Nicholas: The Lords of Satyr (4 page)

A moment later, he realized he’d missed much of what Signorina Rossini had said. He stared down at her and recognized his uppermost emotion for what it was. Boredom.

Worse still, the Faerie scent that had once cloaked her had dramatically faded. In fact, it had all but disappeared.

He stepped back from her.
Seven hells!
It wasn’t she after all!

If he stayed by her side any longer, society would have him engaged to her no matter what his preference. His mind racing, he drew her into the flock of her friends, who quickly included her in their midst.

The gypsy fortuneteller. It had to be.

But King Feydon had claimed he’d bedded a highborn woman, not a gypsy. Had the girl fallen on hard times?

His chin lifted, and he searched the wind. There it was. The very faintest hint—the merest thread of Faerie spice.

Eyes narrowed, he scanned the grounds, questing, and found the formal entrance at the north end of the gardens. There. The arch of glass over the walkway. The very portal through which the fortuneteller had recently fled. With her departure, the scent of Faerie had fled as well.

Abruptly he excused himself from Signorina Rossini and the cluster of guests. He ignored the almost unanimous start of surprise at his curt withdrawal. Features honed with determination, he began his hunt anew.

Outside the garden gate, he trod the expanses of lawn, passing the occasional fountain or pond. Beyond, when the greenery turned to the paving stones of a thoroughfare, he instinctively headed toward the Aniene River.

He caught sight of the fortuneteller again some distance ahead, scampering over the wide uneven bricks underfoot. She traveled alone, foolish girl. It was a fashionable area, but she could easily find herself in trouble in the nooks and crannies of these twisting streets.

Now and then she became lost from his sight, for she had nearly a fifty-yard lead on him. But his gait was longer than hers, and he easily gained ground.

Occasionally she glanced back as though sensing his pursuit. He kept to the shadows, hidden.

After some blocks, he saw her enter an ironwork gate leading to a private town house. From an alley across the lane, he assessed the dwelling and found it well kept and luxurious, though unostentatious. Was it that of her family, or was she a guest in another’s household? Or a servant? Was she already wed? Would her relatives prove difficult?

So many questions, and no answers to be had this night.

In ElseWorld, Satyrs sought their mates in a more forthright manner than was the custom of Human society. Unfortunately that meant he couldn’t follow her inside and take her with him tonight.

Fortunately he could display infinite patience when it was required. Tomorrow he would visit his attorney and determine the nature of her family. Their financial circumstances and social standing would inform him regarding how best to proceed.

Briefly he wondered at the danger to her person about which King Feydon had hinted. The house she’d entered appeared innocuous, like dozens of others along the street. However, he had more than a passing acquaintance with the secrets that ordinary stone walls could conceal.

The clatter of carriage wheels drew his attention. A portly man sat in the passing open-air coach, his eyes closed and an expression of agonized delight on his face.

When his conveyance hit a pothole, a flustered feminine head popped up from between his sausage thighs. Her hair was mussed and her lips moist. For a moment, her glance tangled with Nick’s. She boldly eyed the swell of his crotch and winked.

A prostitute. A very comely one. He smiled his admiration, and she smiled back. Then, with resignation, her head ducked over the signore’s lap once again, and the carriage rattled out of sight.

With no more reason to linger, Nick slipped back to the garden and hailed his private coach. His physical needs could be denied no longer.

Overhead, clouds had gathered and thickened, obscuring starlight. But the heavy tautness in his loins told him the moon was waxing. It was a dangerous time for one such as he to be without a woman for so long.

The Calling would occur three days hence, at Moonful, as it did with monthly regularity. When the night sky’s orb hung swollen and round, his passion would unleash. It was essential he curtail his business here in Tivoli and return to Satyr land before the Calling overtook him.

Hours later, he entered the sumptuous abode of Mona, one of his favorite meretrici in Rome. She greeted him effusively, and he found himself engulfed in her bosom and smothered by the falseness of her perfume. For the first time he felt vaguely repulsed by its brazenness, so unlike the delicate fragrance he’d tracked earlier that evening.

He pulled away and saw she had readied herself for him. She was dressed as he liked, in a manner which proclaimed she’d once been part of accepted society. No bawdy-house woman here, but rather a figure that might have graced the finest ballroom if she hadn’t fallen into financial difficulty and chosen this profession as a way out.

Her mild plumpness and elegance pleased him. His taste in women varied, but on the whole he preferred them cultured and genteel—at least on the outside.

A movement in the salon doorway attracted his notice, and he turned to observe another of her kind waiting in the dimness beyond. He’d sent word ahead that he would be calling. Mona had obviously prepared some sort of entertainment for him.

The other woman wore a scarlet bombazine gown that appeared determined to bind its wearer as tightly as his trousers restrained his burgeoning cock. Though the gown’s design bordered on prim, its waist was sharply curtailed and its bodice forced her ample bosom high.

Marking his interest, Mona waved a manicured hand toward her companion, inviting her closer for his inspection.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she teased throatily, linking her arm with his and the other woman’s to draw their threesome more intimately together. “My sister will be joining us.”

