Wilderness of Mirrors (22 page)

Not that she would mention it.

Kate was as unlikely to drop an ‘h’ as she was a misplaced word.

But she would know.

He didn’t want that.
This is only for now.

He’d let Kate think he was thanking Sam for driving him back from Barkley. He turned an ear in their direction.

“…some of the silk. Maybe for reupholstering the kitchen chairs. Or do you think it would be overkill?” There was a tenuous note in Kate’s question. She desperately wanted Sam’s approval, her attention.

Sam’s face was locked on his sister’s. And Kate had lost the stern lines edging her mouth. Lost her cloak of righteousness.

Because of her deafness, Sam was forced to pay strict attention to each person. It made them flourish. Bask like flowers beneath a sun. Like Kate right now. Like him.

“No,” Sam soothed, “not too much at all. I like your idea. You’ve designed a print with such subtle elegance; I think you could put it wherever you’d like and it would work.”

Kate seemed cheered. Humbly proud even. Had she always been so soft beneath the surface? He’d not really given it much thought. Always considered her cracked lacquer through and through.

Movement caught his attention. He said, “There’s Dylan.” Windswept, blond hair and lean limbs stood out among darker haired teammates. Not exactly a doppelganger, but close enough that Nigel blinked.

The women turned and Sam’s delight further buoyed his spirits. “Good Lord, he must take after your father.”

“Exactly his likeness.” Kate’s bony wrist shot out of her coat as she waved.

I look like the Duke?
The thought took Nigel by the throat. Daniella had been blue-eyed, not her husband. Always, he’d taken after her,
hadn’t he
?

“Just like his godfather.” Kate, eyes hooded with one hand, nodded at Nigel.

Now Nigel remembered that as well. “Poor boy.”

They laughed. One of the dogs barked and David mentioned missing mustard.

“That’s the third thing I haven’t been able to find. The old silver serving pieces and that pretty little set of condiment pots were gone when I had Eleanor fetch it down this morning.” Kate went back to inventorying their stockroom like a Viking wife, and Sam flowed into his space.

“My sister likes you.” He couldn’t quite believe it.

Sam’s throaty chuckle did something to the pace of his heart. “I’ve passed the Queen’s muster?”

“With flying colors.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere.” The heat of her words brushed his lips.

“You almost turned around.” He wasn’t certain why he needed to say it.

She licked the edge of her lower lip.

He’d done that to her last night.

“I got nervous.”

A ball flew by and Dylan chased it. “Uncle Nigel.” The young man’s head dipped in deference, but there was a smile lurking beneath the too-cool façade.

“Do us proud, eh?”

“Aye. ‘Trample the weak’…”

“‘And hurtle the dead’,” Nigel finished.

His nephew grinned and raced back to his mates.

“Let me guess.” Sam smirked. “You played for the same house?”

“Aye.”
Christ, even the boy’s words mirror mine in tenor
.

“Brad too?”

“Same.”

She faced him, eyes flirting with trouble. She roved his mouth with too-brown eyes. “I missed you.”

He was very glad about the length of his coat.

She inched closer. He didn’t think it possible.

He said, “I think we left a button or two at The Club.”

She held out a palm dotted with them. “Three.”

Are you certain you’re not in the ‘actuarial business’?
he wondered.

The wind knocked loose a few strands of her hair.

He tucked them behind her ear. Felt her earring nip his finger. Let his hand linger on the soft heat of her neck. “Sometimes, when the field games ended –”

“You went back to your room instead of the pub.”

“Mmmmm.”

She touched the edge of his jacket. Just over the bruise and blood. “Even when you’d been trampled?”

“I always did the hurtling.”

“I bet you did.”

Her mouth was red with cold. Perfect.
Fuck it.
He leaned in, one hand against the base of her neck, and took her mouth.

If Kate was surprised, she hid the shriek well.

The kiss was chaste, with fire enough to match napalm. His breath was fierce between their newly parted mouths. She stared at his lips, her cheeks cherry.

“Do you know where the powder room is?”

“It’s hard to find.”

“Then you’ll have to show me.”

