The cats, perfectly happy with everything, draped themselves across Andreas’s legs, their purrs like buzz saws. At least someone had gotten entertainment out of it, Nico thought. From inside the bedroom, he heard Rebecca burst into tears.
THEY stayed at the inn for the rest of the weekend while Rebecca made phone calls to archaeologists all over the country and outside it about the ostracon.
Patricia knew Rebecca had trouble believing, despite the evidence of her own eyes. But it was a lot to take in—Andreas was a leopard; Nico had wings; Dyons wanted the ostracon and turned to smoke when Nico killed them.
Rebecca could at least focus on the ostracon and the inscription, which she said was meat and drink to her. She doubled her efforts, letting the challenge help her deal with her shock of Nico and Andreas. She could barely speak to Andreas, shooting sidelong glances at him like a schoolgirl with her first crush. Once, when Rebecca had turned around quickly, Patricia saw that she’d taken to not wearing a bra.
Patricia left Rebecca to her work, only to find Nico’s tension wound high.
He became as restless as Andreas, impatient with everything and worried another Dyon would find them. He said nothing more about what would happen if they found a way to get him free or what would happen if they didn’t.
Whenever Patricia tried to start any conversation with him, no matter how innocuous, Nico would distract her with sexual play. That meant her body was well sated by the end of the weekend, but she could get no closer to him.
Another thing that ramped up her frustration was that she and Nico still hadn’t had full sex. Nico had brought her to some of the most profound pleasure she’d ever experienced, but they hadn’t actually completed the act. Was he trying to make her so hungry for it that when they finally did consummate their relationship, it would be spectacular? She never could ask, because after their play, she’d drop into deep slumber, and Nico would be gone when she woke.
She’d thought that him being her slave would mean he’d do whatever she wanted, but he said no, it meant he’d bring her profound pleasure, his way. So far, she couldn’t argue with his technique, but it left her emotionally unsatisfied.
The only one at ease was Andreas. The big, growling man spent the weekend reading newspapers with his feet up or talking on his cell phone to his assistant running the club back in Manhattan. He usually had a cat or two draped over him, and when he prowled the grounds at night as a leopard, they followed close behind him.
On Monday, Rebecca asked them to come to her porch so she could tell them what she’d found. Nico pulled Patricia to sit with him on a wooden bench, his arm around her, while Andreas lounged against the railing.
Rebecca lectured them from her table spread with papers. The ostracon had indeed been one of three fragments found in a Greco-Roman site in Alexandria. All three pieces had been studied, then sold by the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. One fragment now resided in Mrs. Penworth’s living room, and Rebecca talked to an archaeologist who was certain the other two fragments were in the British Museum in London, where they’d lain for a hundred years, brought to England in a day and age in which they didn’t want to share the artifacts with the country they came from.
Rebecca called the British Museum, but the person she spoke to could not be certain they were the right fragments, and apparently they didn’t have the staff—or the interest, Rebecca said with disapproval—to photograph the fragments and fax them to her. Rebecca would have to go and look for herself.
“And anyway, it’s better to look in person. A photographer or copyist might get it wrong.” Her eyes were sparkling with excitement that told Patricia she was ready to continue the hunt.
“What about your job?” Patricia asked. “Your classes?”
Rebecca waved it away, a complete turnaround from the day they’d met her. “I only teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If we leave Thursday afternoon and get back by Tuesday morning, I shouldn’t miss a thing. It is for research, after all. I could get a good journal article out of it.”
Nico and Andreas seemed perfectly happy with this plan. Patricia expected Nico to tell her she’d be safer left behind, but he only looked at Patricia with pain in his eyes and advised her to come with them.
He was plainly torn between protecting her and needing her with him, the curse gripping him. Patricia supposed it would be kinder to remain behind, but she couldn’t bear the thought of him going off without her. The curse must be gripping her, too.
Andreas and Nico offered to fund the tickets, which Rebecca accepted with the graciousness of a chronically poor graduate student. Patricia tried to pay her own way, but Nico insisted, then tortured her with pleasure that night for even suggesting it.
