Beguiled and Bedazzled

by Victoria Gordon

  ‘Just as a matter of interest, Colleen, how long has your answering machine been broken?’ he asked.

  She paused before replying. To lie or just to ... bend the truth a little bit: that was the question now? — and she didn’t much like either option. Something told her that this was no time to play games, and yet she was equally certain that that was exactly what Devon Burns was doing.

  ‘It ... isn’t actually broken,’ she finally replied. ‘I just ... well ... haven’t been using it—that’s all.’

  ‘Yes, I know that,’ he replied enigmatically. "But...’ he looked significantly towards the telephone . .then where is it?’

  ‘I put it away.’

  ‘You put it away.’ Not a question, not an answer. Just a comment, accompanied by a not so subtle raising of one dark eyebrow as he looked again to where the machine should have been sitting beside the phone.

  ‘Is there some law against that?’

  Colleen was being defensive and she knew it, but she was damned if she was going to let him totally dominate her.

  ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘Except that ... well ... can I ask when you put it away? Or, more correctly, when did you use it last?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be asking if 1 didn’t think so.’ And now his eyes were dark amber pools that seemed to be drawing her closer, mesmerising her.

  ‘Since I started on this latest project,’ Colleen replied evasively, hoping that she didn’t sound evasive but certain she did.

  Burns said nothing, just sat there with his eyes fixed on her and his expressive hands folded across his chest. The look he gave her was speculative but not easy to interpret, deliberately so, Colleen suspected.

  Finally he growled deep in his throat and then said, ‘OK. let’s do it your way, an inch at a time. Dear Ms Ferrar … was your answering machine working / in use / operational /in service the evening you returned from your last modelling session with me? How’s that for specific?’

  ‘I haven’t used it since then.’

  ‘Which does not answer my question.’

  ‘Don’t shout at me,’ she snapped, in a vain attempt to disguise her guilt. ‘This is my home, I’ll remind you.’

  ‘Why, so it is. Fancy that!’ His voice was like silk, but the devils behind his eyes pranced and danced gleefully. Colleen couldn’t help feeling that his trap was silken too, like that of some great spider. She couldn’t keep meeting those interrogating eyes; they saw too much, knew too much. And yet ... she was damned if she was going to make this easy for him.

  ‘Let’s try this another way,’ he was saying, and she was all too aware of his movements as he rose to pour them fresh coffee while he spoke, drawing out the words to fit his graceful movements. ‘Now listen carefully, because I don’t want you to fudge this one. On the evening you last modelled for me, on your return home, here, did you or did you not find a message waiting for you upon said answering machine? And did you or did you not listen to that message before said answering machine ceased to work or was brutally slain or fell or was pushed or whatever the hell happened to the damn thing?’

  The last few words emerged with machine-gun precision as he slammed his muscular body down into his chair and leaned on the table in front of him, demanding a reply, insisting!

  Colleen had never seen such rigidly controlled temper. Burns looked as if the wrong word would set him off in a fury. And she had no real choice of words.

  ‘Not.’ She got the word out, but only just, and when it did emerge it was in the barest of whispers.

  ‘Ah.’ His reply was in an even softer whisper; the mighty breath that swelled his chest was probably louder. So was the grinding of his teeth, the drumming of strong fingers on the table beside his coffee-cup.

  The drumming was a thunder in the silence between them; the look in his eyes was a thunder of a different sort, as was the sound of Colleen’s own heart thudding in her ears. And they all went on ... and on ... and on... Until he said again, ‘Ah,’ and looked down at his hands, then back at her, down at his fingers again, then around the room in a vague yet also specific way.

  Colleen didn’t dare move. Her mouth was too dry to speak, her fingers too unsteady in her lap for her to even think of trying to pick up her cooling coffee. She tried to follow his glances but couldn’t quite manage it.

  ‘You were ... a bit surprised, then,’ he finally said, ‘when I showed up last night. Yes, I suppose you were.’ That comment was as vague as his appraisal of the room, but what followed was anything but!

