by Noelle Mack
He paused to admire her, a smoldering look in his complicated hazel eyes, then reached out to hold her breasts, caressing them with the same warm, slow strokes he’d used on her behind.
“Your tits are hot to the touch,” he whispered.
“Well, yeah,” she whispered back. “I was sleeping on my front.”
“I could not resist stroking you.”
“Did you notice me fighting back?” she murmured.
“No. Am I forgiven, then?”
“I’m thinking about it.” She rolled onto her back, flinging an arm over her head. He nuzzled her armpit and she giggled, until he moved on to her nipple, taking it in his mouth and sucking tenderly.
Sarah let him do that, knowing he wouldn’t neglect the other one. His lips parted and Nipple One, wet and up, caught a cool breeze. Nipple Two was drawn into his mouth next and sucked with the same tender consideration, while his fingers tugged and rolled the first.
Ah. Ahh. Ahhhh…that went right to her pussy. Sarah bent her knees and let her legs fall apart. He held onto her breasts with mouth and hands, but his eyes looked lower, as best he could.
He almost seemed to be whiffing the slight breeze she felt on her damp pubic hair, animal that he was. A very happy animal. Marco inhaled deeply and closed his eyes, resuming his incredibly sensual attentions to her breasts.
She got a hand into his dark hair, finger-combing it for him. The silky black strands weren’t tangled so much as tousled, and he seemed to enjoy what she was doing.
“So where did you spend the night?” she said softly.
“Drinking and singing with the gondolier. He knows more opera than I do, and he has a better voice. We sang the sun up, and then we came home.”
Whether he was telling the truth or not, it was a good story. “The neighbors must have loved the concert.”
He nodded. “They showed their appreciation in the old Venetian way by pelting us with old shoes. But we kept on singing.”
She laughed softly and stroked his hair. “Sing for me, then.”
“Là ci darem le mano,” he began, trailing off and picking up her hand with a ridiculously soulful expression on his face. His voice was excellent, a baritone with a rough edge to it that thrilled her. Sarah recognized the aria from Don Giovanni and understood the Italian words. There you will give me your hand. Awww. Nice Marco was back.
“Has Mozart written that yet?”
“Maybe not. No wonder the gondolier didn’t know it,” he said wryly. He kissed her fingertips one by one and planted a final kiss in her palm.
Then he placed her hand over her pussy, arranging it just so, and spread her hair out over the pillow. “There. You look like Botticelli’s Venus.”
“My, my. You are romantic this morning. Should I be suspicious?”
He shook his head, frowning with amusement. “Ask the gondolier. Federico will vouch for me.”
Sarah snorted. “As if you wouldn’t do the same for him.”
Marco ignored her distrustful look and began to caress her again, moving his hands over the front of her body, using the same long, slow strokes he’d used on her back.
The morning light reflected from the canal three stories below the window, shimmering over the ceiling and walls of the bedchamber in that magical way that made it seem as if they were outside time, neither in the eighteenth century nor their own. Just together, falling into their own fantasy for two.
Oh God. Could she ever get used to this. She raised her hand from her pussy but he caught it and put it back where it was.
“Give yourself pleasure, Sarah. I want to watch.”
No harm in that. She didn’t even have to think about where he’d been. All she had to do was lie back and enjoy herself.
She opened her thighs wider, and he slipped a hand under her butt, lifting her up and putting the biggest pillow on the bed under her. “I want to really see you,” he said. “A beautiful, shameless, drowsy woman, masturbating as if no one was looking.”
“All right,” she whispered. Her hips were higher than her head but the position was comfortable and the pillow was big enough to support her wide-open thighs too.
Marco stroked the soft skin on the inside of her thighs while she spread open her labia with one finger, testing herself to see how slick his sensual caresses had already made her.
Very.
She dipped her probing finger in, teasing herself. It wasn’t enough. She added two more fingers, pushing in and out of her swollen pussy, excited because he was watching so intently, as if he wanted to learn exactly how she did herself with no partner.
