Incapable (Love Triumphs Book 3)

by Ainslie Paton

  Georgia touched her hand to his on her shoulder. “You okay?”

  She couldn’t possibly know how not okay he was. He stepped into her space to be nearer her, so he didn’t turn around and beat a way back to the light. This obviously wasn’t the first time he’d been in total darkness, but it had never had this effect on him before because he’d never figured it would be a full-time thing. Denial was a torch, always lit.

  His free hand went to her hip and he leaned in to the comfort of her. “Are you?”

  “I’m nervous about how this is going to go.”

  “Me too.” Easy to admit that. It stood in for the near terror he was feeling.

  “You’ll be fine.” Jace from up ahead. “This is A.”

  “What can you see, Georgia?”

  “Two bedrooms, the lounge and dining and the garage.”

  “Murder takes place in the garage,” said Jace. “I’ll take you through to B.” From B Georgia could see the remaining rooms. They were going to need to move frequently between these two locations. Back in A, Jace set them both up with gear and they did a sound check and practiced cueing with Ed, who was front of house on the set. Jace left then, saying he’d return fifteen minutes before show time.

  “There’s one stool. You should sit.”

  He should offer it to Georgia, but he was so disoriented it’d be better if he sat so he didn’t argue.

  “Take a step back. And another.”

  He felt the stool brush his thighs. Georgia had a hand on his arm. He sat, reached for her and spun her so she was standing between his legs, her back to him. He expected her to pull away, but maybe the darkness had gotten to her as well. She rested a hand on his thigh. She didn’t say a word and he was grateful. He needed to collect his wits. He closed his eyes and focused on her breathing, one hand at her waist, the other dropped at his side. It took a moment to realise she was breathing short, shallow breaths.

  He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her closer, curved over her. She tensed and he let go with a sigh.

  “Sorry, Damon. I. I.”

  “No, that was—”

  “Nice, that was really nice. You can, um.”

  He wrapped both arms around her and hugged her back against him, like he would’ve done with Taylor, only he didn’t feel like he did when he was hugging Taylor.

  He didn’t know if it was his heightened state of tension or the way Georgia smelled, or knowing they were very alone up here away from the world. Whatever it was, he liked it much better than the sense of panic he’d felt coming up those stairs into the sightless night.

  “This all right?” Her breathing was still fast, so he couldn’t be sure.

  She nodded and he felt it and didn’t press her to talk, just held her. Her hands came up to grip his forearm and she took a deep breath. He felt that too. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “I’m. I’m. I’m wearing a red dress.” Her grip on his forearm tightened.

  He smiled. “How red?”

  “Christmas red. It ties around my neck but leaves my back bare.”

  He dropped his head so he could whisper in her ear. “How short?”

  “Not short. To my knees. But very fitted.”

  “What else?”

  “It plunges, the neckline, it plunges to the waist. No bra.”

  He hissed. He could see this dress. Not something she owned, but fantasised about wearing, pleasing someone in.

  “No other underwear, because you’d see lines.”

  “Hot.” Much hotter than the standard scene she might’ve written; suspenders and corsets. She was giving him a vision that pleased her first.

  “Am I doing this right?”

  “So very right. Shoes?”

  “Black, patent leather, heels, high, soles painted red like the dress. They make me taller. They change my posture.”

  They’d arch her spine, thrust her breasts out. They made him risk pressing his face to her neck. He couldn’t believe his shy Georgia was leading this dance. If it was show time now he’d be insensible, not from panic but from surging lust.

  “My hair is pinned up. I’m wearing diamonds like mini chandeliers in my ears and expensive perfume.”

  “You smell amazing enough without that.”

  She moved her head; she was giving him access to her neck. He took it, pressing his lips there and holding still. Not quite a kiss, but a taste. Her hand came up to his head, fingers threading through his hair, and he rubbed his nose over her jaw.

  “My makeup is faultless and it’s the kind that doesn’t rub off so when you kiss me it doesn’t get messed up.”

