Cameron went very still, lying back on the cloak as he watched her warily.
“It is not very much like a herm, is it?” she said musingly. Those ancient talismans, tall, straight pillars with a startlingly large organ below, had thus far been her only experience of the male private parts. The reality was ever so much better. “Can I touch it?”
Cameron laughed roughly. “Only if you want all this to be over before it begins. Come here, my Aphrodite, and kiss me again before I go utterly insane.”
Calliope fell happily back into his arms, their lips meeting, heartbeats melding. There was nothing at all careful about this kiss, it was all sun-hot desperation, urgent need that burst free like fireworks into the night sky. Calliope felt the slide of his hands on her back as he released the last tapes of her gown. The breeze was cold on her skin, but she was hardly aware of it. Clothes were only a prison now, a barrier between her and the touch of his own bare flesh. She shrugged her gown away, rising above him as a naked goddess.
“Calliope,” he groaned, his hands on her hips, holding her still for his starving gaze. “You are truly glorious.”
“Not as glorious as you,” she whispered. “My beautiful Greek god.”
Still holding her tightly, he rolled her beneath him, on to the softest part of the cloak. Calliope laughed as her hair spilled all around them. She did feel glorious as he looked at her, felt free at last, as she knew she would! The past was gone. There was only now, this one moment, where she was one with the man she loved. He kissed her, and all thought vanished into sheer, undiluted sensation.
She closed her eyes, revelling in his caress, the press of his mouth on her breast, the curve of her ribs. Her palms slid over his back, so strong and young, so alive under her touch. Her legs parted as she felt his weight lower between them, the press of that hot, heavy organ she marvelled at.
She knew what would happen; she and Clio had once secretly peeked at some of her father’s ancient sketches of Dionysian rituals and Pompeii bawdy houses. But those images never hinted at how it felt. Of the heady, dizzy sensation of falling, falling, lost in another person. Another world entirely.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he gasped.
Calliope smiled, feeling the press of the tip of his penis against her, the way her whole body ached for that final union that meant he was hers. “You never could.”
She spread her legs wider, invitingly, and he drove inside her. It did hurt; how could it not? A burning pain, but it was nothing to the way he filled her, joined with her at last. She arched her back against the pain, wrapping her arms and legs around him so tightly he could never escape her.
“You see? You didn’t hurt me,” she whispered. “I feel completely perfect.”
Cameron laughed tightly. “Not half as ‘perfect’ as I do. My beautiful, wonderful Calliope.”
Slowly, so slowly, he moved again within her, drawing back, lunging forward, just a little deeper, a little more intimate every time. Calliope squeezed her eyes closed, feeling the ache ebb away until there was only the pleasure. A tingling delight that grew and expanded inside, spreading through her arms and legs, her fingertips, out the top of her head like flames. Pleasure unlike any she had ever known or imagined.
She cried out at the wonder of it all, at the bursts of light behind her closed eyes, blue and white and red, like spinning Catherine wheels. The heat and pressure were too much, too much! How could she survive it without being burned up, consumed?
Above her, around her, she felt Cameron tense, his back arch. “Calliope!” he shouted out.
And she exploded, consumed by those lights. She clung to him, falling down into the fire.
After long moments—hours or days?—Calliope slowly opened her eyes, sure she had tumbled into a volcano. But it was the same forest clearing, the looming trees and pale moonlight of everyday life.
A life with a new sparkle.
Beside her, collapsed on to the cloak, his arms tight around her waist, was Cameron. His eyes were tightly closed, his limbs sprawled out in exhaustion.
Calliope smiled, feeling herself ever so slowly floating back to earth. She felt the crackle of twigs and leaves beneath the fabric, the press of a stone against her hip. The soreness of her limbs, of her most secret places. It didn’t matter, though. Nothing mattered but this time out of time. She had become Aphrodite, at least for a moment. Or perhaps she had just become truly herself.
