The Mount Series Boxset

by K D Grace

  Liza couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t that she couldn’t breathe, it was just that she couldn’t breathe in enough of Paulo’s scent as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, tongue writhing and sliding over and around hers, teeth nibbling, lips suckling at hers until she felt as though he would pull all of her into his mouth and devour her whole, and God she was totally willing. Then Paulo’s phone rang, and he cursed under his breath just as Jim stepped up next to them.

  ‘Hey guys, if we have to wait, you have to wait,’ Jim said. ‘How about you save it for later, and help us finish up here so we can all get some relief?’

  ‘Vera waiting for you?’ David said, loud enough that his voice echoed off the brick, and Liza could smell Jim’s herby, woody, good-natured embarrassment at being caught out. David laughed. ‘No secrets at Martelli, and Vera isn’t keeping any either.’ He slapped several plastic bags in Paulo’s hands and snapped his fingers at Lucia and Angelo. ‘Get ’em off and clean up your bits, Martelli wants to smell you.’

  ‘Don’t brush it off,’ Liza said, when Angelo picked up his shirt off the ground. ‘The scent of a place as powerful and full of human memory as this has to be a part of what Martelli is trying to get.’

  Angelo obeyed her without batting an eye, dropping his shirt into the zip-lock bag she was now holding for him, along with his trousers and underwear. Then with his eyes locked on her, he stood naked next to the statue of Hercules, wiping his cock on the towel David had handed him. The similarities weren’t lost on her, neither was the hot metal and spice scent of his lust, so different from the lust he’d spent on Lucia, but even while he had been inside the woman, even when he had seemed to be totally focused on the sex, she could smell his dark earth-scented press for her attention.

  Without taking his eyes off her, he stroked and wiped at his wet penis, which was once again expanding in his hand. ‘I’m usually the voyeur, not the exhibitionist,’ he said. ‘But to be sniffed by you, Liza Calendar, I’m happy to expose myself.’ Then he dropped the used towel into the bag, and it was all she could do not to inhale his scent, especially when his cock pointed invitingly at her.

  Paulo had stepped away and was busy talking on the phone to Coraline. Lucia was shamelessly flirting with Jim and David, and no one noticed when Angelo scooped Liza into his arms, pressing a hand into the small of her back and pulling her up tight against his heavy penis and his sex-fevered chest. ‘This is for you, Liza Calendar. Just for you.’ The kiss was both savage and fast, gunmetal and flint, sparks catching in dry grass and drowning summer rain all at once, and her knees buckled, but he held her just long enough to settle her onto her feet. He caught the bag as it slipped from her hand, and still holding her gaze, pulled the edge of the towel from it and she watched, the sound of her own breath drowning out all else as he stroked his cock twice, then three times, then with a grunt, spilled his semen into the towel.

  ‘For you, Liza Calendar, and when Paulo stops arsing around at the Mount and figures out it’s OK to share, there’s lots more where that came from.’ Then he turned his back on her and began to dress in the clothes he’d brought in his rucksack.

  She felt like she’d been gut punched. She felt like she’d been fucked. She felt like she’d been ensnared in some sort of bizarre magic. What the hell was he talking about, when Paulo figures out it’s OK to share? What the fuck was that supposed to mean?

  ‘What did he do? What did he do?’

  It took her a second to realize that Paulo had asked her twice as he slipped his arm around her, and the cold steel smell of anger cut through his scent like a knife. ‘What the fuck did Angelo do?’

  ‘Tell me about The Mount,’ she said, instead of answering the question. ‘I think you need to tell me all about The Mount.’ She looked up into his eyes. ‘This time no interruptions and nothing left out.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  It wasn’t what Paulo wanted, wasn’t his plan. Liza wouldn’t even ride back into Rome with him. She told him it was safer at the moment for her to be with Jim. Fuck Jim! Fuck Angelo! Fuck them all! Coraline had called to say, at Liza’s request, she’d had Jim deliver her to the villa and for him to meet them there. When he arrived, the footman escorted him to The Suite. The Suite was the heart of the Roman Mount. Whoever was the head of the High Council at the time had access to what was actually a huge apartment within the villa. The council’s head could reside there full-time until tenure was up, but no one ever did. The only one who ever actually stayed there was Coraline. Most everyone simply thought of it as her suite anyway.

