His abdomen knotted granite hard, then he felt the familiar knife-sharp twist. His face contorted into a mask of both anguish and joy.
Distantly he heard Alexa’s soft confusion. “Lord Sevin? What’s wrong? What’s happening?”
He bit off a snarl, unable to form the words to explain. The snare of his arm around her tightened, some ancient instinct within reminding him it was paramount that he keep her—his mate—with him until this turmoil ceased. Until he was changed. Ready.
Her muffled protest seemed too remote to heed as he fought to stay on his feet. For now he could only endure, as the last physical change of the Calling night occurred in him.
This was a dangerous time for men of his kind. In these peculiar moments of weakness, their females could escape them or their enemies could do them harm. But from weakness, a new strength would be born. One that would sustain him through the long lusty hours that lay ahead.
At length, all was done. He straightened again. When his arm relaxed around her, Alexa breathed deeply, audibly pulling air into starved lungs. Only then did Sevin realize he’d had a stranglehold on her ribs.
He enfolded her in his arms more gently now and swept her hair aside, displaying the small inked flower she bore there on the side of her throat. At the sight of it, his heart stopped and then raced on, pounding in his ears.
Your beloved. You will know her by the iris.
This was the flower their wine god had favored. An aphrodisiac to males of his kind, it had been used in Calling rituals throughout the centuries. He bent her back over his arm, one palm cradling her head. His mouth found her skin, pressed itself hotly to the floral design, marking her there as his.
At length his gaze lifted. Beyond her, he met his brother’s eyes across the room, saw them glitter through the darkness like those of a leopard in the night jungle. They were both changed now. Freakish creatures of the kind that might fuel a human’s erotic nightmares. Bizarre anomalies, that in this century, dwellers in this world had brushed off as myth. Until recent months, when they’d found out otherwise.
“You’re different,” Alexa whispered, skimming a hand along his thigh. He took her curious fingers and drew them to his hardness, naked in the gape of his trousers. He needed to feel her touch there. Wanted her to acknowledge the changes in him. Wanted to watch her face as she stroked him.
Using her hands as if they were his own, Sevin touched himself, drawing her fists under his, upward along twin lengths from root to crown. The coming of the moon had wrought this change in him. Had gifted him with an additional phallus ripped from his own flesh. It strained from him, rooted only an inch or so above the traditional one branching from the dark thatch at his groin.
After a single ejaculation, this new, second shaft would be gone again, only to reappear a month from now in accordance with the visit of the next full moon.
His passions were on a tenuous leash, his body fully prepared now for all to begin. Both erections twitched under this woman’s touch, hungry for a more intimate taste of her. Aching for the soft, slick haven her body could provide.
S
o the rumors were true! Alexa had seen the depictions of the Satyr in the museums, and had suspected as much, of course. But to see this for herself. To touch him like this. She gazed at the columns of hard masculine flesh under her stroking hands, mesmerized. It hardly seemed possible that a man—even one from another world—could change in such a way!
Sevin’s linen shirt hung open, and the lantern flickered its golden light across the sleek, well-formed contours of his broad chest. She let her long hair fall forward to curtain her face from him as she studied the phalluses that jutted upward from his pelvis and groin, one set just above the other. They were barbaric in size and strength with blood-rich veins roping their lengths, and their fat, smooth crowns flushed a dusky red.
He helped her to stroke them, and she knew he was mimicking the way he wanted to move them inside her. They were hot and vibrant under her hands, heavy with erotic intent, iron encased in sleek velvet. When he taught her fingers what he liked, she felt his body quicken, saw the muscles of his belly go taut and corded.
Her pulse fluttered at the hollow of her throat and she swallowed a tremor of fear. Her single personal experience of carnal matters had been so painful and disappointing. She prayed this would be different.
“Don’t hurt me.” Though her demand came as a whisper, he heard it.
His hands left hers and he pulled her into the cave of his chest, his touch surprisingly gentle as he surrounded her with his body and scent. “I won’t. I swear it,” he promised. It was a low masculine growl, and one she somehow sensed she could trust. She nodded slowly, accepting his word. Her arms encircled him, her fingers tucking just inside the back of his loosened trousers.
