Mortal Temptations (4 page)

SHE already regretted it. Not because she was about to have sex with someone she barely knew but because she already felt a pull toward him in her heart. They’d have a good time in bed, then he’d go, and she’d be left bereft.

That line in Shakespeare—“Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”—was debatable. Wasn’t it better to live pain free than break your heart over someone who didn’t love you back?

Nico pulled her closer, his feathery wings enclosing her in warmth. The fear she’d seen in his eyes fled as he bent to kiss her.

She’d seen animals’ eyes go fixed and distant when they were in pain, and she’d seen exactly the same look in Nico’s just now. The pain tapped her psychic shields, pressing until she feared to lower them even slightly. If she could sense that black taint through her strongest shields, his pain must be incredible. And new. She hadn’t seen it before, not when she’d first met him, not when she’d looked fully at him and Andreas.

The curse? If she could help banish it, well then, who was she to hold back?

He opened her mouth with lavish strokes. He tasted like musk and spice, his teeth sharp points on her lips. His palm slid to cup her buttocks, and the tips of his wings slid under her shirt, pushing it open and up.

The feel of the feathers on her bare skin was strange and incredibly erotic. Nico smiled as he pushed away her shirt and pulled her against his bare chest.

He unlocked her bra with his fingers and pushed it off. Still twining her in feathers, he backed up a step and looked down at her.

Warmth pooled in her belly as his gaze turned appreciative. He cupped her breasts in his hands, pushing them higher, the nipples tight and dark.

“Hold them for me,” he said.

She gave him a startled look, then slid her hands under her breasts as he let go. The skin beneath them was hot, the globes heavy on her palms.

“Flick your thumbs over the nipples,” he said, watching her. “Feel how hard and tight they are.”

Patricia tentatively brushed her thumbs over the points, surprised at the fiery tingle that shot through her.

“Haven’t you ever touched yourself before?” Nico asked her.

“Not on purpose,” she said breathlessly. “Not like this.”

“Really? How do you release yourself?”

“I don’t. I just live with it.”

Nico’s perplexed look turned sly, and her heart beat faster. “I think we’ll have to change that.”

“Will we?” She let her hands go slack as a shiver went through her.

“We will. Keep touching your breasts, Patricia. Don’t stop until I tell you to.”

She had to be out of her mind. Nico was an otherworldly creature, not even a man, and she was letting him kiss her and touch her with
feathers
and give her commands.

But what the hell? When would she get the opportunity to play with a man with wings again?

“Unzip your pants,” Nico said. “Pull them down for me.”

Patricia’s hand went to the button of her fly, but she hesitated. “I didn’t lock the door to the stairs. What if Andreas comes up here?”

“What if he does?”

Patricia gulped. Right now Andreas was a leopard, but even so, the thought of him catching them, watching her strip and touch herself for Nico . . .

Excited her like crazy. Her hands warmed as she unzipped her jeans and pushed them down.

Nico grinned. “Now you’re understanding.”

She stood in front of him in nothing but her panties, thankful she’d put on cute blue-and-pink-striped bikinis this morning.

“Are you wet, Patricia?”

If she hadn’t been before, she would be now. Patricia could feel the heat between her legs, pretty sure her panties were soaked with it. “I think so.”

“I want you to know so. Put your fingers on your pussy, and tell me if it’s wet.”

PATRICIA’S nipples were tight, dark points on her pale breasts. She was so beautiful, all luscious, compact curves, taut belly, sleek skin. Her curly hair escaped the ponytail she’d scraped it into, and blond ringlets cascaded down her back. Her legs were long, slim, and strong, the remnants of a summer tan staining her lower legs light golden brown. Her upper thighs were pale in contrast, showing that she liked to wear shorts.

She watched him with her lovely green blue eyes as she slowly dipped her fingers into the slash of blue-and-pink-striped panties.

“Go on,” Nico said, standing back to watch. “Tell me exactly how wet you are.”

Patricia made a faint noise as she moved her fingertip around. “Pretty wet.”

“Show me.”

She withdrew her finger, which glistened with moisture. Nico crossed the space between them and lifted her fingers to his mouth.

Delicious Patricia. Nico savored her, the smell of her musk strong. He could drink her all day.

He made himself release her hand. “Show me.”

She gave him a shy look, but her eyes sparkled with excitement. She slid her underwear all the way off, then stood with her legs spread a little. The triangle of hair at her thighs was a darker blond but just as curly as the hair on her head.

“You don’t shave yourself?”

She shook her head. “I never think about it.”

Nico dipped his hand to her curls, liking how they caught at his fingertips. “I think I like that you don’t.”

He backed away again, knowing he wasn’t here to touch this time; he was here to watch.

“Put your fingers on either side of your clit,” he instructed. “Spread yourself out.”

Patricia hesitated a moment, then she moved the first two fingers of her left hand between her legs.

