Raine: The Lords of Satyr (8 page)

His hands slid low between their bodies. Taking one of her hands in each of his, he bent forward over her, forcing her to bend with him, then pressing her palms to the bed in front of her so she knelt on all fours.

Behind her, he rose to his knees and slid his fingers up the backs of her thighs, lifting the tails of the shirt she wore to uncover her bottom. It was neatly divided like the twin curves of a ripe peach. He took it in his grasp. Her hips were narrow, just the width of the span of his two hands.

“You have the hips of a boy,” he murmured in a voice that was an octave lower than normal.

She tilted her rump to nuzzle his cock. “Is that a complaint?”

He swallowed. “No. I only meant—you’re small. I’ll go slowly, but the fit between us may be uncomfortable for you at first. I don’t have any cream, or oil.”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. There’s cream enough. It was introduced inside my woman’s passage earlier tonight.”

He remembered. He’d watched it happen, in the theater. Why had she allowed it? For money? For the same reason she was allowing this to happen between them tonight?

He slipped a hand between them and the tip of a finger grazed the root of her cock. She gasped and reached to stop him, no doubt worried he’d discover it.

But his fingers merely worked back toward himself, tracing her delicate folds until he pierced her vaginal slit. His broad forefinger pressed between it, then slipped easily inside to test her channel’s readiness. He plumbed deep, feeling the cream he’d seen men from the audience in the theater deposit in her.

“I’m not your first customer then?” he asked.

“I suppose you could say that,” she said, arching into his touch.

Raine nodded, adding another finger so he fondled her with two. Other men had invaded this passage tonight just as he was. He’d seen them do it. But she was still tight. Perhaps too tight for fucking. Her body was made differently than that of most women. He’d have to go carefully.

She gasped and hesitated uncertainly when he eventually added yet a third finger, trying to stretch her. “Oh, that’s—mmm.”

“Easy,” he murmured, gentling his strokes until she relaxed into his rhythm again.

How much had those men paid to touch her like this, he wondered, watching her rock on him, engulfing his fingers to the base of his knuckles and then darting away. Did she really want his touch inside her? Had she wanted the touches of those other men? Had she taken cock here, as well as hands and fingers, in the hours since he’d seen her onstage?

Her channel had turned juicier now and was sucking at his fingers like a babe at its mother’s breast. He pulled his slick fingers from her and took his ruddy cock in them. His tip nuzzled her feminine slit, wetting itself in her sluice before ducking just inside. Breath expelled between the grit of his teeth at the feel of her taking him. She was warm. Human enough to soothe the beast in him that had clamored for the embrace of Earthly flesh tonight.

His hands found the bones of her hips to anchor her as he pressed steadily forward. Her unusually plush labia pillowed his length as it slowly passed into her chasm. Now and then, her trembling tissues balked at the induction of so much fullness. He prayed her body would take all of him.

She was still now, braced and quiet under him. Her entire being seemed focused on the point where his body was joining itself with hers.

He paused, retreating, then returning only as far as he’d already delved. “Are you all right?” he managed to ask.

“Mm-hmm.” She flexed her knees, pushing back against him so her body gulped several more inches.

The move surprised him and his control slipped, just enough. In a single lunge, he went the rest of the way home, ploughing her deep and hard. His strangled shout mingled with her cry. Of surprise or pain?

“Are you all right?” he asked again.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Then, I’ll—”

“Hold a moment. I feel so full of you. Let me set the pace at first.”

A muscle snarled in his jaw. He hoped he could withstand whatever she had planned.

A few seconds later she made a tentative push–pull movement. Then a few more. Pulling too far forward, she lost him. “I’m sorry. Would you—?”

He stuffed himself back inside her before she could finish the sentence.

“Thank you,” she said politely. “Now hold still and let me try again.” She shoved inexpertly back on him, then pulled away. Back. Away.

What new woman’s torture was this?

“Mmm. I can feel the ridge of your crown moving along inside me. It’s wonderful,” she breathed. “More wonderful than I could have imagined. How is it for you?”

