Dominic (27 page)

wasn’t a figment of his imagination.

She flinched and recoiled from him, rubbing the place he’d touched as though it hurt.

For a long moment, they stared at each other, transfixed.

“Say something,” he ordered at last.

Her expression turned annoyed. “Farewel ,” she told him.

With that, she leaped from the bed and scampered for the door, kicking off the sheets as she went.

“Demons take it, woman, get back here!” Vincent shouted.

His eyes flicked to the clock on the mantel.

Wonderful. He would need al the time left to him to prepare himself and his arguments prior to the meeting that would take place in the adjacent

world in two hours. As daybreak had come here in this world, dusk would have arrived in Else World. Because the various factions who would convene

there with him today were a mix of nocturnal and diurnal creatures, his meetings with them were scheduled at al hours.

And now there was a naked female cavorting about in his home.

He donned his dressing gown but didn’t bother to give chase. She would return. Shimmerskins always obeyed a Satyr’s every command. Without

exception.

Seconds ticked by. She did not return. The realization that she had no intention of doing so was slow to sink in. When it final y did, it was nothing

short of astounding.

It was a simple matter to track her scent down the hal . She’d gone into the adjoining bedchamber—the one that would someday, in the distant

future, house his wife. And possibly Landon’s as wel .

His long robe bil owed behind him as he went in after her. At the sight of her shapely, naked backside, he ground to a halt. She’d opened the

window and was leaning out, surveying the verdant landscape below.

“I wouldn’t advise it. You’l break an ankle or worse,” he informed her, guessing she had escape in mind. Though he’d kept his voice calm, she

whipped violently around at the sound of it. Her eyes were dilated, frantic.

As he began to stealthily stalk her, she cast another look out the window and then apparently decided not to chance it. Together they performed an

uneasy dance, him advancing and her retreating and neither of them sure what would happen when they met.

Eventual y she al owed him to back her into a corner at the far side of the bed. Then she made a desperate, calculated lunge over the mattress,

rol ing across it toward the door and escape.

Quick as a whip, his arm lashed out and caught her waist, hauling her off the bed and back against him. Whirling to face him, she pushed an arm’s

length away, yanking ineffectual y at his hold.

His eyes swept her nude body. Bacchus, she was beautiful. Two hours was actual y quite a long stretch when he considered it. Perhaps they could

squeeze in a time enough for…

“No fuck,” she said fiercely.

His head reared back, and a bark of surprised laughter escaped him. “What?”

Her eyes held his for a long, accusatory second, and then they dropped to gaze pointedly in the general direction of his genitals. He hadn’t

bothered to fasten the sash of his dark satin robe, and it hung open. His huge penis jutted from the divide in its front gap, ful y engorged and ready. Almost

threatening in its size.

He let go of one of her wrists to fold his dressing gown over himself. It tented ridiculously over his distended rod.

“My apologies,” he said. “It’s just that—” He waved his free hand between them, intending it to encompass the entirety of her. “You’re beautiful, and

…and naked. And we’ve lain together before. It’s natural that I would react to you physical y.”

An affronted silence greeted him. Poised on the bal s of her feet, knees flexed and shoulders tensed, she appeared ready to flee or to attack at

the slightest provocation.

“I go,” she announced at last.

“Go?” His brows raised. “Go where precisely?”

She gazed beyond him and then around the room, growing ever more agitated. Her eyes returned to his, and she seemed to force the fear away.

Her shoulders squared to defy him. “I go.”

“Whether or not you go is my decision,” he informed her, crossing his arms. “And you’re not leaving until I get to the bottom of this. Until I’m certain

you have someplace safe to go. Do you understand?”

She shot him a disgruntled look.

It shocked him almost more than did her presence here. Before today, he had never seen so much as a whisper of a negative emotion on her

beautiful countenance in al the months since he’d first created her. Her eyes had held only varying proportions of lust, adoration, and subservience when

they’d gazed upon him.

