In the Mists of Time (12 page)

He tugged down the zip of her rain jacket, and then swept his hand under her skirt, stroking the length of her thigh. Excitement soared as she realized he really meant to do it here. A flood of lustful moisture pooled in her knickers. She opened wider to him, kissing deeper as if drawing him into her with her tongue, and pushed her hand inside the waistband of his jeans, smoothing over the warm, taut skin of his buttocks. The pressure of the fabric vanished from her wrist as he unfastened his zip, and then his hand, his beautiful, bliss-giving hand, delved between her parted thighs, yanking her knickers aside and bathing in her wetness.

He groaned into her gasping mouth, hauling one of her legs up over his hip, and at last she felt his bone-hard erection against her pubic bone, then sliding over her slick folds.

“What's the matter with
you
?” she all but panted against his lips. “Can't you wait until I open the door?”

He lifted his head. “No,” he said, pushing into her. “I can't wait.”

“Oh God,” she whispered. One arm clutched around his neck; the other flailed behind her until she found the door handle and clung to it as he drove all the way into her. She wriggled, squeezing him, and the immediate pleasure sparked into building orgasm. Only with Thierry had she ever found this kind of arousal and need and satisfaction. “Oh, now,” she pleaded. “Do it, now, Thierry, quickly!”

He needed no second urging. Hard and fast as she'd begged, he hammered her. The bag containing his computer tangled with her leg, bumped against her body and his. Rain ran down his shoulders and head, seeping through her clothes. The sea rushed and thundered in her ears, mingling with her own gasps and moans, all one with Thierry's panting breath as orgasm burst upon her, soaring and wild.

Her fingers twisted on the door handle. Unexpectedly, it turned; the door gave way behind her, and they stumbled backward. She was falling, his hand behind her head, but there was no crash landing. She came to rest gently on the hard floor, her legs still clinging around his waist as he strained into her, groaning and thrusting, and came with her at last, emptying deep inside her.

She couldn't move. She didn't really want to. Thierry's weight pinned her to the floor. Every nerve in her body seemed to tingle still with joy and satisfaction. And they weren't even undressed.

Thierry's mouth closed on her throat in a sensual kiss.

She smiled and managed to draw her fingers through his damp, tangled hair. “We really must do something about contraception,” she said lazily.

His head shot up. “Shit, I'm sorry, Louise—”

“Don't be. I should be safe still, though I wouldn't like to risk it into next week.”

He smiled, kissing her lips in a lethargic, sensual way that caused her internal muscles to clench around his still-hard cock. “Does that mean you want to do this some more?”

“Maybe. Though only to prove to you your damned mist doesn't make a blind bit of difference.”

Thierry glanced over his shoulder out the open door. The rain was torrential now, the sky dark, but no mist swirled in the air. With a jerk of his foot, he kicked the door shut and slid out of her before hauling her into a sitting position and pulling off her jacket.

“Your clothes are wet,” he observed. “You'll have to take them all off.”

“So will you,” she agreed co-operatively, pushing the computer bag and his jacket off his shoulders and tugging. “How will we dry them?”

Thierry's eyes gleamed. “Friction.”

* * * * *

The room that would become Aidan's kitchen was their bedroom for the afternoon. Between the bare, newly plastered walls that awaited the delivery of kitchen units, they piled their clothes, with coats spread out at the bottom and everything else on top to make a small and not very comfortable bed. It didn't seem to matter.

Wrapping her lips around Thierry's cock, which she'd been teasing for some time, she sucked delicately, and loved the uninhibited groans she elicited. She released him long enough to observe, “Still no mist.”

“My theory stands,” he got out as she worked him more seriously.

She lashed him with her tongue. “How did you even come up with such a daft notion?”

“Talking to Glenn,” he said between his teeth as she sucked hard and then let him go. It seemed he'd had enough of her teasing, for without warning, he rolled her onto her back and straddled her chest. Deliberately, he guided his cock into her willing mouth and thrust slowly, gently. “When I mentioned the mist on Monday afternoon, he actually blushed. I'm sure it affected him and Izzy as well.”

He threw back his head in bliss, and she held his cock in her hand, working the foreskin as she sucked and licked and he moved faster in and out of her mouth.

