Read Online The Red Lily Crown by Elizabeth Loupas - Free Book Online

alive.
    Bia rose from the prie-dieu and ran her fingers through her hair, letting the rich curls tumble over the sensitized skin of her back. For a moment she simply stood there, allowing him to gaze his fill, as subject to his desires as a
marionetta
on invisible strings. Then she turned and walked to the bed. Without a word she knelt over him, her hair spilling forward over his face, her heavy breasts brushing deliberately against his chest as she mounted him. She knew what he liked. He thrust up with his hips, and reveled in her shudder and whimper of sensation.
    â€œNow,” he said. “You do the work, my Bia. Show me you are sorry for your carelessness, and grateful to your Franco for correcting you.”
    Her thighs flexed sweetly as she sank down upon him. He felt her satiny hide grow warm and moist with her exertion as he ran his hands over her flanks and breasts, over her back, feeling the delicate heat and swelling of the stripes. She made a guttural sound and writhed as he touched her.
    â€œFranco.” She groaned, as if in anguish. “More. Harder.”
    He stiffened all his muscles and drove himself into her. At the same time he sank his fingernails into the welts his leather strap had made on her back. She threw back her head and screamed with her ecstasy.
    When she collapsed over his chest, gasping for breath, her flesh twitching, every shred of dignity and rank and birth gone, he wrapped his arms around her and took his own long, slow satisfaction. That moment, when she was his creature, that was what he loved. More, even, than the physical release. This was what bound her to him, and him to her, and damn the conventions of the court and the laws of the church.
    He rolled her to one side. She was already deeply asleep. He stretched and closed his eyes. In the contentment of a simple man with a repentant and obedient woman, he had forgotten her questions about the alchemist’s daughter.

CHAPTER SIX
    The Casino di San Marco
    THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON
    C hiara was hungry and thirsty. She’d saved the rest of the bread and hadn’t drunk any more of the water—there’d be plenty of time for drinking in the prince’s outlandish tests. If the tests ever happened, and they hadn’t just forgotten her. Finally the bar scraped and the door opened. Two men in Medici colors came in. One of them gestured to her:
come along now, and no funny business
.
    â€œI have to piss,” she said. “Turn your backs.”
    They just grinned at her. She grinned back and used the basin right in front of them. Then she stuffed the rest of the bread into her mouth and followed them out the door.
    All she had to do was obey for now. Pass the prince’s tests and lull him into trusting her, and eventually she’d have a chance to run away if she wanted, or choose to become this
soror mystica
if that suited her instead. It might not be such a bad thing, a place at the court with princes and princesses. A chance to hold the Philosopher’s Stone in her hands. The headaches and demons’ cacklings gone forever. Babbo’s voice admiring and respectful, instead of telling her she was a useless daughter and should have died instead of Gian.
    The guards stopped in front of a door made from carved black wood, heavy and polished. It looked out of place, as if it belonged in a room like the prince’s golden studiolo and not at the end of a stone corridor. One man gestured for her to open the door and go in, then both of them walked away, leaving her alone in the dim light.
    There was a line of brightness, like a thread of flame, showing under the door. Chiara closed her eyes, made the sign of the cross—
deliver me from evil, have mercy upon me, forgive me—Nonna, I’m sorry if this turns out to be something terrible and you never know what happened to me
—and pushed on the door.
    It opened.
    Light—dazzling light. Hundreds of candles, all around the enormous