Giggling, the younger version of his meretrice jiggled coyly, purposely attracting his gaze to the undulating globes that swelled precariously above the neckline of her gown.

“Angela!” Mona scolded. “Lord Satyr comes to us seeking refinement, not the behavior one might expect from a whore of the back alleys.”

The younger woman straightened, chastised.

Nick smiled at her, flashing even white teeth. Her expression melted as she quickly fell under his thrall.

Both women had lush figures but were different of feature. He doubted they were related. Still he gave Mona high marks for the creativity she displayed. The fantasy of having sisters attend him was always quite diverting.

Nick shook off the notion that such pleasures, though as necessary to him as breathing, had come to seem empty in recent months. The addition of a wife and children to his household would prove a welcome distraction from a growing awareness that there was a void in his life.

“Vino, signore?” asked Mona, pressing her bosom into his arm. Candlelight flickered on the bottle she lifted from the liquor cart. It bore the Satyr Vineyard emblem, an embossed SV.

He nodded.

A soft hand grazed the fabric over his crotch, as though by accident. Her supposed sister. He ignored the overture for the moment and lifted the glass that was poured for him, anticipating the first swallow.

The intimate touch at his trousers grew bolder as the shimmering liquid spilled over his tongue. The tart sweetness tightened his taste buds even as the skilled fingers released his engorged prick to the caress of a feminine mouth.

Ah!
There was nothing like the taste of Satyr…wine.

W
ine! It disgusted her!

Jane kicked the empty bottle she’d tripped over just inside her aunt’s gate.

Normally she wasn’t so clumsy. But after leaving Villa d’Este, she’d been rattled by the bizarre notion that she was being pursued. A few more steps and she’d be on the stairs leading inside Aunt Izabel’s town house.

She picked up the wine bottle for closer examination and rubbed her thumb over the raised insignia molded into its side—“SV.”

When she’d lived in London, she’d discovered many such bottles in various hiding places. This one was her father’s, no doubt, as all the others had been. So much for her aunt’s prophesy that the move from London to Tivoli would cure his intemperance.

She wrinkled her nose at the vinegary smell of the bottle’s dregs.

What did he find so necessary in this fermented brew that he’d thrown his life away on it after their mother had died? And how ironic, when the contents of bottles such as this one had been the very cause of her death! For the coachman who’d driven her the night her carriage had overturned had been intoxicated.

The clouds overhead parted, and the bottle caught the moonlight, momentarily shooting amber starbursts. Anger bubbled up. Under her fingers, the glass heated and rattled. Cracks formed over its surface as though it were arid soil too long denied rain.

She tossed it away. Arcing in midair, the bottle shattered in a soft explosion, sprinkling the path with golden jewels.

Gratified, she stepped over the shards and scurried up the stairs. Her bundle was a comfortable weight against her thigh, heavy with coins and the trappings of her secret occupation.

The coin purse hidden in her armoire grew fatter by the week. One day soon, she would take her sister and leave this place. The money would buy them food and lodging somewhere in the countryside. It would buy anonymity. Security.

Upon reaching the town-house door without discovery or mishap, she breathed a sigh of relief. Her step light, she lifted the latch and let herself in.

From the window above, Jane’s aunt Izabel took careful note of her homecoming.

“Jane has returned from her nocturnal wanderings,” Izabel observed. “In an effort to escape the tightening nuptial noose, she goes on her jaunts more frequently.”

“She’d best keep herself chaste for Signore Nesta,” muttered the figure that shadowed her. “Think you she visits another man?”

Izabel’s laughter trilled. “Jane? Hardly.”

A stealthy masculine hand slid over her shoulder and dusted her collarbone. Hesitantly, as though unsure of its welcome, it delved under the neckline of her nightgown to capture a breast.

Izabel registered the intrusion with a distant corner of her mind and decided to allow it.

At her lack of resistance, the palming of her flesh grew bolder. Familiar fingers found and twisted the small silver ring that pierced her nipple, drawing a sigh from her.

“Come to bed, my love,” the man coaxed.

Izabel let the window curtain swish back into place. Her eyelids drooped, and she leaned against the warmth behind her.

Turning her, he lifted her breasts from their lacy confinement and latched onto the nipple nearest his mouth. The slurp and pull of his lusty nursing caused a pleasant tugging sensation in her womb.

The folds of her gown brushed the backs of her legs, gathering in his fists. Cool air touched her naked bottom as his hands gained the access they sought. Gripping her twin swells, he kneaded.

Fondly, Izabel gazed at the head rooting at her nipple. She stroked his wavy dark hair, so like her own.

He was useful, this stepbrother of hers.

And he was always so agreeably impatient to have her. Outside her bedchamber, rules of propriety had to be observed. There, he could treat her only in a fraternal manner. And on many nights, she deemed it wise to refuse him the use of her body even in private chambers. Denial only served to whet his appetite.

Should she let him have her tonight? It wasn’t wise to make him too certain he could take such liberties at will.

