Sevin: Lords of Satyr (17 page)

Placing a proprietary hand at her back, Sevin began a stroll that would take them around its circular perimeter. He was silent, allowing her to absorb the sights at her own pace.

“What is that beguiling fragrance?” she couldn’t help asking. The complex, evocative scent that permeated the massive room was one of the first things that had struck her as they’d entered.

“Magic,” he told her simply.

“Oh,” she said with a careless flick of her hand. “Of course. Magic.” She rolled her eyes at the casual nature of his offhand announcement, and he gazed at her quizzically. This was all commonplace for him, she realized. “That is the sort of statement that underscores the vast differences between us and our worlds, signor.”

“Differences are what keep life interesting, I’ve found.” He smiled serenely as they passed two men lying together in a voluptuous embrace on a leather-upholstered couch. Both had scaled skin, and slender undulating tails extending from their tailbones.

Alexa dragged her eyes away from the intriguing couple to study the salon, entirely fascinated. It was hard to be circumspect when everywhere she looked, there was something at which she wanted to openly gape.

The expansive room was mildly chaotic and already full of patrons mingling with what she assumed to be his employees. ElseWorld species of all kinds milled about, some in translucent veils, others in elaborate costume or in fashionable street clothes, and still others like the two men on the couch—virtually naked.

Standing atop pedestals set around the room there were life-sized statues in various stages of undress. Although they appeared to be stone, she noticed that they occasionally moved in time to the soft, tantalizing music that emanated from the carousel. They were alive, she realized, but their flesh and clothing had been painted to give the illusion that they were sculpted of marble. Their poses were overtly sensual, meant to titillate. Some were paired in erotic embraces, while others posed alone.

So this was what he intended her family’s home to become! Her mother would surely have turned over in her grave. It was a notion that made her smile.

Unoccupied platforms also dotted the floor space here and there, and a series of doors ringed the room at intervals. “For public engagements and private ones,” Sevin obliquely informed her in answer to her question about them.

Just then, two tall, dark-haired men—one with a struggling woman slung over his brawny shoulder—passed them. Alexa stared back at them in outrage, then looked at Sevin. “Aren’t you going to stop them?” she demanded.

But he only pressed a hand low at her back again, moving her onward. “Some things you see here might seem ... brutal. Some are actually intended to shock an audience. But without exception, all are of a consensual nature. House rules.”

Uncertain, she glanced over her shoulder after the trio, which had paused outside one of the doors along the room’s perimeter. While the first man opened it, the woman hoisted over the second man’s shoulder lifted her face and happened to catch Alexa’s eye. Smiling faintly at her, the woman winked. Then she let out a pitiful, but obviously feigned, plea for help and pounded her captor on his back.

This time, Alexa could not help but openly stare, recalling herself only when the door closed behind the trio, secluding them inside one of the mysterious chambers. Sevin didn’t notice, for he had paused to speak to a man in severe, tailored black. There were numerous such men in the salon, each of whom had carefully ignored them as they passed. They were stationed in unobtrusive locations, their sharp eyes alert and seeming to make sure all ran smoothly. While everyone else frolicked here in this hedonistic paradise, Sevin and his guards seemed to be all business.

“This way,” he said at length, directing her up a staircase. As they took the marble steps up toward what she assumed were his offices, she scanned the panoramic scene below. “You could sell tickets to this,” she said, shaking her head in bemusement, and he laughed, following her gaze.

“We attract a broad spectrum culled from Rome and beyond,” he told her. “The salon boasts over a thousand members.”

“Why did you build it?” she asked curiously. “I think everyone in my world assumes it serves as a sort of harem for you and your brothers, but that isn’t it at all, is it?”

He laughed again, flashing white teeth and dimples that reminded her how handsome he was. Hearing him, other women in the salon below glanced up at him, their glances longing, lingering. He could have any of them. Most likely had already done so. Why choose her?

