by Cherry Adair
She didn't understand this overwhelming emotion she experienced when she was with him. More than great sex. More than- Hell, she had no idea. Whatever it was, it filled her with euphoria. He made her . . .happy.
Finn brushed his knuckles over the swell of her breasts. "I like seeing the artists the way they saw them. . .selves." Sliding his hands to hold her hips, he shuddered as she stroked both hands over his chest.
She couldn't keep her hands off him. Peri wanted her hands and mouth all over him. Wanted his hands and mouth all over her. That bed seemed a million miles away, and Finn seemed to be in no hurry. The hardness of her nipples pressing against the prison of the thin beige satin of her bra was driving her crazy. His hot touch, combined with the cool breeze coming off the water, made her nipples hard, painful peaks.
Reaching behind her, Finn pulled down the short zipper of her pants. Slowly. The man was a sadist. He walked her backwards. "That one there is van Dyck," he said thickly in passing. "This bad-tempered looking guy here is Nicola Poussin, early 1600's. Here's the Rembrandt van Rijn. Why did he look so surprised that he was drawing himself?"
How had they moved? Peri wasn't aware of her feet moving, but they suddenly seemed much closer to the bedroom than they'd been a few moments before. Kicking off her shoes, she let the pants drop to the floor leaving her wearing what amounted to a couple of strategically placed satin ribbons. Stepping out of the puddle of linen, she pushed his shirt off his broad shoulders.
She wanted to shake him, but Finn seemed to have a plan that involved taking his sweet time. He indicated another small portrait with a jerk of his chin. "Over there is John Constable done in the early 1800's. This is Jean Francois Millet painted in the 1800's. But he looks like a hippie with all that hair, doesn't he? Georges Seurat, moody and ominous. I rotate them now and then. There are more throughout the ship. Frida Kahlo, David Hockney..." He mentioned a few more artists, most of whom she'd never heard of.
Peri covered his mouth with her palm. "I don't freaking care," her voice hitched as the back of her legs hit the mattress. At last. Combing her fingers through his hair, she cupped the back of his head, drawing him closer to her mouth. "No more talking."
Finn placed a knee on the bed, then slid his hand to the small of her back, and lowered her carefully to the plush surface of his bed.
Bracing his elbows on either side of her shoulders, his gaze traveled over her face. "I forget to breathe when I look at you." His tone was dark with sexual promise. "You're as damned perfect as a painting, but warm, responsive, flesh and blood. I could barely keep my hands off you at dinner."
Peri stroked his hair out of his eyes. "You didn't try very hard."
"Any more," he said against her sensitized throat as he trailed his fingers down the curve of her hip, "and I'd have taken you right there on the table."
"Been there, done that." She angled her head so his lips could more easily reach the exact. . .right. . .spot that made her shiver. "What else do you have in your repertoire?" The warmth of his hand left her hip.
"We've never taken our time." Sliding his palms against hers, he drew both her hands over her head, anchoring her to the mattress with his weight. His erection pressed hard against her mound as he brushed a half-open kiss against her lips, his exhalation filling her mouth so she tasted the coffee he'd drunk after dinner. "Tonight there's no urgency."
He was holding most of his weight off her. Peri curved her legs around his hips and tried to pull him harder against where she ached. "Of course there's urgency, Phineas Gallagher! Your touchy shenanigans during our civilized dinner conversation was clearly foreplay," her voice was thick and sultry. Her fingers flexed impatiently in his grip, "I'm wet and aching for you. Fill me. Finish what you started."
She sucked in a shaky breath of need as he bent his head to trace the sensitive rim of her ear with the tip of his tongue. His teeth scraped, then nipped her lobe, as his breath tickled her ear. "Would it be torture if we took it slowly?"
Every time they'd made love in the hotel in Buenos Aires it had been in a rush, greedy. Even when they'd been satiated, exhausted, there was still an edge of urgency as if each time was the last time.
