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  The Flesh Endures

  Modern Erotic Classics

  The Houdini Girl

  Martyn Bedford

  The Phallus of Osiris

  Valentina Cilescu

  Kiss of Death

  Valentina Cilescu

  The Flesh Constrained

  Cleo Cordell

  The Flesh Endures

  Cleo Cordell

  Hogg

  Samuel R. Delany

  The Tides of Lust

  Samuel R. Delany

  Sad Sister

  Florence Dugas

  The Ties That Bind

  Vanessa Duriès

  3

  Julie Hilden

  Neptune & Surf

  Marilyn Jaye Lewis

  Violent Silence

  Paul Mayersberg

  Homme Fatale

  Paul Mayersberg

  The Agency

  David Meltzer

  Burn

  Michael Perkins

  Dark Matter

  Michael Perkins

  Evil Companions

  Michael Perkins

  Beautiful Losers

  Remittance Girl

  House of Lust

  Michael Hemmingson

  Meeting the Master

  Elissa Wald

  The Flesh Endures

  Cleo Cordell

  Modern Erotic Classics

  Series Editor: Maxim Jakubowski

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  55–56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Penguin Books Ltd, 1996

  This ebook edition published by Robinson,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2012

  Copyright © Cleo Cordell, 1996

  Series Editor: Maxim Jakubowski

  The right of Cleo Cordell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in

  Publication Data is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-47210-555-4 (ebook)

  IT WAS AS IF THERE WAS SOME CONNECTION BETWEEN THE TWO OF THEM, A SILVER THREAD THAT WOUND TIGHT – TIGHTER, DRAWING THEM TOGETHER . . .

  ‘If it is too soon . . .’ he murmured, as if suddenly unsure of his ground.

  And her heart trembled for this man who was a warrior and medicus, and God alone knew what, and was yet made uncertain by this attraction between them. Their need was a tangible force in the chamber.

  She shook her head and whispered, ‘No. I . . . I want this too.’

  She felt the desire for him spreading through her veins. Even the tips of her fingers tingled. She was all eagerness, a map of melting curves and moist flesh. How shameless, how wanton she had become and she gloried in the fact. Her lip curving in a smile as old as time, she spread her arms in welcome . . .

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Cleo Cordell is the author of nine erotic novels, a number of short stories and a forthcoming anthology. The bestselling Captive Flesh, published in 1993, was followed by Senses Bejewelled and Velvet Claws, and Cleo was established as ‘the new queen of suburban erotica’ in Today and ‘queen of the undieworld’ in the Woman’s Journal. Her subsequent titles, Juliet Rising, Path of the Tiger, Crimson Buccaneer and Opal Darkness, confirmed her position as first lady of historical-fantasy erotica. Writing as Susan Swann, Cleo’s alter ego explored contemporary erotica in The Discipline of Pearls and The Ritual of Pearls.

  Cleo began working for Northamptonshire Libraries at the age of sixteen. This gave her ample opportunity to explore the world of dark fantasy fiction, her first love. When not reading or researching, she enjoys the cinema, her cats, wildlife and cooking gourmet vegetarian food. At present she is working on the sequel to The Flesh Endures, continuing the fortunes of the enigmatic alchemist Lord Karolan Rakka.

  This book is dedicated to Shirley Russell, who believed in me and was there at the beginning.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to Jo, Chris, and Cheryl for friendship, support and laughs. Also to Caroline Montgomery and all at Rupert Crew for being on my side. Unreserved and overdue thanks to the girls at NK. Most of all, thanks to Graham – for always.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was gloomy inside the low room, the air thick with the oily smoke from rush tapers. The lavender and sweet woodruff that strewed the beaten earth floor had long since wilted and failed to mask the smells of stale sweat and unwashed clothes.

  At the back of the room, in an area of deepest shadow, Lord Karolan Rakka lay on a pile of tawdry cushions. He watched his companion caressing the two young women, his perceptions blurred by the poppy drug coursing through his veins. The three naked bodies were shiny with sweat and the smells of sex and exertion clotted his nostrils. He wondered, for a moment, why he had stayed. There had been no reason to linger after Jack had given him the things he required, but he had felt a desire for human company. And so he had poured a measure of the opiate into a tankard of ale and settled back to watch Jack indulge his sexual appetites.

  For a while the two women worked on his companion, taking it in turns to kiss Jack’s mouth and caress his body. Then they put on a show for the two men, moaning loudly as they kissed each other, rubbing their breasts together until the nipples stood out like ripe cherries. Inflamed by the display, Jack reached for Isabeau, preferring her rich womanly curves to Adeliz’s more girlish form.

  ‘Come and join us, why don’t you?’ Jack mumbled, surfacing from between Isabeau’s spread legs and wiping her moisture from his chin. ‘There’s enough here for two. You don’t mind sharing your honey pot, do you my pretty?’

  Isabeau giggled and surged against him, her slug-white thighs rubbing against his ears.

  Karolan shook his head. ‘Need my help, do you? You must be losing your touch.’

  Jack gave a roar of laughter and moved up to lie on top of Isabeau. She slid her arms around him and pulled him between her legs, groaning loudly when he thrust into her.