“I’m a businessman. I saw a need for a private location in which ElseWorld kind could safely congregate for conversation and concupiscent engagements with like-minded partners. And I sought to fill it. For the past decade, the salon has helped limit the potential for inadvertent exposure were such engagements to take place outside these environs.”

“And now that your kind has been found out?”

He shrugged. “There’s a greater need than ever. These people—these beings—and my brothers and I—this is a vital haven for all of us during our Calling, when we’re dangerously vulnerable.”

“So all this”—she gestured toward the scene below—“is an act of benevolence on your part?”

“I’m a man of business, not benevolence.”

“But you’ll concede that it’s more than just random good fortune that the two overlap here in this venture of yours.” Although he seemed unwilling to be considered altruistic, the label seemed to fit.

They were on the third floor now and he paused before a door, opening it. “My goals are centered around family, profit, and public benevolence. In that order of importance,” he told her. “And as of last night, you became a part of my family. An important one.”

Beside him, Alexa came to a dead stop in the doorway. The chamber he’d brought her to boasted sumptuous couches, low lighting, and a large bed.

She shot him a skeptical look. “
This
is your office?”

“T
hat’s next door. First, I wanted you to see where I live.” Sevin went farther inside, switching on another lamp.

“You mean that you reside here? In the salon?” Alexa asked, taking a wary step inside. She was curious to know more of how he lived, and they had time on their hands. But this was a dangerous game.

“I sleep here.” He went to another door on the adjacent wall and opened it so that she could see that it led to a small hallway, which in turn ended at another door. “But my real home is through that door. My office.”

Turning, he set his hands at his hips and glanced around his bedchamber as if trying to see it through her eyes. “What do you think of it?”

She thought it was aesthetically pleasing, she thought it was lush, and she thought she wanted nothing more than to lie in that enormous bed with him and forget her troubles in his arms. Of course she said none of that to him. The things she’d witnessed in the salon had primed her for something decadent, and his proximity was having the usual effect on her. She wondered when the attorney would arrive. Hoped he would come before the two of them found a completely inappropriate way to pass the time.

“You can change anything you like here,” he told her, when she didn’t speak. “Wives often do, I’m told.”

“I’m not going to wed you,” she insisted, relieved at the turn in the conversation and hoping it would dispel the sense of intimacy between them. “I’ve tried marriage—”

“But not with me,” he noted.

Spreading her arms, she made an exasperated sound. “You’ve known me less than two days.”

“I’ve been aware of you for far longer.”

He must have read the doubt in her face for he lounged against the door frame and folded his arms, then calmly reviewed the facts. “Blue dress. Blue hat. It was one afternoon early last February in the Forum. You were strolling with Eva through the excavation site. Before you became engaged to Dane. Before she became Dane’s wife.”

Alexa stared at him, surprised. Abruptly, a conversation from that day insidiously worked its way to the forefront of her mind:

“Can you imagine a wedding night with one of the Satyr lords?” she’d asked Eva. “I’d be frightened out of my wits!” She’d leaned in then, whispering so no passersby would overhear. “I’ve heard they sport a second member in their trousers. I’ve also heard they know well what to do with both of them. I was told by a reliable source that there’s a particular statue of a Satyr enjoying a Bacchanalia in one of the temples. It holds a wine goblet, has furred haunches, a tail, and its male—parts—are high and at the ready for entertainment.”

Although Eva had acted convincingly shocked, Alexa now wondered just how much of the truth she’d already known. As for herself, it made her blush to think how silly and naive she’d been back then. That innocent girl was gone now.

“Shall we?” She moved briskly toward him and the short corridor that led from his private apartments to what she hoped would prove to be the relative safety of his more public office. As she stepped past, he took her arm, staying her.

With one shoulder against the wall, he studied her, his hand on her a scalding, possessive weight. “That day was the first of many times that I noticed you. Then that nasty business with your family and Luc intruded. I knew there was no possibility of anything between us. Yet each time I saw you I was reminded again. And my
interest,
however inappropriate, was revived. Strengthened. It has not been easy to keep my distance.”

