by Various
The words faded in the tense, buzzing silence. Oh, God, what had she said? She didn’t dare look across at Luis, scared to see the mockery and contempt on his beautiful, cruel face. The helicopter was coming lower, she realised with a stab of despair. They were back at the palace and in a moment men in uniforms with blank faces would be opening the doors, forcing her out into the real world again. She would go back to her lavish, lonely suite and the silence and the emptiness, and he would walk away, thinking she was insane.
She closed her eyes, squeezing them tight like she used to do when she was a child and believed that you could get anything by wishing hard enough. They were descending quickly, and she waited for the slight thud of solid ground beneath them before she opened her eyes.
She blinked, expecting to see the wide lawn and the palace beyond, but here it was dark. Secret. She blinked again, looking round in disbelief. They were in a clearing, surrounded by trees.
‘Wh-where—? What—?’
Slowly Luis pulled off his headset and ran a hand through his hair. ‘Sorry,’ he said in a voice like broken glass. ‘I can’t fly like this. I’m not safe. Security will come over soon. You can fly back with them.’
‘No.’
He turned to look at her. His face—his high-cheek-boned face with its generous, sensual mouth—was set hard, as if he was silently enduring some private torment, but those narrow, golden eyes were as dark as treacle, burning with an emotion that made her gasp.
‘I don’t want to be safe,’ she whispered.
She was shaking. Trembling with fear and excitement and wild, urgent need. They weren’t touching at all, but their eyes were locked together.
‘Emily, do you know what you’re saying—?’
‘Yes,’ she said, so quietly it was little more than a shivering breath. ‘Oh, yes.’
The forest was deep and dark, and as Luis pulled her through the trees some ragged birds rose, flapping and shrieking into the faded sky. Emily jumped, her footsteps faltering, so that Luis turned back to look at her. In the velvet twilight his expression was tortured. ‘Do you want to go back?’
‘No.’
It was a low, primal moan. Hearing it seemed to release some instinct in him that he was trying to suppress and he stopped and took her face between his hands, crashing his mouth down on hers and kissing her as if he almost wanted to devour her. As his mouth crushed her lips and moved across her jaw, her throat, Emily felt her shaking legs buckle and collapsed against the trunk of a massive tree, surrendering to the waves of ecstasy that were battering her.
Suddenly Luis pulled away, and cold dread gripped her.
‘Don’t stop…please, Luis…’
‘Christo, I have to,’ he ground out through gritted teeth. ‘Otherwise I won’t be able to. In a few minutes the sky up there is going to be swarming with helicopters looking for us, and I wouldn’t like to corrupt the innocence of the security team by letting them see me making love to you on the forest floor.’
Emily laughed, but it came out as a desperate sob of need. Luis took her face in his hands again, stroking his thumbs across her cheeks, gazing into her eyes with a scorching intensity that made her feel like her whole body was on fire. ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’
Incoherent, frantic with longing, Emily could only nod, but the expression in her eyes must have told him all he needed to know because the next moment he was taking her hand. With a muffled curse that sounded like a plea for forgiveness he was pulling her onwards again so that she had to gather up her scarlet silk skirts and run to keep up. Slipping through the gloom beneath the trees she felt like Red Riding Hood, all grown up and not afraid of the wolf any more
Ahead of them a high wall reared up, blocking out the remainder of the dying light. Luis headed for a steel gate set into it, and dropped Emily’s hand long enough to press his finger onto a small electronic pad and then key in a number. A second later the gate swung heavily open.
‘It’s the house we saw from the helicopter,’ Emily murmured, as Luis seized her hand again and led her towards a low stone house with a steeply sloping gabled roof that made it look exactly like a picture from a child’s storybook.
At the door Luis went through the same process with the fingerprint and the security number. Emily’s heart was beating so hard it shook her entire body, sending jets of adrenaline through her with every racking thud. Her skin felt hypersensitive, so that the feel of his hand grazing the top of her bare arm as she went through the door he held open for her made her shiver and suck in a breath.