Calliope half-drowsed, warm where her skin pressed to Cameron’s, the night breeze playing over her body until she shivered. She felt sore and tired—and lighter than she had ever been before! Surely she could soar right up into the trees.
Cameron’s arm was heavy over her waist, and she curled herself tighter into the haven of his body, feeling his breath on her shoulder, the uncoiled strength of his muscles under her touch as she lightly ran her fingertips to his elbow and down again to his wrist.
“Oh, Calliope,” he murmured into her hair. “I can’t pretend to understand you. But I do know one thing.”
Calliope smiled. “And what might that be?”
“That you are truly magnificent.”
She laughed, and rolled over to face him. The moonlight outlined his beautiful features, casting sharp angles, mysterious shadows across his eyes and brow. She traced his face carefully, all those commonplace things—nose, lips, cheekbones—that made up the wonderful thing he was. Cameron.
“I would have thought you would call me bossy,” she said. “And managing…”
“Those things, too,” he teased. He caught her hand in his, pressing her fingers to his lips, one after another. Calliope trembled. “My darling, managing Athena. What made you what you are?”
“I wondered the same thing about you,” she said. “You are so unlike anyone else I know. Have ever known.”
He laid back on their cloak, his arms stretched under his head as Calliope sat up, gazing down at him. His expression was blank. “Me? I am the simplest of creatures, as easy to read as a book.”
Calliope snorted. “A book in Latin, mayhap. I seldom understand you at all.”
Cameron laughed, reaching out to catch her around the waist and drew her close again. “You surely understood me very well tonight!”
“Don’t tease.” Calliope slapped him lightly on the shoulder. “I want to understand your mind, too.”
“Perhaps I just seem a puzzle because I did not grow up here, as your other suitors did. I often don’t feel English at all.”
Fascinated by this glimpse of his past, Calliope rested her head on his shoulder. “Do you feel Greek, then?”
“Not that, either. Perhaps I don’t really belong anywhere.”
A cold sadness touched Calliope’s heart. As vexing as her family could be, as maddening as their squabbles and disorderly ways were, she did know she belonged with them. That they were a part of her, whether she liked it or not. “What was your childhood like, Cameron?”
He shrugged, and she felt the smooth ripple of his muscles beneath her. His fingers moved gently in her hair. “Perfectly ordinary, I would have said. I knew nothing else. I thought everyone spent their lives moving from Florence to Naples, Lake Geneva to Rome to Vienna. I loved seeing new places, learning new ways of life.”
New ways of life. And Calliope had only ever known one. “Why did your parents choose such a nomadic existence? Your father’s studies?”
“That, of course. He was always in search of new objets, new curiosities. Just as so many of our friends do. But also…”
“Also what?”
“My mother was not truly—comfortable in England.”
Calliope realised she knew little about the late Lady Westwood, except that she had been Greek. And, from the one or two times Calliope had glimpsed her, very beautiful, with the same sculpted features and cognac-coloured eyes as her son. “She was homesick?”
“Probably. And she had a natural melancholy, too. She never showed that to me, of course. With me, she was always cheer
ful and smiling, always telling me tales of her own childhood or one of the Greek gods. Artemis was her favourite. But even as a child I could see the sadness in her eyes. The loneliness of having left her home for a place where she could never be fully accepted.”
“But she was a countess!” Calliope cried, aching for the unhappiness of a woman she had never known.
“A countess who was the daughter of a Greek scholar. Oh, she was invited places, of course, and a few people—like your parents—were her friends. Yet I think she always missed the warmth of her homeland, the spirit of her own people. She especially missed the island of Delos, the birthplace of Artemis and Apollo, where her father often took her in his studies.”
“Was she happy when your father took her to the Continent?”
“Happier, I think. It was sunnier there, the people more open. She never went back to Greece, though. She died in Naples when I was still very young, and I was sent back to England to school.”
“So, you went to Greece for her.”
Cameron laughed. “I suppose I did, though I never thought of it like that! I wanted to see if her tales were true.”