Nico pulled a chair from the desk and sat down, making himself comfortable. Her fingers spread her so he could see the lips, pink and moist, peeking out from her thatch of hair. Her clit was a little bud, swelling slightly under the attention it was getting. Nico itched to get to his knees and flick his tongue over it, but he restrained himself.

“Touch yourself,” he said in a soft voice. “Explore. Your body is beautiful, and you shouldn’t ignore it.”

“Inhibitions drilled into me from childhood.” She let out a breathy sigh as her middle finger sank down to find her clit. “Nice girls didn’t masturbate. Or even think about sex.”

“I don’t believe you never thought about sex.”

“Of course I thought about it.” Her mouth relaxed as she rocked her finger on her hood. “Mmmm. But I never followed up. I almost got married. Then I had a long-term boyfriend after that. I thought I didn’t need to learn to please myself.”

Interesting. He wondered what had called off the wedding, and where the long-term lover was now.

He resisted going to her and snaking his fingers in to join hers. She’d be moist and hot, swelling as she relaxed. “Press your thighs together over your fingers. Squeeze yourself.”

Patricia put her feet together. Her muscles contracted, and she let out a little yelp of pleasure.

“That’s it. Now, dip that finger inside you. Feel the wetness, draw it out to smooth over your clit.”

“It’s very wet.”

“I can see that.”

Her curls glistened in the sunlight from the one window. She stroked her fingers in and out, brow furrowing as she explored and tested herself.

Nico guided her with his voice, not letting her stop. Her breath came faster, her face relaxing, eyes drifting closed. As she became more used to what she did to herself, her hips moved, back arching.

“I’m thinking about you,” she murmured. “How beautiful you looked lying in my shop downstairs with your wings—no, how totally
hot
you looked. I didn’t know who or what you were, but I wanted to look at you . . . and touch you.”

He leaned forward, watching her intently. “You bandaged my wing for me.”

“You were hurt, and I wanted to help. But I wanted to touch you.”

His heart beat thick and fast. “If that’s what you want, I’m here to please you.”

Her hips lifted, her hand squeezing tighter between her legs. He watched her wrist work as she rubbed back and forth.

“Touch me, now,” she begged. “With your wings.”

Nico felt a moment of surprise, then he slid off the chair and spread his wings, filling the little room with their sleek blackness.

“Yes,” Patricia moaned. “Touch me. Cover me with them.”

Nico came to her and slid them around her body, loving the feel of her nakedness. Patricia’s hand worked, her body learning what she liked.

Nico stroked across her lower abdomen, fingers caressing and kneading. Her muscles tightened and pulsed, and he could feel the heat from her pussy without even touching it.

He stilled his hands and stroked his feathers down over her clit, twining them with her fingers, loving the wetness he found between her legs.

As his feathers penetrated her, she went crazy rubbing herself on his wings, and Nico clenched his fists to keep from tossing her to the floor and simply fucking her.

As much as he wanted to slide right into the pussy she’d opened for him and release deep inside her, he wouldn’t do it. This was her pleasure, not his.

He could feel his control snapping, waking the famous wildness that had made women both human and magical run from him in his youth. They never ran very fast, happy to be caught and trapped in Nico’s black wings.

His vision went dark, the bright window blurring. He wanted Patricia. His cock hated him for not falling on her and fucking her without compassion. There was something about her that made him want to lose all control, but that was forbidden.

He held his body rigid and closed his eyes, willing himself to remain still. He needed to keep this about her, to not hurt her.

Something warm brushed his face: Patricia’s lips, soft and shaking. “Thank you,” she whispered.

The sweet gratitude knocked through Nico’s darkness. He opened his eyes to see Patricia’s trusting face next to his own, her eyes warm with her smile.

“Thank you,” she said again, then her expression turned to concern. “Are you all right?”

“I will be.” He pulled her close, wrapping both of them in the warmth of his wings. Her nearness, the smell of her come, and her arms around him made him want to hold her like this forever.

He heard a faint noise and looked behind her to see Andreas, still a leopard, lounging on the sofa. He must have come in while they played, the big cat making no noise.

Patricia kept her face in Nico’s shoulder, not noticing. Andreas yawned once, then laid his head down on his paws, the look in his eyes one of both amusement and satisfaction.

A cab crawled uptown a few hours later and deposited them in front of Mrs. Penworth’s building. They rode up in an elevator that contained a cushioned bench and a man whose job it was to push the buttons for residents and their guests.

Patricia led Nico and Andreas down a marble hallway and rang the doorbell next to the double doors at the end. Myrtle, a sixty-something, rotund woman, opened the door, beamed a wide smile, and ushered them inside. Mrs. Penworth’s two-story living room was crammed full of art and collections, but tastefully. She’d been collecting for decades, and her eye was legendary.

Patricia felt Andreas’s tension behind her, his aura crackling like electricity. Nico was a little calmer but not by much. He stayed a step behind her, his fingers on the small of her back, a constant reminder of what she’d done earlier that day.

