Mortal Temptations (8 page)

The only Egyptology specialist Patricia had found with both the expertise and the time to talk to them was Rebecca Trimble, a postdoc at Cornell. The university’s website said that Rebecca had taken her doctoral degree at the University of Chicago, had plenty of experience at excavations, and had won several prizes for her hieroglyphs and hieratic expertise, including the fellowship she currently held. She’d agreed to see Patricia late that afternoon.

Patricia had planned to drive up, talk to Dr. Trimble, spend the night, look through promising antique shops, and cruise on home the next day. Her store could stand to be closed that long; her walk-in business was nowhere near what her behind-the-scenes business was. She’d not been surprised when Nico wanted to accompany her, but she wasn’t sure what Andreas’s motive was.

Andreas stretched himself out in the backseat next to the cat carrier, tucked earbuds into his ears, and closed his eyes. The cats squished themselves to the front of the carrier to be close to him and fell asleep.

She left city gridlock for packed freeways, which thinned out a little as she drove north. The early fall air was crisp, and Patricia drew a heady breath of it. She’d grown up in the middle of Michigan, where winters were dark, but spring, summer, and fall were fresh and alive. She loved living and working in Manhattan, but the countryside always held a special place in her heart.

Nico watched the scenery or watched her. She could feel his dark gaze on her, which reminded her of the warmth of sleeping curled up beside him in bed. Every time he looked at her was like a heated touch.

She glanced into the back to see Andreas, eyes closed, mouth relaxed in sleep. If she was daring, she’d pull over to the side of the road, skim down her pants, then start up again, inviting Nico to lean down and lick her as she drove.

The idea made her pussy throb, but she knew she wasn’t anywhere near that daring. A noise of frustration escaped her throat.

Nico looked over and slanted her his sexy smile. “Are you wet, Patricia?” he asked in a low voice.

Patricia gripped the steering wheel. Her nipples must be sharp outlines against her blouse, but she was too busy driving to check. “I remember what happened last time you asked me that.”

“Good.” His voice went darker as he snaked his hand to her thigh. “I want you to be dripping wet for me, your panties soaked with your come.”

She swallowed and glanced quickly into the backseat, but Andreas lay unmoving, tinny sound emanating from his earbuds.

“I think I’m pretty much there,” she said.

Nico curled his fingers on her thigh, nowhere near the join of her legs, but her pussy squeezed, and squeezed again. “Stop it,” she half laughed. “I need to drive.”

“I don’t want to touch you, Patricia. I just want to know that you’re wet for me, that if I unzipped your pants and dipped my fingers inside, I’d find you wet all over. That my fingers would slide over your clit, that it would swell for me, and you’d drip on me even more.”

Patricia squirmed in her seat. “Oh, God.”

“Your patience will be rewarded, love. I promise you.”

“If you make me come while I’m driving, it may be the last thing I ever do.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t touch you. Not yet.”

“You make me want to touch
you
.”

Nico squeezed her thigh again, hunger in his eyes. “Why? What do you want to do to me? Tell me.”

“I want to open your pants,” she said rapidly. “I want to find your cock hard and huge. I want the tip to wink at me.”

“That could happen.”

“I want to stroke you all the way down to your balls. I want to fit my hand under your butt and play with your balls where they’re warm from hanging inside your pants. I want to feel the hair there rubbing my hand, and feel your balls all hard. I want you to lift your cock toward me, with you dying for me to put you in my mouth.”

Nico’s gaze was intense, his eyes black-dark. She resolutely watched the traffic.

“What else?” he prompted.

“I want to tickle your cock with my fingers, then bend over and lick it everywhere I’ve touched it. I want to suck the tip in my mouth and wiggle my tongue over it.”

“That sounds nice.”

“I want to suck you until you can’t stand it, until you’re dying to come in my mouth. And then I want to slide my own pants off, straddle your lap, and slip your cock into my pussy, which is so, so wet for you.”

He rubbed his hand once along her leg. “I’d like that.”

“And then you’d fuck me. You’d thrust your huge cock inside me until I screamed, because it’s so big. You’d fuck me hard, and I’d keep coming while you screwed me.”

