Dane by Dane Read Free Book Online Page A

ruddy-tipped breasts, wanting her.
    Wanting to feel, if only for that instant. Yet not wanting to give up control to Dante. She moaned, her fingernails digging into his shoulders.
    Delicate gold flashed between her breasts in the fallen tangle of her blond hair, catching his eye. She wore a necklace. His hands slowed on her and he frowned, suddenly recalling another woman with hair as black as a raven‟s. Recalling another necklace whose pendant had been lost in the shadows of the shapely cleavage hidden within a prim gray bodice. A woman with pale pink nipples, not ruddy ones. A woman with eyes the color of new spring clover, but whose f ace he could not recall. Last night.

    His mind worked frantically, trying to hold on to a runaway memory. There had been a woman in the grove last night! She‟d run from him. No. Not from him. From..
    “Dante?”The woman on his lap drew back to look at him. She appeared to have been trying to get his attention for some seconds.
    “What‟s wrong?”
    Dane snatched her away, holding her by the wrists, his eyes intense and glittering as they searched hers. “Who are you? How did you get here?”
    For a moment, she looked taken aback. Then she sighed deeply, looking disappointed. “Oh. Business already, is it?”
    “Che cosa il diavolo! What the devil does that mean?”Taking her weight with him, he stood and set her on her feet.
    Nearby, the other female had awakened, worked her way loose from bondage, and now stood as well. The golden-haired woman nodded in her direction, including her when she spoke. “We‟re Council messengers, my lord, arrived only last night. When we came upon you then, in the throes of the moon‟s Calling, you bade us serve you.”
    “And we did so. Gladly,” the other woman assured him. The two messengers exchanged knowing glances full of memories he didn‟t share.
    Fuck! He‟d been discovered. He hadn‟t expected this so soon.
    Ignoring them, he moved away, finding and jerking on his trousers.
    “We come from the other side of the gate,” they jointly informed him. “We‟ve traveled through watery corridors formed by the rivers and tributaries between Tuscany and Rome.”
    “What for?” he bit out.
    “To find you,” the red-haired one said, offering him a teasing smile.
    “Nonsense,” the other chimed in. “We didn‟t know he‟d be here.”

    “But you do now, don‟t you?”He eyed them with silky menace.
    “How unfortunate for us all.”
    “Our only intention was to bring a missive,” the golden one assured him.
    Her companion nodded and withdrew a metal cylinder about eight inches long from her scant belongings. Nereids traveled by waterway and wore little to impede them. What little they had worn now lay damp and strewn on the marble floor tiles, no doubt where Dante had divested them of it last night. Coming to where he stood under the wide portico that ringed the temple‟s entire circumference, she made to give the cylinder to him. But the golden-haired one, who seemed to be her superior, preempted her and usurped it.
    Removing the cylinder‟s cap with her thumb, she tapped its barrel with one hand, causing a parchment scroll to slide out from it. Her former flirtatiousness returning, she dragged one end of the scroll down the center of his naked chest and lower, staring up at him through her lashes.
    “I assure you we enjoyed this delivery more than most, my lord.”
    He snatched it from her before it reached his crotch and saw that it bore the ElseWorld Council‟s wax seal. Damn! Under his fingertips, the parchment twitched with magic.
    His fist tightened around the scroll, crumpling it, wanting to destroy it. These interlopers had come here uninvited, fucked him without his knowledge. Did they think to take him back with them through the gate as well? His blood pounded on a burst of anger. He felt suddenly out of control, violent. “Take this and go back where you came from. Tell the Council they can go