However, she had reason to be grateful to him. Six months ago, he’d brought his daughters to live in her home. The value of her younger niece remained uncertain. At the moment, it was Jane who was of primary interest.

Soon her eldest niece would be made to wed. Signore Nesta had already proven his ability to sire sons. He would no doubt whelp more on Jane with satisfactory haste. And through Jane’s children, dreams long in the making would be realized.

“Let me fuck you, Izzy. Please,” her companion begged.

A sense of feminine supremacy sent a charge of lust sizzling through Izabel’s veins. She delighted in his pent-up frustration.

Tugging his hair, she pressed his lips to rub across hers. The taste of the wine she’d provided was tart and cool on his tongue. Pulling away, she whispered to him in the darkness.

“You may fuck me in good time. But for now, allow me to—” She let the words hang in the air between them. He caught her meaning, and his eyes lit with anticipation.

Her smooth lady’s hands slid down his body, shaping his ribs and then his thighs until she knelt in a pool of silk and lace before him. His shaft twitched and pulsed, tenting his robe just below its sash. A small circle of pre-cum dampened the satin.

Her lips twisted. While a woman’s desire was easily concealed, a man’s was always so pathetically obvious. The power in this act was hers. His desire for her allowed her to control him.

Gently she parted the fabric.

His ruddy crown bobbed forward, its slitted eye leering at her. His shaft wasn’t especially large, though it had felt so the first time it had come inside her. She’d been so young then, her body untried.

Since that day, she’d delighted in trying many things with him. And with others. It was her nature to revel in pleasures of the flesh. Unlike his former milquetoast English wife.

The odor of male musk strengthened as she widened the opening at the front of his robe. Leaning forward, she ran plump, dry lips along his length. Burying her nose in the thicket of hair at his root, she inhaled the slight sourness, a comfortable and familiar smell peculiar to him. She pulled back to swirl her tongue around the under ridge of his crown and then flicked his seeping slit, enjoying his groan, enjoying the salty taste of cum and unwashed flesh.

He rested fingertips on her shoulders and braced his legs. As though from a distance, she watched her hands weigh and fondle his testicles and then grasp his length and guide it forward. Her salivary glands squirted, preparing the cavern of her mouth for the task ahead.

At the first wet stroke, the muscles of his thighs tensed and jerked. The firm O of her lips undulated his crest and then slid to his root. He moaned as her fists, mouth, and tongue worked in unison, coaxing him in the strong, milking way he liked best.

Though her mind roamed elsewhere as she drove him toward his release, she was truly eager to please him. In the end, it was she who’d benefit from his desire.

For this act upon his flesh, he would do anything she asked of him.

For this and other private pleasures she bestowed, he would betray his own children, turn a blind eye to her plans for them.

For this, he had allowed her to kill his wife.

She had never understood why he’d married that dry English vacca in the first place. The marriage had caused him to abandon her—his dearest stepsister—in Tivoli so he could share a home with his erstwhile wife in London.

When he’d no longer been readily available to fuck her, Izabel had been furious. She had married herself to an elder in her church, who’d been so agreeable as to keel over and leave her a wealthy widow within the year. Nevertheless, for all the nights she’d been forced to spend beneath the old rutting buzzard, she blamed her stepbrother and his marriage. Even now, his betrayal stung.

A firm squeeze to his testicles caused him to buck, stuffing his cock deep. A pinch to the tender skin of his inner thigh reminded him the pace was hers to set. He yelped at the light punishment and clenched his buttocks, trying to remain compliant.

His letters to her during his marriage had often complained of his wife’s deficiencies in the bedchamber, of his disappointment that his efforts with her had sired only two children, and both of them girls. Izabel had read the details of their coital incompatibilities with relish and invigorated hope. She had carefully plotted her rival’s downfall.

When he and his family had occasionally visited, she had made sure the former Lady Cova noticed the unusual closeness she and her stepbrother shared. On that last fateful visit he and his wife had made to Italy, she had flaunted the incestuous relationship until Lady Cova had been goaded into openly acknowledging her awareness of it. And her disgust for it. So naive.

In so doing, Lady Cova had shown herself to be a threat. Their enemy. If she were to expose their secret to the world, few would understand. By then, her stepbrother had grown tired of his wife’s cold English bed. He had quickly seen the wisdom of dissolving the marriage in the only way open to them.

His wife’s death.

Arranging it had proven surprisingly simple. Just three bottles of rotgut wine for the coachman and a shallow cut to a carriage axle that ensured it would break along its trip. The rest of her plan had been equally easy.

Following Lady Cova’s demise, the bereft family had come to Italy, and Izabel had opened her home to them. It pleased her to know society at large thought well of her willingness to care for her nieces and to see to a betrothal for Jane. Appearances were so important.

Amusing how things had worked out in the end. Her stepbrother’s marriage to his English milksop, which had once so pained her, now worked to her advantage. The match had produced Jane.

Jane, of unearthly parentage, who was of a good age for marriage.

At last.

Her stepbrother’s length swelled and grew more determined within her mouth as she competently sucked him off. Only when his cream finally spurted and dribbled down her throat did she rise and lead him to her bed.