“Suck me,” he rasped, his head rocking on the pillow in sensual delirium.
“Sorry, no,” she said as evenly as she could, given her own white-hot arousal. “But I’ll fuck you if you ask me nicely.”
“Nej då! Don’t you dare.”
“But we were going to come at the same time, remember?”
“Suck me!” he yelled, his voice raw and unsteady. “Do it. Just do it, you fucking bitch!”
“Viktor, trust me—the only way I’m going to let you come is if I fuck you. But you have to ask me first.”
“Sug min kuk!” he screamed, straining at the cords, red-faced and wild-eyed. “Suck it!”
Soothingly Elle said, “I know you need to come, chéri. Just ask me and I’ll—”
“Din satkäring! Sur-fjas!” he roared, the bed quaking and creaking as he thrashed. “Bitch! Whore!”
Sliding her finger out of his body and backing off the bed, she said, “I could just leave you here, tied up and helpless, with those poor balls of yours turning bluer by the—”
“Nä, don’t! Don’t! Varsågod! Please!” He was heaving and quivering, every muscle in his body bulging with veins, a tethered beast straining for release.
“Please what?” she asked from the foot of the bed, still fingering herself. “Please fuck you?”
“Vad som helst,” he groaned. “Okay. Okay, goddamn it, just do it. Do it.”
“Do what?” she asked, plucking absently at a nipple.
He let out a snarl of frustration that degenerated into a hoarse little sob. “Jösses. Fuck me.”
“You didn’t say please.”
“Please!” he screamed. “Please, you fucking cunt, will you please just fuck me!”
“You’re sure, now?” she asked as she crawled over him.
“Slyna! Hora!” he yelled as he thrashed against his bindings. “Do it! Fuck me! Just fuck—” A quavering moan issued from him as she took hold of his cock, which was almost too stiff to tilt up, and seated the head inside her. With a grunt of effort, Larsson snapped his hips, filling her; she groaned in agonized pleasure. He bucked beneath her, sweat-sheened and moaning. It didn’t take long, of course. Quite soon he stilled and shuddered, a low, grinding sound, almost like a death rattle, rising from his chest.
Elle ground hard against him, igniting her own climax. Larsson roared, his cock jerking as it shot out a jet of hot come. It went on and on, burst after burst striking the mouth of her womb. He shouted with every spasm, his entire body flexing like a bow. It went on so long that he was hoarse and quaking by the time the final tremors coursed through him.
Larsson went limp, his eyes half-open as he sucked in lungfuls of air. Elle’s hands shook as she pulled the pillow from beneath him and fumbled with the cords knotted around his wrists and ankles. He didn’t seem to notice when he was finally freed; she had to push his left arm and leg aside to flop down next to him.
“Ofattbar,” he muttered. “Fucking satans helvete. That was…häftigt. Amazing. What did you say your name was?”
Reaching over to stroke his damp forehead, she whispered, “Take a little nap, chéri. Just for a few minutes.”
He closed his eyes and went slack, his mouth slightly open, breathing deep and regular.
Dragging her hair off her face, Elle closed her own eyes and whispered the words that would change her back into Elic. The “return ticket,” that was how she thought of it. From female to male…succubus to incubus.
It was much the same on the inbound trip as on the outbound: the queasiness, the pain…This time, though, her bones were expanding, her muscles solidifying, her skin stretching. The widening of her ribcage always made her want to vomit, but the feeling never lasted more than a few seconds.
The discomfort was all but gone when she felt a biting tightness on her right hand. “Merde!” The diamond ring, which she’d forgotten about, was digging into that finger as it grew. She sat up and tugged at the narrow band, growling in pain as she struggled to get it off before the finger finished enlarging. It wasn’t easy; although the finger was coated with lube, so was the hand that was trying to remove it. She closed her teeth over the ring, took a deep breath, and yanked. It slid into her mouth, thank God. She tasted gold and blood; the finger was abraded up to the middle knuckle, but at least she—or rather, Elic—wouldn’t have to end up getting Heather’s engagement ring cut off. The questions would have been awkward.