“Me?” He cleared his throat. “It’s fine.” Bacchus, what an understatement.

Her tissues fondled him in careful, measured drags. He stared, hypnotized by the sight of his dark reddened rod ducking in and out of her wet cave. His hands turned restless on her lower back and rump.

After a half-dozen strokes, she pulled away, almost losing him again. She looked back at him. “I’m ready for you to help now.”

With white knuckled fingers, he grabbed her hips and resheathed himself.

“Um, that’s so good,” she told him. “What do I feel like to you?”

“Like a woman,” he replied without thinking.

“What a lovely thing to say,” she whispered, sounding inordinately affected.

Somehow, he’d managed to stumble upon the answer she seemed to want, though he didn’t know why it had pleased her so. The nuances of conversation escaped him as always.

Taking control, he pumped himself in her hard, from need as much as from a desire to head off further discussion. His eyelids drooped and he turned quiet, determined to prolong his enjoyment of this fuck.

“Oh yes. It’s—oh.” She moaned and sighed, each feminine sound ratcheting his desire to hear the next.

He hunched over her, planting an arm on the mattress alongside hers, so they rode together on all fours flesh to flesh, his chest to her back. The flat discs of his nipples dragged on her skin. He turned his face into her hair, trying to catch the scent of her. It was agony to remember that he couldn’t know her in that way tonight. Longing welled up in his chest. Even if she proved not to be the one he sought, he was determined to take her under him again at least once after his senses returned to him.

Beneath him, she moaned and caught her breath in those little feminine sighs and pants. He found himself moving in ways that seemed most likely to elicit such sounds from her. Without conscious thought, his hand roved lower, reaching for what he knew was hidden and bound high against her belly. She caught his questing fingers, forcing him away from what he would investigate.

Frustrated, he slapped his palm to the mattress and began to fuck in earnest. Long strokes took him from her brink to her core, measuring her depth and seeking to extend it.

Around him he felt her vaginal walls start to ripple and shiver. Was it from true enjoyment or was it a well-rehearsed whore’s trick meant to lure him toward quick release? Regardless, it was effective. His balls quivered, lifted, tensed.

The padding of her bottom shuddered now as he heaved into her like some sort of brutish animal. Her arms straightened and her fists clenched in the bedlinens to brace herself. Head up, she arched her rear into each impalement, opening herself to his plunder and meeting him with a hard slap of moist flesh.

He widened her legs, moving impossibly close between them. Her inner muscles gathered, holding him in an ever-tighter shimmying grip that heralded her orgasm. At last, she gave an inarticulate cry and he felt her seize on his cock in a convulsive, almost painful rhythm as she found her woman’s pleasure.

His balls jerked, preparing to shoot their contents up his shaft. His swollen cock reared inside her, tensing, straining…toward…

Like a mindless, rutting bull, he came, shooting his hot syrupy jism fathoms deep. As it gushed from him in pounding syncopation, her channel milked at him—sucking, squeezing, then releasing, in a sort of carnal peristalsis. With each of his spills, breath left her in a harsh inarticulate puff.

As the last pulse of cum left him, he sneezed suddenly, shoving himself deeper and wringing one final spurt of seed from his cock. Her shoulders slumped to the bed and she moaned.

His hand cupped her belly, prolonging their union. In the aftermath of their passion, he had no cause to worry. He’d sired no bastards in her. It was impossible on a night such as this.

Satyr such as he could fuck themselves witless all month long spreading their seed far and wide without repercussions. The danger of procreating was a concern during one and only one particular night each month—that of Moonful. Only on such a night in the hours from dusk to dawn, when the moon hung fat and round, could he impart fertile childseed in a woman. If he wished. For even on that night, which was most sacred to the Satyr, he could choose whether his seed would be potent.

He ran his hand over the resilient flesh of the woman he’d just plundered.