Sarah withdrew her hand and used her slick fingertips to touch her clit, patting and pinching it. Sometimes she liked to pull hard on it, imagining she had a tiny penis. She whispered that to him and Marco murmured incoherent words of encouragement.
Held between her fingertips, the little rod stood away from the folds of flesh just beneath.
“Do you want me to suck that for you?” he asked. “Hold it just like that. Let me stimulate the tip.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
She tipped her hips to his face as he got into position, flicking his tongue over the tip of her clitoris. The sensation was totally focused and intensely pleasurable—especially when he got closer and began to suck in little pulses.
He thrust two fingers in and out, very slowly, stimulating her swollen, juicy pussy while he kept on tenderly sucking.
Sarah arched her back, enjoying the wanton feeling of being so spread open and lifted up. This was all about her, and she was into it all the way.
Marco added another finger and now three pushed into her yielding flesh, filling her pussy completely. She moaned, craving deeper stimulation, and he gave it to her, lifting his head and wiping his wet mouth on her trembling thigh.
Without clitoral stimulation, she couldn’t come, and this was going to last longer.
“Turn over,” he said softly. “On all fours now.”
She obeyed, her eyes half-closed from getting sexed down so nicely. He pulled the pillow out and went back to his fingerfucking. But he was on his knees now, right behind her, one hand on her bare ass and four fingers of the other pushing in to her now dripping-wet cunt. Her moans were rougher in tone, and she was sweating with intense excitement, craving each full-handed thrust.
His thumb came up and made circles on her tight anus, massaging it gently. He kept her steady despite her attempts to thrust back. Marco had a sensitive touch, and the anal stimulation he was giving was as tender as the rest of his lovemaking.
She wanted to come so badly, wanted him to feel her most intimate flesh tighten and throb, her pussy around his fingers and her asshole under his thumb.
He slipped one finger out of her pussy and teased her clit tip again, keeping steady pressure on her anus and thrusting into her pussy. God, he was good at sex. Oh God. Ohhhh…. she screamed into the pillow when she came at last.
Marco stayed where he was, observing every second of her climax until she finally collapsed on the bed, her hair tumbled over her. She heard him undo the breeches he’d kept on and heard the whispering sound of his hand moving over his own heated flesh, pounding down to the base of his cock with each swift stroke. She heard him gasp. He began to ejaculate in powerful spurts that landed on her back, hot from his body, moaning with each spurt, until he finally let go of himself and collapsed next to her.
“Rub it in,” she said softly. “There’s no better lotion than that.”
He managed a soft laugh and put his hand on her back, rubbing her down one last time.
A few hours later, Sarah hastily pulled the sheet over both of them when she heard the maid knock lightly. Very groggily, Marco told the girl to come in and she did, not looking directly at them as she set down the breakfast tray and enameled coffeepot near the bed and went back out.
“Want some coffee?” Sarah said, propping herself on her elbows and sniffing the wonderful fragrance that wafted from the coffeepot’s s
pout.
The only answer she got was a very satisfied snore. She kissed Marco on the nose, and he smiled in his sleep. Sarah got out of bed, feeling pretty goddamn good herself, and drank all the coffee in about five minutes.
5
“You will find this bookshop interesting. No doubt you will be the only woman there.”
“Why? Don’t Venetian women read?” Sarah stepped carefully on the cracked stones of the ancient street. The shoes she was wearing were far from ideal for walking. But there was no other way to get to the bookshop, which was not on a canal, owing to the necessity of avoiding the damp, which would ruin the stock in trade.
“It is not as popular as dancing and flirting.”
“Seems to me that the men are just as obsessed with all that.”
Marco grinned and took her hand to help her over a small bridge that spanned a very narrow canal. She looked down, charmed by its diminutive size. It was just right for the Venetians, who were not tall or long-legged people as a rule; Marco stood a head taller than most of the men. Yet another reason that women cast so many appreciative glances his way.