“And were they?”
“Oh, yes. True—and more. It was her finest gift to me.”
Calliope gazed up at him, at the wistful glint in his eyes. “She gave you your freedom.”
“My freedom?”
“It’s what I’ve always admired, and envied, in you. The way you care for no one’s opinion—the way you follow your own path in life.”
“It’s not true that I care for no one’s opinion, Calliope. I cannot really be a part of a society that treated my mother unkindly, so I do care little for their rules and strictures. But I very much care what some people think of me, like the Saunders. Like you.”
“Me?”
“Especially you. Your disapproval has cut me to the quick in the past, Athena.”
Calliope gave a startled laugh. “I would never have imagined my opinions would be taken in such a way! And anyway, I feel so very different now.”
“You envy freedom? Care-for-nothingness?”
“Sometimes.”
“And here I have always envied your family.”
“My family? My wild, quarrelsome family?”
“Of course. The way you and your sisters are bonded so tightly together that no one could ever separate you. That is so alluring, you see, to someone with no family at all.”
“I do love them very much. I could never do without them. But sometimes I just want…”
“What is it you want, Calliope?”
She propped herself up on her elbow, swallowing hard. Could she say it? Tell him? She had never spoken of it before, even to Clio. His face was so open as he gazed up at her.
“When my mother was dying,” she said slowly, “I sat beside her and held her hand as the fever raged. And she made me promise to always take care of my father and sisters. She said I had always been so careful of them, so responsible, she could die in peace knowing that they were safe in my hands. That I would always see to their welfare. That I would be their new mother.”
Cameron took her hand in his, twining his fingers with hers. “Such delicate hands for such a great task.”
Calliope tried to shrug it away, as she always had. She was a dutiful daughter, or she tried to be. But how could she convey the heavy feeling that came over her then, like a loop of chains, binding her for ever? “I was the eldest, and I always did feel responsible for my sisters anyway. Ever since Clio was born.”
Cameron wouldn’t let her dismiss those chains so easily, though. His clasp tightened over her hand. “My dear, managing Athena. Of course you care about your family, you want them to be well and happy. But it doesn’t have to be a burden only for your shoulders.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean—I have too much freedom, and you have too many charges. We should share what we have.”
Calliope sat up straight, staring down at him in wary surprise. Did he mean…“What are you saying?”
He drew her down on to his chest, stroking the tangled length of her hair as one would soothe a startled bird. “We work well together, do we not?”
Calliope sucked in a shaky breath. “We argue. All the time.”
“Not all the time. We didn’t quarrel for, oh, at least two hours tonight, did we not?”
She had to laugh. “Our mouths were too busy.”
“Ah, you see! You made a joke. You must feel freer already.” He cradled her closer, as if he would not let her go. “Just rest now. We have a few hours until daybreak.”
And a few hours to change her very life.…
Chapter Twenty
“Since the ladies have gone into the village to do some shopping, I thought you gentlemen might like to peruse these,” Lord Kenleigh said, unlocking a hidden safe in his library and drawing forth a silk-bound album. “Lady Kenleigh doesn’t know I have them, of course. I bought them in Italy years ago, when I was on the Grand Tour.”
Cameron was only half-attending to Lord Kenleigh and his album, predictably filled with erotic etchings of various goddesses and mythological figures. His mind kept turning on the night before, and Calliope and their burst of irresistible passion.
He was truly bewitched by her fathomless dark eyes. How else to explain why he got involved in her harebrained scheme to somehow find the Lily Thief? Anyone clever enough to snatch that diadem would easily elude their fumbling detective work. And Cameron could rather see the thief’s point—Averton, Lady Tenbray and their ilk were hardly responsible stewards of ancient culture.
But he had come to see Calliope’s view, too. Theft, no matter the artistic motives, was not a solution. This was not Greece, where banditry ruled. Theft was quickly and sternly dealt with in England. And Cameron was beginning to fear that the thief was closer than Calliope thought. Perhaps even one of the members of her beloved Ladies Society.