She needed to stop blushing. But she’d never done that before, never touched herself while a man watched her with intense eyes. Nico had left her after soothing her for a while, not demanding she pleasure him in return or proceed to her bed and finish what they started. He’d been rock-hard, but he’d let her go, kissed her, and left her to dress.

She wanted to ask Nico so many questions about himself and this curse he talked about, but when she’d returned to the shop below, Andreas had been growling impatiently about wanting to see the ostracon, and there’d been no time for discussion. Patricia’s two cats had been sprawled across Andreas’s lap, the big man absently petting them as they purred up a storm.

Now Mrs. Penworth greeted Patricia by enveloping her in a diamond-flashing, lightly perfumed hug. She was about five feet tall and very thin, her eyes glittering carbuncle blue. “Patricia, it is so good to see you. And your handsome friends.”

Her gaze raked over Andreas and Nico with fervent appreciation, and Patricia thought with amusement that the woman wasn’t dead.

Both the men looked normal this afternoon—at least as normal as a snow leopard shifter and a winged man could look. They wore dark blue jeans and sweatshirts, Nico’s black, Andreas’s dark red. The gold chains around their necks winked in chance beams of sunlight.

Myrtle brought out champagne on a sterling tray and served it in cut-crystal glasses. She scooted out again and returned almost instantly with a larger tray of canapés and other hors d’oeuvres, enough for a party of several dozen people.

“I love champagne.” Mrs. Penworth smiled as she took a tasting sip. “When I lived in Paris after the war, my young men got me champagne every night. Of course, it wasn’t allowed—all black market stuff. We didn’t care. We were celebrating being alive.”

Nico nodded in understanding. “Celebrating being alive—sometimes it is the best thing to do.”

Mrs. Penworth deposited the glass on the table. “Now, you came to see your ostracon, not listen to an old lady reminisce. It’s right over there. Will you bring it, Myrtle?”

Myrtle, who did everything with a good-natured efficiency, walked to a table full of polished stone objects, lifted the ostracon from its stand, and carefully brought it to them.

Andreas relieved her of it and set it on the coffee table himself. The ostracon was made of limestone and carved with a mixture of hieroglyphs and hieratic writing, the “shorthand” form of Egyptian writing. Some of the hieroglyphs were so tiny they needed a magnifying glass to read them.

Patricia let her psychic mind touch it, but as before when she’d stored it in her back room, she felt nothing unusual from it. The ostracon had been excavated from a site near Alexandria about ten years ago. Two thousand years before that, a scribe had tossed it negligently into a corner, where it had lain for two millennia, silent and untouched. She felt the peace of those centuries, then its shift to the dusty jumble of the basement of the Cairo museum and the tingle of its journey to New York.

She could tell that this was a broken piece of a larger writing, some of the carved letters at the jagged edges sliced in two. Andreas ran his fingers across the tiny writing, blue eyes fixed. Nico leaned forward with him, utterly still.

“Can you read it?” Patricia asked Nico.

“Some of it.”

Andreas couldn’t stop touching the stone. He traced the hieroglyphs with his fingertips as though he’d force their meaning out then and there. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Mrs. Penworth watched with interest. “It’s the inscription you’re interested in? Not the ostracon itself?”

Andreas nodded absently. Nico’s breath came faster, as though the writing excited him.

“I could take photos of it,” Patricia offered. “Then we can lay out the whole inscription and study it. I’ve learned to read some hieroglyphs, but we can get an expert in to translate the rest. I don’t know any of the hieratic.”

Andreas at last took his hand from the ostracon. “Yes. Do it.”

The man didn’t have a gracious bone in his body. “Say please,” Patricia said in a sugary voice.

The glare he flashed at her was pure leopard. She half expected him to snarl and bare his teeth.

“Peace,” Nico said. His silky voice soothed Patricia almost instantly. Andreas growled a little in his throat but subsided.

The ever-efficient Myrtle brought out a digital camera. Patricia set up the ostracon on the magnificent dining room table and took a series of overall photos and close-ups that could be put together later.

Mrs. Penworth watched with enthusiasm, but Andreas paced restlessly. Nico was just as impatient, but he helped hold the stone steady while Patricia worked.

It was a little unnerving to have him so close, to brush against him and catch his warm eyes on her. She wondered whether, once they had their inscription, the two of them would depart. They could easily call a university or museum themselves and find an expert to help them translate the hieroglyphs and hieratic script. They wouldn’t need Patricia anymore.

She clicked the last photo and wiped her brow. Myrtle took Patricia to a computer in another room where she uploaded the photos, printed them out, and brought them back into the living room.

Mrs. Penworth looked at the sheets spread across her costly mahogany table as Patricia labeled them so they could match the close-ups to the overall picture. “What do we do now?” Mrs. Penworth asked brightly.