Dance: Dance of the Seven Veils Read online

  DANCE OF THE SEVEN VEILS

  An Ellora’s Cave Publication, January 2005

  Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.

  1337 Commerce Drive, #13

  Stow, OH 44224

  ISBN MS Reader (LIT) ISBN # 1-4199-0118-4

  Other available formats (no ISBNs are assigned):

  Adobe (PDF), Rocketbook (RB), Mobipocket (PRC) & HTML

  DANCE OF THE SEVEN VEILS © 2005 CRIS ANSON

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without permission.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. They are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

  Edited by Sue-Ellen Gower.

  Cover art by Syneca.

  Warning:

  The following material contains graphic sexual content meant for mature readers. Dance of the Seven Veils has been rated E–rotic by a minimum of three independent reviewers.

  Ellora’s Cave Publishing offers three levels of Romantica™ reading entertainment: S (S-ensuous), E (E-rotic), and X (X-treme).

  S-ensuous love scenes are explicit and leave nothing to the imagination.

  E-rotic love scenes are explicit, leave nothing to the imagination, and are high in volume per the overall word count. In addition, some E-rated titles might contain fantasy material that some readers find objectionable, such as bondage, submission, same sex encounters, forced seductions, and so forth. E-rated titles are the most graphic titles we carry; it is common, for instance, for an author to use words such as “fucking”, “cock”, “pussy”, and such within their work of literature.

  X-treme titles differ from E-rated titles only in plot premise and storyline execution. Unlike E-rated titles, stories designated with the letter X tend to contain controversial subject matter not for the faint of heart.

  Dance of the Seven Veils

  Cris Anson

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Aston Martin: Aston Martin Lagonda Limited

  Bentley: Bentley Motors (1931) Limited Corporation

  BMW: B 130, BMW Haus, Postfach

  Dior: Christian Dior Couture, S.A.

  Donna Karan: Gabrielle Studio, Inc.

  Evian: Societe Anonyme Des Eauz Minerales D’Evian Corporation

  FedEx: Federal Express Corporation

  GQ: Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. Corporation

  Guinness: Guinness PLC

  Harrod’s: Harrods Limited, London

  Honda CR-V: Honda Giken Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha (Honda Motor Co., Ltd.)

  Manolo Blahnik: Blahnik; Manolo INDIVIDUAL

  Mercedes-Benz: Daimler-Benz Aktiengesellschaft Corporation.

  Mustang: Ford Motor Company

  Patek Phillipe: Henri Stern Watch Agency, Inc.

  Porsche Boxster: Dy. Ing. h. c. F. Porsche Aktiengesellschaft

  Ritz Carlton: The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C. LTD LIAB CO

  Rolls Royce: Rolls-Royce Limited

  Shalimar: Guerlein, Inc

  Sprite: Coca-Cola Company, The

  Tiffany: Tiffany & Company

  Victoria’s Secret: V Secret Catalogue, Inc.

  7-Up: Seven-Up Company, The

  Chapter One

  “…and remember, if you see a naked man handcuffed to the ring in the ceiling, it’s because he wants to be there.”

  Lyssa Markham stumbled in her silver high-heeled sandals as she followed her best friend up the broad steps leading to the portico. Even in pricey Main-Line Devon, PA, this mansion stood out, a sprawling, three-story brick affair with Palladian windows and a wraparound porch, hidden from the street by a tall hedge of slow-growing English boxwood.

  “Wait, I’m not sure I want to—”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Kat Donaldson said. “You’re not chickening out now. Uh-uh, no way.” She took a firm grip on Lyssa’s upper arm underneath the billowing black cloak. “You’re making a statement, just remember that. You’re thumbing your nose at that scummy ex of yours and you’re going to be the belle of the ball.”

  Taking a deep breath, Lyssa let her hand brush against her face to be sure her white silk half-mask was in place. Between it and the white veil covering the lower half of her face, she hoped no one could recognize her. She could do this. She wanted to do this. She wanted to prove she wasn’t the frigid, overweight floor-mop that George had divorced. You don’t have to participate, Kat had said. If you say “no,” they’ll leave you alone. That’s an ironclad rule. If you only want to look, that’s okay.

