“And you are feeling complicated, dangerous and insane?” he asked. His voice was very deep and he could feel his pulse like a trip-hammer in his throat. He wondered for a moment just who was seducing whom.
“Yes.”
Damien stood and walked around the desk. He stepped in front of the lamp where it outlined his body in perfect detail but left his face in shadow. His own passion was rising, fed by both Brice’s words and the storm, and it might be best that she didn’t see him in direct light. The physiological changes would be hard to explain.
“What delightful news.”
She smiled. “Are you sure you want to get involved with someone who admits to insanity?” she asked, turning the tables. He wondered when shyness or caution would intervene in their conversation. Surely it would. Her nature was reserved, dignified. Wasn’t it?
He stared into her eyes. “I’ve known true insanity. This is just a touch of divine madness. In any event, there’s some grand fishing to be had in the deep waters of the psyche,” Damien joked.
“Perhaps. But maybe this is a very shallow pool,” she responded. Casting the stack of letters aside, she rose. “Maybe there isn’t enough water of thought here to raise mosquitoes, let alone game fish. Dive in at your own peril.”
“Give it time. The tide rises quickly.”
It was dark, but Brice saw Damien smile and reach out a hand. Should she take it?
There were compelling reasons to do so, and equally compelling reasons not. She couldn’t sensibly choose between them, because one set of arguments belonged to the realm of reason and the other to emotion. She wanted to touch him.
She looked up, seeking an answer from heaven. But heaven wasn’t visible. The lamp didn’t light more than the desk. It couldn’t. It was a 150-watt bulb, but the vaulted ceiling was high and the light lost heart before reaching it.
She was alone here—just her body, her heart and her mind.
Brice noticed no odor of smoke, and yet the room seemed haunted by the lovely scent of pipe tobacco, so faint that it was little more than a memory. There was another familiar perfume too, but there was no time to hunt down the elusive knowledge of where she had smelled it. Maybe it was the ghosts of those people immortalized in the journals and letters she was reading. Had they turned the tables? Were their spirits now watching their watcher be seduced?
Damien touched her. It seemed that all the heat in his body roared through his hands and stabbed through her skin. It entered every fiber of her body, spreading fire. But it didn’t burn; rather, it melted. All senses fled and Brice’s muscles weakened. She did not resist when he drew her into his arms and then laid her down on the desk.
There was time for one last thought. She’d done it now—broken several personal rules. She was caught up in her own rather gothic romance with the lord of the manor. All that remained to be seen in this piece was whether Damien was a hero or a villain.
Her hair lay over the edge of the desk in a red-blonde rope. Lovely, but he wanted it loose. He reached down and unraveled it quickly. As he touched the strands, soft now, like her expression, he was immediately awash in a surge of emotion that was close to religious ecstasy—not the barren worship he had been raised with at the emotional necropolis that had been his home, but something pure and almost holy and entirely alive.
He sighed happily. Yes, this was what he had sought, what he longed for.
One didn’t need to touch to appreciate Brice’s beauty and the beauty of the moment—but the touch certainly added to the pleasure of the instant. And he needed to know that she agreed.
He looked into her eyes, waiting for assent. At her smile, he began.
He undressed her first, enjoying the tiny buttons of her sweater that revealed her velvety skin by slow, tantalizing inches. She wore a bra, a confection of maroon and lighter rose lace that was more teasing than useful. He kissed around the edges and coaxed the straps down, pushing the lace away.
His fingers explored. He loved the delicate articulation of the muscles beneath her creamy skin. Ah, the beauty of the female body! There were no knots of muscle, no hard bulges, just the smooth, almost liquid flow of movement when she shifted that was so sensual.
Perfect! She was perfect. He took her left breast in his mouth and nibbled with the edge of his teeth.
She tightened like a bowstring and moaned as if the breath were being ripped out of her. She turned her head and bit his shoulder. Such animal response was both thrilling and a warning. Some men liked docile, domestic women, pussycats who purred and cuddled, and certainly the sweet ones had their attractions. But tonight he wanted the tigress. The hunger rising between them was not of the usual sort between a man and a pretty woman. The appetite was immense, an implacable lust that could be sated only if they did not hold back. They needed to feast.
She made a noise that was part moan and part growl. It had no words, but he knew what it meant: Here lies madness. Beware.
So, he had been warned twice. He didn’t care. Especially not when her hands reached up and began undressing him.
She worked efficiently but without haste. As the layers were stripped away, her eyes filled with wonder and questions and heat. She peeled his shirt off slowly, revealing the soft net of golden scars that covered his chest and back. They would become more pronounced as his arousal grew.
He moved toward the light, intent on dousing it, but she reached out quickly and stayed his hand.
“No.” Her voice was soft but definite. She went back to undressing him, unbuckling his slacks and pushing them away. “I’m not afraid to see. You should know that the only way I ever do things is with my eyes wide open.”
She reached for him, but he caught her hands. He held them still for a moment and then kissed them.
“Patience.” His voice was rough, filled with the energy of the storm outside.
