Raine: The Lords of Satyr (19 page)

“Are you serious?” Jordan squeaked.

Raine, Nick, and Jane nodded as one.

Jane patted her hand, offering comfort. “Understanding will come with time. After due consideration, you’ll find that many occurrences in your life up to now will begin to make sense to you in light of this newer context.”

So her mother’s dream of the circumstances of Jordan’s conception nineteen years ago hadn’t been a dream at all. It had been real. She stood there, reeling.

Nick gazed fondly at his wife. “Jane is your sister, born of the same father but a different mother.”

Sister? This news was such a shock Jordan hardly knew what to say. To learn that she wasn’t alone in the world and that this gentle female creature was a relative seemed more preposterous than all she’d heard before. She gazed at Jane with new interest.

Jane smiled at her. “I’m glad that news is finally out. It was our ElseWorld father who sent a letter directing Nick and Raine to find us. The letter claimed we and a third sister who has yet to be found were each endangered in some way.”

Jordan stared at the three of them in turn, then she directed her gaze at Raine. “So our meeting wasn’t accidental? You brought me here because of instruction you received in a letter from an adjoining world?” she asked coolly.

“I brought you here to offer you my protection,” said Raine, planting his hands at his hips.

“Part of that protection requires a wedding,” Nick added.

Raine glared at his brother.

Jane cupped Nick’s shadowed jaw. “That’s a private matter to be discussed between these two, don’t you think, darling? Now, I’m exhausted. Will you see me to the house?”

Tugging on his arm, she coaxed him from the glen. And Jordan and Raine were left alone, surrounded by silent stone creatures.

Raine tossed a gauntlet. “I’ve asked a clergyman to post bans.”

“What? Why?”

“So I can take you to wife, of course.”

The idea of actually acquiring a husband was a strange and almost forbidden notion. Jordan allowed herself to imagine it as possible for the barest moment and then shook her head.

“I’m sorry, but my answer must remain no,” she said.

His tone turned soft, belligerent. “Less than an hour ago, you said that you loved me.”

She nodded.

“Then wed me.”

“No,” she said. “Because you don’t love me.”

He was silent, lending a tacit agreement to her statement that wounded her.

“And for other reasons,” she added quickly, when it seemed he was about to argue further. “I don’t plan to marry. Ever.”

“Why the devil not?” Raine was surprised at how much it mattered to him. He’d thought it was only King Feydon’s edict that was forcing his hand in this matter.

“By marrying, my very existence would be suspended. By law, I’d become a satellite to your planet.”

“And be protected under my wing.”

“Or suffocated there.” Jordan shook her head automatically. “I won’t take a husband—you or anyone else.”

“Jordan—” he began, obviously planning to argue her to the ground.

“Do you truly wish to wed a woman who is not completely female?” she demanded, her voice rising. “One you found on the streets in Venice, naked save for a mask and a cloak?”

His voice turned surly. “How exactly did that circumstance come to pass? You never said.”

She wandered away from him to brush away a golden leaf that had tumbled onto the surface of one of the altars. “My clothes were stolen from me that night.” It was true. Salerno had taken them. “You saved me from what was likely a horrible fate and I’m grateful. But I believe any debt I’ve incurred has already been repaid in your bed.”

Raine’s jaw stubborned. “If you wish to continue to warm my bed, we must wed. Otherwise, you’re in danger. ElseWorld is disturbed. Chaotic. Warring. The gate that your third dream hinted at is real. Many in that other world would like to snatch you through it. A prize like you would give one of the factions an advantage.”

“Is it so bad there? In ElseWorld?”

“It was once a paradise,” he informed her. “But I haven’t been there for years. Only Nick has gone to that world in recent times as our envoy. He claims some sectors of it are unsavory now, not fit for civilized living.”

“You say there are others like me there, made with both male and female parts. Perhaps it’s where I belong.”

Raine shook his head. “Your going there would put EarthWorld in peril. There are those in ElseWorld who would leech your Human blood. The tiniest drop of it would enable a hundred of them to pass through the gates into this world. To bring their battles here. Once on our soil, they would seek to subjugate all those unlike them.”