“I’d like that
very
much.” He didn’t move, but his gaze was so fixed on her she could feel it.

“Then you’d come. You’d come so high inside me it would burn me up, and I wouldn’t care. And then I’d . . .”

She pressed her brakes hard, screeching the car to a halt before she climbed the red taillights of the one ahead of her. “Damn it.”

Nico burst out laughing. He couldn’t possibly realize how sexy he was when he laughed, his brown throat exposed, his hair falling like black silk. “Maybe you’d better stick with driving,” he said.

“Maybe so.” She did a quick nipple check, but nope, they weren’t relaxing at all.

As she started moving again, she heard a noise in the backseat. Andreas rose like a god from the sea and leaned forward between them, sinewy arms resting on either seat. He said, “When you’re done doing all that to him, would you consider doing it to me?”

Patricia gasped and almost had to slam on the brakes again. “Shit. I thought you were asleep.”

Andreas regarded her in the rearview mirror with lazy blue eyes. “You were mistaken.”

Nico continued to laugh, not disturbed in the slightest.

“You see?” he said to Patricia, weaving his fingers together. “Tangled.”

NICO spent the rest of the trip uncomfortably hard from Patricia’s fantasy until he was afraid the zipper of his jeans would fly apart. He knew damn well that if he opened her pants as he’d described, he’d find her slick and wet and wanting him.

Whenever they reached where they were going, he’d reward her by spreading her and licking away that sweet honey until she shuddered with release. She needed to release, and Nico could do that for her.

He knew Patricia had a place inside her where desire waited to be caressed to wakefulness. She was shy about it, but as she’d shown him, her buried desires were dying to break free.

He’d teach her that there was nothing wrong with releasing her inhibitions. Before this was over, he would teach her everything, and even if she couldn’t respond to him emotionally, he would have the satisfaction of knowing he’d helped unlock parts of herself that she kept hidden deep down. It was really all he could have from this.

Patricia had booked them into a bed-and-breakfast on a hill overlooking the town, the inn surrounded by trees loaded with September yellow, orange, and crimson foliage. The air was cool but not yet biting. Beautiful.

Patricia asked for two rooms, one for herself and one for Andreas and Nico. The innkeeper, Mrs. Blake, was a bright woman with short white hair, and showed them around with enthusiasm. The house was nineteenth-century, and Patricia looked around as though she were feeling the auras of the many people who’d passed through.

“I’ve given you boys the Helen Monroe room,” Mrs. Blake said. “She was the original owner of the house. Don’t worry if you hear something scuffling about in the night. The whole place is haunted.”

Nico caught Patricia’s twitch of lips as she turned away. He wondered if it was because she knew for certain whether or not the house was haunted or because of their diminutive host calling him and Andreas “boys.”

Patricia settled into her room with her cats, which she’d brought because the inn was pet-friendly. Isis and Red Kitty weren’t used to staying on their own at night, she’d said.

The resident cat, Peachy, was large, gray, and orange-eyed, and supervised all proceedings with a bored air. She did, however, condescend to stalk to Andreas and rub her face against his leg. Isis and Red Kitty hovered around him, too, while they prepared to drive down to Cornell and interview Dr. Trimble.

They met Dr. Trimble in a tiny office in a redbrick building in the middle of campus. Rebecca Trimble was younger than Patricia, maybe in her midtwenties, and wore her yellow brown hair scraped unattractively back from her face. Her clothes were shapeless and baggy, and she wore no makeup.

Nico wondered if she deliberately tried to make herself unattractive, and why she would. She couldn’t hide the fact that her face was delicately boned or her eyes were soft and brown, but the frown she gave them was stern to the point of rudeness.

“I don’t have much time,” she said. “What is it you wanted me to look at?”

Patricia set the folder of photos on the woman’s desk and opened it. Dr. Trimble leaned over the desk, her sloppy blouse parting at the neck, and her annoyed look vanished. “Where did you get these?”

Patricia described the ostracon, and Rebecca listened, her face animated, which betrayed her prettiness. Andreas’s ice blue eyes watched the woman’s every move with his predator-sizing-up-prey look.

