Читать книгу Dane - Elizabeth Amber - Страница 10

I’m not insane.

I…am…not…insane.

Lord Dane Satyr repeated the words in his mind, trying to banish the cold terror that ripped down his spine. Pain speared through his brain like tiny branches of lightning. His heart beat a harsh, ragged drumbeat in his ears. Behind his eyelids, a blood-red haze singed his vision. Dormant, half-formed memories had him yanking sharply at his arms and legs, and rotating his wrists against unseen restraints.

Mouths, caresses, fists, cocks, slaps, bites, fingers, tongues, pinches, breasts…torturous devices. And the hands. Those wanting, needing hands he couldn’t escape. They took from him, used him without his consent. Why did he let them? Why couldn’t he find the will to fight? He was disoriented, out of control. Helpless. He, the most feared and vaunted Tracker in ElseWorld history.

But back then, he’d only been a boy of twelve.

Come now, be a good boy.

No! No!

And then he’d been free. Running.

Gods! Where was Lucien? He had to get to him. Free him as well.

But the voice in his mind—Dante—urged him on toward escape. If you go back for him, you’ll be recaptured, it had whispered. You must flee…You must live…It’s the only way to save him….

The first fingers of dawn came, stroking night from the sky. The suffocating memories that clutched at Dane’s soul like cruel claws were wrenched away. His senses returned to him in a sharp rush of panic. His eyes flew open, and he threw his head back to draw a deep draught of air into starving lungs. He felt confined, choked, and the small muscles of his large frame twitched and quivered with exertion. A fine sheen of sweat chilled his skin in the crisp morning air.

He was naked. On an altar between the thighs of an unknown female. Her eyes were closed in ecstasy, her breasts arched high and shuddering with each rapid breath. They’d been copulating, and not for the first time. He’d just pulled out of her and spilled his seed on her belly. He felt it, slick between them.

Fuck. He’d lost time again.

How much?

Only last night? Or would he look in a mirror to find that years had passed and that he’d grown old and gray? No, his skin was still smooth and his arms as firmly muscled as before. And they weren’t tethered.

With the realization that he wasn’t trapped, his pulse began to calm. The sensation of restraint had only been due to the fact that his arms were wound through those of his companion, his hands gripping hers fast to the altar. He released her and rested his weight on his forearms.

Somewhere behind him, olive leaves rustled in the early October breeze. He was on his own land. In the small temple on the slope of Aventine Hill. Under the shelter of a wide, covered portico upon a multileveled floor of patterned marble strung with tall columns. An elaborate continuous mosaic decorated its walls, filled with scenes of worship and sacrifice that had been performed here in times past.

His ancient ancestors had likely taken hundreds of females here on this very altar. However, this was the first time he’d had the opportunity to follow in the family tradition. It had only been the night before last that he’d won this temple and its adjacent house and olive grove from the Patrizzi scion in a game of cards.

Another bolt of dread crawled up his spine, catching him off guard. Gasping, he bowed forward. But it was only the scratch of the woman’s fingers as they lightly feathered up his back. She locked her legs higher around his hips, rubbing herself against his prick, basting its length in the warm pool of his own spent seed.

“Dante.” It was a feminine purr, the sound of a satisfied woman. The name froze his blood.

“Don’t,” he bit out. “Don’t call me that.” It wasn’t his name. It was that of his illicit occupier, the self-appointed fornicator who took clandestine control of his mind, body, and spirit during every encounter of a carnal nature. Dante, who had been with him for half his life now and who stubbornly withheld answers to plaguing riddles. For the past twelve years, Dane had bided his time. Existed in a sort of purgatory on the other side of the gate, performing the duties of a Tracker in ElseWorld’s Special Operative Forces. He’d waited in vain all that time for Dante to reveal his secrets. Two weeks ago, he’d finally managed to escape into this world. And now he would ferret out those secrets himself…or die trying.

“I’m sorry,” his companion murmured in a conciliatory tone. Instead of lust, curiosity now colored her expression. Damn his loose tongue. He couldn’t afford to fuel any rumors that the third Satyr brother, who’d seemingly appeared from nowhere two weeks ago, was, in fact, mad.

“That name. It’s one I reserve for nocturnal pastimes,” he explained coolly.

“Of course. I understand,” the woman replied. But she didn’t.

The excuse had sounded unconvincing, even to him. What sort of man wished to be called by one name out of bed and another in it? Not a sane one. She was wondering what was wrong with him. Most of ElseWorld already thought him a lunatic, and he’d soon have half of Rome thinking the same if he didn’t take care.