He would never, ever give his childseed to any woman. Not even if she became his wife. The very idea cast a pall over him. Pulling from her, he stood and left the bed. Behind him, she wilted to the coverlet as though she were a finely wrought ice sculpture slowly melting under a pale autumn sun.

He located a square of linen and cleansed himself at the basin, watching her. She curled onto her side and drew her knees high, squeezing her legs together as though to savor the sensations that still pulsed between them.

If she was indeed Faerie, this night was a momentous initiation. His mating of her signaled the beginning of the protective spells he would weave around her over the coming months. The protection was weak now. But each time they coupled it would strengthen around her. Eventually, it would prove strong enough to safeguard her against whatever forces King Feydon had suspected might harm his daughters.

She lay unmoving on the mattress, silent. Her eyes were closed and pleasure shaded her features. At least those he could see beyond the mask. One of her hands lay palm up alongside her head. The other rested high between her legs still cupping her genitals.

At length, she sighed and opened her eyes. Her gaze found him across the room.

“There’s a pitcher here,” he told her. “And a separate basin.”

She rose and came to the washstand. He heard the clink of porcelain and the splash of water. He glanced over his shoulder. She had her back to him and was washing between her legs and higher toward her belly.

Had her cock ejaculated? His own cock, still rigid and thick even after coming, surged at the thought. But he’d give her time before he took her again. And he would take her. How many times could he do so tonight without hurting her, he wondered. Twice more? Thrice?

“Can we do it again?” she asked.

His head snapped up and his eyes met her hopeful ones. Gods, yes! He came to stand before her. His hand headed purposefully toward her abdomen, wondering if she’d let him explore this time. But she caught him, mating her palm with his and folding their fingers together to keep him at a distance.

She shook her head. “Please, in the same way as before?”

His eyes narrowed. “If you wish. But I assure you that you need not hide for no feature of your body will shock me.”

She didn’t believe him. It showed plainly on her face as she shook her head again and gave him her back. “The same as before.”

“Very well.” His hands reached from behind to shape her breasts under the shirt. He cupped their weight, one breast in each palm. They filled his hands to perfection, supple and cooler than the rest of her heated body. He ran his thumbs over the crests, pondering as something puzzling struck him. Through the fabric of the shirt, he’d seen the tips of her breasts were still their natural pale wine color. Once successfully mated to a life-mate, the breasts of a Faerie generally took on a glow of another hue.

But she hadn’t faked her pleasure. He’d mated enough Shimmerskins to know how to gauge false passion generated by a woman determined only to bring him to orgasm while taking no pleasure herself.

Did the lack of color in her breasts mean she wasn’t the one he sought? Or did it only mean that for such a change to occur, she’d have to unbind her shaft and let her passion break free of restraint.

“Rest your arms on the windowsill,” he told her. When she complied, he quickly drove into her wet woman’s slit and began to fuck. Her throat arched and she braced herself as he rode her once again, his desire as great as though it were their first time. The coolness of the storm battered them both, tangling her hair.

“Oh! Oh God, you’re good at this,” she told him. “It’s even better this time now that your seminal fluid is inside me from before.”

Seminal fluid? He could guess where she had learned such clinical terms. Salerno.

She chatted her way through their lovemaking, describing how he was making her feel, telling him how glorious it was, making him feel the hero simply for fucking her.

Whore’s tricks, he told himself, as they lay on the bed much later that night. All meant to make him finish as quickly as possible. And they had worked.

“Will you summon the gondoliers?” she asked sleepily.

“In the morning.” Pulling her back into his chest, he curled around her on his side. “Rest now.”

“Umm. No, I have to go.”

But she was exhausted and fell asleep against him. He ran a palm over her smooth back—the back that had no wings—and wondered if she would prove to be King Feydon’s child.

Wondered if he could keep her come tomorrow.

A
choo!

Raine woke up the next morning to the realization that although his cold hadn’t left him, his companion of the previous night had.

He drew a tentative breath and discovered his nose was at least marginally clearer than it had been last night. Carefully, he inhaled again…seeking.

