Lords of Rainbow Read Online Free Page A

his skin over muscle, movement in the haunches.
    So equine.
    He turned his dark head toward her, and his eyes were drowsy, long-lashed.
    “ My love!” he whispered. “Where have you been? I’ve come here, waiting almost an hour now, after your summons.”
    His words conjured double meanings.
    The woman standing before him, petite but statuesque, and always aware of double meanings, regarded him silently for several moments. She did not really hear him.
    She wore an insubstantial pale dress, more like a piece of thin gauze than any real garment, wrapped around a voluptuous body. Nothing could properly conceal it, and she would never try. Veilings only emphasized her flesh—as veils are wont to do, to aggravate the mystery of a surface which had a sheen to it, textured like an apricot’s skin, delectable silver velvet.
    “ I’m sorry, my pet,” she said at last, in a voice like well-fermented mead. “It was terrible, simply terrible of me to forget. Just that the idiot Minister said there were people to see me , of all things, and he wanted my opinion—something like that. And you know, sweet, that as much as I loathe that court foolery, it’s not to be avoided. Especially the giving of opinion.”
    The youth missed the knife-edge of her words. He was too consumed with watching her in helpless adoration. He watched her pale eyes fringed by acutely dark lashes, sculpted arches of brows, and her bountiful hair, indefinite like shadows, and soft like a cloud of dandelion. Oh, how well he knew it.
    And yet, did he?
    There was something severe and perfect in her profile, that reminded him, always, of who she was—a creature chiseled out of marble. And who he was to her. It was even there in the crevices of her lips, that reminder of marble wreathed by dandelion; soft and hard things bound together.
    Her lips were his obsession. Whether in his dreams, or even when he was in fact biting them insatiably, it was never enough. Sadistic intensity distorted his thoughts.
    Ah yes, his thoughts.
    Such they were, such unusual perverse thoughts. He couldn’t ever have even imagined harboring them, before he was singled out by her, and became her pet .
    The Regentrix exuded power. The power was profoundly sexual, positive, masculine. And yet she was completely female, overwhelming with her sexuality, so that her lovers, no matter how skillful, always managed to feel inadequate. Possibly because the act of copulation presented but a diplomatic challenge for her, and she expected more as a result of that ultimate release than was humanly possible. The youth was well aware of all this, of how he, too, would at one point be inadequate for her, how—
    But for now, there was only the moment.
    She leaned somewhat over him, and her oval breasts, bobbing lightly, moved forward against her thin garment. A twinge of jealousy passed through him when he reflected that all could see her thus, her wonderful flesh, and she flaunted it before every “idiot” minister and imbecile courtier.
    Deileala noted the nature of his glance. She, as always, was in no hurry, but loved to savor the experience, more aroused by the expectation of coital play than the actual act.
    She reached out again, this time touching his upper arm, lingering against its surface. “Linnec, sweetling, get up and help me undress, will you?” Her words were a bored caress, while the young man moved immediately, trying to control the beginning molten-lead sensation in his lower parts, to relax, knowing how much she disliked the hurried act.
    Exuberance rising.
    She stood motionless, falsely passive, while he untied the several thin laces on her back and on both sides. His hands were beginning to tremble, barely touching the planes of her unusually slender waist and suddenly expanding hips. She was like a wasp.
    He felt an uncontrollable pang down below.
    “ So beautiful . . .” he whispered, over and over, his words breaking up and beginning to run together into a