by Gaelen Foley
A pair of doors flew open at the end of the stage. Alice stared, riveted, as a tall, powerful figure swept out of the open doors and stalked across the stage, his face concealed by the deep hood of his robe, which was of black silk. It billowed out behind him with each determined stride as he prowled to the center of the stage with the grace of a massive black leopard. The sheen of the material reflected the flickering fires that seemed to caress him as he passed. The robe hung open down the front, revealing his black trousers and boots and his loose, white shirt with a deep, fringed V that partly bared his bronzed, sculpted chest. Alice gazed at him in wonder. Draco stopped and turned toward the crowd. White lace cuffs dripped below the sleeves of his robe as he stretched forth his large, murderously elegant hands. She could not tear her gaze away.
Though his eyes and the upper half of his face were shrouded by his hood, she stared in fascination at his square, chiseled jaw and strong chin. Then he spoke, and his deep, mesmerizing voice rolled over the crowd in natural command, filling the cavern. “Brothers and sisters!”
The people roared in adoration.
“Tonight we come together to welcome two new initiates into our most vile and ignominious company.” The throng cheered wildly at his insults; a small, mocking smile flitted briefly over his beguiling lips. “They have been tested—and tasted—by the Elders, as you all have,” he purred, “and they have been found worthy. Initiates, come forward and receive the final rite.” He pulled back his hood, unveiling a face of burning, satanic, male beauty.
Alice held her breath, enthralled, feeling the resounding slam of some fateful premonition. Lucien Knight. One look erased any lingering doubt in her mind who he was. He had the bold, patrician features of a dashing adventurer and silver eyes that glittered like diamonds. The glossy jet of his hair set off his sun-bronzed complexion and the wicked, white gleam of his smile.
Then she gasped as two naked women crawled up onto the stage and went to him on their hands and knees. Oh, God, don’t let that be Caro. The women crouched at his feet, and Alice nearly fainted with relief to realize neither was her sister-in-law. “Draco” laid a hand on each one’s head and began making incantations over them in the same incoherent language the pale young man had used. The women moaned, caressing him all the while. Alice watched their hands travel over his hard, lean body as if they could not get enough of him, and the writhing sensuality of the Grotto began to penetrate her naive awareness. She could not stop staring in fascination at Caro’s beautiful, evil lover. No wonder they called him Lord Lucifer, she thought. He was made for temptation.
Concluding his prayer a moment later, he leaned down and kissed each woman gently on the forehead. They sought his mouth, but with a cruel, delicious little smile, he denied them; then the pale young man wrapped the women in white robes and led them away. Draco’s faithful began growing restless. Alice glanced in rising uneasiness as the people all around her began mingling into pairs and more exotic combinations. Here and there, they were embracing, kissing, beginning to slither out of their brown robes. The service seemed to be drawing to a close.
Orpheus suddenly grabbed her arm, startling her. “Give us a kiss, blue eyes.” He grunted, a bead of sweat trickling down his round, ruddy face.
She jerked back. “Let go of me!”
“What are you, a virgin?”
“Get away from me!”
They struggled for a moment and he tried again to kiss her, but Alice shoved him away as hard as she could. Muttering a rude epithet, Orpheus angrily withdrew and moved off into the crowd, leaving her alone.
Shaken, Alice brushed a few strands of her hair back, her hand trembling slightly, then glanced around and stood on tiptoe, trying to spy Caro. She began making her way through the crowd, looking for the prodigal baroness everywhere. The pipers started up again on their drones, making dizzying, undulant music that seemed to coil and twist through her body. With every step, she heard various languages being spoken in the crowd. She realized there were people there from all over Europe—and they were beginning to let loose the fullness of their depravity. The robes were coming off. The great pool was filling up with laughing nymphs and satyrs, as were the small, dark lovers’ nooks carved into the cave walls. Erotic wonders bloomed around her like otherworldly flowers. She saw a masked lady flogging a man who was tied to one of the Corinthian columns, his hands bound above his head; each time she struck his bare back with her riding whip, his body jerked and he cried out with pleasure while other people watched. A few steps farther on, she saw two women locked in a passionate kiss. She stared at them as she passed by, amazed and entirely confused. On every hand, people were doing things to one another that she never could have imagined. She was so overwhelmed by it all that she knew she would have to try to absorb it later. For now, she could only focus on her task—finding Caro, bringing her home to Harry.
