Candlemoth: A Holy City Romance (6 page)

I loaded the van, thinking about what he’d said.  I thought Hazel probably used sex as a way to understand people.  But did that make her a bad person, a bad influence?  It wasn’t as though being promiscuous was contagious. 

I shook my head.  Oh well.  Hazel was good in my book.

As I closed the doors on the neatly stacked trays of frozen cookie balls, I shook my head, amazed at the expense the Calhouns were willing to pay just so they didn’t have to pour their own drinks or pop sweets into the oven. It seemed strange, almost less human somehow.  Or maybe they believed they were spreading their wealth around.  I could think of it like that instead.

Why couldn’t their butler do it?

Because the whole thing was fish-bait, I realized. 

An excuse for a certain spoiled little rich boy to see me again. 

I rolled my shoulders nervously, hoping I was wrong.  Because if Ryland Calhoun was insistent on having me… I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to resist him.

The mansion was quiet when I pulled up.  I couldn’t decide if that made me feel better or more nervous.  I unloaded the trays, closing the van door with my hip, and went to the side entrance as I’d been instructed. 

Their butler was a neat little man with a pink face and expensive shoes.  He opened the door before I had figured out how to knock without putting down the trays of cookies. 

“Perfect, you’re here,” the butler said, smoothly.  It was the perfect butler voice.  Were there boys who spent their lives dreaming how to become the perfect butler when they grew up?  Maybe he’d been one of them. 

Just then, a carriage full of tourists went by in the street, the horse’s hooves clopping merrily on the cobblestones.  I smiled up at him sunnily, feeling for a moment like I’d stepped back in time.

“I’m Geordi,” he said, “Miss Lily, follow me please.”

I followed him into the hush of the house.  I smelled fresh laundry and furniture wax, and the dim golden light through the lead glass of the windows calmed me down in spite of myself.

This was nice.

Geordi led me to a kitchen that was different from the one we’d used for the reception the night before.  This one was on the second floor, not very big.  Everything was industrial-chic and tasteful.  And so clean it looked as if it had never been used.

“Does anyone ever cook in here?” I said, placing the cookies into the fridge.  It was empty except for a magnum of champagne and an unopened jar of organic cherries.

Geordi looked surprised.  “Of course.  Occasionally Mrs. Calhoun amuses herself.  Guest chefs come to the house.  There are events… now, follow me please.  This is the room where the guests will be served.  This is the smoking room; tonight will be just the gentlemen.  Their bourbon is here, cigars will be here, and you are to place the cookies here.  All right?”

“Great,” I said. 

“Very good.”  Geordi escorted me back to the little kitchen, tapped on the door twice in farewell, and then was gone.  I could tell he took pleasure in anticipating needs and being unobtrusive. 

And, I thought, as I pre-heated the oven, the Calhouns probably paid him well enough that he could even have a butler of his own at home, if he wanted.

It was a funny thought.  Russian nesting butlers. 

I dawdled around the kitchen, unable to resist pretending it was mine.  I ran my hands along the beautiful counters, over the stove top.  But my mind had turned inward.  I was remembering the rooms Geordi had led me through on the way to the sitting room.  The antiques everywhere were fabulous, and just a little bit shabby, which one of my fake moms had told me was the sign of real
money.  For people with
real
money, she said to me seriously, as if it were a mathematical rule, it is more important for things to be of the very best quality and to have a long personal history, a patina of heritage-

Her voice in my head was like a mosquito’s whine.  I tuned it out, arranging cookies on the baking tray.  What I really wanted to think about was the huge oil painting I’d seen on the wall.

A family portrait.  Two kids, a mom and a dad.  It had probably been painted ten years ago, and it was the very formal, old fashioned kind of painting, but you could already see how beautiful the little girl was going to grow up to be.  They looked like the pieces to a Stepford family chess set, everyone wearing sweaters and matching side parts in their smooth, wavy brown hair.  And the little boy.  Of course, the little boy…

Apparently, even when Ry was just a kid there was something magic about his eyes, that way he had of holding himself. 

How could anyone
not
fall in love with him, that was the question?  It would almost be an art… learning to resist Ryland Calhoun...

I opened the oven and slid the cookies in, clicked on the timer.  And then I began to feel a curious awareness tickling all along my body.  As if I’d been magnetized.

I turned, knowing instinctively who I’d see standing in the doorway.

Ry leaned there, watching me.  He was completely still.  Then that maddening one-sided smile flicked upwards at the edge of his lips.  He wore a simple, threadworn white tee shirt that looked soft and invitingly snug against his sexy body. 

I wanted to rip his pants off.   

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Ry said, in a low voice.  The sound of his voice was electric-  my breasts sharpened instantly.  I turned away, embarrassed already at my lack of control around him.  My lingerie stroked me teasingly, making things even worse. 

I ached for him to touch me. 

“We aren’t meeting.  I’m working,” I said, trying to sound cool and indifferent, even as the X- rated images began to flash up on the screen in my mind.  “Listen, it’s sweet, whatever it is you’re trying to do, giving me some extra hours or whatever.  But I’m not interested in you, ok?” 

But I still couldn’t meet his eyes for fear that I’d give myself away. 

“You know something, Lily?” Ry said, striding across the kitchen.  He slid easily between me and the kitchen counter.  “Anyone ever told you you’re a terrible liar?” he whispered, propping his hand behind him on the counter so that his muscles bulged erotically.  For the first time, I noticed the edge of a black tattoo on his bicep.  

“I’m not lying…”

A thrill lit through me at Ry’s closeness even as I flinched away from him.  My breasts ached for his touch so much that I actually gave a startled cry as I butted up against the kitchen island behind me. 