“Twelve hells!”

Enough of his sense of smell had returned to tell him one thing. His bed reeked of Faerie.

Mind racing, he leaped out of bed, grabbing for his trousers. First he’d summon the hotel proprietor and determine what he and his staff knew of Jordan’s departure. Then he’d go back to Venice to find that fellow from the theater last night—Salerno—and ask what he knew regarding the whereabouts of his so-called subject.

Someone pounded on his door. He glared at the doorknob, remembering he’d locked it last night with his mind. It should have prevented Jordan from leaving. How had she gotten away?

“Who do you suppose it is?” a feminine voice whispered from behind him.

His head jerked around to find Jordan huddled in the pale shadows that shrouded the far corner of the room. She was still here. He was appalled at how relieved he was.

Her damp, wrinkled cloak was draped around her, obscuring the beautiful body that had pleasured his last night. Her mask remained in place, though it had become crumpled during the night, lending her a somewhat inebriated look.

He tossed his trousers aside and went to her, surprising her by taking her in his arms and burying his face in her neck. He inhaled deeply, breathing in her scent, analyzing it.

Every Faerie’s glamour was slightly different. He nuzzled her, exploring the nuances of hers. There was a sweetness tempered with potent spice—cinnamon and clove warmed by a woman’s flesh. The mixture was exhilarating. Addictive. There were other fragrances as well. It would take time to discern them all.

A heady euphoria swamped him as he realized there was no doubt now. She was Faerie. King Feydon’s second daughter. The one meant for him.

The knock sounded again, growing more insistent.

Jordan turned her throat to give him better access. Her fingers lazily traced the muscles of his back. “Aren’t you going to answer the door?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s my mother,” he muttered.

“Your mother!” she squeaked, shoving him away. She pulled the cloak closed at her throat with both hands as she darted a quick glance at the door. “How do you know?”

“I can smell her perfume a mile away,” he informed her.

“Aren’t you going to let her in?”

“No.” He reached for her again, drawing her into his embrace and this time drawing her hand down to his swollen cock as well. “I don’t think she’d appreciate it, considering what she might witness.”

The knock came yet again, this time as a fierce rapping. “Raine!”

Jordan scuttled away from him, looking scandalized. “I can’t do
that
—not with your mother just outside!” She wrapped the ridiculous cloak even tighter.

Something about her expression made him want to laugh. But he was too annoyed at the interruption. Throwing on a robe, he headed for the door.

“Wait!” Jordan hissed, springing toward the small dressing chamber that adjoined his room. “Don’t you dare open that door until I’m out of sight.”

“Stay where you are.” Raine tied the robe and then snatched the door to the corridor open with obvious irritation.

A woman dressed in emerald bombazine stepped inside without asking for an invitation. She swept him with her severe gaze, her expression indicating that she’d expected to find him lacking and did. It was clear the woman was related to him. She had the same high cheekbones and regal bearing. Gray eyes, too, though hers were far duller than his. And where Raine came across as remote, this woman was cold.

“How lovely to see you, Mother. May I introduce you to my friend, Jordan.”

His mother shot Jordan a sour look. “Has Carnivale come early this year?” she said, noting the mask. “Silly me. I thought it had been outlawed altogether.”

Then she ignored her as though she were a newel post and addressed only Raine. “I would speak to you in private. And for pity’s sake, put on something more suitable.”

Raine responded by folding his arms. The silence in the room grew weighty.

Jordan walked to the dressing room door. “I’ll just slip in here so you two can have your privacy.” Once in the other room, she put her ear to the door crack, listening.

“You look well,” the woman offered.

“What do you want?” asked Raine.

There was an annoyed pause. Though it hardly seemed possible, the woman had stiffened further. “Very well. I’ll be quick in my purpose. It’s your father—or rather, my husband. He has disappeared.”

Raine’s hands fisted. “And?”

“I was hoping you’d locate him.”

“Why come to me?”