The thought of her nephew cleared her head and bolstered her determination. For his sake, she began pushing her way more aggressively through the crowd, ignoring the sex acts, both natural and unnatural, and the score of obscene propositions that strangers made to her as she passed, until at last she came to the edge of the great pool.
The steam rising from the hot spring dampened the tendrils of her hair around her face as she searched the swimmers’ faces in the dim half-light, but after a couple of minutes, her heart sank as she realized her sister-in-law was not among them. She pressed her hand to her forehead. Oh, God, what if she is off somewhere making love with Lucien Knight? She glanced at the stage. The fair-haired man was still there, but “Draco” had disappeared.
Alice scowled and dropped her hand to her side again, longing to be spared the unthinkable prospect of having to interrupt her sister-in-law’s liaison with her demon lover. No matter, she told herself. She would throw Caro’s clothes on her and march her home by her ear, if necessary. Resolved to search the nooks and crannies that lined the cave, Alice pivoted—and crashed right into a man’s bare, muscled chest.
Right at her eye level, his loose white shirt hung open, revealing a deep V of velvety skin. At this close range, she could see every sculpted ridge of his stomach, every hard plane of his magnificent chest; could practically taste the salty, vibrant sheen of sweat that glowed on his skin. Her heart leaped into her throat with instant recognition; her wits scattered like chickens with a fox in the henhouse.
Oh, no, she thought, choking on her gasp.
Slowly lifting her gaze, Alice tilted her head back and looked into the silvery, mocking eyes of Lucien Knight.
Chapter 3
Moments earlier, Lucien had been sauntering through the crowd, watching everything, his senses on full alert behind his air of nonchalance. He had a staff of five roguish young agents-in-training who assisted him in the operation. Four of them each worked a quadrant of the Grotto, while Talbert, the fifth, used his flair for showmanship and flummery to play their “priest.” Six ravishing courtesans were on Lucien’s payroll, as well, and each one knew her duty—to ply the foreign agents with wine, offer her favors, and seduce information out of them. Blending easily into the crowd, the lads and the girls alike would learn all they could and report back to him at the end of the night. For his part, Lucien strolled freely through the Grotto, overseeing everything and staying sharply attuned for any hint of information regarding his enemies.
A man, however, could not be all business. The unbridled sexuality all around him made his blood hot. He needed a woman, and soon. Not Caro—he had bored of her at some indefinable moment during the long carriage ride from London to Revell Court. He had been considering one of his obedient new initiates—or both, perhaps—when he had noticed the girl.
She still had all her clothes on. That was the first thing that had snagged his attention. It didn’t seem quite right. With her hood hiding her face, it was impossible to tell who she was, yet somehow he instantly knew that she didn’t belong.
But that was impossible, he thought. He knew everyone and everyt
hing that happened in the Grotto. His control was absolute. No mere chit could have breached his security.
Then he had noticed that she was alone, and the full, fierce spear of his awareness had homed in on her. He had watched her carefully picking her way through the crowd, slim and stealthy. She set his instincts jangling. The only question was, which instincts?
Intent on a closer look, he had begun following her casually through the crowd while his pulse took up a deep, primal drumming. His craving for a fiery coupling, skin on skin, twisted through his veins. It was the best he could hope for in the bitter knowledge that what he really needed did not exist, not in his world. Like anything else, however, love could be simulated. He wanted to be held like the last man on earth; he wanted to fuck until he was drenched in sweat, to lose himself in adoring a woman’s body and perhaps, for an instant, drive back the isolation that engulfed him.
