They smouldered. There was more than promise there. There was heated need, an invitation. Yearning.
“There it is,” Ryan said and sighed.
Cáel groaned. He got to his feet. “And you’re going to just lie there?” he asked him.
“I’m giving you a head start,” Ryan told him. “I’ll still get to her before you.”
“Don’t bet on it, Celt,” Cáel replied. He strode after Nia, who was climbing the three steps up to the big platform area where the bed was located. The whole platform was divided off with the sheerest of curtains, which didn’t provide any privacy, but did mark off the platform as a very special inner sanctum. Cáel had read enough Greek and Roman history to recognize the symbolism. So he paused at the top of the three steps, just before the wall of chiffon.
“May I?” he asked, indicating the curtains.
Nia nodded.
He stepped through.
Nia stood by the bed, on a carpet that looked soft underfoot. The robe was clinging to her damp body, hiding nothing and emphasizing all that Cáel had come to appreciate about her. Her lean length, the full, upright breasts, the softly curving hips and her long legs, with the strongly muscled thighs.
“Gods, you’re so beautiful,” Cáel breathed. “You humble me, Nia.”
Nia smiled. “I hope not.” She took a few steps forward, so that she was pressed up against him. “I was beginning to like your arrogant confidence.”
He reached for and pulled the clip from her hair and let it drop free around her shoulders. “It was a temporary lapse,” he assured her, letting his fingers snarl in her luxurious soft red curls and locks. He tilted her face up to his. “Now, before that Celt gets here—”
“Too late,” Ryan murmured, from behind.
Cáel felt the heat of him press up against his back and the warmth of his breath on the back of his neck.
“Kiss her,” Ryan commanded, his hands settling around Cáel’s hips.
His body, which had been so close to a heart-stopping climax only a few moments ago, had backed-off from that jaw-cracking tension. But now, with the pressure of Ryan’s body behind him and Nia snuggled up in his arms, Cáel felt the tension leap back almost to the same frantic level as before.
He let out a shaky breath, as his cock pulsed against his belly. “Careful...” he said, trying to warn them of his precarious state. He wanted to extend this moment as long as possible.
But being so close to the culmination of so many fantasies and dreams was driving his pleasure too far, too fast. He was gulping his vintage like an alcoholic and wasting it, when he should be sipping and savouring every single mouthful.
He kissed Nia, not trying to direct the kiss in any way. Nia tasted a little bit like honey and...something sweet he couldn’t pin down. And her scent curled around his head like a spell meant to drive him mad.
Cáel let himself enjoy the taste of her, the feel of her mouth and lips and the pleasure building from the kiss—and from Ryan’s hands on his body. Ryan seemed hotter against his back, possibly because he was naked and drier. Cáel noticed Ryan’s scent, too, simply because it was there when usually, it was absent. The scent triggered strong images of their time in New Orleans and that pushed Cáel’s excitement another notch or two higher.
Ryan’s cock nestling between his ass cheeks, while Nia’s breasts pushed against his chest, was almost more than Cáel could bear. He lifted his mouth from Nia’s with a groan and yanked at the belt of her robe. “Enough,” he declared.
Nia’s lips parted in a soft sigh, as if she agreed with him and that drove his need even higher. She helped Cáel remove the damp robe, peeling it from her flesh. When she dropped it to the floor, Cáel pulled her up against him again and immediately dropped his head so his lips could taste her breasts.
Ryan was steadying them both. “The bed,” he murmured.
Cáel agreed. He already had his arms around Nia, so he simply lifted her and carried her the few short paces to the bed. Ryan was already there, waiting. He helped lay her close to the middle of the enormous spread.
Cáel found himself on one side of Nia, Ryan on the other. By mutual, silent consent they both began to lick and kiss their way from her ear to her thigh, taking their time. Long before they reached their goal, Nia was thrashing on the bed, her hands kneading their shoulders, as she moaned her need.
Her broken, husky voice asking them to fuck her, using raw words and descriptions and her body writhing beneath his mouth and fingers, was enough to keep Cáel’s climax simmering.
