Dane (5 page)

Deeper still. The long, hard glides seemed never ending.

“Oh!”Her jaw tightened against the need to call for a respite from the tug of hands and gravity, and the push of thick, tandem cocks. He would stop if she asked. And she didn‟t want him to stop. She wanted this, needed it. Craved it.

And then at last she was crying out, as unforgiving olivewood and hard male filled her completely. His dark thatch cushioned her bottom, and his chin was tucked at the hollow of her shoulder. His chest was an unyielding furnace at her back, his thighs a powerful embrace on either side of hers. And she was full, so, so full.

You‟ll need me then, between your thighs.

She moaned, remembering. Yearning.

“Make me come,” she breathed. Strong, obedient hands lifted her higher, pulled her lower in an undulating motion, and thus began her erotic ride. Murmuring encouragement and instructions to him all the while, she let passion build, fucking herself, letting him fuck her. Urging him on and on and on.

Air quivered from her throat in wild, quick snatches, and his own came at her nape in hot gasps in time with his plunge and withdrawal.

Her thighs burned. Her lungs were near to bursting. The bedpost was cool between her swollen breasts, her fingers white-knuckled where they gripped it. And deep, deep inside she was wet, humming, on the brink of something wonderful.

Oh, Gods! Her nipples clenched painfully tight, and she reached for his hands, needing them on her there, showing them how to massage her. The slap of their flesh was an aphrodisiac as he went deep in her, hot in her, long in her. The sweet, steady building of sensation rose in her, higher and higher, until finally, finally.. finally.. she felt the first delicate contraction. The seizing of her inner tissues that presaged her ultimate finish. Another contraction came, stronger this time, and then another, again and again, and then closer together, and harder, tumbling upon one another. Her exhalations came in rasps and gulps and moans. Her clit twisted and jerked, and her nether tissues fisted on the lengths they stroked. Her entire body tightened, ready, so ready...

And then she was coming, convulsing in long, harsh, beautiful waves of sensation that burst stars behind her eyelids and seemed to go on forever and ever, and yet not long enough. All too soon, they subsided to dull echoes of their former strength. She slumped forward, her forehead on the bedpost. Her inner tissues pulsed more gently now, their pace slowing sooner than her heartbeat. Her lashes lifted.

Beyond the window, the moon was a tangerine, pale and huge above paper cutouts of black cypress and oak trees and spires and rooftops. Illuminations from the festa under way in the Forum ruins burst and sparkled around the moon, making it almost appear to be weeping for joy.

And then there was empty silence. The dull aftermath of empty gratification. A tear coursed down her cheek and she rested her forehead on the bedpost in front of her, just above her clenched hands. How she longed for something else. Something more.

“You‟re lucky, do you know that?”she murmured. “Apparently there are legions of men who would pay large sums of money to have me in this way. Yet you don‟t care. Can‟t care. And that‟s what makes you special, and so perfect for this night. In a world that would be all too interested in exploiting me if they knew of my existence, you are singular.

Safe. Unlike the pattern I used to make you.”

He didn‟t reply, of course, and was motionless as she pushed herself upward, relinquishing rods of flesh and wood. She needed this dual penetration only once. It was a crucial, necessary beginning to the night.

But now it was over, and she would not require it again. She lay back on the mattress, her head on the pillow, and lifted her arms above her toward the headboard.

“Tie my wrists loosely with the ribbons,” she told him without meeting his eyes. He obeyed of course, and when he‟d completed that task, she sent him to the cabinet to collect several elongated cylinders of varying thicknesses and designs. And a small pot of salve.

Lying there naked, tethered, and waiting for him excited her.

Watching him carry these objects to her for the express purpose of giving her pleasure with them excited her as well. Fostered a momentary illusion that he was in control, not she. It was the sort of situation she craved but could never have. Not with a Shimmerskin—they were incapable of exerting command. And it was unwise to seek another sort of partner who was capable of it. Like the man in the grove.

