The Red Collection (38 page)

She moaned into his mouth with each smooth, deep shove, sipping at his sweetness as the interior stretching did insane things to her clit. His every movement created a divine tugging sensation in the tiny sensitive organ, and on the profound in-stroke his pubic bone seemed to knock against it. She wriggled to adjust the angle of their bodies for even greater perfection, but still Robin kept up his rhythm and momentum.

How can he do this?
she questioned dimly, her entire body
throbbing
, pulsating, teetering on the brink of some great star-burst of pleasure.
He barely weighs anything, yet he has this power, this force?

A heartbeat later, there were no more questions, no more thoughts, no more conscious analysis of any kind.

Just pure sensation as her body sparked and heart and soul flew upwards, borne aloft on a giant wave of loving pleasure.

I love you … I love you … I love you …

She heard the words like bells as she soared among the stars, but for the life of her she couldn’t have specified who’d said them.

6

Sitting up, letting the quilt slide from his shoulders, Robin gazed down at the sleeping woman at his side.

His human fingers tingled with the intense need to touch her again, and in his heart, also temporarily human, emotion surged.

How beautiful she was with her sex-tousled hair and her flushed cheeks. Her body was warm against his, radiating heat and life. He ached to be able to stay and sleep with her in his arms but, even during this special and almost finished month, he could only be the Robin she knew for a limited period. He could only touch, and feel, and experience this depth of passion for a couple of hours, or a little more, after which he was compelled to disassociate.

And he didn’t want to do that in front of Lois.

But just how much would it faze her though?

She was brave, bold and curious. From her thoughts, he knew she was aware that he wasn’t quite what he seemed. Yet still she embraced him and gave herself to him.

And, for that, I love you
.

And he loved her even, he sensed, in his discarnate form, where emotions were fainter, rarefied and far less intense. When May was over, he might still feel the ache of loss.

She was compassionate too. His fingertips hovered a centimetre above her lips, her cheek and then her brow. He sensed the sympathy she felt for her surly neighbour, who had not been polite to her. She’d seen through the man’s bluffness to the sad state of his heart.

Would you feel sorry for me?

His ersatz heart twisted with anguish, as he glanced towards her watch on the bedside cabinet, and heard its tick, tick, tick like a giant tolling bell. His sharp vision noted again the date function.

Tomorrow was the last day of May. The last day of his approximate humanity. How he wished that she’d arrived here on the first of the month.

As if affected by the proximity of the month’s end, his form began to waver, so he rose from the bed and gathered his clothes. Not that they would remain if he disassociated. They were part of his illusion. But it seemed important to be as human as he could for as long as he could.

Dressed, he circled the room, wishing there was more he could do for her. When he touched the dark screen of her small computer, he sensed a fault in it and remembered her frustration with it. With a flick of his wrist, he scattered dust across the keyboard and watched as it glittered and sank into the guts of the device, healing the patterns of force as it went.

Well, at least that would bring her some satisfaction in the days to come, and distract her from the loss of her temporary playmate. He knew he could wipe her entire memory of him, just as he could have wiped the laptop’s electronic memory
if
he’d so wished. But the humanity that gripped him made him selfish.

He didn’t want to be forgotten. He wanted her to think of him. And at least remember a little of what they’d shared.

Lifting the curtain at the window, he looked outside. The moon and stars were beginning to fade in the sky across the bay, and already the pink intimations of dawn were slowly gathering. His hand, where it held the cloth, was fading too, and a stir from the bed said that Lois was waking.

With an ache of regret, Robin abandoned his form and drifted upwards and away through the cabin’s ceiling.

Lois woke early, and for a moment, before her faculties fully reconstituted themselves, she lay warm and huddled in the quilt, bathing in contentment. Never ever had her body felt so relaxed, so sated, so complete.

But as cold – really cold – reality set in, so did a profound and jumbled whirl of feelings.

You
were
real this time! You
were
fucking real!

Gathering the covers around her shoulders against the chill of the cabin, she ran her fingers over the sheet at her side.

