She followed him inside, struggling not to gawk at first, and then she just gave in. S She openly gaped at the 17th century frescoes on the domed ceilings, and the light pouring in through the massive windows.
“You know, I could probably keep a woman like you busy for the rest of your life,” Kenneth said.
“Is that some kind of double entendre?” she asked suspiciously.
“Good heavens, Chloe, I didn’t realize that academics had such dirty minds. Note to self, make friends with more academics. I meant that there is enough cataloguing work here and at my other houses to occupy your time forever,” he said.
“Hmmph. I’m sure that’s what you meant. I’d like to be shown to my room now.” She felt herself blushing again.
Damn the man. She was sure he was subtly flirting with her, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. If only he’d openly flirt with her, she could slap him down – instead of perpetually embarrassing herself, which seemed to amuse him no end.
A male servant grabbed her luggage from her and led her up a circular stairway, and down a hallway long enough to serve as an airplane’s landing strip.
Her room was enormous, the floor was marble and the ceiling bore an astonishing fresco of cupids and angels against the most beautiful painted blue sky. The bed, with its hand-painted wooden frame, was big enough to host its own orgy; spread across it was a cream colored comforter that looked as soft as clouds. Looking out past the double doors that led to the balcony, she could see the vineyard sweeping out into infinity.
If that pompous, arrogant, stuck-up, self-satisfied playboy jerk is trying to impress me…it’s working, she thought. But she also knew that he wasn’t really trying to impress her; this was a house he’d owned forever, not something that he’d picked out just for her, the artwork had been displayed here before she’d ever met him, and all that he’d done was invite her to assess that artwork.
If he was really interested, wouldn’t he have genuinely made a move by now, instead of joking around? He probably flirted as a reflex, as naturally as breathing.
There was a discreet knock on the door, and she called out “Come in!” The door swung open; she’d been expecting one of the servants, but Kenneth stood there.
Heat flared through her. Kenneth was standing in the doorway of the bedroom, looking slightly rumpled and lickably hot. She could smell his earthy male scent, and a woodsy cologne; what was it about his scent that was so perfectly intoxicating?
Kenneth had taken off his jacket and undone the first few buttons of his blue silk shirt. She could feel her nipples harden into swollen, sensitive nubs, and the juices of arousal soaking through her panties.
“Getting settled in?” he asked, his blue eyes boring into her.
“I like how you color-coordinate your shirt with your eye color,” she said snippily.
“Thank you, I spend hours ensuring that the shade matches perfectly.” He grinned, refusing to be offended.
“Can you show me the artwork now?” She needed to get out of this place as fast as she could. There wasn’t enough oxygen in Italy, apparently, because she was finding it hard to breathe and if Kenneth saw her chest heaving and mistook it for desire, she would die of humiliation.
“I do admire your work ethic. My chef has prepared some snacks for us. She’d be insulted if you don’t at least sample them,” Kenneth said.
“Why are you trying continually trying to fatten me up? I want to look at the collection first,” she insisted as she followed him out of the room. She knew she wasn’t being a very gracious guest. That’s what Kenneth got for oozing sex out of his pores and making her ladybits quiver every time he got close to her.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go for a swim first?” he asked, as they walked down the hallway, on a carpet that she suspected should be in a museum. “The river that runs by the vineyard is as clear as glass.”
Of course she wanted to go for a swim. She loved swimming in her panther form. The cool rush of water was a sensual delight, and lying on a riverbank afterwards, with the sun drying her fur, was pure ecstasy. It was so cold in upstate New York that she hardly ever got to swim. And the thought of sprawling in the grass with Kenneth beside her, blinking his great panther eyes lazily in the sunlight, a purr rumbling in his chest…
“No!” she said, too sharply.
He moved in front of her in one swift, fluid step, blocking her path. Startled, she tripped over a wrinkle in the carpet, and fell into his arms, slamming against him. His fingers started to close on her arms, the blue of his eyes grew even more luminous, and her heart was slamming against her chest so hard that she knew he could feel it reverberating through his own body.
