In a half dozen easy steps, Sevin was standing before her. “It’s too late.” He reached for her, but she ducked away. He stalked her, and easily cut her off when she tried to dart past again. And all the while Lucien only watched, as one predator watches another toy with its prey. At least that was how it seemed to her at the moment, with Venice fresh on her mind.
Sevin caught her in a corner. Bracing his hands on perpendicular walls to either side of her, his arms served as prison gates that entrapped her as he leaned closer and murmured in her ear. “Like me, maybe you didn’t want this to happen between us in this way. Or under these circumstances. But I felt the desire in your kiss this afternoon in your carriage. The Satyr have a talent for reading what women want.”
She averted her face. “Then you must know I don’t want this.”
He tilted her chin higher, brushed his lips over hers, coaxing. “I’m afraid that’s not an option. What happens between us tonight won’t be a hardship, I promise you. There will be only pleasure. Fifty fulfillments, remember?”
Alexa gazed into those unfathomable silver eyes. The instinct to flee battled with the sudden strong spurt of forbidden attraction and feminine curiosity that his promise had inspired. Did she dare? No. She couldn’t truly consider going along with his plans. Even if, ever since she’d first seen him and his brothers, she’d wondered how it might be to find herself the sole object of their passion. Even if, after her brief time in the carriage with him today, she’d dwelled upon his countenance, his heart, his nature, for the rest of the night. Had wondered how it might feel to be covered and dominated by a man such as he. To be the focus of his legendary lust.
Heretofore, such considerations had always been relegated to her unspoken daydreams. They weren’t something she’d expected could ever really happen. Not to her, anyway. She didn’t know Eva’s brothers-in-law—not even Dane—except in passing. And in her fantasies she’d never pictured that there would be
two
of them with her in a setting such as this.
Still, she knew that Eva had certainly mated with her husband, even during nights when the moon was full. And not only had she lived through it, she appeared happier for the doing of it. Her face lit with pleasure whenever she spoke of Dane.
Sevin was silent as she debated the matter he’d put before her, turning it over and over in her mind until she thought she might faint. She was not meant to lead a passionless life. Nor to align herself with a docile man. Something in her yearned for a fierce sort of loving. But where did the cruelty of Venice end and the heady sort of passion she craved begin? And which might she find with this man? Or was it possible she would find something in between?
“I have some experience at this,” Alexa admitted to him at last, obliquely answering his brother’s earlier question. She could see she’d surprised him. “But not enough for what you’re asking,” she added.
He brushed a lock of her blond hair behind her ear and studied her face. “I can make it so that you won’t remember anything of what happens here when you wake tomorrow. Is that what you want?”
When she didn’t reply, he slowly straightened and caught her face in his hands. His eyes held hers as the pads of his thumbs gently brushed over her cold cheeks. Instantly, she felt a strange sort of calm come over her. Her shoulders relaxed, and her body sagged bonelessly into his. She heard the drugged quality of her voice when she spoke again. “What are you doing to me?”
His hand slipped around her nape under her hair, stroking the tendons there. “Making you forget.”
Forget? Against his chest, Alexa’s brow knit. Tonight she could know pleasure. Fifty fulfillments, he’d said. Enough to last a lifetime. She had little doubt that he could provide them and make each one as perfect as the one before. If she was doomed to toss and turn in her lonely bed and live a respectable life for the remainder of her years, perhaps ...
With the last vestige of her will, she put her hands on his chest and pushed, her gaze lifting to his.
“I don’t want to forget,” she whispered.
Sevin’s blood heated. The woman in his arms had just given him permission to do as he planned.
“What I do want is your promise that you’ll do nothing that will bring physical harm to me,” she added.
“Agreed,” he said slowly.
Her eyes flicked beyond him to his younger brother, where he still stood in the doorway.
“I speak for Luc as well,” Sevin assured her. “We’re made in such a way that our carnal efforts with you will not only bring you pleasure, but they will also ease any physical discomforts as matters progress. With each fulfillment, your desire to hunt the next will only increase, and your wish to continue on will be replenished.”
Her brows rose, doubting him.