Closing the distance between them, he had savored the modest allure of her walk and felt his body respond to the graceful sway of her hips as they approached the pool. He had envisioned her taking off her robe and showing him her slender nakedness, but instead, she had just stood there, as though searching for someone. It skipped through his mind that when he caught up to the girl, he would either apprehend or ravish her. He still wasn’t sure which it would be as he stood before her, blocking her escape with a dark, slight smile.
As she peered up at him fearfully from the shadowed folds of her hood, he found himself staring into the bluest eyes he had ever seen. He had only encountered that deep, dream-spun shade of cobalt once in his life before, in the stained glass windows of Chartres Cathedral. His awareness of the crowd around them dimmed in the ocean-blue depths of her eyes. Who are you? He did not say a word nor ask her permission. With the smooth self-assurance of a man who has access to every woman in the room, he captured her chin in a firm but gentle grip. She jumped when he touched her, panic flashing in her eyes.
His hard stare softened slightly in amusement at that, but then his faint smile faded, for her skin was silken beneath his fingertips. With one hand, he lifted her face toward the dim torchlight, while the other softly brushed back her hood. Then Lucien faltered, faced with a beauty the likes of which he had never seen.
His very soul grew hushed with reverence as he gazed at her, holding his breath for fear the vision would dissolve, a figment of his overactive brain. With her bright tresses gleaming the flame-gold of dawn and her large, frightened eyes of that shining, ethereal blue, he was so sure for a moment that she was a lost angel that he half expected to see silvery, feathered wings folded demurely beneath her coarse brown robe. She appeared somewhere between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two—a wholesome, nay, a virginal beauty of trembling purity. He instantly knew that she was utterly untouched, impossible as that seemed in this place.
Her face was proud and wary. Her satiny skin glowed in the candlelight, pale and fine, but her soft, luscious lips shot off an effervescent champagne-pop of desire that fizzed more sweetly in his veins than anything he’d felt since his adolescence, which had taken place, if he recalled correctly, some time during the Dark Ages. There was intelligence and valor in her delicate face, courage, and a quivering vulnerability that made him ache with anguish for the doom of all innocent things.
A noble youth, a questing youth, he thought, and if she had come to slay dragons, she had already pierced him in his black, fiery heart with the lance of her heaven-blue gaze. He felt as though she saw through him in a glance, the same way he saw through everyone else. It frightened him even as it held him riveted. If only . . .
It was then, as his initial amazement passed, that reality struck him. He did not know her. He had never seen this girl before, let alone approved her.
Good God, he thought in sudden horror, she was just the sort of weapon Fouché would send against him!
He instantly tightened his grip on her face to a shade short of cruelty, for innocence, too, could be counterfeited. He saw terror fill her eyes. He didn’t care. “Well, well,” he snarled, “what have we here? You’re very pretty, aren’t you, my pet?”
“Let go of me!”
He laughed nastily at her struggles. She wrapped her hands around his wrist and tried to dislodge his relentless grip. Wings, ha! he thought in self-disgust, baffled by his moment of irrationality—gawking at her like some love-struck youth! The only thing this wench was likely hiding under her robe was a dagger that Fouché had sent her to stick between his ribs!
He was enraged that she had nearly duped him in his own game even for a second, but he did not want to make too much of a scene with so many foreign operatives present. His visitors hailed from the Habsburg court, Naples, Moscow—he had even seen the detestable, barrel-bellied, American double agent Rollo Greene in the crowd. Fortunately, Lucien specialized in hiding the truth in plain view. He had to get her alone, learn who she was, and find out who she was working for.
Certain that she was hiding a weapon of some kind beneath her robe, he stopped her from reaching for it by catching her wrists up roughly behind her back, clenching her against his body. The little hellcat fought him, squirming and twisting, bucking against his body.
“Let me go, I say!”
