Dominic (21 page)

position, where they remained as his own hands smoothed down long, sloping, womanly curves, gentling his intended victim to his touch.

The body he held undulated like a cat being stroked, and in the mirror, Emma echoed the movement. His chest would be hot at her back, and the

glass cold at her cheek and breast and bel y, even through the gown.

He brushed aside a long fal of chestnut hair, kissing a nape, catching and locking on a bewitching scent. The bit of linen peeking from the wrist of

his glove snagged his eye and he faltered briefly. Emma’s handkerchief. The one he’d stolen from her bedchamber.

It had become his habit to keep it with him when he went into battle, as a reminder that he must not fail her or her child. After a month of fighting, it

had become almost as scarred and repulsive as he was.

It was a timely reinforcement of the fact that it was best that he and this woman were separated by worlds, for if she were near, he would no doubt

eventual y ruin her as he had this square of linen embroidered so neatly with her swirling initials.

He should desist in this.

But malevolence hummed and sparked within the glove where the pulse of demons beat at him, fevered and wanting. Urging him on.

He hoisted the body he held to her toes and shoved her knees apart, inserting his own between them. Emma’s legs separated as wel . His hands

slid up the back of her counterpart’s thighs, and Emma’s gown rucked upward in response, until the fabric bunched in silky folds at her lower back. His

hands roved the delectable peach of her naked bottom, massaging, remembering.

The Shimmerskin’s hips tilted up for him and Emma’s fol owed suit. Framed high between her thighs, nether lips parted and plumped. Her

feminine slit was prim and pink. Glistening wet. Waiting for him. He traced a finger along its length, testing its slick, delicate clasp.

In another world, quick snatches of breath fogged window glass.

“That’s it,” he coaxed, his voice dark and low. “Offer your pristine body to me, wife.”

Swol en, ruddy pricks nudged into position at two nether openings. His growl colored the air, harsh and possessive, as he claimed female flesh in

a dual glide that pierced and took and gave.

Two female voices moaned in avid harmony.

He withdrew, only to plow again, so vigorously this time that both mirror and window glass shuddered. And then again and again, and with each

ardent impact, he watched the mirror, relishing the visceral evidence that his push-pul was affecting Emma. Saw glossy, puckered lips fold inward with his

ingress and pout at the threat of each subsequent departure.

Emma’s eyes darted toward him over her shoulder, then away.

“Yes, it’s me. You know it’s me fucking you, don’t you?” Would she remember this tomorrow or was her mind too clouded by the disk’s bespel ing?

“Yes.
Yes.”
Entwined, breathless murmurs marked his every stroke. When the Shimmerskin shivered, Emma shivered. When the Shimmerskin

swayed, she swayed. Theirs was a driving, carnal symphony. He, the conductor. And they, the instruments his cock played upon. Three bodies, acting in

concert. Two souls, mating.

Behind him, the grunts and groans of those who stil fornicated nearby in the corridor, echoed dul y off the temple wal s, spurring him on toward his

own inevitable conclusion.

He shoved deep. “Gods.” His mouth seared over the tempting angle where throat met shoulder, branding it.

His hand clutched a feminine bel y, anchoring the groins of Emma and her effigy’s to his own. His bal s were quivering and heavy with unspent

cum. His cocks twitched and jerked with the need to feel it pump through them.

A strangled shout left him to join twin dulcet gasps as torrid semen blasted from the depths of his very core, coming in spasmodic, viscous spurts.

His massive frame shuddered with each giving of it. The woman he held wrenched tight with impending release, and when she ultimately came, he saw

Emma’s slit pulse for him, clenching and unclenching in time to the milking he felt at his cock.

Three bodies strained together. Three faces, three cheeks, three sets of lips came close, almost touching, almost kissing. In a bedchamber a

world away, a windowpane that was misted by their humid lust grew streaked by the fingers Emma curled into fists of ecstasy.

For a suspended moment, he saw his own reflection in the mirror alongside hers. Saw his satisfaction and his anguish at this heady joy, a joy

rendered imperfect by their separation.

