“Either you don’t really believe me, or you’re nuts. I just said I was a criminal. That isn’t delightful. At best it’s titillating.”
“Insanity is always a possibility,” Alex admitted. “But in this case I don’t believe it is a problem. You see, I am actually in Mexico on a similar type of mission. I too work undercover for the betterment of the world.”
She blinked. “Really? I didn’t know that you were an activist. You work for the French environmental movement?”
“In a way.”
“Wow. That’s some coincidence.”
“Yes, I suppose it is. But true nonetheless. What do you Americans say—cross my heart and hope to die? I just keep my profile very low so that I do not disturb my American publisher. It is not entirely true that all publicity is good, you see.”
“No, I know that. I don’t suppose you can tell me what it is you’re working on?” she asked. Her expression was earnest. “Is it more of those factory pollutants up by the border? Someone has to stop the dumping. I hadn’t realized that it was so bad. The land is all but dead, and the people will be too if something isn’t done immediately.”
Alex chose his truths carefully.
“It’s more of an outbreak of suspicious disease that I am investigating, and not in a factory. Perhaps I can tell you about it a bit later. Like you, I worry about being disbelieved when I as yet have no proof to offer in support of my rather wild supposition. I have not the standing of The Spider. I must collect more evidence before I can act.”
“I understand. That’s what I do—collect evidence. But usually from a safe distance. I’m not a foot soldier. I don’t chain myself to trees or bulldozers. I don’t go looking for diseases. That sounds a bit frightening.” She leaned her head against his shoulder, clearly feeling comfortable. The redorange glow of returning desire began to tint her aura. “Actually, I’m writing a novel about being The Spider—all heavily disguised, of course. I’ve made myself into a man and set it in England. It’s taking me forever, though, because I never have enough time to write, and sometimes I get nervous about talking about…well, things. I’m not used to admitting what I do. It’s too dangerous. I think I’m up to about fifty years of jail time now. I hardly even tell myself the truth anymore.”
“Ah! But this is interesting. And I understand completely. Of course, you would have to change some facts to protect yourself.” He didn’t add that he did this all the time.
“And to make the story more out of the ordinary,” she confessed. Her eyes positively glowed with enthusiasm, and Alex felt himself being drawn in by her excitement. “It’s really rather boring, what I do, if you don’t understand computers. Almost no close calls at all. I’ve never been shot at, or even threatened with a gun—not on the job at least. The worst I’ve ever done is play hide-and-seek with a security guard to move some things past airport security.”
“I understand entirely. And it is not just sensible caution; it is a kindness to our readers that we take literary license to move the plot along. But tell me more about being The Spider. This fascinates me professionally. How came you to this line of work? Has the added security of the post-9/11 world made it a more difficult place to function?” he asked. Perhaps if they talked long enough, his desire would diminish and they could be in close proximity without endangering themselves. As it was, Alex was feeling that it might be wisest to stop touching her, at least for the time being.
“It actually started in college. My folks were elderly when they had me, and I lost my dad my senior year of high school. Mom went to live with her sister in Florida and I found myself at loose ends. I was asked by an old boyfriend if I could help with a project he was interested in. We had heard that this local mining company had gotten ahold of some old-growth forest and was planning on strip mining the land. Not just cutting down the trees but destroying the land utterly and completely. I was on spring break and not heading down to any of the parties in Daytona and thought—why not? I could use my vacation to do a good deed.” She shook her head. “I did okay, but was careless and not as efficient as I could have been. Back then we were unorganized and testing methods of collection. We believed that simple civil disobedience and handing out a few flyers telling the facts would lead to consciousness-raising.” She snorted. “I know, that sounds so naive. But our intentions were good. And we did learn from our mistakes.”
