The Hunger (26 page)

Quintoc grinned and popped the buttons one by one off John’s cream-colored waistcoat. He pulled the end of John’s cravat, unwound it and threw it to the ground as Asharti stalked around them, watching. Then, systematically, Quintoc cut off John’s coat, waistcoat, trousers, and stockings. Several times, John felt the prick of the blade on his body as Quintoc was careless with the point. Shoes
were pulled off, shirt and smallclothes ripped away, until John stood naked in his chains. Quintoc stepped back, twirling the knife in one hand.

“There, that’s better,” Asharti observed, pausing in front of him. “I like my men naked.” She looked him up and down. “Especially men built as well as you are.” She smiled. “You are strong. Your scars say you have borne wounds and pain before. You’ll last a long time.” She swept one finger along a cut. It came back coated in blood. She brought it to her mouth and licked, slowly, sensually. Her dark pupils sparked red again. He was not dreaming now.

John gritted his teeth. Horror washed over him. What
was
she? He felt so vulnerable. That’s how she wanted him to feel. He pressed down the panic. She had better get used to disappointment. “You might as well kill me. I’ll be no use to you,” he growled.

“Use?” she tittered. “If you mean you won’t tell me everything I want to know, you lie. You’ll whisper all your secrets eagerly, like sweet nothings in my ear.” She cocked her head and studied him. “But that is only one use I have for you.”

Behind her, Quintoc chuckled. It sounded avaricious.

Asharti whirled on him. “He is for my use alone, until I say otherwise,” she hissed.

John saw a flash of fear in Quintoc’s eyes. “Of course, mistress,” he muttered, cowed.

“Leave the key to his chains when you go.”

John watched as a large metal key clanked upon a table whose heavy wood was scarred with age and use. Did she mean to free him from his chains? His mind skittered over possible escape. Could the table be used as a shield? Could he smash it against the wall? A leg might serve as a club. Or the torch . . . he could lunge for the torch. Quintoc did not bother to shut the door on his way out. Hope flickered in John’s heart.

When he glanced back to Asharti, there was a look of amusement in her eyes. “We are about to have our first lesson, I think.” Her voice was low and throaty.

John blinked and tried to breathe as she bent and unlocked the shackles on his ankles, then reached for the locks at his wrists. She was a tall woman, but still it was a stretch. Her breasts brushed his bare chest. She was going to unlock him! He must be wary. She was strong.

She looked straight into his eyes as his hand came free. He must wait—wait until she unlocked the last chain. Would she really be so foolish as to set him free with a door open and weapons, even crude ones, to hand? He stared at her, defiant. She would expect that.

And then her eyes went red. The feel of her nipples raking his chest through the translucent cloth made his loins feel heavy. Her eyes, red but fascinating, promised pleasures the likes of which he had never known. He would like to know them. She thrust her hips against him. The cool clink of the coins that dangled from her belt sent a shudder through him, but not of cold. He felt his cock rise. How could his body betray him thus when all he should be thinking about was escape? But he could not hold those thoughts. The scrape of fabric across his belly, the swell of her breasts, the throbbing in his genitals, filled all the corners of his mind.

She reached a hand behind his neck and drew his head down to her lips. Something scraped across the flesh at his throat. Goose bumps shot down his right arm and his leg as she whispered, “Come. Let us wash the stink of travel from our bodies before we play.”

She turned, and walked through the open door.

God help him, he followed. He passed the table, the torch, without taking action and followed her through the stone passage. Every detail stood out as it does in a dream. The light of flaming brands in holders flickered over her form. Her dark hair swung, loose to her waist
over the olive-green gauze. The leather of her sandals was worked in copper thread. He looked down and saw his own erection, stiff and throbbing. He was sweating. The walls were sweating. All was heat and desire.

The passage opened onto a stone room lit by torches all around. The air was heavy with moisture. They crossed a little stone bridge over water that steamed. Ahead, on a raised dais, was a round stone rim with tiny nudes cavorting among grapes and leaves, the figures sharp once but now rounded with age. From inside the rim steam rose. Set against the right-hand wall was a wide marble bench similarly decorated and laid with red and purple cushions.

