Dominic (28 page)

woven linen fabric and had been fitted and handstitched by the finest tailor in Florence, she studied it at arm’s length, clearly disappointed.

“Do you require assistance?” he asked, uncertain of the reason for her displeasure.

She sent him a glance that told him she considered his attempt to get his hands on her both transparent and pathetic. Frowning in concentration,

she slid her arms into the sleeves.

The garment was huge on her, its cuffs flopping to her knees, and its tails drooping even lower. He rol ed the ends of the sleeves back to reveal her

hands, and then kissed the backs of each. She tasted just as she always had. Delicious.

She snatched her hands back, rubbing them as if washing them together.

“Does it hurt when I touch you?”

“Hurt blankness.”

“That, of course, makes little sense, but we’l sort it out later. My shirt wil have to suffice as clothing for the present. I’ve sent word to one of my

brothers’ homes for the loan of something more suitable. A dress and other fripperies should arrive within the hour.”

At this, her eyes sparked with keen interest and slowly smiled into his. In the sunlight streaming through the windowpane, they were bright

amethyst jewels brimming with delight.

He’d seen that smile of hers many times. And it had reached her eyes before. But now something about it was far more appealing.

Abruptly he realized what the difference was. It was no longer a false curving of lips he’d instigated in her by his Wil . This was a smile, freely given,

by a woman with a Wil of her own.

His gaze roved her features and roamed lower. Damn, she was beautiful. Sweet. To hel with clothing. He took a step toward her. He needed to…

“No fuck,” she warned, her smile dimming.

He stopped short, biting off a silent curse. “Apologies yet again. I momentarily forgot the new rules.”

Rules were something he understood. Bending and arranging them to suit his preferences was part of any negotiation and was a business at

which he excel ed. It was only a matter of time before she was in his bed again.

He could wait.

A while. His eyes slid over her again.

A short while.

3

C
onvincing her to remain hidden while jugs of steaming water were delivered and poured into his claw-foot tub proved easily accomplished. At least,

once he’d posed it to her as a game.

Upon the departure of his servants, he took the precaution of latching both door and windows before sinking into his bath and commencing his

ablutions. At the sound of his splashing she crept out of hiding.

She came closer to stand by the tub, observing his every move with a critical eye.

“I’m bathing.”

“Bathing.”

“Yes. In order to become clean.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Unclean?”

He frowned. “No, I am not unclean…. That is…” Hestumbled to a halt, glad his law professors at the University of Bologna were not in the room to

witness this fumbling for words of their most lauded and exalted magna cum laude student. “It’s rude to stare,” he archly informed her. “Sit over there on

my bed where I can keep an eye on you.”

Though she moved away at that, she ignored his directive and instead chose to roam the perimeter of his bedchamber, peeking into the armoires,

his shaving mirror, behind the privacy screen, and general y inspecting the surroundings with the diligent curiosity of a child.

Eventual y she paused at his bedside table to ponder the stack of ancient leather-bound legal tomes he’d borrowed from an administrative library

in Else World. She hefted one in her hands, appearing surprised at its weight, and she nearly dropped it to the floor before managing to maneuver it atop

his bed.

“It’s a book. Open it,” he suggested.

“A book. Open it,” she mimicked softly, as though wanting to experience his words on her tongue.

Sitting on the mattress, she unfolded the volume on her lap, whereupon she began leafing randomly through its musty parchment pages. Now and

then, she paused, seeming to study a passage more intently.

“Can you read?”

A shrug was her only reply. However, the book seemed to occupy her for the moment, and for that he was grateful since it freed him to consider

other more pressing matters.

It was a mere fifteen minutes to the gate on foot, which left him wel over an hour’s time before he must depart. It was too dangerous to take her

with him to Else World. Therefore, though he was reluctant to do so, he would have to leave her in the care of someone. But who?

After a moment, she lay the open book flat on his bed and settled on her stomach to continue her perusal of it. His shirttails slid higher on her,

revealing the curves of her bottom and her long legs below. Practical considerations left him as he studied her, lying there amid bed linens that had been

tangled by their nocturnal passion. A passion that stil rode him this morning.

“Gods,” he muttered. For just a moment, he was tempted to take himself in hand, but it was her body he wanted sheathing his cock, not his fist. In

an abrupt move, he stood from his bath, and she glanced up.

Water cascaded from him—a slick sheet racing down his chest, torso, bel y. There it was forced to part, forking around the thickened, florid cock

angling from his groin, before it could sluice down his legs and back into the pool.

She sat up and closed the volume, her fingers marking her place as though she’d actual y been reading with comprehension and planned to return

to a particular sentence where she’d left off. Standing it on end across her thighs, she folded her forearms atop gilded binding that was four inches thick.

Then she commenced to observe his every action as he reached for linen toweling and began to dry himself. The sensation of her gaze moving

over him was every bit as tangible as the stroke of his towel-draped hand. Predictably his cock swel ed to ever-greater dimensions. There was little rush

to dress, for it quite literal y would not fit in his trousers in its current state.

“It has a mind of his own,” he muttered, making no attempt to disguise his erection. “I’l be damned if I’l apologize yet again for it.”

“Damned if I’l apologize,” she echoed.

Stepping from the bath onto the sheepskin rug, he was arrested by the smug smile that flitted across her lips. Though she’d refused him earlier,

some part of her stil took pleasure in his body’s response to her. Her eyes had darkened, and a flush tinted her cheekbones. She wasn’t as immune to

him as she’d led him to believe.

He tossed the towel away and took a step in her direction. Without quite realizing how he’d gotten there, he found himself beside the bed.

Then he was drawing himself over her. And she was lying back, al owing it.

He reached between them to shove aside the legal tome and the obligations it represented. His body relaxed into hers, and it seemed the most

natural thing in the world for his knees to press hers wider and his groin to nestle in the warm, feminine notch between her thighs.

