The Maestro's Butterfly (10 page)

Her vagina flooded itself with juices for the Frenchman who had lured her to his estate and made her his.

His,
she thought. Shards upon shards of lust loosened the heaviness in her gut.

She gave a loud moan as his feathery kisses landed on her neck. Instinctively she reached for his penis. It was sticky, and engorged, as it had been earlier while she teased him into climax. She squeezed it. He responded by raising himself up to nudge open her thighs with his knee, and he mounted her.

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Miranda tried to see his face, but it was too dark. “Can you see me?” she whispered.

“Perfectly,” he said. He slipped inside of her easily this time, giving a few test thrusts before pinning her wrists to the mattress.
“Chérie—”

She gasped as she felt as his body claim hers, knowing that, had she protested, he would not have listened. She felt glad he was thick enough to open her up, or she may have been too wet to feel him. She steeled herself for his passionate thrusting, relaxing as much as possible. But in spite of the way he dominated her with his body, he eased in and out of her slowly, taking time to rotate his hips and press against her labia and clit after impaling her. She felt his thick, curly pubic hair as a cushion against her shaved mound.

“How does it feel,” he whispered in time with his excruciatingly pleasurable grinding, “to be fucked deep in the vampire’s lair, hmm?”

“Oh my God. Claudio—” she said as her skin erupted into gooseflesh. “Fuck”

sounded downright wicked and dirty when he said it, and made her hug him tightly inside of her.

“Ahh, my butterfly responds to gentleness also.” He gave that extra push needed to stretch her into accepting the base of his penis, pressing hard against the sensitive folds between her legs, open and vulnerable. Working it up and down. The pressure in the pit of her belly slowly became the beginnings of an orgasm. She raised her hips to him, greedy for stimulation. She heard him breathe through his nose, controlling it, and imagined that look of closed-mouthed determination he sometimes got when showing her how to play a difficult piece of music.

Except tonight, she was the music, and the instrument. He was doing this to her, drawing these responses from her body.

The pleasure between her legs became excruciating, and still he kept a steady rhythm, increasing the intensity only a little. Desperate to move toward the sensation, she raised her head. “Claudio—” she gasped, then dropped her head back into the 70

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pillow as the orgasm sent jagged tendrils of pleasure in all directions. Even her thighs tingled. Her body arched, mouth open, and she gasped, struggling to free her hands, wanting so badly to touch herself, to regain some measure of control. But Claudio would not release her.

Instead, he began pumping his hips and fucking her hard, shocking Miranda’s raw nerve endings. The line between pleasure and pain blurred. She writhed, trying to escape the orgasm as it ripped through her, and pleasure and pain merged into one great white light in the center of her brain. She disappeared inside it. He was like a wave pulling her under, drowning her in an undertow of darkness and light and sensation.

Finally, he grunted hard into her, then again, and finally a third time, and she knew he was marking her once more with his nectar.

He reached over to turn on the light and settled on top of her, still penetrating her. They breathed against each other. She looked up at him. He flared his nostrils and gloated at her with a little smile.

“You are the most arrogant-looking man I have ever seen,” she said suddenly.

“I know what I want,” he answered around elongated fangs. “I know, also, when I have won.”

“Won?” The word jolted her back to the reality of their agreement. “What do you mean you’ve won?”

“Don’t be so—like this—filled with drama,” he said. “I know when a woman is surrendering completely to me. It will happen with you. It is your nature.”

“My nature?”

“Yes,” he said.

She thought she heard the suggestion in his tone of more to come, but he said no more. Instead, he pumped her until she threw her head back and grasped hard at the sheets.

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It took about a week for something to bring all of Miranda’s repressed worries to the forefront of her thoughts. After her second night in Claudio’s bed, and the tenderness he had shown her, Miranda decided she had plenty of time to get him out of her system, that she would just ride out this experience and enjoy it for what it was—

then attend the big show and leave. They would probably continue to see each other, she reasoned. She would still take lessons and they would have the occasional few hours together. It would fit nicely into her life.