When they'd had sex in the pantry, she'd barely had time to drag in a breath because they were incapable of taking their hands and mouths off each other.
"Yes. It would be freaking torture to take it slowly. I want it hard and fast. And often."
"Often can be accommodated. Hard and fast will just have to wait." His mouth fastened on hers with restrained primal greed.
"What happened to your parents?" Finn asked, lazily using a strand of her hair to paint random designs on her bare shoulder. Replete after making love, skin still slick with sweat, she had one leg thrown over his thighs, the moist heat of her pressed against his skin. His dick stirred, but he was too content holding her like this to move. "You said your father left when you were what? Five?" His PIs had found bugger all about her. He told them to dig deeper.
"You have a good memory." She tasted his skin with a small flick of her tongue. The sensation tightened his balls. "Hmm. Salty. On my fifth birthday. He committed suicide a short time later."
The ache in her voice affected him deeply. He knew that ache. The painful need for family and the desire for a deep connection was a phantom, but very real feeling, of loss. A longing for what might've been. "I'm sorry."
"Me, too. We never had a chance to get to know each other. I only ever remember him as angry - My parents fought. A lot. I acted out. Got into trouble. At home. At school. "Her voice hardened, and her hand on his chest stilled. "Even then, I knew I never wanted to feel that weak and vulnerable again."
Oh, darling. He stroked his hand down her narrow back. I would've wrapped that vulnerable little girl in cotton wool, and told her how she'd grow up to be a strong, secure and courageous woman. "You were practically a baby."
"I grew up fast."
"What about your mother?" He brushed a kiss over the crown of her head. Her hair smelled like lilies.
Her nonchalant shrug, small as it was, told him more than her words could about her mother's support. Finn felt a small stir of pity and a surge of impotent anger at the woman.
"She had a lot on her plate. She packed us up and moved from England to America. New places, new people, no support system. And even though my middle brother had Leukemia, and was in and out of treatment as long as I can remember, she unofficially adopted our next door neighbor’s daughter, who was about my age and in a bad situation at home. My older brother, who was fifteen when Dad left, became the man of the family. He was reckless and driven to make money to support the family. . .It was a lot for her."
Interesting how she never mentioned names. Was that intentional? To distance herself from an unhappy past? Now wasn't the time to ask, but he would. "Sounds like a lot for you, too."
"Everyone has a story. Was anyone in the foster system there for you? I read somewhere you made your first million at seventeen. True?"
"About that, yes." She stroked her palm through the hair on his chest as if she were petting a cat. Finn had never been touchy-feely before Ariel. He loved her hands on him. Hell, he loved any part of her touching any part of him.
"That's astonishing. Most kids that age are worrying about who to take to their prom."
"Apparently I had a twin who died at birth. So I always felt that something was. . .missing, I guess. I didn't have any other family, so I was moved around a lot. That was out of my control, but from when I was very young I knew I'd need money to get out of the system. I’d need skills to survive. Stealing and graft weren't out of the question. But I didn't want to end up indigent, or in jail at twelve. Selling drugs was always an option. But I was only with the Agan family two months before the lot of them were arrested for manufacturing and dealing. I knew nothing about the business and had no capital."
"You would've sold drugs?"
"I would’ve done anything to get out of my situation. At the time the drug
trade didn't seem to me to be a longterm investment. I watched and learned from other families, wherever I was placed, waiting for something to spark, to get me going. I lived with the O'Brian's for seven months when I was twelvish. Jim, the father, was a computer repairman. He had anger management issues, and I learned to keep two arms lengths between us, but he let me watch him work, in his workshop in the garage. I was a fast learner. Because I knew that my time anywhere was unpredictable. I started doing computer repairs after school, whenever I could. I found I had a good technical brain, and I liked it. I got good. Made some money. He beat his wife to death, and I was shipped off to the next family." Right after he was released from the hospital after good old Jim whipped him within an inch of his life and left him for dead, too.
