17
“S
ometimes I think sunlight might be the best antiseptic,” Bastian muttered three days later.
“Are we still talking about the Council's missive?” asked Sevin.
Bastian nodded. “Look at all the effort we expend in hiding what we are from humans. If it was done with great care and diplomacy, might it not be better to reveal ourselves and negotiate the rules of our intermingling?”
“Heretical notions, brother,” said Sevin.
His mood dark, Bastian only shrugged and went to gaze downward toward the main floor below from the smoked-glass window of Sevin's third-floor office in the
Salone di Passione
. He'd quit work in the Forum early today in order to meet with Sevin here on business. Another directive had arrived from the Council, this one with more dire predictions regarding the instability of enchantments that protected ElseWorld creatures from human detection in this world. And now evening was coming on, and fey courtesans were sallying forth from their chambers in the salon to mingle with patrons. His brother would invite him to stay and enjoy himself, but Bastian would make excuses. There was only one woman he desired. And she wouldn't give him her name.
As he observed the goings-on below, a comely female strolled through the main salon on her way to its front exit, her hips swaying in an exaggerated fashion that drew the masculine eye. She glanced up in his direction briefly, and Bastian's interest keened. “Who is that?”
Sevin looked up from his paperwork and supplied her name. “Christiana.”
“An employee?”
Sevin nodded. “I'm surprised to see her up and about. I was told she'd taken ill. If you like, I could introâ” And then he was speaking to air, for Bastian had departed for the stairs.
Sevin's employee only just reached the sidewalk, when Bastian caught her arm, halting her. Her hair was the color of new butter and she wore a dress to match. Color. He went instantly hard.
“Where the hells have you been?” he demanded.
The woman smiled, obviously in a lighthearted frame of mind. “Good afternoon to you, too, darling.” She offered no protest as he detained her, but only gave him time to examine her as he would. Her dress was high-necked and surprisingly prim, her breasts full, and her waist nicely turned. A single ringlet of blond hair hung artlessly over one shoulder, the rest gathered high. And the entire outfit was topped with a toque hat tipped with white doves' wings.
Eyeing it, he commented, “And here I thought you had an aversion to birds and ridiculous quantities of ruffle.”
“You're thinking of my last host. My new host quite enjoys them. Keep up, will you?”
In spite of himself, Bastian smiled. Like Rico, she amused him. In fact, there were several pleasing qualities that threaded through all the personalities she'd thus far met him in. Wit, intelligence, and an interest in antiquities that matched his own. These, he assumed to be her own traits, rather than her hosts'.
Three days had passed since he'd seen her, and he was greedy to have her again. Wrapping an arm around her waist, he propelled her beneath a set of stairs that led up to a fashionable townhouse. There he pulled her close and pressed his lips on hers. An explosion of color assaulted him. His body reacted predictably.
“Satisfied?” she murmured when he eventually drew away. She straightened her hat, looking a bit dazed.
“Just making sure.”
“Is that how you tell when it's me?” she asked, darting a look at him. “From a kiss? Or is it a touch? A glance?”
“That's information you'll have from me when I have your real name from you.”
At that, she ducked under his arm and set off at a brisk pace. He fell in step. “So you're blond now,” he observed.
She leaned his way and spoke to him in the manner one uses to confide to a fool who cannot comprehend the simplest matters. “It's dye,
monsieur
.”
“Et tu êtes également française?”
Carelessly, she waved a gloved hand. “
Oui.
I am both blond and French. You are very observant.”
“And you're named Christiana this time?” he asked casually. “Fey, by the scent of you.”
“Right again. I am the very lovely, very vain, very flirtatious, very recently almost-dead Christiana, who spent the last two days in bed with a terrible fever. And who, to all appearances, is now recovered.” She sighed blissfully. “A miracle,
n'est-ce pas?
”
“I want to be alone with you.”
She nodded easily. “My host has that effect on most gentlemen who meet her. But first I have business with this lady.” She paused, tapping the shoulder of a young woman they'd come upon. “For you, Sabina. With my apologies.” She pressed a letter into the hands of the acquaintance, who glanced at it as if unable to believe her good fortune. Then taking Bastian's arm, Christiana moved off down the sidewalk again.
“It's a letter my host was using to blackmail her,” she informed him in answer to his unspoken question.
“Ah, another Deathwish granted by the good fairy . . . um, what was your name again?”
She smiled slightly. “Christiana repented her malicious blackmail at the last moment. She's actually rather a sweet person in general.”
Bastian stared down at her, imagining again how lonely her existence must be. Concern for her welled up in him. “Are there more like you? Other Ephemerals to give you counsel, now that Michaela is gone?”
Her step quickened as if to run from his compassion. Did she think accepting it would make her weak? She was always so careful, so wary. Something in the worlds threatened her, and he would damned well find out what it was if it was the last thing he did.
“Let us talk about something more interesting,” she suggested. “Opals, for instance.”
“Very well.” Drawing her to a halt, he took her handbag from her. “Let's begin with the matter of their current hiding place.” Her blue eyes watched as he squeezed her bag's softness in his fist and then returned it to her, having determined by feel that it didn't contain any of the jewels.
She slipped the slender straps of the handbag over one wrist and canted her head at a flirtatious angle. “Would you like to look under my hat now,
monsieur
?”
He brushed that long blond curl behind the shell of her ear and laid a hand on the side of her throat, his thumb stroking her high, stiff collar. “Under that and other items of your clothing,” he informed her bluntly. “Tell me, exactly how many opals exist? Six? Or are there more?”
