In the Garden of Sin (37 page)

He didn’t let up, just kept kissing her—and damn, what a kiss—as he brought her off a second time with those nimble fingers and that big, pussy-stretching dildo. He thrust it faster now, faster, faster, rolling the diamond between his fingers as he fucked her mouth with his tongue. Convulsing with pleasure, she heard stifled screams and realized it was her. He dialed it back as the spasms subsided, grinding the dildo hard but slow, caressing her with a whisper-light touch as his mouth flirted with hers and—
oh yeah, oh yeah, here it comes, here it comes
—she climaxed again, just as hard as the other three times, a low, strangled moan grinding out of her throat.

He held her until her heart stopped slamming and the shaking ceased, his arms tight around her to keep her from slumping to the ground.

“Holy
fuck
,” she said through a wheezy chuckle. Oh, yeah, she had to have him. This one wasn’t going anywhere. He was hers.

His erection prodded her stomach. She reached between them to stroke it, but he clamped a hand around her wrist. “It already aches like hell just from watching you come apart like that. You’re so responsive, so wild.”

“It almost felt like you were fucking me for real,” she said.

“I wish I could. God, how I wish I could. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be inside someone like you when you lose yourself like that.” His chest shook with a little laugh. “I’d probably come so many times in such quick succession, I’d pass right out.”

“‘Someone like me’… You mean vampires, or Follets in general?”

“Follets in general, I guess, though I’ve got to say, I don’t think I’ve ever met one as hot as you. Your sexuality, it’s ferocious. Human women… I mean, I love them. They’re great. They can be incredibly sexy, but not like you.”

“Even Lili?” she asked.

His chest stopped moving.

Galiana said, “I gather she’s a special favorite of yours. What kind of a lover is she? I mean, she
is
human, right?”
Might as well get all our cards on the table right now
, she thought.

The air left his lungs. “No.”

“No?” Galiana tilted her head to look at him. “So you can’t…”

He shook his head without looking at her.

She said, “How long have you two been…?”

“Since the mid-seventeen hundreds.”

“Holy shit. If that isn’t a recipe for frustration, I don’t know what is.”

“‘Frustration’ is an understatement. It’s been…” He released her and stepped back, his jaw tight. “Not easy.”

“Not easy?” she said. “And
I’m
guilty of understatement? It sounds like hell. I’d lose my fucking mind if I could only do it with humans. My God, how banal. Don’t you ever get fed up?”

With a sigh of resignation, he said, “I’ve learned to cope. Look, there’s no way to change the situation, so what’s the point of talking about it?”

Stepping closer to him, she said, “What if I told you there
was
a way to change the situation?”

He gave a dubious little snort. “I’d say prove it.”

She smiled.

RINKING ALONE?” Turek asked Lili as he came up behind her the next afternoon. She was standing just inside the main entry door to the great hall, peering out at the courtyard, an open bottle of red wine in her hand. No glass, just the bottle. She’d changed out of her baroness costume into a saronglike garment made of gold-shot gray silk.

She started at his voice, but smiled when she turned and saw who it was. “Not anymore,” she said, handing him the bottle as he came up beside her. “Hi, Anthony.”

Anthony
. Lili was the only person here who called him that. In fact, she’d asked him when he sat next to her at lunch that day whether he preferred Anthony or Tony. It would be nice if everyone was that thoughtful.

He took a swallow and returned the bottle to her, saying, “Great cab.” He loved the intimacy of drinking from the same bottle, loved even more that she’d been the one to initiate it.

“Where’ve you been all afternoon?” she asked.

In Clermont-Ferrand, buying the cordless reciprocating saw, utility knife, and five-gallon can of gasoline Galiana had sent him for. She told him to buy matches, too, but it seemed pretty lame to actually pay for something people gave away all over the place, so he just figured he’d keep his eyes open and snag the next book he saw lying around.

But of course he couldn’t tell Lili what he’d really been up to, so he grinned and said, “Why? Were you looking for me?”

“You seem to be the only person here who can carry on a conversation that doesn’t involve fucking, sucking, whipping, or spanking.”

He said, “D and D Week has barely begun, but you sound like you’re more than ready for it to be over.”

She sighed and returned her gaze to the courtyard, lifting the bottle to her mouth.

He followed her line of sight to a cherry tree near the gatehouse, beneath which Elic and Galiana stood kissing, seemingly oblivious to the orgiastic frolics taking place all around them.

“Do you ever get jealous when Galiana goes all gaga over another guy right in front of you?” Lili asked him. “I mean, obviously, you have an open relationship, but still…”

“You and Elic aren’t exclusive, either,” he said, “yet here you are, spying on him and sucking down—”

“I’m not
spying
on him, I’m just…”

“Lurking and watching him from a distance while he makes out with another woman?”

“Yeah, what’s that about?” Lili asked. “I mean,
making out?

What are they, fourteen? This is a freakin’ BDSM orgy. What are they going to do next, organize a game of spin the bottle?”

Turek knew that Lili wouldn’t be nearly this put off if Elic and Galiana had been fucking under that tree instead of kissing. Fucking was mere entertainment at an event like this—a shared bodily function, no big deal. Kissing, on the other hand, was the sensual expression of emotion. Lili couldn’t help but feel threatened by this evidence that what was happening between Elic and Galiana might involve more than mere hormones and genitals.