Disentangling himself, he sat up from her. His feet hit the cold granite floor, braced wide, and he rested his forearms on his thighs. The floor was remarkably pristine. It struck him then how well-tended the entire temple was compared with the house and grove he now owned. Locating his discarded shirt, he dragged it across his lap, blotting his belly and genitals, wiping away evidence of a pleasurable pastime in which he’d participated, but of which he had no recollection.

A soft sigh issued from several yards away and he turned his head toward the sound. Another female reclined there, her face slack with sleep, her hair draping the floor in a sweep of red silk. He’d known she was there, of course, having scented her the moment he’d awakened. She was pale, her skin almost a blue-white hue and faintly iridescent. Nereid, he guessed. A species that relished violence in their lovemaking. Which explained the scratches he felt on his back. She wore only a slip, creased and twisted high on her hips. Her thighs were sprawled, and though her thatch was moist with his male leavings, it didn’t surprise him that he had no memory of mating her.

One of her wrists was cuffed to the scrolled arm of the marble bench upon which she lay. He’d…no…It had been Dante who’d tethered her there sometime during the night. Not he. His gaze clung to her briefly, but he couldn’t allow it to linger. He found too much pleasure in the sight of a female willingly bound and waiting. Yet upon himself he abhorred chains of any sort, be they constructed of iron, rope, silk, or flesh.

Arms slid around him. His golden-haired lover had come to reclaim him.

“Just because the dawn has broken, there’s no reason for you to go tearing off,” she said softly. Pushing away his crumpled shirt, she slipped onto his lap, straddling him. And he let her, his locked arms bracing his weight on the altar behind him. Doughy breasts compressed against his chest, and her torso slinked along his like a cat’s. Fingers stroked his nape, and soft lips brushed the overnight beard on his jaw.

“Will you have me again?” Her slick gusset rocked over his prick, trying to coax him into entering her. His hands went to her thighs, helping her ride him. He felt the faint etching of scales under his palms. Like the other female, she was nereid. Cupping her ass, he lifted her higher over him and found his cock with one fist.

Then he flinched, feeling a familiar, stealthy presence rise to lurk within him. Like a tendril of smoke curling from a latent fire, Dante was stirring. Readying. Waiting to see if the inferno of lust was to be rekindled. If Dane continued along this path, Dante would surely return. Would take control and revel in the ensuing fornication until all pleasure was finished and all lust extinguished.

It was pointless to continue. Any ecstasy would not be his own.

Still, it was tempting. In the instant before his consciousness was stolen from him, he would enjoy a single delicious spark of carnal satisfaction, like flint striking match before the fire of mating was ignited. Was it worth it? With both hands, he squeezed her ass, moving her hard against him, staring at her quivering, ruddy-tipped breasts, wanting her. Wanting to feel, if only for that instant. Yet not wanting to give up control to Dante. She moaned, her fingernails digging into his shoulders.

Delicate gold flashed between her breasts in the fallen tangle of her blond hair, catching his eye. She wore a necklace. His hands slowed on her and he frowned, suddenly recalling another woman with hair as black as a raven’s. Recalling another necklace whose pendant had been lost in the shadows of the shapely cleavage hidden within a prim gray bodice. A woman with pale pink nipples, not ruddy ones. A woman with eyes the color of new spring clover, but whose face he could not recall. Last night.

His mind worked frantically, trying to hold on to a runaway memory. There had been a woman in the grove last night! She’d run from him. No. Not from him. From…

“Dante?” The woman on his lap drew back to look at him. She appeared to have been trying to get his attention for some seconds. “What’s wrong?”

Dane snatched her away, holding her by the wrists, his eyes intense and glittering as they searched hers. “Who are you? How did you get here?”

For a moment, she looked taken aback. Then she sighed deeply, looking disappointed. “Oh. Business already, is it?”

“Che cosa il diavolo! What the devil does that mean?” Taking her weight with him, he stood and set her on her feet.

Nearby, the other female had awakened, worked her way loose from bondage, and now stood as well. The golden-haired woman nodded in her direction, including her when she spoke. “We’re Council messengers, my lord, arrived only last night. When we came upon you then, in the throes of the moon’s Calling, you bade us serve you.”

“And we did so. Gladly,” the other woman assured him. The two messengers exchanged knowing glances full of memories he didn’t share.

Fuck! He’d been discovered. He hadn’t expected this so soon. Ignoring them, he moved away, finding and jerking on his trousers.