“Why didn’t you return to the mist from which you originated last night as you always have before?” he demanded.

She shrugged, her expression mutinous.

The silence deepened, but he waited her out. A natural negotiator, he’d long ago harnessed his patience and honed skil s that helped him sway

others into accommodating him.

“Change. I change,” she blasted final y.

“Change? How?”

Her hands gestured in a futile way as she sought the words to explain. “You bring me. Times many. Last times I change.”

“Are you tel ing me you can no longer return to…wherever Shimmerskins come from? Because I somehow changed you?”

She nodded once and then looked perplexed and shook her head instead. “I don’t know.”

“Did I conjure you to service me too many times? Is that what made you real?” His eyes drifted over her. “
Are
you real?”

She looked away. “I go.”

“There’s something you need to understand,” he told her, his tone sharper than he’d intended. “You won’t be going anywhere for the present. You’re

naked. And you glow. Normal y Humans can’t see Shimmerskins. But you’re not a true Shimmerskin anymore, are you? Which means you may be visible

to Humans now. And if you’re noticed, your existence wil lead to questions that wil endanger my family. I can’t al ow that.”

He wasn’t certain how much of that she understood. Perhaps al of it, for she now looked even more distraught.

“Come with me.” He left her, moving to stand in the doorway. Glancing along the corridor, he made sure no servants were about, and then he

beckoned her, doing his best to appear unthreatening. No easy task for a man of six and a half feet. “Come back to my bedchamber. We’l talk.”

“No fuck,” she insisted.

“No,” he agreed solemnly. “No fuck.”

“You want,” she said, gesturing toward his turgid cock.

He looked down at the male appendage she found so offensive. His robe had fal en open again, and it hung in the divide. It was so heavy it

couldn’t support its own weight, so it didn’t bob skyward like those of most men. Instead it swung at a lower angle, thick and heavy between his thighs and

curving very slightly leftward like some sort of erotic cutlass.

“I suppose that’s obvious.” He casual y tucked himself away and reclosed his robe, firmly tying its sash. “Nevertheless, you may trust my word that I

won’t force myself on you.”

She looked skeptical.

Red singed his cheekbones as he hurriedly embarked on an uncharacteristical y feeble attempt to explain his past behavior toward her. “What I

mean to say is that you have my apologies if I’ve forced myself on you previously. But I didn’t know…That is, you weren’t supposed to feel anything when I

…when we…”

She came toward him then, pausing only when she drew even with him in the doorway.

“I feel,” she murmured softly, not looking at him.

Like a queen, she swept past him. He fol owed, considering the implications of her curt confession until they were back in his private chambers.

Firmly closing the door, he stood with his back against it and contemplated her.

“Did you ‘feel’ al those times we f—”

Her eyes shot sparks.

Breaking off, he gave her a mocking half bow. “Ah, I gather you come equipped with the usual odd female notions of propriety. Which means that

you may employ certain words to describe our previous liaisons, yet my use of them is deemed offensive. My apologies. I meant to inquire regarding

whether or not you’ve been aware during the times I’ve engaged you in ‘carnal relations’?”

She stared at him a moment and then averted her eyes to her fingers where they toyed with the twisted-silk fringe edging his bed curtains. “Only

last.”

“Only last night?”

Her shoulders rose and fel . He barely heard her whispered, “And.”

“And other times as wel ? How many others?” he demanded.

The eyes that lifted to his were wounded, ful of secrets untold.

“Ten?” he prodded, not wanting to know but needing to.

She shook her head.

“More?”

Again she shook her head.

“I wil have the answer from you, however long it takes.”

A great shuddering breath slowly heaved from her lungs like the exhalation of a bel ows.

“
Tre
,” she whispered, speaking in Latin.

Instantly his mind traveled back, retrieving and sifting through recol ections of the last three times he’d conjured her. Last night. A week earlier. And

the time before that had been—Moonful. A Cal ing night.

He drove taut fingers through his dark, blue-black hair.