“Emma.” His breath mingled with hers. His need to be with her was a living torment inside him. He could almost smel her skin, taste it. Though

only an inch thickness of mirror separated them, an entire world stood between them.

As their coming eventual y ebbed, his pelvic cock retracted from the rear cleft it had so enjoyed. Sufficiently sated, it was efficiently returned into

his own flesh until the next Cal ing night. The woman before him and the one in the mirror both sagged in his embrace. Though the former only feigned

satisfaction, as did al of her ilk, the latter slumped at her window, her breath ragged, her face replete. Affected. By him.

As it always was in the Cal ing, one taking soon segued into the next, and orgasms swel ed and broke, tumbling upon one another so often and

regularly that they almost became a constant state of being. Womanly passages wept with his leavings, one spil of seed easing the way for more and stil

more.

And so the delicious hours passed, and he rutted them away, wil ing time to slow.

But in due course, as the weary moon sought the far horizon, things came down to one final joining. In her world, Emma lay on her back upon her

bed now, arms stretched overheard on the pil ow, wrist upon wrist as if tethered there by the clasp of a spectral hand. Her long, ivory throat was arched,

her naked breasts high and quivering, her eyes screwed tight as she concentrated on the sensation of his prick moving inside her.

Watching her, Dominic drove deep, encasing himself within the Shimmerskin who lay under him on linen-covered stone. Only to suction from her

and slam home again. His grip manacled her wrists…his thatch rasped hers upon each rut…his bal s thudded against her, sending a fervid thril through

him….

I’m going to come. Deep inside her, deep. Any minute….

The cruel horizon snuffed another ray of moonlight, attempting to sever the connection between worlds.

No! Not yet. Not yet.

With an agonized groan, he spil ed his gift…one…last…time.

In the mirror, he saw rapture shade Emma’s face and saw her cal out a jubilant cry he could no longer hear. Upon each subsequent loss of

moonlight, he would lose more of her. Deprived of her voice and flesh, he would be as a vine without water or sunshine or air.

Beneath him, the Shimmerskin faded into the nothingness from which he’d summoned her. Under the temporary carpet of linen, the stone floor

was hard and unforgiving against his bruised knees.

Out in the corridor, three depleted bodies fel together in a heap. Itala and the guards had borne witness to his entire night, as he had to theirs.

Word of him fucking the mother of the Chosen One via the sacred mirror would soon filter throughout society, lending new spice to the tales of wickedness

that already circulated about him.

Utter darkness consumed him, body and soul. The moon’s departure signaled the end of the Cal ing and the beginning of the black hours that

would precede dawn. He had to ral y himself. This was the time when the demons were at their most dangerous.

Wearily Dominic rose and went to cleanse himself. Locating a washing cloth, he dipped it in the basin and made to bathe his chest and arms. His

eyes returned to the mirror, drawn there by the magnet that was Emma. Oblivious to him now, she stil lay sprawled on her back among the pale yel ow

sheets of her bed. She was nude, save for a strip of blanket artistical y draped across her bel y.

He tore his gaze from her. Duty cal ed to him. Cloth in hand, he ran it over his genitals, lifting his cock. And then it was that he realized there was
no

seed
. None. Anywhere. Not on his prick, his thighs, or his bel y. He checked the linens covering the floor and found only a smattering of droplets here and

there. Yet he’d ejaculated countless times into the Shimmerskin. Into…

The bronze doors that protected the inner nave of the temple shrieked with annoyance as they were abruptly thrown open.

“Savior!”

Dominic swung around at the sound of the ravaged voice just in time to see the Facilitator col apse at his feet. Blood pooled around the elderly

man’s frail, wounded body, soaking into the linen carpet.

Seeing no one in pursuit, Dominic knelt beside him. “What’s happened? Who did this?”

The Facilitator clutched at him with wizened fingers, his face contorted with panic. “The evil. It comes because of you. I didn’t know. Gods help me.

Al this time, I didn’t know.”

Was the man delirious?

