“Destroy my research,” she said mournfully. “They broke my laptop, the stupid bastards.” Her eyes filled with tears.
He stretched out beside her, bringing the blanket around her to keep her warm. “I won’t let them near you again, sweetheart. I’ll stay a leopard, so I can scent them better and protect you better. I won’t leave your side.”
She blinked brown eyes at him, then her red lips curved into a smile. “I think everyone would stare if a leopard followed me around. I don’t think they’d let you on the bus with me. We’d have to get you a leash.”
“Very funny.”
She giggled, drunk with pleasure. “You need to think of these things if you plan to stay a leopard. What about feeding? We’d have to set up an account at a butcher shop. If you have to chase and kill your meat yourself, I don’t want to know about it.”
“Stop.” He kissed her to halt her words. She turned readily into the kiss, and his heart squeezed. Maybe if he pleasured her senseless, she’d get tired of him quickly, and then it wouldn’t hurt so much when she broke it off.
Sure.
Andreas rolled on top of her. “Do you want to fuck?”
She smiled sleepily. “Direct, aren’t you?”
“I can make you feel so good you won’t remember the Dyons or even your own name. Want me to?”
“That sure of your sexual prowess, are you?”
He shrugged. “Why be modest?”
She started laughing, shaking his body in a delightful way. “You are such a shit.”
“You haven’t answered my question. Do you want to fuck until we pop the bedsprings?”
“It’s a platform bed; there aren’t any springs. Besides . . .” She put her hand on his lips as he started to growl a smart-ass answer. “I don’t want to jump into this without thought or protection. What about STDs?”
He gave her an incredulous look. “I can’t give you STDs. That’s a human thing. I don’t carry any kind of disease. I’m part god; it doesn’t stick to me.”
“What about fleas?”
“What?”
“You’re a leopard. Can you give me fleas? I couldn’t put up with that . . . or the cat hair.”
Andreas growled and nipped the side of her neck. “Think you’re smart, don’t you, sweetheart?”
“And then there’s pregnancy.” Her eyes were serious.
“You don’t want kids?”
“I didn’t say that. I want them someday. I’m just not picturing you sticking around to raise the cubs. You and Nico will get what you want and go.”
“Is that so?”
She shrugged. “Whatever it is you want from the inscription, you’ll be finished with me once you have it. Nico seems pretty attached to Patricia, so he’ll try to stay with her, but you wouldn’t stay with me. You’re not the stay-with-one-woman kind of man.”
“You sound pretty sure of that,” he said.
“I work with lots of men, Andreas. I’ve seen what they do, and I make sure they never do it to me.”
Her stubborn expression told him a lot. “Is that why you hide your beauty? Why you conceal your body under ugly clothes?”
“I mostly don’t think about my clothes.”
He nuzzled her. “You looked absolutely gorgeous last night.”
She blushed, but her stubborn look remained. “Is that why you are suddenly interested in me? Because I wore a tight skirt?”
“It’s the curse, sweetheart. It’s called me to you, so here I am. Your love slave.”
“I don’t like the it’s the curse line. If you don’t want me just because you do, no way am I doing anything with you.”
“You already let me make you come in the shower. You seemed perfectly happy with that.”
“I was half asleep and still scared. That’s all. You’re not doing it again.”
He laughed low in his throat. “I’ll do it again. And again, and again. We’re connected now, you and I, until this spell wears through. You surrender to me, and I make everything very, very good.”
“But you’re the one under the curse.”
“So are you. You want the pleasure I can give you. You need it.”
Rebecca’s brown eyes darkened as his words sank in. Her pulse beat in her throat, her desires making her body flush with warmth.
Her scent grew stronger, her pheromones pouring over his animal senses. She was hungry, the pleasuring in the shower only partly sating her.
She snaked her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her. He licked her, loving running his tongue all over her face.
“Andreas,” she said, her voice low. “My answer is yes. I do want to make love.”
He shook his head, water dripping onto her as he pulled away. “Not yet.”
