At last she has a glass of Chardonnay in hand, and Jay is savoring a Cabernet.
‘There’s something else,’ she goes on. ‘The night I went out, at the restaurant… Will knocked over a tray of toothpicks and they spilled all over the red carpet.’ She half hypnotizes herself by focusing on the penetratingly black pupils in his light eyes. ‘I knelt down to pick them up. I don’t know why I felt I had to do that, but the point is that, for a second, I felt I could read them. They looked like some kind of writing, and it was the strangest feeling. Then in the gallery there was a painting, a dark red canvas with runes scratched into it, that looked exactly like what I’d just seen on the floor.’
‘Interesting.’
She is as delighted as a little girl who has succeeded in getting an adult to play with her.
‘What do you think it means, Carmen?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Would you like to know what I think?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘I think you’re an incredibly beautiful and imaginative young woman who’s been through a lot in the last week. You were nearly raped, Carmen. You were attacked, and forced to witness a violent beating, then I came along. It’s no wonder you have Vikings on the brain. All these things happened to you as suddenly and unexpectedly as one of their raids.’
‘And I’ve been burning with desires ever since,’ she elaborates, ‘desires I’m a little afraid of because they’re so intense. Yet part of me wants to go with them, doesn’t want to fight them. In the dream, these men take me away with them. I guess I’m just assuming they’re Vikings. That’s the part I remember most clearly, crouching on a deck trying to get warm and watching the leader shoot a flaming arrow into the mist.’
‘That’s a scene from a movie,’ he says coldly.
‘I’ve been having that dream for years,’ she insists fervently, ‘and I’ve never seen that stupid movie!’
‘But you’ve heard of it?’
‘Only because Mike said the same thing…’ she stops herself, but too late.
‘Excuse me, am I to understand that you’ve discussed this with your employer?’
‘Ever since what happened to me in the Grove, he’s been concerned about me, Jay. He’s a very nice person,’ so much for telling him everything, ‘and he’s been happily married for eleven years. His wife is gorgeous. She never comes into the office, but I met her at the gallery, like I told you.’
‘I remember.’
‘Everything I’m telling you is the truth, Jay.’
‘I’m sure it is, Carmen, you’re just not telling me everything.’
She can’t help admiring how sharp he is even as it terrifies her. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because it’s true.’
‘I’m not sleeping with my boss, and that’s the truth.’ She tries to sound angry, but what she really feels is thrilled by the fact that she can’t seem to hide anything from him.
‘Maybe, maybe not. It doesn’t matter.’ He sips his wine. ‘The point is you want to.’ He doesn’t give her a chance to protest before adding, ‘Just like you want to sleep with that cop, if you haven’t already.’
The desire to be totally honest with him, and fear of how he’ll react, collide like matter and anti-matter in her throat, rendering her speechless.
He sits back, keeping one arm extended towards his glass. ‘You’re not going to deny it?’
‘No,’ she replies quietly, ‘I told you, I don’t want to lie to you about anything anymore.’
‘Very good, Carmen, I’m proud of you for having the courage to admit it.’
She imagines this is how Sage feels when she is praised, and suddenly the power he has over her frightens her into lashing out. ‘I’m sure you know some women you wouldn’t mind sleeping with yourself.’
‘I’d like to fuck every beautiful woman I see,’ he admits.
She feels as breathless as if he punched her in the stomach. ‘That doesn’t mean you can.’
‘But the desire is natural, just like it’s natural for a woman as beautiful and passionate as you are to want more than one man sometimes. It doesn’t surprise me, or make me angry with you, Carmen. I only get angry when I sense you’re trying to keep something from me, when you insult me by lying to me, or by only feeding me half-truths. I would never judge your desires, baby, they’re what make you so special.’ He leans over the table towards her. ‘Do you have any idea how many pretty, excruciatingly boring, women there are out there, Carmen? Your intensity is what attracted me to you in the first place. I meant it when I said you’re beautiful all the way through, which means you’re not easy to control. Your intelligence and your imagination, your feelings and your fantasies, are all woven together like the colorful wires inside a bomb. You’re explosively gorgeous, baby, and that’s precisely why I want you.’ He sits back again, and drains his glass. ‘So you can forget about fucking other men behind my back.’ He pours himself some more wine.