“Beloved,” he whispered as his arms went under her thighs, splaying them for his mouth. But only because she‟d willed him to do so.

Until dawn, everything he would do and say would be programmed to incite her passion. She had but to imagine an action and he would perform it, no matter how debauched. Yet her experience and creativity in these matters were limited, and the ongoing necessity of controlling him would always deflate her pleasure.

The brush of his stubbled cheek as he kissed the inside of her thigh was a tender abrasion that thrilled. She gasped, tugging at her bonds as his tongue lapped at her clit, parted her slit, entered her. She turned her face toward the window, gazing at the bittersweet moon.

He felt wonderful. He would make her come. Again and again.

But it would not be enough.

How she longed to feel the hot spill of a man‟s semen. Just once.

Shimmerskins were devoid of it, incapable of producing or imparting it.

She longed for the whisper of love words, sex words that she didn‟t have to specifically request her mate to utter. She wanted to feel out of control.

Bent to a man‟s Will. To know she‟d driven her mate wild to have her under him.

Her eyes went to the array of titillation devices her lover had neatly aligned along the surface of the bedside table, like fine cutlery at a dinner place setting. He would use them on her throughout the night as she wished, and fuck her time and time again through the hours as she directed. Though her flesh would be well satisfied by the time dawn came, it would not be enough.

She could not continue on in this way. Yet, it was widely known that if the satyr did not heed the full moon‟s Calling in this manner, they perished.

Death or this. It seemed she had little alternative.

The certainty that her needs would go unappeased, that she would always live this way, and that she could not change her situation, was so terrible at these moments that she sometimes feared she might truly go insane.

3

I‟m not insane.

I. . am... not. . insane.

Lord Dane Satyr repeated the words in his mind, trying to banish the cold terror that ripped down his spine. Pain speared through his brain like tiny branches of lightning. His heart beat a harsh, ragged drumbeat in his ears. Behind his eyelids, a blood-red haze singed his vision. Dormant, half-formed memories had him yanking sharply at his arms and legs, and rotating his wrists against unseen restraints.

Mouths, caresses, fists, cocks, slaps, bites, fingers, tongues, pinches, breasts. . torturous devices. And the hands. Those wanting, needing hands he couldn‟t escape. They took from him, used him without his consent. Why did he let them? Why couldn‟t he find the will to fight?

He was disoriented, out of control. Helpless. He, the most feared and vaunted Tracker in ElseWorld history.

But back then, he‟d only been a boy of twelve.

Come now, be a good boy.

No! No!

And then he‟d been free. Running.

Gods! Where was Lucien? He had to get to him. Free him as well.

But the voice in his mind—Dante—urged him on toward escape. If you go back for him, you‟ll be recaptured, it had whispered. You must flee.. You must live.. It‟s the only way to save him... .

The first fingers of dawn came, stroking night from the sky. The suffocating memories that clutched at Dane‟s soul like cruel claws were wrenched away. His senses returned to him in a sharp rush of panic. His eyes flew open, and he threw his head back to draw a deep draught of air into starving lungs. He felt confined, choked, and the small muscles of his large frame twitched and quivered with exertion. A fine sheen of sweat chilled his skin in the crisp morning air.

He was naked. On an altar between the thighs of an unknown female. Her eyes were closed in ecstasy, her breasts arched high and shuddering with each rapid breath. They‟d been copulating, and not for the first time. He‟d just pulled out of her and spilled his seed on her belly.

He felt it, slick between them.

Fuck. He‟d lost time again.

How much?

Only last night? Or would he look in a mirror to find that years had passed and that he‟d grown old and gray? No, his skin was still smooth and his arms as firmly muscled as before. And they weren‟t tethered.

With the realization that he wasn‟t trapped, his pulse began to calm. The sensation of restraint had only been due to the fact that his arms were wound through those of his companion, his hands gripping hers fast to the altar. He released her and rested his weight on his forearms.