  ‘That’s it my lusty. I’ll take you,’ she murmured.

  Adeliz, the younger and prettier of the women, propped herself up on one elbow and watched Jack pounding into Isabeau. Her face wore a bored expression. She threw Karolan an expectant glance. He shrugged his shoulders, then raised his tankard to his lips, before looking away towards the window where the icy river breeze pushed inwards against the greased membrane, sending draughts to rustle the carpet of herbs.

  Adeliz pushed out her bottom lip. Proud of her fairness and her high, round breasts, she was popular with the customers and was not used to being ignored. Just who did his lordship think he was to look at her as if she was something that had crawled past him in the dirt? She knew what the other women said about him. Lord Rakka never touched any of them. He came here only to watch, and paid well for the privilege.

  Perhaps he thought he was too good to sully himself with the touch of a whore. Or perhaps, as Isabeau said laughingly, he’d had his privy parts mutilated while fighting the French and lost the urge to pleasure a woman. Pity. He was beautiful, quite upsettingl
y so. And intriguing with the rushlight gleaming on the sharp planes of his cheekbones and softening his chiselled mouth. His neck and throat were slim, but muscular. The skin looked white and firm and had none of the usual coarse weathering of a knight or a working man. Then he glanced at her again and the chill of his beauty was softened by a smile.

  Emboldened to approach him, she slid off the straw mattress. Neither Jack nor Isabeau noticed that she had gone. Their moans were rising in pitch, conjoined as were their bodies. Adeliz straightened her shoulders so that her breasts stood out and her slender body was shown to advantage. Sliding over to Karolan, she stood with her hips level with his head, giving him time to focus on the soft fuzz of dark blonde hair on her mound of Venus.

  Her hands planted on her hips, she parted her legs, giving him a view of the pouting folds of her coynte. When he gave no sign of interest, she sat down next to him on the stained silk cushions.

  ‘It’s a sin to sit alone, when there’s company for the asking,’ she said.

  It was the first time that she had been this close to him. Strange, but she had gained the impression that he was much older. Perhaps it was his air of melancholy or the depth of emotion she glimpsed in his deep-set dark eyes. It seemed to her that here was a man who had done many things in his life, perhaps questionable things, and who considered that he owed no one an explanation. He was self-contained, as few men were who visited the bawdy house by the river.

  She studied him closely, under the pretence of making herself comfortable and pumping up the cushions. Karolan’s face was pale and fine-boned and had a hard, hawk-like beauty. Once, when she had been small, she had been taken to the monastery of Holy Penitence and there had seen the newly installed window. The face of the saint had looked like Karolan. He too had been beautiful and fierce, but somehow tragic too.

  Moved by some emotion she could not fathom, Adeliz raised her hand and brushed her fingers against the hood that lay in deep folds on Karolan’s broad shoulders. As he turned towards her, his long black hair swung forward, framing his cheeks like dark wings.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said tightly. ‘Don’t dare to pity me.’

  Adeliz managed not to flinch, but it took all of her courage to stay seated. For a moment his face had been twisted by a murderous rage. She thought he was going to strike her and she almost hoped that he would. It would at least prove that he noticed her and was not looking through her. But he only slumped a little and took a deep swallow from his tankard.

  She laid a tentative hand on his sleeve, feeling the softness of the costly black velvet under her fingers. ‘Forgive me. I meant no offence, my lord.’

  He covered her fingers with his own, removing them with a gentle but firm gesture. She had time only to register how cool his hand felt, before he stood up and gave her an oddly formal little bow.

  ‘There is nothing to forgive. The fault is mine. I should not have come here. I must go. My work awaits me.’

  Suddenly she was desperate to keep him there. ‘Wait. I beg you. There must be somethin’ I can do for you. Somethin’ I can get you . . . I’ll do whatever you want and I won’t charge you.’

  This time the smile enlivened his whole face, so that her breath caught in her throat. If he said the word she would go with him, now, naked as she was, and never regret it. Something about him drew her, even though she was repelled by the hunger inside herself. When he looked full into her eyes, like that, it was impossible to look away.

  ‘I would demand something you would not wish to surrender,’ he said, his eyes glittering like chips of mica. ‘Leave it be, wench. And save your charity for those more worthy of it.’

  Turning on his heel, he strode towards the door. Only then did she feel able to move. It was as if his going had set her free. She watched him go out into the night, before she looked back towards the entwined figures on the straw mattress. Lord Rakka was a strange one indeed. She did not understand his final words, but only a fool would have missed the menace in his voice. It occurred to her belatedly that she had had a lucky escape, but from what she could not imagine. A shiver snaked down her spine and she was surprised to find that she was trembling.

  ‘Adeliz? You finished makin’ sheep’s eyes?’ Isabeau said acidly. ‘Then come over here and attend to Jack. He’s paid fer two and he’s fair wore me out already.’

