Whispers of the Flesh (11 page)

David let out a pent-up breath. “So this was when you learned that you could will yourself into other forms.”

“Or no form at all. I traveled west, searching for sanctuary in some part of the world where they’d never heard of the djinn. At length, I found this valley, this cave. I’d lived in a cave back in Petra—there were thousands of them there, carved into the mountain, so I felt right at home here. And I was hopeful that
le magnétisme hallucinatoire,
as we call it now, would help to discourage any human wanderers from venturing too deep within.”

“The valley was uninhabited then?” David asked.

Darius nodded. “The Gaulish tribe that settled here didn’t arrive till around six hundred B.C. Their druids decreed that I was a god of fire, and that it was their sacred duty and the duty of their descendants to keep me safe—and so they have to this day.”

“To this day?” David said. “How . . . ?”

Darius smiled. “Théophile Morel, Seigneur des Ombres, is the descendant of Brantigern Anextlomarus—Brantigern the Protector—a young druid who remained here for my sake when the Romans came. Morel has the Gift, as have all his ancestors, the better to safeguard me—and the other three, who came later.”

“And the four of you have managed to live here all this time without the outside world discovering what you truly are?”

“Brantigern’s heirs have done their duty well.”

“After all you’ve been through,” David said, “I’m surprised you’re still willing to heal people.”

“I’m not, not really. When I left Persia, I resolved to never heal another soul.”

“You healed
me.
”

“You would never have taken that fall if not for my ineptitude. I will admit there have been other times over the centuries when I’ve been compelled to use my powers of healing, but those occasions are rare. Even when someone I care about is dying . . .” He shook his head gravely. “No matter how agonizing it is to watch, no matter how tempted I am to intervene, if there is any chance that my healing this person will put me at risk of exposure, I won’t even consider it—not for a moment.”

“Do the other Follets ever ask you to make an exception?” David asked.

“They don’t know I can heal. Nor does Archer, nor even Morel.”

“You’ve kept it a secret from those closest to you all these years?”

“I’ve had no choice,” Darius said grimly. “They
would
ask for exceptions, especially Inigo, who makes human friends easily. If they knew, they would beg me to heal just one more person, promising that no one in the outside world would find out, but they would. It’s inevitable. And then I would once again find myself subjected to . . . who knows what this time. I can’t take that chance.”

“Then why on earth are you telling
me
all of . . . Ah. The conduit. You have to satisfy my curiosity about the Follets.”

“That, and . . .” Darius shrugged. “You were awake when I healed you. I could hardly have kept it a secret.”

“It was a dangerous thing for you to do,” David said. “I will be eternally in your debt. Should there ever be some way I can repay you, pray don’t hesitate to—”

“There is something.”

“Anything.”

“Don’t ever disclose what happened this morning to another living soul, either here at Grotte Cachée or in the outside world. I mean the healing, of course, not . . . you know, me telling you about the Follets, and your being a demon hunter sent by the Church. I daresay the others have a right to know about that.”

“I intend to make a full confession to Lili as soon as I get back to the château.”

“But you won’t tell anyone else who we really are? Even your superiors who sent you here? I know you don’t like to lie, but—”

“Nothing I report will be a lie. But nor will it add up to the truth.” David put his hand out for Darius to shake. “You have my solemn word.”

Twelve

L
ILI TURNED THE doorknob of
la Chambre Romaine
about half past midnight that night, pleased to find the door unlocked and the hinges well oiled. She hesitated as she pushed the door open, having expected darkness, not candlelight. David had retired three hours earlier, saying he wanted to get a good night’s sleep before the predawn commencement of his journey back to England tomorrow. His trek up Alp Albiorix that morning in search of Darius’s
maison dans la caverne
appeared to have tired him out, judging from how stiffly he’d moved when he first returned.

She stepped into the palatial bedchamber, her feet silent on the wine-red carpet, the only sound that of her breath and the silken hush of her
lubushu
—cinnabar tonight, to complement the roseate hues in the room. Her hair was loose, her breasts and throat rubbed with oil of jasmine, her upper arms twined in golden bracelets a thousand years old.

David was fast asleep on the big velvet-curtained bed, reclining in a semisitting position on a mountain of pillows in shades of maroon, rust, and brick. The bed had been turned down already, exposing sheets of sleek Egyptian cotton.

He wore nothing but his underdrawers. This was the first time Lili had seen him shirtless. His torso was beautifully proportioned, the shoulders not quite as wide as Elic’s but nicely squared off, the chest lightly adorned with hair that wasn’t at all coarse; in fact, it looked almost downy. On David’s lap sat a portable writing desk which he’d been using to compose a letter, judging from the sheet of foolscap on its slanted lid and the quill in his slack right hand.

Lili came around to the side of the bed, slid the quill out of his hand, and put it on the nightstand alongside the ink pot and half-burned candle. She carefully lifted the desk off his lap and set it on the dressing table. The letter was written in a sharply precise hand and signed with his real name, David Beckett Roussel.

