by India Grey
‘That’s the idea,’ said Tristan from the doorway. ‘It was commissioned by one of Tom’s more inventive ancestors, and intended to appear decorative but functionless. In reality it’s an in credibly cleverly designed gambling den. Where you’re standing now is a lookout post, so that anyone approaching could be seen long before they had any chance of getting here.’
Lily shook her head and laughed softly, tilting her head back and looking up at the violet velvet sky, feeling suddenly light and breathless. Tristan levered himself away from the low doorframe where he’d been leaning, and came slowly towards her.
Her pulse quickened, and she felt the laughter die on her lips as electricity crackled through her. In the hazy half-light his eyes were dark blue, his face grave, and she sensed again that weary despair she had glimpsed in him earlier. Suddenly she found it impossible to reconcile this achingly beautiful man who wore sadness like an invisible cloak with the sybaritic playboy whose libertine lifestyle so fascinated the gutter press.
‘You’re right.’
Lily gave a small, startled gasp, wondering how he’d managed to read her mind, but then he raised one hand, gesturing to a recess in the wall beside her.
‘The injured dove,’ he said tonelessly. ‘There it is.’
‘Oh…’ She frowned, stooping down and letting her hair fall across her face as she felt heat spread upwards. The bird was huddled in the back of the nesting recess, its wing held up awkwardly. The white feathers were stained with crimson at the place where the wing joined the body. ‘Poor thing…’ Lily crooned gently. ‘Poor, poor thing…’
Tristan felt his throat tighten inexplicably. Her voice was filled with a tenderness that seemed to slip right past his iron defences and go straight into the battered, shell-shocked heart of him.
Usually he slipped between lives with the insouciant agility of an alley cat, letting the doors between the two halves of his world swing tightly shut behind him. But tonight—Dios—tonight he was finding it hard to leave it all behind. The raucous revelry of the party had grated on his frayed nerves like salt in an open wound, which was why he’d had to get away. But this…
This gentle compassion was almost worse. Because it was harder to withstand.
‘I think its wing is broken,’ Lily said softly. ‘What can we do?’
He looked out over the lawn to the glittering lights of the party. ‘Nothing,’ he said, hearing the harshness in his voice. ‘If that’s the case it would be best to end its suffering quickly and kill it now.’
‘No!’ Her response was instantaneous and fierce. She stood up, placing herself between him and the bird, almost as if she were afraid he was going to grab it and wring its neck in front of her.
‘You couldn’t. You wouldn’t…’
‘Why not?’ he said brutally as images of the place he had been earlier flashed into his head with jagged, strobe-lit insistence. This was just a bird, for God’s sake. An injured bird; a pity, not a tragedy. ‘Why not end its suffering?’
‘Because you don’t have the right to play God like that,’ she said quietly. ‘None of us do.’
Standing in the last light of the fading day, she looked remote and almost mystically beautiful. Not of this world. What did she know about suffering? He could feel the pulse beating loudly in his ears, but her words cut through it, exploding inside his head. No? he wanted to say. Then who will? It’s not power that makes men behave like God, but desperation.
He turned away abruptly, walking back towards the door to the stairs. ‘It’s not about having the right,’ he said bleakly. ‘It’s about having the guts.’
‘Wait!’
He heard her come down after him, and the blue twilight darkened as she shut the door at the top of the stairs again. Tristan stopped on the landing, his shoulders against the closed door, and watched her come down the stairs, melting out of the shadows like something from a dream.
Slowly she came down the last couple of steps and stood in front of him, shaking her head. ‘I don’t,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I don’t have the guts to kill it. What shall I do?’
He shrugged. ‘Sometimes you just have to accept that there’s nothing you can do.’
‘But that’s—’
‘Life,’ he said flatly. ‘That’s—’
But he didn’t finish, because at that moment the dusk was shattered by two loud explosions that detonated a chain of nightmarish images and sent an instant tide of adrenaline crashing through him. He saw her start violently, her head snapping round to the window, her eyes wide with shock. Pure instinct took over. Without thinking he reached for her, pulling her into his body, against his crashing heart as he shouldered open the door behind him and dragged her into the room beyond.
