Fire in the Wind

by Alexandra Sellers

  Jake's glance broke away from hers to take in the papers from the file she had stolen from his desk. She had landed on the sofa among them, and they lay littered all around her now, on the sofa and floor. "You're a thief, too," he observed flatly, cruelly, but she saw that he had to swallow before he spoke.

  "And who are you?" she demanded contemptuously. "The angel Gabriel? Nobody makes a million dollars these days without stepping on a few toes, do they?" A lock of hair fell over her eye and with an impatient jerk of her head she tossed it back. "Is this how you deal with your business rivals? Get them thrown into prison for doing the same kind of thing you do yourself?" She felt a paper under her hand on the sofa, and closed her fist on it. "Is this what you came for?" she demanded, holding the wrinkled page up to him. "This nasty, spying little bunch of documents that's going to cause my final downfall? Take it!" She threw it violently toward him, but the paper floated ineffectually down to the floor. Vanessa jumped up, grabbing other papers as she did so.

  "You hate me!" she exclaimed, ripping, crumpling, tearing the papers between her hands and throwing them wildly at his dark angular face. "I didn't believe it before, but I believe it now! I know it now! I've seen this, and this, and this—" she threw the torn pages at him "—and nobody could do what you're going to do unless they were filled with hate!

  "Well, all right, here's your revenge! Take it! Make me a criminal, get me sent to prison! No matter what happens to me there, I still couldn't become a worse animal than you are right now, Jake! Because I loved you—in spite of everything, I loved you—right up to this moment! And you've let life poison you—you're full of hate, and that makes you the lowest form of life there is! I look at you now and I can't imagine how I ever loved you."

  She stood straight, the shredded papers between them on the floor. Jake was unmoving, watching her. "You're contemptible. You haven't the faintest idea about life or love. And when I think I let you touch me, let you make love to me, wanted you to—" she shuddered, "—it makes me cringe. It makes me feel as though I'd let spiders and snakes crawl over my body and—"

  He reached out and jerked her against him, the look on his face almost a snarl. "That's enough," he said. His hand touched her throat. "Shut up."

  The electric humming in the air was suddenly so powerful it deafened her. Vanessa felt panic hit her in a giant slapping wave that nearly carried her way. "I won't shut up!" she shrilled. "Let me go!"

  The look in his dark eyes changed as he stared at her, and his arm around her back tightened its hold. "My God, Vanessa," he whispered, and bent and kissed her.

  She wanted to scream. She felt as though a trap had suddenly closed around her, the trap of his arms and his mouth, making it impossible for her to move.

  She had to force herself into action, lifting her arms to fight him, jerking her face away from the hungry pressure of his mouth. She dragged in a ragged gasp of air, pressing away from him. "Let go of me!" she cried, and with her free hand she slapped his face.

  Jake let her go so suddenly that she fell backward to the floor. She lay there in momentary shock, then was suddenly seething, as angry as she had ever been in her life. Jake's eyes were black as he stared down at her; he hadn't moved even to touch a hand to his flushed cheek. He stood like a street fighter, his arms loose at his sides, waiting.

  "Get up," he commanded. His lips hardly moved, but a pulse was beating in his throat, and suddenly Vanessa's stomach was a swirl of confusion. Slowly she got to her feet a short distance from him, facing him and watching his eyes take in the flash of her flesh in the black robe's opening.

  "You—" she began when she was standing, but he reached out roughly and pulled her to him with such unexpected violence that it took her breath away. His kiss was angry, harsh, and his strong hands gripped her forcefully as his tongue thrust deeper into the softness of her mouth.

  She went up in flame all at once, like an explosion; the hot roar of her own burning deafened her. She forgot everything then, was aware only of the most immediate messages of her body and brain: there was a hand on her breast; it was Jake's hand.

  Under the fierce pressure of his lips she moaned, half in pain, half in ecstasy, but his angry intensity only burned higher so that his touch seared her.