17 October 1829
Grotte Cachée, Auvergne, France

My Lord Bishop,

Your Lordship will wonder why I have chosen to convey the results of my mission in writing rather than during a meeting with you upon my return to England, as planned. Suffice it to say there is little to discuss. My investigation has convinced me with absolute certainty that there are no diabolical entities of an evil nature who reside in this place, nor have there ever been. . . .

Lili didn’t read the rest, not so much out of respect for David’s privacy as out of simple disinterest. David would keep the secrets that Darius had been forced to reveal to him that morning, of that she was quite certain. He had promised Lili as much, swearing unnecessarily on his Bible. Her initial pique at his having misled her this past week about his true purpose in being here had dissipated upon reflection. Had she not deceived him all along as to her very nature? She wasn’t even human, for heaven’s sake, yet he had accepted her charade with the equanimity she had grown to find curiously attractive—for, she knew that, Jesuit or no, his reserve masked a deeply passionate nature.

She sat on the edge of the bed and caressed his face, whispering “David.”

He awoke with a quizzical little grunt, blinked, and focused on her. “Lili.” His gaze lit on her hair, her braceleted arms, her silk-clad breasts, and finally her lips, stained a deep crimson; it was the first time he had seen her wearing rouge.

He met her eyes again; his throat moved. He knew why she was there.

“I thought you were going to turn in early,” she said.

“I, er . . .” He sat up, rubbing his eyes. “I had some things to sort through.”

“How to tell your bishop about us without lying outright?” she asked.

“Among other things.”

“I’ve been thinking, too,” she said, “about what you told me when we were in
la Galerie des Diamants Noirs,
that you have always ached to know how it would feel for a woman to pleasure you with her mouth.”

After a moment of stunned silence, he appeared to be groping for words.

“I know,” she said, stroking her fingers through his hair. “You took a vow of chastity, and I respect your fidelity to it. At the same time, it strikes me that when you made that vow, you really had no idea what you would be giving up. For a man to choose to abstain for the rest of his life from the pleasures of the flesh without having sampled those pleasures . . .” She shook her head. “It doesn’t sit well with me.”

“But, Lili—”

“Kasaru,”
she whispered, stroking her fingertips lightly across his forehead.

David fell back onto the pillows, his look of bewilderment swiftly turning to panic as he realized he was paralyzed save for a very limited range of motion in his trunk and head; she could have imposed a greater or lesser degree of paralysis, but this level seemed to suit the situation. He moved his mouth, but only weak, straining sounds emerged, the
mashmashu
having rendered him mute as well as immobile.

“It’s all right, David.” She kissed his forehead, skimmed her hands soothingly over his shoulders and arms. “Relax. Don’t fight it.”

He frantically shook his head as much as he was able; he could only move it an inch or two either way.

Lili pressed a hand to his chest to feel his wildly hammering heart. The
mashmashu kasaru
could be disconcerting to a
gabru,
but they didn’t generally get quite so wrought up so quickly.

“There is nothing wrong with you, David. It’s just a spell, very simple and very old. You can’t move, but you
can
still feel. You see?” She grazed her fingernails lightly down his chest.

He stilled, his gaze on her hand. She thought she saw a glimmer of relief in his eyes. His body seemed to relax a bit.

“You shan’t remain this way,” she assured him. “I shall release the spell in due course. But first, I think it only right that you should experience at least one of those pleasures which you have chosen to sacrifice.”

He watched her intently as she untied his drawers, his sex stirring beneath the thin white linen.

“I shan’t deprive you of your virginity,” she said. “I shan’t even bring you to climax, if you do not wish it. But I shall give you a taste of that which you should have experienced long ere this.”

Lili smiled in anticipation as she opened his drawers. He grew erect without being touched, the skin stretching taut as the shaft thickened and rose, drawing the foreskin back to expose the blood-flushed glans. Her mouth literally watered. She loved a gleaming-hard cockstand pulsing with heat; the very sight of it made her wet. She couldn’t wait to taste it.

“The
mashmashu
is for your peace of mind,” she told him as she positioned herself,“so that you needn’t truly be in violation of your vow. You never asked for this, you are powerless to prevent it. You have no control, and therefore no need for contrition.”

His cock had reared up so high that it lay nestled in the thatch of black hair on his lower belly. Leaning down, she gave it a soft kiss, causing it to twitch involuntarily; David sucked in a breath. She licked it with unhurried strokes, delighting in the glide of his hot, silky skin against her tongue. He was quivering already, his breath coming fast.

When a
gabru
was under the influence of this type of
mashmashu,
it intensified sexual stimulation, magnifying his pleasure and giving him one explosive orgasm after another. This was normally an excellent thing, ensuring as it did long nights of abandoned bedsport, but Lili had promised not to make David spend without his leave.

Mindful of that promise, she proceeded slowly, letting him savor the sensations he’d lain awake imagining all these years without allowing those sensations to race out of control. She licked his scrotum, then cradled it in her hand, rubbing behind it with measured strokes as she teased the tip of his cock—flicking it with her tongue, popping it in and out of her mouth. When she finally closed her crimsoned lips around him and sucked him in hard and deep, a low, grinding moan rose from his chest. David’s expression was one of rapture; his chest was pumping like a bellows.