“We come from the other side of the gate,” they jointly informed him. “We’ve traveled through watery corridors formed by the rivers and tributaries between Tuscany and Rome.”

“What for?” he bit out.

“To find you,” the red-haired one said, offering him a teasing smile.

“Nonsense,” the other chimed in. “We didn’t know he’d be here.”

“But you do now, don’t you?” He eyed them with silky menace. “How unfortunate for us all.”

“Our only intention was to bring a missive,” the golden one assured him.

Her companion nodded and withdrew a metal cylinder about eight inches long from her scant belongings. Nereids traveled by waterway and wore little to impede them. What little they had worn now lay damp and strewn on the marble floor tiles, no doubt where Dante had divested them of it last night. Coming to where he stood under the wide portico that ringed the temple’s entire circumference, she made to give the cylinder to him. But the golden-haired one, who seemed to be her superior, preempted her and usurped it.

Removing the cylinder’s cap with her thumb, she tapped its barrel with one hand, causing a parchment scroll to slide out from it. Her former flirtatiousness returning, she dragged one end of the scroll down the center of his naked chest and lower, staring up at him through her lashes. “I assure you we enjoyed this delivery more than most, my lord.”

He snatched it from her before it reached his crotch and saw that it bore the ElseWorld Council’s wax seal. Damn! Under his fingertips, the parchment twitched with magic.

His fist tightened around the scroll, crumpling it, wanting to destroy it. These interlopers had come here uninvited, fucked him without his knowledge. Did they think to take him back with them through the gate as well? His blood pounded on a burst of anger. He felt suddenly out of control, violent. “Take this and go back where you came from. Tell the Council they can go f—”

“Dane.” The familiar, deep voice calmed him. Grounded him. It was Bastian, his eldest brother. He’d come from somewhere inside the central area of the temple and now stood framed in one of its several arched doorways. He wore a loosely belted exotic dressing gown of Persian design, which he’d no doubt acquired on his extensive travels to various archeological sites throughout this world. Beyond him in the inner temple, Dane glimpsed pillows and furs spread about in a lush, haphazard manner. Several goblets lay here and there winking dully in the dimness, empty and forgotten. Dane scented the woman his brother seemed to have forgotten there as well.

An inch taller than Dane and five years his senior, Bastian had the same silver-gray eyes and muscular stature, but he wore his dark hair closely cropped instead of wild and tousled. And unlike Dane’s raw, rugged nature, there was an air of refined intelligence about him.

“Shouldn’t you be down in the Forum brushing dust away from some newly discovered bit of pottery right about now?” Dane snapped.

“The digs can wait,” Bastian said, eyeing the coil of parchment Dane held.

“Fuck it.” Dane ripped open the scroll and unfurled it. Then he frowned, tilting it so the others would see that on its surface there were but a few words and numbers. “This is what you came all this way to bring? An address?”

“The entirety of the message entrusted to us may be shared only when all concerned are present,” he was told.

Bastian angled his head over one shoulder and shouted, “Sevin! Get out here.”

Within seconds, their middle brother appeared from the far side of the portico, fastening rumpled trousers he’d obviously just donned. “What’s so important?” he growled. “It’s fricking dawn and I was in the middle of something.”

“Two Shimmerskins?” Bastian hazarded.

Sevin shrugged, but a telling grin curved one side of his lips. This was the Sevin that Dane remembered from their youth, sweeping in with his usual humming energy, his dimples in evidence. With the looks of an angel, he’d been gifted from a young age with the luck of the devil. Gentlemen lost their money to him at every sort of game of chance. Their wives offered him their best biscotti and cannoli, and pressed fond kisses on his cheeks. And their daughters offered him far more than just kisses.

Dane had been thirteen when he’d left his brothers for ElseWorld. Sevin had been fifteen then, and Bastian seventeen. Though they’d been apart for twelve years, the three of them had quickly fallen back into their boyhood roles in the two weeks they’d been reunited.

Sevin flicked a glance toward the messengers and his face turned teasing. “Nereids, Dane? Didn’t know you had it in you.”

Dane favored him with a long-suffering glance and a rude hand gesture, both of which only served to widen his brother’s grin. When he tossed the scroll onto the altar, Sevin nodded toward it, a question on his face.

“It’s an address as usual,” Bastian told him, shrugging one shoulder. Sevin rolled his eyes. Dane’s brows rose, finding his brothers’ reactions inexplicable. But before he could query them, the messengers sought everyone’s attention.