“No, I don’t think it naive. The pen is a mighty weapon when wielded correctly. And we need to have a bit of idealism to keep the cynics of the world from ruining our lives,” Alex answered, thinking of his own efforts to bring about change in the French Republic. He’d done far wilder things than she had to further the causes he believed in, like supplying arms and even manning the barricades that Victor Hugo had written about in Les Misérables. He’d also ended up in jail for refusing to do military service for King Louis Phillipp. Had he not been so famous, his head would have rolled with the other patriots who were arrested during the uprising.
“I guess. I just got so frustrated when nothing changed, and I knew I had to take it a step further. That doesn’t mean that I like everything I have to do. I hate lying to people all the time about who I am and what I do. And these fights aren’t personal, like some of the papers have said. I don’t do this to ruin anyone’s reputation, you know. And I’m not a Communist trying to bring down all capitalists. Making money is fine if you’re not killing the planet to do it.”
“But many capitalists are?”
“Yes, too many of them. Some out of ignorance, but some because they are sociopaths. And, I admit, sometimes ruining these especially rotten jerks is an added bonus of the job. Many of these guys are utter bastards—complete psychopaths. Odds are ten to one that if they’re raping the land they are also raiding their employees’ retirement funds. Sociopaths rarely confine themselves to just one selfish activity.”
“Like Beau?” he asked, testing the water.
“No, not like Beau. He’s actually fairly honest.” She didn’t notice that he had brought up a name she had never mentioned. That was probably because of the tequila blunting her wits. “It started that way, though. I thought maybe Beau was doing something illegal. But he wasn’t. And he seemed to really like me and he was nice. And exciting. That’s rare in a man. Sometimes…” Harmony sighed. “But as we’ve agreed, nice doesn’t get it done, does it? And to stay where there isn’t love or at least honesty and a bit of respect would be to live a lie.”
“Yes. And you are wise to know this. There is no substitute for genuine passion. Or the truth.”
“There certainly is not. Or for freedom. I hate being closed in. He laughed about my book, too,” she added in injured tones.
“The cad!”
“I thought so.” She asked almost casually: “So, are you really Alexandre Dumas, the novelist? I mean, the modern one? I read one of the new stories and liked it a lot. You got the Dumas voice just right.”
“I really am.”
“But you’re not really Alexandre pére—like your publisher says?” She blushed as she asked this. Probably because what she was asking was if he was insane enough to believe something impossible. “Sorry, that was a dumb question. It’s just that you have the right manner.”
“That would be hard to believe, wouldn’t it?” he answered without answering. “It does sell books to reincarnation enthusiasts, though, so let’s pretend that I am. And perhaps I was him in another life.”
“Okay. That’s one lie I can live with.”
She stopped walking when they reached the gazebo stairs and craned her neck upward. The structure had a Moorish feel that reminded him poignantly of Tangier. Abandoning her architectural study, she faced him, chin still lifted so she could look full into his eyes. Alex felt his breath catch. In the moonlight, she looked so much like Thomasina that he found himself thinking: Come close. This time I know we’ll get it right. I know how to keep you safe.
No sooner had the thought formed than red desire fla
red around her and then reached out for him. Startled, he reeled some of his own emotion back in. This was not Thomasina. Persuading a stranger was one thing; overwhelming an inebriated innocent was something else altogether. A mind-jack was acceptable; mind-rape was not.
“I don’t think you’re a liar. I sort of know things about people,” she confessed. “I’ve always had a kind of gift that way. You seem very…shiny to me.”
“I haven’t lied to you,” he said. Which was true, as far as it went. But that was also still a long way from telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
“Would you be upset if I said that I wanted to…kiss you?” she asked.
“No.” He found himself smiling again. This woman made him giddy. “I’ve been hoping that you might return some of the…feeling I have for you. However—”
“Feeling,” she murmured, leaning into him. “Yes, lots of feeling. We might almost call it lust at first sight. You may think this amazing, but I really didn’t know that such a thing existed. I thought it was just a literary device, an excuse for characters to be promiscuous in the first chapter of a novel.”
Lips pressed to lips. The almost forgotten jolt of pure desire and even harsher longing hit him, a memory of his last love repressed because the remembrance was more bitter than sweet. Thomasina—and yet so clearly not Thomasina.