The next moment the sky beyond the two tall, arched Gothic windows was lit up with showers of glittering stars.
Fireworks. It was fireworks. Not bombs and mortars. Relief hit him, followed a heartbeat later by another sensation; less welcome, but every bit as powerful as he became aware of the feel of her breasts beneath the silk of her dress, crushed against his chest. As another volley of blasts split the sky she pulled away from him, laughing shakily.
And then she looked around her at the hexagonal room, with its pale grey walls and its arched windows and the bed with the carved wooden posts at its centre, and suddenly she wasn’t laughing any more.
‘Yours?’ she whispered.
He nodded briefly. Over the years he’d lent Tom more money than either of them bothered to keep track of. The tower was a token return for his investment. ‘It’s where I come when I want to be alone.’
Their gazes locked. Time hitched, hanging suspended. Her full lips were parted, her breathing was rapid and her grey eyes shone with shimmering colour from the fire works that exploded above them. Then she blinked and looked away.
‘Oh. I see, I’m sorry—I’ll go.’
She moved towards the door, but he got there first, slamming it shut and standing with his shoulders against it.
‘Tonight I don’t want to be alone.’
CHAPTER THREE
ADRENALINE was pulsing through Tristan, making the beat of his heart hard and painful. It vibrated through his whole body as the explosions continued outside—audacious reminders of the things he had travelled around half the world to forget.
In the grainy, blurred light Lily’s luminous beauty had an ethereal quality. Her eyes were still fixed on his, and as he gazed into them he felt the panic recede a little, washed away by the warm, anaesthetising tide of desire. Rationality slipped away, like sand through his fingers. For a moment he battled to hold onto it, to anchor himself back in the world of reason, but then she moved forward so she was standing right in front of him and he could see the spiked shadows cast by her lashes on the high arc of her cheekbone and feel the whispering sigh of her breath on his skin as she exhaled shakily.
‘I don’t want to be alone, either,’ she said in a low voice. ‘But I don’t want to go back to the party.’
Slowly, almost reluctantly, he reached out and touched the gleaming curve of her bare shoulder with his fingertip. He felt her jerk slightly beneath his touch, as if it had burned her, and an answering jolt of sharp, clenching desire shot through him.
With deliberate slowness he bent his head, inhaling her scent as he brought his lips down to her shoulder. ‘You don’t like parties?’
‘I don’t like crowds. I prefer…’ she breathed, then gave a soft, shivering gasp as his mouth brushed her skin ‘…privacy. I don’t like being looked at.’
‘You’re in the wrong job,’ Tristan said dryly.
‘Tell me about it.’
There was a wistful ache in her voice that made him lift his head and look into her face. For a fleeting moment he glimpsed the bleakness there, but then she was tilting her head up to his, her lips parting as they rose to meet his, and the questions that were forming in his head dissolved like snow in summer.
He didn’t want to know anyw
ay. He didn’t want to talk to her, for pity’s sake. This was purely physical.
Not emotional.
Never emotional.
Her hands came up to cup his head, her fingers sliding into his hair, pulling him down, harder, deeper. He sensed a hunger in her that matched his own. The silk dress hung loosely from her shoulders and he knew that simply slipping the narrow, gathered straps downwards would make it fall to the floor, but he forced himself to wait, to take it slowly, to suppress the naked savagery of his need. Above all, this was why he had come. Tom and the press were just convenient excuses.
This was his salvation, his purifying baptismal fire. This was where he lost himself, purged himself of all the images from the last week that haunted him whenever he closed his eyes. It didn’t matter whose body he lost himself in, whose lips he was kissing. It meant nothing. It was simply a means to an end.
A way of remembering the joy of being alive, the pleasures of the flesh.
A way of forgetting.