She jumped as the door closed behind them.
The large, open-plan room smelled of wood smoke and was full of dusk and shadows. Emily stood in its centre, unable to look around her or take anything in apart from Luis. After shutting the door he leaned back against it and for endless minutes neither of them moved. His dark gaze seared into her through the twilight, pinioning her to the spot in an agony of helpless longing. A pulse throbbed insistently at the apex of her thighs, each beat increasing the quivering, tingling tension. She was aware of a wetness inside her that both thrilled and horrified her.
‘I’m scared.’
The whispered words had left her lips before she could stop them, and the instant she had spoken she pressed her teeth into her bottom lip, wishing she could take them back. Slowly Luis levered himself away from the door and came towards her, his eyes never leaving hers.
‘You don’t have to be scared.’ Standing in front of her he seemed hugely tall, impossibly broad shouldered and strong. Head tipped slightly back, he took her hands in his and held them, hard. ‘You can stop all this now…any time you want.’
Wide-eyed, trembling, she looked up at him. ‘No. I want this. So much. But…’ She swallowed.
His grip on her hands tightened. ‘But what?’
‘I’m scared because I don’t know what to do. What if I can’t…? What if I’m no good—?’
With a moan he let go of her hands and stepped back, clenching his fists for a moment before pushing his fingers through his hair. ‘Deus, Emily. It’s all I can do to control myself right now, standing here in front of you in that dress.’
‘But you’ve had so many women. Beautiful women. Women who know how to p-pl-pleasure a man…what to do to t-turn you on.’
‘That’s all in the past,’ he said bleakly. ‘This is about now. About you, and you don’t have to do anything. You turn me on so much just by the way you move, the way you talk—Christo, just the way you breathe…’
Without knowing what she was doing Emily had brought her hands up to her mouth, pressing her fingers against her lips to silence the whimpers of longing that threatened to escape her as his rough, raw voice vibrated through her. Very gently now he took hold of her wrists and pulled her hands down, drawing her forward towards the stairs
‘Just you. As you are. No technicalities. No precise, practised steps, remember?’
The stairs led straight up into a single, large room under the eaves of the house. A window at one end looked straight out over the forest, and above the tops of the trees Emily could see the silver glimmer of a crescent moon in the blue velvet sky. She took a step towards it, expelling a shaky breath.
‘Close your eyes.’
Luis was standing behind her. She did as she was told, and a moment later felt his hand on her waist, while he very gently lifted her arm, trailing his fingers lingeringly along the sensitive skin on its underside. It was like a movement from the ballet—part of the grand adage, the slow and seductive courtship between the dancers. She felt her spine flexing, her pelvis tilting back towards him, her body coming to life in his hands.
Slowly, inch by inch, his fingers stroked their path of bliss over her shoulder and along the curve of her neck until finally they reached the zip fastening of her dress. Unhurriedly they lingered there, caressing a curl of hair that had escaped from its twist. She could feel his breath, warm on her neck, could feel the heat spreading inside her, the dampness s
eeping down between her trembling thighs, and she knew that she had to hold herself very still, very rigid, to ride the waves of deranging ecstasy that were swelling within her.
Her eyes were still tightly shut, the darkness magnifying every touch, every sensation. It was getting harder to stop the shivers of pleasure that were building inside of her, and as she felt him begin to ease the zip of her dress down she stiffened with the effort, biting down, hard, on her lip to keep herself from crying out.
He stopped. Her eyes flew open as, horrified, she thought he had had second thoughts, decided after all that she wasn’t sexy or exciting or seductive enough. But then she felt his mouth brush her nape, his breath caressing her, his tongue tracing silken circles around the vertebra at the base of her neck.
This time she couldn’t hold back the deep shudder of desire. His hands came up to grip her shoulders, holding her steady as she tipped back her head and gave a gasp of pleasure and anguish.