“Take me home with you to Esquiline. To your bed. And maybe I'll tell you.”
“What, you've no thieving to do tonight? No foraging for carcasses?” Taking her arm, he stepped to the curb and immediately hailed a conveyance.
Although thieving was precisely what Silvia had on her mind, all she said was, “Fortunately, I have an adequate host at present, as you see. Therefore, I'm free to focus on you.” She entered the closed cab he'd called and then waited for him to join her.
“And as it happens, I have a particular need of you at the moment,” she admitted when he sat across from her.
He lifted a sardonic brow and pulled her to sit sideways across his lap. “I cannot wait to hear it.”
She tugged at the cuffs of her gloves. “Well, it seems that Christiana has another wish, which I promised to oblige.”
“Which is?” His fingers began working to open her bodice.
“That she might achieve sexual fulfillment a half-dozen times tonight.”
He chuckled, one hand gliding under silk and lace to find her breast. “You're joking.”
At his touch, she murmured softly and went boneless against him, resting her head on his shoulder. “I assure you I am not.”
“That was one of her dying wishes?”
She nodded and peeked up at him. “But if you're not up to the task . . .” Her hand wandered between them, high on the front of his trousers. She smiled. “Oh, I see that you are. How nice for all concerned. Might I suggest that we make an agreement to reciprocate in this reaching of fulfillment? I think you'll find my current host's talents quite to your liking.” Her eyes turned teasing. “Her specialty is that of school miss.”
“Gods,” he said, laughing.
Silvia sent him a stern look, then put a gloved hand to his chest. “However, there is one thing I must caution you about.”
His brows went up again.
“Well, I'm sorry to tell you that poor Christiana has been rather naughty of late. The blackmail and all. I'm afraid you'll have to administer some discipline in order to . . . help her along with the matter of her fulfillment.”
“I see,” he said, intrigued. He nudged the opening of her bodice wider and his eyes darkened as he watched his hand cup the warm weight of a pale, voluptuous breast. His thumb brushed its tip, once, again, then was joined by a forefinger. They rolled her pink nipple between them until it tautened, then gently pinched. Her cheeks flushed and she shifted on his lap, aroused.
His eyes met hers. “An unseemly display for an innocent school miss,” he said softly, wickedly. They shared a slow, mutual smile.
“Abundant to be sure,” she agreed.
The mood between them altered then, easing toward passion. His dark head bent and he took her nipple into his mouth, drawing deeply and laving her with his sandpapery tongue.
Her head fell back on his strong shoulder, as her desire for him heated. As if some erotic sash connected parts of her body, she felt the pull of his suckle high between her legs. “Umm.” Her face turned toward him so that she could kiss his throat, and her gloved hand went to his cheek.
“Tell me,” he asked, as he moved to tend her other breast. “Has . . . Christiana . . . ever been with a man? Intimately?” His hand went under her skirt.
“Certainly not,” she murmured, as the warmth of his touch moved over her stockinged ankle, her knee, her garters, and higher still. “She's an untried schoolgirl,
monsieur
. But very bright and interested in acquiring new skills.”
“Excellent. I only work with the most promising of students.” His hand slipped between her legs, and she gasped when he found her slickness. “And she does seem . . . promising.”
“You'll have no complaint with her work,” Silvia assured him earnestly.
His fingers left her and went to the fastenings of his trousers. “I'm afraid I can't take her word for that. I'll want to put her skills to the test before taking her on as a student.”
She glanced toward the window, seeing they'd only just begun the climb uphill to Esquiline. “Is there time?”
“We'll make this first test a quick one,” he assured her. Lifting her off him, they worked together to push up her skirts.
“But one with the desired result,” she insisted, as he brought her to straddle him.
He nodded with arrogant confidence. “The remaining five âfulfillments' can occur in a more leisurely fashion. In my bedâand perhaps on other furniture that might suit.”
She widened her eyes, guileless. “I look forward to your furniture
and
your instruction,
monsieur.”
Then she looped her arms around his neck, pressed her mouth on his, and sank over his cock.
“My father would have liked you,” Bastian told her two hours later.
Lying on her back next to him among the sumptuously rumpled covers of his bed, Silvia turned her head to look at him. “What?” she asked, thinking she must have misheard.
Bastian rolled toward her, his hand going around her to shape her buttock. She winced.
“Are you all right?” he asked, going up on one elbow to gaze down at her. His hand traced over the reddened marks his loving had left here and there on her body. To induce her sixth and final orgasm, he'd put the nearly naked Christiana over his knee and smacked her soundly before setting her on his own naked lap for “instruction.”
She nodded, smiling. “It was wonderful, Bastian. Thank you. From me
and
Christiana.” She lifted her head and kissed him, then fell back to the pillow feeling rather pleasantly limp. Something scratched her leg, and she reached down to find the whipcord-thin branch he'd plucked from one of his birches on the way into his house. Her rump and the backs of her thighs bore the rapidly fading stripes it had left on her, precipitating orgasm number three. Picking it up, she tossed it to the floor. “You were saying? About your father?”
“Only that he would have liked you. And my mother would have as well.”
“What happened to themâyour parents?” she asked, studying him.
His expression closed against her and she thought he wouldn't answer. But after a long moment, his voice came into the quiet. “
I
happened to them. Their gifted son. The one the earth spoke to, whispering its secrets and leading me to discover treasures. It began with the lost petroglyphs in ElseWorld when I was five.”