She made a noise of exasperation. “But you just said—”
“I said I would give you what you need. You need to work up to it, to be so excited that when we finally mate it is the best you’ve ever known.”
Her eyes darkened again, her excitement building despite her frustration. “Then why did you ask me if I wanted to? That’s the first thing you said when we got on the bed.”
“I know. I changed my mind.”
Her hungry look turned to a glare. “I was right; you are a shit.”
“Better get up and get dressed. The other two lovebirds are going to want breakfast.” He kissed her nose, then lifted himself away.
It was physical pain to do it, but he knew that what Rebecca needed right now was not mindless screwing. She needed to savor it, to enjoy every moment with her full attention. His body screamed at him to take her now, but he held himself back. It had to be her utmost pleasure, not his.
Rebecca smacked him with a pillow, glaring at him in rage. She was beautiful lying there naked with her brown eyes glowing.
Andreas deflected the pillow with one arm, still grinning at her. His cock was rampant and moving with his pulse, aching for him to fall on her and fuck her.
But the pain was worth it, he thought as he walked away from her. He’d achieved what he’d needed to this morning: he’d erased the terrible fear in her eyes that had been there the night before. He’d eased her and made her forget.
He sent her a hot smile, then went off to find some clothes.
15
NICO booked tickets to Cairo the next day, the first flight available that he could get four seats on, which would leave a few days later. Patricia decided to enjoy the extra time in London and took Rebecca shopping again to replace the clothes ruined by the Dyons.
Patricia also indulged in casual clothes that were sexier than she usually let herself wear. She was a businesswoman, not someone who wore cute cropped tops and tight skirts or pants that bared her hips. But her real life seemed far away, and she wanted Nico to find her sexy. He did, nuzzling her belly when she modeled the clothes for him, dipping his tongue into her conveniently bared belly button.
Rebecca bought sexier clothes, too, though she blushed a lot when she wore them. She spent most of her time trying to re-create her translation from memory, but her frustrated swearing told Patricia she wasn’t having much luck.
Rebecca seemed awkward with the attention Andreas now paid her, although she flushed with pleasure under it. Andreas had moved his rough charm firmly to Rebecca, and Patricia was glad.
Not that she hadn’t loved what he’d done with her and Nico, but something had changed in her relationship with Nico, and Andreas wasn’t part of it. Nico never said a word about their three-way sex play, but he made love to Patricia with increasing fervor, replacing what Andreas had done with his own dark seduction.
They flew out of London to Cairo, entering a country Patricia had never visited before. She was excited; she’d dreamed of going to Egypt since her teen years, ever since she’d read Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. She wanted to see chaotic Cairo and the pyramids at Giza, sail down the Nile, and visit Karnak and the Valley of Kings.
Rebecca, on the other hand, was comfortable
almost to the point of being blasé as they went through customs and stood in line to obtain the tourist visas they needed. How Nico and Andreas had obtained passports, Patricia didn’t know, but she supposed that, like the endless quantity of money they seemed to have, they’d solved the problem of identification a long time ago.
It was warm, the temperature far higher than late September in New York or London. Patricia and Rebecca had bought more concealing clothes to wear in a country that didn’t like bare flesh, and Patricia found that the layers helped keep the baking sun off her body.
They left the airport to take a hired car Nico had arranged to a small hotel. Nico and Andreas stood out in the crowds, two tall, broad-shouldered men, especially Andreas with his strange, mottled hair. Rebecca spoke to the driver in hurried Arabic as soon as they got in, and the car jerked forward to dive into the hideous snarl that was Cairo traffic.
The hotel they reached was a small luxury hotel on the banks of the Nile near the Egyptian Museum.
“How did you find this?” Rebecca asked, as she looked wide-eyed around the suite of rooms obviously meant for the ultra-wealthy. “When I come for the digs, we’re lucky we find someplace acceptable to fall into bed.”
“I know the owner,” Nico said but wouldn’t elaborate.
