Dominic (8 page)

wonder. He seemed determined to woo her body into submission, but she had a niggling suspicion that his performance was for some reason intended

more to impress his comrade than to please her.

Though her channel dutiful y moistened, her churning thoughts kept true pleasure at bay. For the moment, it was easy to deny any further stirrings of

it.

She felt Dominic’s stil ness, his keen awareness that another man was working between her legs, servicing her with his mouth. His grip on her

arms tensed, and she sensed his covetous desire. Somehow she knew he was imagining himself acting in her husband’s stead. Knew she would soon

be handed over to him to do just that.

Warm, unfamiliar lips touched the column of her throat and traced it downward, pausing to savor the angled nook where throat eased into

shoulder. Lightly he suckled her skin, mimicking Carlo’s attentions to her elsewhere. She shifted, stiffening when the soft skin of her bottom encountered

the masculine thatch at Dominic’s groin. And something else. Something thick and hard that prodded her hip.

He’d unfastened his trousers! This somehow made the ultimate goal of this entire engagement suddenly seem far more shockingly possible.

Gasping, she pul ed away and glanced at him, putting a hand over the place on her neck that he’d just marked with his mouth. His head lifted, and

silver tangled with brown. Thick, charcoal lashes lowered to half mast as he read the new awareness in her gaze.

Something simmered deep within this man, she realized. Something evil that warred with the good in him.

Her eyes fel to his lips, saw they were wet. The place they’d kissed was wet as wel and cool in the night air.

“Please. Summon my family. Or a physician from Florence,” she entreated. “I’m Human. Perhaps my child can be born in the usual way of Human

children.”

Warm, silken breath drifted over her cheek, but Dominic’s tone when he spoke was stark and implacable. “Your child bears the blood of the Satyr

and must therefore be born by means of the ancient ritual. In the hours that lie ahead, I wil service you in your husband’s stead. But only so your body can

perform the function of giving birth come dawn. Carlo wil remain with us throughout the night. If it comforts you, imagine I am he when I come into you—”

His words were abruptly severed as his entire body ripped taut. Ridged abdominal muscles contracted and clenched against her spine, hardening

to iron. The arm that manacled her ribs tightened, stealing her breath.

She and Carlo both stil ed as a bolt of recognition struck them.

Dominic was beginning to undergo the Change.

Behind her, he bit out a low, gravel ed groan that was a blend of both joy and suffering. Then, with a rough, animal snarl, he shoved his trousers

lower to sag and bunch haphazardly over the tops of his black boots. He fought the fabric’s restraint for a few seconds and then kicked them off.

He was ful y naked now except for those boots. A light coat of faun-colored fur was sprouting on his haunches, tickling her bottom and the back of

her thighs. It was one of the first of the changes that would come over him on this sacred night.

Unable to help herself, she twisted, peering downward between them. Her breath hitched at the daunting sight that met her eyes. His prick was

enormous! Straining high and eager from the coarse, tangled nest at his groin, it was easily as thick as her wrist and as almost as long as her forearm.

She swal owed audibly and looked toward the window as panic rose to a boil within her. The moon had not yet shown itself. But soon.

With its appearance would come another more profound change. One that would gift this untamed male animal with a second rod that was twin to

this one. Then he would open her with them and slide those shafts as deep inside her as it was possible for a man to go.

And then he would give her his seed.

It seemed impossible that he would fit. Yet already, high in the waiting aperture between her legs, her tissues were moistening, beginning to ready

for him, yearn for him. A long, low growl emanated from his throat as if he knew.

His handling of her changed subtly, becoming more purposeful. His hands were more possessive now and sensuous as his body realigned itself

with hers, pressing her right shoulder into the cushioned bone of his pectoral muscle. The plush globes of her buttocks gave against the rock of his thigh.

And al the while, his breath came in steady, deep draughts. Those beautiful lips nuzzled her shoulder, her nape, and her throat. He was locking on

her scent. Marking her with his.