No residual heat. No indentation of a large male body. But he
had
been here in the bed, she knew it. He really had.

There was other evidence.

Lowering her face to the sheet, she drew in a great breath of lavender and, as she sat up again, she studied her hand and saw on it that faint veil of glimmering dust she’d seen in the cabin the previous morning.

It was insubstantial. Not in the least bit gritty, it was smooth as silk and seemed to dissolve against her skin. But it was real, and it wasn’t just confined to the bed.

Padding around the cabin, she found it dusted across the rag-rug, on the floor, and even scattered thinly across her laptop.

‘Great! Now I’ve got dust in the works as well as corrupted programs!’

But, when out of habit she fired the thing up, not only did the wi-fi connection spring into life, but also files she seemed to have lost yesterday were restored and full of data she’d believed gone forever.

She began to shake. Hard. So hard she had to sit down on the bed again.

‘What the fuck are you, Robin?’ she demanded of the empty air.

It was impossible to ignore now, the strangeness of him. He’d sprinkled her bloody computer with fairy dust or whatever … and mended it.

‘Oh, God, help me, what’s going on?’

The temptation to dive under the duvet and just hide again was enormous, but she resisted it. The temptation to pour herself a tot of brandy was enormous too, and that she succumbed to, thinking it was a pretty poor turn of affairs that she was driven to drink, boozing first thing in the morning because she was afraid she just might have fucked a supernatural being last night.

She prowled the cabin, stirring up the Robin-dust with the trailing duvet that swept the floor much in the style of a geisha’s formal kimono.

‘This is stupid! There are no spirits, ghosties, sprites and fairies and what-have-you! And I’m sure you’re not a vampire because you’ve got such lovely teeth!’

But, if he was a real man, where the hell was he? Surely he would have stayed, especially if there was the prospect of a repeat performance?

‘Now this is just fantastic! You’re either a supernatural spook and you’ve turned into a pumpkin or something in the daylight … or you’re just a normal bloke who also happens to be a fuck ’em and run bastard!’ She swigged her brandy, then coughed at the bite of it. ‘Bloody hell, I certainly know how to pick men!’

But she couldn’t sit round getting drunk.

Still trying not to think too hard about anything, she showered and dressed and picked at some cereal for breakfast. She tidied the cabin and swept up, but that just swung her thoughts back to things incomprehensible.

The fairy dust or whatever it was seemed to disintegrate as fast as she brushed at it, and irrationally, seeing it go, she felt an aching wrench in the place where she knew her heart was.

He was magically beautiful and she was destroying his very essence.

She stopped cleaning up and tried to do some work. But it was hopeless. The code danced before her, and all she seemed to see were a pair of bi-coloured eyes, a glinting smile and gold-tipped hair … All that, and the most perfect male body, either fantastic or real.

She could feel him too. Deep in the quick of her, it was like having an echo of his penis still there, displacing the tender flesh that had embraced his as he moved and thrust and loved her. As she clenched her inner muscles, caressing a ghost, a deep pleasure gripped her and made her catch her breath.

Staggering almost, she collapsed into one of the easy chairs, her body trembling finely, her nerves, her heart – yes – her sex on fire as if Robin were with her, touching her, fucking her. Ripples of sensation licked over her skin like flames and
she
couldn’t tell if the feeling was real, in her imagination, or in her memory. The agitation in her flesh made her toss her head and writhe against the upholstery, the turn-on far more intense and visceral almost than those moments of displaced lust on the beach. She cupped her breast and her crotch, her heels kicking against the rug as her hands seemed to become Robin’s to stir her.

Where are you? Where are you? I need you!

Opening eyes she didn’t realise she’d closed, she looked down and seemed to see his glorious face looking up at her from between her legs, just like last night.

He smiled, he winked, and her body surged, the sudden sharp arousal capsizing in an instant, as she kneaded herself and the rough pressure made her come.

As she fell back into herself, the absurdity of her actions scared her. It was either that, or the fact that she wasn’t entirely sure they’d been her actions. Her impetus …

Had that just been a visitation? What had happened?

