Silvia's brow knit, trying to follow what she was hearing through the sultry haze of her passion.
“It's his hands that I love best, Via. They're slow. He takes his time. Knows how to concentrate. On a statue”âa damp, lingering strokeâ“on a bit of pottery”âanother strokeâ“on a woman.”
As impending orgasm swelled, Silvia grabbed a pillow, trying to duck her face into its softness.
“No.” Michaela rose on her forearm, her nimble fingers strumming Silvia's well-buttered flesh. “Please don't hide.”
Silvia relented, but laid the back of her wrist across her eyes instead, unable to completely bare her tumultuous emotions, even to a treasured friend. Her pulse thrummed too loudly in her own ears, a seductive drumbeat. Need was choking her, mortifying her. She smothered another moan. “Hurry. Let's be done with it. Please. He's bound to return soon.”
Michaela's red lips parted. “All right,” she whispered. “Love me, Via.” At this familiar signal, Silvia's eyes fluttered open and caught Michaela's. Her hand went low between them, over Michaela's rounded belly and high between her stockinged thighs. Her fingers trembled, slipping between warm folds that had so recently accommodated another lover. She found her ready, still moist with Lord Satyr's ejaculate.
“Do you feel his spend?” Michaela murmured at her ear.
Silvia swallowed. Nodded.
“Good. Oh, I wish you could know him in that way, too, Via. Could know the pleasure he can give.”
Silvia's brow knit in confusion. “Whâ?”
“Shhh.” Through half-closed eyes, she watched Michaela's lips come closer. A truly talented Companion could bring on an orgasm with a mere kiss. Her dearest friend was so gifted.
“I'm going to come.” And then Michaela pressed her sweet mouth to Silvia's mouth, kissing her with lips Lord Bastian Satyr had kissed. The taste of him lingered on her here as well, and it acted upon Silvia like a sweet aphrodisiac. A slight pressure came on her clit, then a tug, and . . .
The climax that had been building within her since she'd first arrived to find Lord Satyr mounting Michaela in this very room now broke over her in rolling, delicate, joyous waves. Distantly, she heard Michaela come as well, for Silvia's slightest carnal touch had always quickly incited her to release. Silvia curled away from her, onto her side, as exquisite pulses rippled high between her legs, squeezing, then releasing only to squeeze again.
Michaela's body curved around hers, her arm wrapping itself at Silvia's waist, offering shelter as she'd done when they were young. “My dear, darling Silvia.” A kiss brushed her hair.
Ah, this was heaven. This feeling of closeness. This tender, shared climax. They clung together as their breathing slowed, as the tumult eased. But these moments were bittersweet, for this would likely be their last such encounter.
They'd discovered this reciprocal talent for giving pleasure years after they'd been initiated as Vestals. They'd been told they were to serve the goddess for three decadesâMichaela as a Vestal Companion; Silvia as one of the Vestal Virgins. And as time had passed, their bodies had ripened and their friendship had grown, and become more. Denied other outlets for their passions, they had turned to each other. The Atrium House was adjacent to the temple where Vesta's flame burned, and Silvia still remembered how the firelight had limned Michaela's body that first time they'd coupled.
Sighing inwardly, Silvia lifted the arm at her waist and pulled away. From now on, things must be different. Michaela's loyalty lay elsewhere, with Lord Satyr. Silvia had pushed her away often enough, unable to give all of herself to anyone. So be it.
Uneasy now with what had passed between them, she shoved her plain shift down and rolled to sit up, eyes averted. She had never felt the full, wild heat of passion that Michaela had often described finding with her other lovers. Wasn't sure she ever wanted to bare herself to another partner so completely. And she most definitely wished to avoid any discussion of feelings in the aftermath of coitus. Unlike Michaela, who relished such talk.
“I took a look around, while you were . . . otherwise engaged,” Silvia said, anxious not to dwell on what they'd done. On what she perceived as a moment of weakness. “How far along is Lord Satyr in the Forum? He should have found the temple by now.”
Michaela didn't let her off so easily. “Seeking pleasure is not a sin, Via.” A strained silence passed, and she feared Michaela would press her to wallow in what they'd shared.
“You haven't even shown him where the temple is yet, have you?” Silvia accused. Provoking Michaela seemed the best way to shatter any intimacy. “I read the letter on his desk. He's still searching for it.”
