Hold Back the Night

by Abra Taylor

  The bell at the door jangled, advertising the arrival of a customer. With a last murmured word to Miranda, Domini hastened up the stairs.

  Sander was out of view in the kitchen. Domini could hear the clink of glass. 'Start stripping,' he called out at once. 'Would you like a glass of ice water?'

  'Yes, if it's big enough to jump into,' Domini called in return. On a day like this there were distinct advantages to be found in removing one's clothes, and she did so in about two seconds flat. Sander entered the room, while she was still removing her sandals, the last of the coverings to go. He was barefoot and naked to the waist, his only concession to decency a pair of cut-off jeans. His lean, hard torso was gleaming with perspiration, and in his hands were two glasses already dripping with condensation.

  'What a good idea,' he murmured smokily.

  'What good idea are you talking about?' asked Domini, accepting the chilled glass and looking at him through her lashes while she touched her tongue-tip to the ice and then quenched her thirst.

  'A cool shower,' he said, 'or a bath. Something big enough for two to jump into. Something wet and very, very wanton.'

  Anticipation tingled through Domini's blood as his hand arrived to close over her wrist, locating it easily because of the clink of ice cubes. 'Does this mean you've finished the sculpture of me?' she asked. Beneath its damp shroud the sculpture looked altogether complete to her, and she had been wondering when Sander was going to admit that it was done. On her last visit he had not touched it at all, claiming that it was too hot to work, and yet he had not found it too hot to vent his passion on the steamy third floor.

  He bent his parted lips to bathe a wrist already damp from the day's heat. His tongue was chilled from the ice, sending a sensuous thrill up Domini's arm. When he straightened, she tiptoed impulsively up to kiss him, too, and tasted the salt tang of his sweat-moist jaw on her tongue. 'I'm not sure about the bath,' she whispered happily. 'You taste wonderful exactly the way you are.'

  'No more talk,' he muttered, removing the glass from her hand and putting it down on a table. Then he drew her to the door.

  'My robe,' Domini reminded him, pulling back.

  'A little risk only adds to the excitement. Besides, don't you think anyone with eyes to see my sculpture will soon be able to see exactly what you look like in the nude? Think about that, my beautiful friend

  In the unrestored Victorian bathroom, the old-fashioned bathtub was huge on its massive clawed feet. Above it was the showerhead, with a light plastic curtain affording the only enclosure. Sander adjusted the spray of the nozzle, evidently having settled on a shower rather than a bath. Impatient for his sensual satisfaction, he lifted Domini into the tub and stepped in himself without taking time to remove his short frayed denims. As the shower stung them both, their mouths met urgently and with no hesitation, Domini reaching for his waistband with the abandon of a woman who knows her bold caresses are wanted.

  Perhaps it was indeed the risk of having no robe that added to the excitement, or perhaps it was the sharp tingle of water on bare flesh, or perhaps the unleashing of Sander's turbulent and turgid passion, unquelled by the shock of cooling spray. Domini was by now well acquainted with all the secrets of his superb male physique, but the newness of the moment made the love-making itself seem new. Sander loosened her hair to let it stream free. Then he lifted her against his aroused body to command her with the kiss his greater height would otherwise not allow, his powerful muscles supporting her slender curves as easily and surely as if she were no more than a feather's weight. With one impatient hand imprisoning her waist and the other smoothing her willing hips into instant compliance, he sank his mouth greedily into the hollows of her arched throat. Domini gasped with pleasure as she felt him join her as if for the first time, and the wild savagery of his kisses against her wet skin told her that for him, too, the moment of joining was supreme.

  With bodies bare and streaming and mouths hungrily exploring, with dark hair and gold soaked and mingling beneath the shower, with droplets beading on his chest and hers, they made impassioned love, although Sander might have chosen to call it sex.

  'What an unbridled creature you are,' his wet mouth muttered against her straggling hair a short time later when he had released her from his commanding grip. 'You don't hold anything back, do you? And to think I once believed you had inhibitions.'

