8
S
till in the guise of Rico, Silvia poked her head in the door of Bastian's bedchamber. Michaela sat there on the bed, working with a pile of burgundy-colored silk in her lap. “What's that you're doing? I thought you were supposed to be resting.”
Michaela didn't look up from her stitching. “I'm making a gift for Bastian. A dressing robe.”
“By hand?”
“Mm-hmm. Handwork is so much more personal than sewing by machine.” She held it out, displaying the unfinished front edge. “What stitch do you think he might prefer for the buttonholes?”
“Raised satin stitch blossoms? Or perhaps a lovely scallop?” Silvia suggested, tongue in cheek. Anything to bring a smile to Michaela's wan face.
As she'd hoped, Michaela laughed. “I'm certain he'd adore either. So masculine.”
“I can whip out a few buttonhole stitches for you if you like,” Silvia offered. “Just let me wash the Forum dirt off my hands and I'll be back.”
When she returned ten minutes later, Michaela was gazing out the window, her expression melancholy. Silvia joined her, unsure how to cheer her up. She'd tried everything over the last few weeks, but Michaela remained introspective. Having never lost a child herself, she could only imagine how her heart must ache.
“The secret in men's tailoring is to put the purl on top instead of on the side,” Silvia said, adopting a brisk attitude. “And pull the whole thing tight toward the finish so the insertion will be snug. You see?”
“It's amusing to see you stitching.”
“These boy's hands do fumble at it.” Silvia bent over the fabric, sewing with care. Her fingers were tired from making out excavation cards. As they dug closer to the house and temple, artifacts were thick in the soil and their hours were long.
“The full moon comes tomorrow night,” Michaela announced.
Silvia nodded. “I'm aware of that.”
“I'm to meet Bastian, of course.” A pause. “You could join us.”
Silvia's fingers trembled. “No.”
Michaela sighed. “Dane spends his Callings with his new wife, but his brothers, Sevin and Lucien, will require mates. If you won't lie with Bastian and me, perhaps . . .”
After keeping herself pure for a millennium and a half, Michaela would foist her on men she barely knew? Appalled and a little hurt, Silvia shook her head. “You know I must go to Pontifex. To Replenish my magic at Vesta's fire.”
“And to do that, you will have to divest yourself of Rico. You'll revert to your own form. Soâ”
“Michaela. Stop.”
An uneasy quiet fell between them, then Michaela's voice came again, sounding sleepy. “I don't recall you ever taking a tailor as host. When was that?”
“It was only for one month, eighty years ago in Florence. And I was a dressmaker's assistant actually. Our shop was known for the production of nightwear and lingerie. I must have sewn ten thousand miles of lace on satin and silk, day in and day out. We specialized in the risqué. There.” Silvia finished the buttonholes some fifteen minutes later, having babbled the time away for Michaela's entertainment. But when she looked up, her friend was asleep. “Michaela?” she whispered, just to be sure.
“How is she?”
Silvia glanced toward the door to see Bastian. Her eyes swept over him and she raised and lowered a shoulder. “Recovering. You look tired.”
“As you must be.” He came to stand beside her chair. “What are you doing?”
Silvia looked down and saw the needle was still between her small, calloused boy's fingers and the dressing gown on her lap. “Helping your ladylove with her sewing. I'm a boy of many talents, as I've told you before.” She peered on either side of him, searching. “No chocolate today? You're slacking off.”
He smiled slightly. “Because I know who eats it. You're the one getting fat, not Michaela.”
“No, not Michaela.” She glanced worriedly at the slumbering woman on the bed.
“Don't look so concerned. The doctor said she's fully recovered. You should get some rest.”
“I'm not tired.” Immediately, she yawned, then grinned up at him.
“Brat,” he said, but his lips curved with affection. She'd grown to love seeing him smile at her, or rather at Rico, in that fond way.
Raising his arms, he gave a mighty stretch of his massive chest, rolling his shoulders and then his head to work the kinks from his neck. Gods, he was handsome, and so . . . so
male
. The light dusting of twilight bristle that now shaded his strong, square jaw only increased his appeal. Her eyes slipped down the strong, corded column of his neck, the immense expanse of chest, his tapered waist, narrow hips. She looked down at her sewing, but his thighs and boots remained in her peripheral vision to tantalize her.
You're no better than Minister Tuchi, who surreptitiously studies his body at every sly chance,
she silently scolded herself.
It had been over three weeks since she'd assumed Rico as her host. His essence had faded away, day by day, and was almost completely gone now. With every new dawn, it was becoming harder and harder to remember she was supposed to be a boy. Especially when Bastian was near. Out in the Forum, they worked closely, and she'd had plenty of opportunity to memorize his every contour, his every gesture. She'd become accustomed to his laugh, his moods, his habits. He liked coffee, not tea. He did not have a sweet tooth. He could work in long stretches with tremendous energy; then his mind would just as readily turn inward, toward academic pursuits. He had incredible focus when it came to his work or to solving some puzzle. He was temperamental, annoying, pompous, slow . . . charming, brilliant, fascinating, wonderful.
She was attracted to him. How he would laugh if he knew. Rico alternately amused him and annoyed him, but their relationship was most certainly not a foundation for passion. Still, she found herself considering the suggestion Michaela had made earlier. Once she left Pontifex, she could return here in female form. Not her own, of course, for that would require becoming mortal as Michaela had. But she could take a female host. Join them in his bed. If he agreed.
Yet, she wouldn't. For it was one thing to consider accepting Michaela's invitation to partake of her lover. Quite another to want him for herself. She pushed the traitorous thought away as she did every time it surfaced. And because she wanted to keep on looking at him, she made herself rise and move around the bed on the pretext of straightening Michaela's coverlet.