Unperturbed, Michaela stretched luxuriously, catlike. “I won't steal from him. No more than I would from you. And don't you wonder why Pontifex wants to recover our firestones so badly? He has gone to considerable trouble to obtain the six he has. I'm not sure he should have them, much less the rest.”
Silvia pounced on this new topic, relieved when she let the matter of their lovemaking go. “I have no intention of giving anything to him. But if I can find them, I can use them to trick him into freeing the others. He believes he can harness our stones' power. Use them to doâ”
“The work of a madman.”
“That goes without saying. But exactly what he plans for themâthat's the mystery I must solve. For if he can use them, so can we. But first, we have to recover them. To find out what powers they have and how they work.” Silvia rose from the bed.
Michaela reached out to her. “Wait. What are you going to do?”
“What you would not. Steal from Lord Satyr.”
“There's nothing to steal, Via. Not yet. The remaining six stones still lie buried. I kept him from finding them.”
Silvia nodded, having guessed as much. On the night the temple had been destroyed, each Vestal had been in charge of the safekeeping of her stone. In the chaos, they'd all been lostâmost in the Forum. But some had made their way into the world and were believed to be in the hands of various collectors, who had no idea what they possessed. And six had made their way into Pontifex's hands.
Going to the fire to warm herself prior to facing the elements again, she said, “Damn, Michaela. This won't be easy to explain to Pontifex. I'll have to move quickly to steer your lover toward the temple in order to have something to show for our time here.”
When Michaela looked ready to protest, Silvia added, “Satyr won't guess my manipulations. And you needn't be involved. I'll gain employment at the dig in order to legitimately observe his progress there.” She forced a teasing smile. “That will also afford me a chance to weigh Lord Bastian's worth, and decide if he's indeed good enough for you.”
“He is.” Michaela sent her an inscrutable glance. “When you go to him for employment, will you go as yourself?”
“In my own form? Don't be ridiculous. I have no wish to be made mortal.”
“It's not that bad.”
“I have a job to do, Kayla. And I can't do it in my own body. Not when I can only use it for twenty-four hours at a stretch without rendering myself forever mortal. I can't let him know what we are. What we want. It would be too dangerous.”
Michaela rolled to lie on her belly, chin resting on both fists. Her bare legs stretched out behind her, long and shapely in a tangle of sheets. The artful display was a Companion's trick, meant to lower the defenses in a negotiation. “Well, at least say you'll try to locate a form that's more appealing than the one you assumed last time we were in Rome, will you?”
Silvia grinned. “You didn't like me in the guise of a Cloaca sewer worker?”
By way of a reply, Michaela pinched her nose between two fingers as if she'd smelled something awful.
Laughing quietly, Silvia turned to go.
Michaela leaped from the bed in a swirl of silk and perfume and scurried to stay her, her grip on her arm urgent. “It doesn't have to be this way. You could stay here. You could show yourself to Bastian when he returns in a few moments. His family is powerful. They could fight Pontifex.”
Shaking her head, Silvia eased away. “Don't pity me.”
“I don't!” Michaela tucked a lock of Silvia's unruly hair behind her ear, her gaze soft. “It's just that I love you. And I love him. If you and he could learn to love each other, everything would be so perfect.”
“Perfect?” Silvia echoed in surprise. Searching Michaela's eyes, she realized what she had in mind. “You want me to join the two of you here, in his bed?”
“You watched us,” Michaela began urgently. “You saw that his passions run high, that his male endowments are generous. He's well able to accommodate another female in his bed, at least from time to time.”
An erotic image of them all locked together in a voluptuous embrace rose unbidden in Silvia's mind, and she quickly banished it. Pulling from her hold, she stepped back, smiling ruefully. “I'm not sure he'd see things as you do, dear Kayla. Rather, he might find your suggestion beyond the bounds of his
generosity
.”
“I'm serious,” Michaela insisted, stamping a bare foot.
But Silvia only went for the door, unlocking it. “Enjoy your new love, but don't think to include me. I'll continue our search for the missing firestones, and once I have them, I'll return to Pontifex a final time, and do what it takes to free the others. As planned. I can look no further than that for now.”