My panties were drenched wet as I looked at him.  The heavy strength in his arms.  I thought about what he was capable of doing to me, how he could throw me around like a doll, and I could smell my own desire for him. 

I realized suddenly he could probably smell me too.  Like a dog in heat. 

Ry took a step closer, trapping me once more.  “You can say all the words you want, but your eyes and your mouth and… the rest of you… are telling me another story.” 

Silence cupped around us like the captured roar of a seashell. 

He wet his lips and then bit his tongue gently between his teeth, gazing at me hotly.  I couldn’t take my eyes off the wet tip of his tongue caught there between his teeth. 

“Be honest,” he murmured.  “Neither of us has been able to stop thinking about the other since the moment we met.”  He raked his hand through his hair, flustered, his face reddening slightly.  “I can’t stop thinking about you.  I’m going crazy.”

              I shook my head.  “Look, let’s get something straight.  I had a weak moment the night I met you.  But you and I, we don’t live in the same stratosphere, okay?  And- you have a girlfriend!”

              There.  I’d said it.  Mostly to remind myself.  For a moment the words hung in the air between us like a scarlet banner.

Ry looked confused.  “No, I don’t,” he said, finally.

              “That blonde girl, last night…?” I prompted.

              “Oh. Madison,” he said.  “Christ, not you, too.”  Ry leaned back against the counter, catching hold of its edge with his hands.  He swung forwards slightly, exasperated.  “My whole life I’ve been hearing about Madison, how she and I should hook up, get married, blah blah blah.  My family loves her, her family loves me.  Shit,
Madison
loves me.  She acts like we’re already married!  But,” Ry cut one of his hands through the air, “there is
no
me and Madison.  I promise you, Lily.”

“I don’t care, anyway. I don’t want to know anything, about you and Madison or Muffy or whatever-”    

              “Muffy, that’s pretty good,” Ry said, laughing.  “She does look like a Muffy.  Or whatever, whoever, huh?  You couldn’t care less, right?”

“You say that like you don’t believe me,” I said.

“Trust me.  I know enough about girls to know when somebody wants me,” Ry said, arching a thick eyebrow. 

A corner of me caught fire.  The fucking asshole! 

I remembered Beren’s story about the strippers.  About champagne and cocaine, and who knows what else.  How could I keep conveniently forgetting these things?  He made me so horny I was stupid. 

“Girls?  I’m not just
some girl,
I’m
me
,” I spat, even though I knew it wasn’t true.  There wasn’t anything about me that was special or different.  We’re all just
some girl
to everybody- except for the people who love us.

“You’re missing the point,” Ry said.  Impulsively, he reached for my wrists.

“Let me go!” 

“Listen, Lily,” he said.  He grabbed my wrist as his other hand fitted flat to my pelvis, urging me back towards him.  For a moment our bodies touched.  The connection I felt to him- the magnetism- was undeniable.
 
It felt so
right
to be close to him.  As if that was where I belonged. 

He was hard against me.  “Kiss me, and tell me you don’t feel anything,” he whispered.  “If you don’t, I’ll leave you alone.” 

I backed up, turning around to face him, but Ry followed me and I bumped up against the counter again.  Right back where we’d started. 

We were so close I felt energy racing between us, almost crackling in the air.  His eyes searched for mine, forcing me to look into his eyes. 

They were blue like my own, but darker, stormier.  The stark black contrast of his long eyelashes and thick eyebrows against them made my breath catch in my throat. 
That
face and
that
body?  He was a mortal god.  

Ry grazed my cheek with the back of his hand. 

“You’re blushing,” he said, quietly.

I stammered.  “I don’t-”

He kissed me then, his arms instantly around me, and I felt myself dip back as if my legs had gone out from under me.  Ry’s mouth was full and soft on my own, tender, insistent. 

Our mouths opened hungrily and our tongues met, dancing hard.  Tasting, learning.

I’d meant to push him away, but instead I was grabbing him back wildly.  My hands fitted against his chest, the hard divots of muscle there.  I could feel Ry’s heartbeat against my thumbs, his muscled ribs, the top of his abs as he took a deep breath that stole my own. 

I melted further into him, dissolving into the kiss. 

He murmured into me as an empty cookie tray behind us clattered down to the floor, but his hands only gripped my shoulders the harder, as if he’d never let me go.

His thumbs rested beside my breasts, and I was electrically aware of them.  Their heat, their cruel, firm strength.  I ached for him to touch me, to crush my breasts in his palms and suck at my skin.  Then, as if he’d read my mind, he lifted one hand. 

But instead of touching my breasts, Ry stroked the side of my face, my jaw, and began to press me back, exposing my neck.  Feeling dizzily vulnerable, I automatically tried to resist him, but he nuzzled my throat insistently, opening his mouth against me. 

His mouth and tongue were so warm and strong that I moaned as he traced lower with his lips, burying his face into me, his hands nesting at my waist, memorizing my shape with his touch as his mouth drew close to my neckline, nuzzling the fabric ever so slowly to one side.  I felt the heat of his breath slip into my shirt, brushing teasingly over the top of my painfully aroused breasts.

Suddenly, the cookie timer shrieked, and I flew back, gasping.  My hand went to my neckline, where the fabric was still warm from him.  We stood there, staring at each other like wild animals in heat.

Ry gave me that sly, maddening grin of his, ever so slightly arching his eyebrows. 

Knowingly.

I hated that he was right about me!  That he could look at me and understand everything I wanted before I even knew it myself! 

He was exactly the kind of guy I’d hated all my life.  A spoiled rich jock who thought he had everything figured out because it had always been handed to him-

I slammed off the cookie timer, exasperated and hot. 

“Oh, get out of here!” I said.  But Ry was still standing there with that hunting look in his eyes when I turned around again, now holding the tray of hot cookies.