What She Doesn't Know (37 page)

“Should we call Connard about that?”

“Every little bit will help.” He called and left a message for him. Then he turned to her. “I want you to think about this. Sira has tried to kill you three times. She murdered Brian. And she may have murdered seven others.”

“She’s willing to do whatever it takes to preserve Xanadu.”

“Including kill you. That’s what I want you to think about.”
 

She started to wrap her arms around herself but halted. She was afraid, yes. But he’d taught her that she could overcome her fear. “That just gives me more reason to put this outfit on. I can’t walk away from this, not now. And I’m not leaving you to handle it by yourself.”
 

She returned to her sewing, turning away so he couldn’t see that she hadn’t exorcised the fear completely. He didn’t have a choice about her attending…and neither did she.
 

Christopher turned off the computer at eleven and rubbed his face. “I logged onto Xanadu. A few of the players left private messages for Alta. They’re excited about meeting his new queen.”

Rita had hung up her costume, changed into her pajamas, and was now snuggled into her small bed. “I’m ready to meet them, too.” She saw warring emotions cross his face. “I’m not going to die because you care about me. It’s superstitious to think that because someone is in your life, they’ll die.”

He looked as though he were going to say something in response but stood instead. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He locked the door behind him, and his footsteps faded down the hallway.

She let out the breath she’d been holding and listened to the hoots and hollers of people having a grand time in the streets of New Orleans. He returned a short time later, damp from a shower, dressed in his sweatpants with his sweatshirt flung over his shoulder. He flicked off the overhead light, leaving them in the soft glow from the lamp on the desk. The curtains were closed. As he headed toward the chair, she stopped him by saying his name.

“There’s room here for both of us.”

He eyed the small cot, barely big enough. She hoped he could see that she wasn’t being chivalrous and wouldn’t make her come out and ask. She let him war with himself and didn’t give him an out. He was going to have to turn her down or give in. Instead of shuttering her expression, she let him see her need to be held.
 

He lost his internal battle and walked to the cot. “Are you afraid? You can still back out. I won’t think any less of you.”

She
was
afraid of tomorrow. Of facing their enemy, of pretending to be a queen, and of losing Christopher. She reached out, and he slid his hand into hers. “I could say the same to you.”

Neither would back down. Not now and not tomorrow.

Rita wasn’t sure what had woken her, but her eyes opened and she remained very still listening. She had no idea what time it was. It wasn’t light out yet. Shadows crossed the room, accompanied by murmurs as a small group of people walked past the window. Her heart pounded a steady beat of fear as she thought how few hours were between then and the Gathering.

She had shifted during the night and was now on her back. Christopher was on his side, one leg over her lower body and one arm over her stomach. The pounding in her heart increased, but not out of fear anymore. It was now desire that made her breathing heavy. She synchronized her breathing so that when he exhaled, she inhaled. As she breathed him in, the pieces clicked together.

She wanted this every night, wanted him close like this. She was ready to let a man into her life. This man. Wanting him had nothing to do with Brian or transference. It had everything to do with finding the man who gave her the motivation to open herself to love, and figuring out why she’d been plagued with nosebleeds.
 

In the deep, dark hours of the morning, she could no longer fool herself. She wasn’t just in love with him. She loved him.

His question had echoed in her mind. How could you know if you loved someone if you had never loved before? Now she could answer him. You just knew.
 

It exhilarated her. It scared her. Mostly, it hurt. He was too valiant to bring her into his darkness.

She reached out to him, sliding her hand along the arm slung over her. She trailed her fingers across his shoulder and down his side. He woke instantly, and his hand slid up into her hair. In the dim light from the courtyard, she couldn’t read his expression, could only see the shadows of his face. He ran his thumb over her mouth in the way that went right down to her soul. She kissed his thumb, then nibbled on the pad.

She heard a quick inhale. “Rita, I don’t know how to love you the way you need.” He lay his hand against her cheek. “But I want to love you the only way I know how.”
 