“You belong to me,” he said, his voice dark with need. “Your pleasure and well-being is my charge.”
He even gently tied a silken gag around her mouth as he played with her, preventing further argument.
Andreas bought the tickets online for Friday, the earliest they could find a flight, and on Friday morning, Patricia drove them all back to the city to catch the flight. The cats stayed behind at the B and B with Mrs. Blake. The innkeeper was happy to take care of them, which relieved Patricia, who hadn’t wanted to leave them alone or put them in a kennel. The cats knew Andreas was leaving, and they sulked.
Andreas had booked first-class tickets, Patricia and Rebecca discovered when they reached JFK. He and Nico behaved as though this was normal, settling into the first-class lounge like they owned the place. Patricia usually flew as cheaply as she could when she went on buying trips and had gotten used to squishing shoulder to shoulder with strangers.
Rebecca, too, was used to bare subsistence travel as a student and doctoral fellow, and looked around in awe when they boarded the first-class cabin. Andreas had secured himself the seat next to Rebecca, with Nico and Patricia across the aisle from them.
“This is . . . cushy,” Patricia said as she leaned into her generous seat on takeoff.
“Andreas likes to travel in style,” Nico answered.
Andreas was busy saying something to Rebecca that made the young woman red and uncomfortable. When Andreas got up to wander to the bathroom, Patricia slid into his vacated seat.
“You can tell him to leave you alone, if you want,” Patricia said. “He’ll have to.”
Rebecca tried to shrug it off. “I’m just not used to men. I mean, men who look at me as a woman instead of an academic.”
Patricia grinned. “It happens.”
“Not to me, it doesn’t. I spent the past ten years trying to make men notice me for my mind. I was valedictorian, summa cum laude, top honors with my PhD. Universities are fighting to get me.”
“Sounds like hell.”
“No, it’s wonderful,” Rebecca said seriously. “I’ve achieved all I set out to and then some. Now I’m starting to want men to look at me for my body, and it’s too late.”
Patricia looked at her with a critical eye. “I don’t think so. You have good material to work with.”
Rebecca sighed. “I have no idea how to work with it. Look at me.” She gestured to her baggy khaki pants, her pale pink top that made her complexion sallow, and her flyaway hair pulled again into a high ponytail. She wore no makeup as usual, but her face had good bone structure, and her lips were full, her eyes a soft brown.
“Leave it to me,” Patricia said. “A few touches, and you’ll be transformed.”
Rebecca did not look convinced but let the matter drop.
Patricia got up as Andreas came back and returned to her own seat. Andreas put his lips to her ear as she passed him.
“You have a great ass, Patricia. Let me know when you want me to fuck it.”
Sudden heat flooded her, and to her dismay, she had a vivid vision of him behind her, hard and ready to slide inside her. She felt her nipples pearl and her quim fill.
She dropped into her seat beside Nico without answering, and Andreas lounged back in his own chair, turning his full atte
ntion to Rebecca.
“What did he say to you?” Nico whispered. They couldn’t snuggle very well in the state-of-the-art individual seats, but Nico leaned to her, running a caressing hand over her arm.
“Nothing important.”
Nico watched her, his look turning dangerous. “I said, what did he say to you?”
He would get it from her, or Andreas, sooner or later. But she was struck with the sudden desire to tell him. It excited her to tell him.
She whispered what Andreas had said, and Nico’s eyes darkened. “Do you want him to?” he asked.
“Well, of course not.”
“Don’t lie to me, Patricia. If you want it, that’s what you’ll have. You know this.”
Patricia gulped and lay back in her reclining seat. “What I know is Rebecca had better hurry up and get that inscription translated.”
Nico watched her a little longer, his eyes as dark as sin; then he chuckled and turned to look out the window. But he wouldn’t forget the matter, and neither would Andreas, and she knew it.
WHEN they reached London, Rebecca discovered that the man they needed to talk to about the fragments at the museum was finishing up a holiday and would be back the day after tomorrow.