“Why have they not taken Jane for their purposes?” asked Jordan.

“She is married and mated, with offspring. All lend her protection against them.” He stuck his hands in his pockets, glancing around. “Some in ElseWorld are watching us. Nick and I have felt it. They won’t leave you alone until you’re thoroughly mated and bound to me.”

“How much more thoroughly can we mate beyond last night’s many joinings?” she asked in disbelief.

He went to her. “I only mean to imply a continued, regular joining between us, over time. Over a course of months. Six at a minimum. Which in this world of course requires a wedding.”

She made a disgusted noise and kicked the base of the altar with her slippered foot. “Very well, I shall give you the plain truth. You will no doubt desire children of your wife. But it’s doubtful I can give them to you, nor to any man. I am infertile.”

Infertile. The word reverberated in his head like thunder. No woman was infertile for a man of Satyr blood. During the Calling if he chose to give of his childseed, it would take root and grow in any woman he mated from the age of 15 to 115 with no difficulty.

That she believed herself unable to conceive might be a devastating matter to her, but he couldn’t help but consider it convenient.

“Did you hear what I said? You’ve seen what’s under my petticoats.” She placed a hand over her skirt where it covered her genitals. “Because of that, it’s likely I am made wrong for childbearing. I’m incapable of giving you heirs.”

“It’s not important.”

“Every man wants children.” Her mother had told her that often enough.

“I don’t.”

She shot him a skeptical look.

He found himself prodded into further speech, an unusual occurrence. He had been known to remain silent under the fiercest or most beguiling of stares.

“I’m not suitable father material,” he admitted.

She waved a hand as though swatting an insect away. “Nonsense. You were born to be a father.”

He stared at her, astounded. “And you’re an expert on my strengths and faults, after so short an acquaintance?”

“I am.” She counted his assets on her fingers. “You’re hard working, loyal to your family, a patient teacher, wealthy, intelligent, handsome, amusing—at times. Now not being one of those.”

He shook his head, bemused. “Suffice it to say I do not want children. I will be content with a companion if the situation I offer is agreeable.”

“A sexual companion?”

He gave her an exasperated look. “Yes, by the Gods. Do you object?”

She batted her eyelashes in the way she’d once seen an opera actress do in the Piazza San Marco. “Not in the least.”

Clasping her fingers behind his neck, she leaned against him and gave him a quick kiss. “I will lie with you.”

His hands came to rest at her waist as she kissed his throat. “Live with you.”

She slid from his hold and went lower, kissing his chest. “And love you.”

She knelt. Unfastened his trousers. “But I have vowed that no man—not even you—will ever have control over me again.”

Her lips delved into the shadowy gape of his open trousers to take him in her mouth.

Raine’s fingers threaded her hair and he threw his head back. “This…discussion…isn’t…over…ahhh!”

S
alerno’s beady eye peeked out from the vertical gap between his front door and its frame. When he saw the bishop on his step, he muttered, “Go away,” and slammed the door.

But the bishop hadn’t journeyed the distance from Tuscany to Venice in order to be turned away from his mission. He put his pudgy face close to the place the crack had been. “I know where La Maschera is to be found,” he shouted.

The door was jerked open. Salerno stood there in the gap, hands on hips, eyeing him suspiciously. “Tell me.”

“By and by.” The bishop pushed past him and entered his home. “But first I will have some medical treatment from you. A cure in fact.”

“For what ailment?” Salerno inquired, shutting the door and following him.

“A private one.” The bishop’s eyes shifted around the room, checking for eavesdroppers, then he lowered his voice. “And I’ll have your assurance that all confidences I share this day will remain safely guarded.”

“Yes, yes. Why should I gossip about one such as you? What is it that ails you for God’s sake so that we may move on to the more interesting subject of the information you possess?”

The bishop leaned close to him and whispered. “It’s the French Disease.”

Salerno took a hasty step backward. Nodding, he rubbed his clean-shaven chin with one hand as he surveyed his visitor head to toe. “Syphilis? I might’ve guessed. You have the look about you.”

