Sevin: Lords of Satyr Read Online Free PDF Page B

not, was a threat to Luc’s recovery, and therefore she must be banished.
    “I want you out of Rome,” he gritted, their faces still only inches apart. A distant rumble of ominous thunder punctuated his words. Outside, the storm was moving off, but the hedonistic tempest inside him still raged for this woman, strong as ever.
    She straightened and pushed at him, her nimble fingers going to re-button her bodice. He frowned, wanting to stop her. Wanting the right to sweep her into the house and keep her there, under him, all fucking night. His eyes went to her mouth, reddened by his kiss, and watched it form a single word.
    “No,” she murmured.
    “What?” He pulled back, realizing he’d been staring like some callow moonstruck youth. His jaw worked as anger at himself welled up and burst out in her direction. “If you defy me—if you remain in this city, you’ll regret it, I promise you.”
    Alexa nodded tiredly, not meeting his eyes. “I’ll consider what you’ve said, signor. But I’ll need time to come to a decision.”
    “You have until tomorrow,” Sevin informed her in a clipped voice.
    Ignoring her protest at this perceived injustice, he flung open the door and leaped from the carriage. Determined to put her from his mind, he welcomed the bracing chill in the air and the half hour of walking it would take him to reach the salon.
    In the hours before a Calling, he often formed a strong attachment to a female that would see him through the moonlit night of debauchery with her. That was all he was feeling now. Sexual desire. He would slake that elsewhere soon enough.
    But as he made his way through back alleys and narrow crooked streets to the rear entrance of the salon, a decade-old prophecy pounded over and over in his head in time to the sound of his boot heels pounding the cobblestones. Your beloved. You will know her by the iris.
    He hadn’t thought of that old Romani crystal gazer’s prophecy in years, not till he’d seen that tattoo tonight. It had been a foolish prophecy, one he hadn’t heeded then and would not now, despite tonight’s strange coincidence.
    The fortune had been told to him during the dark years that he’d been alone, cut off from all family. When he was but fifteen and cast adrift—his parents recently dead and his brothers missing—he’d been taken in by the Romani, a tribe of nomadic gypsies passing through the Italian countryside.
    They’d become a surrogate family. And for three years, he’d lived, worked, and loved among them.
    Clara had been one of them. The crystal gazer’s daughter. She’d been comely, fragile. Human.
    She’d loved him.
    And he’d killed her.

    By the time Sevin reached the salon, the crowds outside had dissipated, presumably due to the intensifying of the storm. A few hardy stragglers remained, but he paid them little heed. The forcewall he’d erected would keep them out.
    Opening the back entrance, he was immediately greeted with the soft strains of music. Nodding to the guards posted there, he tossed his dripping coat on a hook, and moved down a corridor. Another dozen steps and he was parting velvet curtains and entering the central salon.
    It was a massive, splendid room that was the heart of the salon, with a gilded, coffered ceiling that rose three stories high to form a dome. Encircling the vast circumference of the upper floors were rows of balconied seating boxes, including two that served him as office and personal apartments. Enormous candelabras forged of precious metals mined in ElseWorld were positioned between the boxes, bathing strategic areas of the floor in their radiant glow, while leaving others intimately shrouded in shadow.
    He took it all in with a calculated eye, noting in satisfaction that everything was going smoothly. Years ago, he’d designed this place in its entirety. Had made it a seductive paradise in which creatures of his blood could engage in concupiscent pastimes away from the prying eyes and suspicions of