‘I’ll never do anything behind your back again, Jay, I swear it. I always want you to know everything.’
‘It sounds to me, Carmen,’ he takes a long swallow of the Cabernet, ‘like you’re asking my permission to arrange a gangbang.’
Her laughter is a reaction that passes safely for embarrassment. ‘Oh, right!’ She instinctively camouflages her hungry response to the suggestion with sarcasm.
He reaches across the table with his free hand and roughly grips her face. ‘Didn’t you just tell me you were never going to lie to me again?’
Their entrées arrive.
He lets go of her, and she desperately wonders what she can say to lead them out of the maze of dangerous truths they have ended up in. She is too upset with herself for somehow ruining their evening to either eat or speak. She has no problem drinking, however.
‘I thought you were starving,’ he remarks.
‘Not anymore.’
‘Stop looking at me and eat your dinner.’
She is on the verge of tears. ‘I can’t.’
‘I’m not mad at you, Carmen.’
‘You’re not?’
‘No, I’m not, so please, eat.’ He whips her soul again with that disarming grin he had kept hidden from her until tonight. ‘We were just having an honest conversation. They’re going to happen a lot, so you can’t let them upset you.’ He cuts into his steak. ‘They’re like thunderstorms that clear the air. What’s important,’ he savors a bite of meat before continuing, ‘is that we always communicate openly with each other and never hold anything back until it becomes an emotional tumor. Lies are like cancer cells, Carmen; you tell one, and pretty soon they’ve spread through the whole relationship and there’s no hope of saving the trust that keeps love alive.’
She concentrates on her lobster, the shell of which she has to crack before she can enjoy the tender flesh inside. ‘Does that mean you love me, Jay?’
‘Forgive me, I thought I’d made that clear, in my own way.’
She rips a claw off, and finds just the right vulnerable spot to snap it in half. ‘You just can’t say it.’
‘Don’t push me,’ he warns softly, ‘it won’t work. Just trust me.’
She looks at him. ‘You know I trust you.’
‘Good, because you know what I want you to do?’
‘What?’ She holds her breath.
‘I want you to eat your dinner. You need your strength.’
Chapter Eight
In her dream she is as good as invisible to him. He doesn’t even notice, much less appreciate, how hard she works. Yet he always smiles at her in a way that makes her feel like a mouse spotted by a hawk. Then suddenly one cold, dark evening his stiff body is brought home in a fur-lined cart, and later she spies the men who accompanied him standing in the smoky Hall speaking with his widow, whose head is held as high as the winter sun while she plans her husband’s funeral. Then she points a finger, stiff as a snow covered branch, towards the shadows where she is standing, swallowing an intoxica
ting mix of terror and excitement…
Carmen gives up trying to remember her dream and gazes down at the man sleeping beside her.
Jay is lying on his stomach with his face turned away from her. His skin is so pale, and the muscles below it so taut, he has the romantic look of a fallen statue.
His presence makes her soul feel like a cat curled contentedly up in her chest. Yet part of her is more restless than ever, aware as she is now of what her body is capable of in the right hands.
She is thinking straight this morning. Believing that her dreams are memories of a past life is only a conceptual vessel her brain is using to navigate all the powerful feelings flooding her lately.
She gets up to use the bathroom.
Jay rolls over onto his back, flinging his arms open.
The sheet gets caught around his naked hips, and his head falls to one side, tossing a glossy red wing of hair over half his face.
Lucifer just fallen from heaven couldn’t have looked better.
She suddenly remembers how her kittens reacted when she introduced them to meat, because she is suffering a similar ravenous reaction to attractive men lately.
The sky is a second ocean on this splendid morning, and so close to the airport, the huge metal seagulls of airplanes keep flying out of the foaming clouds.