Just over the little bridge, Asharti stopped and turned. She gestured to steps that led down into the steaming water. Next to the steps were some rough towels, much-used soap, and a terra-cotta bowl of leaves. He knew what she wanted. She did not speak. But he knew.

He stepped slowly down into the water. It was hot, but not hotter than the blood that boiled in him. Slowly he knelt, submerging his erection in the heat, until the dark waters were up to the middle of his chest. He looked up slowly at Asharti. She smiled in satisfaction. Then she bent and tossed him the soap. He splashed water over his shoulders, ducked his head then stood, the water up to his thighs. As she watched, he lathered his body. He ran his hands over his shoulders and down his arms. He rubbed his chest and his belly. That’s what she wanted. Then in answer to her unspoken command he slid his fingers between his buttocks and lathered his anus, blushing in shame at the look of satisfaction on her face. He soaped his genitals, heavy with desire for her. He slid his foaming hands up and down the length of his cock until he was almost in pain with the need for release. But, on the edge of coming, he did not. He could not look at her, but he knew what was required anyway. He ducked again
in the water and rinsed. When he stood, water sluicing off him, she allowed him to ascend the steps. He dried himself with the coarse cloth she offered. He could feel her approval of his body. Then she held out the bowl. He took some leaves and put them in his mouth. Mint. He chewed and finally spit into the bowl.

“Now my turn,” she said, low in her throat. She went to the edge of the carved stone rim. John followed and knelt beside her, fear and shame mingling in his breast. It was a great stone bath. Various bottles of colored glass were set nearby on a heavy silver tray. Wine bottles sweated in terra-cotta canisters filled with melting ice. Rich towels far softer than the ones he had used were stacked near the bench.

Asharti unbuckled her belt and pushed the olive fabric from her shoulders. Naked except for her armbands, she wound her hair up and fastened it with two great wooden pins John handed her from the tray. The gesture made her breasts rise. John was afraid his loins would burst.

“Not yet, my pet,” she admonished, as though she knew how close he was, and stepped into the bath. There was a kind of circular stone bench around the inside. She settled herself and then beckoned with one copper-nailed finger, to John. “Bathe me,” she ordered.

John stepped in after her. The waters were as hot as the springs under the bridge below, but slick with scented oils. As in a dream, John laved it over her shoulders as she leaned back and closed her eyes in sensual absorption. He selected a soap and lathered his hands. Then, kneeling in the water beside her, he rubbed the suds over her shoulders, her breasts. Her nipples hardened under his hands. She sat upright, and he soaped her back and arms, alternately lathering his hands and caressing her skin with the slickness. She stood, and he, still kneeling in the water, soaped the roundness of her buttocks, and slid his hands down her thighs. Dread welled in him as he realized that
he was to bathe her private parts as well. The soapy slickness on his fingers met inner folds already slick with desire. He felt her pleasure point, swollen and eager, and slid two fingers along it until she was breathing fast and shallowly.

Then he was standing. She wanted him to apply the soap to his cock, and he did. God, he was going to do anything she wanted! He lifted her so she could straddle his waist, her arms round his neck. His hands on her buttocks lowered her onto his soapy cock. He groaned, and she breathed out as he filled her. Her hands moved over the muscles bunching in his shoulders as he raised and lowered her. She arched back and locked her ankles behind him. Then she bent forward with something like a growl. He felt her breath against his throat and then two stabbing pains. She sucked, rhythmically, as she impaled herself again and again on his member. He felt far away from himself, the sucking at his throat and the stimulation of his cock swirling together into a haze of ecstasy. He teetered on the edge of coming—that pleasure so intense it was more like pain—but somehow he never did.

Asharti did, however. She pulled back from his throat with a shuddering cry. He could feel her contractions around his cock. She went limp over his shoulders and he slowly lowered her into the water. She disengaged herself and lay back as he rinsed her. Where was his will? One part of him was anything but pliable. He could hardly think for the ache in his loins and his erection showed no signs of subsiding. She had sucked his blood! Under the dream he was horrified, even as he knew he let her do it and would do so again.