“Little things,” he managed. “Added to us, and Ron and Nicole…”

She drew her mouth away, holding on to his cock. “So why didn't Nicole want Ron, then?”

“I never said the mist took away personal taste.” Thierry detached her fingers, held both hands on either side of her head and re-entered her mouth, pushing inexorably towards his climax. “Oh fuck,” he said desperately, and shuddered into orgasm, his clouded eyes locked on her face.

“I love watching you come,” she whispered when he withdrew. His care of her, even in such urgency, enchanted her.

“Good,” he managed, collapsing down beside her on his stomach. “Because I'd really like to do a lot more of that.” He leaned over and kissed her mouth before dropping his head on her chest. One hand came up, cupping her breast, idly caressing. “I'll tell you what. Next time the mist comes down, I challenge you not to fuck me.”

She laughed. “To be honest, I'd probably fuck you anyway, with or without mist. My record of resistance isn't great around you.”

“Even though I'm an ex-con under suspicion of more crime?”

“Doesn't appear to matter. But you can't blame that on the damned mist. And here's another. How come Ardknocken folk haven't been having sexual orgies in the mist for years? We get a lot of mist on these hills!
And
off the sea.”

Thierry frowned as if seriously considering the matter. “I don't think this is a regular, normal mist. It's too thick, too…alive. On Friday night, I could swear I saw it in the caravan with us. For an instant, it even had a face.”

“You need to up your medication,” Louise said derisively.

“I'm serious!”

“So am I.” She pushed him onto his back and leaned over him. “You're obsessing. Can't we just like each other? Just for once, can't we be swept off our feet?”

His hand came up, cupping her cheek. “I am.” He kissed her. “And a lot more than once. A lot, lot more.” Rolling her over, he pushed her knees apart and lay between her legs. His cock began to grow and harden against her inner thigh. “I said I'd tell you everything.”

“About the missing money?” she said with some dread.

As if he felt it, he shifted, and with his hand pushed his still-growing cock inside her. Perhaps he meant it as distraction, or bribery to stay on his side. It seemed to work.

“Go on,” she said unsteadily.

“I took tiny amounts every day, put them in the accounts of lots of different customers all over the world, constantly moving them through traceable and untraceable bank accounts, none of which had anything to do with me, my family or friends, and in such small quantities that no one ever really noticed or made much fuss. If they did, it could never be explained. Anyway, eventually it all ended up where I wanted it. Where it still is.”

She was almost afraid to ask. She moved beneath him in unconscious distraction, and he pushed down with his hips, pinning her to stillness.

She gave in. “Where?”

“A children's cancer charity in France. They were kind to Annette, do great work in care and in research. They got an anonymous donation. It didn't come from me, and the money can't be traced back to London and Scottish, let alone to me.”

She slid her hands over his naked shoulders, curled her fingers around his neck. Questions chased around her head, making her feel curiously helpless as well as proud and sorry and frightened for him.

“Thierry, you can't police the world. It isn't up to you.”

“I know.” He began to move inside her, gentle, exploratory little motions that inspired instant response.

He seemed to need the closeness to talk about this. She knew instinctively he'd never told anyone else.

He said, “The way I felt then, I couldn't sit back and let it go. Annette wasn't the only one. I came across lots of other cases across the world. People who'd paid their premiums for decades, generations in some cases, without ever asking for a penny, a cent, a euro; and then when they needed it, the company wriggled out, justified it with small print, and the law, apparently, was behind it. So I broke the law for Annette. It made no difference to the others, of course, but at least that money did more good than it ever would have weighing down the bloated pockets of London and Scottish shareholders.”

He took her face between his hands, tender and sensual as he thrust with more serious intent. “I thought about it a lot in prison, but I couldn't be sorry I did it. I'm still not. London and Scottish will never get it back, and I'm glad.”

She moved beneath him, taking him deep, urging him on as she caressed his back, his constantly moving hips and bottom. She strained against him until he let her push him onto his back. She rolled with him, straddling him, riding him, letting the pleasure build slow and intense from their every friction, every motion.

“Then it's finished, past,” she said, rocking, “and all we have to do is find out what happened to Ron.”

