Exit Unicorns (Exit Unicorns Series) Read Online Free PDF

requisite bells on her toes, I presume,” Jamie said sarcasm liberally lacing his words.
    “Quite a lovely set of each, actually,” Yevgena said mildly. “I think perhaps it’s time for you to quit hiding behind that glass and just finish off the bottle.” Inky eyebrows arched and verdantly green eyes refused the challenge.
    “One supposes you will have your own way regardless,” Jamie said, the bite rather missing from his words, the bottle in hand.
    “One supposes correctly,” Yevgena’s words, unlike Jamie’s, had teeth.
    A clap of hands, a word or two and a sudden hush like dropping snow covered the crowd. Then, like a Siberian rose rising from winter’s blasted ground, rare and surprising, a girl emerged walking into the circle of fire. Smooth, slender, ivory-skinned and fine-boned with hair tumbling like bruise-black silk down bare and blameless skin, she was enough fuel to bank the smallest of flames. Exotic eastern winds, freshly sprung, tinkled the bells strung silver and delicate around her ankles.
    Joints turned and shifted, became the support of elegant arabesques of arm and leg. Eyelashes, wondrously thick, hovered demurely over eyes. Hips and flank were swathed in a purple silk that flickered between opaque and transparent in the uncertain light.
    “My, my,” breathed John. “Are those ostrich feathers?” he indicated the upper body attire the girl held in front of herself, fluttering and furling in the breeze.
    “Mm,” Yevgena mumbled distractedly, watching with interest the interplay of firelight and lust on Jamie’s face.
    Jamie, robbed of speech again, was finding even rudimentary functions such as breathing quite difficult. Other things, of course, seemed to be in fully working order. A flicker of smooth hip there by the fire, and the smell of strawberries and amaranth, dizzying, overwhelming and dissipating into the night. Music began to flow, designed for the baser senses it was heavy, thrumming and sliding through veins, blossoming in blood, redolent with salt and musk.
    Berry-stained feet moved in rhythm, hands, sweetly sealed about feathers, undulated carefully, rounded parts dipped and circled and eyes remained downcast, lashes thickly fanned against flushed cheeks. The air became laden with sighs of two variations.
    “Imagine,” John’s voice was somewhat strangled, “all that and a command of Persian love sonnets.”
    “What?” Jessica asked, uncertain of what she was querying.
    “Part of pilgrim lore, amongst other things those boys were never without an arsenal of Ottoman words of love. One never knows,” Yevgena stretched, the picture of a Turkish odalisque in profile, “when these things may come in handy.”
    The music wound down and the girl disappeared, sighs gathered, collected and blew across the onlookers like an African sirocco.
    She reappeared a moment later, ostrich feathers replaced by a length of crimson cloth. The music pulled hard from the strings, poured down from Spanish steppes, steeped potent in hot Cordovan suns. The dance was the dance of the Andalusian gypsies, the flamenco. Heel and toe moved in ancient and instinctive patterns. Hair whirled like silk around a tornado. She seemed all movement, skin and bone of a dissoluble piece. She seemed, Jessica thought in inexplicable despair, as if she were desire incarnate. The girl moved to the edge of her circle of fire and held out a hand to Jamie. Lashes tilted up and green eyes met their like.
    “Dance with me,” she said quietly, “if you can.”
    Gone beyond the space where madness and propriety were salient points Jamie, golden, reckless, rose in answer to her challenge and took her hand before anyone could think to stop him.
    Despite the handicaps of inebriation, exhaustion and grief, Jamie could dance. He also knew, from a variety of experiences, how to hold a woman. Skin followed skin, blood beat in time and they whirled, spun, stamped and wooed there in the lost world