Lily pulled away, taking a deep, gasping breath of air, trying to steady herself against the swelling tide of pure desire that threatened to sweep her away. The light was fading quickly now; the sky beyond the arched windows was the soft, lush purple of clematis petals and the walls of the tower room had melted into it, making it feel as if they’d been cut adrift from reality and were floating far out at sea. Tristan’s hands rested on her shoulders, his thumbs beneath her jaw, stopping her from dropping her head, ducking away from meeting his gaze. In a world of smudged inky shades of blue and mauve his eyes were as deep and dark as a tropical ocean.
‘I have to warn you,’ he said roughly, ‘this is just tonight. One night. No strings, no commitment, no happy ever after. Is that what you want?’
His honesty made her breath catch. No promises, no lies. Somewhere, distantly, she was aware of pain, of disappointment, but it was numbed by the dizzying lust that circulated through her body like a drug. In the morning she was leaving for Africa—a different world, a new direction in her life. Tonight stood alone; a bridge between the old and the new. There were no rules, only the imperatives of the moment. Of forgetting about tomorrow, and giving herself something to remember when it came.
‘Yes,’ she whispered, lifting her hands to the neck of his shirt, sliding them beneath the open collar. ‘Just tonight.’
Outside another explosion ripped the sky apart with a shower of pink stars and she felt him flinch slightly. Carefully she began to undo the buttons of his shirt. There was nothing hurried about her movements, though her hands shook a little with the effort of keeping them steady, of reining back the powerful need that was building within her. He stood completely still as caressingly she trailed the backs of her fingers down the strip of lean, well-muscled flesh that was revealed by his unbuttoned shirt, and the only evidence of his desire was the quickening thud of his heart.
Her hand moved downwards, skimming over the buckle of his belt.
Not the only evidence… She felt his whole body tense as her palm brushed the hardness of his arousal beneath his clothes. For a second his head tipped back, as if he was in pain, but then he seemed to gather himself, and as his hands gripped her shoulders Lily couldn’t tell whether he was taking control or abandoning it.
The bed was as pale and cool as a lunar landscape in the mystical blue twilight. Tristan’s hands slipped down her arms, making her shiver, and then he was taking her hands in his and drawing her towards it. She wasn’t aware of the ground beneath her feet any more. Stars, brighter even than the ones lighting up the washed out sky outside, filled her head, gold and glittering as, very gently, he pushed one strap of her dress down over her shoulder and stroked a circle of bliss over the skin he had exposed.
Lily bit her lip to stop herself crying out into the thick silence. With maddening, excruciating slowness Tristan turned his attention to the other shoulder. In the fading light his face bore an expression of detached intensity, which made tongues of fire leap along her nerves, burning pathways into the hungry, molten core of her. With a care that was almost abstracted he took the pleated silk between his fingers, holding it for a second before sliding it off her shoulder.
The dress slithered to the floor like a curtain coming down, and Lily stood before him, naked apart from a pair of tiny silk knickers.
She was almost too beautiful, Tristan thought with an edge of despair. Too perfect.
As she stood there, the muted evening folding around her like veils of blue voile, softening the planes and angles of her impossibly slender body and silvering the coronet of leaves in her hair, she looked like some remote and untouchable figure from ancient mythology. With careful restraint he reached out and took her waist between his hands, stroking his thumbs upwards to the small, exquisite breasts.
‘Selene…’ he murmured, and her head jerked back, her eyes filled with shock and hurt, but he felt the convulsive tremor that shook her as his palms brushed her hardened nipples and she didn’t try to move away.
‘No!’ she said harshly, raggedly. ‘That’s not my name. I’m Lily…’
Tristan laughed softly. Her misplaced insecurity touched him. As if anyone would forget her name. ‘I know that.’ He bent his head, pressing his lips to the pale skin below her collarbone, unhurriedly moving downwards. ‘Earlier I thought you were a golden Demeter, but now you look like Selene, the goddess of the moon.’
She closed her eyes and buried her shy smile in the silk of his hair. ‘Tell me about her.’
‘She fell in love with a mortal—a handsome shepherd boy called Endymion—and she couldn’t bear the thought of ever being separated from him.’ Tristan’s mouth hovered for a second over the tight bud of her nipple, the warmth of his breath caressing the quivering, darkened flesh until he felt his own desire pounding at the barriers of his self-control. ‘So she asked Zeus to grant him eternal sleep, so that he would never die and never grow older. Every night she used to go and lie with him.’