She spat the ring onto the floor and slumped back down, swearing under her breath as the transformation ran its course. Her breast tissue shrank back into the pectorals; her genitals felt as if they were turning themselves inside out. It was only when he felt a penis and scrotum lying heavy between his legs that he truly felt like Elic again. He ran his hands over his face, his chest and arms, reassured by the firmness of the flesh, the unabashedly masculine contours. Diverting as it was to be Elle from time to time, it was always comforting to come back home into the body he’d been born with.
During The Change, Larsson’s semen had become imbued with an incorporeal essence unique to Elic. It was a precious elixir, this zeru, as Lili called it, a merging of superb human genetic material with certain more ethereal qualities of the dusii race. The pressure of it, the lust it generated, made Elic’s cock grow heavy, rising just a bit in anticipation of his next stop: the bathhouse.
Feeling a grating emptiness in his stomach—he was always famished after tapping seed—Elic sat up and grabbed one of Larsson’s protein bars, a never-tasted novelty. He lounged back against the headboard to unwrap it, smiling when he found it to be coated in chocolate, a weakness that had rubbed off on him from Lili. He bit off a mouthful and chewed, only to gag in disgust at the shocking, nostril-flaring foulness of it. Spitting the grainy mush into his hand, he squinted in the semidarkness at the wrapper: A heavenly combination of chocolate fudge and soy crisps guaranteed to delight your taste buds.
Lying goddamn humans.
He hurled the bar, pre-and post-masticated, into the wastebasket. Larrson stirred at the noise, blinking his eyes open as he looked around. “Heather?”
“Not exactly.”
The big Swede focused on Elic, his obvious bafflement giving way to recognition as he took in the hair. “Oh, you,” he said, clearly thinking he was looking at the woman he’d just bedded, only to gape in stupefaction when Elic turned to face him fully and he realized there was a man in his bed. “Jösses!” he exclaimed, sitting bolt upright. “Vem…Who the hell…Elic?”
“Let me ask you, do you actually like those things?” Elic asked, nodding toward the protein bars, “or do you just eat them for the—”
“What the fuck…?” Scrabbling back toward the edge of the bed, Larsson said, “What the hell are you doing here?”
Elic allowed himself a puzzled little smile. “You don’t remember?”
Larsson stared at Elic, his eyes glowing like silver coins as he thought about what he’d just done with the woman who bore such an uncanny resemblance to the man now lounging in his bed—the buck-naked, half-erect man. He looked down at himself, at the oily sheen on his cock and balls, the little plastic bottle of warming lube; he’d feel it in his ass, too. “Nej,” he said, shaking his head in revulsion and disbelief as the possibilities crystallized.
“Sorry to have awakened you,” Elic said. “You really conked out there. I’m not surprised, given—”
“Get out!” Larsson yelled. “Get the fuck out of here!”
“Hey, what’s gotten into—”
“Get out!” He lunged across the bed, taking a wild swing that Elic easily ducked.
Elic drew back and landed a swift punch to Larsson’s head, dropping him in a heap on the bed. Grimacing, he examined his injured finger, now throbbing from the blow. What would Larsson think, he wondered, when he came to? Would he rationalize it in his mind, convince himself he’d dreamed the whole thing, or perhaps hallucinated it? The chateau’s guests tended to experience all kinds of unexplainable phenomena. There was th
e lube, but wishful thinking being what it was, he could conceivably decide he’d done that to himself while sleep-fucking or whatever.
Rising from the bed, Elic pulled on his jeans and black T-shirt. Larsson had razzed Elic about the shirt earlier that day, both because it bore the Adidas logo—he’d just signed an endorsement contract with Nike—and because it had faded in the wash. “Look at Elic’s shirt, how worn and shabby it is,” he’d told Lili with an amused little shake of his head. “Even ball boys don’t wear shirts like that.”
Elic whipped off the shirt and tossed it on the floor for Larsson to find in the morning.
She’s still watching.