      
He kissed her. Not a tender kiss, but a hungry one that told her how long he’d held back. He offered her nothing more than this night, this kind of love. She took what he offered, without consulting her common sense. She opened her mouth to his, fully engaging him, showing him how long she had restrained herself, too.
 

Let me show you what being loved feels like.

She turned to her side and let everything she felt for him rise unheeded from the depths of her soul. Men understood actions, so that’s what she would give him. She cradled his face with her hand as he paused mid-kiss and looked at her.

I’ll take what you have to offer me,
she told him with her eyes, with her hands.
And I’ll give back more than you’ve ever been given.
She ran her fingertips over the curves of his face and feathered his eyelashes. She trailed the edges of his mouth and traced the ridges of his ears.

She thought he’d stopped breathing. He’d taken one deep breath when she’d started touching him and hadn’t yet exhaled. She sat up and took his hands so that he would sit up, too. They faced each other on the tiny bed, both on their knees. He leaned forward to kiss her, but she ducked and kissed his chin instead. She continued her exploration of his face with her mouth. As tenderly as a mother would kiss her newborn, she planted tiny kisses over his skin.
 

“Rita, what are you doing?” he asked in a thick voice as he exhaled at last.

She ran her thumb across his lips in the same tender way she loved. “Making love to you the only way I know how.” She leaned forward and kissed him, a soft, gentle kiss that could not heat their blood and lead to mere sex. Her mouth moved down to his chin before he could try to deepen it.

He tilted his head back, and she heard his breathing go deeper, felt his surrender. She moved to the place just beneath his ear, soft skin that made him growl low in his throat. She wanted to take him not to that place of heated passion, but a place she knew he had never been. She kissed down the length of that scar that haunted him. She knew that he had never been loved for who he was inside.
 

His hands tangled in her hair as she moved lower. For a moment, she got caught up in the way his fingertips moved over her scalp and the tingles that shivered down her spine. But this was not about her, not now. She moved behind him and kissed down the indent of his spine. His muscles flexed beneath her tongue as she trailed it across his shoulder blades. When the level of sensuality rose too high, she lightened it by trailing sweet, chaste kisses across his back. After she had covered every inch, she unbuttoned her pajama top and slid her arms around him, skin to skin. She pressed her cheek against his back and squeezed him tight, as though she could meld right into him and chase away all the darkness inside.

“Rita, I can’t…give this back.”

“Shhh.”
 

He didn’t know how to be treasured. Though she didn’t know either, she knew that’s what she was doing: treasuring him. He took her hands and pressed first one palm and then the other against his mouth. She could feel the tremble of his lips. Was it from restrained passion? With a deep intake of breath, he turned around and gave her the longest kiss she’d ever experienced. He was driving now, she realized, and let him take the wheel. Before she surrendered to his kind of love, she wished she knew: was her tenderness too much for him? Or not enough?

When Rita woke the next morning amid the tangle of blanket and sheets, Christopher was gone. Sunlight streamed through the cream curtains and pooled beneath the window. She wrapped the blanket around her and walked over to the warm puddle of light. A couple huddled at the table in the far corner of the courtyard, sipping coffee and laughing.
 

She heard the door lock click and turned to see Christopher. He stopped, as though he’d come across a force field. His expression was shuttered, but for that one second, she’d seen something glimmer in his dark blue eyes. He blinked, swallowed, then pushed himself to move forward and close the door behind him.

She wrapped the blanket tighter around her. “What’s wrong?”
 

Beneath the long coat he carried, he revealed the sword she had seen at Brian’s house, keeping his gaze on that as he laid it across the desk. “When I…” He looked up at her. “You’re so beautiful standing there in the light.”
 

Their gazes locked for a moment, making her throat go dry.
 

“Thank you.” She felt that compliment melt into the deepest parts of her.

He shrugged off the tender words and concentrated on the sword again. He didn’t want to make a big deal out of it; she wouldn’t, either.
 

