In the Garden of Sin (33 page)

Okay…

“In the painting,” Galiana continued, “Judith is standing behind a table with his sword in one hand and the other just kind of resting on his severed head. She’s incredibly beautiful, of course, and she’s wearing the most fabulous sixteenth-century gown you’ve ever seen, and a big plumed hat and tons of awesome gold jewelry. But the coolest part is his head. It’s totally realistic, right down to the bloody neck stump. You just know Cranach painted it from an actual chopped-off head, probably a decapitated criminal. Pretty grisly for a painting of that era. I could stare at it for hours.”

“And, um, your costume is based on her gown?” Lili asked.

“It’s actually a near-perfect reproduction. I had the best Italian seamstress in New York make it up for me this past week. I didn’t bother with the hat—I’ve never been big on
hats—but I did bring a couple of Renaissance-era necklaces that are real close to the ones in the painting.”

“You collect antique jewelry?”

“Let’s just say I’ve held on to all the really good stuff that’s come my way.” Galiana dropped her cigarette butt, crushing it under the knife-point toe of her boot. “Time to suit up so I can assume my proper baronial role and join in the fun. My room isn’t ready yet, but that guard, the American one, said I could change in the…chapel withdrawing room?”

“Yeah, it’s where the subs get into costume.” Pointing, Lili said, “Go through that door, and then a second one, and you’ll be there. Don’t mind the mess. We’re turning it into a screening room.”

“Tony.” The dominatrix said it softly, but Prazak flinched as if she’d snapped a whip at him. Handing him the garment bag and tote, she said, “Be a sweet
marish
and come help me dress.”

Galiana’s silence was more terrifying to Turek than if she’d pitched one of her thermonuclear fits. Except for ordering him to hang up the garment bag and set the tote on the floor next to it, she didn’t say a word as she nonchalantly stripped down in the subs’ dressing room.

There were questions he would have wanted to ask her.
How did you know where I went? What are you going to do to me, and how can I get out of it?
But he just stood there in mute dread, afraid to speak for fear it would set her off. He groped around frantically in his mind for some excuse or rationalization for what he’d done, but Galiana Solsa was very smart and very old and very powerful and he was very, very fucked.

The bitch let him wait there like an idiot while she admired
herself in front of a trifold mirror. Entirely naked except for the fuck-me makeup, the diamond clit stud, and a pair of nipple rings— yellow-gold barbells with ruby-eyed snakes encircling the nipples themselves—she looked like the star in every guy’s darkest, dirtiest sex fantasy. She turned this way and that, plucking at her nipples to make them hard, flicking the diamond to engorge her clit. Her working theory was that male primates, including human men, became stupid and malleable in the presence of an overt display of female arousal.
Let them think you’re in heat, and they’re yours
. This was little challenge for Galiana, who really was always in heat.

Rubbing her labia to make them flush and swell, she said softly, “Looks like you were playing me after all, Anton.”

“What?” It came out as a croak. “No. No, I—”

“My hairbrush.”

“Wh-what?”

She pinned his reflection with her hard, black-rimmed eyes. “Bring… me… my… hairbrush. It’s in there,” she said, nodding toward the tote bag.

It took a while to locate the brush among the tote’s jumbled contents: a bulging jewelry roll, a pair of gold satin high-heeled lace-up boots, her favorite gigantic black strap-on dildo, a slender little aluminum cane with a leather belt hook, and the Paramount 900XT Maximum Security Waist Chain. The latter, comprised of over two pounds of steel chain with state-of-the-art locks on the attached handcuffs, was how well-funded police departments secured their high-risk prisoners, and it was Galiana’s favorite restraint for subs. Like the strap-on and the cane, she toted it with her almost everywhere she went.

Another item she was never without: the gold-plated perfume atomizer with which she sprayed herself two or three
times an hour whenever she found herself among a large number of people. The purpose of this was to mask the mélange of odors that bombarded her on a continual basis, odors most Follets and all humans were unaware of, at least on a conscious level. The perfume she’d been wearing lately was La Fièvre de la Jungle, a chic and pricey new scent that was all citrus top notes, and which did nothing for Turek but make him sneeze.

Galiana took her time brushing her hair while he stood there, soaking his damned costume with flop sweat.

When she was finally done, she held the brush out to him, handle first, and said, “Fuck yourself with this.”

He looked at her. This was a new one. Under the circumstances, what did it mean?

She just stood there with her empty black eyes, holding the brush out.

He took it. She told him to strip from the waist up, drop his trunk hose, and stand in front of the three-way mirror “so you can see yourself from every angle.”

It was a boar bristle brush with a fat, round lacquered rosewood handle imprinted with “Wick & Carlisle” in gold. Nice brush. Probably cost her three or four hundred bucks.

“What are you waiting for?” she said.

“Um, is there any—”

“Lube? No.”