‘It’s OK…’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘It’s OK to let go…’
‘I can’t…’
‘You can…querida, you can whenever you want to.’
He had eased the zip of her dress the rest of the way down now, right to her waist. Emily sucked her stomach in, her whole body tensing as his big, skilled, steady hands moved over her back, stroking the rigid angles of her shoulder blades, his thumbs finding the hollows above her hips as his fingers slipped beneath the gaping satin bodice to gently brush her waist. Emily crossed her arms over her chest, holding the dress against her bare breasts as her head fell heavily forward, her spine arching helplessly.
‘I want to see you.’
Her head snapped up and a protest sprang to her lips, but it was useless—Luis was already turning her around to face him. The dying light from the window behind her turned his skin to dull gold, and the reflection of the moon shone in eyes which were dark, fathomless pools.
Her arms were still locked across her chest. She half expected him to peel them away, but he made no move to do so. Instead he reached out and touched her mouth lightly with his fingertips.
‘You’re exquisite,’ he said simply.
And that one butterfly touch, combined with the intensity of his moon-drenched gaze, broke through the bonds which held her back. With his fingers still against her mouth she parted her lips, exhaling a ragged, needy breath and in an instant she was crushed against him as he kissed her with a wildness and an urgency that made everything that had come before seem like a childish game.
It was as if she had been locked in some dark, cramped place and he had released her. Just as he had opened the door to this secret house of shadows with one touch of his fingertip, so had he magically unlocked a secret, joyful part of her that wasn’t afraid and didn’t care about being perfect. There was nothing disciplined in the wantonness with which she kissed him back—her tongue tangling with his, her lips exploring, tasting, sucking, tearing—and nothing controlled in the way her shaking fingers fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, desperate to touch his warm skin.
His hands were in her hair, working with considerably more finesse at the diamond comb and the pins which held it up, swiftly and expertly dispatching them until the elegant pleat uncoiled and fell about her shoulders. Pulling back from her he held her at arm’s length for a moment, giving a subdued moan as he raked his fingers through it, tousling it out of its sleekness. She had forgotten to hold the top of her dress up, and it fell down over her shoulders, half exposing her breasts.
‘I think it’s time to take this off,’ he said roughly, pushing it down completely and sliding it over her hips so it settled on the floor in a crimson pool.
She heard him breathe in, felt him recoil slightly, his whole body tensing as she stepped out of it. For a moment all her doubts returned, but as she glanced anxiously up at his face she saw that it was desire he was struggling to control, and a second later he had scooped her up into his arms and was carrying her across to the wide bed at the other end of the room.
The sheets were cool beneath her back and she spread herself across them. He bent over her, and she caught the dark gleam of his eyes, the clean musk scent of his skin as he lowered his head and took her tight nipple in his mouth. Ten thousand volts of bliss shot through her and she cried out, jerking convulsively as his hands held her steady, but he didn’t stop. Inch by quivering inch he covered her body with a thoroughness that felt like reverence, until Emily was floating, spaced out, incandescent.
She wasn’t aware of him taking off the rest of his clothes, but as she felt the hard warmth of his flesh against hers she registered his nakedness. For a second he pulled away from her, and she glimpsed the astonishing, magnificence of his erection as he deftly rolled on a condom, and she felt she was teetering on the edge of some dizzying precipice she hadn’t even known was there. Her legs twined helplessly around him, her supple body moulding against him as she opened herself up to his kisses. Dimly she was aware that he was holding her waist, lifting her on top of him so she was astride his hips, and she wasn’t sure whether the throbbing, tightness she could feel beneath her was her own body or his. Instinctively she raised herself up on her knees, arching backwards, sweeping her hair off her hot damp neck as she tilted her hips, hungry for him.
‘I want…more… All of you…’
In one fluid movement he had levered himself up and was holding her against him, taking her face between his hands, kissing her fiercely before rolling her over onto the bed and towering above her. His perfect face was cool and remote, his expression almost abstracted as with infinite tenderness he entered her.