She quickly pushed back away from him, stumbling several steps before she regained her balance.
He moved towards her, stopping just a foot away. She had to tip her head up to look at him.
“What are you afraid of?” he asked.
“You,” she admitted, breathing hard.
“Why? I don’t bite. Well, not unless you ask nicely…”
“Other than the fact that you’re a notorious playboy, and I’ve been raised to mistrust the Chamberlin family my entire life…”
“Why don’t you get to know me before you pass final judgement on me?”
“Why would you even suggest that? I’m far from your type.”
“And you would know this how?” he raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“All those pictures of you on the society pages, with all those women…it’s like you’re running the girlfriend of the month club,” she said indignantly.
He grinned at her. “So you’ve been google-stalking me. I’m very flattered.”
Damn it. He had her – as usual. “It pays to know the enemy,” she said loftily, and turned and stalked off down the stairs.
* * *
The Sumerian artwork was now stored in a room with doors of reinforced steel, with four bear shifters standing guard.
Kenneth leaned forward to let a retina scanner shine a beam into his eyeball in order to get the door to open. After the two break-ins that he’d suffered earlier, he was taking no chances.
The door unlocked, and Kenneth held it open for Chloe. “After you,” he said.
“Thank you. She walked in slowly, reverently.
. Everything that had been found in the sealed up room was now laid out on tables. The room was temperature and humidity controlled.
Chloe’s eyes lit up with amazement as she gazed at the contents of the room. “Oh, my God. This collection…” she breathed reverently. Her mouth was an O of astonishment,, her eyes aglow with passion. “It’s…incredible.”
Would she ever look at him like that? Kenneth wondered, his heart squeezing painfully in his chest. He knew she was attracted to him physically, but would she ever look at him with sheer, utter, adoration, the way she was looking at those pieces of art? Did she even like him, for that matter?
When Kenneth had first laid eyes on her, the physical attraction had been immediate, but the rest of it had crept up on him slowly. The more time that he spent with her, the deeper his feelings grew. All of his life, he’d dated women who were physically stunning, but did nothing for him emotionally. He’d accepted that he was like his parents and grandparents, that he’d never find a fated mate, and rather than settle for a loveless marriage of convenience, he’d resigned himself to a life of casual dating and meaningless sex.
When he was younger, it hadn’t mattered so much. He loved sex. Who cared if there was no emotion attached? But as he grew older, moving on from one beautiful, vacant face to another started to feel hollow, he had to admit to himself. He hadn’t even bothered to go on a date in several months before he met Chloe.
Watching her moving among the tables, pushing her glasses up her nose, stirred an odd feeling inside him. She was brilliant, she was funny, she was brave even when she was scared, and she was fiercely loyal to her family, and she didn’t fall for any of his cheesy lines. The more she ran
away from him, the more he wanted to pursue.
But what if he never captured her?
She stopped at one of the tables, peering at the shards of pottery there, utterly entranced. It was if Kenneth had vanished from the room. He’d never been ignored by a woman before; he suddenly found himself feeling fiercely jealous of a collection of old clay and stone.
He cleared his throat, loudly. She didn’t look up.
“The dates have been authenticated,” Kenneth said, feeling like he needed to contribute something. “They were made around 3000 b.c.”
“Indeed. They are amazing.” She moved rapturously among the pieces, which were laid out on a table. There were shards of pottery with scenes painted on them, and golden helmets, and statues of limestone and of clay.
Laid out on one of the tables were large scale photographs of the stolen statues. Although the artwork had never been examined by an expert and properly catalogued, it had all been photographed when its existence had been discovered after the earthquake.
A small statue sat next to the photographs; it was the statue which the thieves hadn’t bothered to steal.