  The apartment, however, was not the reason why The Suite was the heart of the Roman Mount. The real reason was why they should have shown it to Liza last night before things got out of hand in the dungeon. Coraline met him at the door.

  ‘This was a bit of a muck-up.’ She didn’t give him a chance to reply. ‘Not yours. All of ours. Oh I don’t mean tonight. That went really well. I think we’ll have everything we need for the animal/al fresco scent, and Liza is pleased. But tell me, what were we thinking, letting her get away from the villa last night without making sure she knew exactly what The Mount was and what it was all about?’ Coraline’s rapid-fire monologue told Paulo that she was upset. ‘We can’t afford for Liza to be unhappy. We don’t want to keep secrets from her. We let last night pass without making sure our main, and really our only purpose was achieved. I don’t know if Angelo is aware of what he did, but I have every intention of flaying him properly for the mess he’s made. The man never seems to know when to keep his mouth shut and stay out of things.’

  Paulo shivered at the thought of being flayed by Coraline Martelli. Even Angelo was a lightweight in the dungeon compared to Coraline. But then again, as far as he was concerned, Angelo deserved what he got.

  ‘Is she all right? Where is she?’ he asked, having no other real response to give Coraline.

  ‘She’s in the shower. Jim says she didn’t say a word all the way back from Ostia Antica.’

  ‘Did she tell you what Angelo said to her that upset her so?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘She said relatively little since she got here, other than she needed a shower.’

  ‘Well whatever it was, the bastard really upset her.’ Paulo said. ‘I couldn’t hear it. I turned around just in time to see the fucker …’ Christ! He couldn’t even say what he’d seen.

  ‘Coming in front of me.’ With a start, they both turned to see Liza standing by the door in a soft, floral summer dress, wet hair hanging loose around her shoulders. ‘You turned around just to see Angelo shooting his wad in front of me.’ Without a hint of a blush, without so much as a flinch, she looked from one of them to the other. ‘He told me that when Paulo stops arsing around at The Mount and figures out it’s OK to share, there was lots more where that came from. That’s what he told me.’ Before either of them could respond to Angelo’s bad behavior, she said, ‘I need to know what The Mount really is, and what it has to do with Martelli Fragrance. And what the hell does it have with Paulo and Angelo thinking they should share me?’

  ‘It has nothing to do with Martelli Fragrance,’ Coraline said. ‘It’s connected only in that I’m a member of The Mount, as my father was before me and both Martelli Fragrance and The Mount have been mutually beneficial to each other while at the same time being mutually exclusive. Martellis have been members of The Mount for a long, long time. Rita’s a member of The Mount in London.’ She paused for a moment to let that sink in. Coraline had told Paulo that Rita and Liza were good friends. She continued. ‘Quite coincidental there are several members of The Mount who work for Martelli, including David.’

  ‘It was my idea to use members of The Mount in the research for our new line,’ Paulo said. ‘And that idea only became something concrete, something I could actually put a plan with, when I met you, Liza.’

  ‘I’ve already been told that The Mount is a sex cult. Fidelia said that. I’m OK with that. I figured it was something like that when I was
brought here to observe the threesome. I know for the kind of experiments we’re talking about, we aren’t going to be hiring people off the streets to help us. I understand that. I’m OK with that. What I’m not OK with is being broadsided with aspects of The Mount I know nothing about, aspects that clearly Angelo thinks should somehow have an effect on me.’

  Paulo wished like hell he could smell her now. He needed to know what she felt, what was going on with her. He needed to know the two of them were all right. She could no doubt smell his discomfort, and it pissed him off that he had no way of hiding himself from her. He wasn’t used to being this vulnerable.