Sarah and Marco went on, dodging the usual cats and barefoot urchins as they turned corner after corner, going into an older part of the city where crowded buildings leaned upon one another. Flowering plants trailed from wrought-iron balconies too narrow to hold anything else, intensely bright against the mellow walls of painted stucco and brick.
She stopped to look at a grotesque face, not entirely human, set into a wall at the level of her head. Its accusing eyes looked straight at her, and its mouth was stretched into a strange smile. Had she reached up a hand, it might have bitten her.
Marco turned when he no longer heard her footsteps.
“What is this?”
“Ah. A bocca di leone—it is like a letterbox. If you wish to denounce someone in secret, you can leave a note in there. The agents of the Council of Ten take it from there.”
Sarah felt a little shiver run up her spine. The charm and frivolity of Venice had a dark side. The sight of the bocca didn’t seem to worry Marco, though, because he walked on, whistling cheerfully. She saw the bookshop’s sign just ahead, looking up and over his shoulder as she followed him.
Scrolled letters on the sign spelled out a single word: Arcana. There were books arranged decoratively in its window, some closed and stood on edge, some opened as if a reader had just set them down. Broadsheets with political cartoons were displayed next to newspapers, and there were magazines with engraved cameos of local beauties.
Something for everyone. But the selection didn’t make sense. Sarah didn’t waste very much time trying to puzzle it out.
She noted a pair of spectacles placed on the page of an open book that cast double spots of light behind them. Nice touch.
Marco stopped to look at the display. “Well, it is not in the window.” He peered through the window farther into the shop, as if he was hoping to see it displayed in the center of the floor.
He was acting like an author who hoped his title would be prominently featured, which was kind of funny. What was the matter with him? He didn’t seem concerned enough about the spell they had to reverse. There was no getting around the necessity of doing that—if only he could summon his ancestor. Or work a little magic of his own that didn’t have to do with sex. But he couldn’t be a mage, even if he was related to one, she thought.
Marco was so warm and so sensual, not to mention handsome. Mages and conjurors were supposed to be old men with long beards and robes who dwelled in towers in grumpy solitude, not studs with palazzos and fancy bedrooms that were made for loving the night away.
Or could he be? Marco’s hazel eyes still had the same compelling and faintly mysterious quality in this century that she’d noticed when she’d met him. And Ombra, his so-called familiar, was forever underfoot. Sarah was almost surprised that the little gray cat had not followed them to the bookstore. However, she looked and acted like any other cat. Like thousands of other Venetian cats.
Marco opened the door for Sarah with a gallant half-bow, and went ahead when he realized she wasn’t paying attention or appreciating him enough. She fought the temptation to pat his breeches-clad ass. Sarah intended to get some more of that loving tonight.
Particles of golden dust swirled in the air as they entered, then hung suspended again. Her nose wrinkled at the musty but somehow pleasant smell, a mixture of leather bindings and parchment, vellum and ink. Sarah sneezed.
Startled from his reverie, an elderly man behind the inlaid marble counter peered at her curiously. Under his wrinkled eyelids, his eyes were the palest possible green, like glass seen from the side. But the fiercely intelligent gleam in them made her breath catch. He seemed to be taking in every detail of her, from her blond hair that the Turkish maid had so carefully arranged to her dainty shoes.
He nodded to her politely enough, then greeted Marco in Venetian dialect. The two men began a serious conversation in low voices. Sarah looked around the shop. She went to one of the shelves, pulling out a volume at random and flipping through the pages. One odd symbol after another captured her attention, as did the close-set type beneath each. No doubt the symbols were explained in the captions, but as with the book of spells, she couldn’t make head or tail of it.
Marco came over to see what she was looking at. “He’s looking for the book. We could be back in our own time in minutes. What do you think of that?”