At the mention of Pontifex, Michaela crossed her arms. “What will you tell him of me?”
Suddenly reminded of that awful long-ago night when Michaela had shielded her from harm at Pontifex's hands, Silvia felt a fierce surge of protectiveness toward Michaela rise within her. “Whatever lies will keep you safe,” she replied simply. Rendering herself invisible, she then departed the room and the house, managing to avoid another encounter with their owner.
But shortly after she arrived at the Forum, Lord Satyr did as well. From her position atop Palatine Hill, she watched, her hungry eyes following him across the grounds until he eventually entered the large white tent that dominated the landscape. She sighed. If she were to choose a man to lie with, he was certainly an appealing specimen. But now was not the time in her life for such things.
She spent the entirety of the morning and early afternoon along the periphery of the Forum, scouting it from the adjacent hills that overlooked it. Time had changed the terrain, and it was with some difficulty that she exacted the location of the temple, which now lay buried beneath centuries of accumulated soil. Once she was certain, she made her way into the lush orchards of nearby Aventine Hill, which were on the property of Lord Dane Satyr, one of Bastian's brothers. There, in solitude, she briefly assumed her corporeal form again in order to dine on what fruit she could find that was not yet rotten.
As dusk approached, she quickly changed into the noncorporeal form she'd decided she would take for this venture. That of a childâthe very same six-year-old girl she'd been fifteen centuries ago on the day she'd been chosen to serve Vesta.
And then she went calling on Michaela's lover.
3
W
ith a dramatic flourish of white canvas, Bastian threw back the front flap of the expansive tent, which served as his office in the middle of the Roman Forum excavations. He tossed his topcoat onto the stand, where it caught at the collar and draped its length into neat folds, as if it didn't dare do otherwise in his commanding presence.
“Signor Satyr?” His foreman, Ilari, had followed him across the Forum grounds, nattering on about nothing of importance. An agent of the Parliament appointed to work under Bastian, he was loyal to the government, not to Bastian or the dig.
Bastian ignored him as he often did, his mind still dwelling on the presence he'd felt in his study that morning. On the color he'd seen. He was carefully dissecting the matter in his thoughts, turning it round and round, unshakable as a dog with a bone until he solved a puzzle. To one who'd never before witnessed a world awash in color, it had been a miraculous event.
And it had had a curious effect on him. Afterward, he'd craved another lie-in with Michaela. Although he'd fought it, bathing first and completing business in his library, he'd eventually succumbed. He'd lain with her twice more that morning, and was now late getting in. A rather unprecedented occurrence in itself. He was always eager to begin here, often appearing before dawn and driving himself harder than any of the workers.
“Signor? How shall we proceed?”
“Slowly,” he replied, having no idea what Ilari was asking, but figuring it was usually the best advice in any archaeological case. “Now remove yourself from my sight. I'll join you outside when it suits me.” Going straight to his great leather chair, he sat and surveyed his desktop, anxious to begin work. The well-worn chair was a comfortable fit for a man of his powerful build. His father had once sat in it himself as he lorded over the early excavations here in the
Forum Romano
. That had been eleven years ago, when he'd been alive. Before Bastian had killed him.
Shaking off the morose memories through dint of long practice, he began sorting through neatly arranged items on his expansive deskâmaps, tools, various containers of yesterday's pottery shards, a stack of blank excavation cards, and another stack of cards upon which recent finds had been cataloged. His mornings were spent in study and his afternoons in the field, though there was some overlap and always many interruptions. And thus he typically passed the long, fulfilling days thoroughly entranced by the ancient past in the Forum.
It seemed only minutes had passed when he heard Sevin's voice. Another interruption in a day during which he had scarcely managed to steal a moment of time for what lay on his desk. “I trust you will not be too fatigued to participate in tonight's festivities, big brother,” Sevin announced, pushing aside the canvas flap. “In view of your strenuous morning on Esquiline, I mean.”
Bastian favored him with a lift of one dark brow. He saw no reason to respond. For like all blood-related Satyr, he and his siblings each shared the libidinous encounters of the others, albeit from a distance. When one of them engaged in fleshly pleasures, all experienced something akin to an echo of that pleasure. It was a certainty that his brother knew he'd bedded a female the previous night and again this morning.
“Well? Come in or get out, but choose one,” said Bastian, “before that wind douses my fire.”