Lili slid him out of her mouth, then back in even deeper than before, sucking it in strong, rhythmic waves from the base up with the head seated firmly in her throat. No human woman could take a man this deep without choking, nor did they have the physiological ability to milk a cock with their palates and tongues; a pity for human males, many of whom had told her it was the most ecstatic sexual experience of their lives. It was, however, an experience that tended to produce a swift and violent ejaculation. In fact, so erotic was the sensation of a man shooting volleys of come down her throat that Lili could easily climax from that alone.

Wanting David’s pleasure to last as long as possible, Lili switched tactics, bestowing airy kisses and little licks up and down the shaft. A bead of pre-ejaculate materialized on the tiny slit. Lili rubbed it onto the shaft to slicken it, pumping him lightly with her hand as she took him in her mouth again. He thrust his hips inasmuch as he was able, trying to push deeper into her mouth. She let the tip nudge her throat, then backed off again. He thrust harder, his body quaking.

He was right on the edge. It was time to put an end to this.

“David.” Lili had to say his name several times before he seemed to hear her. “David, if I do this any longer, you’ll spend. Do you want me to finish you this way?”

He shook his head, forming the word “no” with his mouth.

With a sigh of regret, she retied his drawers over his erection. Sitting up, she stroked his forehead lightly while speaking the words that would lift the
mashmashu. “Hadatu.”

“Bloody hell,” he gasped as the feeling flooded back into his arms and legs.

“You are a man of remarkable self-control,” she said, lowering her feet to the floor. “I don’t know if that’s always such a good—”

David seized her, threw her onto the bed, and whipped her
lubushu
up to her waist. He tugged twice at the waist cord of his drawers, then ripped them open and fell upon her. She felt his fingers searching, fumbling, heard him swear under his breath as a sharp thrust slid away from its target, and then a second—but with the third, he pushed in about halfway.

He gasped at the sensation, pausing as if to savor it, then bulled into her with an anguished groan.

He took her with a mindless ferocity, putting his strength into it, his entire body heaving, pounding. She came within seconds, clawing at his back as she bucked beneath him. He shuddered, pushing deep. A shout roared from his lungs as his arms tightened around her, his cock pulsing, pulsing, pulsing . . .

He collapsed onto her, damp and trembling. They lay together catching their breath for a minute, Lili relishing, as always, the singular bliss of lying motionless with a man’s spent cock still full and heavy inside her.

She kissed his neck, saying “I thought you didn’t want to come.”

“Not that way. I wanted to come inside you.”

“Why, what an inspired idea,” she said through a chuckle.

He growled contentedly, nuzzling her hair.

“I’m sorry, David.”

He lifted his head to look down at her, frowning in puzzlement. “Whatever for?”

“Your vow of chastity. I made you—”

“You didn’t
make
me do anything, Lili. And I’m not constrained by the vow anymore, or I won’t be soon.”

“How can that be?”

“I wrote to my bishop, requesting temporary secularization so that I can . . . think things through. If I decide to pursue my ordination, I can return to the seminary and do so. If not, I shall apply to the Holy See for permanent release from my vows.”

“Do you think that’s what you’ll do?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Whatever I decide, I know that I shall never regret coming here, meeting you . . . It isn’t every man who can say he’s been ravished by a Babylonian goddess.”

“I beg your pardon, sir, but who ravished whom just now?”

“After being pushed to the limits of his endurance.”

“Oh, that was your limit, eh? Too bad. I’d had such high hopes for the rest of the night.”

“Witch,” he growled, thrusting against her.

“I thought I was a goddess.”

He lowered his mouth to hers, saying “I do believe you’re both.”

Lili climbed the winding stone staircase in the northeast tower early the next morning garbed in her yellow silk
lubushu,
her hair wet from the dip she’d taken in the bathhouse after seeing David off before dawn.

The door to Elic’s apartment was a slab of oak so thick and heavy that she had to lean her weight into it to push it open, both she and the door groaning with the effort. She went directly to his bedchamber, finding it dark within because of the closed window shutters, and cool, and very quiet.

Elic lay on his back in the big bed with the bedclothes rucked around his waist, his head angled toward her, his beautiful hair spilling over the pillows like streams of honey. His mouth was slightly open in sleep, as it often was, making him look terribly young despite the sharply carved face, the muscle-packed shoulders.

She unwrapped her
lubushu
and climbed under the covers, which roused him from his slumber. He opened his eyes, radiant as blue fire in the shadowy room, and gave her a groggy smile as she tucked herself against him. His body felt like an oven against the coolness of the sheets.

“Kveðja,”
she said softly.

Elic gathered her up, kissing her damp hair as their bodies settled into the natural embrace in which they often slept together, wrapped in each other’s arms.
“Shalamu, mins Ástgurdís.”