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Want to sample before you buy? Read on:
The motoscafo pulls up at the dock before the San Clemente Palace, the sumptuous building and its towering dome impressive even by Venetian standards. Eresh accepts the taxi driver’s hand to help her out of the boat, the once-goddess holding the driver’s hand as she pays in cash, the woman’s sun-kissed skin pale against Eresh’s own bronze hue. The contact long enough for the driver to blush. If Eresh weren’t in a hurry, she’d be happy to see where else the delectably proportioned woman’s skin blushes, and how deep.
She’s always loved how responsive Italian women are to her charms. But there’ll be time enough for pleasure later.
She’s here for work: retrieving a relic from Giulia Lagana’s collection of rarities and objets d’art. Some of Lagana’s finer pieces on display in the San Clemente for the gala charity benefit she’s hosting – the beneficiary of funds raised almost certainly a tax shelter of Lagana’s, owned through layers of shell corporations. It’s how the game is played, even among new money trying desperately to prove they’re not, Giulia having come from a long line of farmers and merchants. But whatever her motives, it’s to Eresh’s client’s benefit that Lagan has included in her flagrant display of egregious wealth a rather priceless carved dragon’s scale the size of a dinner plate.
The scale itself bears a storied history among collectors in rare art circles – rumors abound that it once belonged to an actual beast of legend, rather than merely some master sculptor’s work. The wealthy laugh at such “nonsense.” But of course, Eresh and her associates know better. Though she’s never known a dragon willing to part with one of its scales. Even in death you can’t pry the damn things off, so she has no idea how it was managed. But there’s always a first time.
It’s certain to be well guarded. And she does love a challenge. She’s been wanting one for months; nothing interesting enough as of late to drag her from her Boston penthouse. Eresh worried that if she lingered there too long, the world would assume the Fox had retired. And that simply won’t do. She has a legend to live up to. Because the once-goddess is very good at what she does.
So, Eresh reluctantly lets go the driver’s hand, enjoying watching the woman shudder as Eresh slides warm fingertips across the driver’s palm. She smiles as the woman’s delicate lips split in a soft ‘oh.’ Eresh hikes up her dress to keep it away from the sloshing water at the stairs’ edge as she turns and climbs up to street level to wade into the other members of the crowd come for the gala.
