“Let down your walls,” he whispered. “I want to touch your soul.”
Letting him in was as easy as drawing breath. Between one thrust and the next, her barriers simply fell. He was inside her then, as if her heart had always been his home. She could see with his eyes, feel with his body. His love was a sea that buoyed her in boundless warmth, deep, unstinting, as amazing as it was sure. No emptiness could survive it. This was her salvation, no matter what came to her in the end. She was loved and she could love, a blessing greater than any for which she’d dared to pray.
Their auras flickered together, shimmers of green and blue, ribbons of red and gold. Martin groaned and thrust so hard he lifted her from his lap. She could feel his swelling rise to climax, or maybe she felt her own. Sensation blurred, doubled, as if he were joining with her in truth, as if their bodies had lost their separate forms.
A hallucination, she thought. Real or not, the intermingling was delicious. Her body became her sex, yielding, giving, being taken in every cell.
And then she remembered.
This was how she had changed. This was how Auriclus had made her an upyr.
Exultation rose like new spring wine. She could make Martin what she was. She did not have to lose him, did not have to watch him age and die.
But— said the last sane corner of her mind.
But— said the first selfless corner of her heart.
If she made him what she was, she shared not just her gifts but also her burdens. He might have chosen to love her but he had not chosen that.
Her awareness expanded, then stilled. Colors pulsed in the hush like veils spun out of gems. She felt his attention, and his question, as if it were her own.
“We must stop,” she said, or maybe only thought. “I cannot steal your future.”
“And if my future lies with you?”
She wanted to believe so badly, the ache of it rang through her bones.
“Luisa,” he said, his thought-voice as rich as velvet spice. “In all my lives, I have lost and found more treasures than I can count. But none of them, none, ever meant as much to me as you. There is no nirvana without you. There is only an empty night.”
She searched him for the truth, though she knew he could not lie. What if he came to be sorry? What if she dragged him down?
“We will drag each other up,” he promised. “Together we will be twice as strong.”
“This is your choice? Truly?”
“I did not know how much I wanted this until I looked into my heart. I will not be sorry, Luisa. And I am not afraid.”
All that he was infused the declaration: his pride, his courage, his curious, questing mind. It seemed impossible to fathom and yet she saw that loving her had made him stronger. Gone was his bitterness at his father, gone his fear that he never would belong. Because she loved him, all of him, he knew he belonged and always had. He did not need to renounce either West or East. Instead, all the world could be his home.
“Change me,” he said, “and I will share the world with you.”
A shower of stars burst within him, diamond cool and bright. His body disappeared, no boundaries, no limits, just sparks spread far and wide. I am the world, he thought, but a heartbeat later he slammed back in.
He was all body then, all tautly focused nerve and flesh. His phallus tightened. His throat burned with a swallowed scream. Luisa tugged at him, outside, inside. She was so wet, so warm. Sweat sprang from his pores, the pleasure like a cramp. When it swelled his cry broke free. He could not stop it, could not stop any of it. He came so strongly he almost turned inside out.
When Luisa arched, he came again.
And then a peace like none he’d ever known spread outward from his sex. It was purely a peace of the body but its power coursed sweet and deep. For the first time in his life, he knew what it was to be flawlessly in balance, every bone and muscle, every particle of being. Sighing at the liquid, golden feel, he toppled with her in his arms onto the bed. Apparently her strength had not abandoned her. She leaned over him, smiling, her hair hanging around them like new-washed silk. She seemed an angel to him, a dakini of the highest grade.
Angel or not, she traced the shape of his face with the tip of her longest finger. “You hardly look different,” she mused, then laughed deep in her throat. “You must have been nearly perfect as you were.”
The compliment pleased him, though it seemed vain to admit.
“I am sleepy,” he confessed, watching her through pleasantly drowsy eyes. “If I let myself go under, will I forget what you have done?”
She smoothed his brow beneath her thumb. “I am not sure but I do not think so. Auriclus never taught me to blank a mind. Not that it matters. I would not alter your memory. I trust you with my secrets more than I trust myself.”
This compliment he accepted without shame. “I shall strive,” he said huskily, “to be worthy of your esteem.”
He woke to a subtle twang inside his body. Sunset. It was almost a taste, like water from a spring: sweet, pure, the darkling dawn of his new day. At some point, he and Luisa had rolled out of bed onto the carpet. Despite the fading light, his vision was crystal clear. Different. Changed. I am upyr now, he thought. I am a foreign being. The recognition inspired exhilaration instead of fear. Maybe tomorrow would bring regret. For tonight he was simply glad.
He shifted, oddly at home in his altered form. The nerves in his back were alive to every strand of Kashmir wool. Luisa, bless her, lay sleeping across his chest. She was warm even now, or possibly he’d grown cooler. Her skin still felt like burnished silk. Desire overwhelmed him, sharper and harder than before. If this was what upyr felt, he did not know how she had held off. Too impatient to wake her, he rolled her under his body and thrust inside.
“Mm,” she said, and cocked her calf around his hip. “I like an early riser.”
