Читать книгу Dane - Elizabeth Amber - Страница 9

Heart pounding, Mademoiselle Evangeline Delacorte struggled to fit the slender blade of the bronze key into the lock in the ornate ironwork gate. A difficult task when her lace-gloved hands were shaking so badly.

Her face was flushed, fevered with an unfortunate illness that came to her with regularity and ever-increasing force. Human females of her acquaintance might complain about their monthly flow to confidantes over tea in the privacy of their salons. Yet for her own safety and that of those she protected, she must remain silent on the subject of her own more unique monthly discomforts.

“Odette? Pinot?” she called, rattling the key in the lock with growing desperation. Why wouldn’t it catch? In contrast with her frenzied struggle, the lazy Italian moon eyed her just above the horizon. How long did she have? Fifteen minutes? Ten? She’d never cut her time so close. Just beyond the gate lay a small garden; then beyond that the door to her townhouse. In moments, she was going to fall apart.

Sudden illuminations splintered the sky above her, bursting like fiery snowballs. She started violently, and the key clanked to the cobblestone lane at her feet.

She cursed under her breath. “Must every night bring another celebration to this ridiculous city?” Bending, she swept her skirt aside and searched the ground on all sides of her.

Footsteps sounded and she glanced up, alarmed. Had the man from the grove followed her? But it was only a group of human revelers scurrying past, on their way to a Roman festa of some sort. Decades of excavations in the Forum along Via Sacra had caused a rampant fascination for all things mythological. They were dressed in costume. How ironic that they chose to disguise themselves as the very species that she and other ElseWorld transplants took such pains to hide.

The lone Bacchus among the group wore a garland of olive sprigs and held the arm of a delicate sprite. Accompanying them were several maenads, a fairy with wings that glittered in the dwindling light, and the Roman goddess of love, Venus. A faux satyr was costumed in a dark demi-mask and a cloak. A large, multicolored phallus meant to draw the eye bobbed at an upward angle from the codpiece he wore.

You’ll need me then, between your thighs. She shivered, recalling the words of the man in the grove. Gods! How had he guessed when no one else had before in all of her twenty-two years?

Beside her foot, her hand touched metal. The key. When she stood again, a dour face stared back at her through the curls of iron in the grillwork of the gate. She flinched and lay a hand over her heart. “Odette! You nearly scared the life out of me.”

The mulatto woman’s eyes, startling blue against her coffee skin, narrowed on her. She’d had the uncanny knack of ferreting out Eva’s secrets ever since she’d been a girl. Would she guess what had just occurred in that small olive grove on Aventine Hill?

But Odette only darted a meaningful look at the moon. Clucking, she lapsed into the colloquial mix of her native ElseWorld and an obscure Italian hill-country dialect as her hands worked the stubborn lock from inside. Then, “You late, mademoiselle! I sent Pinot out looking for you,” she said, referring to the diminutive pixie who served them as a combination coachman, majordomo, and bringer of gossip. “I worry you could be out there dead like the others, floating in the Tiber River.”

“Obviously I’m not. I’m careful.” Eva wrung her hands. “Hurry, will you?”

Finally, the gate budged. It swung open with a protesting shriek—one they did not oil away for it offered advance warning of visitors. At last she was admitted into the garden. As Eva darted inside, Odette peered both ways down the street, eying those who idled there as she shut the gate again. She hadn’t yet gotten used to the fact that they no longer dwelled in the dubious district they’d inhabited in ElseWorld, rather than their current, more respectable address on Capitoline, the smallest of the Seven Hills of Rome.

Odette swung the gate shut with a bang and followed behind her, her step ungainly. “Where you been?” she demanded suspiciously.

“I followed the map in Maman’s book to the grove.” Eva paused long enough to stuff the handful of olives from her pocket into Odette’s hands.

“This all you could get? It won’t see you through the month.”

“I’m lucky to have gotten that much. The land has been occupied,” Eva threw behind her as she scurried through the garden’s small courtyard and toward the house.

“By whom?”

“Not now.” Eva shook her head, nodding toward the two wide-eyed girls who stood barefoot in the doorway. Clad in white linen nighties, they almost appeared to be apparitions. They weren’t, of course. But they weren’t entirely human either.

“Mademoiselle! You’ve come!” said five-year-old Mimi. She bounced on her toes in childish excitement. Next to her, eight-year-old Lena was nervously stroking the end of her braid over her lips, looking as if she were nibbling a paintbrush.

