House of Dark Delights Read Online Free PDF

given—”
    â€œGet out!” Larsson yelled. “Get the fuck out of here!”
    â€œHey, what’s gotten into—”
    â€œGet out!”
He lunged across the bed, taking a wild swing that Elic easily ducked.
    Elic drew back and landed a swift punch to Larsson’s head, dropping him in a heap on the bed. Grimacing, he examined his injured finger, now throbbing from the blow. What would Larsson think, he wondered, when he came to? Would he rationalize it in his mind, convince himself he’d dreamed the whole thing, or perhaps hallucinated it? The chateau’s guests tended to experience all kinds of unexplainable phenomena. There was the lube, but wishful thinking being what it was, he could conceivably decide he’d done that to himself while sleep-fucking or whatever.
    Rising from the bed, Elic pulled on his jeans and black T-shirt. Larsson had razzed Elic about the shirt earlier that day, both because it bore the Adidas logo—he’d just signed an endorsement contract with Nike—and because it had faded in the wash. “Look at Elic’s shirt, how worn and shabby it is,” he’d told Lili with an amused little shake of his head. “Even ball boys don’t wear shirts like that.”
    Elic whipped off the shirt and tossed it on the floor for Larsson to find in the morning.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    She’s still watching.
    Elic smelled it in the night air as he crossed from the chateau to the bathhouse, that heady fusion of jasmine and pheromones that told him Ilutu-Lili was still somewhere at the edge of the woods, keeping an eye on him—and an ear, as well. She would have heard Larsson pleading with Elle to fuck him, heard him roaring in relief when she finally did. She’d be disillusioned with her mighty
gabru,
and perhaps a bit miffed with Elic for putting Larsson through all that when he could have been tapped with a good deal less drama. She wouldn’t stay cross at him long, though, she never did; nor he with her.
    Lili…my beloved,
mins ástgurdís.
Would that it was you I was coming to now,
Elic thought as he approached the bathhouse.
Would that I could possess you as I possess all these others for whom I care nothing. Would that I could lie with you and love you and make you truly mine.
    Elic’s cock stretched the fly of his jeans as he stood in the arched doorway of the temple-like structure, watching Heather take her midnight soak. She reclined on the steps in a far corner of the pool, head back, eyes closed, the red swimsuit a little puddle on the marble floor behind her.
    He entered the bathhouse and circled the pool, taking no care to be silent. The other spell he’d cast upon Heather this afternoon, when he’d put it in her mind to take this late-night bath, had ensured that she would be deaf to any sound produced by humanfolk or follets from the moment she lowered herself into the pool. So Larsson’s groans and pleas and screams of lust, audible, Elic was quite sure, to the entire Grotte Cachée valley, had not been heard by his fiancée.
    Moonlight streamed in through the skylight, infusing Heather’s sleek, damp body with a silvery radiance. Her hair, even wet as it was, looked like spun gold, her nipples like little copper coins balanced just so on her petite breasts.
    Arkhutus,
that was what Lili called the female guests in whom Elic, the incubus incarnate, chose to plant the seed he took such care to harvest. That Heather was engaged to Larsson was purely a fluke. The
arkhutu
needn’t be involved with the
gabru
who’d produced the seed, nor even know him. All they need have in common was excellent genetic potential, as demonstrated by such factors as physical vitality, accomplishments, and intellect. Archer referred to them, in that aridly British way of his, as “prime breeding stock.”
    Standing at the edge of the pool not far