“Can I use a lubricated condom? I’ve got one in—”

“No.”

Under normal circumstances, even as cowed as he was in general by Galiana, he would have pressed her on the lube issue. But he didn’t, and he knew that she knew why. He’d fucked up and now he was utterly and completely at her mercy. Apparently, she’d decided to subject him to an S&M
scenario like those she enacted with her pathetic human subs. She didn’t normally play these games with him, not overtly, anyway. The question was, how far would she go?

He braced his feet and drew a deep breath. It took him a few long, teeth-gritting minutes to bury the entire handle, as she demanded. Maybe it was the pressure against his prostate, but by the time it was all the way in, his cock was a fucking flagpole.

“None of that,” she said when he went to touch it. “Both hands on the brush. All the way in and all the way out, and keep at it till I tell you to stop.”

She strolled around him, stroking her pussy while he stood there with his hose around his ankles, ass-fucking himself. Occasionally she would snap at him to stand up straighter or thrust harder, or to direct his gaze to one of the side mirrors so he could watch his own hands shoving the brush handle in and out, in and out. If she was trying to humiliate him, she was succeeding. It was demeaning, for sure, but in spite of that or maybe even because of it, it was also darkly exciting. He trembled with the effort to keep from thrusting his hips, which she forbade.

“Yes,” he breathed when she reached for his cock, but she merely pinched the glans to squeeze a viscous stream of pre-come onto her fingertips. This she used for lubrication as she stood right in front of him and brought herself to climax.

Watching her masturbate ratcheted his arousal to a fever pitch, as she had surely known it would do. His lungs were pumping; his cock was on fire. He didn’t dare stroke himself, or even ask for permission to do so, but he thought if this went on much longer, he might just come with no contact at all.

When she was done playing with her pussy, she licked her fingers with relish and said, “That’s enough. Get dressed.”

He stared at her in stupefaction. That’s enough?
That’s
enough?
Was she fucking kidding him? He’s was about a nanosecond from coming, and she knew it, and—

She knew it. Fucking bitch. Sadistic fucking cunt. So that was the idea. Degrade him, torment him, drive him to the aching, throbbing, no-turning-back edge of orgasm, then pull the rug out from under him and see if he’d go along with it like the good little compliant
marish
he was.

But what choice did he have? Defy her and set off a firestorm of rage? No telling what she would do to him then.

You’re getting off easy
, he told himself as he eased the brush out and raised his trunk hose with quaking hands, taking care as he fastened them not to let the fabric rub too hard against his erection. It wouldn’t take much to make him come, and then what would she do?

She watched him in smug silence while he got dressed. As he was buttoning up his doublet, he said, “Interesting punishment, I must say.”

She closed her fist around his throat and lifted him off the floor with an outstretched arm.

He clawed at her hands, his lungs convulsing as they strove in vain to suck in air. Strangulation wasn’t fatal to vampires— they might pass out, but they wouldn’t die—however, lack of air was as panic-inducing for them as it was for humans. And it was anyone’s guess what this crazy bitch would do once he was unconscious and helpless. Would he come to soaked in gasoline, with her holding a lit match and smiling that dead-eyed smile of hers?

Keep your fucking legs still!
he told himself as he struggled and flailed, bright little pinpoints swarming in front of his eyes. God knew what she would do if he were to kick her.

“You thought that was your punishment?” she asked with an incredulous little smile.

Turek tried to shake his head, but from the neck up, he felt
like a lump of meat in a refrigerator. His mouth was agape, his tongue sticking out. He tried to pull down on her arm, but it was like trying to bend the arm on a bronze statue.

A gray fog rolled in, blurring and then obliterating everything … a night fog under a cold moonless sky, growing darker and denser until there was nothing but blackness.

UREK OPENED HIS EYES to find himself lying on a plush gray carpet watching three ghostly, white-robed women moving in graceful synchronization.

No, that was wrong, he thought as he blinked the scene into focus. It was three angles of the same tall, black-haired woman reflected in a trifold mirror as she stood behind him, tweaking the drape of a silken chemise.

Galiana.

Sheisse
. She wasn’t through with him. She was going to do things to him that would have him shrieking and sobbing and begging for death.

He was well and truly fucked.

He lay absolutely still, his eyes slitted, as he watched her adjust the neckline of the chemise to get it as low as possible.
Play dead
, he thought,
isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when a bloodthirsty predator has you cornered?

Her triple reflection disappeared as she walked off toward the clothing racks. He heard the rustling of fabric, but he didn’t dare turn his head to look. A few minutes later, she reappeared wearing a full skirt and carrying something that was made of pieces of gold brocade and the same hunter green velvet as the skirt, with narrow green ribbons trailing off it.

“Figured it out yet?” she said as she ducked her head into the garment—a bodice, he now saw—and started threading her arms through the sleeves. “How I knew you were here?”