He never wanted to see Calliope hurt, never wanted to see those beautiful eyes clouded with pain, that wonderful confidence falter. Especially after last night. Nothing was the same now.
“Ah, now, this one is delightful,” Herr Mueller said. Cameron glanced up to see that the professor had abandoned the naughty etchings of Leda and the swan, Danae and the shower of gold, to examine the more conventional paintings displayed on the walls.
Cameron strolled over to peer closer at the canvas. It was “Cupid Blindfolding Youth”, a tiny pink-and-white cherub laughing and tying a scarf over the eyes of a young woman. Glossy dark curls draped over her bare shoulders as her white silk gown slipped off, and she, too, was laughing, one hand outstretched as if reaching for the viewer.
She looked like Calliope, in those rare moments when she forgot herself in merriness. The curve of her lips, the faint rosy flush on her cheeks.
“Delightful, indeed,” Cameron said.
“This one, too, is very fine,” Herr Mueller said, pointing out a scene of Socrates lecturing to his followers in the marketplace. Unlike Calliope-Youth, it invoked no emotions in Cameron, but he had to admit that the details were beautifully wrought, the fallen ruins of Greece brought back to vivid life.
“Yes, the columns here and here, the steps Socrates sits on, the colours,” Herr Mueller said. “It evokes what we love about the classical world, ja? Order and symmetry.”
Cameron smiled. “Some would claim ‘order and symmetry’ are cold.”
“But you and I know that is not true, Lord Westwood! The Greek forms can be rigorous and mathematical, yet also full of life.”
Cameron looked back at the raven-haired Youth. “A harmony between passion and order?”
“Exactly so, Lord Westwood. They say you have travelled in Greece?”
“I have. My mother was Greek, I was raised on tales of the gods and goddesses who lived under its hot sky and sun.”
“Then you must understand this dichotomy between rationality and emotion better than most Englishmen. And far better than us Germans! I h
ave studied the order all my life. I cannot seem to grasp the passion. Perhaps I ought to travel to Greece myself, ja?”
“I would definitely recommend it,” Cameron said. “I never really understood the stories myself, until I stood on the land where they originated.”
In truth, he had never fully understood until he met Calliope. Never saw how cool order and hot passion could unite so perfectly.
“Then I will go. Just like all your English poets! How they flock across the Mediterranean. Ah, and here is a painting of the Muses at Helicon!” Herr Mueller pointed out a large scene of the nine Muses, gathered around their sacred spring with their various symbols and accoutrements. “Just like the young fräuleins, the Chases.”
Cameron’s gaze went to the figure in the middle, set slightly higher than the others. Calliope, eldest of the Muses, patron of epic poetry, holding her writing tablet. Unlike the real Calliope, she had golden blonde hair, but her expression was much the same. Steady and serious as she peered out at the viewer.
“Perhaps not exactly like the Misses Chase,” he said.
“Ah, no! For you see, this Clio does not have the red hair. And this Thalia is, how do you say, not so exuberant.”
Cameron glanced at the Thalia, her face half-hidden by the mask of comedy she held up. Beside her sat Clio, light brown hair braided into a neat coronet. She held a scroll and a pile of books. Beside her sandalled foot, springing from the dark green grass, was a single purple hyacinth.
“The artist has made fine use of symbolism,” Herr Mueller said, gesturing to the flower.
“Indeed. For Clio was the mother of Hyacinth…” Cameron’s voice trailed away as he remembered that blasted list. The Grey Dove, the Golden Falcon, the Purple Hyacinth…
The Purple Hyacinth. It couldn’t be. And yet—it made a strange sense.
“…and here we see the Oracle at Delphi,” Herr Mueller said, having moved on to the next painting as Cameron still stared at Clio and her purple flower. Her painted gaze seemed direct, mocking, as if she dared him to say it aloud. “Surely you have been to Delphi, Lord Westwood?”
To Catch a Rogue Page 19