Dane. Elizabeth Amber
as she could remember.
But this was no human man. Nor was he satyr. Nor true flesh and blood. He was an insentient being. One of the ranks of those who’d serviced the satyr since ancient times. A Shimmerskin. His singular purpose here tonight was to obey. To serve her. At dawn, he would disappear.
She circled her creation, enjoying the sight of smooth sloping valleys, hills, and plateaus of muscle and bone. His skin was resilient and glimmered preternaturally in the light. He was a head taller than she, with broad shoulders and strong arms and narrow hips. And he was naked.
“I don’t have time for this, you know,” she murmured to him, knowing he wouldn’t be able to comprehend what she spoke. “I have other important business here in EarthWorld, in Rome.” Sharing her confidences with an insentient being was foolish, but it gave her solace. “I’m searching for my father. The one who made me what I am.”
Her eyes fell to his genitals. Even in repose, they appeared pleasing. If she’d remained in that olive grove on Aventine a few moments longer, she might not have been forced to guess at their dimensions. Regardless, she’d based her creature’s phallus on an extraordinary model. Just prior to her eighteenth birthday, her tutor had taken her to view one of the ancient ElseWorld Wonders—the famous series of marble statues of the wine god Bacchus that lined the mirrored Hall of Vitis Vinifera.
Throughout her inspection of this effigy she’d fashioned, he only stood there, gazing docilely at her. She sighed. This was the difficulty with these beings. They required instruction.
“Come,” she bade him softly.
Obediently, he came nearer to tower over her. His stride and movements were strange in their otherworldly fluidity.
Dark lashes amplified the piercing silver of the eyes that stared down at her. Eyes that were vacant.
She lay a hand on his arm. He was warm and smooth. “Bend me to your Will.”
He hesitated, unsure. Of course, since he had no Will, he didn’t understand. He required more specific commands.
“Remove my clothing,” she instructed, and his fingers came to her gray silk bodice, unfastening. He made quick work of it and her corset, skirt, and petticoats as well. Long, blunt-tipped fingers pulled at strings, untying her pantalets, then unrolling her stockings. Soon, only her chemise remained. He reached for it as well.
Suddenly, a ray of moonlight found its way through the window, burnishing her pale skin to gold. And with its coming, a great longing came over her. She shivered and pushed his hands away. “No,” she whispered. “Leave it.”
Hurrying unsteadily to the bed, she climbed up and swung one leg over the footrail, straddling it. With one knee on the mattress and the other atop the tall leather trunk on the opposite side of the rail, she kneeled there, open. Poised inches above the protruding, olivewood phallus.
High between her legs, her flesh was flushed, warm and plump with her desire—the effect of the full moon. Her fingers found and threaded through the soft triangle of down, parting her folds and slipping between them. She was damp, creamy. A sound that was half moan, half sigh welled from her as her need turned unbearably urgent.
She glanced at her companion. Remembered how the original version of him had wanted her, there beneath the murmuring olive trees. “Come close. Behind me.”
“Yes.” He moved toward her like a beautiful automaton, dutifully preparing to fulfill the role for which she’d designed him. She grasped the bedpost before her as he straddled the rail on his knees, coming close to warm her spine.
She turned to look at him over her shoulder, catching his eyes. “Take me,” she whispered.
As if she’d flipped a switch, his pupils dilated on cue and his expression filled with lust. She felt his prick harden at the small of her back and her breath quickened. With soft words, she told him what she needed from him.
Hands came, big and firm on her hips, positioning her and then guiding her downward. Olivewood kissed her feminine nether lips, parted them. Impaled them. Her eyes fell shut and her chin lifted on an excited murmur.
Hands tilted her hips back and another phallus, this one just as smooth, planted another kiss on the pruney ring tucked within the crevice of her bottom. And then he was pushing, and she was sinking and spreading and gasping at the exquisite, hot bite of him. The fat greedy plum of his crest slipped inside her, a move synchronized with that of another entrance of polished olivewood. She felt them push on, deeper. Deeper still. The long, hard glides seemed never ending.
“Oh!” Her jaw tightened against the need to call for a respite from the tug of hands and gravity, and the push of thick, tandem cocks. He would stop if she asked. And she didn’t want him to stop. She wanted this, needed it. Craved it.
And then at last she was crying out, as unforgiving olivewood and hard male filled her completely. His dark thatch cushioned her bottom, and his chin was tucked at the hollow of her shoulder. His chest was an unyielding furnace at her back, his thighs a powerful embrace on either side of hers. And she was full, so, so full.
You’ll need me then, between your thighs.
She moaned, remembering. Yearning.
“Make me come,” she breathed. Strong, obedient hands lifted her higher, pulled her lower in an undulating motion, and thus began her erotic ride. Murmuring encouragement and instructions to him all the while, she let passion build, fucking herself, letting him fuck her. Urging him on and on and on.
Air quivered from her throat in wild, quick snatches, and his own came at her nape in hot gasps in time with his plunge and withdrawal. Her thighs burned. Her lungs were near to bursting. The bedpost was cool between her swollen breasts, her fingers white-knuckled where they gripped it. And deep, deep inside she was wet, humming, on the brink of something wonderful.
Oh, Gods! Her nipples clenched painfully tight, and she reached for his hands, needing them on her there, showing them how to massage her. The slap of their flesh was an aphrodisiac as he went deep in her, hot in her, long in her. The sweet, steady building of sensation rose in her, higher and higher, until finally, finally…finally…she felt the first delicate contraction. The seizing of her inner tissues that presaged her ultimate finish. Another contraction came, stronger this time, and then another, again and again, and then closer together, and harder, tumbling upon one another. Her exhalations came in rasps and gulps and moans. Her clit twisted and jerked, and her nether tissues fisted on the lengths they stroked. Her entire body tightened, ready, so ready…
And then she was coming, convulsing in long, harsh, beautiful waves of sensation that burst stars behind her eyelids and seemed to go on forever and ever, and yet not long enough. All too soon, they subsided to dull echoes of their former strength. She slumped forward, her forehead on the bedpost. Her inner tissues pulsed more gently now, their pace slowing sooner than her heartbeat. Her lashes lifted.
Beyond the window, the moon was a tangerine, pale and huge above paper cutouts of black cypress and oak trees and spires and rooftops. Illuminations from the festa under way in the Forum ruins burst and sparkled around the moon, making it almost appear to be weeping for joy.
And then there was empty silence. The dull aftermath of empty gratification. A tear coursed down her cheek and she rested her forehead on the bedpost in front of her, just above her clenched hands. How she longed for something else. Something more.
“You’re lucky, do you know that?” she murmured. “Apparently there are legions of men who would pay large sums of money to have me in this way. Yet you don’t care. Can’t care. And that’s what makes you special, and so perfect for this night. In a world that would be all too interested in exploiting me if they knew of my existence, you are singular. Safe. Unlike the pattern I used to make you.”
He didn’t reply, of course, and was motionless as she pushed herself upward, relinquishing rods of flesh and wood. She needed this dual penetration only once. It was a crucial, necessary beginning to the night. But now it was over, and she would not require it again. She lay back on the mattress,