  Glancing at Jack’s heavy body, the damp mat of hair across his broad chest and his heavily muscled limbs, Adeliz felt a surge of relief. Jack was stolid, crude, and possessed of a rough-edged charm. He smelt sour and could be brutish at times, lashing out when he was in his cups, but he did not scare the life out of her like the tall, elegantly attired and saint-like Lord Rakka.

  The moment Karolan left the ramshackle building he forgot all about Adeliz. But the sexual tension that her nearness and the freshness of her young body had fostered in him remained as a dull pressure in his belly.

  He had long ago trained himself to subdue the clamourings of his flesh, but that did not mean that he was unaware of the movement of the tides within him. He observed himself with a sort of amused detachment, gaining a perverse pleasure from testing his self-control in the same way that one worried at an aching tooth.

  As he walked down the narrow, cobbled alley, careful to avoid the piles of nightsoil and food scraps, he felt the subtle difference in the atmosphere that heralded the approach of the spirit being which was his constant companion. What had taken it so long? he mused. Normally it would have been attracted by Jack’s labours.

  There came the familiar folding and pleating of the air directly in front of him.

  An observer would have seen nothing untoward, but Karolan, with his preternatural senses, perceived the Fetch as a ragged shadow; an amorphous, reed-thin, almost human shape that wove in and out of focus, its constant movement deceiving to the eye. The Fetch’s voice was shrill and high-pitched, resembling bird song or the sound of water trickling over a rock.

  It whispered to him now, eager for whatever experiences the night might hold.

  Karolan smiled grimly. ‘You’re too late for the bawdy house, but there’ll be something later. There always is,’ he said, amused by its measureless hunger for sensation.

  Unlike humankind the spirit never seemed to tire in its quest. Its whole existence was focused on indulging its every whim. Misery was its food, violence its delight and if there was a sexual element involved, then so much the better. It was totally amoral, but then, he was little different. It was just a question of degree.

  ‘Now. Want it now. Want to bathe,’ it whispered, allowing Karolan to feel the heat of its breath and the faint touch of lips at his ear. ‘As do you, Master.’

  Karolan shivered. It could feel how he burned for sexual release and was offering its services. Images crowded his mind. Over the long years the Fetch had become expert at attending to his needs. The pictures it placed in his head were irresistible, obscene, tantalizing. It was everything he wanted it to be. A beautiful virgin, a lush, full-bodied woman, an adolescent boy. Twisting and turning it presented itself for him. Moist, willing. Soft curled petals of flesh, folded inwards over a centre of deepest-rose. Damp curling hair around a tight shadowed orifice. Perfume clouded his senses, amber, lilies, the spice of sexual exertion, the heady musk of a woman’s sex . . .

  He clenched his hands into fists as the heat throbbed in his loins.

  ‘Stop that!’

  The Fetch laughed wantonly, a sound like wind in the reeds. And obeyed him at once. The images faded, but the sweat broke out on Karolan’s forehead. It knew that he would not hold out against its potent lure for long. He never did; the alternative was too painful to bear. Too many years, too many deaths. The loneliness of his existence was like acid, eating into him until he thought he would go mad. And the only companion in his personal purgatory inhabited the spirit world.

  A single word of assent and it would be at him, on him, or in him – whatever was his choice – drawing energy from his pleasure, bathing in the e
manations given out by the restrained violence of his arousal.

  He would resist for as long as possible. Ah, but it was torture to deny himself the solace of pleasure. And why did he still try? Only for the hollow victory that self-control brought him and because it angered the Fetch to be kept waiting. It was one way of punishing it for its betrayal all those long, long years ago.

  He quickened his step until he broke free of the maze of alleys that clotted the area around the docks. Only the dissolute and those hardened by circumstance to a life of crime would be abroad at this hour, yet he felt no fear of walking alone and unarmed. He knew himself to be more a creature of the shadows than anyone he might meet.

  The smell of the river was strong. At low tide the mud banks were exposed, their dark-green breath casting a pall over everything in the vicinity. In the thick, grainy light of early morn he could see the white shapes of oyster catchers dotting the banks. The bigger brownish humps were the bent backs of those who skimmed a living from digging in the mud, vying with the birds for their catch and as likely to turn up a bloated corpse as anything of value.

  Along the waterfront the dark shapes of warehouses and small dwellings loomed up at him out of the gloom. There was a cog moored in the harbour, her sales furled and the web of her rigging imprinted on the brightening sky. He could smell the salt-sourness of her wooden hull and see the barnacles that clung to the slimed planks below the water line. At full tide she would be sailing to Flanders with her cargo of English wool.

  Beyond the cog was another vessel, her elegant shape proclaiming her Venetian origins. It was from this ship that Jack had alighted the previous night, bringing with him the spices, opiates, chunks of perfumed resin, and other rare substances for which Karolan paid handsomely. The best thing about Jack was that he asked no questions. Anything could be had for the right price and there was no fear that he would go running for the authorities.

  From the open doorways of the taverns, light spilled out onto the muddy path. Karolan could hear the voices of sailors and dock workers raised in song, but he felt no urge to join them. He was known in this area and would be tolerated, if not welcomed, but he felt the need to get back to his workroom. The furnace needed tending and there were things he needed to bury or burn. They were starting to smell.