The Wolf's Captive (18 page)

“My Lord,” she said, her slightly confused voice muffled against his chest. “Just over my right shoulder. That group with Gaston Grimaldi. One of those men, only I cannot tell exactly which one.”

Cesare’d had only perhaps a second of peace before Lucia had uttered the name ‘Grimaldi.’ He wished he’d savored it. Another Grimaldi connection would only further implicate Lucia’s father, and thus Lucia herself. Still, he had to get to the truth.

“Then we will have to go ferret him out,” he said, forcing himself to pull away. Lucia’s bright green eyes shone beneath her mask. “Don’t worry. Your mask will protect your identity here.”

She nodded. Cesare looked down at her breasts, which strained against the poor fabric of her dress, letting her dark nipples peek through the fine, translucent weave. “Though I doubt anyone will be looking at your face,” he added. He was absurdly grateful for the distraction of her flesh at that moment.

Lucia smiled. “Whose fault is that, my Lord?”

Impulsively he pushed aside the offending fabric and squeezed her bare breast. “Only don’t forget: you belong to
me
,” he said.

The hitch in her breath was particularly satisfying. Cesare wished they had more time. He wished he could simply take her back to his townhouse and ignore the rest of the world. Instead he covered her again and reattached her leash with only a hint of ceremony. He held her chin, looked into her eyes: she understood.

“Come,” he said, and turned in the direction of Gaston Grimaldi and his group of sycophants, possessed by the notion that if he didn’t get this over with, he might not be able to resist the temptation to simply grab Lucia, make an insane run on the jail for her father, and flee the city.

Control yourself, Cesare
.

He didn’t look forward to the way Grimaldi and his goons might drool at Lucia, especially given the risk that at least one of them might know her, but he had to have her listen to them up close. They were clustered together, laughing mawkishly, even with all of their attention directed…where, exactly? Cesare was thwarted by both the size of the crowd and the placement of several central pillars from which the lines of lanterns spread out across the entire barge. Everyone around him seemed to be staring at something just out of his sight.

But the crowd itself was what bothered him. Every Bacchanal crowd was different, every Bacchanal crowd moved with its own energy. This one was skittish, almost frightened, and yet there was something, something beyond the pillars, that drew them in. Like bugs to a lantern, darting in and out, tittering nervously to each other like school children. The laughter was all high-pitched, much of it forced, all of it anxious.

He could smell the curious mixture of excitement and fear.

It was the first time he’d smelled anything like it. Most Bacchanal events were highly anticipated and yet somehow routine, and with everything watched by the
oscario
, there was no reason to fear. This smelled like the fear of the unknown. It was like what he’d smelled in the jail.

The fear of uncertain danger.

And the smell of it grew more intense anytime one of those skittish guests turned to look at him.

Cesare pulled gently on Lucia’s leash until she was close beside him, and put his arm around her. Something about this was not right.

Still, he forced his way through the crowd. When guests looked up and saw who he was, they tended to vanish, some of them spilling their drinks with a start, others melting away quickly.

“Are you all right, my Lord?” Lucia whispered to him.

“No.”

And still he pressed forward. Grimaldi was in sight, his minuscule mask dangling from one relaxed hand. He didn’t even care who saw him, somehow safe in the knowledge that no one would trace his conspiracy. The arrogance was astounding. And yet, if Lucia could identify even just the
one
man, Cesare might have a chance of winning her freedom, which meant, he now felt, his own freedom.

The crowd was thickest now where they were, all of the faces oriented toward something on the other side of the pillars. All of the faces that did not turn toward Cesare in fear, that is. He had never felt quite so…
watched
, he supposed was the only way to put it, not even when commanding a raiding force. These casual party guests, when they saw him, reacted as though they’d seen Death himself. But Cesare was focused on his quarry, blind to all else outside his telescopic field of vision, to anything extraneous to his immediate goal.

Until Lucia herself stopped, and stared.