"Next were the Walsh's. Mrs. Walsh was an investment broker. A crooked broker, I might add. I was still repairing computers, but Eileen Walsh taught me about day trading and penny stocks. I'd found something I was even better at than computer repair." Eileen had also taken his virginity at fourteen. "I used my repair money to day trade, used that money for penny stocks. . .That's the long story to my first million."
"It's a fascinating story, and I'm sure you left out some of the best bits between then and now."
"I like your best bits between here..." He kissed her mouth. "And here…” He stroked his fingers through the silky tangle of damp curls at the juncture of her thighs and they stopped talking.
NINE
Twenty-five miles inland, on the wind-swept plains of Patagonia, the Supreme Leader of el Elegidos, the Chosen, was elated by the discovery of two new marble tablets.
At last.
He'd been staring at the photographs of all three gold tablets on his giant computer monitor for hours. The thrill of looking at them was profound. The one taken of the La tavoletta d'oro Merrezo was sharp and clear. Indecipherable, but the image was good. The other two pictures were not professionally staged, rather, photographed with a smartphone. The second so blurred that it could be any flat, gold object. Still, it was clear they were uncannily similar.
Stroking a finger across the cold glass, his heart actually leapt with elation. Now he'd have proof of the teachings of his forebears, and details of the work still to be done.
No coincidence that they'd been found mere weeks before the world as everyone knew it, ended, and the new world order began.
He would lead the Chosen. His position was ensured, passed down through the generations.
He knew the date his official rein would commence.
But what else did the tablet or tablets spell out?
What details had they kept hidden until now?
The Abipón language was ancient. Extinct. He knew but a handful of the obsolete words of his people. But not enough to read the Merrezo tablet which he, his father and his grandfather before him, had visited many times in the hope of learning something new. Those visits always proved fucking useless. He'd stopped going ten years ago. Waste of money and time.
It had become increasingly more difficult to retain his eleven thousand followers’ attention over the years. It was hard, if not impossible to get them to maintain fervor for el Elegidos' promise, and keep the prophecy in the forefront of their minds. Sheep farming could no longer hold them to the land, and they were moving to big cities, with modern, big city ideas.
A five hundred-year-old prediction, by a child, with almost no proof, couldn't compete with sophisticated education, and access to the information highway. He knew he could only bullshit them with a scrap of paper and a promise for so long.
Even though he had not as yet seen them, he knew unequivocally that the discovery of the tablets, and where they'd been found, was the sign he'd waited for his entire life.
In the 1400's, a young boy was declared the village seer due to the accuracy of his visions. The specific content of those predictions and the identity of the child had long since been forgotten. The little they did know had been translated and interpreted multiple times over the next five hundred years, the true meanings of the seer’s visions eventually lost. But, even based on so little, the belief and unshaken certainty of the seer's predictions had always, without exception, been believed by the followers of the Chosen.
Still, he, as Supreme Leader, had very little in the way of tangible proof to hold his people. A few scraps of worn parchment, the words, passed down from Leader to Leader. . . But now he'd have the tablets. And fuck it, if he couldn't read much more than a handful of words on them, he'd pretend to his people that he could. The Chosen sure as shit hadn't attempted to learn the ancient language as he had. Much good that had done him, but still- he'd made the effort.
His father had assured him, that when the time was right, all would be revealed. All would be clarified. The time was at hand.
The consequences, should these tablets not deliver as promised, was him being unseated, his legacy and leadership forgotten just like their language.
He was closer to learning the truth today than he'd been a week ago. Than any of his people had been for five fucking hundred years.
Things were looking up.
With a satisfied smile, he leaned back against the butter-soft leather of his chair. In his esteemed opinion, massive furniture, and a display of his wealth, showed his followers his power and importance. He inhaled deeply, relishing the familiar scents of his power; dusty paper, fine Cuban cigars, and the acrid smell of fear he instilled in his followers. The darkly paneled room was wrapped with ceiling-to-floor shelves filled with ancient manuscripts and old tomes.
