Dane (21 page)

Obviously considering the matter well in hand, Sevin went off to take care of some problem his employee had brought to him. His brother relished the success of his salon, but the furious pace of its expansion was fast reaching a crisis point.

Michaela‟s fists were stroking him now in long, slow, wet sweeps from root to crest, forcing pre-cum to well in his slit with each drag. Every time her fist met his plinth, those lips—those magic lips—met her fist from the opposite direction, and her mouth and tongue suckled the pearls of seed from him. Bastian sucked air between his teeth. Cum roiled in his balls, and hot, pagan lust boiled higher in him. His palms struck the smoked glass, making it shudder as he braced himself against the sudden and intense need to come.

Enough! A flash of anger filled him that she had gotten through his defenses so quickly and he glanced down to issue a cutting comment.

She‟d been watching him, but her eyes dropped under his. And somehow, he found himself instead murmuring, “You should find someone else. A man who can offer you what you deserve.”

Her mouth slowly released him with a wet, lingering kiss that caused his prick to jerk and the long muscles in his thighs to twitch.

“You‟re giving orders again,” she whispered, “I distinctly heard your brother try to dissuade you from that.”

“It‟s a habit.”

She glanced at his cock pointedly, then caught his eye. “A hard one to break apparently.”

His eyes darkened and his voice turned suggestive. “Let me show you exactly how hard.”Long fingers tangled in her soft hair, holding her as his other hand brought his cock to her mouth. “Open for me.”A primitive power surged in him as he watched those full red lips obey him. Take him.

Stretch for him. He felt himself glide over her tongue. Felt her swallow his tip into her throat, watched her take all of him as few women could do.

He craved the strange connection he felt with her at times like these almost as much as the sex, but it made him wary, too. Her hands clenched his ass as if to keep him lodged inside her forever. But he contracted the muscles of thigh and hip, rocking himself out of her, then back into her liquid heat. Her lips bowed and pursed as he fucked her mouth. She moaned and he felt her anticipation for him rise. A warm shiver of exhilaration flooded him. “Gods, that‟s good, Michaela.”

He felt his balls draw up tight, his cock swell. Her head went back against the wall and his cock followed. He braced his forearms above her, his head bent between them to watch her take him again and again. He wouldn‟t last much longer. A few moments more and he‟d be issuing orders to her again, this time to swallow his seed. Yet with her mouth thus pleasantly occupied, she would not fault him for it.

When Sevin‟s attention left her moments earlier, Eva had taken advantage and slipped behind a row of columns, then ducked into the room where Signor Russo had gone earlier. Once inside, she was greeted with the slapping sound of leather.

She froze, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dimness. Her first impression was that she‟d entered an austere cloister. All was done in dark colors with fat, cream-colored candles clustered around the room casting a golden glow. Two dozen visitors sat upon rows of uncomfortable-looking stone benches, aligned in three semicircles facing the small stage. All eyes were riveted to the three Brethren who stood there, and her own followed suit.

Signor Russo had removed his hood but was otherwise still garbed in his long robes. However, his two companions had removed their hoods and cowls, leaving on only the skirts of their garments, and were familiarly kissing a woman, costumed in the habit of a Sister. Eva jerked as the slap of leather sounded again. Russo was holding a flogger! He brought its thongs down across the buttocks of one of the men, who flinched and then resumed his kissing even more fervently. As if he‟d enjoyed the fall of the lash! Eva put a hand to her mouth to still her gasp.

No, these men were most definitely not true Capuchins!

As she watched in consternation, the female slid lower, going down on all fours. The men sank to their knees. In an instant, the back hem of her habit was hiked up to reveal a white bottom, which jiggled between her black skirts and black stockings. Using her mouth and the availability of her rear entrance, she began to pleasure both men. Russo looked on and raised the lash, striking his own flesh over his shoulder. The leather straps sliced the fabric of his robe and the small audience clapped.