He straightened up and looked at her. Her eyes were incandescent with unconcealed need but laughter gleamed in their depths as she raised herself up onto her tiptoes to kiss him again.
‘You seem to be on first name terms with all the A-list goddesses,’ she said softly against his mouth. ‘Either you have friends in very high places or a degree in Classics.’
He pulled away sharply, dipping his head downwards so she couldn’t see his face. ‘Neither,’ he said tonelessly. ‘I have half a degree in Classics.’
‘You gave it up?’
‘Yes. I dropped out.’ His voice was soft, but he couldn’t quite keep the bitterness from it as he pressed his mouth against her scented skin and pushed away the thoughts of the life he should have had. He heard her gasp as he ran the tip of his tongue around the rosy halo of her nipple and he felt her whole body momentarily convulse against him as he took her deeper into his mouth, sucking, kissing, losing himself in her.
Her arms tightened around his neck, her breath in his ear was a soft siren song of want. The familiar room, his refuge, his private sanctuary, blurred and blackened as the blood pounded in his head, a primitive, insistent rhythm, drowning out everything else but the miracle of her cool, creamy flesh on his tongue.
Sense left him. His brain—exhausted, jaded, cynical—crashed, and the jagged pattern of his constant, tormented thoughts levelled out into a flat line of submission while his body and his senses took over. Her hands were on his belt, working swiftly, deftly at the buckle, then pushing his trousers downwards, his underwear too, and together they sank down onto the bed, their mouths not leaving each other, their hands not pausing in their urgent, hungry exploration. Dimly Tristan was aware that his shirt still hung loose and unbuttoned from his shoulders, but he was too far gone to stop and take it off.
He was too far gone for anything. The awfulness of the last few days, the constant, grinding stress, the relentless horror that pushed at the steel barriers he placed around his mind had suddenly gone, sucked into the vortex of physica
l need, of blissful annihilation. It was as if some inbuilt survival mechanism had clicked into place inside him, finally shutting off the maddening need to think and plan and stay rigidly in control…
Did she sense this as she pushed him gently back onto the moonlit bed, and rose above him? Her flawless skin was bleached to ghostly whiteness, intensifying the dark glitter of her eyes and the crimson of her kiss-bruised mouth as she dipped her head and slid down his thighs, parting her glistening lips and…
The outside world slipped from focus. Even the machine-gun snap of the fire works faded to a dull crackle. There was nothing beyond the sensation of her soft mouth on his burning, swollen flesh, the feathery caress of her hair brushing his skin as she bent over him. Opening his eyes, looking down, he could see the pale arc of her back. In his dazzled head her shoulder blades looked like angel’s wings.
Dios… Dios mio…
He was on the edge, on the brink of oblivion, holding on by his fingernails, but he wouldn’t allow himself to let go and hurtle through the secret darkness to his own bliss. Sitting up, he caught hold of her and, sliding his hands into her hair, pulled her head up.
‘My turn now.’
Meeting his eyes through the blue gloom Lily was instantly flooded with slippery heat. Though his face was tense and set, they were black and liquid with arousal. Wordlessly she let him pull her towards him, so that they were facing each other on the moon-drenched bed. One hand was in her hair, his strong fingers slowly massaging her scalp, sending shivering electrical impulses down through her entire body. The other remained at his side as he looked at her.
He simply looked…
Lily Alexander was used to being looked at. It was her job. Her life. It made her feel manythings…resentful, jaded, uncomfortable, contemptuous… Never like this before. Never as if she were burning from the inside, as if fire were spreading from the cradle of her pelvis through the centre of her, while torrents of honeyed desire soaked her. Her body was a tool of a job she’d never wanted, and over the years she had learned to regard it with dispassionate acceptance, as if it were something impersonal. But now this man was bringing it to life. Transforming it from an aesthetically successful arrangement of bones, muscles, limbs into a finely tuned network of tingling nerves, heat, pounding blood. By making it his, he was giving it back to her.