It was Lucia, then, who unwittingly brought it forth, and even then only because everything she did was of interest to Cesare Lupin, and that could hardly be considered her fault. And besides, she did not know of the ban Cesare himself had imposed. She had never seen anything like it, and had no idea it was forbidden, and so of course she stopped and stared. Of course she was shocked. Of course she was upset, perhaps appalled, and yet curious. There was no one to explain to her that what she witnessed was entirely consensual, just as there was no one to explain to her why such a sight had never been seen at a public Severille gathering since Cesare Lupin came of age.

And there was no one to explain what risk there was in allowing such a thing to be seen in the presence of Lord Cesare Lupin.

All Cesare saw was Lucia, stopping dead in her tracks, her mouth open, her eyes wide underneath her bright scarlet mask and trained upon something to his right, just beyond the border of the central pillars. Her reaction was enough to give Cesare pause in his mission, to make him crane his neck and look.

And before he did, he heard the sound. A crackling
snap
. A sound that vibrated all the way down the chain of Cesare’s memories to his core, to his childhood, and echoed back up as a scream.

That sound alone almost turned him.

And when he looked, he saw it: a man, a prancing, idiot man, wearing a light mask that only emphasized his large nose, the Marquis de Sason, easily recognizable, given that absurd beak, a juvenile libertine by all accounts, brandishing a bullwhip over the prone, naked buttocks of a Severille slave.

Cesare went cold, right before he went hot.

Technique is everything, Cesare,
said the remembered voice in his head.
It is all in the snap of the wrist.

The Marquis de Sason snapped his wrist, and the tail of the whip cracked around the slave’s skin, leaving an angry red mark. The Marquis shrieked with laughter, like a demented child.

Do you see, Cesare? This is the only way beasts learn. The whip is the golden tongue.

The Marquis, encouraged by the giddy applause of those nearest to him, all of them drunk from partaking in the forbidden, let loose again with his whip. The slave flinched.

But you will never learn, will you, Cesare? And look at what must happen.

The welts crisscrossed the slave’s pale skin like a hastily scratched out section of a hated passage in a diary. The image bypassed Cesare’s conscious brain entirely, and arrived somewhere deeper.

Somewhere far more dangerous.

“Why are there whips?”

He heard the roar, but only in some far away place was Cesare aware that it had come from his own throat. He dropped Lucia’s leash, and quickly cleared a path through the rapidly thinning crowd until he broached the circle around the slave. The Marquis, drunk with his own power, giggled and raised his arm for another stroke.

This time the whip did not catch the slave. Instead it wrapped around Cesare’s thick forearm. He didn’t feel it as pain, only as a call for destruction. The crowd around them froze for one solid second, and then, as one living organism, retreated. The circle around Cesare and the Marquis grew wide; those who had laughed loudest did their best to hide behind others. And yet, no one wanted to miss what happened next.

“Why are there whips?” Cesare repeated. His tongue felt thick, heavy, and words dripped from it, dumb and half-formed.

“My Lord,” the Marquis stammered, his giddy laughter turned both defiant and afraid. “I have every right.”

Cesare jerked his arm, tearing the bullwhip out of the Marquis’s uncertain hands. Snarling, he advanced upon the Marquis, who seemed not to entirely believe that this was happening.

“Only if you do it properly,”
Cesare sneered. The voice, the words, were not his own. He was channeling a remembered terror. “I will show you.”

And he grabbed the thick end of the bullwhip and struck the Marquis across the face with the heavy handle.

The Marquis screamed. Cesare heard the words—something like, “My Lord, I have permission,” over and over again—but was past comprehending. He was sinking into a delirium of violence, a place that felt good and right and comfortable to the parts of him he struggled to keep hidden, a place where his mind gave up all control to the beast that rode his body.

The blood spattered.

The last conscious, human thought he remembered having was this:
I wonder how long before it takes over altogether.

He was changing. He was stronger than any human man had a right to be. No one should be able to smell the world; no one should have such a preternatural understand of the movements of prey.