  Oh fuck, was that an invitation? Her breathing had changed again, it was race ran short, it was heated and calling to his. How did they get here so quickly from her embarrassment in the taxi? Why did he think he’d had to lie to her to win her attention?

  “Georgia?” The rest of his question got lost when her head dropped back against his shoulder. He didn’t want to scare her off, make her retreat into the self-consciousness she usually walled between them, but he was going to kiss her.

  Footsteps clanging on the stairs. Jace was back. Damon groaned, but dropped his arms, sat up straighter and Georgia shifted away.

  A hand on his shoulder. “Cans.” He lifted his hand and Jace put the headset with a mic in his palm. “We’re live in ten.”

  He wanted to tell Georgia he wasn’t finished with the red dress, but Jace was close and Ed was in his ear and there was no time. It made him smile, the tease was accidental but damn it was effective. “What can you see?”

  “There must be a hundred people, they’re wandering everywhere. They don’t want to stay in the audience area, they keep crossing over the line onto the set and the stagehands have to ask them to step back.”

  “Yeah, that’s a bigger problem than we expected,” said Jace.

  “The actors are in place. The mum is changing the baby. Oh, she really has to.” Georgia laughed. “You should see people’s faces.”

  He grinned at her excitement. “Tell me.”

  “They’re surprised, maybe disgusted. There is a body behind the car in the garage. It’s hard to tell if it’s someone fixing something underneath the car or not.”

  Damon smiled. He knew from the script this was the murder victim, but he didn’t want to spoil the discovery for Georgia.

  “There is a mum and dad, the baby, two older kids, both boys, and another female, older, maybe an aunty. The body under the car wears jeans and boots. I’m guessing it’s a man but maybe not.”

  There were two mums and the man wasn’t the dad. The dad was dead under the car. Ed said, “Cue opening, Damon.”

  He toggled the mic on the headset, aligned it with his mouth and spoke the opening monologue. Jace patted his arm. Georgia was somewhere in blackness in front of him. He had four minutes of narration and spoke them from memory. This part and the concluding monologue were unaltered from Dalia’s emailed script. The rest of it was going to be harder.

  When he finished he felt Georgia’s hand brush his knee, her shoulder touch his. He realigned the headset so he could hear Ed in one ear and Georgia in the other. On Ed’s next cue, Georgia said the line and he repeated it. This one was unchanged. Ed’s next words were an impromptu line about an audience member in a Midnight Oil t-shirt. He repeated the line straight and they heard a bubble of laughter from the set. With his hand on Georgia’s shoulder they moved the dozen steps to position B. Damon took Ed’s cues, Georgia’s words, and fed them into the performance space.

  Ten minutes in, Ed asked Jace if he was able to leave the gantry to help with audience control.

  “Will you guys be all right?” Jace said.

  “I’ve got Damon. We’ll be fine.”

  Jace’s feet on the metal tread of the stairs.

  Yeah Georgia had him, more and more with each touch, each graze of their bodies as they moved between vantage points A and B. He was totally reliant on her for script clarification and positionin
g and it should’ve irritated the shit out of him in the way being dependant on anyone did, but for now, in this, in their post red dress suspended animation, he was happy.

  On the set, the mystery was unravelling as the audience pieced together the family dynamics and puzzled the who-done-it, like the police and detectives who arrived on the scene.

  Up in the gantry the mystery was thick, fuelled by Georgia’s whispered lines, her glancing touches and the darkness of being alone together. By increments her hands lingered, his held and didn’t release until they were moving, bodies together like in a dance, where she led and he was excited to follow. By interval he knew he wasn’t going to wait to kiss her in the taxi home or outside her door before he said goodnight.

  Ed gave the last cue before the break. Damon spoke his line sending the guests to the bar, where they were unknowingly about to be fingerprinted and have their mug shots taken as part of the experience. He pulled his headset off and did the same to Georgia’s, dropping them to the floor, cupping the back of her head and bringing her body to face him. She came into his arms willingly, with the softest of breaths across his throat.

