The Gypsy King (8 page)

He grinned as it dawned on him that Emelie must feel the same way Ahndray felt when he talked about being in Leone’s shadow all of his life.

Emelie looked up with a malicious grin that threw a surge through Leone’s heart and cock.

“She also brags to me about how long she is making you wait to take her virginity, Leone.”

Leone’s face flushed red with anger and

humiliation, as red as their family’s deepest shade of ochre. He almost reached across the table and made sure Emelie would not be having any

conversations with anyone for several months as her broken jaw was healing, but he once again fought his urges. He listened and rubbed his hands across the crisp white cloth adorning his family’s handsome dining room table. He looked at how the delicate Spanish lace hung almost to the floor, its gilded edge sparkling lightly in the candlelight. He loved this table. It was solid, 74

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stable, and more than once, his fists had slammed down on it with his gigantic force and it had barely creaked. He ran his rough hands over the cloth and stared at his fingers.

“Emelie, let me tell you a story. You’ve heard how my father sent me to Corsica when I was fourteen years old to learn the family business. For six months, I was tossed from one sailing barge to another while instructed to shut up and learn everything I could about these barges and how their owners used our ochre. Now, these barges were some of the fastest and most versatile trading ships ever built and one of the reasons, besides working the crew until they puked blood, was their sails. They were magnificent! They sucked in the wind like, well, like your sister used to suck on my cock. It was my job to learn how they

protected them from the seawater and made them last for years and years. They showed me how they dressed the sails, too. They mixed up fish oil, seawater, horse piss and our red ochre. Our red ochre! My family makes some of the finest red ochre in the world, Emelie, and without it, the sails would look dirty and gray. You’ve heard of the red sails at sunset, right?”

Emelie nodded.

“That saying comes from our family and our

history of sending across the seas the best ochre in the world. I used to have to boil these canvas sails in big, black cauldrons, mix in tar, tallow and oak 75

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bark, and then spend days and nights painting this fucking blistering hot mixture onto the sails and hang them to dry. Our ochre is used for the sails, but the pigment is used to make our Rodell No-Rust Paint. The bloody Brits invented it over in Brixham, but we’ve perfected a paint that stops cast iron from rusting. Nobody else, not one scientist, could find a better way of stopping rust, and now, we sell more paint than ochre and wine together.”

“Anyway, I found this plank and I made this table in Corsica and carried it on my back, Emelie, all the way home here in Lourmarin. I personally brought it to my father when I returned as a symbol of my appreciation for the lessons he taught me by sending me over there with those fisherman and sailors, drunks and whores, all of them. Every decision about the family business since I came back has been made at this table.

“Now, before I make a decision that is going to have far reaching ramifications, I need to make sure I fully understand what you are saying.”

He bent forward in his chair and got deadly serious. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth? You know your sister and I recently became engaged. How do I know you’re not here, late at night, drinking, because you want a Rodell man for yourself, but I’m the one you really want, not prissy little Ahndray?”

He got up, walked over to where Emelie was

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sitting and stood behind her, close enough that he knew she could feel his breath on her hair. He put his hand on her forehead and ran it back over the top of her head while rubbing her shoulder with the other hand. “Your sister has everything a woman could want, Emelie. I am offering her a family, a happy future here with me and you know how well I will take care of her. She will live a very comfortable life with me here in Lourmarin.

But now you tell me she is a whore and is

fornicating with my brother. Maybe it’s really
you
that wants more. Maybe you want a little more than you’ve been getting from the boys in your school, eh?”

He stood beside her and pushed his bulge

toward the side of her face. He rubbed his

growing crotch against her shoulder and laughed.

He smiled as he watched Emelie unwrap her arms from around her upper chest and put them both on the table.

He moved behind her chair, massaged her

shoulders and, without hesitation, briskly ran his hand down Emelie’s blouse, dragging his fingers along her chest and down to her twitching,

abundant nipple. He cupped her breast in his hand and began kneading it slowly while rolling the nipple beneath his fingers hungrily. He felt a surge of heat in his cock, and decided in that instant, that he was going to take what was being thrown at him, either by that bitch, Veronique, or 77

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her hot little slut sister. “Now Veronique is also taking the one thing that you always wanted for yourself. Isn’t that right?” He asked her sweetly, his breath cloying and hot on top of her head.

She nodded slowly as his hands squeezed and groped her breasts, then pinched her nipples until they hurt.

“Maybe it’s a good time to get a little revenge of your own?” Leone asked, pushing one hand

deeper down her chest to her belly, making her jump. He pushed almost his entire hand down her shirt, rubbing his arm hair against her nipples as he forged toward the upper lip of her skirt. He could smell her fear.

“If I can’t have my Veronique’s virgin pussy, maybe I can have her sister’s? Maybe you’re here to give it to me, Emelie?” He growled and pulled her chin back so she was looking up at his face, then kissed her hard on her mouth. He squeezed her cheeks until she opened her mouth and he glared into her eyes. He gripped her tighter, pursed his lips together and let a long, bubbly pearl of spit drip from his lips into her trembling mouth. He smiled as she swallowed reflexively, trying not to cough and gag.

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shove his tongue deeply into hers. She held his kiss longer than she ever thought she possibly could, then twisted away slowly, stood up, and tilted her head the way her sexy sister had done hundreds of times. “Why don’t you get us some more wine, Leone, while I go to the wash room?”

She purred with everything she had. She could barely stand without leaning and spinning.

His sly grin told her everything she needed to know and she was surprised he was this easy. As he went to the kitchen, Emelie straightened herself up while listening closely to Leone humming, banging around like a bull in a barn full of cows.