Sam left Tam courting two little girls and Kate’s skewered lamb kebabs. Their walk was brisk. Words minimal. At last, they made the high, curb-hugging buildings. There was an arched double door set into the thick, red brick.
The Timbralls
read a burnished plaque.

Nigel pushed through the right half of the paint-blackened entry. She watched him as he remembered it all.

What a lonely, strange place for a boy to grow up.

An empty foyer echoed their steps.

They zigged a bit. Hit a stairwell. Zagged a bit more.

Then paused for a fleeting moment while he did something to the keyhole before them.

The housemaster’s office, she guessed. Old. Brown paneling everywhere. And a big, very big desk with not so many papers on it.

Nigel shoved the door behind them and turned the hasp. “He’ll be on the field.”

His hands found the zipper at his neck, and he ripped free of his jacket.

“Let me.” She wanted her hands on him.

He stepped into her, thrust fingers through her hair and ignored the spinning hat.

He came at her like a cyclone: mouth covering, hands seizing, hips caging. She handled his shirt as she had the evening before. More buttons to find.

Unfortunately, Nigel was having heaps of trouble with her seamless long sleeve tee. So he undid the button on her jeans instead and shoved his hand down. “You fuck with my head, Sam.”

Her legs were rubbish. She backed against the bookcase, and her wrist hit an iron coat rack. Pain rang and was summarily ignored. She felt the tie she’d seen before - the black and white house one, still knotted, though somewhat loosened – and tossed it over his head.

His eyes blazed and he managed to yank her shirt away.

She worked his jeans. Down past the curve of his buttocks, snug against his corded thighs.

When he hesitated, eyes on the boning and lace bustier she’d put on just for him, because it did things to her breasts she’d have once believed impossible, she reached for the tricky clasp herself. The custom fabric was almost unbearable in its thickness.

He tugged at the loose tie in illustration. “You’ve your fantasies. I’ve mine.” His thumb brushed hard against the faux silk covering her breast. And she felt it start. A hammering of lust shook the rust off her hinges. His mouth was on hers again, his tongue and teeth restlessly sweet. She’d have thought him impervious but for the reverberations in his neck.

Mr. Forsythe was a growler.

She leaned into the shelves labeled Middle English and hoped Chaucer was enjoying himself. There was a hand on her calf and away went a boot. Then another. Down came her jeans and up went Nigel’s pulse.

His fingers ran the length of her thigh-high stockings, stopping at the garter. His forehead met hers and he stuck two fingers in her mouth. Before she’d finished with them, he licked them himself and thrust them between her legs.

Her hands knocked the books bouncing. His lonely thumb took root beneath her chin and he drove into her with tongue and fingers. She arched her back and he sank teeth into the tendons of her neck.

He shoveled coal onto her engines. Built a hot fire inside her. There was a roaring in her veins and her lungs were working overtime. She realized her eyes were closed and tried to focus on him. The top of his head was just under her chin. She had a long view down his powerful back. Near the bottom, along the indentation of his spine and flanking muscles, she could make out a detailed tattoo. From her angle, it appeared to be a cathedral of some sort.

There was an old scar too, through the clipped gold of his hair, shaped like a sickle. At once, it sobered her.

They’ll kill you. In one alley or another, with a knife or a gun, they’ll find you and I won’t ever recover from it. This time is…different. You are different.

He felt her seize-up. Stall like a racecar going into its final turn.

They’d spin now, veer away and crash before burning.

He grabbed her, saw fleeting wide eyes –
Not Irina’s. Not bloody Irina’s! –
and spun their bodies onto the ancient oriental.

He kissed her mouth and pulled damp hair away from her face. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” Her voice was steady. Whatever it was had been masterfully hidden.

He tried not to wince as she rattled his chest.

She put a finger to his mouth. Slid a hand down to sheath his cock. His body mutinied. He’d find out later. When his mind started working again. They rolled over and into one another. Her heat shocked him. He closed his eyes. One stocking-clad foot gripped his thigh. Regrettably, more pain blasted him. Her back arched and her breasts crested their fabric prison. He sucked at air and his ribs rattled away at his sanity.