Because the Marquis had become prey. To be toyed with. To be controlled. To be utterly destroyed.

And it all would have ended right there, on that barge, in an orgy of blood and death, if Lucia Lyselle had not come forward and taken his hand.

C
HAPTER 11

What Lucia remembered most was that he would not let go of her.

From the moment she touched him as he towered over that poor man, sprayed with blood, his eyes flashing madly and his throat making noises she’d never heard, he’d refused to break contact. He’d stopped mid-blow, frozen in a terrifying tableau, the moment her hand touched his.

In retrospect, Lucia couldn’t believe she’d done it. It had been insane. She might have died. Who was to say that Lord Cesare’s blind violence wouldn’t turn on her? He hadn’t been a man so much as a feral, furious, man-shaped animal.

And yet, she’d touched his hand and it had stopped.

Lord Cesare wouldn’t speak, and it was almost as if he didn’t trust himself to move of his own volition. A man who introduced himself as Jovan helped them to a ferry, and then to Lord Cesare’s carriage. The crowd parted for them without comment.

Only when they were alone did Lord Cesare seem to come back to life, and then he did so in spectacular fashion.

In the carriage he’d sat curled over himself, his head buried in the crook of one arm, his other huge paw closed tightly around Lucia’s hand, his breath rasping into the night air. They’d sat in silence, Lucia not knowing what to say, and Lord Cesare apparently unable to speak, both of them swaying softly with the gait of the horses. And then slowly, so slowly, Lord Cesare had begun to unfold.

His massive back, marbled with coiling muscle, straightened, his shoulders heaved, his head brushed the top of the carriage, and his legs planted themselves firmly on the carriage floor. And then he turned his large, handsome head, and his eyes burned into Lucia’s. She knew what was coming a split second before it happened.

In one motion, he pulled her over his legs, and held her splayed, helpless body there while he tore at the front of his trousers. She tried to move, to help him, but he only growled and pinned her arms, keeping her motionless.

Lucia heard herself moan. She couldn’t help the way she reacted to Lord Cesare. To being
held down
by Lord Cesare. She was instantly wet.

Only a moment later he flipped her up, as though she weighed nothing at all, as though she were just a doll, just a plaything; he lifted her up, pushed her legs apart, and lowered her onto his waiting cock. He couldn’t wait. As soon as she felt the tip at her entrance, he drove up into her while pulling her down, impaling her on his full length.

Lucia screamed. She put her arms around his neck and screamed her pleasure, not caring if the coachmen heard. And then she held on for dear life.

Lord Cesare’s hips pistoned up with enough force to lift Lucia’s entire body, and yet Cesare was not satisfied, using his arms to lift her up and drive her down onto his cock over and over again. When the carriage at last rolled to a stop beyond the gates of the townhouse, Lord Cesare burst from the door with Lucia still wrapped around his waist, still pulsing inside her. She put her head into his neck and held on, every movement another escalating pleasure, every step pushing his cock against her flesh.

When they finally reached Lucia’s rooms, Lord Cesare threw her on the bed before him, pinned her arms above her head with one hand, kept her legs spread wide with the other, and drove into her until she blacked out, shuddering and spasming around his furious cock.

~  ~  ~

Lucia awoke with moonlight spilling into her eyes and Lord Cesare’s arms holding her tight. She couldn’t move, but she wouldn’t have wanted to. It was impossible for her to identify and parse all the many complicated things she knew she was feeling, but the warmth of him against her skin, the weight of his body on hers, the smell of him—all of that made it easier for her to simply forget.

For a time.

Eventually, even with his warm breath on her neck, the image of a bloodied Lord Cesare standing over that beaten pulp of a man invaded her mind. The thought was inevitable. It had happened. She had seen it with her own eyes. This man, who understood her body better than she did, who seemed to have such complimentary desires to her own, this man who at that very moment held her so tenderly—he was a man who was capable of beating a man to death.

She’d never seen anything so terrifying in her entire life. She’d never seen such true pain, such brutality, such monstrosity.