  'The shower washed them all away,' Domini breathed, still quivering in the aftermath of his ungoverned and inventive ardour, which she had returned with wild shamelessness.

  After that he soaped her and she soaped him with a slowness and sensuality that was pleasurable in itself, although both were too well sated for a renewal of the volcanic passion of before. When the shower had rinsed them, Sander closed the drain and allowed the tub to fill. And then, with the shower at last turned off, they sank together into the contained cool sea of the tub.

  And there they remained for the next few minutes, Domini at first luxuriating in the coolness of her flesh, but soon turning reflective and unhappy as she lay enclosed in Sander's arms, in a tight embrace dictated by their close confinement in the bath. With lids lowered over the sightless silver eyes and a distant expression on his mouth, he ran his fingers over her body with the slow-motion indolence of a man whose passions have been fully slaked, lightly touching her breasts and the contours of her face, neither speaking nor asking Domini to speak. She accepted without question, because the lazy stroking of his now passionless fingers must needs serve him instead of eyes, and serve her instead of the words of love she wanted so desperately to hear.

  To Domini there was no wrong in what she did. She loved and she expressed her love freely and fully and without reserve, as she had been taught to do in childhood. Although she was bound by neither vows nor inhibitions, she was bound by stronger bonds. Sander had fathered her child although he did not know it, she loved him although he did not know it, and Domini would have married him had he asked. She knew he would not ask, not only for reasons of pride or cynicism, disillusion or despair, but because his feelings for her did not include love. Were it not for her daughter, she would have moved in with him altogether and felt no shame, although she was certain that Sander would not have asked that of her either. He might want her physically, but he wanted her in no other way.

  Domini's morbid reflections troubled her, and she decided she was only torturing herself by staying for the afternoon when no sculpting was to be done. Wordlessly she left Sander in the bath, wondering if the steep furrow in his brow was caused by thoughts as difficult as hers.

  With passion no longer heating her flesh, she was more cautious on the downtrip, and so she commandeered Sander's dressing-gown for the return to the studio. Moments later she was on the main floor, hair still damp and twisted into a quick pony-tail.

  Miranda was idling over a daily newspaper, one of several on her desk, but put it down as soon as Domini appeared. If she was surprised at the shortness of the visit, she didn't comment upon it.

  'Sit down and take a break,' she suggested with no more than a faint smile at the sight of Domini's betrayingly wet hair, which had dripped down the back of her light dress, darkening the cotton, i'm only catching up on last week's art columns, which I was too lazy to read at the time. And I'm still too lazy! I'd much rather visit. Besides, it's been ages since we've had a really good chat. You're always in such a hurry, first to get to Sander, then to get to Tasey. Or do you have to rush off to see some client?'

  With the end of day care still some time away, Domini was for once able to take a breathing spell, and so she sank on to a padded bench near the sales desk, unwilling as yet to face the intense heat of the street. 'No, thank God, my work's in good shape. I have no more windows to change until next week. Then I have a pile to do, but perhaps the heat will have broken. They say it's about to.'

  'How's Tasey these days?' The question was another small part of the ritual exchange indulged in during Domini's afternoon visits, one that had be
en neglected earlier because of the arrival of a customer. Ritual or no, Domini knew that Miranda's interest was genuine.

  'She's fine, getting taller by the day. Do you know, her fourth birthday is only two months away?'

  'I wish you'd bring her to visit.' Miranda sighed.

  Domini merely smiled and gave a small shrug. She was running out of excuses for her failure to bring her daughter back to the gallery, in view of the oft-repeated invitation. Tasey, too, sometimes asked when she was going to see the ice-cream lady again.

  'It might be a good idea if Sander got to know her,' Miranda suggested too artlessly with another oblique look at Domini's dampened hair.

  'And then again it might not,' Domini said firmly. 'Sander hasn't got marriage on his mind, Miranda.'