“They couldn’t tell me that when we were still in New York,” she growled as she hung up the phone in the suite they’d booked near the British Museum. “I suppose I could go over there and do some research while we wait.”
“No, you can’t,” Patricia told her firmly. “Remember what I said on the flight? You’re going shopping with me.”
Rebecca brightened, as though offered a rare treat. “Shopping?”
“We’re going to leave our boys and indulge in the frivolous, feminine sport of shopping. We deserve it.”
Rebecca nodded, still hesitant, but her eyes showed her eagerness. “I suppose we do.”
Patricia intended to find Rebecca an outfit that went with her trim little body and make her wear it. The woman was too used to the habitual slovenliness of the career academic, but she had potential, and Patricia intended to bring it out. Like her fairy god-mother.
Plus, Patricia wanted to sightsee. She’d been to London before, but she usually only had time to go to antique auctions, ship her findings back home, and fling herself onto a plane, exhausted, for the return journey.
Now she and Rebecca strolled the streets and looked at what she’d only glimpsed from cab windows: the neoclassical glory of Buckingham Palace and the quiet of Green Park, Georgian houses that were an antique lover’s dream, the Tudor remnants of Saint James’s Palace. She pressed her nose to the window at Christie’s and sighed over the beautiful antiques inside, pretended not to gawk at the wild characters in Piccadilly Circus, and walked with Rebecca out across the river to gaze back at the London skyline.
And they shopped. She and Rebecca browsed shops until Patricia found Rebecca an adorable skirt and jacket outfit, the skirt sexy-short and the jacket made to hug her figure. Rebecca perked up considerably looking at herself in the mirror, but she refused to accept it unless Patricia found something for herself. No conservative pantsuits or formless skirts, either; Patricia had to go for it.
Patricia tried on minute skirts and a dozen tops until Rebecca picked out a bright red skirt and a black sleeveless sweater with a halter neck for her. Nothing for it but they got thigh-high stockings and high black heels to go with it.
“Nico’s eyes will pop out,” Rebecca said as they walked out armed with shopping bags. “You make sure you wear it.”
“I’ll wear mine if you wear yours.”
Rebecca nodded seriously. “Bargain.”
They sealed it over a lunch of fish and chips in a nearby pub.
“I love London,” Patricia said, rubbing her fried potatoes in vinegar before popping the satisfying concoction in her mouth. “So much history, from the Roman outpost to yesterday.”
Rebecca only nodded. “I suppose.”
Patricia laughed. “I forgot; you’re used to working in 2000 BCE. This must all seem hideously modern to you.”
Rebecca smiled. “Somewhat. Why do you think Nico and Andreas let us go off on our own today?”
“You mean why aren’t they here protecting us from potential Dyon attacks?”
“Exactly.”
Patricia stared at her empty plate, wishing more chips would manifest on it. “They must think we’re safe for now. From what I gather, the Dyons are like dogs who have been trained to guard one thing and one thing only. If you get close to that thing, they attack. Otherwise, they ignore you.”
“In other words, we’re probably not on the right track,” Rebecca said glumly. “Or else these Dyon things would be all over us.”
“Something like that.”
“Why did they insist we come here, then?”
“I don’t know. They might have figured something out since we arrived and haven’t bothered telling us.”
Rebecca sipped her lager, making a face at the taste. “You mean they haven’t bothered telling you. Andreas won’t tell me anything directly if he can help it.”
Patricia peered at her, noting her blush. “Are you falling for Andreas?”
“Seems like it.” Rebecca drank more lager. “He . . .” She heaved a loud sigh. “He teases me, but I don’t think he’s interested in more.”
“Hmm.” Patricia waited to feel anger or jealousy that Rebecca confessed her attraction for the tall, sexy Andreas, but none came. She knew she would have burned with hurt if Rebecca’s target had been Nico.
“Have you told him?” Patricia asked.
Rebecca suddenly changed from a shy young woman interested in a sexy man to a resigned woman who knew what disappointment was.