  ‘Colleen — where is your answering machine?’

  ‘I told you, I put it away.’

  ‘Where?’

  Does it matter?’

  ‘Where?" His voice said that it did indeed matter.

  ‘In ... in a drawer.’ She was almost afraid to answer. Devon’s jaw was clenched; his rangy, muscular body was so tense that she thought he was going to explode. The atmosphere in the room was no less tense; she could almost see the sparks in the glare that those amber eyes were shooting at her.

  Then, quicksilver swift, his attitude changed. He took one huge breath and relaxed, deflating — no, not deflating, just easing into the sort of calm-before-the-storm posture of some great hunting cat. Even his voice had a sort of purr when he finally spoke.

  ‘You didn’t listen to any messages when you got back that night,’ he mused, ‘and you haven’t used the machine since. So the tape’s still in it, along with whatever messages might be on it. Is that a fair assumption?’

  Colleen didn’t answer, couldn’t. She just sat there and stared back at him, knowing that she was perched on the edge of his trap now, and also certain that no matter what she said, what she did, it was going to be wrong — for her!

  ‘Well?’

  Colleen sat. Burns sat. Her body was tense with suspicion and apprehension. His was even more so, but his tension was that of a predatory animal at the end of the stalk.

  ‘What time does this dog trial start?’ It was a frail attempt and she knew it, but she also knew enough about gundog trials to hope that she might divert his attention. Check-ins were rigidly controlled; one was on time or out of the competition.

  Burns said nothing, merely shook his head. Almost sadly, she thought, but not as sadly as she was beginning to feel. Colleen started up out of her chair, picking up the dirty dishes as she did so. Burns, to her astonishment, did likewise; they arrived at the sink side by side.

  ‘You want to wash or dry?’ he said, not even bothering to hide the chuckle in his voice, that infuriating cocksure attitude he handled so well.

  ‘I would have thought we could just leave them,’ Colleen said, frantic now for any ruse that might work. ‘After all, we can’t afford to be late and it’s getting—’

  ‘Getting awful close to crunch time, eh, Ms Ferrar?’ His voice was silky soft; the lean, hard body so close to her own was anything but.

  ‘How about we just do these dishes now?’ he asked, in a whisper that was almost ghastly in its softness. ‘You wash — I’ll put things away. I know where everything goes now.’

  Colleen couldn’t help it. She turned to glare furiously into eyes that returned her glare with mocking highlights of laughter, her gasp of fury blunted by a voice that growled and caressed in the same words.

  ‘You’re so beautiful.’

  But before the words had actually registered he was turning away to stack the dishes in the sink and turn on the water, one hand flicking the mixer tap as the other generously squeezed out detergent into the streaming water.

  Colleen stood there, bedazzled by the sheer insanity of it all, until Burns finished running the water and turned to take her forearms in his strong fingers, gently but irresistibly shifting her towards the sudsy sink. Only when she shrugged him away and plunged her hands into the water of her own volition did he release her, and his grin was a model of self-satisfaction before he plucked up the tea towel and turned away.

  ‘
You do a good job now,’ he muttered, but didn’t stop to watch. Colleen could only stand there, up to her elbows in suds, as he strode quickly across to the phone stand and with uncanny but not unexpected accuracy yanked open the bottom drawer and lifted out the answering machine.

  ‘Poor Freda,’ he crooned, lifting the machine like some grisly trophy. ‘What a thing to do to you — locked up there in the dark like a criminal ... she ought to be ashamed of herself.’

  And the triumphant, gleeful look he shot at Colleen was evidence that he would make very, very sure that she would be!

  To think that you once dared to chastise me for the way 1 talked about poor old Ignatius,’ he said to Colleen, shaking his head in mock dismay as those long, slender fingers flew through the intricacies of plugging the machine in, attaching the various connections. Colleen heard the hiss-click of the machine spinning into readiness, saw the single red eye, as accusing as the two amber ones he turned on her.