“Stay with him. I’l summon a physician!” Dominic cal ed to the guards who’d gathered with Itala. He made to rise, but the Facilitator held him in a

death grip and rushed desperately on.

“Twice now you’ve crossed the gate into Earth World. For the duration of your sojourns there, the evil didn’t visit us with the darkness. I’ve only just

now tonight realized…Don’t you understand?” A froth of blood gurgled from his lips, and he began wheezing, fighting for every breath. “Al along, it’s been

the presence of a demonhand here in this world that brought evil to life…. Without you here, they cannot exist. You must go from this world. Go!”

Stunned at the magnitude of what he’d revealed, Dominic could only watch the life in him begin to fade. “The demons,” the Facilitator moaned as

his eyes rol ed back in their sockets. “
You
create them.”

As though the Facilitator and the Acolytes had been right al along in their assumption that invoking the name of the demons would summon them,

lights began flashing on al sides of him.

Demons were invading the temple, dozens upon dozens of them. More than he’d ever seen at once. As the Facilitator went limp in his arms, they

surged near, immediately slaughtering Itala and the guards and knocking Dominic to the ground. Surrounded by more of them than he could possibly

prevail against, he nevertheless leaped to his feet and began to fight.

Minutes later—naked, bloodied, and barely conscious—he was being dragged from the nave by clawed hands. His gaze lit one last time on the

vision in the mirror that was fading with the end of Moonful.

Blithely unaware of what went on in his world, Emma rol ed onto her side with a sigh of contentment he couldn’t hear. The bed linens shifted with

her. One leg drew up slightly.

A thin rivulet of cum trickled from her, shiny silver on her inner thigh. His seed. It had been potent. There had been no need for him to show restraint

with a Shimmerskin. For they could not bear children.

But Emma could.

22

Earth World

Moonful

E
mma surveyed the milky-colored smears on her bedsheets with horror. She knew exactly what they meant, for she’d found similar stains on these linens

on mornings after Carlo had bedded her. And on the morning after Dominic had, one month ago today.

Dominic.

She moaned deep in her throat, a wail of amatory memory and incredulity. Her sheets smel ed of
him
. Of sex. And they were strewn with male

seed. How was that possible? Ripping them off the bed in a sudden frenzy of denial, she bal ed them in her arms.

Heading for the corridor, she passed Lord Stanton’s letter, which lay open on her writing desk. Growing ever more stale by the day, his invitation

offered a perpetual opportunity to escape. One she’d decided to accept.

Tomorrow she would take Rose and leave for London. Not wishing to hear more of her family’s arguments against her plan, she had told no one as

yet.

She refused to pine here alone in a house that was empty of yet another husband who didn’t love her. And she would not let that same husband’s

world steal Rose from this one if he was destroyed.

Carrying the sheets downstairs, she deposited them in the laundry, raising the brows of the servants for this break in routine. Ignoring their

questioning glances, she retraced her steps, rushing up the staircase as if fleeing the stains and what they could mean.

What she was imagining was impossible!

But no more impossible than the fact that her body displayed every sign it had been plowed long and hard last night. The private female flesh

secreted high beneath her skirts was unusual y slick. And it ached pleasantly with each step she took as if…as if last night’s dreams had been
real
.

As if Dominic had come to her in the darkness and had lain with her. As if he’d mounted her countless times and found his fulfil ment deep within

her, even as she’d reached her own. Her dreams of him had been erotic, the stuff of fantasy.

She shut her eyes tight, but stil she saw the shine of the quicksilver gaze that had held hers as the ful ness of his male organ had come into her.

Stil she felt the rasp of his evening beard on her throat, at her breast, between her legs. Her hand rose to her bosom and squeezed gently and

surreptitiously, trying to relieve the untoward sensation that memories of him had rekindled. It didn’t help.

Though she hurried to her bath, she couldn’t seem to wash away thoughts of him. They continued to haunt her throughout the day as she packed

her belongings and made preparations to close the smal house for the coming year.

As the afternoon lengthened, her pace slowed. Her travel arrangements were nearly complete by the time she climbed the narrow staircase that