit formed by centuries of sediment deposits. Jutting into the Seine from just below the bridge, it pointed downstream like the prow of a ship.

Stepping into the park, he quickly swept the banks with his eyes, but saw nothing move. Where were they?

The crooning reached him again, louder and more beguiling this time. He walked the perimeters of the park where land met water, searching more keenly.

Here, the fresh natural odors of loam and vegetation filled him, offering a welcome respite from less pleasant smells of brick and smoke above in the bustling city. Cities were entertaining in their own way and on occasion, but why anyone of means would choose to inhabit an urban area in preference to the vast expanses of rural terrain that lay outside its borders was beyond his reasoning. Something in his soul tied him to the land.

Suddenly, he whipped around. The crooning had come again, this time from the park’s north bank. An unanticipated thrill engulfed him, prickling his skin, and hardening his cock to ever-greater dimensions.

For this time, the sound had brought with it something new. A precious fragrance. It entwined the call, separating itself from Human smells and marking itself as peculiar. It was an unmistakable scent. That of Faerie. Aroused Faerie.

Was it possible he’d so easily located the very female he’d come to Paris to find? He paced the length of the north shore again, more impatient than ever for a first glimpse of the river nymphs. Convinced now, that King Feydon’s third daughter was among them.

Never mind that until this moment he’d been aggrieved at this duty and reluctant to meet her. Never mind that having her find him the very night of his arrival in Paris seemed an errand too easily accomplished. Never mind that it appeared she was inexplicably of the sea, rather than of the land.

One thought and one only rode him—that within minutes, in this very park, he would make her his. Reason could wait until after his cock had found a haven in her.

His eyes scanned the bank. Where was she, damn it all?

Something stirred the river just beyond a patch of grassy silt beneath a plane tree. A lithe form rose from the depths, water streaming from its dark hair and slicking over shoulders and full, tipped breasts. Silhouetted against the sunset’s brilliant orange reflection on the Seine’s surface, a nymph reached toward the park embankment. Bracing her arms there, she pulled herself higher and turned to sit onshore with her glistening back toward him.

Lyon devoured the distance between them. Earlier, he hadn’t wanted to find her, but now that he had…

He came to stand just behind her, his legs warm on either side of her river-chilled spine. Twin opalescent dorsal fins at her shoulder blades twitched against him, like the gentle flutter of faerie wings.

Her body was sleek and curved, beautiful and mysterious. Her hair was a dark wet scarf, its length wrapped once around her neck and its ends draping forward to cling damply at her hips and lap. The tip of her tail remained hidden, still swallowed by the Seine.

His hands touched the sides of her face and caught her hair, smoothing it from her cheeks and unwinding it until its length hung free down her back, soaking the front of his trousers.

Beyond her he heard two more nymphs making their way to shore, but he ignored them. This one was Feydon’s daughter. From the moment he’d drawn near to her, he’d been certain of it.

Slipping his hands under her armpits he gently lifted her dripping figure clear of the river. The sooner he got her on land, the sooner she’d dry enough to transform for him.

Over her shoulder, her head angled his way, but otherwise she didn’t acknowledge him.

Other heads had swiveled toward him as well, for the crowds had spilled down the staircases on either side of the bridge and out into the park. Human voyeurs, eager to be shocked and entertained, craned their necks and whispered.

“You see nothing,” he murmured in their direction. Eddies of air caught his words and carried them, spreading a mindspell throughout the atmosphere of the park and beyond.

One by one, the gawkers turned away and forgot what had captured their interest in the first place. No longer would they be able to detect him or the fey in any way. The more perceptive among them could still see had they chosen to do so, but now they would no longer be inclined to look.

Turning the nymph to face him, Lyon anchored her against him with a muscular forearm at her lower back. Of necessity, he supported her entire weight, for she would remain unable to stand on her own until the transformation occurred that would replace her tail with two limbs.

His gritted his teeth at the thought of the wait ahead. As a protection against rape, nymphs’ mating cavities were sealed until their bodies had been sufficiently aroused by their partners. It would take at least a half an hour on land before her tail would bisect. Only then would she be available for mounting.

He pulled back to see her, but she kept her face averted. Her arms lay on his chest and gleamed with the phosphorescence of sea creatures that haunted only the deepest parts of the ocean. It would fade with her metamorphosis, disappearing completely if she remained on land. Which, if things worked out as he expected, she would.

The curtain of her hair streamed over shoulders made strong by many days of battling sea currents. It partially cloaked her like ropes of wet satin hanging almost to her knees.