“We bring a communication from the Council of ElseWorld,” they announced in tandem. Steepling their fingers under their chins, both bowed their heads in the traditional salute afforded to ElseWorld sovereigns, having apparently been informed that all the brothers bore more than a hint of royal blood in their veins.

“Go on, then, if you must,” Dane grumbled, for it seemed as if they awaited an invitation.

Standing shoulder to shoulder, they began reciting their message from memory:

A good Moonful Dawn to you Lords of Satyr,

We write today to express our concern over the recent unexplained deaths in Rome—nine Else bodies found in the Tiber in the past year alone. Add to that a host of minor indiscretions in the use of magic by some of our kind in our Italian colonies, and eventual discovery of our presence there seems inevitable. In that event, our access to the grapevines and olives will be in jeopardy. As will your ownership of land, your wealth, and your citizenship. It is imperative that you maintain a foothold there. And we have a suggestion in that regard.

“I’ll bet,” Bastian muttered. The messengers frowned at him, then continued on.

All of ElseWorld has a vested interest in ensuring the continuation of your royal bloodline, as it is one of the ancients. Since it is nigh onto impossible for you to breed in our world now due to the Sickness that affected most of our women, our best hope in securing the future of your line lies in the wombs of human females. We compel you to wed with expediency. To acquire human wives who, by the grace of our Gods, will bear you many satyr sons and human daughters.

Gods be praised,

The Worshipful Council of ElseWorld

“Ah, there’s nothing like a good ElseWorld directive in the morning,” Sevin noted with a mighty stretch of his well-muscled arms and back, and a total lack of concern at what he’d heard.

“Does it require a reply?” Dane asked. As a defector with far more reason to be wary of the Council than his brother, he carefully sifted their words in his mind.

The messengers looked a bit surprised, but only shook their heads. “It’s assumed that you will do your duty.”

“Then gather your belongings, ladies,” Sevin told them affably. “I’ll see you both back to the Tiber to ensure that you aren’t intercepted.” The messengers would travel through the network of magic that stretched from Rome to Tuscany, where they would return home through the ancient interworld gate. Hybrids of olive tree and grapevine brought over from ElseWorld had been planted throughout this network and now emitted a constant scent that bespelled every human within. This had the fortunate benefit of allowing Else creatures to go about their business in the guise of humans and made paranormal events seem normal to this world’s inhabitants. Still, the magic that cloaked this territory was fragile. The Council was right that exposure seemed inevitable.

After Sevin and the messengers struck out for the river, Dane located one of his boots, sat, and tugged it on. “You were here all night?” he asked Bastian. “And Sevin as well?”

His sibling nodded. “Didn’t you feel us here?”

Dane’s head snapped up, and each brother somberly searched the other’s face. During the Calling, the satyr were inexorably drawn to congregate for the rituals of Moonful. Ancient blood ties linked them, causing them to share emotions and sensations. The rut of one fueled that of the others, increasing the pleasure of all. But last night, Dane had been cheated of all physical gratification by the phantom presence that lurked within him. He remembered nothing.

And he could see in his brother’s eyes that he had sensed something peculiar about him during the night. Of course he would have, and Sevin as well. Damn. Dane had hoped to hide this from them a while longer. But the rigors of Moonful had exposed him.

“I wasn’t exactly myself last night,” he admitted.

“What does that mean exactly?” Bastian asked carefully.

Dane speared the fingers of one hand through his hair. “Gods, I hate this.” The rest of the world was welcome to think as they liked, but his brothers and he had been close, before. He couldn’t bear it if Bastian thought him mad once he learned the truth. Still, he would lay the facts out without apology, and his brothers could take him as he was or disown him. Their choice. He’d been alone half of his life. He would survive.

“I mean I don’t fornicate,” Dane said baldly. “Another does it for me, in my place. A separate part of my personality takes hold of me—mind and body—during any carnal experience. He forces me out at Moonful dusk, and I am left with no memory of the Calling time when I awaken again at dawn.”

“He?” Bastian’s set face gave away nothing of his thoughts.

Dane went on, determined to speak the raw truth. “Dante. Because of him, I only mate during Moonful when our bodies demand we succumb. Otherwise, I’m celibate.”

“Gods, Dane. One night a month? That sort of denial would kill some men of our kind,” said Bastian, with new respect in his voice.

Dane shrugged. There had been times he’d wished he were dead over the years. But the thought of Luc had kept him going.