She knew exactly what he meant, for his nearness was affecting her. Making her want him. Want more of what she’d enjoyed with him last night. Did he really wish to wed
her?

She shook her head, not realizing she was doing so and that he wondered at it. No, she’d made enough mistakes recently. He would leave her heart damaged, and they had both been hurt enough.

His head lowered, but she averted her face. “Please don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t continue with this ... lark. Your family has already suffered through its association with mine. And there are things you don’t know about me... .”

With an easy shift of muscle, Sevin leaned with his back against the corridor wall, drawing her to him. “What things?”

“Private things.”
A dead ex-husband bleeding out in my bedroom.

At her reluctance, he growled low in his throat and pulled her closer until she was standing between his powerful outspread thighs. “Don’t shut me out, Alexa. Give me the right to protect you. To love you.”

Love? Did he mean in the physical sense, or ...
She gazed at him then, losing her heart somewhere in his molten silver eyes. Had she really thought them hard and reflective only two days ago? “You can’t protect me.”

“I assure you that I can,” he promised with quiet confidence. “If you’ll confess what’s got you in such a rush to sell out and leave.”

Lifting her hands to his shoulders, she shook her head. Her eyes were on his mouth. Her body remembered the pleasure it could give. Maybe just one last taste, tonight before she left Rome. What could it hurt? “I see the way women gaze at you. You’ve rarely had one refuse you anything. If I stopped running. . .”

He gaped at her. “You think that if all of this between us ends in marriage—that I’ll lose interest?”

She lifted on tiptoe, her mouth pressing to the hollow of his throat, and she felt every muscle in his body tighten. “I’m not here to acquire another husband, only to tell you that you may buy my house. For a price. I know you want it for a new salon and a storage place for artifacts in the catacombs below. I wish you well.”

“And you?” His hands moved up her back. She sensed that he wanted to kiss her, yet he made no move to do so.

“What about me?” she replied, her desperation for him spiking. “I’m sure you’re not the only male capable of providing protection—or pleasure—to a woman.”

He drew his head back, frowning down at her. “More capable than a human man. What exactly went wrong between you and your Laslo?”

She gave a sad little laugh. “I willingly allowed him in my bed, hoping to have the mysteries of the flesh revealed to me. Unfortunately, I’ve always had a curious nature regarding such matters.”

“There’s no wrong in that. What happened?” His warm hand stroked her nape and she relaxed against him, sighing. “Nothing good.”

At the thought of another man hurting her, Sevin wanted to punch something. Or someone. And then she murmured into his shirtfront, “Nothing like it was with you.”

Desire speared him, need for her racing through his blood to heat his entire body. The need to take care of her, to love her, to mate her. “Ah, gods, Alexa.” In a lithe move he swept her up into his arms. He’d been holding back, hoping to bargain with sex to get what he wanted. But to hells with holding back. He would argue the matter of marriage later with a cooler head, and he would win her assent.

Turning, he pushed her against the wall, taking her mouth with his. She welcomed him and their kisses were hot, their breath urgent and rough. He went lower, kissing her throat, the tops of her breasts. Wanting more. “Open this damned thing for me,” he demanded.

He watched her unfasten her bodice for him, then her corset. Beneath them, she was warm, soft. His mouth covered the peak of one breast and then another, drawing on them until she moaned. The sight of them, reddened, wet, and erect from his attentions, affected him like an aphrodisiac.

A variety of debaucheries in which he wished to engage this woman—this
particular
woman—heated his mind. He lifted her thighs higher around him, rocking his sex at her gate, wrenching fabric aside. His voice rasped at her ear, telling her what he would do to her, here against this wall and later in his bed.

She moaned again and her slender, stockinged legs tightened around him. “Yes. Hurry,” she whispered, her hands tugging his shirttails from the waistband of his trousers. His hands worked between them, ripping at the fastenings of his trousers.

Then suddenly, Alexa faltered. Her head lifted and she peered over his shoulder, frowning slightly. Had she just heard voices?