Against him, her ice-blue breasts soaked his shirt in dual fat circles. A dozen or more strands of sumptuous jewels draped her neck. Frigid, pointed nipples peeked from among them, poking his chest as hard as two fingertips.

Having grown to its usual legendary proportions, his long-suffering cock nudged her through his trousers, beyond anxious for a taste. It occurred to him that wedding this half-Faerie might not be as bad as he’d feared.

“Look at me,” he growled.

With the smooth elegance that typified water-dwellers, she lifted her gaze. His head jerked back as he got his first look at her face, for it bore telltale pearlescent V-shaped scales.

“Twelve hells! You’re a Nereid?”

She cocked her head. “You expected something tamer?”

Damn! King Feydon had saddled him for life with a Nereid? A nymph who was equal parts sea-faerie and she-devil?

Her hands clutched the hard swells of his biceps as though she feared he’d withdraw from her. “I am the king’s child—the one you seek,” she assured him.

“Your name?” Lyon heard himself ask.

“Sibela, my love.” Her voice was pleasing, her every utterance a lilting chant of the kind that had lured legions of males to their doom.

She tugged him closer and her lips found his jaw, nibbling delicately along it. Then she licked his cheek with a firm upward sweep of her abnormally long tongue. He’d forgotten that the Nereid liked to taste their men.

He heard a splash and used the excuse to turn his face from her. A distance behind her, two more of her kind had levered themselves up on the banks. Their covetous eyes ran over him as they began drying themselves with crisp ruby and gold maple leaves as big as his hands, anxious to hurry their own metamorphoses.

Sibela’s eyes flashed seashell pink, then green again and her tailfin slapped the earth at his feet, its two sharp points ripping at his boots. Her melodious voice was the yowl of a harpy now as she scolded and warned them off, laying claim to him. The acolytes shrank back, but didn’t go.

Lyon winced, envisioning his future with this creature.

“What are Nereids doing in the river?” he asked, silently cursing King Feydon. “Your kind normally frequent the Mediterranean or even the oceans, leaving the rivers to Naiads.”

“I’ve come for you,” she whispered, all smiles and sweetness again.

“How did you know to come searching for me here?” he asked, suspicious.

“News of your coming and the reasons behind it was brought to me by the currents. I know what you want of me tonight. And I am willing.” Claws ripped at his shirt, opening it and pushing it off his shoulders. “Eager.”

Her story was viable. It was no secret that he and his brothers had begun searching out brides of late. And he was well aware that EarthWorld’s waterways circulated such gossip more rapidly than its land roads.

Cool hands slid lower around him to knead the cheeks of his buttocks through his trousers. Her sea-green eyes turned sly and knowing as she ground her groin against his and felt how much he wanted her.

Instinctively, he shifted aside, evading her overture. He stared down at her, shocked at himself. His body was well primed for a mating, so why the fuck had he done that?

She was glaring at him now, clearly wondering the same thing. “Lie with me,” she coaxed.

Feeling that everything was wrong about this, Lyon nevertheless summoned a grim smile. “Yes. Of course.”

He swung her into his arms and carried her farther onto shore, leaving a trail of liquid phosphorescence in their wake. She touched his cheek and something akin to panic filled him when he realized he felt no special attachment toward her.

Where was the instantaneous bonding Nicholas and Raine had felt toward King Feydon’s first two daughters upon meeting them? Where was the craving to join his body to Sibela’s to the exclusion of all others? The kind of impatient desire he’d witnessed in Nick, only when he was in Jane’s presence? The intense, selective need even his remote brother Raine had been unable to hide when Jordan was near?

As he lay her upon a soft bed of reed grasses a distance away from shore, the realization that he felt nothing above ordinary lust toward the female in his arms shook him. Yet his body did clamor to claim hers, and he took heart from that.

So he stretched himself on the ground beside her, preparing to mount her here on the very spot where Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar, had been burnt at the stake in medieval times. She was willing and her body would give his ease. More importantly, their joining would initiate the protection that a lengthier mating during Moonful tomorrow night would greatly extend and reinforce.

But he was certain now that she would not leave her stamp upon his heart. No woman ever had.

Lying with a forearm pillowing her head, he nudged her onto her back and ran his hands over the bones of ribs and hip, then lower. As her body dried, a shallow furrow was forming along the central length of her, from groin to tailfin. The flat of his fingers traced over it, slicking away the droplets of seawater that had pooled in the depression.

“How long?” he growled, as desire rose hotter in him.

Seawater eyes brimming with sexual promise caught his. “Soon, my sweet.”

Sweet? It was obvious from her tone that she enjoyed the fact that he was suffering for want of her.

