Mortal Temptations (11 page)

She pulled the blouse apart and slid it from her shoulders, letting it rest halfway down her arms.

Andreas growled. He slid his chair back from the table, and before she knew what was happening, he had her out of her chair and on his lap, straddling his legs.

He leaned her back, and as the leopard had, licked between her breasts all the way up to her throat. Rebecca sucked in her breath, her quim going hot and wet. She loved the way he’d spread her legs around him, and for some reason she wanted to rub herself against his thighs.

Andreas traced circles on her neck, then licked all the way up to her lips. He danced his tongue around them, reminding her of what the leopard had done last night.

“This can’t be happening,” she said against his playing tongue. “I’m dreaming.”

He cupped her bared breast, rolling her tight nipple between finger and thumb. “Does this feel like a dream?”

“The best dream.”

He kissed her. His lips opened hers, his demanding tongue delving inside her mouth. It had been so long, so long, since a man had kissed her, and then they’d never kissed her like Andreas. She was coming in her pants, her hips moving back and forth like she was fucking him.

“Easy, darling.” Andreas slowed the kisses, licking inside her mouth again. “You don’t want to use me up too soon.”

She had no idea what he was talking about. She suddenly wanted to kiss and kiss him, to drag him against her while he fondled her breasts.

She dipped her head and caught his thin gold chain between her teeth. She didn’t know why chewing it was so satisfactory, but she was beyond reasoning.

“You’ll get it, sweetheart,” Andreas rumbled. “I’ll give you all you want. But not yet. Things I have to do first.”

“What things?”

He took her hands and held them still in his strong ones. His eyes glinted, something dark lurking behind the blue.

“Unfinished business. But soon.” He pushed her from his lap, and she landed awkwardly on her feet.

She stared at him, her blouse unbuttoned and half open, the autumn breeze cooling her breasts. What would it be like, the devious imp inside her wondered, to be naked for him out on the grass? What would it be like to lie on the prickling green and spread her legs, inviting him to take her right there?

A sudden gust of wind made her shiver, and she dragged her shirt closed.

Andreas got sinuously to his feet and took the black lace bra from the table. “I’ll keep this.”

Rebecca’s eyes widened. She tried to snatch the bra back, but Andreas folded it and stuffed it into his pocket. “Don’t wear it the rest of your stay.”

“I brought two more,” she said faintly.

“Did you?” Andreas swung around and entered her bedroom, rifling the drawers until he found where she’d stashed her underwear. He lifted out two more bras, one white and one cherry red, and wadded them in his hand.

“I’ll give them back when you go home,” he said, then he walked out and banged the bedroom door behind him.

Her breasts suddenly itched, and Rebecca cupped them in her hands, feeling dew trickle between her thighs. No man had ever turned her on like this, and she wasn’t quite sure if she could take it.

His high-handedness about the bra—about everything— annoyed her, but at the same time it excited her to obey him. She sat down at her table again, pulling up the blouse, the fabric against her bare skin making her feel more wicked than she had in her life.

IN another part of the grounds, screened from view by a thick stand of trees, Patricia and Nico lay together on a blanket. They hadn’t undressed, it being a little too chilly, but Nico had wrapped them in his lush wings, which kept them warmer than an electric heater.

“What will you do,” Patricia asked, “if this inscription helps free you from the goddess? What are your plans?”

He nuzzled her, dark eyes enigmatic. “I’ve learned not to have plans. I never think ahead too much.”

“You know that once you’re free, you’d be free of me.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know what will happen once the curse is off, if it ever can be. I might leave this world and never come back.”

She blinked. “What do you mean, leave this world?”

He touched her face. “The old gods have been pushed out as the world changes. They live apart now, away from the mundane world. It’s harder now for the gods to move back and forth. Most have given up.”

Patricia rubbed her face on his soft feathers. Nico wasn’t human, as the wings she loved reminded her. He was half god, half nymph, tied to human beings only by the curse.

“I’d miss you,” she said.

“You already have me enslaved. You could keep me here by destroying the inscription before Rebecca can decipher it.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“You’d have nothing to lose.”

Patricia tried to sit up, but he held her too tightly. “I hate that you’re so sure I’ll hurt you. Please believe that I won’t.”