  Now Kat murmured, “Just keep saying to yourself, ‘I’m celebrating the one-year anniversary of my divorce. I’ll ogle the men all I want, and if I feel like touching them, I will. And if it feels good, I’ll let them touch me back.’ You’ll do fine, Lyssa. You’re a beautiful woman who’s unfolding out of a cocoon into a spectacular butterfly. You’ll have them buzzing around you like honeybees in a field of clover.”

  Lyssa’s mouth twisted up in a tentative smile. “Aren’t you mixing metaphors here?”

  “Yes, and aren’t you procrastinating? More guests are coming in behind us.”

  A glance behind her told Lyssa that two cars, a Jaguar and a Mercedes, had pulled up to where two parking valets waited to whisk the cars to the rear of the property when the guests alit. As did Lyssa and Kat, the newcomers all wore half-masks and long black capes, hiding their costumes from prying eyes outside the mansion’s five acres of manicured lawn and garden. The masks and capes, Kat had explained, were their “ticket” into the party. There would be no gatecrashers.

  “Okay,” Lyssa said softly. “Let’s go.”

  She reached out, but before her slightly trembling fingers touched the brass knocker, the solid oak door swung open and a tuxedo-clad giant bowed them inside. Bouncer, was Lyssa’s first thought. It somehow eased her mind. All the members of this club had been rigorously screened, Kat promised, for physical, financial, and emotional health. Guests had to be approved in advance by a screening committee. Lyssa hadn’t even known Kat belonged to such an exclusive club until she’d been invited to tonight’s soiree. But, she supposed, with Kat’s fine arts gallery situated on upscale Lancaster Avenue

  in nearby Bryn Mawr, she came in contact with many wealthy clients and browsers.

  A never-married free spirit with a long string of lovers, Kat turned heads with her flippant attitude, flamboyant auburn hair, whiskey-colored eyes and funky wardrobe. Lyssa herself leaned toward the look of understated elegance she’d grown up watching her mother wear.

  Not that any of it mattered tonight, Lyssa thought wryly. Her own scanty costume, that Kat had autocratically said she would supply, couldn’t be worn on the streets of downtown Philadelphia.

  The giant relieved them of their black capes and gestured to a room beyond an exquisitely carved archway reminiscent of a Roman aqueduct. Taking slow, almost reluctant steps, Lyssa allowed her eyes to roam the spacious foyer. A Bokhara rug in soft reds covered a portion of the checkered black-and-white marble floor. Atop the rug stood a beautifully carved library table, decorated with an alabaster vase filled with dozens of fresh, fragrant calla lilies. A chandelier the size of a beach ball, lit with hundreds of sparkling crystal lights, hung from a ceiling that, Lyssa gauged, was probably fourteen-foot high. Along one wall, a sweeping staircase wide enough to handle hoop-skirted Scarlett O’Haras led to the second floor, where bedrooms no doubt awaited some. Don’t go there, her mind warned.

  The drawing room beyond the archway was softly lit
by wall sconces and dozens of candles clustered on the massive marble mantel, imparting a rosy hue to everyone’s skin. The veils of her costume swirled sensuously around her, stroking her bare legs, as Lyssa slipped into the room. She was conscious of the slight swaying of her unfettered breasts beneath the nearly translucent silk. Kat had already disappeared into the darker recesses of the room. She was on her own.

  A good-looking, bare-chested young man wearing tight black pants and carrying a silver tray of champagne flutes stopped, dipping his tray in invitation. She took one, hoping the glass would act as a kind of barrier-cum-moral support and hoping the contents would settle her nerves. As she sipped, she edged into one of the shadowy spaces between the sconces. The room seemed to be at least forty feet long, divided into seating areas on one side—long, pillowy sofas, she noted—and an open space where, in the dimness, she perceived several slowly moving shadows that she presumed were dancing partners.

  On one of the sofas, she noticed a man settling down on his back. He wore only a loincloth and bear-tooth necklace. Red ochre stripes decorated the exposed part of his face. Another Indian, this one in full feathered headdress and a long, shapeless leather smock laced up from neckline to hips, pulled the reclining man’s arms over his head, tied his wrists with rawhide strips, then fastened them to a table leg.