“Luc.” His head lifted toward his brother and he jerked his chin toward the pallet he’d made across the room. “I came across some bottles in a cabinet. Unguents and oils set out there on the blankets. Find something and bring it to me.” Lifting her by the waist, Sevin crowded her backward a few steps until she came up against some leather-bound trunks along the wall. Stacked one atop another and two deep from the wall, they rose only as high as her waist.
In seconds, Lucien was beside them. As he handed something to his brother, his eyes flickered over her. Male hunger came and went in them, so fleeting she wasn’t sure she’d truly seen it. Then he was gone again.
She heard the clink of glass as Sevin pulled the stopper from the decorative bottle he held now and poured something viscous from it into his palm. Tossing the bottle aside, his other hand ruched up the front of her gown—it barely clung to her now and sagged from her waist to the floor, secured to her only by the crook of her bent arms.
Beneath its skirt, his fingers found the apex of her thighs, threaded through the soft, feminine bristle there. A strangled moan escaped her as they pushed between her legs, palming and stroking her most private flesh.
Alexa clutched the chiseled muscles of his upper arms, needing an anchor as so many delicious, wondrous sensations assaulted her at once. His clean breath mingling with her own. A thumb oiling her clit. A tongue sliding along hers. Long fingers stroking the pink folds of her flesh with slow, easy, rhythmic movements. His kiss. Deep inside, her core began to melt for him, readying her with a natural feminine slickness meant to ease his way in the performance that lay ahead.
She wilted against the trunks at her back, the heels of her hands lifting to clutch the edge of the uppermost of them. Her head lolled back and her entire body swayed under his every voluptuous stroke.
Mmm.
When his touch left her momentarily, it was to briskly smear the remainder of the oil on his erections. He was so close that she could feel the push-pull of his hands, the occasional nudge of knuckles at her belly. She heard the smacking sounds, and smelled the spicy scent of the oil as he worked himself.
His hands rose and cupped her breasts in an arousing, voluptuous massage. His mouth captured a peak and dragged on it in a sweet, sensual pull that had her moaning. Their eyes met and clung. Sevin brushed her lips with his a final time, and spoke to her in his language—a low sound of carnal intent.
Then he lifted her slightly and turned her to face the wall. She bowed forward over the uppermost trunk and the length of her hair slid smoothly across one shoulder to drape her forearms where they rested atop it. A small corner of her mind was aware that his brother watched them from the shadows, and the scandalous notion that they were not alone in this beat a terrible, forbidden excitement through her.
Behind her, she heard the rustle of Sevin’s clothing, felt his trousers shoved low. All seemed so surreal here in this dark, cool room bathed in golden light. She could hardly credit that she was here with this man, a virtual stranger. That this was actually going to happen between them. That it wasn’t simply an erotic dream. Why did it all feel so easy, so right?
The back of her gown lifted. Strong, furred thighs forced hers wider. She sensed the barely leashed urgency in him now, and matters proceeded with haste. Hands came, each fisted over a phallus. Plump, smooth crests nestled in place, one at the heart of her feminine folds, the other finding the divide of her bottom.
She drew herself up, stilling like a doe under threat from a predator.
Then came the sharp bite of a dual penetration. Her eyes went fixed and her hands fisted on the trunk. She gasped as she felt flesh give way to the masculine pressure. His groan of pleasure tangled with her sharp cry as the oiled heads of his erections breached her. Inside her, they were smooth, immense, slick, and scalding hot. She rose on her toes to ease the sensation, but he was already plumbing deeper.
A broad hand settled at the bone of her hip and tightened reflexively, sending an erotic thrill over her skin to throb at her feminine core. His other hand came around her, fingers bunching in the fabric of her gown at her belly to hold her ready for his lovemaking.
Her eyes stared unseeingly at the trunk upon which she rested, and she drew careful, shallow, silent breaths. Every fiber of her being was focused now on their connection, on his slick, ceaseless ingress. As his masculine flesh steadily advanced, so her feminine flesh succumbed. She wanted to urge him on, and yet at the same time, wanted to push him away.