Jay drives her to work. Her hair is wet from the shower they took together, she didn’t have time to put on any make-up, and her purse doesn’t match her dress, yet she has never felt more beautifully together in her life. He will be picking her up again for an early lunch.
Once in the office (only a little upset that he didn’t kiss her goodbye) she pours herself a cup of coffee, attends to the faxes, then entertains herself by trying to imagine what his condo on Brickell Avenue looks like inside. For one thing, there won’t be any cat hairs on the furniture, which she pictures as black and stainless steel.
The phone keeps ringing all morning, disrupting her reverie.
‘Good morning, Seaside. No, I’m sorry, Mr Peterson isn’t in at the moment. May I take a message?’
He enters their suite shortly before lunchtime, sees she is on the phone, and shakes his head to indicate he isn’t taking any calls.
‘Yes, sir, of course, I’ll let him know.’ She hangs up impatiently.
He holds her eyes as he walks by her desk. ‘Good morning, Carmen.’ He doesn’t smile.
‘Good morning, Mike.’
She takes her time pouring him his coffee, self-conscious about her desire to follow him into his office.
He is shrugging off his jacket as she enters. He drapes it across the back of his chair, and unbuttons his collar as she ritually places the Styrofoam cup on his desk. He doesn’t take his eyes off her, and his stare feels like the atmosphere of an excitingly dangerous world.
‘Do you happen to know anyone who wants a kitten?’ she asks nervously. ‘I have three to give away. Would it be all right if I sent a memo around the office?’
He snaps open his briefcase. ‘Of course.’
‘Thanks.’ She turns to go.
‘Carmen?’
She faces him again. ‘Yes, sir?’
He tosses some papers onto his desk. ‘I just remembered. Linn’s birthday is next week. She might like one.’
‘Really? That’s wonderful. You would absolutely love Buffy, he’s the most unique Champaign color…’
‘I’d like to see all of them,’ he closes his briefcase and slips it beneath his desk, ‘and pick one out myself.’
A delicious confusion clouds her mind. ‘You want me to bring them here?’
‘Of course not.’ He sits down. ‘I’ll drop by your apartment tomorrow night,’ he begins sifting through a stack of messages, ‘at around seven-thirty.’ He glances up at her. ‘Unless you’ve already made other plans.’
‘No… I should be home.’ She is proud of how casual she sounds.
He begins dividing his messages into three piles as if dealing cards. ‘Sit down, Carmen,’ he says abruptly.
The firmness of his mouth as he looks up at her seems to flat-line her brainwaves, so that all she can think about as she moves obediently over to a chair is how desperately she wants him to kiss her.
Rising, he walks to the door.
The blood starts rushing through her heart and she has to grip the arms of the chair, as the floor seems to heave towards her like the deck of a ship.
‘I don’t like what’s happening here, Carmen.’ He closes the door. ‘I can’t get you out of my head, and you have no idea how unlike me that is.’
She doesn’t dare look at him.
‘Let me tell you, if this wasn’t the twenty-first century, I’d accuse you of casting a spell on me. I’ve even started dreaming about you, for Christ’s sake.’
She concentrates on the shining front of his cherry wood desk. ‘I’ve been dreaming about you too, Mike,’ she realizes out loud. ‘You’re in that recurring dream I told you about.’
The office vanishes, and a deafening sound like dimensions being ripped apart drowns out her cry as she jumps to her feet, straight into his arms.
He crushes her body against his, then his tongue thrusts into her mouth like a wave surging around hers and nearly suffocating her. His violent kiss makes her feel totally weak and helpless, as though she just fell off a ship in the middle of the ocean. She can’t resist his power because she has no desire to. She lets the inexorable force of his need lift her dress, and rip down her panties, finding her balance just long enough to step out of them before she falls into his arms again.