“Did your physicians in ElseWorld shed any light on this?” Bastian asked. “The Council swore to us you’d be cared for. We wouldn’t have let you go otherwise.”

“I went into the asylums.”

“Fuck.” Bastian’s clipped curse was a tangle of frustration and fury. Dane’s crazed behavior—convulsions, sleepwalking, incessant nightmares—after his abduction had worried his brothers to the extent that they’d agreed to have him deported to ElseWorld for treatment when he was but thirteen.

“You couldn’t have known,” said Dane. “And the doctors there did have some experience with my disorder.”

“Disorder?”

“Dissociation, they called it, caused by a psychological trauma. Something happened to me that resulted in a fragmenting of my personality. It is as if I am divided into two distinct men. One that goes about life, another that fornicates.”

“This trauma—it was something that happened during the year of your disappearance?” hazarded Bastian.

“Yes, but the doctors never moved much beyond that initial diagnosis. Treatment was forestalled when Special Ops recruited me. After that, it was easy to go without women. We’re trained not to give in to our carnal natures.”

“Except during Moonful.”

Dane sent him a rueful half smile. “There’s no avoiding the ritual then, for anyone. Every species of our world must heed it to some degree, and the Ops didn’t want their entire army dead at dawn following Moonful. They brought us ample numbers of females, and I was told Dante enjoyed some fine orgies.”

The growing horror in Bastian’s eyes told him he was just beginning to fathom how all this had shaped Dane’s life.

Dane stiffened. He didn’t want anyone’s pity. Beyond uncomfortable by now, he’d rarely been so grateful to anyone as he was to the woman who joined them just then from the depths of the temple. Swathed in an overlarge dressing gown similar in design to Bastian’s, she carried a neatly folded stack of what he assumed to be his brother’s clothing. After she set them on the altar, she went to hug Bastian’s waist.

Michaela. Dane found the name from somewhere, realizing he’d met her once before. She was fey and a courtesan—an expensive one who dwelled in the surreptitious business establishment Sevin owned on Capitoline Hill.

Absently, Bastian roped an arm around her, stroking her side. He’d always been a tactile sort, but a woman’s curves and a nicely turned piece of pottery seemed to fascinate him equally. Michaela curled into his touch.

Dane angled his chin toward the discarded scroll. “What do you make of that?” he asked his brother.

Tacitly agreeing to the change in subject, Bastian flicked his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “Nothing. We receive these lectures and missives with monotonous regularity. It’s most likely the address of a Marital Broker.”

Dane laughed, then quickly sobered when he realized that his brother wasn’t joking. “You can’t be serious. A matchmaker?” He picked up the scroll, studying the address.

“I’m quite serious. They proliferate up north in Tuscany these days, each vying to catch the bigger prize and cast them into matrimonial hell. And now one has come here to Rome. Follow up on it if you feel the urge to find yourself a bride. I, however, don’t.”

The woman in his arms stiffened at his words. It would have been an imperceptible tightening of muscles to most observers, but Dane had been trained to notice such things. The least little detail was often the very one that led a Tracker to make a capture.

Michaela was infatuated with his eldest brother. However, Bastian’s affections had long been reserved for females carved from marble, limestone, and granite. Even twelve years ago, when Bastian was seventeen, flesh and blood women had found their way into his bed on occasion. But with his heart, they’d stood little chance. It seemed nothing had changed in that regard.

“I’ll go bathe and dress,” Michaela murmured, slipping away from him. “Find me when you’re ready to depart.” Then, shooting a shy smile toward Dane, she scurried off down the path toward the house.

“She’s breeding,” Dane announced into the silence that fell after her departure.

Bastian straightened. “How did—?” He expelled a breath. “Sometimes I forget the sort of work you’ve been doing in ElseWorld all these years.”

Dane eyed him. “Is it yours?”

Bastian shook his head. “She was raped a week before we met. She refuses to name the villain, but once I wring his name from her, he will meet with a swift and fatal accident. The child won’t reach term.”

“Due to another accident?” Tucking the scroll in his pocket, Dane stood.

“I have no quarrel with the child, only its father,” Bastian assured him. “However, Michaela was stricken with the Sickness and is unable to bear children. She caught it when she came through the gate. The—”

The rest of what he’d been about to say was interrupted by the sound of footsteps crashing toward them through the grove. It was Sevin, looking as if he’d run the entire way back to them after seeing the nereids off.

“There’s been another killing,” he announced. “We found a body down by the Tiber as the messengers were departing.”