He kissed the top of her cleft, letting his tongue edge into the delicate valley, making her gasp sharply.
“Cáel, please, please. Fuck me,” Nia begged.
Ryan moved away. “You heard the lady,” he said.
Cáel wanted to hesitate, but he knew there had been far too much worrying, hesitating and second guessing. Centuries of it. And his body was driving him now. His need. He let out a deep exhalation. “Whatever the lady wants,” he told them both.
He settled over Nia, his pulse zooming impossibly higher as her thigh curled over the back of his hip. Her eyes seemed greener, depthless, as she stared into his, her lips parted as her breath escaped in little pants.
Cáel tried to ease his cock into her, to enjoy the moment of taking. But he’d barely began when he felt Ryan’s hands on his ass, probing gently between the cheeks and the surprise—and the thrill of pleasure—made him both gasp and drive his hips forward at the same time. He thrust into Nia hard and deep.
She gasped. Then she smiled. “mmm...” she murmured. “Good.”
Cáel held still. “You two...planned this,” he said, trying to speak evenly and failing. He needed two breathes just to get it out.
Nia’s smile broadened. “Keep still for a moment. I want to watch.”
Cáel tried to fight off closing his eyes as Ryan prepared him. His long fingers pressing inside him felt unbelievably good, with Nia watching. It added an element of eroticism that Cáel had not anticipated.
Ryan gripped his hips and Cáel let himself breathe as Ryan worked his cock inside. The sensation was at once familiar and dear, but oddly novel now that Cáel was buried inside Nia at the same time. He curled his fingers into tight fists as he leaned over Nia, trying to control the silvery surge of pleasure. He was far to close to coming.
Nia was tightening up around his cock, in a series of squeezes and releases. She was aroused by this, too.
That made it infinitely better.
Cáel swallowed hard, working to stay on top of the climax. Control it. Extend it. He shifted, but even the tiny movement of his cock inside Nia was almost overwhelming and he stifled the movement.
Ryan’s lips pressed against the back of Cáel’s shoulder. “Heaven,” he murmured.
Cáel closed his eyes. He couldn’t agree more. “Someone should invent media clips that capture sensations and emotions. I want to preserve this moment. This one right now and here.”
“You mean this moment you’ve worked so hard to engineer?” Ryan asked.
Nia smiled.
Cáel shook his head. “Don’t make me laugh. I’ll lose what little control I’ve got left here.”
Nia’s smile turned instantly wicked, as her eyes narrowed. She looked up at Ryan and raised a brow. “I think Cáel has been controlling things far too long,” she said. “It’s about time he lost his mind.”
“Agreed,” Ryan replied
Before Cáel could voice more protest than a single, hoarse “Wait!” Ryan began the sort of deep, hard thrusting that Cáel liked the best, his balls slapping up against him. The motion pushed Cáel deeper inside Nia, making him hiss with overly-sensitive pleasure, for Nia’s pussy was clamping around him in continuous, hard milking waves.
Sweat broke out on his temples as Cáel realized that he was the meat in an erotic sandwich. Trembling wracked him, as the pleasure spiralled. He was helpless to do anything other than obey the demands of the rising lust overwhelming his b
ody and mind. He found himself thrusting into Nia in hard counterstrokes to Ryan’s cock sliding into him.
Then someone—Ryan, he assumed—stroked his balls and squeezed the swollen sacs.
Cáel was tipped over into a thought-destroying, tendon-snapping climax, that made him cry out wordlessly, while everything, including his heartbeat, seemed to suspend in a liquid pool of exquisite pleasure, floating for an eon.
He came to himself, still shaking and was thankful to find he hadn’t collapsed on top of Nia. She was breathing heavily beneath him and as he looked down at her, she touched his lips with her fingertips. Her hand reached past him, then and he knew she was reaching for Ryan, too.
Her eyes were shining with tears.
Contrary to what a woman’s tears would normally do to him, extraordinary peace washed over him. Cáel shifted his weight to one arm, then squeezed Ryan’s arm, which had curled around his chest once more. Then he leaned down and kissed Nia’s temple.
