And then I heard the music....and my steps literally faltered.
He caught me, of course. The hand at my back slid around to curl fingers around my waist.
Suddenly the music, a deep pulsing beat of drums that had seemed so frightening only a moment before, began to feel different. It seemed to echo my own thundering heartbeat. The pulse of blood pumping through my veins went directly to that spot at my side where his fingers lay. And I could think of nothing but him.
Just inside the door, a servant moved to take our coats. The room was lit by red glass lanterns that bathed everything in scarlet. Even the doorman's skin was tinted red, making him look rather impish to my mind.
I watched Io's eyes sliding around the room, assessing, surveying, planning as he was helped out of his long coat.
And as another servant took my cloak, while the music still pulsed inside me, I simply stopped being embarrassed by the way I looked in that dress.
The air licked across my skin, down my exposed back all the way to just above the cleft of my backside...and it was delightful.
Something wicked was edging its way out of my soul. Something decadent, something dark, something that wanted to be there in the midst of that pulsating music.
I willed his eyes to me, but he was still taking in the room around us, looking for danger or information.
So, I stepped to his side and he absently slid that arm back around me. I felt him flinch as his fingers came into contact with my bare skin.
He still did not look down though. When I got the nerve to glance up, his jaw was tight. I thought those fingers curled in just a tiny bit against my naked flesh.
A servant led us down a long hall that opened onto what I assumed was a ballroom. We found ourselves in a huge, high-ceilinged chamber lit by tables full of fat, black pillar candles, below multiple levels of balconies.
There were people on every level, most of them masked and leaning over the railing to intently watch whatever they saw below.
The floor of the ballroom had been curtained off by long, pale silken sheets suspended along wires or ropes.
The music continued to thrum and pulse as we passed through an opening in the material.
We followed the silent servant down a central corridor, and I began to see shadows writhing against the fabric. They were couples lit from behind, creating a sort of show. Their bodies writhed and slipped against each other to the beat of the music and soft moans.
In some places, I could see multiple people, their limbs tangled together, heads lowered or thrown back, doing any number of things to each other.
I should have been embarrassed. I should have looked away. I simply could not. I drank in the sights, the sounds, the smells of sweat and lust all around me. Most of my focus still, however unlikely, on that nearly chaste feel of his fingers curled around my side.
The servant held aside another curtain as we reached the end of the hall.
It opened onto a glittering party of well-dressed revelers, most of them in masks. Some were dancing to the pulsing music. Others were gathered around the many long couches, settees and tables, in various states of dress and undress, in various states of ecstasy and camaraderie.
The servant bowed and retreated, having delivered his charges to the party.
Without another look, Io swept me to the side, behind a large pillar next to more of those flowing curtains.
"What in the name of the gods are you wearing?" he hissed, my back against the pillar as his body hovered over me. He was close—very close.
I knew what he meant; the dress. He had not missed it from the first moment I removed my cloak. He was just playing the role of someone unperturbed by it.
I pretended not to understand as I saw his gaze slide downward only for a heartbeat to where the sides of my breasts were clearly visible in the plunging neckline.
"What ever could you mean, My Lord?" I was surprised by the husky, breathless sound of my own voice.
"You know exactly what I mean, Sera. Why are you..." he swallowed, his eyes glued to mine as though he would not dare to look down.
He was angry.
What right did he have to be angry when his own guard had dressed me that way? His ownfemaleguard had done it. I didn't have time to consider whether she had done it to embarrass me or to embarrass him as I spat, "It's only skin, Io."
"It is a fuckinglotof skin, Sera." He may as well have slapped me for the disgust I saw in his expression.