  As Lyssa watched, transfixed, the Indian chief began unlacing the smock, then slid it slowly off his—no, she realized—her shoulders and down to her feet. Unabashedly naked, with a feather tattoo on the outer curve of her right breast, she pulled one, then two feathers from her headdress and began to stroke the bound brave’s skin. Slowly up, down, up, down his tanned body, from neck to ankles and back again, until Lyssa could see him grit his teeth in a grimace of arousal that could not be assuaged. The squaw leaned forward, large breasts hovering tantalizingly above his face. A distinctive lump lifted the loincloth, growing larger with each languid stroke of the feathers.

  Lyssa gulped her champagne. She could feel her breath coming more heavily. What would it be like to be so totally dominated by someone arousing you, teasing you, being captive but knowing that you wouldn’t be hurt, someone bringing you to the brink but not knowing when release would come?

  She shivered deliciously and turned away.

  And bumped into a red-haired, red-bearded man wearing nothing but a kilt. The wiry hair on his wide chest brushed against her bare arms and she shivered again. That must be how the feathers felt, she thought, surprising herself. She looked up into the shadowy depths of his eyes behind the mask, deep blue like a loch on a clear day. And saw unmistakable desire flare through them.

  “Ah, lassie, may I touch you?” he asked with a hint of a Scottish burr.

  “You can,” she breathed. Where had that quick acquiescence come from? He’s a stranger!

  Slowly he raised his hands to her shoulders and with a butterfly touch stroked her arms down to her wrists, then back up again. The sensations rocking through Lyssa astounded her. Here she was, in a roomful of strangers, allowing a nearly naked stranger to fondle her, and she didn’t want to move!

  The Scotsman took the edge of one of her veils and dragged it slowly sideways, the soft, translucent silk abrading her nipples with its movement. She could feel them pebbling, tightening into hard peaks. A tremor ran through her.

  Apparently taking that as encouragement, he lowered his head to her shoulder, and his lips followed the line his fingers had made down then back up her arms. His bushy beard contrasted with the delicacy of his mouth. Lyssa closed her eyes and gave herself up to the sensation. She felt his mouth move to her collarbone, dropping moist, nibbling kisses that tickled and nipped, while his hands stroked her cheeks, her neck, then, soft as a whisper, to her breasts.

  Tensing, Lyssa opened her eyes. As if attuned to every nuance of her body, the Scotsman raised his head in silent question. Lyssa worried her bottom lip with her teeth, uncertain how to extricate herself. The feelings he evoked in her quite contradicted George’s brutal assessment of her that she had been an unfeeling blob in bed during his quick, mostly unsatisfying sexual encounters. Yet here was a stranger who was fondling her in full view of a score of others. And she was responding.

  “Ah, lassie,” he crooned, “yer a dream come true, with yer green eyes and blonde hair, with the body of a goddess and the reactions of a satyr. If you decide you want a taste o’ Scotland, I’ll be here all night waitin’ for ye.”

  He took one of her hands in his, lifted it to his mouth then turned it over to give her palm a slow, licking kiss. He closed her fingers around the kiss and, with a rueful sigh, moved on.

  For one long moment Lyssa stood immobile, stunned by his casual comment. A stranger had seen more passion in her than her ex had! Had she really been as frigid as he’d always complained?

  Well, this was the perfect opportunity to find out, she decided. Had Kat hoped this would happen? That she would discover her own sexuality? After all, she’d married George at eighteen and gotten pregnant right away, and he’d been her only lover.

  She eased her way around a curly-haired woman bent forward over an oak sideboard, her short leather skirt riding up over hips that showed no sign of panties, being spanked with the flat of a devil’s hand. In a far corner she saw what Kat had mentioned earlier, a man handcuffed to a huge ring anchored in an exposed ceiling beam. He was naked and it seemed to Lyssa that he was being totally ignored. She wondered if he enjoyed bondage and punishment, for his eyes behind a black mask seemed to avidly take in the action around him. Judging by his boner, he was receiving plenty of vicarious pleasure.

