Bordello Dolls (2 page)

“I have a collection of unique pieces I thought you might enjoy seeing.”

She felt she had no choice but be ushered along even though she had absolutely no interest in dolls, unique or otherwise. In him, however, she had interest. Already, she suspected she had become addicted to whatever opulence he might care to offer.

He sidestepped around her, bowing slightly as he did so, his hand nearing her shoulder without touching her. If she had moved towards the gesture, a mere inch or less, she would have known the sensation of his hand on her skin. If she had, but she hadn’t. She followed dumbly, instead.

His dark silky shirt ballooned loosely over belted trousers. The flow of his physique beneath was almost fluid. A clasp, intricately woven, held a swath of long hair down his back. Again, she was recalculated his age but for what justification she couldn’t explain. Age made no difference. His sensuality was an inrushing cause for celebration, as would a late summer storm promising rain when the earth was devastatingly parched. The newness of this experience left her slightly lightheaded.

Curiously, she had become acutely aware of her body beneath her limply fitting dress. She felt restricted, though the scanty dress was appropriate for summer. A sudden and mad urge to pull off the dress swept over her. But only if the presentation would pleasure her host. She had to struggle to keep such wildly conceived thoughts controlled. She did enjoy a man’s attentions, but she was no harlot.

He stopped, eye-level to a shelf of beautifully painted dolls.

“Aren’t they lovely?” he purred, primping the corner of one doll’s long, layered skirt. His fingers rose to the synthetic locks that cascaded over her face and down her breast. He slowly caressed her leg. The act was saturated in adoration. Too much so, perhaps. She felt he had an unnaturally close relationship with this inanimate object. She also felt a twinge of jealousy. Such tender affections. She would relish such sensual consideration.

“These are the Bordello Dolls,” he said. “Thrown away. Unloved. Uncared for. Damaged. Now they belong to me.” He smiled. “All harlots of the night are mine.”

She startled. Each and every doll—three dozen she surmised quickly—had a presence. A chorus of soft whispers rose in her mind, uniting into a lulling song, no word discernible. Yet, there was a shifting energy. These dolls had a past life, shrouded in an undistinguishable mist. Suddenly the sensation ended. The dolls were again simply … dolls.

Her host smiled at them, pressed his pursed lips to the pad of his forefinger and dabbed one richly painted mouth.

And she couldn’t be certain, but she thought she witnessed the swift movement of the dolls’ glassy eyes towards her. Except for the one on the very end. Its face was covered by long, tangled locks. Yet it was on this doll her host lingered. He leaned forward to kiss its shrouded mouth, and as he did so, his finger trailed under her white laced skirt.

Scarlet felt her mouth moisten as though the kiss was hers. And she sensed a delicate pressure between her legs. With it came a sudden rapture that coursed through her body.

“Oh,” she gasped. The rapidity of the sensation shocked her.

“It’s the heat, isn’t it?” He turned, his face etched with concern. “Shall I get you a glass of wine?” He reached over, taking a hold of her elbow.

She, in turn, touched his arm. The ecstasy that had rushed through her seconds before was gone. Her light headedness remained.

He immediately swept clear a chair. Books toppled to the floor. Scarlet stumbled to the seat, throwing herself down without grace. He crouched in front of her, the unblinking black eyes never faltering. She felt so weak, so helpless. Yet she didn’t sense a need for alarm. His rapt attention penetrated, flooding her with an austere sexual awareness. He was the most powerful masculine presence she had ever encountered. And as she peered back into his gaze a wash of extreme arousal eddied through her whole being.

“I know you from somewhere,” she said. “You seem so familiar to me.”

It was true. She was far too overwrought with ill-defined feelings of desire by this time to keep her thoughts concealed.

“I’m certain we’ve met before,” she added, searching her memories. No recollection rose that suited him. Unless he had simply invaded her dreams one night, a premonition of a quiet storm about the break on a new day’s dawn. “I just don’t know where. Or when.”

He didn’t confirm. His unblinking stare offered no explanation.

“I really must go now,” she said, slightly annoyed with his silence, frightened more of her rising need for intimacy. “It’s late.”