He watched her for a long time, his eyes unreadable, then he kissed her forehead, feathers tickling her. “Like I said, I try to never look too far ahead, love. I’m only looking as far as tonight, and I have so many ideas about that . . .”

Patricia longed to hear them, watch him tell her with his seductive smile, but at that moment, Rebecca screamed.

NICO could move like lightning when he needed to, and he reached the porch room well ahead of Patricia. Andreas already had the Dyon in a headlock on the porch, the hissing, struggling creature trying to rake Andreas with his talons.

Rebecca had retreated to the doorway, watching with wide eyes. Nico sensed Patricia come panting up behind him, and at least she, too, was sensible enough to stay out of the way. All three cats stood on the porch railing, fur spiked, howling their encouragement.

“I was working,” Rebecca called. “He just—appeared—and started grabbing my notes.”

Papers were scattered over the floor, some ripped. Nico joined the fight, and the Dyon glared hatred from his yellow eyes.

Hera’s being was strong, and Andreas was having trouble holding on to it. Nico ripped his shirt from his back and let his wings explode out of him. His strength and agility increased when he didn’t mask himself, and he leapt at the Dyon.

Andreas released it, but only long enough to morph into his leopard form, teeth and claws ready.

The Dyon betrayed no fear. He fought hard, but Andreas’s leopard strength coupled with Nico’s god strength bested him quickly.

“Tell your mistress she’s defeating herself,” Nico said, his arm around the Dyon’s throat. “We won’t let her hurt those we’re enslaved to.”

“I tell her nothing,” the Dyon spat. “I am hers to command.”

Nico’s rage boiled over. “Fine.” He snapped the Dyon’s neck.

Rebecca shrieked and clapped her hands to her face. Patricia, knowing how dangerous the Dyons were, relaxed in relief.

The Dyon dissipated into smoke, and suddenly Nico held nothing. The cats hopped down from the rail, tails high, purring loudly as they made for Andreas.

Rebecca’s face was pasty white, and she leaned heavily on the doorframe. “I want to wake up,” she panted. “Why can’t I wake up?”

Andreas growled softly and butted his large head against her legs. Rebecca stared down at him in anguish.

“Oh, God, this is real. You really are a leopard, and I let you . . .”

Patricia passed Nico, her hand firm in his for an instant, then she all but shoved Andreas aside and led Rebecca back into the bedroom. “We need to have a talk,” she said. “A long talk.”

Patricia shut the door in Andreas’s face. Suddenly drained of adrenaline, Nico hid his wings away and sat heavily on the porch stairs. He heard the crackle of bone and fur as Andreas resumed his human shape.

Andreas sat next to Nico and pulled on his jeans, his hard body covered with a sheen of sweat.

“This is getting fucked up,” Andreas said in quiet voice.

Nico nodded agreement, his heart heavy.

The cats, perfectly happy with everything, draped themselves across Andreas’s legs, their purrs like buzz saws. At least someone had gotten entertainment out of it, Nico thought. From inside the bedroom, he heard Rebecca burst into tears.

THEY stayed at the inn for the rest of the weekend while Rebecca made phone calls to archaeologists all over the country and outside it about the ostracon.

Patricia knew Rebecca had trouble believing, despite the evidence of her own eyes. But it was a lot to take in—Andreas was a leopard; Nico had wings; Dyons wanted the ostracon and turned to smoke when Nico killed them.

Rebecca could at least focus on the ostracon and the inscription, which she said was meat and drink to her. She doubled her efforts, letting the challenge help her deal with her shock of Nico and Andreas. She could barely speak to Andreas, shooting sidelong glances at him like a schoolgirl with her first crush. Once, when Rebecca had turned around quickly, Patricia saw that she’d taken to not wearing a bra.

Patricia left Rebecca to her work, only to find Nico’s tension wound high.

He became as restless as Andreas, impatient with everything and worried another Dyon would find them. He said nothing more about what would happen if they found a way to get him free or what would happen if they didn’t.

Whenever Patricia tried to start any conversation with him, no matter how innocuous, Nico would distract her with sexual play. That meant her body was well sated by the end of the weekend, but she could get no closer to him.

