Read Raine: The Lords of Satyr for Free Online Page B

clink of crystal told Jordan some of the others had begun filling their glasses. Leaving his guests to their own devices, Salerno came to her side holding a toolcase, a pen, and a small notebook.
    “These are new, eh?” he asked her, rubbing a finger along her plumped labia.
    She shrugged. Three of the guests gathered around them—the bishop, the Englishman, and the Sicilian—watching as Salerno again palpitated the twin lumps in her labia. Mentally distancing herself from what was happening, she stared at the ceiling, noting a rather large water stain that had been caused by a leak at some earlier time. It resembled a brown rabbit with unusually long ears. She tensed, realizing where she’d seen just such a rabbit before.
    In her dreams.
    Transfixed, she felt herself fall helplessly into the pit of her nightmare.
    “Hello? Hello?” Salerno’s loud voice jarred her. “When did you first notice evidence of testes forming in your labia?”
    Her eyes jerked toward him. He was looking at her strangely as though he’d been trying to garner her attention for some time. She swallowed, finding her throat dry. The pull of the dreams was growing stronger, reaching her even during waking hours.
    “Testes?” Jordan repeated. “But are you certain that’s what they are? They’re so small.”
    He waved her question away. “Don’t quibble with my medical expertise. I know what I see! When?”
    “About ten months ago,” she replied.
    His cold, veined hands lifted her phallus—limp now—and twisted and turned it, examining. Calipers were brought out of his toolcase to measure its length and girth at rest.
    By now, she was inured to such examinations. Or so she told herself. Disassociating herself from what was happening, she continued to locate animal shapes among the ceiling’s water spots.
    “From this angle the creature could be male or female,” a tipsy voice said from somewhere behind her. The two Venetians were apparently well on their way to becoming drunk. And from the sound of things, they were busily viewing the portraits the artist had made of her.
    Jordan knew which particular drawing they were studying. It was the only one that could be described in that way. It was a rear view. She’d posed for it on her knees, her head bent low to rest on her folded forearms. In that position, the puckered ring between the cheeks of her buttocks gapped slightly. But they were right. It was one view in which she appeared normal, yet it was impossible to tell her gender.
    “And who would know the difference in the dark?” came the first man’s slurred rejoinder.
    “Not a buggerer like yourself I presume…” Jordan quipped, twisting to fling the words toward them.
    The man’s companion slapped the fellow on the back, guffawing. “I do believe you’ve been insulted, il mio amico.”
    Too soused to take affront, his friend only raised his glass in a sloshy toast. “A bung is a bung is a bung is amongus,” he singsonged.
    Jordan was immediately angry with herself for reacting. Her eyes sought the ceiling again, but the water stains failed to recapture her attention.
    “No change in size from last year,” Salerno announced. Having measured her flaccid shaft in all dimensions, he scribbled a notation in his book. Then he asked the question she’d known would eventually come. “On what date did your penis first engorge?” His pen hovered over the page, waiting.
    When the dreams had begun to plague her in earnest. When they’d become so frequent and compelling that it had become difficult to discern the difference between wakefulness and slumber. On the night dark masculine voices had begun to whisper carnal suggestions to her, causing her to writhe and gasp. Causing her shaft to harden and lift and to spill its ecstasy, despoiling her bedsheets. But she would tell him none of that.
    “Well?” he prodded, scrutinizing her. “Is the question so difficult?”
    “Ten months ago, the same as when the lumps formed