She walked over to the desk and looked at the shiny blade and ornate handle. “My, what a big sword you have.” She batted her eyelashes at him when he met her gaze and was rewarded by that snarky grin of his.

“All the better to penetrate you with, my dear.” He held the sword with both hands and moved it in circles. “I thought a king should have a sword to protect his queen with.”

She swallowed hard, knowing how he felt about weapons, about that sword, in particular. The words,
his queen
tingled through her. “Where’s my sword?”

Though she was kidding, he surprised her by reaching beneath the coat and presenting her with the Silent Shadow. “For extra protection. You’d better get dressed before I get careless with my sword.”

She couldn’t believe she didn’t feel self-conscious standing there naked but for the blanket. “Is that supposed to be a threat?”

He moved the chair from behind the desk and took the stance of a true swordsman. “I don’t want to be distracted. I’ve got to remember how to use this again.”

“Mm,” she answered, before adding, “I think you know how to use it just fine.” She cleared her throat. “When did you get that? It’s from the house, isn’t it?”

“I got it last night when we stopped. I was hoping I wouldn’t need it, that Connard would have found something. I spoke to his partner just now. He didn’t know where Connard was or anything about our situation, and he had the patience of a dog looking at a bone.”

Rita let out a sigh. “So he obviously didn’t buy anything we told him.”
 

She watched him parry and thrust for several minutes—or at least she thought that’s what it was. The grace of his body and the warrior fierceness in his eyes impressed her. He had learned hatred in the tableaux. Now he would use it for good.

Sira wandered the fabric hallways of Xanadu, her heart thumping as though it was buried in mud. She clutched the wrinkled script in her hand, the paper wet from her damp palms. Once Alta had loved her, had wanted her for his queen. Then Rita had interfered. Everything was falling apart. Alta was gone. Now Edward had gone mad, lying there with that man’s body, smearing blood on himself. She’d had no control over him that night. Only when he was ready did he throw his clothes, shoes, and his parents’ ashes into the fire. Only then did he walk silently to Brian’s house.

“No regrets, no regrets,” she chanted and dropped the script on the floor. “Focus on Xanadu.”

Interlopers had breached Xanadu’s security and would be making their appearance at the Gathering today. Worst of all, Sira could not make her own appearance. Not at first, anyway.

She climbed the metal stairs in the back. If she could at least restore the sanctity of Xanadu, she could regain the happiness she’d once had. She could even find love again.

It had fallen to her time and again to sacrifice. To preserve. Now the physical manifestation of Xanadu itself would be sacrificed. She set a device in the corner and started the timer. Fire would cleanse this physical world of Xanadu. She had a whole year to recreate it somewhere else. It, like she, would rise out of the ashes.

She’d told Alta time and again that having the Gathering in the same place at the same time every year wasn’t wise. What if those who were banished decided to cause trouble? Some of the participants were unbalanced. Some had made threats. But Alta was attached to this old place. So Sira had made sure the banished did not return. Ever.

She placed the last device in the back of the gathering room, where the black cage sat. Her fingers slid down the cold bars, and she smiled. Christopher LaPorte had one more tableau to perform. He would be exposed as the fraud that he was and condemned to death as the crowd applauded. Sira would finally get the glory for all she’d done.

“And ‘mid this tumult Sira heard from far, ancestral voices prophesying war!” Like Coleridge’s Xanadu, this one was magical and sacred. She would keep it safe forever.

CHAPTER 25

Rita wasn’t sure when it all started to feel surreal, but through last-minute stitching on her costume and watching Christopher fence with an imaginary foe, she began to feel as though she’d slipped into another dimension. They had stayed in the office most of the day, though she was occasionally drawn to the window to watch the crowd in the courtyard. She thought she would feel conspicuous in her costume…until she saw the sperm people. Seven of them, holding up papier-mâché sperms on poles, all following a large egg.