“Because you have the nose of a bloodhound. If anyone can find him, you can.”

“Ah! So the nose you once condemned proves useful at last. How ironic.”

His mother smoothed her unwrinkled skirt. “Please don’t dredge up old business, Raine. Now, I have an inkling who your father may be with.”

“Who?”

She hesitated. “I can trust you to keep silent on this matter. Can’t I?”

Raine shielded his eyes with his impossibly long lashes.

Silent. You must keep silent. How often had he been told that as a boy, when he’d known things he shouldn’t and told of them? He’d soon discerned that not everyone knew the things he did and that his knowledge made others uncomfortable. So he’d learned to keep silent.

A scene from boyhood flashed through his mind…

He’d been thirteen years and three months old. He and his father had been preparing to visit the stables, when his mother had entered the room, bringing a waft of her own special scent. Without thinking, Raine had turned to her, worry creasing his brow.

“You’re bleeding,” he’d told her with soft concern.

“What?” She stepped back from him, perplexed. “No, I’m not.”

“Between your legs,” Raine insisted.

Flattening a hand high over her skirt as though to hide the place where her thighs met, his mother had stared at him. “How dare you!”

His father had been stunned into silence.

Confused, Raine had stilled, knowing he’d said something wrong again.

Then his mother’s soft hand whipped out and struck him full across the face. “How did you know that, you spawn of Satan?”

Raine touched his blazing cheek, hurt in more ways than one. He’d only spoken the truth. His mother was bleeding. He was worried about her.

He turned to his father. “What I say is true. Someone should see to her.”

For a long moment, his father’s eyes had searched his. They’d slid over Raine’s strong jaw and beak of a nose, studying the boyish face so unlike his own florid, plump one. He’d surveyed Raine’s tall, muscular body as though seeing it for the first time, noting his height, which had already surpassed his own stocky stature.

He’d always claimed he was proud to have fathered such a fine physical specimen as his only son. But now suspicion crept into his eyes.

He turned to Raine’s mother and read the guilt in her face.

Raine stared, knowing he was the cause of the sudden tension between them but not understanding.

“Is it your woman’s time?” his father asked her, his voice low and accusing.

His mother nodded.

“How did you know?” his father asked him then.

Raine spread his hands and looked blank. “I just know.”

He’d heard the question so many times over the past months. Had seen the strange, fearful glances directed his way, since he’d turned thirteen and gained this strange ability.

How did he know a visiting clergyman had eaten haddock for breakfast? How did he know the rag picker in the lane had a rotten tooth? How did he know where the blacksmith had hidden his coins? How did he know the butcher had lain with a woman other than his wife? How did he know the cat had captured a bird that morning?

The answer to all those questions had been the same: he could smell the evidence of these things of course. Couldn’t everyone?

In fact, his olfactory abilities were improving and refining as each day passed. At any given moment he could analyze the air and discern a variety of smells. He scented the upstairs maid’s arousal when she studied his body. Smelled the mold growing in the cellar. Smelled the seeds sprouting under the soil.

But after he’d blundered in speaking of his mother’s blood-time, he learned to keep silent about such things. Though his parents never spoke of the disturbing events of that day again, something between the three of them had shifted. Trust had been eroded.

Another month passed and Raine kept quiet regarding other physical changes that had begun to worry him. For he’d begun to waken each morning to find his penis stiff and so swollen that it ached.

One dawn, out of desperation, he comforted it with the stroke of his own fist. In seconds, it seized and shot juice from its tip, soiling his sheets. It had proven such a pleasurable relief that he’d begun milking himself into spilling thereafter as a daily event.

Ashamed and confused, he wanted to know what it all meant. But the unfortunate episode with his mother and father was fresh in his mind. So he mentioned this new pastime to no one.

Nevertheless, as the days slid one into the other, he’d felt a storm gathering within him. He found himself drawn to watch the waxing moon each night with an agitated anticipation. Its pull affected him in the same way it did the ocean, building waves of sensation in his body, day by day, night by night. All toward some unknown goal.