“Vite, bebes! Come inside—all of you,” Eva scolded softly. Bending to give them slapdash hugs, she gently tugged the braid from Lena’s mouth, offering her a reassuring smile. Then she skirted the pair and ducked inside.

Lifting her skirts high on either side of her, she raced up the stairs in an unladylike manner. On any other night, Odette would have scolded her.

But tonight, she only called to her from the bottom of the staircase, “All is as you like!” Behind her, the girls peeked from either side of her aproned skirt, fascinated as always by any hints of what was to happen to Eva during this mysterious monthly event.

“Off with you!” Odette shooed the girls toward their room on the opposite side of the house.

“Do as she bids you,” Eva called. At the top of the staircase, she rushed down the corridor and flung herself into her bedchamber.

Shoving the door closed with an elbow, she half fell against it, the weight of her body slamming it shut behind her. Her head fell back and she wrenched open the neck of her bodice. Her corset had become a device of torture. Breath was strangled in her chest, struggling to escape. She ran her fingers down hooked fastenings, popping the uppermost of them open. Released from their decorous silken prison, her breasts swelled within the deep vee. Ah, sweet freedom!

But tonight, these four walls would serve as another sort of prison. One that kept the world out and rendered her safe within. The doors and walls here were thick and the windowpanes doubled. Whatever happened here would be buffered from the outside world and from the two girls who’d become her family. When she’d come here three months ago, a neighbor had told her that a madwoman had been kept here in this chamber a century ago. And would she not turn mad herself soon? She supposed she was fortunate that her lunacy would only be of a ten-hour duration. From dusk to dawn.

Her eyes opened, darting to the tall cabinet along the far wall. The small door inset at eye level was normally kept locked, but it now stood open to reveal an assortment of crystal jars, vials, cylinders, and other curious items. Pushing off from the door, she crossed toward it, kicking off her boots onto carpeting that had been woven on ElseWorld looms. Eva paused before the cabinet, which had been constructed by fey woodworkers. In fact, the very house itself was under the covert ownership of the ElseWorld Council.

Sitting prominently on a low shelf within the cabinet was a slender glass bottle that to the untrained eye appeared to contain ordinary red wine. It was an ElseWorld relic, found somewhere by Odette, who knew how to locate such things. Beside it was a goblet, which had already been poured, awaiting her. Odette had obviously been here recently, preparing things.

She put the goblet to her lips and took a long draught from it, feeling the sanguine elixir burn its way down her throat. She followed that quickly with yet another gulp. Gasping, she wiped her lips with the back of one wrist. This was ancient drink, a necessary component in initiating tonight’s ritual. A ritual that took place only once a month under the fullness of the moon.

One of the powders she’d taken that morning was meant to soften the effects of this Calling, delay its onset. When she’d first begun taking the powder four years ago, it had allowed her to pass nights such as this one with relative calm. But with each successive full moon, the powders’ effectiveness decreased. Darkness had only just fallen and already she was near to leaping out of her skin.

Fortunately, the wine would calm her and set her on the inevitable path she must follow tonight. She took a third swallow from her goblet. The entire bottle would be empty by night’s end. Would somehow become full again a month from now without anyone having replenished it.

Seconds later, she heard the smooth glide of metal upon metal. Tumblers groaned, falling into place. Her door was being locked from the outside. For a moment, there was waiting silence beyond it. Odette was listening from the hallway.

“I’m all right,” Eva called softly. After a slight pause, she heard her servant’s familiar uneven step fade down the hallway.

In truth, she was beginning to feel far better than just all right. The elixir was doing its work. Already the pace of her blood was slowing, and her jittery mood was altering to one of arousal, anticipation. In just a few moments more…

Eva stared into the goblet, tilting it toward the window in order to see the moon’s light upon the wine’s wavering surface. Dipping a finger into the drink, she stabbed the reflected orb, watching it turn bloody with the juice of Sangiovese grapes. When she lifted her finger again, several drops fell from its tip upon the breasts that swelled from her gaping bodice. The crimson droplets trickled lower between her curves. She caught them on the pads of two fingers and painted their slick moisture in a light circle over her nipple.

Where he had touched her. A prurient thrill prickled over her skin, and her nipple became a hard bead. Umm.

Her head lolled lazily to one side and her gaze fell to the bedside table. A basin and linen toweling had been placed upon it. For later—toward morning, when all this would end.

Through lowered lashes, she noted other preparations. Two lengths of silk-twisted rope securely tied to the head of the bed, one anchored at each bedpost. Her eyes skittered across these cords, a little shamed by them. By her need for them. The coverlet had been removed and folded on the dais, leaving only pillows and batiste sheets atop its mattress.