“I’m not jumping for joy yet. Let’s see if he has it first.”
She didn’t want her expectations raised too high. Besides, Arcana was only one bookstore—there were many others in Venice. Finding a copy of the old book and casting a reverse spell just might not be as effortless as moving back in time had been. They weren’t going to get off that easy. Sarah had a feeling the magic that had brought them here wasn’t done with them yet.
“What does that mean?” She pointed to a geometric shape set inside a circle.
“Ah.” Marco kept his voice low as he quickly read the book and explained the caption under the image to her. “Five sides—that is a pentagram. The circle around it signifies protection of its center, the sixth side, so to speak. The center contains a sixth element: love.”
“Hmm.” It still didn’t make any sense to her.
“And what is wrong with love, my love?” He clasped her waist and nuzzled her neck as he asked the question. Sarah stood on tiptoe to peer over his shoulder. The old man was still looking through his shelves. She felt Marco’s tongue circumnavigate her ear. The highly pleasurable sensation made her giggle.
“Nothing.”
“Good. You know I love you, don’t you? In my own way, of course.” Marco straightened and winked at her. “I should go back. Let me know if you need anything else explained.”
“You what? What did you say?”
But she wasn’t going to get an answer. He was already up at the marble counter, waiting for the proprietor. With a sigh, she set the book of symbols back on the shelf, moving to another section with newer books, again pulling out one at random. Sarah opened it. The engraving on the frontispiece made the contents clear. A nude woman was pleasuring herself with a dildo while another woman watched. Sarah flipped through it. The text was simple and the words repeated like a primer. She could probably read this one. If it came right down to it, she could write this one. Now that might be a way to earn money that she didn’t have to ask Marco for.
Worst-case scenario, she would hire someone—the Venetians were great schemers and sneaks—to find the mage for her.
Marco had hung onto the money he’d found in the armori. He didn’t seem to understand that she didn’t like sending out the servants to get everything she needed and didn’t like not having money of her own. After a night of drinking wine with his odious friends again, he had pointed out, laughing his head off, that the only way for a woman to earn money was on her back—unless she wanted to grow melons and sell them.
Sarah hadn’t e
ven thought of writing. She could find a poor scribe or clerk who would translate for her if he was promised a cut of the proceeds. She thought of the English duke who had frowned at her at the ball. Surely there was someone attached to his household who would do.
Erotica might not be the noblest literary form, but there was no harm in it. The best Latin poets had penned their share of odes to muffs and cocks and bums; Marco, Venetian gentleman that he was, had read her a few. She could try her hand at writing something sensual. As a monument to posterity, it would beat leaving her name on a plaster wall to find in the future.
She looked up from the book to see Marco looking out the window while the bookstore’s proprietor was up on a ladder retrieving a book from a high shelf. Her black-haired loverboy was eying two beauties who stopped and looked at the window display.
It was less than a minute after he’d licked her ear and said he loved her. The past was a bad, bad place to be a woman.
Sarah wanted to chuck the book of girl-on-girl erotica at his handsome head. Call it the Revenge of the Lesbians. But she restrained herself. He hadn’t been this flirtatious in the twenty-first century. Maybe it had taken him that long to get it out of his system. Men truly were impossible. She closed the book with a snap that made him turn around.
“Did you find something worth reading, Sarah?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I will buy it for you.”
The offer was graciously made but it still rankled her that she couldn’t buy it for herself. She handed it to him silently, and he glanced inside to find the price, not getting as far as the naughty engraving.
He found a coin on his person and put it on the counter for the proprietor to pick up. Marco turned back to the old man as he took his foot off the lowest step of the ladder.
“I do not have the book you mentioned, Signor, but I do know of it. It was published some time ago. A very strange little volume. The authorities were also interested in acquiring a copy.”
Sarah felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. Marco wasn’t even listening. He was looking at the women who were pretending to look at the books in the window.