The act was easier now, more natural. The rhythm came without duress. His arms were tireless, his thighs like tempered steel. And the pleasure…that was a roaring flood. When he threw back his head in climax her nails left approving half-moon pricks against his skin. Sadly, they had healed by the time she climbed atop and began to ride. He would have liked to bear her mark, just as the sages promised in the sutras. That one small disappointment, however, could not allay his joy.
As if she sensed this, she smiled through her flaxen hair. “You are not hungry,” she said, wonder growing in her eyes.
Martin gripped her waist. “Only for you,” he said, and thrust as deeply as he could. “From now on only for you.”
“Shall I come with you?” she asked. She stood before him, her head lowered, her hands resting lightly on his breast. She was the picture of the wife he had not known he wanted.
“No,” he said, “I have delayed this long enough.”
She smiled at that, a secretive curling of her mouth. Since sunset they had put everything off but love. On the floor. Against the wall. Standing. Sitting. Twice they had even done it head to toe.
He had liked that. He thought it was a thing a god would do.
“I do not care what you say,” he grumbled even as his body stirred again. “This incessant desire for coupling cannot be normal.”
Her hands flowed seductively across his shoulders. “I did not say it was normal, I said it was natural. You were a healthy young man. Now you are a healthy upyr. Given your history, how could you not have numerous unmet urges to fulfill?”
“But I am turning into a fiend!”
She looked at him, her eyes round with concern. “Is that what you think? That I made you a fiend?”
“No, my love, no.” He kissed her alabaster forehead. “I am merely feeling guilty for enjoying this so much. Or, rather, I am feeling guilty for not feeling guilty enough.”
Her face lit up, as sunny as daybreak. “You called me your love.”
He laughed. “You are my love. And now I must go, before you convince me I cannot.”
She nuzzled the hollow beneath his thro
at. “Are you certain you don’t want me to talk to the abbot with you?”
“I am,” he said. “This task is mine alone to perform.”
He was sorry to leave her despite his words. Her warmth had kept his anxiety at bay. Yes, his teacher had expected him to share the act of coition with their guest. He could not, however, have expected Martin to turn upyr.
Hands fisted determinedly at his sides, he strode through the lower hall. He stopped when two monks shrank in horror from his path. Only then did he realize how swiftly he had been moving, huge inhuman bounds that ate the distance.
“I am practicing a new power,” he growled at the wide-eyed monks.
The men exchanged a wary look. Obviously this feat was more than they expected even from Shisharovar’s best naljorpa.
I shall have to go, he thought. I do not fit in here now.
The knowledge hurt but not as much as he feared. Even if Luisa had lived close, he would have been ready to leave. The wider world was calling. Perhaps it had been all along.
He closed his eyes and let the new awareness find a home. When he opened them, his teacher stood before him. The glow that lit his aura told Martin he had come from the midnight prayer.
“Rinpoche,” he said, bringing his hands together for his bow.
“Martin,” responded the abbot, “I see you have achieved all that I hoped.”
Martin gaped at him. The abbot’s eyes crinkled in amusement.
“Come.” He took Martin’s arm. “I think this calls for a cup of tea.”
He led him to a small reception chamber, the same room in which Luisa had been chained. A pot waited on a table with two brown cushions pulled to its side. When his teacher poured a cup of pure gold Indian brew, Martin knew he had seen the truth. Luisa could not drink Tibetan tea, and neither now could he.
“How could you know?” he demanded. “And why are you not upset?”
“You have your gifts,” said the abbot, “and I have mine.”
“But—”
“I saw it,” he said, “in a vision the day she came. You were gleaming in the moonlight white as stone. ‘She is mine,’ you said. ‘She is the one for whom I have blindly waited all these years.’ Oh, I knew my vision of the future was a chance and not a surety, and that it would be wrong to push, but I hoped…”
“You hoped!” Twice now his teacher had used that word. Martin was so flustered he had to put down his cup. “Rinpoche, I know I have come to view what happened as a blessing, but how could you hope? This change can only take me far away.”
“That,” said the abbot, blowing firmly across his tea, “is precisely what I hoped.” To Martin’s astonishment, his teacher’s eyes welled up with tears. “Old friend, if you had seen the shadow I have seen hanging over our little country, you would know we will need every friend that we can make. You are no longer my charge, and I cannot give you orders, but I am not too proud to plead. Be our emissary, Martin, not to preach but to share our ways, to teach the world that Tibet is a treasure that must be saved.” With heartfelt strength, he gripped Martin’s icy hands. “It is a work of many years, but I know you will have them now.”
A tremor swept Martin’s newly sensitive upyr nerves. What sort of shadow could cause his guide to plead?
“Do not ask,” said the abbot, one hand raised as if to fend off a blow. “We may yet find a way to turn this tragedy aside. Still”—he ventured a brilliant smile—“what country does not need friends?”
“It would be my honor,” Martin said through his thickened throat, “to make them on your behalf.”
He rose then before emotion could shame them both. An errant thought stopped him at the door. “What would you have done if I had not let her change me?”
The abbot’s grin was impish. “I could lie,” he said, “and say I would have asked your Luisa to change me. Alas, even if she would have, I fear you would see through my deceit. I have always aspired to win free of this earthly plane. You are the brave one, Martin. With all my heart, I bid you joy in your life to come.”