There’s blood and the scent of gunfire.

The room spun and he struggled to focus on her achingly lovely face. With shock, he realized he just might throw up.

She stilled. Touched his face.

His lips were beginning to loose their feeling. The muscles between his neck and shoulders were taut. He couldn’t tell if he was too hot or freezing.
What could he say?

She worked fingers into the bunched muscles of his neck and upper back. Her mouth touched him, with care, over and over. Twice, her tongue lingered along the hammering of his artery. Ever so slowly, he remembered what The Firm’s doctor had been trying to teach him.

“
Slow your breathing. Belly, not lungs. Remind yourself danger isn’t present in that moment. Listen to a score. Watch my fingers. Watch my fingers. Replace those thoughts.”

“
With?”

“
Something you love.”

“I need you right now.” If he thought too much about his choice, he’d walk out the lower door and step in front of the first tour bus. He shoved his hips into hers and focused on the lust in her eyes. That look was for him. About him. He wondered if she could see his desire. They always seemed so flat, his eyes. He’d practiced deadening them year after year. What use was lying if your eyes gave you away? Now, he wished life into them.

Her hands grabbed the borrowed tie. Yanked and pulled his face into her range. She ran her fingers through his hair and kissed him breathless. He felt the pressure between them build and he stopped trying to control it. Her second leg joined the first and she arched hard, throwing her head back as her body racked and clenched him.

He grabbed her wrists – that tattoo – and thrust.

“Nigel.” The word seesawed between a moan and a mantra.

It was enough. He exploded. Lost himself along the roads of her long legs and depths of her cream-colored valleys. There was the white-hot of African sunlight. Peace. Blessed silence through the length and breadth of his shattered soul. Her, all wrapped up in and around him. And for a moment, no pain at all.

He lay sprawled over her, the pulse of his heart shaking the stays of her ribcage. Her hand pressed the back of his head into the curve of her neck. She could feel his breath come and go where he’d sucked her skin. Somehow one of her legs was between his; the other was bent at the knee, its foot planted in the rug’s plush.

Instinctively, she brushed a thumb over the edge of his finely cropped hair. She knew exactly what the skin there looked like. Red, gone brown, with a faint line of white where the barber ended his work. There would be the taste of salt there after a hot day in August.

Unless August found him lying in a pile of refuse, a raw bullet hole halving the distance between his pool-blue eyes.

Her heart felt peeled like a spring onion. In five seconds she’d managed to fall further than Icarus. What had she gone and done? Her body still throbbed with heady reminders of his hold over her.

Oh, she’d had fantastic sex before, and it wasn’t worth the price of balcony admission to this performance.

She closed her eyes and sighed. She’d gone and lost her heart to someone who’d be dead before she figured out how to tell him it was all her fault.

She had to put an end to it.

Tonight. I’ll find a way to end it tonight.

He felt her sigh and tilted his head and body to better face her.

Younger. He almost looked as he had in Hong Kong. Stripped and rebuilt in less than ten minutes. She smiled, couldn’t help it. “Could you get a ‘rip’ for this?”

“You think my essay was substandard?” There was murder in those eyes.

“I’m not sure. Maybe I should reread it?”

His laugh rumbled along their twined bodies. “You know– ” His hand gripped hers, fingers and wrists locking comfortably together. “I’ve never been in an office like this when I haven’t been in trouble.”

She didn’t doubt it. “Are you in trouble now, Mr. Forsythe?”

“As deep as it gets.” His eyes softened a degree and he set his mouth against hers, pulling her lower lip into the space between his teeth. His hand found her breast and his thumb destroyed what little coherence she might have had at the ready.

Some long minutes later, he rested the scratch of his unshaven cheek along the inside of her thigh.

“You now,” she said.

With care, she crossed his minefield of abrasions, bullet holes and bruises.

With less care, she untied his control and left him shuddering, fingers knotted in her tangled tresses.

T
hey were walking back from
The Timbralls
, down a stretch of the Slough Road sidewalk, waist-high brick walls dividing them from the fields on their right and streams of cars ribboning their left. She leaned contently along his side when the rev of downshifting punctured his thoughts.