“And you have the look of a quack about you. Do you have a cure?”

“Doesn’t every doctor? Who knows if any work? What are your symptoms?”

“Tumors, fever, aching bones, dizziness. A strong desire to kill the whore that gave this pox to me.”

“I guess I needn’t ask if you’ve become subject to angry outbursts,” Salerno said snidely. “Any loss of feeling in your legs?”

The bishop shook his head.

“Follow me then.” With that, he led the way from the room. As they passed deeper into the passageways of his home toward his pharmacy located in the rear, Salerno treated him to a discussion of various authoritative speculations on the causes of his malady.

“…In his work
Contagion,
the poet and physician Fracastor adhered to an age-old belief that the planets play a role in outbreaks. When they line up a certain way, some think conditions are ripest for the emergence of the disease.”

Only half-listening, the bishop ogled the strange items set on every shelf, countertop, and table they passed. Dried bat wings, shrunken insect carcasses—a weird lot. Finally they arrived at the back of the establishment. A doorway led outside to a small enclosed area filled with various bizarre mechanisms.

“Do you wish to examine me now?” the bishop asked, making to hitch himself onto the examining table.

Salerno shrugged, digging through some vials he’d located inside a glass-front cabinet. “No use. If you’ve got the pox, you’ve got the pox. What cures have you tried?”

“Mercury salve, caustic, the avoidance of exercise, purges.”

“The gamut. Well, I have a new method. A device. You’ll see.” He selected a vial at last, measured some of its contents out, and stepped outside.

An hour later, the bishop found himself sweating the morning away, sitting in a fumigation tub in the garden behind Salerno’s apartments. Only his flushed, florid face was visible where it protruded from a hole atop the great square-shaped iron compartment.

A fire below the enclosure heated and vaporized the mercury Salerno had taken from the vial and set at the bishop’s feet. Its pollution swirled around his flesh and its fumes swamped his nose. Periodically, a comely young Sicilian woman replenished the blaze, scalding him and raising a fog of his curses.

“Your so-called cure is worse than my disease!” the bishop shrieked.

“You may depart at any time,” Salerno suggested. “But I wouldn’t advise it. Your case is advanced.”

“And you’re telling me this as though it was something I didn’t know?” the bishop railed.

“There are limited number of treatments for the French Disease. Though interestingly enough, in France they call it the Italian Disease. No one wishes to take credit for such an infamous malady,” Salerno told him. “Isabella! More wood!” he called. At Salerno’s instruction, the servant came into the room and stirred the fire higher.

The steam hissed, causing the bishop to gasp. “I’m boiling, you fool. Let me out of this sweatbox before I expire.”

Salerno waved the young woman away, saying, “Leave us a moment.”

When she obeyed, he tapped the latch on the tub and studied the bishop. “You came bearing news. Let’s have it and I’ll let you out. Where is La Maschera to be found?”

“In Tuscany! In Tuscany, damn you!”

Salerno’s thin lips tightened. “A big place. Precisely where in Tuscany?”

“The Satyr vineyards. The middle brother of the three is fucking your little prodigy. He even wishes to marry it, can you imagine?”

The claws of Salerno’s hand grabbed the bishop by the throat. “Is that the truth?”

“Yes, I swear it on my mother’s name!”

“Very well.” Salerno released the latch. The bishop crawled his way out of the cruel containment just as the Sicilian girl returned. Seeing his flushed, dripping nakedness, she let out an outraged cry, flipped her apron over her eyes, and rushed back out.

The bishop’s eyes followed her. “Was that truly a cure or did you just mean to torture me?” he gasped.

“It’s touted as a cure. You’ll have to let me know.”

Seeing the direction of his gaze, Salerno added, “It has been suggested that the raping of a virgin may cure some of the ravages of syphilis. You might try it for good measure. I could arrange such a thing. For a fee.”

The bishop’s eyes flew to the doorway through which the girl had just disappeared, contemplating. He felt his prick stir. His eyes went back to find Salerno’s knowing ones. “How much?”