Holding on to that image allowed her to put aside any worries she had about mysterious men in pinstriped suits and to stop wondering if she was out of her mind for having an affair with a vampire.

Hearing Adam and Gena arguing in hushed tones burned right through that veil of denial. She heard the voices from the top of the basement stairs, and hesitated to open the door.

“It’s just a damn show,” Adam whispered emphatically. “A performance. And the damn thing ain’t even making money—it’s costing.”

“You mean the money Victoire gave to the theatre to cover liabilities?” Gena asked. “That’s coming out of Victoire’s pocket, Adam. It isn’t costing us anything.”

There was a heavy sigh. “When you deal with a du Fresne, it always costs you something. Claudio knows that. But he’s too arrogant to think he can lose, even against his own brother. Damn!”

Adam’s words barely registered, as images of the man in the pinstripes played in Miranda’s mind. The skin prickled all over her body.

“And you know who pays the big price if he’s wrong?” Adam continued. “The new girl, that’s who. She don’t even have a clue what he’s done.”

The new girl.
Miranda reeled and nearly lost her footing on the stairs as nausea 72

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washed over her. She began to tremble. She wondered if Claudio had simply pretended to want her in order to get her out here for some dark purpose. Her skin went clammy.

Spots swam in front of her eyes.

Gena spoke urgently. “Keep your voice down Adam. Someone might hear.”

“I don’t give a damn who hears me. It ain’t right to use people that way, Gena. It just ain’t right.”

“Claudio knows what he’s doing.”

“Yeah. I’ve had about all of Claudio knowing what he’s doing that I can stand.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m leaving. Right after the November show, I’m out of here.”

“Leaving? But—”

After that things got too quiet for Miranda to make out what they were saying.

Plus the room was spinning. All she could hear were murmured tones of voice. She knew that Gena was pleading with him to change his mind and that Adam’s anger was softening, and he was trying to make her feel better.

Miranda, however, did not feel better. She sat down on the stairs, not caring if someone opened the door and hit her with it. Something big was happening, something big enough to make Adam decide to leave a home he had lived in for who knew how long. And it involved her.

She wondered if Claudio had been biding his time like a patient spider, waiting to lure her into his web. The fact that he’d decided she was his “butterfly” didn’t make her feel any better about that image. She wondered if that was a private joke he had with himself. He would openly flaunt the power he had over her and what he intended to do.

Was there some kind of underground feeder slavery ring?

Finally she decided she had to get up off the stairs and stop scaring herself before she went mad or, more likely, before Chloe came barreling through the door and sent her sprawling. Would Claudio’s bite allow her to heal if she did break her neck?

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Was that how it worked?

There were so many questions whirling in her head, they gave her a headache.

Her temples throbbed, but at least the room was no longer spinning and she didn’t feel in danger of passing out. She stood and turned on the stairs, losing her footing for a moment and grabbing the rail in a panic. Then she had to hug it for a moment as a new surge of adrenaline shot through her. Finally, she felt able to open the door. It squeaked heavily. She heard chopping noises in the kitchen and headed that way gingerly.

It was Gena, chopping celery. She looked very low-key in denim shorts and T-shirt, her hair pinned up with a large barrette. Her head was bowed and she sniffed every now and then.

“Where’s Adam?” Miranda asked with a shaky voice.

Gena startled and half-whirled, giving her an embarrassed smile. Her eyes were red-rimmed. There wasn’t an onion in sight.

“Oh. Hi,” she said and dabbed the back of her arm on her nose. “He’s, uh, up in his room, I think. Claudio doesn’t need him today.”

“I heard you,” Miranda said over the pounding of her heart. “Just now.”

Gena forced a smile. “Oh that’s nothing. People threaten to leave all the time.

You know how—”

“I mean before that. Am I the new girl he was talking about?” Miranda was very close to tears herself. She felt exquisitely betrayed.

“Of course not,” Gena said and got back to her cutting. “You didn’t hear what you think you heard. It bothers Adam that vampires have to keep feeders. He says it’s slavery, and Claudio doesn’t help by calling us that. But that’s not what we are. Adam gets into one of his moods, and he grumbles for a while and then it’s over. End of story.”