A tape measure was held up next to the statues in the photographs. It was clear that they were about four feet high and made of limestone, with white shells inlaid as eyes. They had strange heads, with horns growing from them, and wild, bulging eyes. Long forked tongues lapped from their mouths.
“That is very strange,” Chloe said. “I’ve literally never seen anything like those heads. The bodies are classic Sumerian sculpture, right down to the style of the high-waisted goat skin skirts worn by the men, but the heads…”
The statues had a base, and on each base was writing in cuneiform, the ancient alphabet developed by the Sumerians.
She looked over the symbols, and grimaced, looking disturbed.
“What is it?” Kenneth asked.
“I don’t know, these statues just give me a weird, creepy feeling. The writing seems to be saying that no blood must ever touch these statues…unfortunately, translating cuneiform is not a perfect science, and some of these symbols I’ve never seen before.”
Next to the pictures of the stolen statues lay a broad, flat ceramic plaque, which was adorned with a painting in shades of red and black. It featured a gruesome war scene. A huge demon floated over a field of bodies, which were immersed in an ocean of red. Its grotesquely long tongue protruded from its mouth, lapping up blood.
There were two smaller demons in the picture, floating beneath the larger demon. One had horns that curled like a ram, and one had horns like a bull’s.
A man floated above them, on the upper right portion of the plaque, and he held a spear in his hand, and a lightning bolt shot from the spear towards the demons. The man was shown in profile, as was common from art of that period. He wore a helmet and the traditional ankle-length skirt made of goat skins.
Underneath the scene was cuneiform writing. Chloe squinted at the scene, brow wrinkling in concentration.
Kenneth chewed on his lip. Chloe in full-on scholar mode was just about the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. He felt the blood rushing to his crotch, straining against his pants. His heart was pounding in his chest, so hard he feared that she could hear its echo in the huge room.
“Good lord,” Chloe said. “This is the Great Priest Garmesh. This explains so much.”
“Never heard of him.”
“He was the ruler of one of the mightiest cities of that time-period. Basically, in 3000 b.c., most of the population of Sumer had organized into city-states clustered around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The cities were perpetually warring with each other for dominance. They were organized around religious life, with the temple at the center of each city. Garmesh was a priest and the ruler of the largest of the cities, and he had conquered several nearby cities, all these statues and a massive ziggurat were built in his honor, and then he and the city of Kar abruptly vanished from the historical record.”
“Car? Like what you drive?”
“Kar with a K. Well, the cuneiform alphabet doesn’t translate literally to our alphabet, of course.”
Kenneth looked at the picture. “The picture shows him larger than the demons, and above them. It looks as if he defeated them.”
Chloe straightened up to look at him. Her wavy brown hair flowed over her shoulders, silky as a chocolate river. He imagined himself tangling his fingers in that hair, tipping her head back, nibbling at her plump pink lips as if they were sugar candies…
“Very good,” she said, nodding enthusiastically. “The picture does clearly show that he triumphed over them. If they’d won, the picture would have shown him in an inferior position, smaller than them, probably mortally wounded. Well, there might not even have been a picture; these appear to be some kind of demons. Demons probably weren’t big on commemorative artwork.”
Kenneth felt a warm glow wash over him at her approval.
“So do I get a gold star?” Kenneth grinned. “No, wait…I’d like to choose my own prize.”
Chloe choked back an amused laugh.
Now he felt like the dorky kid who’d just won a date with the captain of the cheerleading squad.
Then she grew serious again, looking at the picture.
“So it appears as if his city was attacked by a plague of demons, and he defeated them…but then he vanished, and his city fell into ruins. Why, if he conquered the demons? And why would there be statues of the demons? The Sumerians generally made statues of benevolent deities, of gods who protected them and conferred some benefit – gods who brought rain, the sun god…I would think it would be bad luck to create statues like this.” She shook her head, puzzled and fascinated.