“I agree that the ostracon is Ptolemaic,” Rebecca said when Patricia finished. “But the text on it is far older. I see references to gods here that were pretty much forgotten by the time the Greeks took over. It was probably copied from an older source, and I’m betting the copier didn’t even know what it meant.”

“How can you tell?” Patricia leaned forward, just as interested, her blond ringlets catching the sunlight from the room’s one window.

“The inscriber got the names just a little bit wrong. A common mistake by copiers of the later periods. Some of the gods got changed into Greek-Egyptian hybrids, but these names would be familiar to the pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty and earlier.”

“Can you read it?” Nico asked her.

“I think so. It will take me a little while to study it and do the best translation possible—”

“How long?” Andreas asked abruptly.

Rebecca glanced at him, then immediately away, her cheeks staining red.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I have a lot of commitments, but I’d be happy to work on it whenever I have a spare moment. Perhaps by the end of this semester?”

Andreas rose, his tall frame filling the office. “Drop all the other commitments and do this for us. We will pay you whatever amount of money you require.”

Rebecca stared up at him, her pale mouth open. “It’s not that easy. I’m here on a fellowship, and I have obligations.”

“Which you can fulfill after you translate this.” Andreas tapped the pile of photos. “How long will it take if you spend all your time on it?”

“I don’t know. Depends on how much I have to look up. A week, maybe more.”

“Good. Start now.” Andreas shoved himself away from the desk and out of the small room, anger rolling from him in waves.

Rebecca stared after him, openmouthed. “Is he always like that?” she asked Patricia.

Nico flashed her a smile. “My dear, you have no idea.”

Rebecca swallowed and looked quickly at the photos again. “I probably can take a few days and see what I can come up with.”

“Excellent,” Nico said, crossing his long legs. “We’ll wait.”

Patricia stood up. “No, we’ll leave her to it.” She flashed Rebecca an apologetic look. “Don’t let these two bully you. You do what you need to do and take the time you need.” She sent Nico a glare. “I’m sure the rest of us can find something to do while we wait.”

NICO insisted Rebecca stay at the inn with them, which Patricia took to be worry about the Dyons finding Rebecca now that they’d showed her the inscription. Patricia called their hostess and learned she did have an extra room available, then Patricia and Nico went with Rebecca to her apartment so she could pick up what she needed for a few days’ stay.

Andreas had disappeared completely, but they found him waiting at the inn, the cats all over him.

The four of them had a quiet dinner at the B and B, Patricia and Rebecca finding common ground talking about artifacts and the antiquities markets, legal and illegal. Nico and Andreas didn’t eat much and remained quiet, Andreas particularly tense.

Patricia was a little surprised that Nico didn’t try to follow her when she retreated for the night. He brushed a light kiss to her forehead before Patricia left the sitting room, but other than giving her a seductive smile, he made no indication he wanted to follow.

She wasn’t certain if she was disappointed or relieved as she crawled into bed by herself. The four-poster was comfortable and warm, made more so by Isis and Red Kitty curled up on either side of her.

She felt the cats leave as she began to drift to sleep, probably off to find Andreas, their new best friend. She wondered sleepily why the cats were so attracted to him. He did his best to be rude and gruff with humans and then let the cats climb all over him. Maybe cats had a secret snow-leopard fixation.

“Patricia.”

Patricia jerked awake. She tried to roll over, but Nico’s warm body nestled protectively alongside her, penning her in. His face was dark with unshaved whiskers, his hair disheveled from sleep.

“What are you doing in here?” she whispered.

The room was dark, a sliver of moonlight leaking through the gauzy curtains. The house was silent, outside equally so.

“I like watching you sleep.”

He skimmed his hands down her body and inched up the hem of her nightshirt. She hadn’t bothered to wear panties to bed. Anticipation?

His hands were big and warm on her back. He slid his fingers to the cleft of her buttocks, making little circles there that drove her crazy.

“Where’s Andreas?” she asked.

“Hmm? Patrolling.” He paused a moment. “Do you want me to fetch him?”

His eyes were unreadable in the dark, his fingers gentle.

“No, I want you.” She touched his lips. “Why do I want you so much, Nico? I never think about sex like this. Not this constant wanting.”