Soon, very soon, he would lose his grip on the power of higher reasoning. The primal need percolating in his veins would begin to dictate his every

action. Once completely in the throes of the Cal ing, he would kil in order to mate with her. Not Carlo—not even the Satyr lords themselves—would be

able to stop him then. Not without kil ing him.

Carlo’s tongue found her again, more voluptuous in its duties now, as if Dominic’s altered physical state had excited him. She glanced toward her

husband where he stil worked between her thighs. Unlike his friend, he didn’t grimace and groan. His cheekbones weren’t flushed with desire.

It was true then. There could be no question. Carlo remained unaffected by the moon’s pul . He wasn’t going to experience the Change.

If she didn’t accept this other man—this stranger—into her body tonight, her son or daughter wouldn’t emerge at sunrise. It would die inside her,

unborn.

Carlo’s need to prove himself in Else World’s war had exacted far too terrible a price. She felt angry at his sacrifice. And a trifle guilty. For she’d

long suspected that the only reason he’d retreated to that other world had been to escape her. To escape the burden of her need for a love he didn’t feel

for her.

Was this one night too much of a sacrifice for her to make in return so their child could live? So he could become a father and she a mother?

This reasoning calmed her as nothing had before, and she gave in to the inevitable necessity of what must happen in the hours ahead. A naked

male stranger was embracing her. Planning to copulate with her. Her husband condoned this. And she would al ow it. For tonight. For her child.

Once her struggles ebbed, it became impossible to ignore the potent stimulation her two lovers were providing.

Under Carlo’s attention, her feminine flesh had plumped and swol en with the heated rush of lustful blood. Her splayed thighs trembled now, and

her hips swayed languidly back and forth, aiding his tongue in its stroke. Her channel had become a slick void, ready to welcome him inside, if only he

could oblige.

From the corner of her eye, she saw a masculine hand reach out. Dominic’s. Transfixed, she watched him scoop a dol op of cream from the jar on

the table.

The muscles of his left arm shifted along her back. She jerked when blunt fingers came between her rear cheeks, daubing her pruney ring with

cool cream. Gently he began oiling it.

For a while, his heavy cock set the pace of their ménage, rocking at her hip in time to the languorous stroke it required. Her slit and Carlo’s mouth

could only haplessly dance to his tune, which determined how often and how deeply the lips of a wife and a husband would marry.

She tried to disassociate her mind from what was happening. To shut out the slick smacking sounds of fingers and tongues and mouths as the two

men attended to her.

Dominic’s right hand covered her breast, surprising her into overlaying his with her own.

Her free hand fel to the top of Carlo’s head, and for a moment, her palms connected her to both men. Absently she smoothed a lock of her

husband’s fine hair and watched it flop back into place. She no longer loved him, and it was impossible for her to ful y understand his physical loss, but

she felt regret for the grief it caused him.

The fingers at her breast drew outward to pluck and twist at her sensitive nipple, sending a prurient thril over her. Dominic’s touch on her there

almost seemed to hum, alive with some strange, stimulating force. Sparks arrowed directly from this distended peak to throb at the nubbed stem of flesh

Carlo now worshipped. An erotic pulse, stronger than any she’d ever felt before, reverberated outward from it along her slit.

It squeezed. Once. Hard.

No!
Surely, she wasn’t going to embarrass herself in
that
way. Surely she wouldn’t attain fulfil ment standing here in the middle of the room, where

her features would be revealed to anyone who cared to look when
it
happened.

Embarrassed, she pushed Carlo away. And immediately she wished him back. Wished for a finish to the wildfire passion he and Dominic had lit

in her. She stroked his hair again, trying to induce him closer without the use of words.

But her husband only pressed his cheek to the sloping underside of her rounded midriff, kissing her there with masculine lips stil rouged by her

own feminine juices.

Dominic’s mischievous palm at her breast began to rove. Like a dark cloud, it stroked stealthily down the landscape of her body, along her

breastbone, between ribs, and over her gently rounded bel y. There, his strong fingers spread wide, shaping the mound of her child as though he was

staking a claim.