He’d read almost every scrap of paper in the room, finding nothing of importance. All he had of any relevance to el Elegidos was a fragment of an ancient document. The worn, fragile piece of torn parchment had been given to him with great ceremony by his father on his deathbed, thirty years earlier.
Unlocking the top desk drawer, he opened a velvet-lined leather folder and lay it on the desk. The ancient parchment- this most holy of holy relics, was torn, worn thin, and stained. The rest of the prophecy he knew by faith alone.
Over hundreds of years, the writing was now faint, in most cases illegible. Worn away by hundreds of hands over time.
Heart pounding, he let his eyes scan down, hoping something would miraculously become clearer now that the time was so close at hand. The date of the End was unmarred and as clear as if it had been written that very morning. Ten days from now.
It seemed not only fortuitous, but divine providence, that the two tablets had been found now.
He scanned the words on the parchment, even though he knew them by heart.
The words High Altar and Holy Lake were slightly less faded than other words, not only recognizable, but quite legible.
His first name, the same as that of all his male ancestors, was as clear as day. Nkaatek, the Abipón word for fire, in the middle of a long, too-faint-to-read sentence had never made any sense. Possibly the means by which everyone would perish? "Warrior" was mentioned several times. Sometimes the two words were together, other times, not. Aaloa, meant Earth. “Star” could be anything. Possibly the date or time on which the seer had written the document.
Star could mean Gallagher's ship, Blackstar, but that was too much of a coincidence and stretched his credibility. Coincidence, that was all.
The words that put a chill in his heart were el Ehnos. The Protectors had not been seen, nor heard of, in hundreds of years. It was only on the rare occasions that he read their name, here on this parchment, did he think of them. If, as he knew, they'd died out hundreds of years ago, why was their name so prominently, and unmistakably written on this holy item?
Would the Protectors show up to thwart his plans?
They'd better the fuck not. He had a skilled army of true believers at his disposal. Five hundred strong, they'd been trained from childhood for this very moment. Should the Protectors still have any members, they would be annihilated, as would anyone who stood in the way of his divine path.
As stated in the prophecy, only eleven thousand Chosen would remain to populate the earth. Why were the Protectors mentioned, and what, if anything, would be their roll in the end of days?
Who were they? Where were they?
Was eliminating them part of the prophecy?
Frustrated that he couldn’t read more, he looked forward to getting his hands on the two new tablets and was hopeful they'd aid in interpreting the mystery. He closed the leather folder and returned it to the drawer. Locked it, then sat back in his chair to wait.
Heavy, burgundy velvet drapes hung open at tall, leaded glass windows. Stark white moonlight washed across barren, open fields of scrub grass and hardy shrubs. The house had been built around an ancient temple that was on holy ground in the middle of fucking nowhere. Not a house, not a human for miles. He was surrounded by sheep.
With a deep sense of destiny pulsing through his veins he was ready, more than ready, for his next, even more exalted position; el líder supremo del mundo. Supreme leader of the World.
“Adelante,” he called at a soft rap on the ornately carved door to his private inner sanctum.
Like a timid mouse, his second in command peeked around the door. Thin graying hair stood up on the side of his head. A deep crease on his cheek indicated he’d rushed from his bed. “You wanted to see me, su excelencia?”
“Come in. Come in.” He gestured impatiently for the other man to get his ass inside. “Do not hover, Jose Luis. Close the door. I have momentous news, the reason I summoned you in the middle of the night.”
The late hour was unnecessary. He’d gotten word at noon about the first tablet. Mid-afternoon about the second. He just liked to fuck with his acolyte.
He’d positioned spies on each of the six ships anchored off the coast at the onset of the salvage. It was Divine Providence that he’d already had so many in place when the two tablets had been brought to the surface. He’d received the unexpected and astonishing news about them almost immediately.