Elic smelled it in the night air as he crossed from the chateau to the bathhouse, that heady fusion of jasmine and pheromones that told him Ilutu-Lili was still somewhere at the edge of the woods, keeping an eye on him—and an ear, as well. She would have heard Larsson pleading with Elle to fuck him, heard him roaring in relief when she finally did. She’d be disillusioned with her mighty gabru, and perhaps a bit miffed with Elic for putting Larsson through all that when he could have been tapped with a good deal less drama. She wouldn’t stay cross at him long, though, she never did; nor he with her.
Lili…my beloved, mins ástgurdís. Would that it was you I was coming to now, Elic thought as he approached the bathhouse. Would that I could possess you as I possess all these others for whom I care nothing. Would that I could lie with you and love you and make you truly mine.
Elic’s cock stretched the fly of his jeans as he stood in the arched doorway of the temple-like structure, watching Heather take her midnight soak. She reclined on the steps in a far corner of the pool, head back, eyes closed, the red swimsuit a little puddle on the marble floor behind her.
He entered the bathhouse and circled the pool, taking no care to be silent. The other spell he’d cast upon Heather this afternoon, when he’d put it in her mind to take this late-night bath, had ensured that she would be deaf to any sound produced by humanfolk or follets from the moment she lowered herself into the pool. So Larsson’s groans and pleas and screams of lust, audible, Elic was quite sure, to the entire Grotte Cachée valley, had not been heard by his fiancée.
Moonlight streamed in through the skylight, infusing Heather’s sleek, damp body with a silvery radiance. Her hair, even wet as it was, looked like spun gold, her nipples like little copper coins balanced just so on her petite breasts.
Arkhutus, that was what Lili called the female guests in whom Elic, the incubus incarnate, chose to plant the seed he took such care to harvest. That Heather was engaged to Larsson was purely a fluke. The arkhutu needn’t be involved with the gabru who’d produced the seed, nor even know him. All they need have in common was excellent genetic potential, as demonstrated by such factors as physical vitality, accomplishments, and intellect. Archer referred to them, in that aridly British way of his, as “prime breeding stock.”
Standing at the edge of the pool not far from Heather, Elic realized she wasn’t dozing, as he’d thought. Her submerged right hand, which rested in her lap, was moving in a slow, sensual rhythm. Elic stripped off his jeans and stepped down into the pool—cautiously, so as not to betray his presence by disturbing the water. Lust quivered up his legs, settling hot and insistent in his loins; the water would have contained a lingering sensual charge from this afternoon even before Heather stepped into it, thus kindling her own sexual heat.
He grew fully erect within a matter of seconds, his cache of zeru only fueling his lust. Standing in the water about two yards from Heather, Elic stroked himself in time with her own caress, very lightly, just the fingertips playing up and down the shaft as he gritted his teeth to keep himself in check. It wouldn’t do to go off in his hand, thus squandering all that precious seed, but he’d learned that it paid to be as primed as possible. The greater the discharge of seed, the more likely the arkhutu was to get pregnant. The position in which he took her was important, too, conception being likeliest if she was on her back, although he sometimes made them lie on their sides, or kneel facedown. And, too, it was imperative that he coax her into the most powerful orgasm possible, the contractions of which would force her cervix into contact with the ejaculate.
If Lili were with him now, she might milk Elic’s seed, as he had milked Larsson’s, while he pumped away with measured strokes inside this arkhutu, trying to make it last, to make the pleasure mount and mount until he was wild with it. Lili sometimes did that for him, amid soft kisses and intimate whispers, often with a little curved steel rod she’d had forged for that purpose by the royal swordsmith to Louis XVI.
Tonight, however, Lili was just a distant, if not quite disinterested, observer.
Elic grasped the head of his cock to squeeze out a few thick drops of pre-come, which he rubbed over the aching instrument to facilitate penetration. Now.
He crossed to Heather in two strides; by the time she opened her eyes, he was upon her. She drew in a breath to scream. He clamped a hand over her mouth and willed her hearing to return.
“It’s me—Elic,” he said, but she was already kicking and struggling. She rammed a fist into his nose, sparking a bolt of pain that had Elic swearing harshly even as he thought, Good girl.