The suite was an elegantly tiled apartment with a fountain in the antechamber and four bedrooms, so there was no ambiguity about who would sleep where or with whom.
Nico and Andreas had also decided to become abnormally protective. They wouldn’t let Patricia and Rebecca leave the hotel, and both women loudly protested.
“You can be right next to us,” Rebecca insisted. “We won’t get lost; I know my way around Cairo.”
“And it’s an antiquer’s dream,” Patricia put in. “I could get so much for my store, as long as the import fees don’t kill me.” She was almost salivating, the antique lover in her wanting to dive into the back streets and browse.
“I’ll take you shopping when all this is over,” Nico said. “The Dyons are much closer to home here, and they’ll be more powerful.”
“I thought you said they come from Hades.”
“They do. But Greece is where Hera made them, and the closer they are, the stronger.”
Patricia had to concede that it would not be smart to invite the Dyons to follow them, even though she was dying to explore. The hotel had a screened balcony that overlooked the river, the flowing Nile looking so peaceful compared to the craziness of Cairo streets.
“You mean I have to stay cooped up here?” Rebecca wailed. “I wanted to take Patricia to Giza.”
Patricia smiled. They were hardly “cooped” in a huge, arched living room that boasted seven Egyptian-style couches and satellite television, and four enormous bathrooms with deep whirlpool tubs. There was a maid and concierge for this room only, who said they’d serve supper to them here as well.
The furniture was true antiques, Patricia could tell from their psychic residue. One of the screens on the patio was an old carved seraglio screen. Patricia ran her hand along it, feeling centuries of women, some frustrated with their confinement, some who felt safe and protected. The vibrations of their love, anger, happiness, hope, despair, and grief came to Patricia loud and clear, and she stood for a long time, her hands on the screen, absorbing the energies.
“Did you hear me?” Rebecca’s voice cut through the din in her head. “They’re being way too quiet.”
Patricia opened her eyes, letting her shields slide back into place. “You mean Nico and Andreas? Yes, I noticed.”
“Andreas is driving my crazy.”
Patricia hid a smile. “I see the way he looks at you.”
“Like a cat waiting to pounce on his next meal? Do you know he said he’d insist on staying a leopard to protect me if he had to?”
Andreas’s pull to Rebecca had become very obvious, but Patricia could tell the two of them hadn’t had full sex yet. Rebecca was too irritable: a woman craving a man, not a woman satisfied by him.
“I think they’re worried,” Patricia said, glancing inside where Nico and Andreas lounged, the male attendant having brought in coffee.
“I think they’re anxious to get this over with,” Rebecca said. “And be rid of us.”
“Maybe.” Patricia looked at Nico again, who was blowing on his coffee to cool it. Her heart squeezed. He was a beautiful man, at her side protecting her during the day, warming her at night. She’d never had it so good. “I’m not ready to be rid of Nico, though.”
“You make a great couple. I’ll bet you stay together a long time.”
“Nico says their curse doesn’t work that way. I still think he’s wrong. I can’t imagine me pushing him away.”
“Andreas—” Rebecca broke off and tugged her loose hair with one hand. “I don’t want to push him away, either. But he says he has to make me wait until I really, really want him. He doesn’t believe me when I say I do.”
Patricia thought of Andreas’s sinful smile whenever he’d stolen into Patricia’s bed and helped Nico pleasure her. He was a taunting, calculating lover, like a cat stalking its prey, while Nico was playful, teasing, and maddening. His silken wings made her entire body sing.
When they ducked back inside, Patricia started to laugh. The cat she’d seen down in the hotel lobby had managed to get into the room and now stood on Andreas’s lap, having his chin scratched by Andreas’s broad finger.
“Fleas,” Rebecca said. “Like I said.”
Andreas growled at her but continued to scratch the cat.
They ate in the suite, the hotel staff bringing them a huge meal of koshari, a pasta and rice dish with spicy sauce, a fish stew, chicken kebabs, and plenty of bread and baba ghanoush. It was tasty, and between the four of them and the cat, they reduced it to crumbs.