She took another long drink. Then the base of her goblet hit the low shelf with a thunk. And without knowing quite how she got there, she found herself standing at the foot of the bed. Her maman had found it for her at an auction of antiquities in ElseWorld, and it had been dismantled and brought here when Eva and Odette had crossed through the gate three months ago. Just after Maman had died. Its origins were uncertain, but it had almost certainly been wrought by satyr craftsmen. Her mother had said the owner didn’t understand its secrets, but that Eva would.

It was beautiful and stately, made of lacquered olivewood. The head and footboards were done in an elaborate design of stylized grapevines and mythological figures. These disguised a number of intriguing features Eva had discovered on her own over the years. She skirted the tall leather trunk that stood at the foot of the bed rising to the same level as the mattress.

Tracing along the foot rail with her fingers, she found the indentation she sought underneath and pressed. There was a soft click and the rail began to rotate. A smooth cylinder about six inches in length and an inch or so in diameter slipped from its moorings within a sculpted design of vines, tendrils, leaves, shoots, and grape clusters in the footboard. Once the rail had twisted half a rotation around, it locked into place with another click. Now the cylinder stood upright, still rooted in the railing. From there it curved upward, angling slightly away from the nearest bedpost. A highly polished phallus of flawless olivewood, it had been purposely placed here for precisely the use she would make of it tonight.

You’ll need me then, between your thighs.

A small, anguished moan escaped her. A carnal engagement with the flesh and blood man in the grove had posed too great a risk. But she’d wanted him. And she could still have him. Here. Tonight. In a manner of speaking.

Gazing intently at a vacant space just beyond the bed, she began to whisper her summoner’s spell. The one her maman had taught her to help ease her suffering on these nights. Although her mother had imparted the spell, only Eva was gifted with the ability to utilize it. Her mother had been fey, but little of her blood had passed to her offspring. No, Eva’s other parent had had far more influence in defining what she was.

As her words were diffused into the room, the air in front of her started to vibrate. Strands of translucent mist slowly began to appear there, where before there had been nothingness. Concentrating, she called up her memory of the man from the grove. The memory of how he’d made her feel, the details of his appearance. He’d been dangerous and forbidden, exciting, handsome.

Stay. Stay with me tonight.

She clenched both fists to her chest to still the wanting that leaped inside her for something she could not have. For the truth was she had longed to linger there with him. Even though it would have been beyond foolish. Even though he’d terrified her with his strangeness and his suspicions about her origins.

But in truth, she was far more strange than he.

On both sides of the gate, it was nothing for satyr males to scatter their fertile seed far and wide among females of human, fey, or any of the dozens of ElseWorld species. And when a satyr son was born of any such alliance, it was deemed unremarkable. The birth of a daughter elicited no special comment either, as long as she bore only the blood of her mother. But what if another sort of daughter were to issue from such a union? A daughter with only the blood of her satyr father, but no hint of her mother’s blood?

That eventuality was quite simply unheard of. In all of ElseWorld history, not a single full-blood female satyr had ever existed in either world.

Until her.

The man had been right in his suspicions. She was like him. Despite the fact that a female of his species was deemed an impossibility.

Of course there were hints of such things in the ancient petroglyphs in the caverns. And the rumors. But ElseWorld scientists and philosophers had long proclaimed the feasibility of a satyr girl-child to be preposterous. A myth. Some even said, an abomination. Yet, here she stood—in danger from both worlds. Simply because of her blood.

Just beyond the bedpost, the mist began to whirl and spin in a blurred confusion of magic. Swaying gently side to side, she continued her mantra in sotto voce. With all her skill, she tried to summon a particular likeness from within it. In the past, she’d occasionally conjured a single amalgam of the features of various men she’d met in passing. But never had her desire been so specific to one man that she sought to bring forth a precise replica of him.

Within the swirling mist, a form began to take shape and solidify. Then, born from the ether itself, in the middle of her bedchamber, there stood a man. One that was tall and virile, with silver eyes under straight jutting brows and hair the color of fire-blackened wood. His cheekbones were flushed with vigor, his strong jawbone brushed with a hint of an evening beard. This was a copy of the man from the grove, or as near as she could remember.

But this was no human man. Nor was he satyr. Nor true flesh and blood. He was an insentient being. One of the ranks of those who’d serviced the satyr since ancient times. A Shimmerskin. His singular purpose here tonight was to obey. To serve her. At dawn, he would disappear.