  He moved his hand to bracket her face and took her mouth gently, pulling away to give her time to protest. When her breath stuttered and she clutched at his arm, he kissed her again and her lips opened to his, starting a petrol fire in his chest. Its heat licked his lungs, softened his spine, made him press her closer to blanket the pain, bring on the pleasure. Her arms came up around his neck, one hand caught in his hair and she was kissing him back, no longer the recipient, but a willing partner writhing in the flames.

  He reversed until he was against the gantry wall, bringing Georgia with him, a hand searching for the stool, dragging it behind him so he could sit, be closer to her, hold her between his legs. She made little gasps of surprise, of delight, when he let her breathe.

  Now she touched him without the hesitation, without the accident of contact. Her hands were on his shoulders, gripping his biceps, moving across his back. She pressed against his body and he didn’t need to hold her there, they held each other in this momentary madness born of hesitation and matured fast with a red dress fantasy and impossible proximity in the deep dark.

  He learned her like he’d wanted to almost from meeting the occasional lilt of her accent, the stiffness in her manner. She was slender but not painfully thin like Heather. She had muscle, she had hips he could flare his fingers over, and when they were both lost in sucking kisses he found her breasts, high and full in his palms, cause for her lips to abandon his, her head to drop back and her breath to come in noisy exclamations.

  If he spoke he might break this, turn the light on it, make it daytime real, and he wasn’t ready to risk that. He had a sense she was more comfortable with the shadow meaning. The darkness had deniability for her in a way it never would for him. But full colour words and images rampaged across his brain, Georgia in her low-backed dress, the muscle in her calves bunched in her come fuck me shoes, their soles spiked dangerous and red when he tipped her onto his bed. If she left them on, he’d feel their stiletto sharp stab his thighs. He palmed her butt and pulled her closer still, kissing a line from her mouth to her ear, down her neck to her collarbone, then down the centre of her shirt to the button he opened so he could put his teeth to the edge of her bra and tug.

  She liked it. Her jerky movements, the ebb and flow of tension in her limbs, her caught breath, the nails in his arms told him everything he needed to know about her current state of mind. She wanted more of this now, but when the world returned he figured on her withdrawing to cautious, to polite arm’s distance.

  Before anything else, he wanted her branded with what could be so what was before lost its satisfaction score. Only fair, it’s what she’d done to him.

  Made him less afraid of the dark.

  12: Shadow Comfort

  In the blackness Georgia’s body blazed, lit up like cut crystal shot with sunlight, fractured and reflecting a rainbow of bright pinks and blues. She kept her eyes closed so she wasn’t blinded, so the whorl of heat that made her tremble didn’t end, so Damon’s lips stayed on her skin and his hands held her upright, kept her from floating away like a dust mote.

  Beneath his clothes he was lean and hard muscled. His body caged her in strength, made her fluid with need. She lost all sense of place and time, of purpose other than to feel the shocking weight of unleashed desire low in her gut. She overflowed with it, her breath snagging on it, her ears stuffed, her fingers made claws to hold him, stop him from dissolving into the night where she’d lose him, lose her sanity. It was already altered beyond recognition from his kiss, from the trace of his tongue and the movement of his hands, searching, possessive.

  This would stop, and she’d be ended, burned up, cinder, ash, to rise a Phoenix, new and stronger. Or she’d be straightjacket, padded cell crazy.

  In this moment was everything she’d missed out on as an adult except the sound of his voice. He’d locked that away behind warm searching lips and teeth that could sting to make a place for a soothing tongue to lap. She craved the anchor of his words but heard only the sound of her own desperate breathing and the wet snick and glide of their kisses.

  Then Jace coughing. Then the tinny sound from the headphones on the floor.

  Now the blaze was embarrassment. She pulled away from Damon and that won her his voice. He said, “Intermission,” all husky and shot through with a rumble of grit.

  Intermission was over, it was time for the third act, but he cleared his throat and kept hold of her hand. It was a declaration they weren’t.