He wedges his hand between her thighs, forcing them open so he can thrust two fingers up into her wet, welcoming cunt. She gasps from the almost painful joy as he plugs her straight into the anger in his eyes. She clings to his rock-hard shoulders as he forces a third, then a fourth, finger into her slit, in which discomfort and pleasure merge into one overwhelming current of sensation. Only his thumb is left out and crushing her clit so that there isn’t a single drop of her feeling that isn’t flowing into his hand. Yet she somehow manages not to cry out watching his expression as he feels how tight, and yet utterly yielding, she is.
She feels the hard edge of the desk behind her, and the look in his eyes pushes her back across it. She is vaguely aware of message slips rustling like leaves beneath her hair, and of the cool, firm leather of his blotter against her bare shoulders; peripheral, meaningless impressions compared to the one his hand is making inside her. Hanging off the desk, her legs spread with a will of their own, opening wide for him without consulting her brain, which cowers in some small and insignificant corner of the experience. It knows there is nothing it can do now that her flesh is discovering its mysterious ability to embrace a man’s power rather than fight it.
‘You whore,’ he whispers, ‘you’re so hot! I bet you could take my fist!’
‘Oh, yes,’ she breathes, not at all sure she actually can, but wanting it more than anything.
He pulls his fingers out, then the feel of his knuckles shocks her with an electric, breathless expectation. She is afraid her body won’t be able to endure what she suddenly longs for, but just letting him fuck her again would be too easy, too normal, and her senses are starving for the unknown and the forbidden. Her nerve-endings are eager to blossom into unexplored realms of sensation, to flower wildly across conventional borders.
Mike’s silence is as focused as a surgeon’s as he works his clenched hand into her slowly.
His fist is a hard, unnatural embryo pushing its way back in towards her womb as her heart strains beneath white-hot pulses of fear and ecstasy. She wants to scream the fulfillment is so excruciating, so absolute, yet she doesn’t scream, or even ask him to stop. He is the only one who makes a sound, a deep groan of cruel satisfaction. She throws her arms over her head and clings to the edge of the desk; sucking quick, shallow breaths in through her mouth as she works muscles she never knew she had, straining to relax them around his hand. Yet only a small part of her
is tense with fear that he will tear her, most of her is simply amazed by how good his dangerous penetration feels. His wrist is thick and hard, and his fist fills her up so completely, he might as well be beating her to an exquisite death through her own pounding heart.
‘Mr Peterson?’ Beatrice’s voice rises uncertainly from the intercom, directly in her ear.
She gets a taste of how agonizing labor must be then when he wrenches his fist out of her abruptly, and his other hand falls heavily over her mouth to stifle her cry.
‘Mr Peterson?’
He takes a deep breath, and lets it out in an impatient, ‘Yes?’
‘Um, is Carmen in your office, sir? There’s someone here to see her.’
‘Carmen is busy at the moment.’ He keeps his hand over her mouth as his stare pins her down. ‘Tell whoever it is to wait.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He grips her face, and digs his thumb and fingers deep into her cheeks. ‘I could kill you,’ his voice is a hoarse whisper, ‘I could kill you!’
She is aware of her own sea-like scent on his fingers as she willingly dives into his cold blue stare, because nothing matters now except how good it felt when he was fist-fucking her. His hand falls to her throat. ‘Who’s out there?’
‘Jay!’
‘Are you sure?’ He pulls her up into a sitting position. ‘Maybe it’s that cop. And now you can add your boss to your list of conquests. But I’ve got news for you, Carmen; men aren’t kittens. You can’t play with three at a time and not get hurt.’
She clutches his shirt, gladly exchanging oxygen for the thrill of seeing how long he’ll dare sustain the pressure on her throat.
He snatches his hand away. ‘God, what the hell are we doing?’ He backs away from her.
She can’t answer as her mind is wiped clean by another explosive ripping apart of the atmosphere. During the flash the overhead lights flicker in rhythm with her pulse, then die.
She hears a man curse beneath his breath in the darkness, then what sounds like a god’s profound sigh as the emergency generator kicks in, flooding the room with a sunset’s bloody afterglow.
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