She knew all four floors of the Rodell house like the back of her hand. She had played in this house as a child, she and Ahndray had studied together many times in both the downstairs library and the upstairs drawing room.

As soon as she heard Leone begin uncorking a bottle in the kitchen, she swiftly went through the hall to the study, then through the back wing to the utility room, out the French doors leading to the patio, bounded over the double hedges and ran as fast as she could toward her home. She knew she had made a terrible mistake and

couldn’t wait to sit down with Veronique and explain what she had done, before it was too late.

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It took almost twenty minutes before Leone

realized he had been outsmarted. When he finally realized she was taking quite a long time in the washroom, the empty room echoed with his howls as he frantically rushed throughout the first floor of his home, opening and slamming each and

every door until his ears were buzzing and

popping from the noise.

“Fucking tramp! You fucking little twit...make me look like an idiot!” His search ended where it began, sitting at the huge plank wood table, alone.

A rage he was familiar with continued to build until it simply overwhelmed him and he made no attempt to stop it or even control it anymore.

Gripping both wine bottles by the neck like pistols, he launched them simultaneously against the far wall and laughed as they exploded into an abortion of blood red froth and glass.

His anger felt good. It invigorated him and, as he screamed, he frantically searched for something else, anything else that he could destroy. The candles made an unsatisfying thump against the same wall and a random plate, two wine glasses and a copper serving tray all added to a

cacophony of sound that he found more enjoyable the louder and more brash it became.

Emelie was long gone by the time Leone placed both of his hands on the table and hung his head in exhaustion. Sweat trickled from his jet-black hair and his breath sounded like that of a wild 80

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boar, injured from the hunt, but still alive and extremely dangerous. With a guttural howl that shook the glimmering stones in the family

chandelier high above his head, Leone reached upward from his own place in hell and brought both of his fists down like hammers onto the center of the wood. With a force that surprised even him, the table split violently in two and each shattered plank sunk to the floor just as a sinking ship drowns in the dark sea.

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eone stood in the dining room with both hands Llying limply at his side and the remains of his family table popping and sizzling in the fireplace.

He was deep in thought now, his physical rage was slowly subsiding to nothing more than a dull pounding in the back of his skull. He

unknowingly matched its tempo with a steady tapping of a boot heel on the wooden floor.

He enjoyed feeling the ebb and flow of his

anger, liked to feel it simmer and bubble up like the boiling mixtures in the cauldrons that dyed blood red the sanguinary sails in that hellhole, Corsica. Much like the anger he felt after being beaten, trampled and humiliated by the older men who saw his apprenticeship as an intrusion and a threat to their way of life, he grew stronger with every harsh breath and cleared his brain.

He thought about his brother and part of him 82

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was shaking he was so angry. Another part of him admired Ahndray for what he had accomplished.

He wondered how Ahndray had seduced

Veronique, a shrewd girl whose only flaw was she allowed her heart to get in the way of her head. He thought about how Ahndray had never attempted to help the family out by being involved in the business in any capacity and it made him furious enough to spit onto the floor in disgust.

He
traveled to the coast for his own apprenticeship and lasted only three days! Three days! Instead of learning their profession, he asked to go to India to study elephants and colored batiks! His little baby brother didn’t understand about duty, about hard work and

obviously nothing about loyalty. He saw a vision of his father in his mind’s eye and knew what he needed to do to reconcile this tragic development.

He would make his father proud. Yes, he knew exactly what he needed to do.

“And who wants a whore in the family

anyway?” He thought about Veronique and

everything he was willing to give her to make her happy. All he wanted was what they both had wanted since they were young—a house, babies and a long life taking care of him while he took care of the family business. A dark, Corsican cloud came over him and he winced as he remembered lessons from his youth years and years ago.

Leone finished the rest of his third bottle of 83

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wine and flung the empty into the fireplace, then laughed at the explosion! He laughed and danced around wildly, spinning in circles and kicking his heels like the Greeks after so much Retsina they can barely stand, but still managed to dance and fight. He staggered up the stairs, falling against the banister several times and laughed at himself and his sudden predicament. He marched into his bedroom, head held high, opened his travel trunk and unwrapped one of his most treasured

possessions, a French Officer’s Epee.

The sword gleamed in its velvet coffin and

Leone admired its history immensely. It had been used in Napoleon’s cavalry and infantry during social functions. In exchange for six cases of Leone’s finest champagne, an infantry officer had given it to him. He looked at the elegant, thirty-two inch blade, the handcrafted leather scabbard with a brass locket with frog stud and end piece.

He pulled it from its velvet tomb and, with anger and hatred at a situation he could not yet control, he released it from its scabbard and stood up straight, falling naturally into a fighting position.

In complete silence, he cut the air in a searing practiced stroke so fast, accurate and deadly, he surprised himself.

“There will be no whores in this family!” he hissed venomously between gritting teeth.

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eronique’s room was dark except for slivers of Vmoonbeams slicing through the window,

bathing the hardwood floor and her bed in a soft glow. Ahndray slept, his breathing smooth and peaceful. Her naked body, still glistening with a light sheen from their lovemaking hours earlier, draped over him like the branches of an Aspen tree against a darkening sky.

The banging and yelling downstairs woke them both like a thunderbolt! They sat straight up in her bed and Ahndray immediately reached for her hand. They listened and looked at each other.

Without speaking, both understood what was

happening downstairs.

Veronique’s father was in the foyer trying to talk sensibly to another man who was yelling and would not be consoled with anything he said.

They continued talking, the din of their muffled voices carried up the flight of stairs and wafted 85