Just as Galiana had planned.
The more alienated she feels toward Elic
, she’d told him when she gave him his instructions this morning,
the more likely she’ll be to go off alone with you when the time comes
.

A mental image ambushed him: Lili enveloped by flames, shrieking as that exquisite olive skin blistered and charred.

In the end, when I finally torch you, I’ll take my time
, Galiana had promised, should he fail to carry out Lili’s execution.
You think you know what I’m capable of, but you don’t, Anton. You really have no idea
.

Bile surged in his throat. He fumbled for the pack of Gitanes in his trunk hose and shook one out. “Do you mind?”

Still staring across the courtyard, Lili absently shook her head. “How long have you and Galiana been together?”

About two hundred twenty years
, he thought, lighting the cigarette, but he could hardly tell her that, since she assumed he was mortal, so he just said, “A long fucking time.”

“You mind if I ask what you see in a cold-blooded piece of work like that?”

There was nothing in the question to suggest that Elic had disclosed Galiana’s vampirism to Lili.
Let me know if he told her
, Galiana had said, ’
cause then we’ll have to switch tacks
.

“I didn’t see that side of her in the beginning,” he said, which was true.

“You never do, with her kind. They reel you in, and then one day you suddenly realize you’re in a relationship with a sadistic control freak who’s got you on a tight leash, and there’s no way out. It’s a classic situation, happens to people all the time.”

Not just people
, Turek thought grimly.

“Mostly women.” Lili added.

And not just women
.

“Aren’t you worried she’ll double-cross you someday?” Lili asked.

Turek paused with the cigarette halfway to his mouth. “Double-cross?”

“You know, replace you with someone else and get rid of you?”

“Get rid of?”

Laughing, Lili said, “Do you always repeat what people say?”

That’s right, start irritating her just when she’s warming up to you. “Sorry. I, uh… It just seems like such a dramatic way to put it—‘get rid of Like you’re talking about offing someone.”

“That’s not what I meant, but it happens. You find yourself in a relationship you can’t get out of, ’cause no matter how hard you try, the other person always has to be the one to call the shots. They’ll never let you break up with them. They’ll kill you first. Or if you do manage to leave them, they get into this stalkerish head where they spend all their free time plotting your demise.”

Just as Galiana had done after Turek broke it off with her in the Piazza di Maggiore in June of 1348—not as an idle exercise, she’d assured him later. She had fully intended to torture
him to death. It was the same fate she’d threatened him with the day before, a fate he could avoid only by burning Lili to ashes.

Assuming she kept her word and really did let him live in exchange for taking care of Lili.

Aren’t you worried she’ll double-cross you someday?

Across the courtyard, Elic and Galiana looked up from their necking session to greet Inigo. They spoke for a few seconds, and then the three of them headed out through the gatehouse together.

“Et tu
, Inigo?” Lili murmured.

“Hm?”

“Looks like they’ve got a three-way in the works.”

Not quite. According to Galiana, Elic had been balky but intrigued when she’d revealed that she was one of only three or four vampires in the entire world with the ability to replace all the blood in the body of a human or Follet. If he allowed her to transfuse him, she explained, he would be able to have sex with her or any other nonhuman, assuming the donor could do so. The catch: When she left Grotte Cachée, he would go with her. He was tempted, but troubled by the prospect of losing Lili, so she said he could sleep on it, but that it was a one-time only offer; if he turned her down, he would never get another chance.

That morning, he told her he’d decided it would be best for Lili and him both if they stopped torturing themselves and went their separate ways.
It’s about time he figured that one out
, Galiana told Turek.
An incubus and a succubus in a platonic relationship? It’s a sitcom that should have been canceled after the first episode
.

Inigo had agreed with typical satyric good humor to act as donor. Given that Elic’s replacement blood would be that of another Follet, he would still be virtually immortal afterward.
There was also a strong likelihood that he would retain his ability to change genders, since genetically, he would still be a dusios. The dusiian blood factor only controlled penile hydraulics, not the rest of it.

Galiana told Turek that the transfusion was to take place that afternoon at a shallow stream in the woods. This was so the water could carry away the blood draining from Elic’s femoral artery as she discharged Inigo’s blood into his carotid.
Then, while Elic and Inigo are recovering, you and I can set the stage for Lili’s little accident
.

The fatal “accident” would be Galiana’s insurance should Elic be tempted then or in the future to reneg on his deal with the Devil and remain at Grotte Cachée. And, too, Elic’s grief would make it that much easier for Galiana to manipulate him into accepting vampiric conversion.

“Anthony?” Lili said.

“Hm?”

“I said I’m sorry I blew you off like that when you asked me out to dinner yesterday. You’re obviously a nice guy. I hope I didn’t come off as a bitch.”

“You?”
Turek laughed. “Look who my girlfriend is.”

Lili laughed, too, but her smile soon faded. “Yeah, she really knows what she’s doing. Elic… It’s like he’s a teenager with his first crush.” She looked down, swallowing hard.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded and gave him a watery smile. “Here.” Taking his hand, she closed it around the wine bottle. “You finish it before I start blubbering.”

His hand was warm where she’d touched it. He took a long pull on the bottle. And then he took another.