  'Maybe you could change it for him, if you let him know how you felt.' Miranda leaned forward earnestly. 'Actually I've been wanting to have a good long talk with you for some time, but you always race off before I can get my two cents in. I'm not half-witted, Domini. I know you're in love with Sander. Why, it sticks out all over you, and if he had eyes, he could see . it for himself. The way you look at him, the way you say his name . . . good Lord, even the way you walk up the stairs so flushed and expectant. But when you come down, you always look . . . well, kind of sad. Hopeless.'

  'Is it that obvious?' Domini asked quietly.

  'To everyone but Sander,' Miranda replied. 'Why, Joel noticed at once. Face it, Domini. Sander isn't going to suggest marriage because he wouldn't want to be a burden to you. He's too damn proud! But if you brought Tasey around once in a while, he might begin to understand that you need him as much as he needs you. You're always thinking about his problems .. why don't you let him think about yours?'

  'I don't have any,' Domini said.

  'Rubbish,' Miranda returned, eyeing Domini sceptically. 'Sharing troubles is a two-way street, and yet you keep all yours to yourself and try to solve ours. Don't think I haven't noticed how much you've helped us! You have a money shortage, too, I know it, but do you ever tell that to Sander? Do you discuss the difficulties you have with your clients? Do you talk about the nights you have to sit up when Tasey has croup? You never complain, and yet it can't be all that easy raising a child on your own, especially when you have to run a business too. If Sander could see that your daughter needs a father

  Domini studied her fingers and tried to control their tremble. 'I don't think he likes her,' she said. 'In fact, I'm sure of it. He cut me up for not keeping her under control the night she was here.'

  'Good grief, she wasn't that much trouble. Don't forget these past few years have been very difficult for Sander; it isn't easy for a man like him to adjust to blindness. He hates being helped and he hates feeling helpless. That's made him put a wall around himself and pour boiling oil on anyone who happens to get too close to the fortifications. But you know, Domini, he wasn't always such a bitter man. And he's not as bitter now as he was a few months ago, when you first appeared on the scene. You've helped draw him out of that terrible solitude he was in, you and the work he's doing now. I'll bet Tasey could help complete the job if you'd give her half a chance. Kids are so natural.'

  'I don't know,' Domini said slowly. 'I don't think it would work.'

  Miranda regarded her steadily and sternly. 'If you just keep giving Sander more of what he wants, he's going to keep taking. It's time you asked him for something in return, and I mean something that doesn't happen in bed. As long as you allow yourself to be a sex object that's exactly what you'll be ... a sex object and nothing more. Is that what you want?'

  'No,' Domini admitted unhappily.

  'I didn't think so,' Miranda said more kindly. After a moment's thought she suggested: 'Why don't you bring Tasey here for the weekend? Ask us to look after her, make some pretext of going away for a few days. The spare bedroom's filled with sculptures, but there's a cot in there I can pull into my own room for her stay. You know I love children. And if you weren't around, Sander would get to know her better, simply because he wouldn't be angrily looking to you to keep her under control. He used to be quite good with children. If he had to help take charge of Tasey for a while, it could make him feel needed. I think he'd get a whole new view of you too. Why, it might be just the thing.'

  'I'll think about it,' Domini temporized. Could there be something in what Miranda said? Or would it simply amplify the internal anguish of these past months if it didn't accomplish anything? If Sander and Tasey took a real dislike to each other, Domini didn't think she could bear it.

  'Don't think, just do it,' urged Miranda, and then as if Domini's extreme inward distress had registered in some way, she ceased to lecture. A moment later she tactfully changed the subject. 'How's the unicorn? Still bearing up? Or is Tasey getting too old for it?'

  'Oh, I don't imagine we'll be scrapping it for a while.' Domini managed a brave smile. 'There's a little mileage in it yet.'

  'I wouldn't scrap it at all,' Miranda remarked, flicking a fingernail at the newspaper she had been reading. 'Who knows, even though it's only a copy you soon may be able to sell it for a profit, because I imagine Le Basque's prices are about to jump to the moon. You know what happens when a great artist puts one foot in the grave ... the collectors who've already bought are quite happy if he puts the other one in too! Even his laundry list will be fetching a fortune now that the news it out. Isn't it always the way?'