He put his hands on her shoulders, ran them down her arms to her elbows and higher again, gentling her to his touch. “Don’t worry. I—we—know what we’re about in all this. Just relax and ... enjoy.”
What he promised her was true, Sevin knew. Yet it was also true that he
would
bring about a change in her, though it would not be a real harm in the way she meant. He would act first with her tonight, before Luc. It was a crucial distinction, for it meant he was the one with whom she would become forever linked.
After this night, her body would crave his. She would suffer his loss in her bed, pine for want of him. But perhaps this would be a fitting punishment if she turned out to be as guilty as her family in their acts against his. By morning, he would know.
“And further, you will agree that in return for ... what we do here tonight ... you will cease harassing me,” Alexa went on. “No more asking me to leave Rome.”
“Done. Now—let us seal our bargain.” He sleeked his hands underneath the fall of her long pale hair, slowly moving them over her back. At the feel of her cool silken gown gliding over her shape under his hands, sudden need slammed through him. He lowered his head, his mouth finding hers. After a brief hesitation, she put her arms around him. His head angled and he kissed her more deeply. This kiss, like those in her carriage, heightened his desire to mate her, but they told him nothing about the matter of her guilt.
That knowledge would come later.
Across the room, Luc had remained stubbornly silent throughout their negotiations, as if they had nothing to do with him. But there was already fever rising in Sevin’s own blood, a blood that linked all four of the brothers. In spite of Luc’s diffidence, his need had to be rising, too.
Although they couldn’t see it down here belowground, Sevin could feel the moon coming. The steady thud of his heartbeat was stronger now and faster; the touch of Alexa’s hands on him more keenly felt. Soon all would begin. And then, this female he held would present a temptation his brother would not be able to refuse, no matter how he fought it.
The same applied to him.
Lifting his head, Sevin gestured to Luc, indicating that he was to come closer. “Let her drink from your goblet,” he said. With obvious reluctance, Luc did as asked. His face had a drawn look about it and there was a white line around his lips as if he were in pain. But it was a pleasurable pain that Sevin recognized—one he was feeling as well as their Calling drew ever nearer.
Keeping one arm around Alexa, Sevin murmured to Luc in the ElseWorld language. “It’s almost my time.”
Luc nodded. “Mine as well.”
“Swear to me that you will lie with her tonight. That you won’t run.”
Luc looked away.
With a grimace of impatience, Sevin gripped his brother’s arm and jerked him closer so they looked each other in the eye. “Swear to me as I ask, Luc. Now, on the blood of the ancients. If you will not—if you refuse the Calling against your own nature—I swear to
you
that I will as well. I’ll send this woman to find her way home with her lamp, alone and untouched. And you and I will die here together in darkness.”
Luc shook off his hold. “Will you be able to tell the extent of her involvement with the Bona Dea? After you’ve mated her?” he hedged with quiet anger.
“I believe so.”
A long moment passed. And then, with a barely perceptible nod and softly sworn promise, Luc moved away to lean against the opposite wall, shrouding himself in shadow once more.
Alexa lifted her lashes, feeling pleasantly drugged from Sevin’s kisses. Lucien had drawn near to them. The brothers were exchanging low, urgent words she didn’t understand, spoken in some inscrutable language. It was reminiscent of an Italian dialect found only in the hill country, only more archaic and dark.
She watched as Sevin took the goblet from his brother and tilted it to her lips. “Drink,” he told her. “It will make you want what is to come.”
As Lucien left them, she hesitated, staring at the ruby liquid swirling like blood in the bottom of the goblet. She felt a strange sensation, as if Sevin’s mind were pushing at hers.
Trust me. All will be well.
As if with a will of their own, her hands lifted, taking charge of the goblet and tilting it higher. She felt Lucien move away as she took one sip, then another—and still more, at Sevin’s urging.
How very easily it slid down her throat, warming her, soothing away her every misgiving. It surged through her system, sending with it a blast of euphoria. She drank again, finishing it. The prurient desire in her strengthened, her flesh prickling.
Her fingers relaxed and the goblet fell from them to the cool stone at their feet.