He tried to pin her into the corner of the pool, but she thrashed and fought like a wild thing, and she was surprisingly strong. She bit his hand to get it off her mouth, but as she was filling her lungs, he clamped a hand to her forehead and said, “Láta…liggja… Shh, Heather. Easy. Easy.”
She quieted, her breath coming rapidly as she stared at him. He felt the tension ease from her muscles as her mind and body surrendered to his desire, his aching need—always a heady moment, filled with the promise of exquisite pleasures to come. Her eyes glittered darkly as she held his gaze; her legs fell open. Elic knelt on the floor of the pool and slid his cock up and down the cleft of her sex, feeling the heat and dampness of her arousal even underwater.
Closing his hands over her breasts, he whispered against her lips, “You’re about to have the most extraordinary dream.”
One
May 1749
DARIUS, CURLED up in his little box of straw in the gatehouse, awoke to Frederic, the guard on duty, barking out, “Halte! Qui va là?”
“It’s Mrs. Hayes with the virgins,” responded a woman in English. “Sir Francis is expecting us.”
Darius rose, quivering as he stretched the kinks out of his back, and leapt from his box. A lady stood silhouetted against the setting sun on the other side of the portcullis barring the arched entryway. She was plump and matronly, her steely hair mostly hidden beneath the hood of a long red cloak.
“What is the watchword?” demanded Frederic, whose English, like his French, bore a pronounced Swiss-German accent. He was, like the two dozen other guards charged with maintaining the peace and privacy of Grotte Cachée, a Swiss mercenary, members of a breed prized throughout Europe for their discipline, skill, and prudence. So discreetly did Frederic and his brethren fulfill their responsibilities that the chateau’s guests rarely noticed them, despite their rather garish red and blue striped uniforms.
“Do what thou wilt,” she said with a sigh of annoyance. “Now, will you kindly raise this bloody thing and let us pass? We’re late as it is, and Sir Francis doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
“The cart, it must go ’round back to the stable,” said Frederic as he cranked the windlass that operated the portcullis’s pulley system. There came a battery of creaks and groans, underscored by a high-pitched metallic grating that Darius could only hear in his present feline incarnation.
Slinking beneath the big iron grate as it rose, he crossed the drawbridge that spanned the dry moat. On the path out front stood a cart full of prettily attired young women, gazing up at Château de la Grotte Cachée as if awestruck.
“Leave your shawls and mantles in the cart, lasses, but don’t forget those fans,” Mrs. Hayes ordered. “Necks high, shoulders down, arms curved lightly outward. Pinch
your cheeks and plump up those bubbies.”
The cartman repeated the instructions in French as he handed the girls down from his vehicle. They were young and creamy skinned, fresh little peaches in dainty lace caps and frocks of dimity and flower-sprigged lawn. They giggled and whispered as Mrs. Hayes ushered them through the gatehouse and into the chateau’s enclosed courtyard, their gaits naively rustic, their skirts swishing against Darius as he followed along. They all wore exactly the same scent, an all-too-common eau de parfum redolent of rosemary, bergamot, and orange blossom, no doubt supplied by Mrs. Hayes.
“They await you in the withdrawing room next to the chapel.” Frederic pointed toward an arched doorway in the castle’s west range.
“What ho,” said Mrs. Hayes when she noticed Darius. “Seems a little gray ghost has thrown in with us.” She squatted down to pet him, but he dodged her before she could. He could mingle with the chateau’s guests on those rare occasions when curiosity got the better of him, such as this evening, so long as he was careful to steer clear of actual physical contact. “Skittish, are you? Aye, but you’ll fit right in with the rest of these coy little pusses.”
The girls fell silent as they neared the fountain in the center of the courtyard, a stone pool surmounted by a statue of a man and a woman joined in carnal union as water sluiced over them from a jug held aloft by a handmaid. It wasn’t the sculpture, indelicate though it was, that had stunned the girls into silence, Darius knew. It was the gentleman kneeling over the edge of the pool with his gold-shot silk coat thrown up and his breeches around his knees, grunting in pain as a lady in an ornate silver half-mask whipped his buttocks with a length of rattan.
House of Dark Delights Page 3