  After snagging another flute of champagne to ease her dry throat and hopefully slow her racing pulse, Lyssa wandered to the other side of the room, her face and figure briefly spotlighted as she passed the lighted candles on the mantel. When she reached the dance area, she could hear soft music, something operatic without words, from La Traviata, she thought, something to heat the blood and invite slow, sensuous movement, preferably close to another’s body.

  She found herself swaying to the rhythmic music as she watched a couple in identical long black robes—a witch and warlock?—moving more or less as if they were having sex standing up. The music came to an end and they separated briefly, giving Lyssa a glimpse of two bare bodies underneath their open robes. Her skin heated. She could feel a flush creep from her ears to her cheeks, her neck, down to her breasts. The man’s glistening, upright penis told her they had in fact been doing exactly what Lyssa had imagined.

  Another piece of music issued from hidden speakers, this one a bluesy jazz sound with a soulful saxophone in a slow, sexy tempo that had Lyssa wanting to hold someone and dance as close to him as she could. She felt the flute being removed from her hand as a fireman in a long yellow slicker came up to her. He was just slightly taller than she, so that their eyes, and lips, were almost on a level. His dark eyes glowed fiercely as he gazed on her mouth that had softened from watching the previous couple. He leaned forward slightly and flicked his tongue across her mouth. She felt the delicious shock of it down to the center of her sex. With a soft sigh, she unconsciously inched toward him, needing to feel more. It had been too long since a man had kissed her, and the sensory bombardment she’d already received this evening had aroused her more than she could have imagined just yesterday.

  He pulled both sides of the slicker apart and hauled her up against his naked length. One hand came around her shoulder; the other took hold of her hand as in a normal dancing stance. He slid the hand down from her shoulder to the small of her back, tightening his hold. With the other he positioned her palm on his hairy thigh. And started swaying to Coltrane and the blues, snuggling his erect penis against her. “I’ve always dreamed of holding Marilyn Monroe in my arms,” he murmured into her ear. “And now I’ve got her. All soft curves. All woman.”

  For a moment Lyssa went shell-shocked at his comment, then relaxed a bit and reveled in the warmth, the safety of being wrapped in strong, male arms
. She relished the feel of his hard cock pressing between her legs, evidence that she was a desirable woman. Heat from his swarthy skin radiated through the thin silk into every pore, raising her internal temperature almost to a point where she had to reciprocate.

  Suddenly she felt heat on her back as well. Someone—unmistakably a man, naked as well—pressed against her from behind. Large, callused hands settled around her waist. She felt the slight scrape of five o’clock shadow against her nape, warm breath in her ear. He, too, seemed decidedly aroused, his engorged penis finding the cleft between her buttocks and moving his hips suggestively.

  A shiver that was half panic, half desire, zapped through Lyssa. Eyes closed, she allowed herself to live in the moment, to examine her dichotomous reaction to what Kat had once laughingly called a “man sandwich” with her as the filling. In the prim, repressed part of her mind that George had boarded up tight, she knew she shouldn’t be allowing this, that she was merely a handy receptacle for two indiscriminate males in heat. Yet, in the part that was awakening to adventure, she knew that nothing would happen without her consent, that Kat had somehow known she wasn’t frigid but only needed an opportunity to discover that fact, that she had had some part in arousing these two sexually sophisticated men who took more and more intimate liberties the longer she stood quiescent.

  She could feel the two penises, hard, hot, urgently seeking, which had somehow snuck under her veils and stroked her, skin against skin, skin against pubic hair. Their breathing became more ragged, and hers along with it, their hands touching, caressing, stroking her in every place they could reach.

  “No.” It came out a whisper. She opened her eyes, cleared her throat. “No,” she said, more forcefully.

  She knew she was blushing furiously. She couldn’t meet the fireman’s eyes as he slowly, regretfully, took a step back. The other did as well, his hands slow to leave her waist, trailing his fingers as if trying to prolong contact. Would they think she was merely a cockteaser? So what? She’d never see them again.