Eva took a step back, thumping into the wall. She‟d never watched someone else copulate. And she couldn‟t just walk up to Russo and tap him on the shoulder with her questions. If he was her father, it was horribly inappropriate for her to see him like this. She fumbled along the wall for the curtain, intending to leave. A hand slipped around her upper arm and another covered her mouth, muffling her shriek as she tried to struggle away.

“Trawling for clients?”The question was a suggestive growl at her ear. Dane.

“Oh, it‟s you. Thank goodness,” she whispered. Relieved, she ceased struggling and turned into him. His hand went low on her back, rubbing lightly. “What are you doing in here?”

“I followed one of those men on the stage from the gala,” she said, her head buried in his chest. “A Signor Russo.”

“Pursuing yet another octogenarian?”Mild humor laced his voice.

“I begin to be truly concerned at your taste in partners.”

“He‟s no more than forty-five,” she grumbled. “The perfect age to possibly have sired me.”

“Russo?”Above her head, she sensed Dane glance toward the stage. “I don‟t think so. He prefers men.”

“What?”she sputtered. “But what about the.. the Sister?”

“Also male.”

She peeked at the stage, and her eyes widened at the goings-on there. She could see now that the person in the role of the Sister was, in fact, male. “But my mother‟s journal mentions him. She was a courtesan.

A very comely one. Do you think he might have made an exception for her?”

He shrugged. “Anything is possible.”

“What is his species? Can you tell?”she asked eagerly, causing his eyes to narrow.

“Your mother‟s book didn‟t lend any clues as to your father‟s identity or species?”

“I have numerous names, that‟s all. My olfactory abilities are next to nothing, but yours seem to be excellent. Can you—“

His nostrils flared almost imperceptibly. “He‟s fey.”

“Oh,” said Eva, her hopes wilting.

“You don‟t think your father could be fey?”

She was tempted to tell him the truth. He was a Tracker. With his nose, he could probably help her locate her father if she provided him with enough details. What could it hurt? He would never jump to the conclusion that she, a woman, might be satyr.

“Actually, my mother has hinted that he was satyr.”

Dane shook his head at that. “I haven‟t scented any satyr here tonight, other than my brothers.”

“You could help me find him, though, couldn‟t you, if he is somewhere in Rome?”

A potent pause, then, “Is that what you‟re looking for Eva? A father?”

“I told you I was.”

“Why?”He lifted her chin on a finger, searching her eyes in the dim light.

She didn‟t quite know how to answer him. Why was it so important to her? “Everyone has a need to know their parents.”

Something shifted in his eyes, in his touch. A new understanding.

“Or maybe what you‟re truly seeking is not a father at all, but rather a strong male presence of another kind in your life.”That hand at her back was roving lower now, still rubbing in slow circles, tantalizingly close to her rear. It was making it difficult to think about anything else. “I watched you from the balcony before I came down here,” he continued. “I saw what interested you. Domination. Multiple partners.”

His words were soft but struck her like staccato bullets, and she stiffened, her eyes darting warily to his.

“You‟re ashamed,” he murmured, gentle surprise coloring his features. “No, don‟t be. Shame is an emotion that serves no purpose in what‟s between us. We‟ll hurt only ourselves if we don‟t satisfy our passions. Do you wish to play daughter to my role as your strict father? I can do that. Want to play nun to my priest? Naughty schoolgirl to my schoolmaster? I can do those as well. Whatever you like.” At last his hand rubbed over her buttock, squeezing and sending a hot thrill through her.

Shocked at herself for being titillated by his suggestions and wandering hands, she pushed him away intending to quit the room. But instead she found herself standing before him uncertainly and studying his face. She felt laid bare, her most secret desires exposed. It felt good and freeing and worrisome all at the same time. She had never allowed herself to so blatantly consider such notions, even in her own imagination.

“Don‟t be disgusting,” she said faintly. Her cheeks flushed under his knowing gaze.

He reached out and tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear.