  ‘Paulo will show you the vaults,’ Coraline said, ‘and answer any of your questions.’ Though she knew The Mount and its history much better than he did, Paulo was relieved that Coraline was willing to let him handle it. He’d had a sneaking suspicion that she shared Angelo’s opinion. He was pretty sure everyone else at The Mount did. He should be OK with that. He knew that he should. ‘Paulo?’ Coraline interrupted his thoughts.

  He motioned for Liza to follow him. As she fell in close behind him, he thought he heard her sniff, and he couldn’t keep from tensing, even as he knew that she would smell that too.

  He led her to a central hallway in the huge flat, a hallway that had no windows and, at this time of night, no natural light. At the end of the hall, he pushed aside a thick velvet curtain to reveal a heavy wooden door, which opened inward onto a narrow stairway lit by evenly spaced wall sconces. Behind him, Liza caught her breath at the sight.

  Liza could just make out the steep dimly lit stairway beyond Paulo’s broad shoulders. The scent of stone and age and dry dust filled her nose, for a second superseding Paulo’s tart citrus scent of nerves and the bite of irritation. ‘Another dungeon?’ she asked, though it didn’t smell at all like the dungeon she was in last night.

  ‘No dungeon. This is the heart of The Mount. If we had a holy of holies, I suppose this would be it.’

  ‘Then you really are some kind of cult?’

  His chuckle sounded brittle. ‘I suppose some would see it that way, but no. This is a place where we keep our archives.’ He descended the steps. ‘The Mount has been around for a long time, and the Roman Mount is the oldest of all the covens.’

  ‘Covens? You’re witches? You practise magic?’

  ‘Not witches, no. But I doubt you’d find anyone in The Mount who would deny that there’s magic involved in good sex.’

  At the bottom of the steps the scent changed, and she could smell parchment and old books. Above the arched doorway they passed through she looked up to see a simplified version of Venus and Mars embracing. Beneath the bas-relief written in Latin were the words, “The depths of our animal nature and the highest mount of our divinity”. Interesting that though Coraline Martelli claimed that there was no connection between Martelli Fragrance and The Mount that the same simple image of Venus and Mars embracing and the same motto graced the Martelli letterhead.

  The vaulted room Paulo led her into reminded her of a wine cellar, but it was spotlessly clean, and the ceiling to floor shelves along either side housed books instead of wine. She leaned close and squinted at the volumes nearest the entrance. The gold gothic lettering was in Latin. It read, The Laws and Statutes of the Covens of The Mount.

  ‘There are lots of books of coven law,’ Paulo said. ‘And they’re not all in Latin. They’re near the door because they’re most often referred to, much more so than the older histories, though we consider the older histories far more valuable.’ Those books, she noticed, as she looked down the long row of shelves, were protected behind glass.

  ‘Someday Alessandro hopes to get everything on computer, but I think he’s only dreaming. Some of the histories are so old, so fragile that they’re not even kept in this room. There’s a temperature-controlled vault in the next chamber. The oldest and the most fragile manuscripts of Mount History are kept there.’

  She grabbed at the wall to steady herself. ‘Let me get this straight. The Mount is a sex cult.’

  Paulo nodded.

  ‘And it’s how old?’

  ‘No one knows for sure. We expect some of the earlier manuscripts were lost when Nero burned Rome.’

  The room suddenly spun around her in a wave of vertigo. Paulo moved to steady her. ‘It’s a lot to take in, I know. You have to understand that there’s been very little time in Western history in which human sexuality hasn’t been controlled and regulated by either religion or government. The reasons for that control were most often property and inheritance, though both could be easily wrapped up in religious dogma. There have always been people who didn’t like someone else telling them how they should behave as sexual beings, who they should have sex with and under what circumstances. There have always been people who have felt that rational human beings, when given the right information, when given the freedom to enjoy what is clearly a natural part of their biology, would regulate their own desires with wisdom and self-control.’

  ‘So it’s not about wild orgies and sex parties then? I mean when I had a wander about last night, there was sex going on all over the gardens.’