He shut his eyes against the thought and braced himself against the waves of onrushing desire that would surely batter his heart. Sweet—so sweet! But only a fool would seek this out again. And what of her? Just because love’s wounds left no visible marks on the body, it didn’t mean that one did not suffer lasting pain inside once the anesthetic of first attraction wore off.
Or once someone died.
It was wonderful to enjoy women. To have sex—yes. He had to have that much contact or his soul would shrivel and die. But anything more? No, and then again a thousand times no.
Yet, he didn’t break away from the kiss. The temptation was to taste just a bit more of what desire truly could be with someone who was tuned in to him mentally and could be his equal. It was elation he hadn’t known in decades. It was panic too. And a crazy tingling in every nerve as electricity ran over his skin and tried its best to find a way inside her body and mind so that she would give herself to him without reservation, in spite of her fears of possession.
Harmony gasped as he thought this and arched into him. Beneath his shirt, he felt the net of golden scars that roped his chest stirring into life and spreading over his body. His flesh said it knew her as an old love, the other half of his wounded heart, and it wanted her immediately.
Insanity—sheer madness!
“Mon Dieu!” Alex leaned back onto the latticed wall of the gazebo. Harmony pressed against him. He raised his head to gain some distance, to assure himself once again that this was not his old, dead love, but rather a lovely stranger he had met only this evening.
Inches away and she was still beautiful. Still more desirable than any woman he could imagine. And yet achingly familiar because of the emotion she aroused.
Her hair was tangled in his fingers, a tumble of red-gold, feather soft. Gorgeous, the stuff of a thousand passionate dreams. He touched the strands, marveling at the silken texture of the mane around her shoulders. It was soft, like her mouth, and again he felt flooded with a surge of desire that was close to insanity—the kind that inspired artists and musicians to create great works, saints to renounce vows, and made even the sanest of men do foolish things.
He hadn’t felt this way in seventy years. The knowledge was an almost physical blow. This was what he had been hungering for all this time. It was the balm of Gilead—a drug of blessed if temporary amnesia. It was forgetting, a divine intervention by a kindly Fate that made the pain of living an empty life for the last seven decades suddenly seem worthwhile. It was what he had believed he had to deny himself if he was to win the struggle to live after Thomasina’s death.
Ever reckless, for a moment he let this desire blot out old misgivings. He kissed her again. He would indulge, just this once.
Alex didn’t need to do more than kiss Harmony to resurrect the recognizable feeling of the lust that preceded wild, life-altering love. And, on some level, he was grateful for the passionate memories she gifted him with, and aware of the rarity of this perhaps never-to-be-repeated insanity. The thought of further, deeper touching added to the pleasure of the moment of anticipation.
He forgot that he wasn’t human anymore, that there was danger around them.
Alex picked her up with an ease that revealed his unnatural strength and went quickly up the stairs into the gazebo. Moonlight cut the darkness with bright bars of silver light that crisscrossed their bodies.
“Are you certain about this? I don’t think this is something you usually do,” he said softly, thinking she was perfect. All that was missing was music—something soft and probably heavy with a bass beat, an erotic soundtrack to score this most-longed-for of events. All he could hear was his heart.
“No, it isn’t. But, yes, please. And be as wicked as you like.” She sighed as he set her on her feet, as though now able to read his mind and see all the things he wanted to do to her. “I have been in a prison for so long and just want to feel without fear. To have without guilt.”
To feel without fear. To have without guilt. He understood—bien Dieu! Yes, he understood.
“The pleasure is all mine.”
He undressed her, enjoying the resistance of the buttons on her skirt-waist that only reluctantly came off to reveal the velvety skin of her abdomen inch by tempting inch until the strips of cotton could be pulled down her hips and pushed away altogether. Her blouse went next. She wore a camisole beneath it, a confection of coffee and raspberry lace that reminded him of a Viennese Sacher torte. It was more tempting than functional, though it extended down her torso and had a series of small pearl buttons that had to be undone. He kissed around the edges and then pulled the tiny loops free one by one, pushing the bit of silken nonsense away, revealing the perfection of her lightly tanned body, darker than his own.