“It‟s play, Eva. For pleasure. Simply fantasies played out between consenting adults. I trained as a Tracker, remember? We‟re taught how to tease, how to lure our suspects on, to know what will push them to the precipice of pleasure time and time again.. until that pleasure becomes so acute that it is almost pain, and they willingly surrender what we want of them.”

The suggestive scenario he painted opened up a Pandora‟s box of salacious fantasies in her mind. Fantasies she‟d always kept carefully locked away from the light. Her heart ached with a tentative gladness, yet she was almost afraid to let it blossom. To believe that she wasn‟t alone in these desires that had always seemed too deviant to put into words, much less into action. Yet this man was telling her that her particular fleshly desires were acceptable, and more than that, he was offering to make them reality.

“Only think how empty you will feel if you leave me and this place,” he went on. “Think of the pleasures you will miss. There‟s much more to be seen here, more to do. So stay, Eva. Stay with me.”

12

Dane pulled her unresisting body against his, his hold undemanding for the moment, his hands slowly roaming her, gentling her.

She couldn‟t miss the fact that he was hard and twitching to have her. If he didn‟t soon, he would explode. Yet at the same time, he relished the waiting. Relished the sensations of his rushing blood, his prickling skin, his tumescing cock. The touches between them were a sweet torture, the brush of her skin like an aphrodisiac. It was all still new to him. So wondrous.

Through her skirt, he traced a finger up the divide in her buttocks and back again, slowly, almost to her cunt. She shivered and leaned into him. Their thighs aligned, and his cock grew fatter, longer, hungrier for her. Somewhere deep within him, Dante stirred, restless to take her. But he—Dane—now controlled when it would happen. Tonight, for the first time, their two male presences no longer chafed and repelled one another.

Instead, there was a true mingling taking place between them, like tendrils of smoke interlacing steam. Yet the balance in their relationship had irrevocably shifted. Now it was Dane who was in command.

Because of Eva.

Their mutual craving for her had blended them into this great tangled confusion of ferocious need. And Dane would use that need to his advantage tonight. Though Eva didn‟t know it, she was to be the instrument that would allow him to interrogate his latest subject, Dante.

He would take things slowly, drawing out the pleasure and tempting all those within their unusual manage—Dante and Eva and himself. He would lure Dante until he grew desperate to have her. And still he would deprive him. Would not give him release until he supplied much-needed answers about Dane‟s past. About what had happened that long ago night and during that lost year.

And this was all to be done for Luc‟s sake.

But Dane would take this ride along with Dante with reluctance, for he was already randy to pin Eva to the nearest wall with his prick. But so it must be. He would endure, and he would make it good for Eva. For all three of them in the end.

He glanced over her head and saw that a third of the audience had joined the cast onstage. The orgiastic frenzy now under way was unlikely to please her sensibilities when she noticed. Wrapping an arm around her, he took her outside and steered her in a direction away from the salon door, resuming the tour her precipitous flight had interrupted with Sevin.

“As I‟ve told you, my suggestion of a liaison between us extends only to Moonful,” she was saying in that dubious, prim voice that only made him want her even more. “Reserved for nights when our human spouses cannot do for us.”

“ElseWorld demands that I marry a human,” he argued complacently, secure in the belief he would convince her, because inside, she wanted what he did. “A marriage for the making of children. The keeping of property. The vows I‟ll take are necessarily false. I‟ll keep up the pretense, but nothing more.”

“That‟s a difference between us, then,” she said in quiet earnest.

“I‟ll only break my vows to my husband during Moonful out of necessity, when my blood calls me to abandon him for a male of our own world.”

She was foolish to think she could compartmentalize her passion in that way, but now wasn‟t the time to quibble. He turned her toward him, hands on her shoulders. “Yet tonight no impediments stand in our way.

No wives. No husbands.”

Around them a sensual kaleidoscope whirled, but for the moment, neither noticed. She looked up at him, searching his face, hope lighting her own. “True.”