.

his guest was unabashedly eavesdropping. Was he so obtuse he didn’t know when a married couple required privacy? Enough! She rounded on him to request that he leave.

      “Signore, perhaps you will allow us to continue our discussion of this matter in seclusion?”

      But Dominic’s emotionless eyes had left her, and he was now staring fixedly at her husband.

      Behind her, Carlo muttered, “He stays.”

      “But why?”

      “Little idiot! Do you care nothing for our unborn child?” he bit out, gesturing toward the swell at her waist. “If I don’t fuck you tonight, it will die where it lies within you!”

      Scandalized by his crude, hurtful words, she was slow to take in their precise meaning.

      “Lust is a vital part of my makeup,” he went on, slamming a fist to his chest. “Fucking has been like breathing to me for all my adult life. Tonight I feel sick with the need to mate from dusk to daybreak. The fiendish cruelty of my condition is that though the ability to do so is gone, the drive remains.”

      Emma paled as the true horror of their situation finally dawned on her. “Do you mean to say you cannot function in that way? At all?”

      “At last she comprehends!” He flung up his hands, bitter laughter erupting from him. “You know the ways of the Satyr. Children bred at Moonful must be birthed during the following one. A month’s gestation. Our offspring must enter this world with tomorrow’s sunrise. As the catalyst for a birthing, you must first experience the pleasures of tonight’s Calling ritual. However, my cock is sadly incapable of entertaining you in the coming hours. Or ever again.”

      He palmed himself graphically, cupping and grinding his own genitals through his trousers as if he despised what they contained.

      “But there must be some way,” she protested, hugging her middle protectively. “That is, could we summon a physician? Or could we—?”

      Carlo blasted toward her. She backed away from the fury in his face, but she understood the reason for it now. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he exerted his strength, pressuring her downward until she sank to the floor to kneel between his legs.

      “Carlo! Our child! You must take care with me!” she cried, clutching for balance.

      Hard fingers dove into her hair to hold her as his other hand wrenched open his trousers.

      Lowering her eyes to the shrouded gap at the front of his trousers, she beheld the true extent of the injuries he’d unveiled. Though he hadn’t loved her, his body had always been ready to couple with hers under a fully waxed moon. But no more. Now his manhood hung shrunken and defeated.

      “Show me how we can make it work,” he bit out. His tone was scathing, as though he despised her. “Take me in your mouth, wife. If you can get a rise out of me, I will gladly fuck you.”

      Emma heard Dominic take a step toward them and then check himself. Apparently he was reluctant to interfere in another man’s way of dealing with his dashed dreams.

      Her lashes fluttered lower, and shame rouged her cheeks. “Please. Not in front of him,” she whispered.

      “Do as I say,” Carlo instructed. “As an obedient wife should.”

      “Very well,” she agreed, unsure how else to defuse this situation other than to comply. Reaching out, she traced the angry, jagged slashes that diagonally dissected his pelvis to arrow low toward his groin. The surrounding skin was splotched with horrible yellow and purple bruises.

      “I’m so sorry,” she commiserated, brushing her fingertips over the abrasions.

      “Then show me. Lend me comfort.” His fingers tightened against her scalp, and she winced as he drew her head forward.

      With a garbled sound of protest, she clawed at his offending hands. “Stop! You’re hurting!”

      A masculine thumb and forefinger dug into the hinges of her jaw, forcing her lips to open and prompting her to action. Only after she lifted his crown and took it and then the rest of him into her mouth did he release his remorseless grip.

      It quickly became impossible not to distinguish the horrible difference. On the previous occasions she’d performed this service for him, the thrust of his rod had bruised her throat with its strength and size. But now…

      She felt Dominic observing them and wanted to rail at him to turn away, but her husband’s fuse was short, and she didn’t dare release him long enough to do so.

      Forcing saliva to pool in her mouth, she bathed Carlo’s meager length, earnestly undertaking the challenge he’d set for her. Using the O of her lips, she suckled him strongly, drawing back and attempting to extend him in the way he’d taught her on their wedding night. But when she inadvertently loosened him, his shaft recoiled so unexpectedly that she lost it.

      He sucked an angry breath through his teeth and quickly replaced himself in her mouth. Holding her cheeks in his hands, he rocked once, twice, thrice, moving his flaccid cock along her tongue.

      She gripped the fabric of his trousers as her cheeks pumped to the lecherous rhythm he’d set. Stroking from his root to the ridge of his crown and back, she diligently tried to bring life to that which was dead.

      Try as she might, he didn’t stir.

      Then came the touch of a foreign hand. The heat of a body—a masculine one looming behind her.

      Dominic!

      Shocked, she attempted to jerk away from her task. But his broad fingers gently wove through her hair on either side of her skull, easily holding her head and riding its back-and-forth movements as he watched her fellate another man. It was as if he’d been driven to participate with them in some small way, to soothe her with thumbs that stroked the tendons at her nape and hands that massaged in a sensuous caress.

      “A dutiful wife, is she not?” Carlo’s voice inquired from somewhere above her. “Alas, her ministrations are for naught.”

      Dominic spoke at last, his voice a low command. “It is you who should be readying her with your mouth.” With a slow, lingering reluctance, his touch left her.

      At his words, her husband stilled. Then, as though he found it impossible to disobey his companion, his touch on her fell away, too. “Yes. You’re right, of course.”

      When he stepped back, his shriveled penis slipped from her mouth, flopping free to dangle uselessly at his groin. Frustration lent his hands unnecessary force as he shoved her from him and then yanked up his trousers and tucked himself inside.

      Chestnut tresses cascaded over Emma’s shoulders, trailing on the carpet as she fell awkwardly to her hands and knees. Carlo bent to help her, as though momentarily regretting his actions. But when she only glared up at him, he straightened away and simply finished adjusting his clothing.

      Emma attempted to gather herself from the floor on her own, but with a full-term baby housed inside her, this proved impossible.

      Strong hands came under her armpits, and she found herself lifted to her feet. Dominic again. Touching her when he had no right.

      Whirling away as soon as she’d regained her balance, she pushed the curtain of hair from her face and wiped her lips with the back of one wrist. Embarrassed at what he’d been witness to and by his overly familiar behavior, she scanned his expression.

      His face had taken on a grim quality, all planes and angles softened only by the shadowy beginnings of a blue-black evening stubble along his jaw. Those eyes had seen too much, knew too much. They were molten silver, pitiless and flat. She saw her own reflection in them, but nothing of him.

      “You have no right to touch another man’s wife, signore,” she rebuked, angry and confused by the fact that Carlo hadn’t bothered to chastise him.

      Though his gaze was on her, it was her husband to whom he spoke. “Prepare her, Carlo.