“The statues do seem to bring some kind of bad luck, if what you told me about your grandmother is true. It was after she had contact with the statues that she apparently went mad. Remember, my grandfather acted as if he were on some kind of a mission after that. He travelled back to Turak again and again. I think it’s pretty clear that he was seeking answers as to what happened to her.”
“Perhaps,” she agreed, looking thoughtful. “But he ended up marrying someone else.”
“After five years,” Kenneth pointed out. “And Sophronia was on her third husband by then; her previous two husbands had died. I did the research. And I know that he was under considerable pressure from his family to marry a respectable panther and continue his bloodline. So when the situation with Soprhonia appeared hopeless, he entered a marriage of convenience, but he still kept seeking answers.”
“Why would only she have gone mad, and not him, if they both handled that collection, and both were responsible for purchasing it?” Chloe asked, rhetorically.
Kenneth shook his head. “It’s all a mystery to me,” he said, but she’d already turned back to the statues, and he suddenly felt an odd sort of loneliness deep inside him, a sensation he’d never felt before.
Chapter Ten
Chloe lost track of the time that she spent in the room, meticulously examining each piece, until she could no longer ignore the rumbling in her stomach.
When she looked up, she realized that Kenneth was standing there, waiting patiently.
“Oh! What time is it?” she asked. “I’m sorry, I was a little distracted.”
He smiled patiently. “It’s three p.m. A late lunch or early dinner, depending on how you look at it, is waiting for us outside in the garden.”
He had been extremely gracious, she thought.
“Was that terribly boring for you?” she asked. She hadn’t meant to be openly rude.
“No, not at all. I enjoy watching you work. There’s a passion that you bring to it…” there was a gleam in his eye as he spoke. “You’re lucky that you love your work so much.”
“I am, aren’t I?” Chloe said, surprised. She hadn’t ever particularly thought of herself as lucky before.
She followed Kenneth downstairs, into a kitchen which was as oversized as the rest of the mansion. The flo
or was an apricot colored terra cotta, the gleaming steel refrigerator was industrial sized. They walked through the kitchen and out into the garden, where a plate of appetizers had been spread out before them.
“We could eat in the dining room, if you’d prefer a more formal experience,” he suggested.
“Oh, no, this is fine. I’m not the formal type, myself.” She grabbed a plate and began piling on the appetizers. Stuffed mushrooms, rolls of prosciutto, wrinkly black olives, shrimp drenched in spicy tomato sauce…
She sat down and began working her way through the plate.
“I do love a woman with a healthy appetite,” Kenneth said. She looked at him suspiciously.
“No, I mean it,” he said. “I’m used to women who order lettuce with no dressing for dinner, and then spend their meal staring hungrily at my plate, but refusing to take a bite.”
?” “That’s a shame. You do serve a delicious spread.” She bit into a little sandwich with cheese and capers. Delicious.
Kenneth was charming and attentive as she ate, but didn’t flirt with her at all. He attacked his food with gusto, enjoyed his wine, and made polite conversation.
That was exactly what she wanted, wasn’t it? She’d promised herself a thousand times, perhaps a little too fervently, that she wanted nothing to do with the man.
Then why did she feel herself burning with frustration? Why did she feel as if the distance between them across the table was much too wide, a huge gap that she wanted to bridge?
This is ridiculous, she scolded herself. I can finish up here within a couple of days. I just need to start writing up my findings first thing tomorrow, and I could be home by week’s end.
Home. On the other side of the country from Kenneth, or maybe on another continent. She had no idea what he’d be doing after she left, or where in the world he’d be. That thought left her feeling strangely sad and empty.
Irritated with herself, she scooped up a piece of chocolate mousse, only to watch it slide off her spoon and plop on to her chest. She grabbed a napkin and mopped at her chest.
Had he noticed? He had, hadn’t he, she thought, flushing red with humiliation. He was just pretending not to notice, carrying on, sipping his wine, so as not to embarrass her.
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