“Men like that never want women like me,” she said in a dull voice. “I don’t know how to talk about anything but my job. He might be interested in having sex with me—getting the nerdy academic to let her hair down—but that’s as far as it goes. He won’t be moving in and helping me pick out a bathroom rug.”
Patricia couldn’t answer, because she wasn’t sure Rebecca was wrong. Andreas might be compelled to Rebecca by the curse, but that might be as far as it went.
The two women looked for more answers in another helping of chips but drew no conclusions. They walked off lunch by strolling through Green Park and admiring Saint James’s Palace, watching people teasing the stiff-faced guards.
They took the tube back to their hotel near the University of London and the British Museum and entered the front room of the two-bedroom suite. There was no sign of Nico or Andreas.
“Where’d they get to, do you think?” Rebecca asked, sounding a little cranky.
“In here.” Patricia’s voice was hollow as she froze in the doorway of the bedroom. Rebecca came to peer over her shoulder and gasped.
Nico and Andreas lay stretched out across the huge bed, Andreas’s head on Nico’s shoulder. Nico’s wings cushioned both of them, and they were very naked.
Nico smiled at Patricia. “We thought you’d like a little show.”
“That is, if you ever got here.” Andreas snorted. “What were you doing, buying up the whole town?”
“We stopped for lunch,” Rebecca said faintly.
“Hope you’re still hungry,” Andreas returned.
Patricia felt Rebecca’s hand on her shoulder, a faint clutch as the other girl held herself up. Patricia swallowed on her dry throat as Andreas rolled over and gave Nico a full-tongued kiss.
“Oh, my,” Rebecca breathed.
Patricia could say nothing. They were enjoying themselves, laughing together at Patricia and Rebecca standing stunned in the doorway. They didn’t expect Rebecca or Patricia to do anything; this was a show for their benefit.
The two men tangled on the bed were so beautiful, Nico’s wings providing a black, feathery background to their tanned bodies. Andreas’s white black hair mingled with Nico’s dark hair as they kissed, Andreas’s strong hand on Nico’s chest.
Patricia’s quim grew hot as she watched the male sexual play before her. Cocks were rampant, not touching, Nico’s lying against the curve of his thigh, Andreas’s straight out. It was the most erotic thing she’d ever seen.
“I can’t look,” Rebecca whispered, but when Patricia glanced at the younger woman, Rebecca’s gaze was riveted to the pair on the bed.
The two men broke the kiss, and Nico nibbled Andreas’s upper lip. They turned together to the women in the doorway, smiles wide. The identical chains around their necks winked in the sunlight that streamed through the window.
“What would you like us to do?” Nico asked.
Patricia opened her mouth, but nothing would come out. Rebecca was breathing fast, hot against Patricia’s shoulder. Patricia at least had grown somewhat used to the pair’s blatant sexuality, but Rebecca must have been floored by it.
“Anything you want,” Nico continued. “We’re yours for the afternoon.”
“Command us, ladies,” Andreas said in a hard voice. “I’m getting bored.”
Nico was laughing quietly; probably she and Rebecca were pop-eyed, their mouths hanging open to their chests.
Patricia cleared her throat, trying to dislodge the shock that had clumped in it. Her knees were shaking, but her nipples had pinched into tiny, hard buds. “Play with each other,” she choked out.
Behind her, she heard Rebecca gulp.
“Play how?” Nico asked. His gaze riveted to Patricia, and in it she saw joy that she’d accepted this gift he offered.
“Bring each other off,” she said. “Please.”
“That’s easy,” Andreas said in his growling voice. “He’s so hard he’ll go as soon as I touch him.”
“Speak for yourself,” Nico answered.
He reached for Andreas’s cock, closing his hand around the hard and heavy staff. Andreas arched his back, his eyes closing in pleasure. He swiped his tongue through Nico’s mouth, then he grasped Nico’s cock in his huge hand.
Patricia longed to go to them, to climb on the bed among all those soft feathers and be with them, but she also wanted to stay right where she was. Rolling around with them, she’d miss watching the ecstasy that made Nico give her a heavy-eyed smile.
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