“You weren’t talking about slavery. You were talking about some deal Claudio made and how the new girl was going to pay the price. That’s me, isn’t it?”

“Claudio’s always making deals. He’s a businessman.”

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Miranda continued. “I made a bet with him the other night. When I mentioned it to Chloe she acted like I had sold my soul to the devil. Is that what I’ve done? Gena, tell me.”

Gena put down the knife and turned to Miranda, motioning with her hands.

“Chloe likes to scare people. I think you heard things wrong. It takes a few days for your system to get used to them feeding on you. It can play tricks on your mind.

Paranoia is one of the symptoms.”

“I know what I heard.”

“No. You don’t.”

“Fine. I’ll just go ask Adam then. Where is his bedroom?”

Gena sighed, looked at her a moment, and said, “Right at the top of the stairs.”

Miranda’s heart beat so fast, she hardly had enough wits to realize she hadn’t yet been up to the second floor. She wanted to take the stairs two at a time, but couldn’t seem to make her legs stop jack hammering up one at a time. There were three bedrooms—one at each end of the hall and one in the middle. At least Miranda assumed they were bedrooms, because the doors were all closed. The only open door was to the bathroom. She focused on Adam’s and listened for signs of life. Hearing none, she took a deep breath and knocked softly. Finally, she’d know what was going on.

Even after knocking, though, she didn’t hear anything. She looked around nervously, wondering how foolish she looked hanging around outside Adam’s door, especially if he wound up coming naked out of someone else’s bedroom.
Whatever,
she thought. She had to know, she told herself. This was important. She knocked again, louder this time, then called his name, but there was still no answer. She tried the doorknob, just a little. The door clicked open. She froze and waited, feeling faint again, but made herself push it open.

He wasn’t there. The bed was made, sloppily, with a baritone sax atop the covers. A couple of violin cases were stashed in the corner, next to a small desk piled with CDs. Mardi Gras beads hung on the curtain rod.
Godfather
posters covered the 74

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walls, along with a print of a well-dressed elderly man bowing his head before a loaf of bread, and one of Jesus looking devoutly toward the Heavens, his heart showing, wrapped in thorns. There was a bedside table covered with progressive literature and a couple of small bookshelves with books with words like
kundalini
in the title. But no Adam.

Miranda found her heart didn’t beat so fast now that she was actually in here.

She left and closed the door.

Downstairs, she confronted Gena again. “He wasn’t up there.”

Gena stopped what she was doing, bowed her head and sighed. Then she turned to Miranda with a warm smile. “Look. I know this is strange for you. A lot of wacky things are happening to you right now. We all went through that. He brought each and every one of us here without telling us what we were getting into, but he’s a good judge of other people’s needs. You need to be here, or he wouldn’t have brought you.”

“Unless he had something else in mind.”

“Like what?”

Miranda threw up her hands. “I don’t know. I know what I heard you and Adam talking about, though. I don’t think these bites screw with your mind like that.”

Gena nodded, her smile becoming sympathetic. “Adam’s around here somewhere. Talk to him if it will make you feel better. Talk to Claudio.”

“Claudio’s the one who brought me here under false pretenses for God-knows-what reason. Why would he tell me the truth?”

“I trust Claudio,” she said, turning back to her work. “He’s always taken care of us. He may be temperamental and moody and unreasonable at times, but he is the most loyal man I’ve ever met. He takes care of what’s his. And if he considers you his, he won’t let anything happen to you. That, I can promise.”

Miranda nodded. Even if she was hiding something, there was a sincerity in Gena’s voice she couldn’t argue with. “How long have you been with him?”

Gena shook her head. “Since the fifties or the sixties. I lose track. I wasn’t 76

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exactly healthy when he found me.”

“What happened?”

“He saved my life,” she said, turning to Miranda briefly to smile. “There’s no other way to put it.” She paused before speaking again. “Now I’ve got a lot of prep-work to do, so either go hunt down Adam or grab a knife and chop something.”