“Thank you,” he told them. “If I ever have to give up control, I’m glad it’s for you two. I don’t think I could do it for anyone else.”
“We know, Cáel,” Nia said softly.
“We know,” Ryan finished.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Constantinople, 1453 A.D. (Fall of the city)
The sounds of a besieged city about to fall are utterly unique and Constantinople, after eight centuries of domination across Europe and western Asia, was about to topple with the mightiest of impacts. The sound was unforgettable.
Ryan stared out the second floor window he stood at, peering out over the balcony at the citizens who were attempting to flee the city by the small number of secret gates and escape routes the Turks hadn’t shut down yet, carrying what wealth they could with them. Then there were the looters who were scavenging through what the citizens had left behind. Rioting and mayhem was rampant. Law and order had long since lost any sway over the city.
Fires had broken out, but Byzantines had long memories and fire stirred a deep chord of fear in all of them, after the three day Nika riots had all but obliterated the city from the map. Fire had burned most of the major buildings to the ground in those riots, including the city’s beloved St. Sophia cathedral. Any alarm sent up concerning fire these days, no matter how lawless the conditions, tended to rally people from near and far to quench the flames. The city had much better systems for fighting fire now, too.
So the few fires that had begun had not spread far.
But the night was filled with smoke, ash, dust and screams.
The city was dying, long before the Turks got to deal the mortal blow.
Ryan looked at his wrist watch, which he had been keeping hidden beneath the long sleeves of his cloak. “I can’t have forgotten all this,” he said. “But it has been a long while since I recalled it.”
“Who would want to voluntarily remember it?” Nayara asked, from behind him.
Ryan turned back to face the room. It was quite dark, but there was enough light falling in through the two big windows that they could see the details without lighting a lamp. The crumbling remains of Salathiel’s maker lay disintegrating on the tiles.
“How long ago, do you judge?” Ryan asked her.
“A day. Not more.”
He looked out the window. “There are two Salathiels out there in the city. What happens if he tries to find himself?”
Nayara wiped the back of her wrist across her forehead. Her fingertips were covered in ash. “I don’t know, Ryan,” she said, her voice tired. “I don’t know how any of this works. I don’t even know how we got here. I just know we have to stop him from killing her and we were too late this day. We have to go back further.”
Ryan nodded. “Another... What do you call it? A jump?”
She shrugged. “Call it what you want. I don’t care.”
He moved around the ashes carefully. “If we go back too far, we stand the chance of overshooting...we’ll miss him.”
“Then we’ll just wait for him. He’ll turn up sooner or later, Ryan. We already know he does.” She pointed at the pile of ashes that had been Salathiel’s maker. “We have hard evidence that he does.”
“So when do we jump back to?” he said. “We need to pick a time.”
She shrugged. “Does it matter? Just pick something. A few days ago. We can wait.”
Ryan frowned. “I don’t think we should jump that wide,” he said slowly, thinking it through. “I don’t know how it works, either, but I don’t think it’s good to have two of both of us in the city for days, either. The chances of running into ourselves is way too high. We should time it more precisely.”
Nayara wiped at her eyes. She left a small smear of ash across her cheek. Ryan didn’t bother pointing it out to her. He knew she was deeply upset by the maker’s passing. She needed to be distracted. And she needed to replace her mourning with another emotion.
“We need to think like Salathiel,” Ryan told her. “We know him well enough. We should be able to figure out what he would have jumped to. Something that stuck in his memory.”
She put her hands on her hips, frowning, her bottom lip pushed out as she thought about it. She was wearing a simple shift dress that was a twenty-third century substitute for a fourteenth century bliaut, plus a cloak over the top. It brought memories flooding back every time Ryan looked at her, especially with her hair tied in two thick braids as it was.
The answer slid into his mind just like that.
“The cart,” he said. “On the main road. Remember, Nia?”