“Spells are like that.”

“It has to be more than that.” She stopped, frustrated. “You say you’re drawn to me by the curse; you have to pleasure me until I’ve had enough. But I don’t want that. I don’t want you coming to me just because you’re compelled to.”

He kept on stroking her back, fingers soothing. “It is more than just the curse,” he said softly.

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t.” His eyes went darker still. “I want it to be more. It goes both ways, Patricia.”

“And if we break the spell, what happens then?”

He stroked her hair, his hand warm. She felt his wanting clearly through the fold of nightshirt that had slid between them, his cock hard and heavy.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t even know if it’s possible to break it. All I want is to be with you right now, in case I can’t ever be with you again.”

Patricia went silent, watching the flick of his lashes as he looked at her, the moonlight making shadows of his eyes.

“I’ve never believed in casual sex,” she said.

“No? But it happens all the time.”

“Not to me. If I’m not emotionally engaged, I can’t do it. I don’t want it.”

“Patricia.” He touched her cheek. “Do you want me?”

“I’m dying for you.”

“Then let’s enjoy each other. We’ll worry about how we feel tomorrow when tomorrow comes.”

He stopped her next words with a kiss, lips sliding over hers and driving out of her head what she’d intended to say. He slid hands down to pull up her nightshirt again, skimming it all the way up until he cupped her breasts.

“Let me give you joy,” he whispered.

She nodded, seeking his mouth again. His tongue and lips were masterful, and she thought she could kiss this man forever.

He had other ideas. He pulled her up until he could suck her nipple into his mouth, and then he suckled, his teeth and tongue doing a wonderful dance. Hot tingles wove through her, and she cradled his head in her hand.

“Harder,” she begged.

He obeyed. He opened his mouth wide, drawing as much of her breast into his mouth as he could, then withdrew, clinging to the tip with his teeth until the last minute. He did it over and over, lavishing attention on each breast, licking and sucking like he couldn’t get enough.

She pushed him onto the bed and burrowed her face against his chest, liking the way he groaned when her mouth found his flat, male nipple.

She’d always heard that men liked being played with almost as much as women, but this was the first time she’d had the chance to test out the theory. She moved in between the areolas and sucked his skin sharply into her mouth, wanting to leave a love bite.

He groaned and laughed. “You like me.”

“I like every bit of you.”

“Especially the wings?” he teased.

“I’d like you with or without wings. Although, with wings is better. Can you fly with them?”

He chuckled, his chest rumbling beneath hers. “Yes. They work.” He moved his mouth close to hers. “I’ll take you flying one day, sweetheart. I promise.”

“Can you fly and fuck me at the same time?”

His laughter cut off, his eyes going darker than ever. “I don’t know, but it would be fun finding out. Not tonight, though—too dangerous with Dyons looking for us. Plus I’d hate for some stray hunter to take me for an overlarge goose.” He pulled her closer. “But one day . . .”

Nico skimmed his tongue across her lips, then took her hand and closed it around his hard, hot cock.

ANDREAS, a leopard once more, could smell the sex going on in the bedroom next to him. Patricia was hot for Nico, and her rampaging pheromones made his fur tingle.

Patricia would want Andreas soon. He’d glimpsed the inkling of it in her eyes, the unearthing of fantasies that she’d kept long buried. Her longings had flared when she’d bared her body for him in his and Nico’s bedroom, but she’d snapped the lid over them again.

It wouldn’t be long now. Both he and Nico were stripping away her inhibitions, and soon she’d be ready for what she’d never dared before.

Andreas had opened the window before he’d changed, and his big cat form easily slid out to the huge maple tree that spread across the side of the house. The branches sagged under his weight, but he quickly leapt from limb to limb to the ground.

To his annoyance, he heard Patricia’s two cats springing after him. Not really the threesome he’d had in mind.

He worried a little about Nico. Nico always tried to remain stoic about the women he serviced, but this time, he wasn’t. Patricia was cute, no denying it, and the woman had a certain something. But if they couldn’t unravel the spell, and Patricia dumped Nico—and she would—Nico was going to get kicked in the balls. Nothing Andreas could do about it, but he didn’t want to see his friend in pain.