“Thank you,” Martin said, and hid his smile as he turned away. For all the abbot’s wisdom, Martin knew he could not conceive how much happiness one life could hold.
7
With her hunger taken care of—and so enjoyably—the voyage back to Florence was far more comfortable than the voyage out. Just the same, Luisa was not sorry to be home, especially since she had come home with him. Home, home, home, to her stately fortress on the Arno, with her view of the Duomo and her courtyard and her private cellar of fine French wine—each pleasure doubled by being shared. Even sunset, she discovered, possessed a deeper charm. A glimmer of scarlet still blooded her windows’ mullioned diamond panes. She had had her blessed soak and was now being dressed for her first dinner since their return.
Martin lounged against the bedpost to watch the maids prepare her. Outwardly amused, the gleam in his eye bespoke arousal. To him, her Western clothes were like a whiff of she-cat to a tom. His nostrils flared as her whalebone stays encased her smock, followed by the hip-widening cage of the farthingale. As her skirts were eased down the frame, he had to shift one ankle over the other. The way her breasts over-swelled the bodice made his gaze shoot aqua fire. When the maids began pinning jewels onto her slashed and embroidered sleeves, however, he could not restrain a laugh.
“Behold the glittering idol,” he said, spreading his arms in a gesture he had been practicing for a week. The pose was convincingly Florentine. “Tell me, milady, is there an inch of that gown that does not bristle with lace and bows and a sultan’s ransom in precious stones?”
“Pray God there is not!” she huffed, surprising the younger maid into a laugh. Both girls curtsied when she dismissed them, leaving her alone with her new spouse.
Unaccountably nervous, she adjusted her open ruff. With a small, quirked smile and a careful foot, Martin stepped into the circle of her skirts. In waves of emerald silk they spread around the giltwood stool on which she sat. As if to make certain she was real, he touched her powdered cheek. The cosmetic pinked her skin, a requirement for one so fair when mixing with mortal guests.
“My attire is part of doing business,” she explained. “People do not believe you are successful unless you put on a show, and unless they believe you are successful, they will not help you to be more so.”
“Is that what you want, to be more successful?”
Heart overflowing, she kissed his hand. “How I love you. When you ask a question, you never act as if you will judge the answer. I enjoy my success, yes. I worked hard for it. It is also a kind of safety. The Inquisition cast a shadow, you know, not as long in Florence as elsewhere, but such dark days I shall not soon forget. Besides”—she flashed a smile—“someone must fund the ventures of men whose stockings are full of holes.”
“Is that what you do?”
“Among other things. I am not one lone woman anymore, I am a net of enterprise. My success supports that of others and that, too, warms my pride.”
“And these partners do not know what you are?”
“No. Only my lawyer and his venerable father know. The Vasari are a proud Florentine family, back from when the great casate built towers to defend against being assassinated by their rivals. Old and young Piero understand loyalty—and discretion. I shall have to start silvering my hair, though, soon enough.” She touched the youthful coils that supported her velvet cap. “After a time, I shall go into seclusion, perhaps even leave the country. Then, once I pass quietly away, I can return as some far-flung niece and heir.”
Martin rubbed his nose. “It seems complicated.”
“It is inconvenient,” she admitted, “but necessary, and considerate in its way. If people do not know for certain why you are odd, they are content to have you be so.”
“As long as you are successful.”
Luisa smiled at his quickness. “Precisely.”
“I have much to learn,” he said, and plopped down on their bed. The feather
bolster fluffed around his hips but could not detract from his dignity, no more than could his foreign clothes.
Much as Martin enjoyed her dress, he had been shocked by the fashions for men: their expense, their colors, their—to him—immodesty. But “I do not mind,” he had assured her. “I cannot make friends for Tibet unless people see me as one of them. It is only, well, to wear this garb in public…”
Since he was determined to try, she had steered his disappointed tailor to the less flamboyant products of his trade. Now a pair of snug black venetians, sans padding, hugged Martin’s well-formed thighs. The ice blue doublet displayed his shoulders to perfection and the blazing white neck ruff, small though it was, enhanced the still-warm color of his skin.
Despite his discomfort, his regal bearing and natural talent for mimicry carried off the style. With his hair growing out, his wonderful Asian face almost seemed Italian.
“You have learned so much already,” she said. “I hope you do not think—”
He shook his head, hearing the words before she spoke. “I do not think you expect it of me. In truth, I find I must work hard to discover what you desire.”
“As if you could not guess!”
His blue eyes darkened with amusement. “Yes, there are many things I can guess, but since most would require being shut up in this bedchamber…” His grin turned wolfish, but his gaze as always was sincere. “I am learning because I want to, my love. I wish to move smoothly in your world. Once I can, I will decide what I want to do.” He laughed, the sound both deep and happy. “I cannot imagine what I shall be. A builder of ships? A lawyer?”
“Oh, not a lawyer, love.”
He leaned in to nip her ear. “Then perhaps a famous sculptor. Shall you sponsor me, donna, if I model my creations on your form?”
Fantasy Page 17