In her many daydreams, she could never have imagined the incredible sensation of having this powerful man mating himself to her in this animalistic way. When uncertainty gripped her, and she was sure she could take no more, he seemed to sense it and he would slow himself. His lips would brush her nape, telling her how much her flesh pleased him, how good it felt to be inside her, coaxing her to relax for him, take more of him.
Finally, eventually, ultimately he slid home. He bent low, a guttural pagan groan of pure ecstasy escaping him. She cried out, her spine curling under him.
She was full, so impossibly full. It seemed impossible, incredible that he could be so deeply buried inside her. But she felt the truth of it in the hardness that stretched her tender openings, in the soft scratch of his groin against the delicate skin of her bottom, in the powerfully muscled thighs that pressed hers wide.
A strange sort of pride welled up in her—that of a female who has managed to provide succor to her mate. Amazingly, she felt no pain, only a thrilling anticipation. It was as if her flesh had been specifically designed to glove this particular man in this intimate, precious way. Surely, they must have been created by some greater hand to fit so perfectly together.
Arms surrounded her and Sevin enfolded her into his embrace as they half lay on the trunk. His broad palm took the weight of a feminine breast, squeezing sensuously and drawing its peak outward in a way that made her moan. In reaction, her tissues convulsed on his phalluses of their own accord.
His mouth found the side of her neck just below her ear. His voice came, strained and hot on her skin. “Gods, Alexa. If you keep that up ...” He drew a shuddering breath, then his hips withdrew slightly and he commenced a slow, measured push-pull.
He braced himself wider, so her thighs draped his now. His fists slammed upon the trunk on either side of her, his fingers clenched tight. Yet still, his thrusts were tense, measured. “I promised to go easy with you,” he muttered, as if trying to remind himself of this fact.
“I don’t care,” she whispered, shaking her head. “I just need ... I want ... more ... oh, please.”
“Yes. Gods, yes.” He fucked her hard then, his body hunting its pleasure in hers in earnest. She could feel his crowns moving inside her, rubbing her in just the right way. Hot hands smoothed upward along the long muscles of her back, from her hips and over her ribs, then back again. They clenched on the globes of her bottom, held her hip bones.
She fit herself to his rocking rhythm, bowing for him when his inward push lifted her slightly, and arching when he suctioned away. The stark slap of their flesh was loud, their sharp cries and soft moans echoing in the quiet, a lecherous, seductive sound. He fucked her fiercely now, grunting his enjoyment and murmuring small encouragements. Telling her how well he liked the stroke of her flesh, how good it was, how soft, how wet, how slick.
His words slipped in and out of that other language she didn’t comprehend as he seemed to lose himself in her and in this carnal dance they did. Her eyes fluttered open and she gazed at his shadow on the wall before her. It loomed large, his shoulders so wide and his frame so massive that she could see nothing of her own shadow. It seemed that he had overtaken her, dominated her, so that it was impossible to tell where one of them began and the other ended. She was one with him, connected in a way she’d never felt connected to another being.
He covered her back, his forearms braced on either side of her so that Alexa was forced to bend lower under him. She rested her forehead on her fists. Damp tendrils of hair framed her flushed face. Her eyes were closed, her mouth gasping. The leather-bound trunk grazed her soft skin, dragged lightly and thrillingly at her nipples as her breasts shuddered with each powerful buck of her lover’s hips.
The passionate friction licked sensation at her nerve endings, curling, coiling, amplifying. She churned with it. Burned with it. Hurtling toward a fulfillment she’d never experienced, yet had yearned for—and already felt within her reach. She tilted her hips for him, panted, bowed, and arched. Begged, pleaded.
Reached for that wondrous feeling that was, as yet, just ... out ... of ... reach... .
Across the room, Luc stood in shadow, watching them. Tension clenched his every muscle. His skin felt too tight, his blood’s pump too hot.
With the moon’s coming, his body had changed in the same way as his brother’s. Like all the Satyr tonight, his carnal need was all encompassing, a taut blend of pleasure and pain. He would sicken soon, if he did not take this woman after Sevin had mated her. His gaze narrowed on her, revolted by the thought of fucking a Patrizzi.