An uncomfortable moment passed and she worried he'd noticed the strange tension that hovered in the air between them. A puzzled frown creased his brow and he searched her face as they gazed across the bed. “There's something different about you.”
Alarmed, Silvia backed away. “A bath and new clothes is all,” she said, bursting into speech. Then, “Tell me something, BâLord Satyr. You like Sal, don't you? I mean, you'd take care of him if anything happened to me?”
“Nothing's going to happen to you, brat.”
“But if something did, would youâ”
“Yes, I'd take care of him.”
As if he sensed he was under discussion, the dog wedged his nose in the gap Bastian had left in the doorway and made his way inside the room, his tail wagging. “Salvatore! Out! Michaela doesn't like you in here,” Silvia said, shooing him off.
But he'd already woken Michaela. “You're home,” she said, her eyes finding Bastian. She reached for a pillow, and Silvia rushed to needlessly arrange things for her. “Help me get her more comfortably settled,” she told Bastian, knowing Michaela would enjoy his attention.
“I'm filthy,” he said, spreading his hands.
“Then bathe and return to me,” Michaela suggested in a flirtatious tone.
Bastian nodded and left his bedchamber, having expected as much from her. He was fastidious by nature. However, when he returned from the Forum each day, she always looked so pristine and feminine. And on occasion the urge took him to fuck her as he was, fresh from his labors, so that his body would leave its earthy, passionate mark on her. But she'd always recoiled from his attentions until he bathed.
“I heated water for you,” Rico called after him as he moved down the corridor.
He returned moments later to find the boy missing and was disappointed, for he'd come to enjoy Rico's quick wit. Michaela's heart-shaped face lit up when she saw him. His ladylove, Rico had called her. Before her illness, he'd lain with her every day and night for three consecutive months. He'd made love to her hundreds of times and enjoyed the hell out of it. But he didn't love her.
He had no illusions that he would ever find a deep, enduring loveâthe kind that his parents had found with each otherâwith any woman. His life was his work, and he did not apologize for that.
It had been the same with his father, yet his father had found time for a family. But perhaps this was because his mother had trained as a surveyor. They'd worked in concert, both excited over each new excavation, over every discovery. And Bastian had been their pride and joy. Their gifted son. It was his gift that had killed them.
“Shouldn't you be lying down?” he asked.
“I'd like nothing better, if you'll join me in my bed,” Michaela said, coming to stand before him.
His gaze narrowed. “Are youâ”
“Knock, knock,” said Silvia, tapping on the bedchamber door as she entered. “You two aren't doing anything that would shock an innocent boy of twelve, are you?”
Michaela smiled, noting that she'd changed into one of the boyish outfits they'd purchased for her a few days ago. She'd seemed content enough to wear Rico's rags, but Michaela had protested. “You're going to break some hearts one day,” Michaela teased her now, “and soon I hope.” Only the two of them knew the whole of what she meant.
“Likely so,” Silvia replied lightly. “I'm already quite a favorite among the ladies at the
Salone di Passione.”
Bastian frowned at her. “You've been to Sevin's salon?”
“Don't you dare say I'm too young,” said Silvia, eyeing him.
Bastian's expression lightened with humor and he reached out a hand to rumple her hair. “You're too young. Save the ladies for your old ageâeighteen at least, hmm?”
“Hmph. I'll wager you didn't wait so long,” Silvia chided, ducking away. “Besides, Michaela's friends seemed to quite enjoy having me help them out with their . . . needs.” She wiggled her eyebrows.
“No doubt fetching their cologne and bonbons and the like,” Bastian said.
“Umm-hmm. The âlike' is the part they liked best,” said Silvia, baiting him.
Michaela observed their sparring closely. Not listening to their words, but to the inflections in their voices. She weighed Bastian's body language as she'd been taught to do in those afternoon classes at the Vestal House. While Silvia had spent the centuries learning hundreds of skills from hundreds of hosts, Michaela had spent her time wooing men and fucking them. It was all she was good forâdetermining what a man desired in order to get what she wanted of him.
She'd always secretly pitied Silvia for her awkwardness with the male sex. But no more. For if she wasn't very much mistaken, Bastian liked his protégéâliked him a great deal. And it was a liking that might easily tip in a new directionâtoward love, if Silvia were to present herself to him in her true form as an adult female.
Michaela's heart tripped. When she'd pictured them all together, it was always with her as the star of their amatory trio. Bastian was to be wildly in love with her, and Silvia only hovering in their orbit, coming second in both their affections. But now a real fear suddenly swamped her that Silvia might somehow supplant her in Bastian's heart. Shocked at herself, she squashed it. She was making something out of nothing. All would go as she'd planned between them.
Still, a sudden urgency gripped her to be reassured of her attractions. To reinforce the fact that Bastian was hers in front of Silvia, lest she forget it. Ignoring her friend, she put her hands on Bastian's strong shoulders and went up on tiptoe. “Lie with me,” she whispered. “It's been too long.”
Bastian's attention was caught, his big hand settling at the small of her back. “Are you sure?”
“I'm perfectly well.” She sent him a meaningful glance, sliding her arms up to loop around his neck.
This woman's touch never failed to excite his body, and Bastian did nothing to hide his physical response from her. Feeling his hardness at her belly, her lips curved in a slow, feminine smile. It was a smile he understood perfectly. From the moment they'd entered their teens, he and his brothers had all been on the receiving end of many such come-hither glances from females. He smoothed his knuckles down her soft cheek.