When the moon eventually rose full and hearty as a perfect O of light, it almost seemed to call to him. To lure him toward some preordained destiny.

He’d gone to the window to gaze upon it. When its light drenched him, he felt a hard knot form an inch or so above his penis. He’d ripped his trousers open and pressed at the bulge with his hand. Something was pushing at the skin of his abdomen, from the inside. It twitched under his fingers for hours. But by morning, the knot was gone. The storm had dissipated within him as well. Relieved, he mentioned it to no one.

As the months passed and other full moons rose, he grew desperate when the knot reappeared. It was embarrassing, painful, and frightening. Still, he bore it all in silence.

That is, until the night the knot started to force its way out of his skin. Knowing that a full moon was to rise that fateful evening, Raine had been itchy all day, unable to settle or perform his lessons.

Once twilight fell, he’d been driven to gaze into the night’s inky shroud, waiting. When the full moon had eventually shown itself, the torturous knot had formed again as he’d expected. It was bigger this time, and its eagerness to emerge from his pelvis had turned fierce. Abruptly, he felt his skin begin to part for it.

Terrified, he’d gone to his parents where they sat in the salon on either side of the fireplace.

“I’m having a baby!” he’d blurted.

His father had set aside his journal with a violent rustle and his mother’s needlework had dropped to her lap.

They could not have been more astonished. But then he shoved his trousers down and the twitching knot had erupted from his pelvis.

His father stood so abruptly that his chair fell over backward. His mother covered her mouth and turned red as a fever victim. They’d been flabbergasted. Appalled. Disgusted.

Raine looked down at his belly and saw it was not a baby that had poked from him. It was a second penis, slightly smaller than the first one that always swung between his legs.

“God in heaven! This is my doing,” his mother had wept.

His father’s brow darkened and he turned on her, his expression vicious. “Do you have something to tell me, wife?”

She paled, her expression guilty.

“Pull up your trousers, boy,” his father bellowed.

Raine had obeyed, hiding yet another part of himself that made him so different from everyone else.

“Is he mine?” his father had growled.

“Of course,” said his mother, drawing herself up.

But Raine had smelled her fear. Her lie.

Somehow, his father had sensed it too. Cupping Raine’s shoulders, he’d brought him to stand between himself and his wife, not as a buffer but as a wedge.

“I ask you to reconsider your answer, my dear,” he’d told her. “If you lie again, it will go ill for you and
your
son.”

Raine’s mother’s lower lip had trembled. Then a damning confession had tumbled from her. “I’m sorry. As you’ve guessed, h-he was fathered by another man.”

“I see.” His father’s fingers flinched on Raine’s shoulders, then he’d given him a hard shove in the direction of the door. “Go to your bedchamber until you are called, boy.”

Raine went. And waited. But he wasn’t summoned that night. Nor for breakfast. He wasn’t called until noon the following day. And then, it had been two servants unknown to him who’d come. They’d packed his belongings and then escorted him to the waiting family carriage.

His father had explained nothing to him. He had simply ridden his mount alongside the carriage, escorting him out of Venice. In due course, they’d arrived at the Satyr Estate, at one of a trio of castellos that lorded over Tuscany like a fiefdom. Beyond it lay fertile forest, vineyards, and groves that were the envy of the entire region. But Raine hadn’t known all that at the time.

When his carriage and his father had entered the courtyard, a man had joined them there as though he’d expected them. He was tall, strong, and somehow familiar.

Raine inhaled, searching for his scent. Surprised that he couldn’t find it, he’d moved closer, but still found it impossible to detect. He’d gazed into the older man’s eyes, curious.

Eyes much like his own had stared intently back into his. A strange sense of belonging had encompassed him.

“My whore of a wife has borne you a son, Lord Satyr,” Raine’s father had announced. “Raise him or turn him out, it makes no difference to me. But keep him from my house. He’s tainted by the devil. No doubt you’ll find him to your liking.”