can imagine, but…”
Beside her, the ever-vigilant Dominic shifted, causing the muscles of his shoulders to strain the breadth of his uniform. It was difficult to think, much less speak under the weight of his silent quicksilver study.
“Don’t mind Dom,” Carlo said. He’d been watching their reflection in the windowpane. “He’s all too aware of our situation.”
“Situation?” Emma echoed.
With a huff of annoyance, Carlo turned to lean his hips against the windowsill. “Has motherhood rendered you thick-headed? Let me put it to you more plainly, cara. I cannot be to you what a husband should. Not ever.”
A small, uncharitable spurt of gladness sprouted within her. He was telling her his seed could no longer sire children. From her perspective, this was something of a gift. Never again would he be able to force another babe into her womb without her consent. Relief, immediately chased by a touch of guilt for her selfishness, made it easy to be sympathetic.
“A loss, to be sure, but we must be grateful that your life was not taken, too. After all, it’s not necessary that we—” She’d taken a few steps toward him as she spoke, but his next words had her stalling in the middle of the room.
“It damn well is necessary—I’m part Satyr, for pity’s sake!” he bellowed in outrage. “Dominic understands what this ‘loss’ means to me even if you do not!”
Still guarding the door, 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