  He broke off the kiss when he was ready and stared into her eyes as one hand moved to stroke the thick tumble of her hair. The intensity of that touch, too, was nearly painful, and the passionate response of her own body to it terrified her.

  "Stop," she whispered.

  Every muscle in his face was pulled taut; he looked like a granite carving of himself. His dark eyes devoured her. As though she had not spoken he pushed her away from him.

  "Go into the bedroom," he said in flat command. "Take off your robe."

  She closed her eyes, silently fighting against the effect that his voice had on her, fighting not to obey. He understood that. With a brief crooked smile he pulled her back to him then and held her tight while one dark hand found her breast. He rasped the nipple gently with his thumb, his eyes harshly, cruelly watching her face.

  Electricity flowed from his fingers through her breast and arm, down across her stomach and along her legs, so that she could hardly stand. She moaned and bit her lip and opened her eyes to see him staring into her face as though he needed the sight of her roused desire to stay alive.

  The look on his face was like a blow to the stomach, and she heard the little grunting cry she made with distant surprise.

  "Jake," she pleaded, but there was no shaking his angry control.

  "Go into the bedroom," he commanded again.

  She felt stunned, not under her own control. She half-wanted to yield to him, but his cold control frightened her. He let her go and stood rigid and unmoved, waiting. In the jumble of emotion and passion he had stirred in her she wanted to soften his anger, to appease him. And it somehow seemed to her as though he would not touch her again unless she obeyed him—and she needed him to touch her....

  Vanessa licked her lips, opened her mouth to speak, but the look in his eyes stopped her. She was powerless. She could not exert her own will. She had no will. Her body's dictates controlled her now, and her body wanted Jake.

  Vanessa stepped back one and then two paces and then, as though under compulsion, turned and walked through the door to the bedroom.

  He followed her. The sound of each step behind her rippled along her spine as though the vibration were his mouth. At the foot of the bed she turned and stopped. Jake stopped, too, and blinked once, slowly, his heavy lids briefly hiding his dark eyes from her.

  "Take off your robe," he said again, and obediently she did so, letting the rough cloth of the robe slither off her shoulders and down her body to her feet.

  She saw a flicker of fire behind his eyes then and, not taking his eyes from her, he shrugged off his jacket, and his hands dropped to his waist and to free his urgent flesh as she watched.

  "Lie down," he said, watching hungrily as she did so. Then he fell on her, and pushed into her, and the touch of his body seared her skin, and the flicker of his anger made her gasp.

  "Don't ever hit me again," he said, his voice rasping in his throat, while she clenched her teeth to keep back the moan that was ripping its way through her throat as his flesh moved in her. "I don't like it when women hit me. Do you hear?" He waited, wanting an answer. "Do you hear?"

  "Yes, yes!" she gasped wildly, not knowing how she formed the word, and he thrust home again.

  "Good," he said with a crooked smile. "Now—" he bent his head and she felt the heat of his mouth against her throat and cried out the response of her body "—tell me again that you don't like it," he said, his mouth moving down to the white rise of her breast. "Tell me this is spiders and snakes crawling over your skin. Tell me you hate it, Vanessa." His body, his voice, his mouth were urgent against her, demanding, and she was helpless under the onslaught of pleasure that assailed her with every stroke.

  "Jake," she begged, and he look
ed into her dark eyes and knew she could not say it. Suddenly his anger swelled in him, and his black eyes narrowed and his scar pulled the muscles of his face.

  "Don't—ever—tell—me—not—to—touch—you," he said, slowly, harshly, timing his words with each thrust of his body. His hands jerked her arms above her head and closed tightly on her wrists, and she felt the wild climb of passion begin in her body as his body and his anger beat against her. "Don't ever tell me you don't like the touch of my body or my mouth or my hands. I know what you like better than any man living or dead—don't I?"

  It was drowning her, crashing her over and over like a huge wave, smashing her with sensation.

  "Jake!" she cried.

  "That's right," said his voice in her ear, his body beating the time. "Jake—Jake—Jake. Don't you forget it. And don't you ever tell me any different."