His fingers tightened on her hips, and he pushed up, hard. “The mist happened to Ron.”

“What mist?” she whispered, lowering her mouth to his. He rolled her again, half-off their little pile of clothes. Arching, he latched his mouth to her breast and drove into her. Her naked shoulder scraped across the hard floor, but she didn't care, so lost was she in Thierry and sexual pleasure. He wrapped her close in his arms, holding her head and shoulders off the floor as he brought her to yet another blinding orgasm.

She thought her vision was still clouded as she lay sprawled across him, gazing towards the kitchen window. She blinked several times, but although the walls were clear, the window wasn't. White mist swirled across it, thick and opaque.

Chapter Eleven

Louise lifted her head, staring at the window. Despite all her scepticism, a chill shivered up her spine.

“Thierry.”

After a moment, he sat up, holding her close as he too gazed at the window. “It's us,” he said. “It's you and I who bring it.”

“That's even sillier,” she objected, even though the sudden appearance of the mist was filling her with doubts. “I've lived here all my life. And if you're imagining it's our magical combination, remember you've lived here for more than two months without summoning lust mists for me.”

Thierry stood. “It's spring now, and a young man's fancy…and a young woman's.” He rummaged in the pile for his clothes. “Come on, experiment time.”

“What?” She stared, baffled, as he climbed into his jeans and T-shirt. Eventually, she began to scramble into her own clothes and stumbled out the back door after him.

Thierry's hand found hers. Grateful, she hung on to it, for she could barely see him in the opaque fog, which seemed to cover every area above the ground.

“It must have come off the sea,” she murmured as they walked the length of the house to the side path. “I can't even
see
the sea from here. This thick, it must be lethal for shipping.”

“And yet I can't hear any foghorns.”

She tightened her fingers on his as they paused and stared through the mist in the direction of the sea. “Are you saying it only stretches down to this cottage and no farther?”

“We could walk down to the beach and find out. You can see through this, right?”

“Not exactly see,” Louise said. “I just always seem to know where to put my feet.”

Holding on to his hand, she began to walk down the side of the cottage to the patch of garden at the front, found the gate Aidan had replaced and the few steps down to the beach path. From there, it was only a short distance to the beach.

On sudden impulse, Louise began to run, drawing Thierry in her wake. When the first wave ran over her shoes, she came to an abrupt halt and stepped backwards.

“As if we weren't wet enough,” she muttered, staring through the thin tendrils to the sea. Visibility wasn't great, but she could make out boats and gulls and the distant islands. “But you're right, it does seem to stop here.”

She turned, gazing back towards the cottage, which was totally lost in the mist. “This is weird.”

Thierry began to walk back towards the cottage. “Agreed.” His fingertips stroked the inside of her wrist. “So how do you feel? Want to make love?”

Heat surged through her. “I've just made love with you,” she retorted. “Several times and in several different ways. Fabulous as you are, I have physical limitations!” So why, then, was the heat induced by his suggestion so intense? Why did it mingle so urgently with the lust already growling in the base of her stomach?

“Do you?” He stopped, turned her into his arms and laid his hand deliberately over her breast. As the breath caught in her throat, he bent his head and kissed her mouth. Lust surged gamely through her sated body.

One more time wouldn't hurt… One more time, here, now, in the mist, oh yes.

“Do you feel that?” he whispered against her lips as he rubbed his impressive erection against her hip, her tummy. “Not ten minutes ago, I was as sated as I'd ever been in my life. One way and another, I've had you three times this afternoon, and after the third, amazing as you are, I was as boneless as a filleted trout. Hell, I was actually asleep when you spoke my name. Yet now…”

He pushed his tongue into her mouth, kissing her thoroughly, and she threw her leg up over his hip, as if trying to climb on him, get him inside her all the faster.

“Now,” she muttered into his mouth, seizing him around the neck. “Now.”

“Now, I could take you here on the ground, as desperate as if I hadn't had you—or any woman—in years.”

“So do it. Take me now,” she pleaded, and latched her mouth back on to his while she forced her hands between them to get at his zip.