He let out a lusty laugh as her hip chafed his groin. “Mm, I like that,” he purred, holding her slender body against him.
“You, horrible—stop it!” she yelled. “You’re hurting me!”
“Good.” He lowered his face toward hers and looked into her eyes with a menacing glower. “Now, then, my beauty, why don’t you and I go somewhere private?”
She stopped fighting suddenly, her blue eyes widening, her lovely face going from flushed to pale.
Without warning, he lifted her off her feet and threw her over his shoulder, still gripping her wrists with one hand while he clapped the other firmly on her backside to hold her in place.
Her high-pitched shriek went unheard amid the lusty cheers of the people all around them as Lucien carried her off, barbarian-style, to his private observation room behind the glowing red eyes of the dragon.
His wide shoulder was as hard as iron under her stomach, and his whole body gave off angry heat like a furnace. If Alice’s notion of reality had been skewed by the decadence of Revell Court, her wits were absolutely routed by being carried off by the demonic master of the place. The people clapping for Lucien Knight and cheering for him seemed to think that he had singled her out for one reason only. Alice was terrified that they were right.
Her protests, threats, and begging went unheeded, drowned out by the throbbing music and drums. Her kicks and flailing punches when she finally wrenched her hands free had not the slightest effect on him. She even tried pulling his wavy black hair in her wild scramble to free herself, but it only brought his hand down on her backside in a hearty spank.
“How dare you?” she gasped, her body going rigid, her eyes smarting at the sting, though the blow hurt her pride more than her flesh.
“Quit pulling my hair or next time it’ll be your bare arse.”
At his crude threat, her courage blasted up in a geyser of fury and indignation. For a man who supposedly spoke seven languages, he was a master of the vulgar tongue! She did not think she had ever been so angry in her entire life. She felt helpless, hefted in his powerful arms, and she hated it—more specifically, she hated him. Oh, how she wished her brother were still alive! Phillip would have put a bullet in him if he could have seen this—first Caro, now her!
Nevertheless, as “Draco” stalked toward the great carved dragon, Alice stopped fighting temporarily, knowing she was overpowered physically and had best regroup before they arrived wherever he was taking her. She was going to need her wits about her if she had any hope of stopping the fiend from ravishing her.
A guard in a long black coat opened a door for him behind the dragon’s elbow. Lord Lucien strode through it. It closed behind them, muffling the echoing roar of the music and the crowd. She braced her hands on the curve of hi
s lower back and tried to twist around to see ahead.
“Where are you taking me?” she demanded in a shaky voice.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he replied in a nasty tone.
She winced at his mockery, bounced against his rock-hard body as he began marching up a narrow spiral staircase hewn into the stone. His stride was tireless. At the top of the steps, another guard opened yet another door for them. With Alice still dangling over his shoulder quite bereft of her dignity, Lucien marched into a small domelike room, dim and overheated. It had a couch, a wooden table with a couple of chairs, and two oval windows of scarlet stained glass that overlooked the Grotto and the great pool. She was startled to realize they were inside the skull of the dragon.
He leaned down and set her on her feet. “Don’t move.”
The order was futile. She was already in motion, instinctively backing away from him as she would from the wildest of predators.
He reached into his shirt and pulled out a pistol, which he coolly leveled between her eyes. “I said don’t move, love.”
She froze in place, staring in astonishment down the barrel of the gun. Her stomach plummeted with terror.
“Hand over your weapon.”
“What?” she whispered, her shocked gaze swinging from the pistol’s barrel to the ruthless beauty of his face. The lurid red glow from the dragon’s stained-glass eyes bathed the harmonious planes of his cheeks and forehead, contoured the sharp angles of his princely nose and square, determined chin. His sable hair was blacker than night in the underworld, spun from silken shadows. His silvery eyes gleamed with anarchy as he stalked toward her.
“You’re not going to cooperate, are you?” he chided in velvet menace. “Very well, chérie. If you’d rather have me search you, I am more than willing. Take off your robe.”