legs and grip his thighs, her expression beseeching. “She is nothing to us.”
Lyon ruched up his trousers, wincing as he forced his still turgid cock inside and slid fastenings home. It had just achieved the most gratifying orgasm of its lecherous career, yet it was still angled high, at the ready.
Gods, what a night. “Stay here until I return,” he grimly instructed his companion.
“Damnation!” Her angry fist aimed for his groin but was deflected and only hit his thigh when he jerked back in time. “I am your chosen one. Not her!”
He bent and lifted her so they stood eye to eye. “That remains to be seen.”
“Bastard!” With her coming, her transformation had concluded and she tottered uncertainly before him on newly formed web-toed feet. Were she to remain on land now that the change was complete, all signs of her origins would soon fade. Her scales and luminescence would recede altogether until she appeared completely Human. Or near enough to pass.
Sibela wrapped desperate arms about his shoulders and lifted her lips to his ear. “If you must go, just first tell me this,” she whispered. “Your seed. Was it potent?”
He wrested her claws from his neck and set her firmly away from him, giving her time to steady before he released her. “You know it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.”
His eyes lifted to search the bridge rail. Nothing made him more eager to escape a scene such as this than a woman who clung. She had a right to be angry. Such post-coital behavior on his part was beyond ungentlemanly, but something was wrong here.
She was far too determined to keep him from the mysterious woman on the bridge, and he was conversely filled with an intense, inexplicable determination to find her.
“Do you forget that tomorrow night marks the conclusion of Bright Half?” she went on, referring to the two weeks of the monthly cycle in which the moon waxed. “You will need me then, when the full moon comes.”
“Stay, Sibela. I’ll return later.” He flicked his fingers toward her in a gesture that bolstered the magic surrounding her. “Until then you’ll remain undetectable by Human sight. But when next we speak, I’ll want answers. Truthful ones.”
“You dare speak to me as you would your dog? We have mated!” she shrieked. “You cannot leave me in this way. We are bound!”
Ignoring her, he turned and loped across the park. He’d already lost too much time and would not linger to untangle Sibela’s lies now. Her claim to him was not as thorough as she might have wished and he suspected that, rather than any true feeling for him, was at the root of her shrewishness. For until they mated under the full Moon, any bond between them was not irrevocable.
By taking the southern staircase closest to the direction in which the woman on the bridge had gone, he avoided the crowds. But when he reached the Quai di Conti, her scent had already largely dissipated. He searched the air for the path she’d taken, for once wishing his olfactory abilities were as keen as those of his brothers.
Behind him, Sibela had commenced her screeching again. He grimaced. Bacchus, please let there be some mistake! Was he truly destined to be tied to such a female for a lifetime?
A door shut along the quai. He turned toward the sound and located the scent again. He tracked it past ten buildings and lost it just short of the stoop leading to a townhouse of plastered gray with a red door.
Had the pretty voyeuse he sought retreated here? Instinct had him taking the steps and rapping the knocker for admittance. If he was wrong, he was about to embarrass himself.
Almost immediately, the door was snatched open and a majordome appeared. When his gaze swept Lyon, his nose lifted and his lips curled into a sneer. He made to shut the door.
Lyon’s palm smacked flat upon it, holding it wide. “I seek a word with the lady who just entered here…” Something beyond the man caught his attention. Just inside, a woman’s wrap had been cast upon a hook. It was crimson red.
“Thee salon weel not beegin for one hour. At nine o’clock tonight,” the man informed him with a supercilious sniff. He eyed Lyon up and down. “And eet eez by eenvitation onlee.”
A rivulet of blood trickled down Lyon’s neck and he mentally cringed, recalling his bedraggled state. His neck still stung from Sibela’s claws and his shoulders were striped with welts where she’d gripped him as they’d mated. His shirt hung open and was sliced in ribbons, and his grass-stained trousers were damp with seawater.
He was probably not the sort of guest who normally called here.
The Human obstacle before him stepped back for greater leverage and again tried to close the door. Lyon’s huge paw remained fast, preventing him. His other hand delved into his trouser pocket and whipped out an assortment of Tuscan lire and soldi, which he deposited inside the servant’s vest without bothering to determine the amount of his offering. “I believe you’ll find that to be adequate invitation,” he informed him. “I’ll expect to be allowed in when I return.”
The majordome patted his bulging vest pocket, peeked inside it, and then favored him with a grudging nod. “Onlee eef you are suitablee attired. And do not bring your entourage.”
Lyon straightened and looked over his shoulder, surprised to see that an assortment of women loitered there, some openly ogling him and others doing the same in a more circumspect manner. Behind him, the door shut with a haughty snick.
He took the steps and strode back into the lane, sighing when his admirers decided to trail him. He was weary of this inexplicable Human attention and he had no time for it. He was a mess, and he had but one hour to get himself to his hotel, clean himself up, and return.
“I’m not what you want,” he murmured to the group at large. Sending a light mindspell over the women, he crossed the quai not waiting to see them disband.
At the park’s edge, he glanced back toward the gray house. A curtain twitched at a window on the top floor. Someone watched him. Was it the woman from the bridge? Such an attic window would most likely open to servants’ quarters. Was she a maid or a governess?
Was she the woman who’d just given him the hardest orgasm of his life?
He would find out at nine o’clock tonight.
3
Reaching her solitary bedchamber in the rafters at the front of the house she so despised, Juliette soundlessly shut her door behind her. Without lighting a candle, she hurried to the single window along the wall and, taking care to keep herself hidden, pulled back the curtain’s edge to peer down toward the quai.
She gasped. There he was! That man she’d seen from the bridge was loitering on the front sidewalk, studying the house. Now that he stood upright, she could see he truly was a giant. A disheveled one.
His tattered shirt was misbuttoned and damp with dew and sweat. It faithfully molded shoulders nearly twice as broad as her own and a muscled torso that rivaled the mythical statues carved on the Palais de Justice. Thoughts of that place sent a shiver over her.
Her breath hitched as she watched him disappear up the front steps and heard the door open for him. His coming here was no accident. He’d seen her on the bridge and followed her. Why? What did he want? Was it simple curiosity? Or, even worse, was it possible he was one of her persecutors and she’d inadvertently led him here?
In semi-darkness, she groped along the wall until she reached the washstand. Her hand found the vial there and by ease of practice, she splashed wine into a glass and squeezed a small dose of the vial’s tincture into it. Though she craved more, she limited herself, for she’d need her wits later tonight. She swallowed it in one gulp and returned to the window.
Long moments later, the man reappeared below her again on the sidewalk. The servants had rebuffed him!
Her gaze followed him as he crossed the quai and continued on. Her emotions were in such a tangle