  She grabbed for the headsets and they put them on. Damon went into his narration and she forgot to feed him the change. One change in one line, did it really matter they’d messed it up? One kiss had messed her up. Left her knowing she’d do anything for more.

  She tried to focus on the printed script, but Damon’s hand on the back of her neck, the brush of his fingers behind her ear made it hard to keep her place, impossible to talk herself out of having more of his attention; hands to heat her from the inside out, voice to sink her into bliss and tether her to her body, to his.

  He wasn’t Hamish. He didn’t blame her. He hadn’t isolated himself from friends and family. He didn’t need her except in superficial ways and there were other people in his life who stood by him. He sang like he didn’t care that his sound was mastery and it did things to her, reminded her of who she’d once hoped to be.

  But she wasn’t prepared for Damon, the force of him, the energy of him. She’d never had a one-night stand and knew she wasn’t made of the stuff you needed for that, detachment, fearlessness, a healthy self-image. It was no good pretending she could love Damon and leave him. He already loomed too large in her thoughts to be so easily discarded. And yet she couldn’t hold him either, she was too little, too small in her understanding of life, and he was too grand. He’d be bored with her when he realised how ordinary her outlook was, and she wasn’t strong enough to have her heart broken by that truth.

  As if he could read her thoughts or smell her indecision, he turned her face and kissed her and nothing about it was idle. She tasted unexpected things on his lips: curiosity, attention, determination, and it made her shiver.

  She fed him lines and he repeated them. She led him from A to B and back again in a rhythm of grazing bodies, an odd dance of practicality and stumbling purpose that made them both stifle laughter, snatch kisses.

  Not once did she feel like she was responsible for him, that she was the reason he could do what he needed to do. That made no sense. He couldn’t work the script changes without her and despite Ed’s cues, he wouldn’t be able to see the actors to time the lines with specific movements. So he needed help, but this needing felt nothing like being claimed by Hamish. Being needed by Damon didn’t make her feel heavy limbed and headachy, crushed with expectation. It was stunningly different. It was enlivening.

  It was fun.

  The baby didn’t
do it, but was the leading clue. The murder victim was the baby’s daddy. Damon knew, but he’d laughed at her surprise, taken obvious pleasure from knowing the performance engaged and amused her.

  While the audience cheered, they kissed again like it was a new fashion and might be done with before the night was. Damon’s fingers explored her face over the sound of whistling, stomping and rousing applause, and she forgot to be nervous about being caught out by Jace again. Jace had caught on anyway. He didn’t return.

  Damon was still voiceless though, relying on touch to bind her close, wind her up and spool her out like so much insubstantial floss. Her body was his to stage direct. His hands made her pulse thump, her skin bead with sweat, her buttons magically part to expose her to his tongue and teeth. He counted her ribs with tiny nips, he skimmed her waist with the flat of his thumb and traced the edge of her bra with his knuckles. She lost her breath again and again and he lent her his. She lost her balance and he held her up, but inside, where her hopes and fears flourished, she tipped over anyway and sprawled on the floor at the feet of such unexpected delight.

  But it wasn’t meant to last, the suddenness, the fever of it. It was random like the movements of the audience, impromptu like lines in the play, and just as mysterious and thrilling in its conclusion.

  It was also one night only. Had to be, the circumstances were unlikely to be repeated.

  When Damon did speak, it was in that crushed glass voice that growled in his throat, and knowing it was time to move on she tried to kiss him silent to take one more minute, one more grab at the illusion before it was gone.

  His breath across her cheek. “I have to see Dalia.”

  She eased back. “Of course.”

  He drew her close again, brushing her hands away from her shirt, doing her buttons. She might have fumbled them, with fingers thick and dumb from too much hot blood freewheeling through her system. He was steady and sure, but then maybe backstage trysts were not uncommon for him, a night of sport. The thought made her teeth clamp together, made it hard to swallow. She was a fool to think this was more than a performance to him, when it was a front row seat at an exclusive event to her. And he’d lied to get her here.