  Then he was back beside her, moving so swiftly that she saw only a blur of movement through the mist of tears she couldn’t quite control.

  ‘Right, love, let’s get on with the washing-up,’ he growled. ‘We’ll clear up the dishes, and then we’ll clear up one or two or three other little things, and then...’

  The rest was left unsaid, the threat simply but effectively implied. Colleen couldn’t handle the expression in those eyes; she stared down into the suds and began doing as she was told, her fingers moving sluggishly, her mind racing a million miles an hour in a million different directions.

  Beside her, Burns was a silent, omnipresent body, his muscular thigh occasionally touching her hip, his elbow occasionally brushing her own, and his damnably agile fingers so quick to catch utensils that she was about to drop — the cup she fumbled, the plate that slipped from her fingers.

  All in silence, a silence that grew and was magnified until it roared like the futile, silent scream inside her as he imposed his will upon her, using these casual touches to reinforce the imprinting of past lovemaking, past intimacies.

  Colleen didn’t look at him, could hardly even focus on what she was doing. She merely manoeuvred her hands through the task he’d set her, enduring, trying to drum up whatever reserves of strength she might still have.

  ‘All done?’

  She nodded blankly, then obeyed his instruction to pull the plug, stood there silently as the water and suds swished themselves away and half wished that she could do likewise, especially when he turned her gently round and began to dry off her hands, making the drying of each finger a singular, separate event.

  ‘Now come and we’ll sit down somewhere comfortable,’ he said, and his voice was seductively hypnotic, like his touch. Colleen felt his hands at her waist as he guided her to the sofa, allowed herself to be manipulated, to be placed just so, felt him sit down beside her but didn’t dare now to meet his eyes, just ... couldn’t.

  Her eyes closed. She felt a finger beneath her chin, lifted her head obediently but couldn’t open her eyes, didn’t want to. Heard his voice whisper-soft.

  ‘Relax, love. Just relax and I’ll tell you a story or two. All you have to do is listen, and when I’m done we’ll both listen to what Freda has to tell us. It’s been long enough; I’m rather curious myself, to tell you the truth.’

  Colleen started to reply, but his lips were there to halt her, there to touch lightly on her own, perfectly matched to mould her lips, to hold her mouth in enforced silence.

  ‘Not now,’ he whispered through the kiss. Then he added, ‘Later. Plenty of time for questions later.’

  All the time in the world, she realised. His very next words assured her of that — words he would repeat often, use to punctuate the other things he had to tell her — things that weren’t important any longer but things he wanted to tell her, so she listened.

  But the important words were the first ones, three of them.

  ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Hear that first. Believe that first.’

  Colleen held on to those words as if they were a prayer, almost needed to. Everything Devon Burns had to say was so incredible, some of it so totally unexpected, that she had trouble believing that she was really awake, really hearing his words, feeling the touch of his delicate fingers at her cheek, on her throat, her wrist.

  He loved her. Not Ingrid, not the striking redhead with the child who as startlingly resembled Burns himself, but her!

  And he’d told her earlier too. Except that she hadn’t listened to that final message on her answering machine, and had spent more than a week in a bleak despair that had been totally, astonishingly unnecessary.

  But now he was telling her again. And would keep on telling her, he said, until she finally got it through her head, until she stopped fighting him, stopped finding excuses to deny it — had she ever done that? she wondered — until she admitted that this was what she wanted, what they both wanted.

  ‘You’ve been driving me crazy all week,’ he said. ‘At first I thought I was wrong, that you didn’t share my feelings after all. Then I thought, OK, I’d have to accept that. But I couldn’t, Colleen, not without hearing you say it, seeing you say it. And every day I’d phone, and phone, and then I began to wonder if you’d packed up and left the country, or if you were sick, or... Well, hell... I thought all sorts of weird and wonderful things.

  ‘Until finally I couldn’t take any more of it. I had to know, one way or the other. And then when I got here and it looked like you’d just got super-involved in some work project I could have broken your lovely neck.’