“Why? You don’t look patient.”
Byron followed her line of sight and looked down at his penis risen to attention. He laughed once. The showoff! Selfish, inconsiderate, gluttonous, always desiring its way—and immediately. But it was as reliable as the tides when it wanted something. And it wanted Brice Ashton very much.
“Damien?”
He realized he was still smiling as he held her hands, and Brice was now looking a little concerned. Laughter was an inappropriate response at the moment, but storms always left him feeling a little high and wild. And the storm would only grow. Windy fists, harbingers of that assault to come, struck the glass, their power only slightly lessened by being diverted around the buildings of the city. He should leave Brice until the storm had passed. Failing that, he should reassure her somehow.
Then he realized that she wasn’t staring because he was laughing. She was staring at the vein that pulsed just beneath the skin of his organ, and at the foreskin—such an anomaly in this day and age—that was laced with a mesh of golden scars which were now quite evident.
“It looks like lightning,” she murmured, marveling and not appalled. The hair on her head began to stir as static electricity crept through it.
“It is.”
Could she also see that he hummed like a tuning fork? That his muscles had taken in an electrical charge, drawing from the atmosphere of the room and the storm without, and they were begging for a chance to expend that energy in some physical activity?
“I wish I could say that I feel respectful, for you deserve it.” His voice was low and rough as he looked into her eyes. “But you must settle for libidinous reverence rather than esteem.”
“The strongest emotions don’t respect what is proper and decent and nice.” She again managed to sound reasonable, in spite of the pulse hammering in her throat—and he loved that too.
“No—and thank God they don’t. What’s the point of spontaneous sex that isn’t mindless and crazy?”
“I haven’t a clue,” she answered, though of course they both knew what else it could be if emotion was allowed to intrude into the proceedings.
>
Brice tugged her hands free, and this time he didn’t stop her when she reached for him.
He crouched, ignoring the crisp sound of crumpling paper beneath her on the desk, and lowered his mouth to hers. It was like kissing lightning. Power poured from his mouth to hers, mixed with her own divine fire and then rebounded, stabbing through his nerves where the charge redoubled.
Her hands were cool on his skin, but not enough to stop the heat rising in him. No, not nearly enough, as her hands slipped around his flanks and traced the cleft of his bottom. He could feel her exploring, one hand sliding over his buttocks and then between, the other roaming around to the front of his body. Her touch was gentle, soft as a fall of apple blossom as she coaxed the foreskin up his shaft, but he felt every stroke, every nerve. In that moment he was all sensitized flesh.
“Your halo is so bright,” she whispered.
He knew she was right. Only, it wasn’t a halo. He could feel the lightning beginning to dance over his skin. The reaction was too intense. He should stop, or think of baseball, or—
“So beautiful,” she whispered, and then turned back to his lips. He didn’t mind that her kiss turned harder, less refined. She cradled him in the relative coolness of her body, accepting his heat—even demanding it.
He moved down to her breasts, suckling strongly and drawing another moan from her as she curled fingers into his hair and pulled it forward toward her lips. He went lower, biting the underside of her breast with enough force to mark but not break the skin. Then, distracted by the weight, he lost himself in the sensation of smooth, cool skin gliding over his face.
Though she resisted with her handholds, he slid lower. Her scent aroused him, a patchouli that was universally feminine and yet specific. He had been humoring her earlier when he talked of Fate—and yet it almost seemed that destiny had taken a hand. Pheromones couldn’t have reached him all the way from where she was in South Carolina—unless perhaps they had clung to her manuscript…
He stopped thinking, explaining. This was something that just was.
Damien’s hands flexed on the muscles of her thighs, urging them to open. She writhed under the exploration of his fingers, crying out when his thumb flicked over her and then slipped inside. Her legs moved restlessly, shifting the drifts of antique paper and spilling some onto the floor.
He set his mouth to her, enjoying how this flesh also changed. He wanted to devour her, to climb inside; he was going to detonate, perhaps electrocute them both. The electricity dancing over his skin was visible now and pouring onto Brice as well.
He had to end it immediately; it was too dangerous to wait. Such play could come later when the first burst of arousal had passed and the storm calmed outside.
Damien slid back up her body, and her legs whipped around him as though securing him against another escape. She was ready. He slid into her. The tempest was on him immediately. There was a flash of light, a sheet of whiteness that passed down their bodies in both directions from where they were joined. Brice screamed once when the shock threw her into erotic convulsions, and he followed immediately. He found release.
He collapsed on her when his muscles unclenched. The small lightning of last desire danced over their skin and died out slowly, a last fizzle of eerie, incandescent light. Brice’s eyes were mere slits, and Damien wondered if she had seen what had happened.
And if she had, what she would say.
After a moment he shifted off of her and onto his side. “That was wonderful,” she whispered, sounding a bit stunned. “It was also really weird.”
So she had noticed. Well, what had he expected? They had just lit up the room like a searchlight.
“More wonderful than weird?” he asked, bracing for the next question she would ask.
But, as always, she surprised him.