She circled her creation, enjoying the sight of smooth sloping valleys, hills, and plateaus of muscle and bone. His skin was resilient and glimmered preternaturally in the light. He was a head taller than she, with broad shoulders and strong arms and narrow hips. And he was naked.

“I don’t have time for this, you know,” she murmured to him, knowing he wouldn’t be able to comprehend what she spoke. “I have other important business here in EarthWorld, in Rome.” Sharing her confidences with an insentient being was foolish, but it gave her solace. “I’m searching for my father. The one who made me what I am.”

Her eyes fell to his genitals. Even in repose, they appeared pleasing. If she’d remained in that olive grove on Aventine a few moments longer, she might not have been forced to guess at their dimensions. Regardless, she’d based her creature’s phallus on an extraordinary model. Just prior to her eighteenth birthday, her tutor had taken her to view one of the ancient ElseWorld Wonders—the famous series of marble statues of the wine god Bacchus that lined the mirrored Hall of Vitis Vinifera.

Throughout her inspection of this effigy she’d fashioned, he only stood there, gazing docilely at her. She sighed. This was the difficulty with these beings. They required instruction.

“Come,” she bade him softly.

Obediently, he came nearer to tower over her. His stride and movements were strange in their otherworldly fluidity.

Dark lashes amplified the piercing silver of the eyes that stared down at her. Eyes that were vacant.

She lay a hand on his arm. He was warm and smooth. “Bend me to your Will.”

He hesitated, unsure. Of course, since he had no Will, he didn’t understand. He required more specific commands.

“Remove my clothing,” she instructed, and his fingers came to her gray silk bodice, unfastening. He made quick work of it and her corset, skirt, and petticoats as well. Long, blunt-tipped fingers pulled at strings, untying her pantalets, then unrolling her stockings. Soon, only her chemise remained. He reached for it as well.

Suddenly, a ray of moonlight found its way through the window, burnishing her pale skin to gold. And with its coming, a great longing came over her. She shivered and pushed his hands away. “No,” she whispered. “Leave it.”

Hurrying unsteadily to the bed, she climbed up and swung one leg over the footrail, straddling it. With one knee on the mattress and the other atop the tall leather trunk on the opposite side of the rail, she kneeled there, open. Poised inches above the protruding, olivewood phallus.

High between her legs, her flesh was flushed, warm and plump with her desire—the effect of the full moon. Her fingers found and threaded through the soft triangle of down, parting her folds and slipping between them. She was damp, creamy. A sound that was half moan, half sigh welled from her as her need turned unbearably urgent.

She glanced at her companion. Remembered how the original version of him had wanted her, there beneath the murmuring olive trees. “Come close. Behind me.”

“Yes.” He moved toward her like a beautiful automaton, dutifully preparing to fulfill the role for which she’d designed him. She grasped the bedpost before her as he straddled the rail on his knees, coming close to warm her spine.

She turned to look at him over her shoulder, catching his eyes. “Take me,” she whispered.

As if she’d flipped a switch, his pupils dilated on cue and his expression filled with lust. She felt his prick harden at the small of her back and her breath quickened. With soft words, she told him what she needed from him.

Hands came, big and firm on her hips, positioning her and then guiding her downward. Olivewood kissed her feminine nether lips, parted them. Impaled them. Her eyes fell shut and her chin lifted on an excited murmur.

Hands tilted her hips back and another phallus, this one just as smooth, planted another kiss on the pruney ring tucked within the crevice of her bottom. And then he was pushing, and she was sinking and spreading and gasping at the exquisite, hot bite of him. The fat greedy plum of his crest slipped inside her, a move synchronized with that of another entrance of polished olivewood. She felt them push on, deeper. Deeper still. The long, hard glides seemed never ending.

“Oh!” Her jaw tightened against the need to call for a respite from the tug of hands and gravity, and the push of thick, tandem cocks. He would stop if she asked. And she didn’t want him to stop. She wanted this, needed it. Craved it.

And then at last she was crying out, as unforgiving olivewood and hard male filled her completely. His dark thatch cushioned her bottom, and his chin was tucked at the hollow of her shoulder. His chest was an unyielding furnace at her back, his thighs a powerful embrace on either side of hers. And she was full, so, so full.

You’ll need me then, between your thighs.

She moaned, remembering. Yearning.

“Make me come,” she breathed. Strong, obedient hands lifted her higher, pulled her lower in an undulating motion, and thus began her erotic ride. Murmuring encouragement and instructions to him all the while, she let passion build, fucking herself, letting him fuck her. Urging him on and on and on.