Sevin came inside, throwing himself into the only other chair within the tent. Slight indentations that he refused to call dimples creased his cheeks, only emphasizing his masculine good looks. Although none of Bastian's brothers had ever encountered difficulty attracting female attention, Sevin was the one that women of all ages were drawn to like felines to catnip.
With the twist of one wrist high in the air, Bastian quickly bespelled the perimeter of the tent against any eavesdroppers that might choose to loiter outside the tent walls. Confident that their conversation would remain private, he asked, “What brings you here so early? Moonful isn't for hours yet.”
Sevin held up a single finger. “
One
hour, brother. Singular.”
“Damn. Really?” Bastian surveyed his desk, frustrated that he'd soon be useless at his work, rendered so by the coming of night. Although there was much left here to do, it would all suddenly seem unimportant when the fullness of the moon summoned him to take part in carnal rituals the Satyr had enjoyed since the dawn of time.
“But since you ask,” Sevin added, picking up the thread of their conversation, “I've come to enquire after the welfare of my employee.”
“Michaela?” Bastian glared at him.
Sevin's expression was all innocence, but his silver-blue eyes gleamed with humor.
Bastian gestured in an innately Italian way, a turn of his hand that brushed off any concern. “You'll see for yourself this very night that she's unharmed by my attentions.”
“Ah. Your attentions. Frequent, are they?” Sevin's long legs found the footstool and he crossed booted ankles upon it. Setting his elbows on the arms of the chair, he steepled his fingers over his expansive chest, tapping them with a satisfied air.
Settling in to enjoy his teasing, Bastian assumed. “I'm sure you're well aware of their frequency. As I'm aware of the
in
frequency of females in your bed lately.”
Sevin's smile only widened. “Alas, it's true. I'm surrounded by women at my establishment, but loath to bed even one lest she form an attachment to her employer. I discovered early on that favoritism is bad for morale. Business at the
Salone di Passione
is brisk and new employees are in need of lodgings. Yet, Michaela's chamber stands empty for nights on end. Shall I make it available to another who would put it to more profitable use?”
“I have no wedding plans if that's what you're angling to know,” Bastian informed him. “Michaela and I are both satisfied with the current nature of our relationship and need no coaching in any direction from the likes of relatives. Let her keep her lodgings at the salonâlodgings I fund, I'll remind youâas a closet for her belongings in the manner in which she currently does. She has not taken up permanent residence with me. And will not.”
Sevin chuckled, unfazed. “You're a bear this evening. Too many sleepless nights?”
“The only thing troubling my sleep is the damned Roman Parliament.” Bastian perched a pair of goggles with elongated lenses on the bridge of his hawkish nose and took up the largest of the shards that had been found outside in the dig only an hour ago.
“How so?” Idly, Sevin picked up a terracotta urn from the nearest shelf, then gazed at it with distaste. It was newly unearthed and still covered with grime.
Bastian tossed a wire brush to him. “Make yourself useful and polish that into gold, will you?” He smiled to himself, knowing how his brother disliked anything to do with the digs.
“Terracotta into gold? That would be a neat trick.” Grimacing, Sevin nevertheless began whisking the brush over the surface of the urn. Their archaeologist father had taught all of them the rudiments of excavation as boys, and Sevin knew the work well. But Bastian was the only one who'd followed in their father's footsteps.
Bastian adjusted the magnification of the goggles' lenses until he was finally able to read the writing he'd noted earlier on the shard: “Amata.”
Beloved
. He smoothed the pad of his thumb over the word, enjoying the slightly gritty feel of it and the knowledge that he was touching something that had been created untold centuries ago.
“Every find we make here is lauded and exclaimed over, but I've hardly finished one when Parliament is clamoring for another,” he went on in disgust. “The new Minister of Culture has no respect for history, only for power and gold.”
“If I have the minister to thank for this lowly task, then I despise him, too,” said Sevin, giving the urn a particularly hard whisk.
“He has political aspirations and seeks to ride on the back of our discoveries here in order to better his own station,” said Bastian. “Between these blasted Roman politicians and the ElseWorld Council, it's enough to send a man to drink.” A potent silence greeted his statement.