Oh, God, I think I’m going mad!

‘I can’t go on like this! I’ve got to get out of here!’

The sound of her own voice snapped Lois mercifully from her fugue, and she grabbed her coat, threw it on and set out for a walk.

The day was grim and cold again, and the skies leaden. A brisk wind was whipping up high seas and making spray lash the beach. Gritting her teeth and huddling into her puffed jacket, Lois took the path into the woods, her walking shoes squishing as she tramped the packed earth that had partly turned to mud. She wasn’t quite sure where she was going, but her feet just kept putting themselves one in front of the other.

Are you out here, Robin? Is this where you hang?

The silent trees mocked her, and there was no sign of life other than a few dubious-sounding rustles in the undergrowth. She wondered whether to turn back. What if there were foxes, or some other wild animals that might attack her?

Probably nothing more dangerous than the man-thing I fucked last night
, she decided, shaking her head, and then strode on.

The woods were dark and dank, and were frankly starting to scare her. But, just on the point of turning back, she seemed to burst out into a little glade that was chocolate-box pretty and lifted straight from an illustrated Victorian fairytale. It was bright here too and, when she looked up, she was astonished to discover that the sun had finally come out and was peppering the little dell with golden light.

There had been nothing about this on the BBC Weather site, but, with her face still lifted towards the welcome sunshine fragmenting through the higher branches, Lois unzipped her jacket. With the light had come heat. She stepped forwards into the glade, and then laughed out loud. Not only was she in a circle of light and warmth, but she was also standing in a fairy ring of toadstools.

‘I don’t believe this! It’s got to be a joke.’

Although she was half expecting Robin to pop out from behind a tree and answer her, nothing happened. She was still alone. Vaguely disappointed but also slightly relieved, she crossed the ring and sat down on a large fallen log, puffing out her cheeks.

‘So where are you, Magic Man?’

Her words echoed strangely, almost as if she were in a church, ringing and rebounding.

Still nothing.

Well, not completely nothing. As she sat motionless on the log, there was a rustling in the low brush, and an animal hopped out into the circle, almost floating over the short cropped turf.

It was a hare, long-shanked and lop-eared, mottled in colour, cream and dark brown.

Laughter burst like a bubble from Lois’s lips and she instantly expected the timid animal to bolt back the way it had come. Instead, it cocked its head on one side, studying her with bright intelligent eyes.

Bright intelligent eyes that had something really peculiar about them. Peculiar and familiar …

Lois opened her mouth to speak, but suddenly there was a loud crack in the underbrush behind her, like the breaking of a twig, and she almost leapt up from the log, swivelling around.

Nothing behind her this time, but, when she whipped back around to face the clearing and dappled light and the toadstools, she was no longer alone.

Robin, standing tall and dark in his long black coat, his head cocked on one side, was studying her with bright intelligent eyes.

He was on the very same spot the hare had occupied.

She’d heard no sound of the animal’s movement or his.

No rustle of grass or undergrowth. No displacement of air.

The hare had simply disappeared and left Robin in its place.

The broken sunlight faded, becoming splodged with black as the dell began to spin violently.

Lois fainted.

*

Struggling back to consciousness, she found herself firmly held and encircled. Fight or flight reflex made her jerk and wriggle and try to get free.

She knew whose strong arms were around her.

Or
what’s
arms.

That idea made her fight hard. But to no avail. His hold was unbreakable.

‘Let me go! Let me go! Get off me!’

The hold loosened, but bizarrely, now she was free, her limbs felt too heavy and lethargic to allow her to move. She stared at her booted toes and his much bigger ones beside them.

They were sitting on the short firm turf, their backs against the log, their legs stretched out in front of them. She could not, dared not, look at him. But his large cool hand gently stroked her face and, against all the odds, it seemed the simplest and most comfortable thing in the world to rest her head against the strength of his shoulder. The backs of his fingers moved slowly and soothingly against her cheek.