  Burns sighed, reaching up with fingers like spun silk to touch at her neck, to stroke rainbows along her throat and down into the hollows of her collarbone.

  ‘But 1 couldn’t. You looked so worn out and frazzled that all I wanted to do was take care of you.’ Then his mouth nuzzled into her throat and he growled through his kisses, ‘Until I realised this morning that you hadn’t even listened to the message I left; then I wanted to break your neck again. But now I’ve got a better punishment in mind — an appropriate one even.’

  He shifted so as to be able to look her squarely in the eye, and laughed.

  ‘I am going to take you into your little trundle-bed. Colleen, and make love to you as it has never, ever been done before. I am going to kiss you and touch you and show you exactly how I feel about you, and I’m not going to stop until you absolutely beg for mercy. And until you can admit to both of us how you feel about me too.’ And he laughed again, wickedly, wonderfully.

  ‘But not until after the dog trial’s over today. ‘Problem is—I expect I’ll suffer more from waiting than you will.’ And he grinned. ‘I usually suffer anyway with that damned dog. This might just be a pleasant change.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Colleen shivered with delicious anticipation as Burns’ lean, strong fingers stroked her arch, not only tickling her foot but sending tendrils of ecstasy the length of her leg. And beyond. She shivered again as his lips touched at her ankle-bone, his teeth nicking gently at the sensitive skin below it.

  ‘You taste delicious,’ he said. ‘All soapy and steamy.’

  And I still think you had this planned from the start,’ she replied, not opening her eyes, merely drinking in the sensation that his other hand created as it glided higher along the inside of her thigh.

  ‘Hoped, not planned.’ Then he chuckled, his lips giving the most astonishing effect against her water- softened skin. ‘Well ... maybe just a bit of planning.’

  Tm pleased to see you admit it,’ Colleen retorted, ‘considering I have it all on tape as evidence.’

  ‘Which I suppose you’ll hold against me in the long run,’ he replied, lips now moving further up the leg which he’d lifted from the steaming waters of the hot tub. ‘Do you think that’s fair? After all, you didn’t even bother to listen to your answering machine — for a week, I might remind you! — until I insisted on it. If I hadn’t insisted, you still wouldn’t know how I feel about you — or at least
you mightn’t believe it, which is the same thing.’

  Nor would she have. Even having been told, even having been shown in a thousand and one delightful ways, she still felt as if it was all a dream, a unique fantasy in which all her senses had been heightened to overload and beyond.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you’d have found some way to get your message across,’ she replied, unwilling even now to admit how difficult she found it to believe that it was really happening. Then she sighed at the wonder of his manipulating fingers on a body she would have thought already sated with his lovemaking. But he knew better, and continued to prove it.

  ‘Besides, I thought you were busy with Ingrid. You never gave me any reason to believe —’

  ‘You’re blind, that’s all. I did everything but shout it from the roof-tops, and very nearly did that too,’ he growled. ‘And let’s drop this rubbish about Ingrid, all right? Give me credit for some sense, at least. You should like Ingrid, actually. She didn’t have trouble sorting out how I felt about you; she spent the rest of her visit rousting on me to rush into Launceston and get us sorted out.’ Whereupon he chuckled. ‘All in the name of my art, of course; Ingrid always did have rather specific priorities.’

  ‘Of which you were very, very high on the list,’ Colleen replied. ‘And not entirely because of your art. You must be blind if you haven’t realised by now she fancies you like crazy.’

  ‘I’ve already got a mother,’ was the reply, slightly muffled by the fact that his lips were busy exploring her knee while his hands did even more interesting things keeping it in place for just that purpose. ‘That woman would have an artist chained to his work for eternity; she has the soul of a slave-driver.’

  ‘More likely chained to the ... well ... never mind,’ Colleen said, now quite happy to drop the subject. She personally would always be convinced of Ingrid’s real hopes for Devon Burns, but if he chose not to see them she wasn’t fool enough to keep insisting. Instead she changed the subject entirely.