F
rustration was Jordan’s sole companion as she waited a full hour after dinner one night, pacing, reading, pacing, working at her embroidery, pacing again. Then, at the stroke of nine and wearing only her nightgown and robe, she made for the stairs carrying a small, carefully packed bag. Stealthily, she crept down the circular staircase that led to the wine cellar.

Taking the last of the steps, she sited down the perfectly aligned rows of barrels that seemed to go on forever. At the far end of the cellar, there was a hazy light.

Once again, Raine was working late here among the casks. His experiments with hybridization along with his testing of the vats, racking of prior years’ wine, blending, and seeing to a share of Lyon’s duties while he was in Paris were taking all Raine’s waking hours and then some.

He’d still found time to do his duty with her each night, continually refortifying the protective veil he claimed his lovemaking helped weave around her. But he’d recently been bedding her with a perfunctory efficiency, which told her he was miffed at her refusal to fall in with his marriage plans. She’d tried to cajole him in a variety of ways, but his mind and heart remained distant and by now she’d grown needy for his full attention.

So she’d plotted and planned. And tonight she was determined she would have all of him to herself.

Earlier, she’d measured out pinches of an herb Jane had supplied when Jordan admitted she sometimes had difficulty sleeping. It was the truth. Her dreams often deprived her of sleep. But she hadn’t taken the herb herself. Instead, she’d dropped it into Raine’s wine at dinner this evening.

Silently, she moved along the corridor now under the brick-vaulted ceiling and between the barrels stacked three high. She’d learned a great deal about winemaking over the weeks here. These barrels would last only five years at most. After that, their oak turned neutral and would add little beneficial flavor to the contents inside.

She swiped a finger along one of the metal hoops binding the staves of a barrel together. No dust. She rolled her eyes. Raine kept his cellar as meticulously as he did the rest of his home and estate. In a way it was fortunate, since she had no housekeeping skills to offer him.

This was the first-year cellar, Raine had told her. At the end of fermentation, about a month after the harvest, wine was racked—set in racks—here in these barrels where it would remain for about a year and a half. She felt a moment’s sadness, knowing it was unlikely she would be here long enough to see this vintage bottled.

She found Raine in the cozy warmth of the small steward’s room. He’d taken to napping here each night in this narrow bed. He was asleep on his back now, one broad hand alongside his head and another on his chest.

Stealthily she crept forward and touched his cheek. He didn’t awaken. The herbs had done their job.

She set her bag on his worktable. Its surface was littered with the tools of his blending efforts. A scale. Spoons of various sizes. Measuring cups. A half-dozen crystal glasses. A spittoon in which to expel wine he sampled and analyzed.

A corklike cylinder caught her eye. She picked up the glass bung. Each barrel stored here had one, forced into a hole on its upward side. It was cold, smooth, interesting.

She set it aside for the moment, opened the bag she’d brought, and spread its contents over the tabletop.

Raine awoke, instantly aware that something was amiss. He was lying on his back, in the wine steward’s bed. But when he tried to rise, he found the action thwarted.

His head whipped aside to discover one of his wrists tied to the headboard with a leather strap. His head whipped to the opposite side where he observed his other wrist to be similarly lashed. A hard tug revealed his legs were encumbered as well, loosely anchored to the two bedposts at the foot of the bed. He was naked, splayed upon the feather mattress in an irate X.

He scented another presence nearby and his cock tightened with recognition. Jordan.

His eyes searched the dimness outside the circle of light given off by the candelabra on the small table beside his bed and found her.

She stepped nearer, her figure an indistinct blur in the area between light and shadow. She wore a long robe that completely swathed her petite figure.

“Untie me,” he growled.

She took a fortifying breath. “Not yet.”

He stared at her, clearly shocked by her defiance. “I don’t find this amusing, Jordan. If I have to summon a servant to release me, you won’t enjoy the consequences.”

“The day servants have gone for the evening, and I’ve locked the doors against other interlopers,” Jordan informed him. “I have you all to myself until morning.”