After dinner, to Patricia’s and Rebecca’s exasperation, Nico and Andreas told the two young women to stay put in the hotel room and vanished into the night.
“WHY do you think he’s following us?” Nico asked, glancing behind them.
“Hell if I know.”
“Want to make any guesses who it is?”
Andreas shook his head, his gaze on the pavement. “No.”
They rounded a corner into Cairo’s busy streets, where mostly men roamed. “You’d think Hera could leave us alone to be miserable.”
“You like to dream.”
Nico glanced at him. “And you don’t?”
“No point in it.” Andreas hunched his shoulders, his hands in his pockets. “Forget about it, Nico. It’s not real, and you know it isn’t. Doesn’t matter how many times you fuck her. It will turn out the same in the end.”
“This inscription might help break the curse,” Nico said.
“Wishful thinking. I doubt it.”
Nico doubted it, too, but he didn’t like hearing Andreas say it plainly. “You were the one who first pointed out the inscription,” he reminded Andreas.
“I changed my mind. We shouldn’t have pursued it; we wouldn’t be here chasing a wild goose.”
“We wouldn’t have met Patricia and Rebecca.”
Andreas’s ice blue eyes flashed. “Like I said. We wouldn’t have met them and been spared what will happen when they are ready to dump us. It’s going to hurt like hell, worse than it ever did before.”
Nico stopped. Two men who’d been walking behind them nearly ran into them, and Nico said a gruff apology. “You’re saying that meeting them is part of the curse, that you spotting that inscription in the magazine was one more step in Hera’s idiotic game.”
Andreas nodded. “I wouldn’t have been so long-winded, but yes. That’s what I think.”
“Shit,” Nico said.
“She’s a pissed-off goddess,” Andreas growled. “She’ll grind us under her heel for eternity; that’s what vindictive goddesses do.”
“Shit,” Nico repeated.
“You said it. Still interested in catching our stalker?”
Nico nodded, t
hough every muscle in his body hurt. “We’d better. Doesn’t smell like a Dyon, though.”
Andreas agreed. They strolled along like nothing more than friends walking off their dinners. Nico had sensed someone behind them all day, but every ruse they tried to make their follower reveal him- or herself didn’t work. Nico also felt a ripple of something he didn’t understand, something he should understand, but he couldn’t quite place it.
They didn’t speak much on their way back to the hotel. The night was warm and overlaid with the smell of exhaust, food, and many people living in close quarters. The lobby of the hotel was airy, with pointed arches and polished screens, open to the first three floors. It had a hushed elegance, a hotel for the wealthy who didn’t want too much flash. Their friend Demitri had done well for himself.
Andreas entered the suite upstairs and then swore. Nico barreled in behind him, heart hammering, to find Andreas standing with his hands on hips in the middle of the empty living area. “They’re not here.”
A check of the bedrooms and bathrooms proved Andreas right. Rebecca and Patricia were gone.
“Damn Demitri,” he snarled. “I told him to look after them, not to let them out.”
Shutters were still fastened at the windows, with no sign of disturbance. The two women, probably pissed at being told to stay put, had gone.
Nico’s heart jumped when he heard laughter from the corridor, and a moment later, Rebecca and Patricia entered the room together.
“There you are,” Patricia said, looking happy.
Nico wanted to grab her and hold on so tight she couldn’t slip away again. “Where the hell were you?”
Andreas glared at both women and Rebecca glared right back.
“Downstairs talking to an Egyptian antiques dealer,” Patricia said. “He was harmless—not a Dyon in disguise or anything.”
“And how did you get downstairs to meet him?” Andreas demanded. “You were supposed to stay here.”
“We weren’t planning to leave the hotel,” Rebecca said. “We’re not stupid. We went downstairs to look at the gift shop and got to talking to this man. He deals antiques all over the world, and he and Patricia knew a lot of the same people. We were downstairs an hour, no big deal.”
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