His finger found the tip of a luminous breast amid the tangle of rubies, pearls, and other less exotic stones encircling her neck. Hooking an inexpensive strand from amid the more costly necklaces, he lifted it for closer study.

“Where did you come by all this?” he asked, nodding toward the bounty.

She snatched it from him and carefully patted it back into place. “From here and there. My most recent finds were from the hold of a vessel. A sunken one littered with dead Spaniards who were so kind as to leave a trunk full of gems at my disposal. However grateful I was for their gifts, they proved quite a trial.” Her eyes were cunning as she slid her hand lower between them. “For their flaccid organs provided little in the way of entertainment.”

He caught her hand, thwarting it from finding him. “Do you think to make me jealous with your talk of other men?”

“No. Of course not.” She shook off his restraint and he let her. “It’s only that your carnal exploits are the stuff of legend and I wish to assure you that as a woman of experience, I’m your match in such matters.”

Her hand found his cock then, and her voice turned intimate. “And I find myself hungry tonight for a more lively joining with a far greater treasure than limp Spaniards.”

Clawed fingertips pricked through his trousers, fondling his tumescent shaft.

Hissing inwardly between his teeth, Lyon gave her a warning squeeze. “If you want my ‘treasure’ so badly, I suggest you exercise care not to damage it before it can perform as you like.”

She looked ready to speak, but then something beyond him caught her eye. Abruptly, she rose on an elbow to glower menacingly over his shoulder. Slithering on their bellies across the grass, the others of her kind had trailed them and had drawn too near to suit her.

Reminded of Sibela’s wrath, they halted a distance away combing their hair with their fingers and eyeing him.

With mechanical expertise, his fingers continued to caress, deepening the trench along Sibela’s tail. But his mind worked apart from his hands. “How is it that King Feydon’s third daughter comes from the river instead of land?”

“My secrets are not yours to hear until we’ve grown closer,” she crooned, all cloying again as her attention returned to him. Her bony, translucent fingers made quick work of the fastenings of his trousers. Freed, his cock surged from the gape of fabric and she reached for it.

“Careful,” he reminded softly.

She nodded and stroked him once. Twice. “You seem sufficiently roused for the task ahead.”

Then her hand covered his where it massaged the furrow forming directly along the center of her tail. What had been one long, solid form from hip to tip was beginning to remodel itself into two distinct limbs. A true separation had already begun at her groin and this was where she led his touch.

“So am I,” she whispered. “I’m open for you! Feel me?”

Under their combined touch, the tender slit at her groin deepened. It would take some time for the separation to continue along thighs, knees, calves, and ankles. And longer still for it to form webbed-toed feet from angled fins. But he needn’t wait any longer, and she wouldn’t require him to.

Bracing his hands in the grass on either side of her, he slung himself over her and replaced their fingers with the crown of his cock. He flexed his hips, beginning his push.

“Are you ready for me?” His voice was gruff, trembling with need.

She flattened her palms against his chest, staying him. “You understand my price?”

Their eyes caught and his jaw hardened. “I’m more than willing to meet it—if you’re truly King Feydon’s daughter.” He had little choice. The third fey child was destined to be his for all eternity whether he cared for her or not. It was what his brothers expected. Cleaving himself to her was his duty and would protect both her and the gate on Satyr land that stood as the only barrier between two disparate worlds.

“You will wed me in the Human way?” she asked, demanding a clearer agreement. “Take me to your lands where the Arno flows?”

Everything in him—except his cock—rebelled at the idea. “Yes,” he told her.

She smiled slowly. Releasing him, she threw her arms wide on the grass to tangle in the hair that fanned around her.

“Then come into me, husband,” she breathed.

His tip dipped farther into her, widening and stretching her small gap. Her milky readiness coated his crown and stirred every nerve ending he possessed.

“Gods, yes,” he breathed.

“I know,” she crooned. “I know you need me, darling. And I’m yours.”

He drew back and pressed forward again. And again, in an erotic dance that teased her entrance wider and lodged him farther inside her each time. He lowered his head to her, nuzzling the hair along her temple. “Yesss.”

Her crooning turned louder and more harmonious, becoming a vibrant hum. “Fuck me, fuck me!” she chanted.

With a vigorous shove of his hips, he penetrated her, tunneling hard and deep. Sheathed inside the newly formed gelatinous core of the woman he would marry, he shivered, recalling yet another reason he’d always shrunk from fornicating with Nereids. Sibela was cold—inside and out.

“Welcome home,” she lilted at his ear. “I am meant for you.”