In the last days of the siege, when it had become clear that the fall of the city was inevitable, Ryan, Salathiel and Nayara had let their household staff go—only if they had solid, workable plans for stealing from the city, which the three of them vetted and approved first and sometimes improved, by providing assistance in the form of money, goods, transport, weapons, or good advice. Ryan and Salathiel handed over every boat they possessed to groups small and large who could find a way over the walls.
In the last week before the walls fell, there were no servants left in the household and they were looking after themselves. Salathiel, as the only human, needed food, so the three of them walked to the main road in search of supplies.
Constantinople’s main street, the Mese, had never been named, but despite the lack of a title, it was still a magnificent colonnaded thoroughfare, rich with marbled buildings behind the columns, a wide paved street that had seen dozens of triumphal processions. On any ordinary day the Mese was filled with a colourful cross section of Constantinople’s citizenry, lingering to exchange news, hurrying on official business, or meeting friends.
The markets had disappeared, but if there was food to be had, for barter or sale, then it would be found on the Mese.
They had walked to the main street in the cool of the early morning, which made it one of the busiest times of the day, normally. It was a sadly empty street they found, the paved road between the marching columns strewn with the left-behind belongings of people who had fled the city and couldn’t carry it all with them. Looters had picked over and taken everything of value. What was left behind lay in the early morning sun, a forlorn reminder of happier days, while on the other side of the wall, which lay only half a league away, was the murmur of the Turkish army, who waited for their explosive guns to arrive to destroy the city walls for them.
A few people were walking the streets and gathered in small knots to talk. Any transport they may have once used had long since been taken to escape the city.
So the sound of cartwheels and horses’ hooves clattering down a side road sounded loud in the unnaturally quiet street and everyone turned to look toward the intersection, then at each other, startled.
The cart was travelling too fast. The driver’s cry to the horses to hurry and the crack of the whip even made some of those listening to the progress of the cart wince.
Much to fast for the cobbles and the turn to come.
Nayara grabbed
Salathiel’s sleeve. “Move,” she said shortly, pulling him across the street.
“What?” he asked, stirring himself from staring in fascination toward the intersection where the cart would emerge.
“Ryan,” she snapped. “I can’t be seen moving him by myself.”
Ryan grabbed Salathiel’s arm and between them, they manhandled him across the street, to stand between the pillars on the other side. By then they had his attention. “What are you doing?” he demanded.
Ryan patted Salathiel’s shoulder. “We were right in the path the cart will take.”
Salathiel licked his lips. “Stop the cart,” he said. “You two have the strength. The speed. You could halt it before it hits the pillars.”
Startled, Ryan glanced at Nayara. Her eyes had widened, too. “We can’t, Lathe,” she said quietly. Gently. “Everyone will see us.”
The sound of the cart’s progress leapt. Amplified. It was nearly on them. It had nearly reached the intersection. The driver’s voice had taken on some alarm and now they could hear other voices. There were passengers on the cart. Women. Probably children.
“Save them,” Salathiel demanded. “You can do that, for heaven’s sake.”
Ryan’s gut clenched. “No, we can’t,” he replied.
“You have the power, for pity’s sake,” Salathiel said desperately, as the cart appeared. The horses were lathered, their eyes rolling, froth at their mouths. They had been driven too hard. They were obeying blindly now. They tried to take the turn as they felt the pull of the traces. But their hooves began to slip and skid on the detritus and dust that had settled on the cobbles of the street. They whinnied.
The passengers in the cart screamed and clutched at the cart and each other.
Nayara gave a low moan.
Salathiel reached for the pillar. “No,” he said, his voice hoarse. He looked at Ryan again. “Stop it,” he pleaded.
Nia clutched at Ryan’s arm, her fingers digging in.
“We cannot, Lathe,” Ryan told Salathiel sadly.
The horse on the far side of the turn lost its footing and slipped. It fell beneath the other and the cart wheel slammed into it from behind. The sound was awful and Ryan shut his eyes briefly, wishing he could shut down his hearing the same way. The cart was moving much too fast to halt so quickly. It flipped up, tossing the occupants and their belongings across the street. Some of the contents were brought to a halt by the pillars that lined the Mese opposite the corner of the road.
Byzantine Heartbreak Page 27
