The Wolf's Captive (14 page)

And now here she was, naked before him again, her delicious nipple in his mouth, shivering slightly. It was not cold. He knew it was her desire for him; he could smell it, could feel it in his bones. It was his anchor, the thing that made him more than just a damaged, broken man and a vengeful beast occupying the same body. In this moment, he was whole.

He drew away and brushed the fair skin of her belly, and thrilled to watch her shudder.

The desire to possess her totally, to open her up and have all of her, replaced every other feeling in his aching body. And because of her, he was still strong, still alert, still with the world of smells—her smell—swirling around him, but in control now. Not mindless.

Of one mind.

“Sit down and spread your legs.”

Cesare heard her swallow, very slowly. With her head held high, she turned and sat delicately on the edge of the settee. Here is where she faltered. A flush climbed up her beautiful neck and spread to her chest; she was embarrassed. More than that, Cesare realized, she was afraid. Afraid to be vulnerable and exposed with him. Because of a question he’d asked her that he couldn’t answer himself.

Well, he would show her what he thought of her at her most exposed. It was the best he could do.

“I said spread your legs.”

He commanded her the way he might a Severille slave, and got the same immediate, ingrained obedience: her thighs parted, her knees bent. She was a natural, and she spread as wide for him as she could before she realized she’d even done it. She blushed, but held her back straight, pushing her perfect breasts up for him.

Cesare had to catch his breath.

“You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” he said simply. It was true.

Whatever she was expecting, it was not that. She shifted her weight, as though about to move, about to speak, about to break the spell, but Cesare fell to his knees in front of her, and put his huge hands on her spread thighs, keeping her still.

“I did not say to move. Do not…for pity’s sake…
do not move
.”

He stayed kneeling in front of her, while her breath came in quivering gasps, and drank the sight of her in. Her folds were glistening wet, and her nub was already swollen and begging to be touched. She was perfect, although in the back of his mind he knew she would have been perfect no matter what, simply by virtue of being her.

And he had made her feel terrible.

Lucia stifled a little noise, and Cesare looked up to find that she was quietly crying, the trails of a few stray tears staining her cheeks. She was overcome, even though he knew she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He might never understand women, especially this one, whom he loved and yet who might be trying to kill him, but he could do what he could to show her how he felt. He leaned in and kissed her.

Where their first kiss had been about passion, about what passed between them in that one moment, this one was deliberate, about all the things Cesare felt in every moment but could not put into words. It was a love letter for the impatient, the immediate, from a man who was not yet capable of spoken confession. It was his need for her, distilled.

He was delicate and strong and insistent, and wanted to savor the taste of her. But more important was the fact that she kissed back. Hesitant and shy at first, but then with a tender ferocity that nearly erased what was left of his suspicious mind.

Cesare pushed her back against the settee, dropped his head back between her legs, and kissed her more intimately.

She tasted sweet, as he knew she would. She wriggled as he laved her bud with his tongue. The sounds she made weren’t quite words, just the sounds of surprise and awe and innocent delight. She’d never done this before, just as she’d never known a man—he could tell. Cesare brought one huge hand up to her breast, pinching and pulling at her nipple, while his mouth made love to her.

Lucia’s first orgasm was light, like a feathery thing he could feel fluttering away from her body. It made him hungrier. He sucked gently until he’d coaxed her back to the brink, and then he thrust two fingers curling deep inside her, finding that little rough island he knew would be there. He began to rub against it, his tongue still working furiously, and soon Lucia was screaming. Cesare felt her ripple and pulse around his fingers and tongue, and every moan of her pleasure was like an unfurling tether from her body to his, lashing them together, holding him steady, making him stronger by tying him to her.

He felt like he knew her body as intimately as his own, and just as she was about to climax again, he freed his cock and drove it into her, grabbing her behind the knees and lifting her legs up, sinking in to the very hilt. Lucia’s eyes flew open, and she choked on a cry before she found her voice, lower, lower still, as he thrust into her, over and over again.