“It’s poor manners to stare,” he scolded, his voice low and velvet. His fingers threaded her hair, dark against light. “Especial y at a naked man to

whom you are not wed. In fact, in this world, such unseemly behavior would commonly be construed by that naked man as an invitation.”

She screwed up her expression in way that implied she was utterly at a loss to understand him.

Brushing her mouth with his, he made it simpler. “No Human woman would stare so brazenly unless she meant to invite a man here.” His cock

gently nudged her. “Between her legs.”

“No Human.” She touched her own cheek, indicating she referred to herself.

His interest sharpened at the confession, and he instinctively transitioned into the role of the interrogator he’d been trained to be. “Then what are

you?”

A terrified confusion seeped into her eyes at the question but was quickly snuffed by the sweep of her lashes.

“I am…” She sought words to define herself but failed to locate them.

A rivulet dripped from his damp blue-black hair onto his col arbone and then made its way down his chest. Her finger caught it, tracing its path on

his skin.

“I am unwet,” she decided softly.

Her unexpected response and the dazzle of her jeweled eyes as they peeked up at him temporarily blinded him to al looming responsibilities.

His head lowered. “A state more commonly referred to as ‘dry.’”

Gazes and lips caressed and clung, and her hands lifted to stroke the damp slopes of his shoulders. Though their bodies had loved before, al

was now changed between them. They were new to one another, yet not strangers. The circumstances of their liaison had altered irrevocably with the

coming of dawn. He wanted a new joining. Wanted to remind her that she wanted him. Needed to brand her as his, lest she’d forgotten.

His fingers went lower, parting the tails of the shirt he’d given her to find the warm, slick heart of her. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she arched into

his touch. His thumb pressed delicately at her clit, and two fingers delved inside her and then out again in an erotic stroke. She’d been wrong about one

thing—she
was
wet. For him.

She moaned softly, and her fingers clutched his arms.

“Look at me,” he told her, hearing the need in his own voice. She complied, and at the same time drew up her legs on either side of his until her

calves hugged his hips. Her slit coddled his bal s. She was open, ready.

How was it going to feel to drown himself in the depths of her amethyst eyes—now that they were
aware
—at the very same moment he drowned

his sex in hers? The thought turned the thump of his pulse even more urgent, more passionate. A fevered lust heated his blood—a blood endowed unto

him by centuries of lecherous, fornicating Satyr ancestors.

Beads of pre-cum formed at his tip, and they painted a thin, silvery line down her bel y as he led the crown of his cock to her opening. There, it

spread lips that were already slippery with feminine desire.

“Please,” she whispered at his ear. It was the sound of a wil ing, wanting woman.

“Gods. Yes.” Muscles bunched in his buttocks as he flexed his hips, beginning to part her.

At that very moment, a brisk knock sounded on the door.

Her breath hitched, uncertain. Their eyes caught and clung.

“A hundred thousand fucking hel s!” he bit out through his teeth.

Someone was in the corridor outside his room. Throughout the entirety of the estate, it was an unwritten rule that servants were forbidden to

disturb a Satyr male in his bedchamber. The reason for this break with tradition must be an important one for a member of his household to risk dismissal

over it.

His cock was poised at her gate, dying to breach her, to taste her. Their joining could be consummated so, so easily. They needn’t linger over it.

He could…

She tilted her hips, luring him deeper. His crown slipped inside her.

His hands planted themselves on the mattress on either side of her as he plumbed an inch deeper, and deeper stil . He’d achieved little more than

several inches of ingress, and already his bal s had lifted taut, quivering with the need to ejaculate the seed they brewed.

The clock on the mantel at the opposite wal began to bong mournful y, another insistent reminder of duty. It was nine o’clock.

A slew of curse words filtered through his mind, and he faltered, his expression grim. Never had he wished his obligations further away. But the

fact remained that he was due to depart this world in a little over an hour.

Forcibly defusing the escalating need between them was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. Muscles clenched again as his hips lifted,

reversing the direction of his cock.

“No,” she pleaded, clinging as he quit her.

“Another time,” he murmured against her lips. “Soon, I promise.”

“Promise,” she echoed in a forlorn voice.

As the ninth bong sounded, the knock came again, louder this time.

“A moment!” he roared toward the offending interruption.

He considered explaining himself to the woman under him, but the gap in their communication skil s was so great that doing so would take too

long. Straightening away from the bed, he stood, carrying her with him to the edge of the tub.

“Your turn.”

She stared down at the pool, somewhat surprised at the novelty of the suggestion he’d presented. Reaching down, she tested the bathwater with

her fingers, swirling them curiously through its fluid warmth. Then, without protest, she al owed him to lower her the rest of the way into the tub until she sat,

submerged to her chest.

“Remain there,
quietly,
while I answer the door,” he told her, placing a finger to his lips in emphasis. “Don’t speak. You understand?”

At her nod, he grabbed his dressing gown, donning it as he crossed the room, whereupon he yanked the door open with the ful force of his

frustration.

As he’d expected, it was one of the servants. She looked a bit taken aback at his thunderous expression and even more alarmed when he

crowded her backward and stepped into the hal with her. She’d no doubt have fled with her apron flung over her head if he hadn’t had the presence of

mind to forcibly secure the crest of his turgid cock under the waist sash on his robe as he’d tied it closed.

“Wel ?” he demanded as she only continued to gape.

She quickly remembered her place and her mission and bobbed a curtsey. Doing her best to tamp her curiosity when they both heard the

splashing sounds issuing from the room behind him, she announced, “
Scusi,
Signore, I apologize for the intrusion, but a package has arrived.”

“Wel ? Where is it?” he inquired impatiently, noting the woman’s empty arms.