“It was a past dream,” he whispered, his voice gravelled. “A deliciously sweet dream. I am a Visionary, as are you, Scarlet.” He sighed, an elongated heavy breath, as though every particle of air was being squeezed from his thick chest. “And I see your loneliness. I, too, have been alone. Share the taste of passion with me this night. Let us learn of each other. Again.”

A blur of sensuality followed. His presence, knelt before her, became all intrusive. He shuffled forward, spreading her knees. She felt her dress shift against her thigh, letting the material rise to accommodate his being fitted there. She saw nothing except the depth of those hypnotising black eyes. She had fallen into the Visionary’s addictive grasp and she burned for his seduction.

He lifted his hand, feathering a light touch on her cheek with his knuckles. His opulent smile caused her heart to thrash.

“I would love to stay awhile,” she said.

His lips were inches from hers. He inhaled he breath of her words, his lids half-closed. A soft moan escaped from his throat. She felt his fingers clasp her shoulders. He tugged her slowly forward. The storm that had swelled in her gut broke. The heat of a wet rain was rapture between her lips as his tongue fluttered the first teasing kiss. She dared to reach up, touch his wide neck. Madness, all of it. Her passions rushed through her and she tightly held his jaw, luxuriating in the rhythmic flow of his deepening kiss, the sound of his throaty moans. Her body arched into him. Her fingers swept the cool material of his shirt, the silky smoothness of his hair. And she sighed as his mouth lightly explored the curve of her throat. She threw back her head, wrapped her legs around his torso, eagerly inviting his swaying body ever closer.

“Nicolai,” she sighed. “I am not a harlot.”

His breath was moist against her throat. He laughed. The sound delighted her, and she cupped his skull, forcing his gaze to lift and meet hers. “Then I shall make you one, so that you might belong to me” he whispered, the corner of his mouth pinched into a humourless sneer. “The Scarlet woman who found her fantasy could come true in the quiet hours between passion and death.”

Passion and death.

“A Mistress for my bordello dolls.”

While he spoke, she was vaguely aware that one hand had fallen to the front of his trousers. His shoulder flinched as he worked, preparing himself for what she understood to be inevitable. Her legs were already sprawled around him and her arousal so severe she knew that with his one thrust she would shudder to release. The very thought manifested itself into a moan that boiled up from her throat.

“This is what I can do for you, Scarlet. I shall satisfy the fantasy you have deemed most erotic and yet most unobtainable. I shall persuade you to want of only me. You shall turn this night.”

His eyes widened as he guided himself deep between her legs. He studied her face, breathing hard through his nose, nostrils flaring. She shifted, flexing her internal muscles around the invasion of his massive girth. He remained stationary as she waltzed against him, her gentle swaying all that he needed or demanded.

She weakened almost immediately. The tide of ecstasy emanated from her sex yet gushed quickly through her groin, an onslaught of heavy wet rain following the surge of thunder. Her cry of shock was shrill.

And when she opened her eyes, he glared hungrily at her face. She sensed that he fed on her orgasm, the energy of it. In some peculiar manner, it was sustenance for him. Perhaps all he wanted. He continued to remain inside her, yet he didn’t move.

Finally, he clutched her hips, grinding her in short circular movements, into him. His stare never faltered. She returned it with her own unblinking gaze until one flinch took him farther inside, deeper, more invasive. It was as though his cock had expanded. She responded with a clipped cry of surprise, and her reaction threw him into a raging lust.

Razor-like fingernails dug into the soft flesh of her hips as he wrenched her into his groin. The scent of blood added to his frenzy. “Dance, harlot,” he seethed through gritted teeth. “Awaken the pleasures of deep, undying lust. Be with me forever.”

He threw his head back to a wolfish howl, and through her blurred moment of ecstasy, she was certain she saw sharp canines as his lips snarled. She arched. Beneath her ear, she felt a sharp sting, an oozing burn seep down her limp arm. A sudden silence droned.

In the proceeding seconds, nothing moved. Her heart stopped beating. Her ears thrashed in pounding, thick silence as though she had been plunged under black water. Instinctively, she lifted her hand, shielding the softest section of her neck, but it was too late. And he moved back, slipping from her body, leaving her wet where she sat.

He arranged himself before standing then lifted her as he rose.