  Premonitions of disaster clutched at Domini's stomach. 'Isn't what always the way?' she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

  'Read for yourself,' Miranda offered. She tossed the folded newspaper in Domini's direction. 'He's had a massive heart attack.'

  Domini's face drained, and it was a lucky thing that two Japanese tourists chose that exact moment to walk into the shop, relieving her of the necessity of reacting to Miranda's revelation. Like an automaton, she turned her eyes to the art columns in the paper, finding at once the headline about Le Basque. While Miranda showed her customers a portfolio of large numbered lithographs, Domini quickly scanned the story, her numbness growing with every word she read. The columnist confirmed the worst. According to the story, Le Basque's three legal sons, Domini's American half-brothers, had been contacted by the newspapers and revealed that they were making plans to rush to his bedside.

  And then, remembering something Miranda had said earlier, she looked and saw that the newspaper was a full week old.

  She put the paper back on the desk but remained seated, trying to think through the swirl her thoughts had become. Papa dying! He was in his mid-seventies now, and it should not be a shock. But it was. He had always been so strong, so much a cornerstone of Domini's existence, that she had never thought of him in terms of death. And yet he was dying. He had been dying for a week, and she had not known...

  Her brain refused to work very well, but she knew what she must do, and she knew she would need Miranda's help. It didn't matter whether Papa loved her or not; she loved him. She couldn't take Tasey to France, and she couldn't afford a live-in sitter, let alone find one on such short notice. For months she'd been ignoring former friends, making excuses in order to free time for Sander, and having done that, it was hard to approach others for help.

  At last Miranda finished with her customers. Whether two minutes had passed or twenty, Domini was not sure, but it was a period sufficient to help her get some grip on herself. Her face was calm and set, if a little white, when Miranda returned to the sales desk and sat down with a sigh because no sale had been made.

  'I've been thinking about what you said,' Domini started at once. 'I'm going to take you up on your offer, Miranda, and I don't even have to invent an excuse. I had news a few weeks ago that my aunt is dying.'

  'No wonder you've been looking so drained,' Miranda sympathized. 'Is that the aunt who brought you up?'

  'Yes, the one who lives in France.' The lie needed little amplification because Miranda had been told of Domini's fictitious background several months before. 'I had deci
ded I couldn't fly over to see her because I couldn't afford a woman to look after Tasey. I simply don't have the money. But I'd really like to go because my uncle is very upset. The only thing is, it might mean leaving Tasey here for more than a weekend, but at least during the week she's in day care all day. If you could help me out, I'd be...'

  The words choked to a halt as Domini bowed her head and pressed taut fingertips to her cheekbones. She ached for the release of tears, but they would not come. Had she really been making love to Sander while Papa was dying in France?

  'You poor kid,' Miranda said, coming to her side and putting an arm around her shoulder. 'Didn't I tell you it's better to share your problems? Of course Tasey can stay with us. Bring her over any time.'

  ❧

  There was just enough money in the bank, fortunately, to pay for a round-trip airline ticket. Domini drew it all out. As soon as she had wait-listed herself on half a dozen flights, pleading an emergency and earning a sympathetic but not entirely optimistic promise from the travel agency that was one of her own regular clients, Domini hurried back to her loft and placed a call to France.

  The new servant who answered the phone was unfamiliar with the name Greey, and Domini had to assure the suspicious woman several times that she was not a member of the press, but a relative. Because her father had disowned her, she didn't wish to mention the exact nature of the relationship; nor was she sure of the reception her call would be given, except by Berenice herself.

  The servant must have neglected to mention the name or had perhaps muddled it in the transmission, because when Berenice came on the line she was unprepared for the sound of Domini's voice.

  'Berenice?'

  'Didi,' Berenice whispered, choked, recognizing

  Domini from the syllables of that one utterance, as if it had been only yesterday they had spoken. 'Oh, Didi

  'How is Papa?' Domini asked urgently, sliding easily back to the language of her childhood.

  'Not at all well,' Berenice said, and Domini could hear the tears and the worry in her voice. 'You must come at once. You must hurry.'