She had expected it to hurt, had stiffened momentarily in anticipation, but there was nothing but an incredible feeling of relief—relief so strong she could have wept with it. But already another sensation was overtaking her, one so powerful and compelling that it made everything else slide out of focus—a sort of exquisite sweetness that gripped her body so tightly that it felt almost like pain.
She opened her eyes, gazing up at him in panic, as the fear of being overwhelmed…out of control came back. And then for a split second she saw the expression in his eyes, the intensity of his desire, before his eyelids flickered and closed and she knew that this strong, fearless man was surrendering too. His powerful body tensed, the hard muscles of his back bunching beneath her hands as he thrust inside her again.
It was too late. She couldn’t hold on, couldn’t hold herself together any more, and she was falling, shattering, dissolving…
Except he was there, anchoring her and holding her safe, rocking her, and murmuring into her hair as the spasms of aching bliss gripped her body and then went on shuddering through her like the aftershocks of a massive earthquake.
Lying in the ruins she knew that nothing would ever look the same again.
‘I never dreamed I could feel like that.’
Emily’s head was on his chest, her fingers idly caressing his upper arm. Looking up into the high, sloping eaves, just as he had done so many times over the years when he’d brought women here, Luis smiled bleakly.
‘Neither did I.’
She raised herself up on her elbows, looking down into his face with a slight frown. It was almost completely dark outside now, but her blue eyes glowed with a luminescence that came from within her.
‘Was it OK?’
Was it OK. He didn’t know what to say. OK didn’t really begin to describe what had happened back there.
‘It was more than OK.’
‘I’m sorry that I didn’t do all the things for you that you did for me…’ Her blue eyes were suddenly hidden by a downward sweep of her lashes.
‘It was just as well you didn’t. I wouldn’t have lasted two minutes if you had.’ Watching her gradually let go, give herself up, lose control, had been the most intensely erotic experience of his life, but for that very reason it had also been one of the most challenging. To rein himself back and control his own devouring lust after so long had been agonising and exhau
sting and exhilarating…and ultimately profoundly satisfying. It made him realise that up until now he hadn’t known the meaning of making love. What he had been doing before with that long procession of anonymous women was like picking out a nursery rhyme tune with one finger on the piano. Joining dots. Colouring in a crude drawing with crayons. This had been a concert-standard, full rendition of Beethoven’s Ninth, a masterpiece in oils.
‘Next time,’ she said softly, her hand moving downwards.
From outside he could hear the drone of a helicopter. He got up abruptly, swearing in Portuguese as he reached for the clothes he had thrown on the floor.
‘We need to get dressed.’
‘Luis—’
‘We don’t have long before the royal security force smashes its way in here to see if we’ve been kidnapped by terrorists, so please…’ He picked up her dress and went over to the bed with it, trying not to breathe in the scent of her that clung to the red silk because he knew it would weaken his resolve.
Clutching the sheet to her she sat up and took it from him, her eyes huge with terrible emotion—dread, anguish, hurt.
‘You’re trying to tell me there won’t be a next time, aren’t you? This is it—’
He stopped in the middle of buttoning up his shirt and spun round to face her. ‘Deus, Emily, that’s not what I want.’ His hands, dropping to his sides, curled reflexively into fists. ‘But you deserve much more than I can give you.’
‘I’m not a child, Luis.’ She got to her feet, still holding the dress bundled up in her arms. Against the darkness of her hair and the scarlet silk her face was very white. ‘Not any more. I don’t want some neat and perfect fairy-tale happy ending. I want this.’ She came towards him, her strong bare feet making no sound on the wooden boards, her eyes as clear and unclouded as a summer sky. ‘It’s like all the things I’ve never quite understood suddenly make sense now, and after years of controlling and disciplining my body and forcing it to be perfect I finally know what it’s really for.’