Fierce anger blasted at her, but his voice was calm, controlled, and all the more intimidating because of it. “I’ll ask you once more to untie me.”

She shook her head slowly, refusing to quail.

He strained against the bonds, testing their strength.

“Stop! You’ll only injure yourself.” She sat beside him and tucked a hand high along his inner thigh, nudging his ballocks gently with her knuckles. “Do you think the world will end if you relax your control for a single night?”

“Quite possibly. I’ve told you about ElseWorld. About the gate. I must be on constant guard. Whatever you’re planning, I advise against it,” he warned.

With her other hand she caressed his masculine jaw darkened by evening stubble. “Forget that for tonight. Just for tonight.”

His muscles turned rigid under her palm. In rejection or anticipation?

“I’ve allowed you liberties when I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy them,” she reasoned. “Yet I did enjoy them in the end. How does one know if a new experience will be fulfilling unless one tries it?”

His lips curved cruelly. “I hate to destroy the little fantasy you’ve created here, but this situation is nothing new to me.”

Jordan gasped, uncertain. “Other women have restrained you?”

He raised an arrogant eyebrow, obviously pleased by her dismay. “Shall I tell you what delicious and perverse sexual acts they performed on me while I was incapacitated and at their disposal?”

He was baiting her, she realized, hoping to get his way.

Instead of releasing him, she leaned closer, gently combing the hair at his temples with her fingers. “Yes. Tell me everything they did,” she suggested. “Then I won’t repeat their performance and bore you. I wouldn’t want you to nod off before you have sufficiently pleased me. Not after the trouble I’ve gone to. I had to cut your clothes off, you know. And arranging your limbs was a sore trial.”

Raine snarled in frustration and yanked even more violently at his bindings.

Stepping away from the lurching bed, she forced herself to watch his struggles with outward calm.

“Where in the name of Bacchus did you learn to tie knots like this?” he demanded.

Along the docks of Venice when I was a boy, roaming the streets with other boys
, she thought. But he didn’t know about that part of her life. And she didn’t want him to.

“I’ve lived on the streets, as I told you. I was taught all manner of useful things true ladies are not.”

He fisted both hands and gave the bindings a final yank, but they held. Sensing the futility of fighting her, he turned his face to the wall, shutting her out.

“Shall I tell you how I undressed you?” She sat alongside him again and massaged a hand over his hip bone.

He pretended to ignore her, but she heard his reaction to her suggestion in his altered breathing. Felt it in the coiled bunch of muscles and the tension of his flesh. Saw it in the thickening of his phallus at the apex of his thighs.

Long, silent moments passed, testing her will to continue. This unbending control of his was strangling him, though he couldn’t seem to understand that. She would leave him one day soon. But before she did, she would give him this gift—the knowledge that he could surrender his control now and then. And that the world would not come crashing down around his ears as a result.

She stiffened her resolve. “Pouting?” she inquired.

When he didn’t respond, she felt momentarily defeated. If he’d experienced restraint before at the hands of others without overcoming his fear of appearing weak, what could she possibly hope to prove? Her shoulders drooped and she considered unbinding him. But then a new thought struck her.

“During those other encounters,” she mused aloud, “I imagine you made sure you were bound only as long as you wished to be. Your paid companions wouldn’t have defied you if you had asked to be untied. So all the while you were restrained, you must have known you were ultimately in control.”

His head rolled toward her, stormy silver glinting at her from twin slits.

“Therefore this will be a new experience for you after all!” she said, with burgeoning confidence. “Restraint against your will.”

“By Bacchus, untie me, woman.”

“No. At least, not yet,” she said.

“Damn you!” he fumed. “Get on with it then. Do whatever you plan to do and be done with this game.”

“Very well.” She gathered herself and her resolve and rose on her knees to straddle him. Holding his gaze, she began to undress. The robe slid from her arms and flowed gently down her body to drape over his thighs.