With a flick of his hand, Sevin erected a barricade around the perimeter of the room, his magic rendering them secure here. Although air would continue to circulate, no one and nothing could come or go from this chamber now, except the three of them. They would be safe here until dawn.
Gently, he tugged Alexa from the corner into the pool of soft light. Turning her to face in the direction his brother had fled, he stood before her slightly to one side so that Luc would see her as well. Gaslight limned her in gold, casting shadows of dark bronze beneath her full breasts and along the press of her thighs through her gown. She had no idea how the sight of her like this affected him, how much he wanted to begin. But, no, they must wait for the moon, only minutes away.
For now, he would only tease her, a dangerous game that would test his restraint and that of his brother. He felt her watching him as his fingers traced the neckline of her bodice. Knew Luc watched her, too, since the lamp would reveal her to them both.
Dipping in the dusky hollow between her breasts, he opened the tie of her gown and carefully widened its bodice as if unwrapping a fine gift. She pressed a hand there, clutching the tie, clinging to her modesty by a thread.
He drew her hand upward and kissed its palm.
Let me,
his mind whispered to her.
When he let her go, her arm fell unresisting to her side. The gape at the front of her gown widened, until he brushed it from her shoulders. It drifted lower, then caught and clung at her elbows, forming a sort of skirt that draped her only from waist to floor.
The back of his fingers slid upward from her ribs to brush the undersides of pale, unclothed breasts, then rounded higher to gently catch and twist peach-colored nubs. She drew in a sharp breath, but didn’t try to stop him again. Cupping the weight of her breasts in his palms, he rubbed his thumbs over her nipples, drawing on them in a way that made her moan.
At the sound, a low growl rumbled in his chest and his cock surged, wanting her.
He felt Luc’s avid gaze, knew he was fighting his need to watch.
“She is beautiful, is she not, brother?”
Silence.
The woman in his arms caught his wrists and gazed at him through her lashes. “What will happen? How will things unfold between us?” she murmured. Her gaze slipped past him to Luc. “All of us.”
Sevin stroked his hand over her hair, enjoying its cool silk. “I will lie with you first,” he told her. And then she would take his brother.
Matters had progressed in this way with every Shimmerskin or fleshly female they had shared between them under a full moon since Luc had been released from the catacombs. Because of the time his brother had spent in captivity, he could not be left alone on nights such as this when their blood called them to mate.
If they did not bed the same woman—sometimes the same women—Luc could not be trusted to fulfill the cravings of his own body. So Sevin had made sure to be there with him on each Calling night that had come and gone. He’d made sure that Luc did what was needed to sustain his life. This night would be no different, in that regard at least.
Suddenly, a hard shudder racked his entire body as a sensation that was equal parts pleasure and pain bolted through him without warning. A ragged groan erupted from a place soul-deep inside him.
It was a cry echoed by Luc across the room. Somewhere outside, in the sky beyond the catacombs, the moon was within seconds of showing itself. The Change was coming. Soon all would begin.
Sevin wrenched open the buttons of his shirt. He heard Alexa’s gasp as he crushed her to him, one hand on her back and one on her bottom. He relished the feel of her silken flesh against his naked chest. Of her soft woman’s body conforming to his harder one.
He bent his head. Their lips touched; his parted hers. Their breath became one breath, their tongues slid together. The elixir that was blended from the grapes of two worlds was clean and sweet in their mouths. His hand drove into her hair, holding her as he kissed her as deeply as he’d wanted to hours before, in the carriage.
Would she prove to be as guilty as her family? His talent would reveal the truth, eventually. But for now, with the moon coming, he cared only that her skin tasted like heaven, her mouth like peppermints and wine.
Somewhere outside this ghoulish place, the full moon chose that very heartbeat of time to emerge from the horizon and observe the world with its brilliant unblinking eye. With the coming of its light, cramps seized him, turning his muscles to stone.
Somehow managing to keep a precarious hold on his wits, he held her fast with an iron-hard arm clamped around her. Moving his body at an angle to hers, he ripped at the fastenings of his trousers with one hand. A sublime and terrible agony struck him as the Change began. A harsh, inarticulate shout was wrung from him. It was the same cry his ancestors had given upon the commencement of every Moonful that had come their way over centuries past.