  She howled then, as sensation billowed up in her, a sweep of bright blackness that enclosed her brain in a smothering blinding swirl of utter physical joy. Through the churning blackness she felt his hands clench convulsively on her wrists, heard his voice call her name in helpless surrender, and then his body against hers at last was out of control.

  * * *

  Reason returned slowly. To Vanessa, her head in the hollow of his shoulder and the cloth of his shirt under her cheek, it was like waking up from a drugged sleep, a deep, deep dream.

  She sat up slowly, looking down at him, and slowly, slowly remembered. She felt appalled, sick at what had happened. What had he done to her to make her submit like that, when she knew he hated her, wanted to destroy her?

  Jake's hand moved against her back, stirred in her long tangled hair, and she felt rather than saw his eyes open. With a sudden shudder Vanessa pushed her way down to the end of the bed and bent to pick up her robe.

  In front of the sofa the carpet was littered with torn crumpled papers, mute evidence of everything she had forgotten, everything she now remembered. Tying the belt of her robe with a little snap Vanessa moved across to the sofa and gazed helplessly around. Then she bent to pick up the buff unlabelled folder and knelt on the floor.

  She picked up every scrap of paper, smoothing and straightening each one and placing it in the file folder. After a few minutes she became aware that Jake was in the doorway watching her, but she didn't hesitate in what she was doing, didn't indicate by the flicker of an eyelash that she was aware of his presence—until she had collected and meticulously smoothed every piece of paper.

  Then she stood up and faced him. "There you are," she said coldly, dropping the folder onto the coffee table with a small slap. "That's what you came for—all your precious evidence that's going to put me in prison—take it. Take it and get out."

  "Vanessa." His voice was a flat command, and it enraged her. She gritted her teeth.

  "My fingerprints are all over it, if you want evidence that I'm a thief, too, and all over your desk drawer as well, I'm sure. A criminal breaking into an office to remove evidence of her crime: the police will like that, won't they? And you will, too," she said sneeringly. "It'll make you feel how pure and upright you are by comparison, won't it, Mr. Angel Gabriel?" She drew her lips into a tight smile. "But before you get completely carried away with your own integrity, let me remind you that you aren't so far above rape as you thought!"

  Jake threw up his head. It was the first indication she had had that he could hear what she said. "I didn't rape you," he said in a gravel voice.

  "What was it you called it?" she asked brightly. "The animal bludgeoning of body and spirit? Unimaginative, you said, and I have to concur. I only hope you found it as unsatisfactory as it was unimaginative."

  She didn't know where the words were coming from. She had a bitch living inside her whom she had never met before. Now she laughed mirthlessly and pointed at the folder on the table beside her.

  "Please take your evidence and go. If you need more revenge, send me to prison. But—" she stared coldly into his eyes, "—do—not—ever—touch—me—again." She gave each word equal space and emphasis.

  "Damn it, Vanessa—" he began, and with a wild oath she picked up the folder and strode across the room to thrust it into his arms.

  "Get out of my house!" she growled in a raw animal voice, feeling that if he did not leave, her mind would snap. Her voice rose to panic. "Get out!"

  He swore, a steady impatient stream of curses, and left her, walking out to the hallway and down the stairs without another word or look. Vanessa waited at the top of the stairs until she heard the outside door slam. Then she ran down to the foyer to make sure he had left.

  His car was at the curb. She saw the interior light come on, saw him throw the file folder into the passenger seat as he got in. Then there was blackness again, till the engine roared into life and the bright headlights reached out into the night.

  Vanessa made sure both doors were locked and ran upstairs. But the apartment no longer seemed her safe haven from the world.

  * * *

  Vanessa had discovered that running her own business meant she simply couldn't work a forty-hour week like everyone else. She worked late at Number 24 during the week, almost always the last person to leave at night, and when there was extra pressure on—as now, when she was designing the summer line—she frequently worked on Saturday.

