Performed for the pleasure of a group of strangers, some harsh voice from his other life reminded him.
Yes, he thought vaguely, but didn’t stop. Even though, this time, there were no bonds to restrict his movements, nothing to keep him from turning around and leaving. Or from finishing quickly and technically completing his assignment, while rendering his audience frustrated and unsatisfied.
And yet, perversely, he found that he didn’t want to.
It felt like there was something in the air tonight, heavy and languid. Like the soft sound of rain starting up outside. Like the flowering vine growing on the balcony, perfuming the darkness. Like the light from the lamps that left the corners of the room in shadow, but fell warm and honey thick across his skin.
It slowed his movements, made them languid, too.
Made him pause to slide his hands up his torso, enjoying the feel of hard muscle and smooth skin and rigid nipples before moving back down. Made him arch his back, gliding his hands over the tense muscles of his buttocks, then smoothing around to the front. And following the deep V of muscles to the heavy globes hanging between his thighs. Made him linger on their heat and velvet softness for a long moment before resuming his former occupation.
He searched his emotions again, looking for the smallest suggestion of influence. Of any sign that he was being controlled by the woman watching from the chaise. But there was none.
She had paid to be entertained, not to perform herself.
No, this was all on him.
Whoever he was.
He could change his name, he suddenly realized, speeding up. He could become anyone, he could do . . . well, not anything, but a great deal more than he had. The human laws didn’t apply to him anymore. The human restrictions and prejudices had been left behind with his life. Along with the expectations and duties and heavy mantle of authority that had passed to him too soon.
Because he wasn’t that man anymore. He’d been so busy contemplating all he’d lost, that he’d utterly failed to see what he’d gained. Freedom of a sort he’d never known, could never have known in life.
It seemed amazing to him now, almost as amazing as the timing of his epiphany. But then, how better to see yourself clearly than when there were no barriers? No clothes to hide behind or names to live up to. Just sweat-slick skin and undulating hips and rasping breaths as the most primal of needs built toward a climax.
The women draped over the couches had started murmuring, discussing him among themselves, the soft rise and fall of their voices like the lap of waves in the canal outside. But it didn’t bother him now, any more than the feel of their eyes on his body. Somewhere along the line, he’d stopped thinking about being on display for them. And started noticing other things.
The flutter of soot-black lashes against honeyed skin. The dark purple stain on a pair of perfect lips. The swell of a breast above creamy silk.
The feel of a dozen hands sliding over his body.
The women hadn’t moved, much less their mistress. In all the room, nothing did. Except for the flicker of lamps, the slide of raindrops, and the erotic shadows he threw on the wall.
But moving or not, he felt them, some part of them, everywhere. Fingers soft as air combed through his hair, explored his ribs, ghosted over the tense muscles of his backside. Invisible teeth nipped the peak of a nipple. Phantom tongues followed the curve of his ear, skimmed down his collarbone, dropped to trace patterns in the sweat on his now heaving chest.
And then slid underneath the mask he wore, and started to push it up.
It ripped the first sound from his throat, a desperate, keening cry. It also finally broke his rhythm when he hunched over protectively, he didn’t know why. It was such a little thing, when he had revealed so much already.
But it was also his last.
The last bit of him still hidden. The last taboo still unbroken. The last, most private part of him, far more so than his body.
He felt that heady sense of freedom evaporate in an instant. That man in the mirror could be anyone, anyone at all. But once he showed his face . . .
Then it wouldn’t be an anonymous courtesan doing these things anymore. It would be him. It would be Mircea.
But it seemed that his audience was determined to have everything.
Unseen hands pulled his own away from his face. Leaving him with no way to hide as the soft touches returned. Sliding through his hair, tugging at the silken straps, undoing the soft knot. He could have fought them, could have resisted. But emotions were roiling in him too fast and hard to know how to respond as they pulled away his last remaining defense.
And laid him bare.
He stood there, watching the last of his old self die as the mask fell away. As he transformed from a living statue, to be admired for adherence to ancient aesthetics, to a flagrantly sexual being. One standing tall and proud and utterly exposed before the room.
And before his client. Who kept him like that for a long moment, her eyes going over him. From the convulsively working throat to the glistening chest to the proud jut of his manhood. And then back up to meet his eyes.
She studied his face, that last forbidden area. She took him in, she took all of him. Until he was trembling, his head was spinning, and his body was teetering on the brink.
“Now.”
She’d barely said the word when he was caught in a furious cloud of invisible lips and tongues and teeth. They dropped him to his knees, with delicate, razor-sharp fangs that slid into the bulging veins at his neck, his breast, his wrists. They bent him backward, leaving him arching and thrusting into the air, before piercing him at his thigh, his groin, even the vein running down his length.
They tore another cry from his throat, and then another and another, pulling them out of him as if on a string. Each sounded shockingly loud in the silence, but he didn’t care, couldn’t care. Caught in the middle of a sensual assault unlike any he’d ever imagined.
And then finally, finally, the pain gave way to sweet, yielding flesh, to the demands of a dozen bodies sliding against his, their need mingling with his own to send it spiraling higher and higher and higher. Until his orgasm erupted out of him, along with a roar that crashed through the well-mannered stillness and echoed off the walls.
And announced his climax to the room.
Chapter Eleven
Mircea staggered through the back door of Martina’s house, along with a burst of rain and wind that set the candles guttering and someone cursing. Someone else went running, and something hit the floor with a clatter, scattering in a thousand rolling pieces. Which hurt like the devil when he fell on them.
He decided he didn’t care and hugged the rough wooden floorboards gratefully. Whoever had been swearing did it some more. And then tugged the sodden cloak off him, which had proven worthless when the clouds opened up halfway back.
Fortunately, he’d been in a gondola, being too weak to walk. Unfortunately, the gondolier had decided that he wasn’t being paid enough for this, and had dropped him off at the end of the street. Which Mircea had never before realized was quite so long.
But he’d made it, and now someone was pulling him into a slumped sprawl against the nearest wall, giving him a strange angle on the large room. Or maybe that was him. He had the feeling he might not be entirely level.
Thankfully, the kitchen was the one room where nobody cared if you sprawled in the corner. The rest of the palazzo felt alien with its glass this and inlaid that. The house Mircea had grown up in wouldn’t have been thought fit for a self-respecting tradesman in Venice, much less one of the wealthy merchants, who lived like the princes they thought they were.