He knelt before her, letting his eyes feast. As he had suspected, she was lean like a cat. Her breasts were gorgeous, her stomach a stretch of perfect skin interrupted only by a small tattoo of fleurs-de-lis at her hipbone and a fading scar from a long-ago appendectomy. For some reason the tattoo disturbed him, reminded him of someone in his past, but its association with his long-ago history eluded him.
She was thin, so he could plainly see the delicate articulation of the muscles beneath the velvety skin. He reveled in the perfection of her body! No knots of hard muscle to disturb her sleek expanses, no coarse hair bristled up to mar her flesh, just the smooth, almost liquid flow of erotic progress when she knelt and wrapped herself around him.
Finished with the first round of tactile exploration, he laid her on the floor. He took her right breast in his mouth, and bit softly with the edge of his teeth. Her skin was both sweet and salt, perfume and drug, a balance of the human and the divine. Alex shivered. He knelt again, reaching for his shirt. He wanted to rid himself of his clothes as quickly as possible.
“What’s this?” Harmony asked, running a hand down his back and encountering his .45.
“A gun,” he said. Then, realizing that this might be disturbing, he added: “Don’t be alarmed. This is a wild place. I never go unarmed when I’m working.”
“Oh. But you’ll take it off now? I don’t like the feel of cold metal.” What she meant was that she didn’t like the feeling of cold intent the weapon carried. He also sensed that it had been used to kill before, and death lingered on the gun like an invisible fingerprint.
Alex paused. He was almost mindless with desire, but what he had said was true. He didn’t go anywhere without being armed. Especially not when his senses told him that danger was nearby. Still, Alex hesitated for only an instant. What harm could befall them in the middle of town? And it would just be for a while—minutes, pe
rhaps an hour. Nothing more. And the gun would be close by. It wasn’t necessary to hold the cruel thing in his hand.
“Of course…Do you have any weapons with you—beyond being female?” he asked.
“Brass knuckles,” she confessed. Her voice was a bit breathless and he could see her heart beating beneath her pale skin. “In my purse. I got them years ago in an antique store. They belonged to one Madame Belle who ran a brothel in New Orleans. I thought they might be useful down here.”
Alex found himself smiling again. He put his gun aside, at a distance so she wouldn’t feel it but still within reach.
“But how perfect! Still, I promise you’ll have no need of them with me.”
“I know. You’re not dangerous…in that way.”
Harmony was dazed. The usual self-consciousness of firsttime sex was gone; like a cat on the prowl, it had slipped into the night at the first touch of Alex’s lips. It never occurred to her that nudity in a public place was probably inappropriate. And if it had occurred to her, she wouldn’t have cared as long as he touched her.
A part of Harmony realized that this stranger—this Alexandre Dumas who carried a gun—was somehow inside her head, perhaps guiding her to this moment, perhaps against her will or at least her better sense. Odder still, she had this feeling that if she shifted her thoughts just a bit she might be able to see into his mind too. As it was, it seemed as if she knew what he would say and do a split second before he said or did anything. This should have alarmed her, but her senses seemed entirely taken up by the weird but overwhelming erotic sensation that was making her skin dance and her muscles go weak.
Perhaps she was more drunk than she realized. But drunk or not, she didn’t care. She had thought about an encounter like this—dreamed about it—for a long time: a sexual attraction to a strong man who wanted her, admired her—her and only her—but didn’t need to possess her for more than the moment. She looked and looked at this Alexandre Dumas but couldn’t see—couldn’t feel—anything that frightened her. He wasn’t insecure, or anxious, or domineering. All she felt in him was intense desire tinged with a sort of amusement, and a kind of expectation that reminded her of a child waiting in the dark on Christmas Eve for Santa Claus to arrive.
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