  Today, striding through the streets of Vancouver in jeans, sneakers and a heavy sweater, her long hair swinging in a ponytail, her portfolio under her arm, she was glad to be going to Number 24. Work meant she would have to concentrate, and that meant there would be no room to be thinking of other things.

  It was a chilly, beautiful, sunshiny day. From her home to Number 24 was a walk of about twenty-five minutes, and she had got into the habit of walking every day unless it was particularly wet. October had been very wet so far, and it felt wonderful to be walking again under clear skies.

  A blue-and-white police car drove past, and Vanessa shuddered inwardly. It was an unfamiliar feeling: she had never been afraid of the police in her life. But supposing Jake had gone to them last night? Suppose there was a warrant out for her arrest?

  Vanessa looked up at the clear open sky and felt her own freedom. She could go anywhere, do anything... especially in this wonderful mad city where even the most eccentric behaviour and dress were greeted with an easy benign tolerance by the people at large.

  Jake wanted to take this away from her. Or perhaps all he wanted was to feel that he could: to make her live with this tormenting feeling of being under threat. That she didn't know was the torture.

  She unlocked the door of Number 24 with a sudden sense of the futility of what she was doing: working so hard to make a success of something that would be snatched away from her the moment she succeeded. But she couldn't have done anything else. She was committed to Number 24, as Jake had predicted. She wanted to make it successful.

  She worked all morning on the summer line, incorporating appliqués in both the horseshoe emblem and a large 24 in figures with a small written "number" over the two. She had decided not to restrict herself to one single emblem: Number 24 was quite unique as a name; she could use it in any way without its losing its distinctiveness.

  After several hours, for relaxation, she sat at the sewing machine and began to stitch the black velvet costume she was making for a masquerade party Robert and Maria had invited her to on Halloween.

  "Come as Someone," she had been instructed, and Robert had told her that the party was an annual event and that people were usually pretty imaginative with their costumes. Vanessa had decided to go as the Cavalier poet Richard Lovelace. Using a sketch in a large costume book that had been her constant companion since her second year of college, she had designed knee breeches and a jacket in black velvet with a collar and cuffs that would require several yards of lace. She hadn't bought that yet and might go hunting through the stores for it this afternoon.

  But after an hour of sewing and pinning, and without conscious decision, she suddenly found herself r
ooting through her big shoulder bag for David Latham's business card.

  "David Latham, Q.C.," it read, and she wondered what the letters meant. He had written his home number on the back of the card; he answered on the second ring.

  "Vanessa!" he exclaimed rather breathlessly, as though he were in the middle of some heavy exercise. "No tennis this morning? I was sure we'd see you at the club."

  She explained about working, and he clucked his tongue and berated her gently for the waste of a perfect Saturday. Finally she said, "David, I need some legal advice, and I think I need it urgently. If you're free for lunch, would you mind eating with me?"

  They decided on a restaurant named Victoria Station that had some quiet corners, David said, and Vanessa put down the phone with a sudden relief that told her how unconsciously tense she had been.

  Victoria Station was named and decorated after the railway station of that name in London. Vanessa had never been to England, and she supposed the décor was more like something from 1890 than modern-day England, but she liked the atmosphere, the sense of foreignness. And, as David had promised, the restaurant had some quiet corners.

  "David, have you ever heard of the fifth estate?" she asked, when they were settled in one of the corners and had ordered their meal, and he was looking expectantly at her.

  David wrinkled his forehead. "You mean the TV program?"

  "The TV program! I don't—is that what it is?"

  David shrugged. "There's a program called 'the fifth estate' on CBC. Where did you hear the name?"

  "I read it—written down with an address. Could that be it?"

  "I don't see what else it could be. The address can always be checked out."

  This was too confusing, Vanessa thought. What on earth would a TV program have to do with her?

  Abruptly her eyes were wide with a sudden thought. "What kind of a show is it?" she asked, but the answer was already forming inside her own brain.

  "Oh, an investigative-journalism, public-crucifixion kind of thing," David replied. "I suppose you could call it Canada's answer to '60 Minutes'."