Finding himself at a loss for a convincingly ardent reply, he kissed her instead. And to make up for his lack of affection, he then proceeded to rut her with all the considerable skill he’d acquired over the past decade. Gripping the soft-scaled rounds of her buttocks, he drove himself into her, then pulled away, reveling in the feel of her inner muscles sucking at him. He slammed home again and again, beginning to lose himself in the animal act.

Whap! Her tail swept upward to slap his rear, and the twin tips of her caudal fin pierced his skin.

“Gods!” Lyon jerked at the pain and shifted his leg so it weighted her tail. Shoving fingers tight in her hair, he spoke to her nose to nose. “There’s something about me you’ll want to remember. Rough, I like.” At the beginning and finish of each sentence, he bucked her in emphatic slams. “Violent, I don’t.”

Her channel undulated, squeezing him in a way that urged him toward orgasm but let him know she intended to be the one who’d decide when he’d attain it.

A hoarse, carnal groan escaped him, and she smiled knowingly.

“You will grow used to my ways in time,” she told him.

A part of him reveled in the frank coarseness of her. But something in him craved variety, and she would always demand that his lovemaking be an assault. The Nereid considered pain and aggression an inalienable part of this act. For them, every mating was a test of their partner’s worthiness. It was not her fault, he reminded himself. She was who she was.

So he fucked her, rough and aggressive, ruthlessly taking what he needed and giving her what she wanted. She licked the strong column of his neck and then nipped him there and he let her. Her necklaces bit into his chest and her claws raked up and down his back and ripped at his clothing as she pelted his ears with raw pleas.

“Fuck! Ram it! Give it to me!”

To save his own skin as much as anything else, he wrenched her wrists above her head and secured them with one hand. Holding nothing back, he gave her what she begged for, sending shock waves through her body with each lusty hammer of his hips. He grunted like an animal as the force of each plow slammed his balls against her. The stubble on his jaw chafed her throat and his mouth bruised her, but she only pleaded for more.

“Yes!” she shouted, “Yes,” over and over until his ears rung and he wondered if he should bespell himself into deafness. Her frigid, slushy core warmed, and she began to hum a soft siren’s song deep in her chest, indicating her heightening pleasure. His balls tightened in response, presaging the monumental release that often came with the fucking of a creature with ElseWorld blood.

Yet all the while, he remained alert to his surroundings. Apart from the actions of his body, he tracked where every Human within a hundred feet stood and used his acute senses to filter the air for sounds or signs of danger.

Above him, the Pont Neuf still bustled with activity and the enthusiastic crowd pounded across the bridge like a herd of cattle. The acrid scent of smoke told him the lampiste was illuminating the lamps along the bridge. Some of the chestnuts in the vendor’s cart had burned, a container of beer had just been broken at King Henri’s feet, and another man had just spilled his cum inside the brown-eyed Human woman Lyon had earlier abandoned.

Then, without warning, something unfamiliar and…pleasing…reached him. It was a new, momentous fragrance unlike any he’d ever experienced. Riding on the air, it invaded his lungs, his mind. And sought to leave its mark on other organs no female had ever yet touched. On his heart—his very soul.

His head jerked back from Sibela’s. His brows knit in concentration as he scrutinized her face. She was staring beyond him, toward something above him on the bridge.

“Your scent—” he gasped, never breaking the rhythm of his rut. Her eyes flicked guiltily to his.

“Ignore her,” she urged, and he heard the fear in her voice. “She’s nothing to us.”

She wrenched her wrists from his hold in order to clutch him to her and kiss his throat with cloying desperation.

“Ignore who?”

And then, impossibly—despite Sibela’s pleas and despite the din on the bridge—a single word reached him. A single word made of two sweet syllables, fallen from feminine lips. A word that in and of itself meant nothing to him. But which fell upon his ears with the subtle impact of a delicate leaf drifting to lie upon a still pond on a quiet autumn day.

It was a simple, quiet utterance. Yet one that wreaked havoc on his senses. He felt himself losing control. Felt his gut wrench. Felt himself being forcibly hurtled toward the fiercest ejaculation of his life. His cock swelled and hardened to stone as unyielding as the bridge supports. His teeth bared and every muscle in his body seized.

Bone-deep ecstasy shuddered over him, then he shot off, harder than he ever had before. Cum flooded from him, thick and hot and never-ending.

“Gods! Gods!” he gasped, barely registering the fact that his partner was coming as well. It was as though he were experiencing his orgasm with someone other than the woman under him.

His back arched and he looked upward, toward the place on the bridge from which the unexpected sound and scent had emanated.

Above him, a shadowy form watched from along the balustrade of the bridge. He had only a quick glimpse of a pale, rosy-cheeked feminine face within a crimson hood, before it ducked out of sight.