“A joke, brother. Only a joke,” he added when the silence lengthened. “I do make them on occasion.” Bastian stretched his shoulders, causing the fabric of his waistcoat to stretch over honed muscle. The coat was of Chinese design, one of many unique items he'd brought home from his travels to the Orient when he was eighteen. He didn't recall the circumstances of how he'd come by the garment. In fact, there was much he didn't remember of that time after the death of his parents. He'd been drunk. For four long years.
“What's that thing you're staring at?” Sevin asked after a moment.
“A clue to the whereabouts of the goddess Vesta's missing relics.” Pushing the goggles to his forehead, Bastian went to stand before one of his bookshelves. In the lamplight, his well-muscled, six-and-a-half-foot body cast an impressive shadow against the inside walls of the white canvas. Running all along its perimeter stood sturdy shelves lined with thick reference books, bits of precious pottery, maps, and ancient artifacts, all meticulously arranged and cataloged. To him, order and schedules equated sanity and sobriety, and he was hell-bent on retaining both.
Locating Alexander Adams's best-known work,
Roman Antiquities,
he thumbed to the passage he wanted, and read aloud from it, skimming: “ âVestal virgins were chosen . . . by Pontifex Maximus, who . . . selected from among the people twenty girls above six [years of age] . . . free from any bodily defect . . . It was determined by lot in an assembly of the people which of these twenty should be appointed. Then Pontifex Maximus went and took her on whom the lot fell, from her parents, as a captive in war, addressing her thus, “Te Amata Capio.' ”
Bastian glanced up triumphantly. “There, you see?”
“No,” said Sevin, polishing with more zeal than finesse.
“Amata,”
Bastian said patiently, gesturing toward his desk. “It's there, written on that shard, which was found today near the Temple of Castor and Pollux. Not fifty feet from here.
Amata
was a generic title given to all the Vestals.”
“Ah.” Realization dawned on Sevin.
“Exactly!” Bastian snapped the book shut and shoved it back into precise alignment with its neighbors on the shelf. Making his way back to his desk, he again lowered the goggles to examine the shard. Fourth century, he guessed.
“And like our father, you believe Vesta's Virgins are the key to reinforcing the magic that prevents humans from discovering that we walk among them?”
“Not the Virgins themselves, as Father maintained. No, the relics they guarded are what I'm after. They're referred to by the ancient philosophers as stones or relics, but I believe they were jewels of some sort. I think they're the keys.”
Bastian broke off abruptly, as something prickled over the back of his neck.
Something ancient is stirring, somewhere deep in the earth.
He replaced the centuries-old terracotta shard carefully upon his desk, his every sense going on alert.
Directly across from him near the tent's opening, a mist appeared where before there had been nothing. He squinted, attempting to determine whether it was only the annoying Ilari come back to prattle at him or an actual phantom; then he recalled that he still wore the goggles. Intended for close work, they were thick and greatly magnified his surroundings, making objects at any distance over a foot away impossible to see clearly. He ripped them off. And saw her.
Just inside the door stood a girl of six years of age or so. Save for a shock of long, wild hair, she was pale as a wraith. And just as unreal. Excitement shot higher in him. A vision. He hadn't had one in months. He'd begun to wonder if his gift had deserted him. Every muscle drew taut as he slowly rose from the leather chair at his map-covered desk.
When he didn't respond to something Sevin said, his brother straightened from his sprawl in the opposite chair, his boots hitting the carpet that covered the dirt floor. Quickly gauging the nature of what was going on, he said, “Less than an hour till Moonful, big brother.”
The vision started in surprise, as if she hadn't realized there were two men in the tent. Bastian followed her gaze to his brother, staring in an unfocused way that caused Sevin to curse. Sevin was right in his dismay, of course, he thought with detached interest. The Calling beckoned and the entire family was soon to engage in the ritual tonight on his land. His body was already beginning to quicken in anticipation of it. His skin was heating, his loins tautening, and his cock had grown hungry for the taste of a woman. Yet at the moment, all that seemed singularly unimportant.
His eyes swung back to the vision, and he took a careful step in its direction. Seeing that, the girl exploded into action, bolting off and disappearing through the solid wall of the tent in a whirl of filmy blacks, whites, and grays.
And he was right behind her, ramming his bulk through the tent door. Outside, he searched the landscape for her.