  ‘It’s about celebrating our sexuality as consenting adults, Liza. That’s what it’s about.’

  She pulled away from him and paced in front of the glassed in shelves, her eyes locked on row after row of books to avoid his gaze. ‘Then Angelo is right. About you sharing, I mean.’

  ‘You’re not a member of The Mount.’

  ‘Then what happened to me when I got caught sniffing in your office that first afternoon? What … what Fidelia and I did?’

  ‘What Fidelia and you did shouldn’t have happened. It was really reckless of Coraline to order it, though I don’t think she thought Fidelia would go that far. I don’t think she thought you’d let Fidelia go that far.’

  Liza ran her fingers along the cool, wood frame of the bookcase. ‘Would she have given me a choice?’

  ‘Would you have wanted one?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said quietly, suddenly, strangely close to tears. ‘If you’d asked me that a few days before I met you in the lounge at JFK, I’m sure I’d have been horrified at the thought. Now,’ she looked up at him. ‘Now it just … excites me.’

  He moved to her and took her in his arms, and she didn’t protest as he rested his chin on the top of her head. His relief and his concern for her blended into a herby, watery, sweet scent mixing with his own that she could never get enough of. She could also scent the question that was like hot pepper flakes on the tip of his tongue.

  ‘And you want to know how I feel about you sharing me with Angelo.’ His arms tensed around her and his scent became more metallic.

  ‘Well the truth is, it excites me.’ She laid a hand against his chest and pushed away just enough that she could look into his eyes. ‘Not that I want to be alone with him. But the idea of the two of you. The idea of the two of you sharing me, it excites me.’ She sniffed. ‘And you can’t say that it doesn’t excite you too, because I can smell that it does.’

  He groaned and pulled her back to him, so tight that she huffed out a breath, then inhaled the woody, lightning storm scent of him aroused ‘God, Liza Calendar, you don’t play fair, you know that?’

  She raised her mouth to his. ‘Do you want me to play fair, Paulo Delacour?’

  At first his kiss was fleeting, as though he were afraid she’d run, but as she lifted her arms around his neck, the kiss deepened and warmed and was just beginning to heat up to the possibility of a good fuck against the bookshelves when there was a clearing of a throat, and they pulled a part to find Coraline standing at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Sex is what distracted the two of you last night, and though The Mount is most definitely the place for sexual distraction, Liza’s not a member, Paulo. And she needs to see everything and understand everything before we run the risk of another nasty surprise from Angelo.’ She nodded to Liza. ‘Darling, why don’t you come with me, and
I’ll show you around. Paulo, you go talk to Angelo. He’s in the dungeon.’

  The angry scent of cold metal overrode the scent of Paulo aroused, but Coraline glared at him. ‘Do it.’

  He stepped away from Liza, squared his shoulders, and nodded. But before he headed back up the stairs, he pulled her into a brutal kiss that had her heart racing and her knees turning to jelly. ‘We have unfinished business,’ he spoke against her mouth. Then he nipped her bottom lip, pulled away, and growled at Coraline before he headed up the stairs.

  Chapter Eighteen

  What Paulo had not expected was to find Angelo alone in the dungeon. The man was seldom alone when he was at The Mount, and he didn’t have to be. He was the most sought after sexual partner there, though everyone knew that if they wanted a chance at sex with Angelo, they had to meet him in the dungeon. There were plenty of people who were fine with that, but there were others who just had to settle for fantasies because they weren’t brave enough to meet Angelo on his home turf. And even Paulo knew that to meet Angelo anywhere else was to miss out on the full experience of the man’s sexuality. Though in all honesty, he’d never seen Angelo like he was tonight at Ostia, and he’d never imagined the man would join the party above ground. That made him only more aware of just how taken Angelo was with Liza.

  He lay sprawled across the hard wood of the bondage bed in nothing but jeans. They were partially undone. His left arm was thrown over his face as though he were attempting to block out too much light, and his right hand stroked his cock absently from the breach. ‘Did Mum order you to come and make up?’ he asked without looking at Paulo.