“I can't see where we are,” he murmured. “What if—”

“I don't care where we are,” she said, tugging down his jeans and freeing the straining cock within. With a purr of anticipation, she took his hand and drew him towards the ground. He sank with her, finding and caressing her hard, sensitive nipple. It was sweet, it was amazing, but she couldn't wait. She straddled him, holding his cock in both hands, and impaled herself upon him with a moan of satisfaction that intensified as he thrust upward, hard.

And then, abruptly, she was spinning, under him, and he was driving into her in a frenzy of lust while she bucked and strained beneath him. It was wild, basic, almost animalistic in its urgency, and it seemed neither of them was willing or even capable of making it last. The mist swirled around the angles of his face as if trying to disguise him from her, and she spoke his name like a plea as she came.

“Thierry…”

His hands cupped her face. One more jerk and he emptied himself inside her with quiet gasps rather than the full-voiced shouts of joy she'd grown used to with him. As she clung to him, she almost felt the mist surrounding them like a presence. Perhaps it was all Thierry's nonsensical talk…

His earlier words came back to her.
“Next time the mist comes down, I challenge you not to fuck me.”

As orgasm faded, a chill seemed to replace it. Over Thierry's head, tendrils of thick, cloying mist seemed to writhe in imitation of what they'd just done, rising and swirling into, surely, the shape of a person, a woman.

Staring, Louise tugged hard at Thierry's heaving shoulder. “Look,” she whispered. “Look, Thierry, tell me I'm not insane.”

With what seemed an almighty effort, Thierry hauled himself off her and turned to follow her gaze. The indistinct face in the mist seemed to smile and come closer.

Again…

Louise had no idea where the voice came from, whether it was inside her head or deep in the mist, or even her imagination.

“Oh no,” Thierry said. “This isn't about
you
or for you.
We
decide.”

The misty figure seemed to throw its head back as if laughing. And when it straightened, a stab of lust struck Louise so sharply it was almost painful. In shock, she pressed her hand to her lower abdomen. Thierry's arm came round her shoulder, holding her to his side. Part of her wanted very badly to jump him again whether this mirage was real or not, but the rest of her, her thinking self, knew instinctively that this was enough. That she and Thierry sprawled in the open, scarcely a few steps from the beach, with their clothes in disarray, having made love more times in a short space of time than was strictly normal. More, to be frank, than her brain had wanted.

“Come on,” Thierry murmured, rising to his feet, drawing her with him. He released her for long enough to fasten his jeans, and then, taking her hand, turned his back on the misty woman and began to walk.

Louise corrected their direction, her heart beating with dread as if they were walking away from threatening muggers. At the cottage steps, she couldn't resist glancing over her shoulder. The mist was thinner and she could see no human form in it.

“Was that real?” she said huskily. “Was she real? You saw her too, right?”

“I saw her,” Thierry said slowly. “I think we've been feeding her. With all that sex.”

“You mean if we don't want the mist to come down, we're not allowed to have sex anymore?”

His hand slid up her arm and across her shoulders. “I'm not agreeing to that.”

“Maybe we're both just insane. From too much sex.”

“Good sex,” Thierry said, pushing up her face so he could kiss her lips. “Beautiful sex. Even the last one.”

Louise pressed her cheek to his. She didn't need to lead him now. The mist had thinned enough to see through.

Back in the cottage, Louise made them instant coffee from Aidan and Chrissy's little stash beside the kettle on the kitchen floor, while Thierry stood by the window, watching the mist fade into the watery spring sunshine that should probably have followed straight after the shower that had soaked them on the way down from the big house.

Then they sat against the wall opposite the window, their shoulders touching, and drank the coffee.

“There has to be a totally rational explanation for all of this,” Louise said. “For the mist and what we saw. Or thought we saw.”

“Hysterical hallucination,” Thierry offered.

“I don't like the sound of that.”

“I don't believe it either.” He took a sip from his mug. “You can't explain everything in the world rationally, you know. Some people dream the future or see it in flames. Other people see ghosts. Magic, witches, mythical creatures like selkies and werewolves must have a basis somewhere. Taken in the light of all that, our mist isn't so very unlikely.”

“But it isn't just ours, is it?” Louise objected. “Everyone saw the mist last week, and everyone who was up saw the one on Friday night.”