Lucia threw her head back and screamed, and convulsed around him as though she couldn’t get enough, drawing him in deeper, ever deeper. Then she hurtled forward, wrapping her arms around him, and sunk her teeth into the scar on his chest.

Cesare came with blinding force. Everything went white.

He didn’t know how long they lay entangled together, sprawled absurdly on his ruined settee. He began to come back to full consciousness slowly, and as he did, he passed through a brief moment of complete and utter clarity:
she is still hiding something
.

She was. Whatever…sense…he had of her, whatever it was, he could feel it; she had been bare, open, for a single beat, and by the time he had come to, she had tucked herself away again, her heart hidden deep inside.

And again it tugged at him, caused him pain, threatened to drag the beast out. Cesare had to wonder how much time he had to win her heart before the Berkari curse overtook him completely.

And whether the heart of a traitor was winnable at all.

C
HAPTER 9

Lucia awoke just before dawn, disoriented in the dark. For a moment she took all that she’d experienced for a fevered dream, a sexual fantasy about a man she would never have—and then she felt her sheets.

Pure silk.

She’d never touched such silk in all her life. She lay still and silent for what seemed like a long time, reassembling the pieces of memory in her mind. So much had happened. Her father, arrested—oh, gods, that had really happened, then, too. And Lucia herself a captive. A sexual captive. Her encounters with Lord Cesare punctuated her memory like bright, blinding flashes, so intense it was hard to think coherently about them. Both times, she’d been dazed for a long time afterward.

This last time he’d collapsed in her arms. She’d had a sense of peace before the reality of her situation began to penetrate her consciousness, and by then Lord Cesare himself had become distant and awkward. For a brief moment it had seemed like they might lay like that together forever, and then, suddenly, with a bow—with a
bow
—he’d left.

She’d had the presence of mind to dress herself again, and she’d been as ready as she could have been when Avignon knocked discreetly on the library door. He’d shown her to a lavishly decorated bedroom without further comment, though he’d had someone prepare a bath and leave her some food.

Lucia liked Avignon.

Perhaps more, in this dark, lonely, early morning moment, than she liked Lord Cesare. That wasn’t quite fair, she knew; there had been no promises of emotional entanglement in their arrangement. Rather the opposite, actually. And she’d promised herself that she’d keep her mind, and she’d just assumed that meant she’d get to keep her heart, too.

Stupid girl
, she thought savagely.
Caring for a beast
.

He really was a beast. The way he’d attacked that vile Captain, and even Paolo, the unrestrained, primal fury of it, was truly terrifying. And he could be so cruel with her, so careless and brutal with his words and actions. And it always came after something sweet or happy, as if he regarded tenderness and affection with reactionary suspicion. Just like a wild animal.

Of course, his beastly attributes weren’t all bad. If he were fashioning himself after a Berkari myth, Lucia wouldn’t complain about the sexual benefits. She felt like she’d gone from nominal virgin to sexual virtuoso in only a few days, due to his tutelage. He was better even than her own ministrations.

She just had to keep him happy long enough to save her father, and hope she didn’t lose herself along the way.

The irony, Lucia realized as she gave up on sleep entirely, was that the more she fell for Lord Cesare, the harder it was to conceal from him the things she’d always been taught that she must kept hidden if she were to catch a man: her stubborn will, her contrary opinions, her cutting humor. Lucia had never been an easy person, a pliable person, and her grandmother had made sure she knew what men thought of difficult women.

“I’m doing my best, Nana,” Lucia said, angry at no one in particular.

She kicked her legs free of the luxurious sheets and fumbled with the heavy latch on the huge paned window. The first light of dawn was beginning to leak through the early mists, and Lucia wanted to feel fresh air and a hint of sunshine before she had to go back into hiding.

Lucia didn’t know what she expected when she threw open the window. Maybe some beautiful, melancholy birdsong or something, but definitely not the sounds of street boys fighting over the best pickings from the trash.