Carlo’s head yanked back, startled. Off balance, he tottered back on his heels and gaped at the possessive hand that had forced his lips away.

Emma saw how it crushed him to see another man usurp his rights to her, his wife. How, then, was he going to bear watching his friend mate with

her throughout the long hours that stretched ahead?

Her husband’s eyes rose to hers, and he saw the pity there. He looked beyond her to search Dominic’s face, and whatever he read there distorted

his features with agony.

Without warning, Dominic’s creamy finger prodded the prudish, tight ring of muscle along her rear cleft. It invaded, going deep.

A cry that was a confusion of shock and raw need wel ed from the depths of her soul. Hurt tinged the pain in Carlo’s face, an emotion that quickly

flamed into jealous anger.

“What did you expect?” she whispered. Had he intended her to endure his friend’s touch, yet somehow inure herself to the pleasure of it?

A second finger joined the first, stretching her. The fans of her lashes drooped to half veil her eyes as her chin lifted on a moan.

With jerky, uncoordinated movements, Carlo stood and began backing away.

“Wait,” Emma croaked. She reached her hand toward him, but he ignored it and continued making his way toward the door, his eyes glued to

Dominic.

Oblivious to the drama being played out, Dominic nuzzled her nape, shifting her hair aside to make way for the graze of lips and white teeth. The

clever fingers at her backside left her, and she heard a splash. He’d plunged that hand in the crystal waters of the basin she’d readied earlier for

cleansing.

Abruptly the first strands of moonlight came then, lancing through the window glass to bathe them al in its silver.

Dominic raised his face toward the sacred light, glorying in its cool caress. Along Emma’s back, the muscles of his abdomen rippled and yanked

taut. A terse, strangled shout broke from him.

Carlo halted, transfixed by the sight of her and Dominic’s naked bodies locked in an erotic embrace. He watched with obvious envy as his friend

hunched over her, his massive frame cruel y seized by the brutal cramping that heralded the last physical effects of the Cal ing.

Dominic clutched her to him, and her body bowed wil ingly within the cavern of his. Ravaged by the onslaught of this new primal pleasure-pain, his

lungs sawed with ragged breath. Held this close, she felt the final Change come over him with a zinging sweep of Else World magic.

When he slowly uncoiled behind her, the transformation in him was palpable. His skin was hotter now, his body harder, his demeanor more

passionate and determined.

But the greatest difference could be felt pressed high along the hol ow of her back. For instead of one male shaft extending from him, there were

now two.

There was nothing subtle in the way he handled her now. Nothing subtle in the way his twin cocks angled high, twitching and straining for a taste of

her. He was readying for rut. Within minutes, he would make her his.

Carlo stumbled awkwardly backward, tripping over the footstool and then knocking into the dressing table.

His attention riveted on Emma, Dominic didn’t acknowledge the disturbance in any way.

Fumbling behind himself, Carlo blindly gathered his belongings from the table where he’d set them. The clink of coins came, and the whoosh of

the drape fal ing from the mirror. The creak of the doorknob. Emma’s fingers dug into the muscles of Dominic’s arm, trying to dislodge him. Trying to reach

the dubious haven that was her husband.

“No! Don’t leave us!” she pleaded, realizing he was about to go.

A cal oused male hand rose to her breast again, covering it. The pad of a thumb brushed her nipple. She moaned, helpless to deny the pleasure it

wrought in her.

Across the room, Carlo’s face contorted with despair. His throat worked soundlessly, and he shook his head.

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

With that, he swung around and fled, slamming the door behind him.

7

E
mma froze in horrified disbelief.

Dominic had promised Carlo would stay. That had been the plan. But in the end it seemed her husband hadn’t been wil ing to watch another man

join himself to her, even one he himself had chosen.

Instead he’d deserted her when she needed him more desperately than she’d ever needed anyone before. Instead he had acted the coward and