Hel s! The first sex of her life that she could actual y remember, and it had been an eight-hour Cal ing fuckfest? He scarcely remembered what acts

he’d engaged her in that night as he’d gathered with brothers and cousins in the sacred glen that lay hidden in the heart of the Satyr Forest.

Shimmerskins had been everywhere. They’d been quickly and easily brought forth from the spectral mists that clung low and thick to the verdant

landscape of the glen. Since the beginning of time, it had been assumed they were insentient. That Bacchus had created them to act only as vessels for

the lecherous ejaculations of legions of Satyr males. No one had ever thought to question the tradition.

He looked at the woman who stood before him and saw memories of that night shift in her eyes.

Between her luminous sisters and his relatives, there’d been a crowd of nearly two dozen on the last occasion of Moonful. Spirits and cocks had

risen to greet the arrival of the whole moon that signaled the culmination of Bright Half. The blood of his ancestors had pumped hot and hard in his veins.

Wine had flowed freely. As had semen.

Matings had been rigorous and guilt-free. He’d been inside her and inside others like her in every way possible, and they’d al arduously

dedicated themselves to accommodating his passions.

Each orgasm had been swiftly forgotten as the search for the next began. It had been an orgy of epic proportions. In other words, a typical Cal ing

night in the Satyr glen.

“Do other Shimmerskins…feel?” he asked in dawning realization of what this could mean to the males of his breed. If al Shimmerskins had the

potential for sentience, they could no longer be used in good conscience in the way his family had utilized them for centuries past. Under such

circumstances, to continue on as before could only be deemed heinous. Criminal.

She shook her head slowly and flattened a hand between her breasts in emphasis. “Only.”

Relief swamped him at her admission. His fraternal relatives had no idea what a narrow escape had just been handed to them. There were stil

questions, but…

His eyes glazed over as they fel to the hand between her naked breasts. Breasts that were ful and perfect and crowned with nipples that were

pink and pointed. Under his robe, his sex twitched.

Both her hands dropped to fist at her sides. “No fuck.”

“What? Stop saying that! I have no intention of attacking you.”

She looked skeptical.

He sighed. She had reason to mistrust him. From her point of view, it must seem that he had used her sexual y without her consent in their past

associations. He should consider himself fortunate she remembered only the last three. But, damn, why did one of them have to be a Cal ing night?

He closed his eyes and rubbed the heel of his hand to ease the sudden tension in his forehead as he tried to recal more of the Moonful they’d

shared. He had been drunk with wine and lust.

If Landon had been there, they would have passed her between them. Taken her together against the base of one of the ancient statues that

ringed the glen. As they had a year ago, the night he’d first conjured her. The night Landon had been on leave from the war in Else World.

A night she couldn’t remember.

Suddenly he had to know.

“Did I, we,
anyone
hurt you during that Cal ing two weeks ago? Or since?”

A gamut of emotions flitted over her face—bewilderment, wariness. Then she stiffened and looked past him. “I go.”

When he didn’t move from the door, she glanced toward the window.

“As I said before, I’d advise against it. We’re on a
piano superiore
. You understand? An upper floor?”

Unwil ing to admit whether or not she comprehended, she only crossed her arms, inadvertently showcasing breasts that plumped heavily on them

like ripe, delectable fruit displayed upon a platter.

His cock throbbed, hungry.

“Let’s put some clothing on you. Then I might not find myself constantly hard.”

“Clothing?” She brightened instantly.

He smiled, absurdly glad he’d pleased her. “You wish for something to wear?”

She nodded.

Locating a pen, he briskly scribbled a cursory note to his brother Marco. Then he stepped into the hal and, seeing a manservant downstairs, he

tossed the missive to him, summoned his bath, and instructed him to have the note delivered to Marco’s home, which was less than twenty minutes ride

from his own on the expansive Satyr estate.

Returning to his chamber, he withdrew one of his shirts from the armoire and gave it to his guest. Though it had been cut from the costliest of