“There was another on Wednesday night,” he said. “I'd have bored a hole in my mattress—or my fist—for wanting you, so I lost myself in work instead. That's how this game idea was born.”

“Wednesday,” she repeated. She blinked, found herself blushing in spite of their recent intimacy. “I wasn't aware of the mist, but I might have dreamed about you that night.”

“A naughty dream?” he asked, his eyes darkening and gleaming at the same time.

“Maybe.” She nudged him to keep him on track. “The point is, people see it. The mist is real.”

“And it makes us randy. Randier, more urgent, whatever. It affects us. I think we just proved that.”

Louise gazed into her coffee, then raised her eyes back to Thierry. “
Again.
I heard the word
again
. Or thought I did.”

He nodded. “So did I. So the mist wants us to have sex constantly. Wants
everyone
to have sex constantly.”

“Because it strengthens her—
it
, damn it!—or because that's its purpose? None of this makes sense, Thierry. It's like some bizarre erotic fairy tale!” She took a thoughtful sip of coffee. “You really think that's what happened to Ron? Got such a fit of the randies that he walked off the waterfall by accident?”

“Maybe,” Thierry said.

Louise frowned and sighed. “But then, if it's about you and me, why had it already formed here before we got back from Oban? Come to that, why is it only here, around Ardknocken?” Her frown deepened until it felt like a scowl. “Or is it?”

“I don't know,” Thierry said. “But we should probably try to find out before other tragedies happen.”

“How?” Louise asked helplessly. “Where would you even
start
to find out stuff like that?”

“Well.” Thierry considered. “It spoke to us. Maybe we can talk back, communicate, the next time it comes. Until then, we could look into the history of these hills and any local legends, see if they shed any light. Once we understand it, perhaps we can deal with it.”

“Perhaps.” Louise shivered, remembering the chill she felt when she'd noticed it through the kitchen window. “But what if it's more than some kind of weird aphrodisiac? If it's sentient enough to talk to us, powerful enough to make people—even strangers—have sex, then what if it…”

Thierry's brow contracted, as if he knew where she was going with this and didn't like it. “What?” he asked.

She drew in her breath. “What if it deliberately killed Ron?”

* * * * *

The impossibility of conducting a discreet romance within the confines of Ardknocken was impressed upon Louise all over again when she finally found a moment to drive in to the library late on Monday morning, and found Thierry there already, talking to Morag under the beady eye of two old men and the MacDonald sisters with their brood of toddlers.

Louise's heart gave a jolt of fierce joy at the sight of him. He sat at one of the two study tables, with a couple of books piled in the middle. A third was open in front of him, and Morag, perched on the end of the chair beside him, was pointing to something on the page. Although Thierry's head was bent, his face in profile, she could tell he was completely focused, a pose so much a part of him that she wanted to smile with sheer pleasure.

And yet, at the same time, an unwelcome twinge of jealousy curled around her heart because it was Morag who sat beside him, who had reason to because of her work. And Morag was everything Louise was not: witty, clever, university educated—like Thierry—a woman who'd travelled and seen the world and come home with a similar air of mystery to the one that surrounded Aidan. It seemed to surround everyone who left for a long time and then came back.

Louise had never left, never even travelled beyond Edinburgh.

And to top it all, Morag was beautiful in the kind of way Louise most admired: dark and aloof and yet somehow smouldering in womanly mystery. Her own blonde, elfin looks she found annoyingly ditzy and unattractive, without gravitas or anything to inspire men to more than friendship or fun. Which was fine most of the time. Friends were good. But she didn't want that from Thierry, or if she did, she wanted more, much, much more, and now he had Morag beside him. She, Louise, wanted to be his femme fatale.

She swallowed hard, as if that would get rid of her unwanted and unworthy spurt of jealousy. Then Thierry glanced round towards the door where she stood, and his face changed at once, breaking into a spontaneous smile that made her heart turn over and her knees weaken.

Alerted, Morag looked up too and gave a knowing, slightly crooked smile of her own. Only then did Louise realize her lips had stretched into a no-doubt ridiculous, infatuated grin, and that she was the prime focus of several other pairs of eyes.