Another thing that ramped up her frustration was that she and Nico still hadn’t had full sex. Nico had brought her to some of the most profound pleasure she’d ever experienced, but they hadn’t actually completed the act. Was he trying to make her so hungry for it that when they finally did consummate their relationship, it would be spectacular? She never could ask, because after their play, she’d drop into deep slumber, and Nico would be gone when she woke.

She’d thought that him being her slave would mean he’d do whatever she wanted, but he said no, it meant he’d bring her profound pleasure, his way. So far, she couldn’t argue with his technique, but it left her emotionally unsatisfied.

The only one at ease was Andreas. The big, growling man spent the weekend reading newspapers with his feet up or talking on his cell phone to his assistant running the club back in Manhattan. He usually had a cat or two draped over him, and when he prowled the grounds at night as a leopard, they followed close behind him.

On Monday, Rebecca asked them to come to her porch so she could tell them what she’d found. Nico pulled Patricia to sit with him on a wooden bench, his arm around her, while Andreas lounged against the railing.

Rebecca lectured them from her table spread with papers. The ostracon had indeed been one of three fragments found in a Greco-Roman site in Alexandria. All three pieces had been studied, then sold by the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. One fragment now resided in Mrs. Penworth’s living room, and Rebecca talked to an archaeologist who was certain the other two fragments were in the British Museum in London, where they’d lain for a hundred years, brought to England in a day and age in which they didn’t want to share the artifacts with the country they came from.

Rebecca called the British Museum, but the person she spoke to could not be certain they were the right fragments, and apparently they didn’t have the staff—or the interest, Rebecca said with disapproval—to photograph the fragments and fax them to her. Rebecca would have to go and look for herself.

“And anyway, it’s better to look in person. A photographer or copyist might get it wrong.” Her eyes were sparkling with excitement that told Patricia she was ready to continue the hunt.

“What about your job?” Patricia asked. “Your classes?”

Rebecca waved it away, a complete turnaround from the day they’d met her. “I only teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If we leave Thursday afternoon and get back by Tuesday morning, I shouldn’t miss a thing. It is for research, after all. I could get a good journal article out of it.”

Nico and Andreas seemed perfectly happy with this plan. Patricia expected Nico to tell her she’d be safer left behind, but he only looked at Patricia with pain in his eyes and advised her to come with them.

He was plainly torn between protecting her and needing her with him, the curse gripping him. Patricia supposed it would be kinder to remain behind, but she couldn’t bear the thought of him going off without her. The curse must be gripping her, too.

Andreas and Nico offered to fund the tickets, which Rebecca accepted with the graciousness of a chronically poor graduate student. Patricia tried to pay her own way, but Nico insisted, then tortured her with pleasure that night for even suggesting it.

“You belong to me,” he said, his voice dark with need. “Your pleasure and well-being is my charge.”

He even gently tied a silken gag around her mouth as he played with her, preventing further argument.

Andreas bought the tickets online for Friday, the earliest they could find a flight, and on Friday morning, Patricia drove them all back to the city to catch the flight. The cats stayed behind at the B and B with Mrs. Blake. The innkeeper was happy to take care of them, which relieved Patricia, who hadn’t wanted to leave them alone or put them in a kennel. The cats knew Andreas was leaving, and they sulked.

Andreas had booked first-class tickets, Patricia and Rebecca discovered when they reached JFK. He and Nico behaved as though this was normal, settling into the first-class lounge like they owned the place. Patricia usually flew as cheaply as she could when she went on buying trips and had gotten used to squishing shoulder to shoulder with strangers.

Rebecca, too, was used to bare subsistence travel as a student and doctoral fellow, and looked around in awe when they boarded the first-class cabin. Andreas had secured himself the seat next to Rebecca, with Nico and Patricia across the aisle from them.

“This is . . . cushy,” Patricia said as she leaned into her generous seat on takeoff.

“Andreas likes to travel in style,” Nico answered.

Andreas was busy saying something to Rebecca that made the young woman red and uncomfortable. When Andreas got up to wander to the bathroom, Patricia slid into his vacated seat.

“You can tell him to leave you alone, if you want,” Patricia said. “He’ll have to.”

Rebecca tried to shrug it off. “I’m just not used to men. I mean, men who look at me as a woman instead of an academic.”