Air quivered from her throat in wild, quick snatches, and his own came at her nape in hot gasps in time with his plunge and withdrawal. Her thighs burned. Her lungs were near to bursting. The bedpost was cool between her swollen breasts, her fingers white-knuckled where they gripped it. And deep, deep inside she was wet, humming, on the brink of something wonderful.

Oh, Gods! Her nipples clenched painfully tight, and she reached for his hands, needing them on her there, showing them how to massage her. The slap of their flesh was an aphrodisiac as he went deep in her, hot in her, long in her. The sweet, steady building of sensation rose in her, higher and higher, until finally, finally…finally…she felt the first delicate contraction. The seizing of her inner tissues that presaged her ultimate finish. Another contraction came, stronger this time, and then another, again and again, and then closer together, and harder, tumbling upon one another. Her exhalations came in rasps and gulps and moans. Her clit twisted and jerked, and her nether tissues fisted on the lengths they stroked. Her entire body tightened, ready, so ready…

And then she was coming, convulsing in long, harsh, beautiful waves of sensation that burst stars behind her eyelids and seemed to go on forever and ever, and yet not long enough. All too soon, they subsided to dull echoes of their former strength. She slumped forward, her forehead on the bedpost. Her inner tissues pulsed more gently now, their pace slowing sooner than her heartbeat. Her lashes lifted.

Beyond the window, the moon was a tangerine, pale and huge above paper cutouts of black cypress and oak trees and spires and rooftops. Illuminations from the festa under way in the Forum ruins burst and sparkled around the moon, making it almost appear to be weeping for joy.

And then there was empty silence. The dull aftermath of empty gratification. A tear coursed down her cheek and she rested her forehead on the bedpost in front of her, just above her clenched hands. How she longed for something else. Something more.

“You’re lucky, do you know that?” she murmured. “Apparently there are legions of men who would pay large sums of money to have me in this way. Yet you don’t care. Can’t care. And that’s what makes you special, and so perfect for this night. In a world that would be all too interested in exploiting me if they knew of my existence, you are singular. Safe. Unlike the pattern I used to make you.”

He didn’t reply, of course, and was motionless as she pushed herself upward, relinquishing rods of flesh and wood. She needed this dual penetration only once. It was a crucial, necessary beginning to the night. But now it was over, and she would not require it again. She lay back on the mattress, her head on the pillow, and lifted her arms above her toward the headboard.

“Tie my wrists loosely with the ribbons,” she told him without meeting his eyes. He obeyed of course, and when he’d completed that task, she sent him to the cabinet to collect several elongated cylinders of varying thicknesses and designs. And a small pot of salve.

Lying there naked, tethered, and waiting for him excited her. Watching him carry these objects to her for the express purpose of giving her pleasure with them excited her as well. Fostered a momentary illusion that he was in control, not she. It was the sort of situation she craved but could never have. Not with a Shimmerskin—they were incapable of exerting command. And it was unwise to seek another sort of partner who was capable of it. Like the man in the grove.

“Beloved,” he whispered as his arms went under her thighs, splaying them for his mouth. But only because she’d willed him to do so. Until dawn, everything he would do and say would be programmed to incite her passion. She had but to imagine an action and he would perform it, no matter how debauched. Yet her experience and creativity in these matters were limited, and the ongoing necessity of controlling him would always deflate her pleasure.

The brush of his stubbled cheek as he kissed the inside of her thigh was a tender abrasion that thrilled. She gasped, tugging at her bonds as his tongue lapped at her clit, parted her slit, entered her. She turned her face toward the window, gazing at the bittersweet moon.

He felt wonderful. He would make her come. Again and again.

But it would not be enough.

How she longed to feel the hot spill of a man’s semen. Just once. Shimmerskins were devoid of it, incapable of producing or imparting it. She longed for the whisper of love words, sex words that she didn’t have to specifically request her mate to utter. She wanted to feel out of control. Bent to a man’s Will. To know she’d driven her mate wild to have her under him.

Her eyes went to the array of titillation devices her lover had neatly aligned along the surface of the bedside table, like fine cutlery at a dinner place setting. He would use them on her throughout the night as she wished, and fuck her time and time again through the hours as she directed. Though her flesh would be well satisfied by the time dawn came, it would not be enough.

She could not continue on in this way. Yet, it was widely known that if the satyr did not heed the full moon’s Calling in this manner, they perished.

Death or this. It seemed she had little alternative.

The certainty that her needs would go unappeased, that she would always live this way, and that she could not change her situation, was so terrible at these moments that she sometimes feared she might truly go insane.