“Oy, I saw you palm that!” said an angry little voice.

“Keep it quiet, you idiot,” came the reply.

Some people would have been annoyed. But Lucia only had one thought:
Remy!

~  ~  ~

It had taken Lucia only a moment to navigate her way to the back stairs and down to the kitchens. She’d found clothing in the closets of her room, and, while most of it appeared to require the assistance of a small army for proper assembly, there had been a sort of rich velvet cloak thing that she’d managed to grab and throw around her shoulders. Similarly, there weren’t any servants to avoid; there were only a few in the house, since Lord Cesare seemed to want to keep Lucia’s presence in his life a secret. And she’d found that she could navigate a grand kitchen as well as her own modest one. She’d grabbed a meat pie from the cold room and run to the delivery door, hoping she’d still find them out there.

Lucia was in luck. She heard the telltale scampering as soon as she opened the door.

No use beating around the bush. Lucia said, loud and clear, “I’ve brought you a pie.”

She was met with an intrigued silence. She could almost hear the raising of many little eyebrows.

“You’re not in trouble,” she said, dropping her voice to a stage whisper. “I’ve a favor to ask, that’s all.”

She waited. The dawn was breaking fast, and soon the street boys would need to melt back into their darkened alleys and side streets. And the longer Lucia stood there in the street, in plain sight, the longer she was exposed to the likes of Captain Rickle. But these were not the sorts of boys to blindly trust in good fortune. They reminded her a little of Lord Cesare in that way.

“Listen, I’ve got to talk to Remy,” she tried at last. “If you want to explain to him that you passed up a good pie and cost him his own, be my guest.” And she pretended to turn toward the door, which was propped open with half a brick.

“What sort of pie, miss?”

He’d come from nowhere. Lucia would swear she’d only turned for half a second, but there he was, huddled close to the back gate. His face was dirty, like Remy’s always was, and his hair was long and knotted. He didn’t yet have Remy’s self-assurance, and so he almost seemed his age, which couldn’t have been more than six.

“Pork, I think,” Lucia said.

“That’s a good kind of pie.”

“You can have it if you promise to tell Remy that his friend Lucia is all right,” she said. The street boy’s eyes never left the pie. “And if you ask him to come tell me about her—about
Lucia’s
father,” she added.

“Sure, I can do that, miss.”

“Don’t tell anyone else, all right? It’s very important that you don’t tell anyone else the names.”

“We never tell anyone names, miss.”

Lucia held the pie out, making the offering official. The boy sprang forward and thrust out his sparrow-thin hands. She hesitated.

“You’ll share with your friends, won’t you?” she asked.

“‘Course, miss,” the boy scoffed. Lucia laughed, and handed off the prize pie. The boy’s face lit up for a brief second, and then he disappeared around a corner, the sounds of laughter and tiny feet echoing after him in the early dawn.

Lucia had to hope it would work. She needed information. She was relying entirely on the changeable Lord Cesare for her father’s future, and she didn’t even know what her father was supposed to have done.

~  ~  ~

When Lucia next awoke, it was well past noon. The warm, lazy light of spring streamed in through the huge window, right up until Avignon crossed the room and closed it.

“I apologize, Miss Lyselle, but we cannot risk your exposure, given the circumstances,” he said, latching the window firmly shut. He even drew the heavy drapes, giving the outside world one last suspicious glance.

“And Lord Cesare requires your presence at lunch. He requests that you wear the blue.” Avignon coughed meaningfully. “And nothing but,” he added.

Lucia blinked. There was another slight, silky thing draped at the foot of her bed. Lord Cesare was dressing her in what amounted to lingerie—again. It was both intoxicating and humiliating. Perhaps it was intoxicating
because
it was humiliating. Lucia was having to face her own sexual proclivities while she was Lord Cesare’s captive, and she was finding they were even darker than she’d thought. She nodded silently, grateful when Avignon left the room. She was already wet for Lord Cesare, and the day had not even begun.