Somewhere behind him, olive leaves rustled in the early October breeze. He was on his own land. In the small temple on the slope of Aventine Hill. Under the shelter of a wide, covered portico upon a multileveled floor of patterned marble strung with tall columns. An elaborate continuous mosaic decorated its walls, filled with scenes of worship and sacrifice that had been performed here in times past.

His ancient ancestors had likely taken hundreds of females here on this very altar. However, this was the first time he‟d had the opportunity to follow in the family tradition. It had only been the night before last that he‟d won this temple and its adjacent house and olive grove from the Patrizzi scion in a game of cards.

Another bolt of dread crawled up his spine, catching him off guard.

Gasping, he bowed forward. But it was only the scratch of the woman‟s fingers as they lightly feathered up his back. She locked her legs higher around his hips, rubbing herself against his prick, basting its length in the warm pool of his own spent seed.

“Dante.” It was a feminine purr, the sound of a satisfied woman.

The name froze his blood.

“Don‟t,” he bit out. “Don‟t call me that.”It wasn‟t his name. It was that of his illicit occupier, the self-appointed fornicator who took clandestine control of his mind, body, and spirit during every encounter of a carnal nature. Dante, who had been with him for half his life now and who stubbornly withheld answers to plaguing riddles. For the past twelve years, Dane had bided his time. Existed in a sort of purgatory on the other side of the gate, performing the duties of a Tracker in ElseWorld‟s Special Operative Forces. He‟d waited in vain all that time for Dante to reveal his secrets. Two weeks ago, he‟d finally managed to escape into this world. And now he would ferret out those secrets himself. . or die trying.

“I‟m sorry,” his companion murmured in a conciliatory tone.

Instead of lust, curiosity now colored her expression. Damn his loose tongue. He couldn‟t afford to fuel any rumors that the third Satyr brother, who‟d seemingly appeared from nowhere two weeks ago, was, in fact, mad.

“That name. It‟s one I reserve for nocturnal pastimes,” he explained coolly.

“Of course. I understand,” the woman replied. But she didn‟t.

The excuse had sounded unconvincing, even to him. What sort of man wished to be called by one name out of bed and another in it? Not a sane one. She was wondering what was wrong with him. Most of ElseWorld already thought him a lunatic, and he‟d soon have half of Rome thinking the same if he didn‟t take care.

Disentangling himself, he sat up from her. His feet hit the cold granite floor, braced wide, and he rested his forearms on his thighs. The floor was remarkably pristine. It struck him then how well-tended the entire temple was compared with the house and grove he now owned.

Locating his discarded shirt, he dragged it across his lap, blotting his belly and genitals, wiping away evidence of a pleasurable pastime in which he‟d participated, but of which he had no recollection.

A soft sigh issued from several yards away and he turned his head toward the sound. Another female reclined there, her face slack with sleep, her hair draping the floor in a sweep of red silk. He‟d known she was there, of course, having scented her the moment he‟d awakened. She was pale, her skin almost a blue-white hue and faintly iridescent. Nereid, he guessed. A species that relished violence in their lovemaking. Which explained the scratches he felt on his back. She wore only a slip, creased and twisted high on her hips. Her thighs were sprawled, and though her thatch was moist with his male leavings, it didn‟t surprise him that he had no memory of mating her.

One of her wrists was cuffed to the scrolled arm of the marble bench upon which she lay. He‟d... no. . It had been Dante who‟d tethered her there sometime during the night. Not he. His gaze clung to her briefly, but he couldn‟t allow it to linger. He found too much pleasure in the sight of a female willingly bound and waiting. Yet upon himself he abhorred chains of any sort, be they constructed of iron, rope, silk, or flesh.

Arms slid around him. His golden-haired lover had come to reclaim him.

“Just because the dawn has broken, there‟s no reason for you to go tearing off,” she said softly. Pushing away his crumpled shirt, she slipped onto his lap, straddling him. And he let her, his locked arms bracing his weight on the altar behind him. Doughy breasts compressed against his chest, and her torso slinked along his like a cat‟s. Fingers stroked his nape, and soft lips brushed the overnight beard on his jaw.