Patricia grinned. “It happens.”

“Not to me, it doesn’t. I spent the past ten years trying to make men notice me for my mind. I was valedictorian, summa cum laude, top honors with my PhD. Universities are fighting to get me.”

“Sounds like hell.”

“No, it’s wonderful,” Rebecca said seriously. “I’ve achieved all I set out to and then some. Now I’m starting to want men to look at me for my body, and it’s too late.”

Patricia looked at her with a critical eye. “I don’t think so. You have good material to work with.”

Rebecca sighed. “I have no idea how to work with it. Look at me.” She gestured to her baggy khaki pants, her pale pink top that made her complexion sallow, and her flyaway hair pulled again into a high ponytail. She wore no makeup as usual, but her face had good bone structure, and her lips were full, her eyes a soft brown.

“Leave it to me,” Patricia said. “A few touches, and you’ll be transformed.”

Rebecca did not look convinced but let the matter drop.

Patricia got up as Andreas came back and returned to her own seat. Andreas put his lips to her ear as she passed him.

“You have a great ass, Patricia. Let me know when you want me to fuck it.”

Sudden heat flooded her, and to her dismay, she had a vivid vision of him behind her, hard and ready to slide inside her. She felt her nipples pearl and her quim fill.

She dropped into her seat beside Nico without answering, and Andreas lounged back in his own chair, turning his full attention to Rebecca.

“What did he say to you?” Nico whispered. They couldn’t snuggle very well in the state-of-the-art individual seats, but Nico leaned to her, running a caressing hand over her arm.

“Nothing important.”

Nico watched her, his look turning dangerous. “I said,
what did he say to you?
”

He would get it from her, or Andreas, sooner or later. But she was struck with the sudden desire to tell him. It excited her to tell him.

She whispered what Andreas had said, and Nico’s eyes darkened. “Do you want him to?” he asked.

“Well, of course not.”

“Don’t lie to me, Patricia. If you want it, that’s what you’ll have. You know this.”

Patricia gulped and lay back in her reclining seat. “What I know is Rebecca had better hurry up and get that inscription translated.”

Nico watched her a little longer, his eyes as dark as sin; then he chuckled and turned to look out the window. But he wouldn’t forget the matter, and neither would Andreas, and she knew it.

WHEN they reached London, Rebecca discovered that the man they needed to talk to about the fragments at the museum was finishing up a holiday and would be back the day after tomorrow.

“They couldn’t tell me that when we were still in New York,” she growled as she hung up the phone in the suite they’d booked near the British Museum. “I suppose I could go over there and do some research while we wait.”

“No, you can’t,” Patricia told her firmly. “Remember what I said on the flight? You’re going shopping with me.”

Rebecca brightened, as though offered a rare treat. “Shopping?”

“We’re going to leave our boys and indulge in the frivolous, feminine sport of shopping. We deserve it.”

Rebecca nodded, still hesitant, but her eyes showed her eagerness. “I suppose we do.”

Patricia intended to find Rebecca an outfit that went with her trim little body and make her wear it. The woman was too used to the habitual slovenliness of the career academic, but she had potential, and Patricia intended to bring it out.
Like her fairy god-mother.

Plus, Patricia wanted to sightsee. She’d been to London before, but she usually only had time to go to antique auctions, ship her findings back home, and fling herself onto a plane, exhausted, for the return journey.

Now she and Rebecca strolled the streets and looked at what she’d only glimpsed from cab windows: the neoclassical glory of Buckingham Palace and the quiet of Green Park, Georgian houses that were an antique lover’s dream, the Tudor remnants of Saint James’s Palace. She pressed her nose to the window at Christie’s and sighed over the beautiful antiques inside, pretended not to gawk at the wild characters in Piccadilly Circus, and walked with Rebecca out across the river to gaze back at the London skyline.

And they shopped. She and Rebecca browsed shops until Patricia found Rebecca an adorable skirt and jacket outfit, the skirt sexy-short and the jacket made to hug her figure. Rebecca perked up considerably looking at herself in the mirror, but she refused to accept it unless Patricia found something for herself. No conservative pantsuits or formless skirts, either; Patricia had to go for it.