His thumb brushed over her cheek while he studied her face with renewed intensity. “You pleasured me,” he said. “I have pleasured you. Your choice has been made.”

His gaze drifted over her head. The dolls. A shadow of a smile flirted with his mouth.

“What choice?” she murmured, holding onto him. She was jealous that his attention had wavered from her. She had to have him all to herself so ruthless had her obsession become. She had the foreboding feeling that the dolls were her most daunting competition.

“The choice of eternity.” Nicolai pressed his cool palm over her eyes. “Allow your inner vision to predict what follows.”

The descent forward into the future was slow, her lips parted, seeking another humid kiss. One that might promise they would never part.

“Scarlet,” he called, suddenly through the distance. “Sweet harlot. Be my Mistress.”

She felt as though she was being pulled violently backwards. She opened her eyes, wakening from a cruel dream. The rain had begun to fall around her in the ally. No light shone onto wet cobblestone. The door was shut. A rumble of thunder warned of a horrifying storm moving near.

Had this all been a cruel hallucination? Had he only existed within some erotic fantasy she’d willed to come true? Had her Visionary prowess gone askew, her Guides gone mad?

She touched her cheek, the spot where his knuckles had caressed her, and the skin still felt hot. Her fingers fluttered to her throat. She remembered his mouth and the pinching kiss beneath her ear, the hunger in his dark eyes, the garish howl. And still she had no read of him. Despite his empty soul, Scarlet needed his touch.

Some gestures, like storms, are merely gentle and faintly refreshing. Some are onrushing, passionately seductive. Others inflict unimaginable pain and terror.

Was he flesh and blood or a shimmering delusion? Either way, Nicolai Von Adler was perfection.

The thin veil of reality for Scarlet Boujois had been unequivocally torn.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Incessant arousal lessened her slumber. The threshold between waking and sleeping was never fully crossed either way. Her head was too heavy to lift from the pillow, memories flooding her—his silken body and the way he pushed against her. Even though she remembered the firm caress as his knuckles explored her cheek, her throat, her breast, even though his kiss promised to keep her in his arms for eternity and beyond, his very existence seemed lost within a veil of fantasy.

“Nicolai,” she whispered, turning onto her stomach, spreading her legs, uncomfortably hot.

“The choice of eternity. Allow your inner vision to predict what follows.”

A puff of breath tickled her nape. Fingers gently pulled aside her hair. The smooth edge of teeth lingered on her skin.

“Nicolai?”

His flesh was cool. He stretched over her, his cloak draping his outreached arms. “Sweet doll,” he whispered in her ear as he flattened himself over her, penetration in one swift movement.

Like a huge winged shadow, he writhed into her. She was an instrument for his pleasure. And she permitted him to find release in her body because she could predict, not his destiny, but her own—to always be faithful to him.

As suddenly as he had manifested, he vanished. The hunger he stirred in her went unresolved. Her only hope was to find him.

Again.

At daylight, she struggled to finally wake and dismissed the thought that Nicolai was, quite simply, an erotic dream. She could not condemn Nicolai into obscurity. Nor could she convince herself she had gone temporarily insane.

He haunted her with memories of malevolent lusts, ones that became burning obsessions. She had never been so infatuated by anything or anyone on any other occasion.

Scarlet Boujois, the Visionary who guided the forlorn through mystically created answers, was lost amidst the haze. She could not rest until she returned to the eerie little antique shop and spoke again to the keeper who, not only knew her most erotic fantasy, but fed it. Fed upon her. She had to speak with the soulless man because, with him, her psychic senses were impotent.

Without him, she would smoother in her own pain.

What might happen after that she left to fate.

But try as she might Scarlet could not retrace the steps that carried her through the twilight only mere hours ago. The heat scorched her body and the light pained her eyes. Her body wilted. Time was running out. The harlot could not find her Master.

Her frequent inquiries, both for the shop at the end of an alley and of Nicolai Von Adler, were met with blank stares, unknowing shrugs and furrowed brows. No one could help her in the search, and her confidence was beginning to fade. Perhaps he was a delicious delusion, and this obsession smouldering in her gut would never find release. That would be more unbearable than her futile search.