The gown it uncovered was golden silk with French lace insets that cupped her breasts affording tantalizing glimpses of her nipples. The lacy bodice had slim straps and was fastened in front by means of seven ribbons tied from chest to hip. Below them the lace gave way to a skirt of translucent silk, which alternately revealed and concealed with her movements.

A delicate finger toyed with the first ribbon tied between her breasts. He watched intently as she pulled at it and then another below it, loosening them one by one.

“You won’t entice me to your cause, no matter how you may behave like a common strumpet,” he growled.

Her hand paused and then continued its work. “The night is young, and I thought your tastes ran to strumpets.”

“Huh,” he grunted. The heat of his eyes burned every inch of skin revealed as she opened her gown with exquisite care, slowing unveiling what lay beneath.

“Do you like my gown?” she inquired when the silk gaped from breast to waist. Only one tie still held fast at her midsection.

“I’m in no mood to offer compliments to you,” he replied. But his eyes were riveted to the single tie that remained.

She ran the fingers of one hand idly along his erection where it angled high from him, hard alongside hers. The pad of her thumb smeared the creamy drop that had seeped from his tip and spread it over her own. His eyes heated.

“Still, I see it has tempted you.”

“I’m sure you chose it knowing the effect it would have,” he replied grudgingly. “I suppose Jane supplied it.”

She nodded. “It’s such a delightfully wicked gown, don’t you think?” she whispered in falsely scandalized tones.

His laughter was tinged with sarcasm. “Exactly. Why do you imagine I find it so appealing?”

“I’m glad. But I believe I should seek to quell this streak of wantonness in you,” she said gently.

He smirked. “Good luck. I have had no success in doing so myself lo these many years.”

“Perhaps if I remove temptation from your sight.” From the table beside the bed, she gathered the silk scarf she’d brought. Holding it stretched taut between her hands, she attempted to place it over his eyes.

“Don’t you dare,” he warned. He thrashed violently, refusing to cooperate. After struggling with him for several moments, she desisted and giving him a perplexed look, tossed the silken square away to land on the bedcovers somewhere above his head.

“If you won’t untie me, why don’t you untie that last ribbon there instead?” he suggested, glancing pointedly at the solitary bow still secured at her waist.

She smiled down at him, pretending to consider his suggestion. “All right,” she agreed at length.

Leaning forward so the curves of her breasts were inches from his gaze, she fumbled for the end of the last remaining ribbon tethering the fabric of her gown. She gave it a yank.

At precisely the same moment, and before he could realize her intent, she reached over his head and folded the silk scarf over his face.

“There, now I have released the ribbon as you requested,” she told him, sitting back.

He jerked in sudden awareness that she’d managed to blindfold him after all. “That’s not exactly what I had in mind,” he said ruefully.

“I’m truly sorry, but I simply couldn’t allow you to see me like this.” The flat of her hands caressed his chest in slow circles. “My gown is quite indecent and I fear it might put scandalous ideas into your head.”

He chuckled in spite of himself. “Too late.”

She stretched fully atop him and rested her chin upon her fist at his breastbone. Now that his eyes were hidden, she was free to gaze at him with all the love she felt for him. The pads of her fingers circled one of his taut, brown nipples. “I touched you here with my mouth. While you were asleep. Did you know?”

He grunted, his attention caught.

“Like this.” She bent her head and lightly suckled him.

He gasped at the unexpected caress. “Take this vile rag off my eyes. I want to see you.”

She pulled herself higher and kissed his throat. “No.”

He swore. “Just remember I
will
eventually get loose. Then we shall see how brave you are, my pretty tormenter.”

“Let me have my way with you,” she coaxed, nibbling her way along his neck. “Bend to my will. Just for tonight. Please.”

A moment later, she felt him angle his head to the side to allow her lips better access. The movement was infinitesimal. But joy soared within her. He was accepting and even enjoying her attentions. It was a chink in the armor of that rigid control. She proceeded to taste him as she’d longed to—his throat, shoulders, chest, belly, and lower—as though she had all the time in the world.

When she met his cock she sucked at the head, lightly, lovingly. Her fingers threaded through his thatch to find and fondle his sacs.

He groaned deep in his throat.