“I’ll let you know in a minute. I’m thinking wonderful, but my brain isn’t working right.”
“Please, don’t let me rush you.”
“You couldn’t, not at this moment.” She turned her head and closed her eyes as though exhausted.
Damien, who felt energized rather than drained, took the opportunity to drink her in. He didn’t care for the modern obsession with hair removal, particularly not the strange goatee achieved by the Brazilian bikini wax. Brice did not have this issue.
He ran a finger along the edge of her inner thigh, outlining the soft blonde curls. Yes, he would play here again. When it was safe. When there was no storm outside. Or inside.
“That tickles.” Brice’s eyes cracked open, She looked down at his hand and blushed slightly. “I know. It looks a bit like a merkin. But I assure you it isn’t a wig.”
Her words startled Damien to laughter. He had forgotten about the old craze for pubic hair wigs.
Brice smiled wryly. “I wasn’t planning on seducing you, you see. Not tonight. Obviously. I would have shaved.” She added, “And I would have chosen a better location for seduction. As it is, I think I have a stapler embedded in my back.”
Damien, manners finally recalled, helped Brice off of the desk. She stood slowly and then, with a frown, started peeling off the papers that perspiration had glued to her body. Damien looked on with interest. The photocopies’ ink had transferred to her buttocks in a sort of reverse print. The left cheek said The Collected Letters of Marquis Sévigné. The right cheek was harder to make out but said something about the philosopher Saint Evremond.
“The two men were never so close,” he murmured.
“What?”
He reached for her, turning her back to the giant mirror that hung on the wall. “Look.”
Brice peered over her shoulder and made a disgusted sound as she tried to rub the print away.
“Please tell me there are no security cameras around here. This isn’t something I want preserved for posterity.”
“None. There are the wages of sin, though. You can’t hide from them,” he told her, shaking his head with mock sadness. His eyes danced, still sparkling wildly.
“Then it’s your lot to help cleanse my…soul.” She put the damp papers carefully aside. “I’m just thankful it wasn’t the originals. I don’t know what I was thinking!”
Spoken like a true historian.
“Your soul?” he asked, relieved and yet perplexed that she hadn’t asked him any questions about what had just happened. Surely she was puzzled by what had occurred at the moment of climax.
Her next words confirmed that she understood part of what had occurred, that she understood the lightning that had swept through them.
“My soul, and anything else you messed up with your lustfulness,” Brice said, taking his hand and towing him toward the guest bathroom. She added thoughtfully: “I hope we don’t end up brain damaged from making love in water. Do you think that could happen?”
Chapter Nine
The corpse was dismembered and the dissevered limbs cast into the pit where they continued to move about for an entire day, only gradually losing mobility. My assistant called it an abomination—and perhaps it was. But all I could think of were the applications in battle. Imagine an army where the soldiers could be killed, have limbs struck off, and yet continue to battle. What would such a warrior be worth?
—From the medical journal of Johann Conrad Dippel
I should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law. And even then, I might have carried it through if I could have been sure of becoming a ghost and haunting her.
—Lord Byron in a letter to Thomas Moore
Not quite adultery, but adulteration.
—Byron, Don Juan
A while later, when they were curled up by the fire in the library, sipping at some horrendously expensive brandy, Brice finally got around to the subject of their unusual lovemaking. But even then, her methods were indirect and delicate, guiding the conversation yet giving Damien room to answer or not as he chose.
“That’s some physiogn
omy you’ve got. It seems to work like a dynamo. Still, if it always has that effect…?”
“Nearly always,” Damien confirmed.
She smiled a little. “I guess you like winter a lot, then.”
“This winter,” he answered, his hand running down the curve of her waist, wanting her skin but settling for the soft flannel of her nightgown. He liked the way her hair looked when it was slightly damp. It fell into messy ringlets that glowed in the firelight.
“Does it ever get embarrassing?” Brice asked curiously. “I’m thinking especially when you were a teenager.”
“I’ve learned to control it,” he said and then frowned. “Except during very particular kinds of storms. But I remain home for those special events. When the raging outside is no match for the one within, it’s best to stay indoors and away from temptation.”
“I would think so.”
“Anyway, I didn’t have this…condition when I was a teenager.”
She nodded calmly. After a moment, obviously coming to some decision, she said in her most reasonable way, “Many people don’t know it, but intuition is really the most sophisticated sort of reasoning that humans have. It comes from both the conscious and unconscious, putting together many clues buried in both sides of the brain. I think everyone has it, but few choose to listen when it speaks. Perhaps that is because the same process causes imagination—which is usually embarrassingly wrong about what it conceives.”
“Your intuition is speaking?” Damien asked. His body tensed slightly but he didn’t turn away. This was what he wanted, wasn’t it—someone to finally understand?
“Yes. Or else my imagination.” She rolled over to face him, then draped an arm over his waist. She kissed the part of his chest that peeped through the V of his shirt. “Whichever it is, my gut is telling me something that should be impossible. But I don’t think it is. Which presents me with an intriguing problem.”
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