When he had finished rinsing her body, Asharti bade him get out of the bath, though she used no words. He stood dripping, holding a huge, luxurious-feeling towel for her as she rose. He wrapped her in the soft folds and gently dried her. She touched his neck and her finger came
back bloody. She licked the tip. “So, you have been whipped recently,” she remarked, pulling the towel around her and reclining upon the cushions on the stone bench.

He knelt beside her, still dripping on the stone floor. The damp heat meant his perspiration mingled with the bathwater. “Knees wider. You will always kneel that way to me.” To his shame, he complied. “Now where and by whom were you whipped?”

He did not want to answer her, but the words came tumbling out. “Portsmouth. The commander of the prison hulk ordered me lashed.”

Asharti propped her head upon one elbow. “Well, it looks as though making it off the hulks alive was a near thing. I personally thought you would die there. I cannot say I am sorry, though. If you had died, I would have missed this lovely interlude at Chantilly.” She lifted his chin with one finger. “Who were you there to see?”

This was the beginning of her questions, but it would not be the end. John knew he must refuse to answer if he was to come away with his honor. He clenched his teeth around a guttural sound that swelled in his throat. But he found his gaze being pulled up to her face. He strained to jerk away. He closed his eyes, but they would not stay closed, and there they were, her red eyes. He gasped, and the words were torn from him. “Dupré” he grunted, so low it must be unintelligible.

But she heard. “Ah yes, Dupré,” she said. “You were supposed to kill him. But you didn’t.”

“No,” John croaked. But she knew that already. She had him killed herself. She was toying with him. John shuddered. She would ask him everything, and God help him, he would answer.

“You’re doing well.” She reached out and ran her hand over his shoulder, touching the scars. “You have had a busy life. And to think they all believe you are a worthless rake. You have caused havoc for my dear little emperor,
you and your rebellious diminutive island. While you have that navy he is not safe, though he wins battle after battle by land. He wants the world. I want it through him. But first we must pull out this English thorn.”

She cradled his jaw and ran her thumb over the muscle he clenched there. “My agent almost had you several times in London.” She said it like a caress. Her hand stroked the arteries that beat with the flutter of his heart in his throat. She held his neck between fingers and thumb, lightly. “But you have come to me instead. How delightful. How many secrets you must know!”

She must have seen the fear, the horror rise in his eyes. “Delightful,” she whispered. “But we will save that for future conversations. I find your resistance . . . stimulating. Futile, of course, but that is part of the attraction.” She threw aside her towel, revealing her lithe body, and John crawled up onto the cushions and lay, wet, beside her. “I believe I am still hungry for you.”

Part of him despaired even as he throbbed against her and bent to kiss her nipple.

Beatrix paced the snug coffee room of the Crowned Head in Petersfield. Langley had been here all right. He put up at this very inn the night before the prizefight. His name was in the ledger. He had driven out the next morning. Everyone at the inn assumed he had gone to the mill. Beatrix was willing to lay odds he had not. Neither had he gone to imaginary friends in Hampshire. But how to trace him? Livery stable. “Symington,” she called.

A few hours later they were bowling along toward the first posting house on the road to Portsmouth. He had not gone to the mill. The groom at the livery said he had driven toward Portsmouth. She was betting he had gone all the way to Portsmouth, but she had to be sure. Now came the tedious part. If he was really bent on some innocent visit he would have stopped at the big coaching houses for
refreshment, and so would be easily traced. However, a man with secrets would not continue in that so-identifiable carriage with the Langley crest on the doors. That man would stash the carriage in a byway, and continue, whether to Portsmouth or a some other destination, in a more circumspect vehicle. To trace him she had to find the place where he had changed his livery. The possibilities were daunting.

The first step was to inquire at the major posting houses. Though it was six weeks ago, Symington’s guineas provoked real effort at memory. So Beatrix knew Langley had driven his own phaeton through Weston, Horndean, and Purbrook, stopping to water his horses and take a glass of negus or porter at the major coaching stops. Now they started checking smaller houses, too, being very close to Portsmouth.

She was impatient and snapped at Symington twice. If Langley were even now being called back from whatever mission he was on, to be set upon the trail of whatever rogue cult had drained the blood of a whole ship, she might be too late to save him. It had been some time since she had wakened in the evening with anything like anticipation in her breast.