Stone Kissed (20 page)

Neither did he.

***

His room held the bed, an unusually large antique four-poster she’d seen in one of his catalogues and called up from inventory. She’d ordered custom-made combed Egyptian cotton sheets sized for the massive mattress. She’d filled the room with mahogany woods, chocolate leather and silver-blue accents that matched his eyes. The window was framed in luxurious drapes to hold in the heat from the fireplace and lined with silk undercurtains that would float on the faintest summer breeze. She’d insisted each bedroom and bath be supplied with radiant heat subflooring, so that even in the bitter winter nights his room would stay warm. She’d created for him a cave, a dark haven, a womb.

Their clothes fell to the thick Aubusson carpet that covered much of the wood floor. They crashed together and shattered apart. He bit down on her shoulder to pin her and mount her. She clawed his arms to pull him deeper inside. They spoke no words, both of them with jaws clenched and eyes flashing, writhing and twisting and flipping on the bed, each determined to gain ascendance over the other, each melting into the other.

Delia came with a shuddering cry that ripped her heart’s pain from the inside and scattered into the warm night air. She kept her eyes shut so he wouldn’t see what he’d loosed.

What do you want?
He’d asked. Too much. Always too much. She wanted to say what she felt, be who she was, and live in someone’s love.
His
love.

“Delia?” His voice was quiet as she nestled her face into his shoulder. He stroked his hand down her arm, but she wouldn’t open her eyes. Her palm, however, crept to his chest and their hands flowed over each other as if they were exploring each other for the very first time, marveling at the contrasts between smooth skin and rough calluses, between the heated swells of her breasts and the cool, flat planes of his back. Her lips tingled as she kissed the skin at his collarbone. Her toes curled as he kissed her.

He bent his head to her right breast, as she knew he would. They had patterns now, the familiarity of knowing what pleased each other. It made his touch no less pleasurable, and as her nipple puckered, Delia inhaled and finally opened her eyes to see his dark hair. She wove her fingers through it slowly, deliberately, and then pressed him closer. Tiny shocks jolted her as Grant swirled his tongue over her swollen tip. He sucked her all in, and then pulled back, closing his lips over her nipple, giving it a quick bite. Her hips bucked in response and a quiet moan bubbled up from her throat.

“Delia, you are my treasure.” Ahh, there he was, looking at her with serious eyes, his obsidian voice riding over her, blanketing her, shaping to her and burning into her self-consciousness. She turned her face to the side but he placed his finger on her cheek and brought her back to look in his eyes. “You are my treasure,” he repeated.

She couldn’t help herself. Hope filled her and she lifted her head with a cry, framing his face with her hands. He rose above her and met her offered kiss.

Grant slid into her slowly, like an old key gliding into a stone lock. She knew what he would do even as he did it, knew how it would feel as he slid back out. She stroked the sole of her foot down his calf in a silent plea for him to come back—and he did. He wouldn’t allow her to break his gaze. In truth, she didn’t want to.

She rocked into him and he thrust into her, faster and faster, the muscles and tendons of his chest, shoulders and neck rising up in high relief. She lifted up to him and he pinioned her, and the old bed squeaked and groaned. She knew his pleasure, felt it as if it were her own. Together they shattered, together they flew. And together, at last, they melted as one being, so that Delia couldn’t tell where her skin ended and his began.

She felt, even as the connection between them cooled, that being here with him was the only thing truly worth being. When she left him, left her true home, she would be ripping out the last of the magic that had made her unique. Even as her body lived on, Delia feared, her soul might die for the lack of Grant.

She felt the tear trickle out the corner of her eye, and knew that in another moment, he would feel it, too, so she pushed at him gently, rolled out to the side.

“Delia, please stay.”

His arm was light across her body. Not even a finger had twitched to hold her in. She could lift Grant’s arm easily, slide out and go back to her apartment. By sundown tomorrow she would be on the highway, rolling in the coming days through the green hills of and gold plains to the emptiness of the mountains in the west.

He’d asked her to stay. Grant had said
please.

He wrapped his arms around her back and placed a jeweled chain of kisses down the side of her neck and shoulder. She clutched his arms, knowing even as his lips caressed her breasts that he wouldn’t stop there.

Even so, the electric velvet-on-silk shock of his tongue probing her deepest core was such an amazement of erotic heaven that Delia couldn’t help but rise into it, willing him to, to… Oh hell, she didn’t know what she wanted, but damn if he wasn’t giving it to her again. His tongue slid up and down between her swollen folds, pressed deep into her, and then popped over the nub of flesh. He sucked it gently in a manner he may have meant to be soothing but sent her senses reeling outward in layered waves. She rose and crashed again and again, each peak hitting her harder, making her wilder than she’d ever been in her life.

Delia clung as long she could to the opalescent heat that swirled through her body and mind. As the shocks faded from tremors to quivers to quiescence, she pressed her cheek to his chest. She heard nothing but the deep, strong beat of Grant’s heart. She saw nothing but the dark glow of his skin in the moonlight, the sweep of his eyelashes as he drank in the sight of her face.

And again, minutes or hours later—it didn’t matter, time didn’t matter—he stroked a finger down her spine, touching the electric spot at the base of her tailbone. And again the key turned in the lock and she fell open for him. He flowed into her, welcomed by every cell of her being.

Delia gloved him tight, holding him deep even as her legs flexed and her toes curled while the waves of joy and pleasure rolled over her, slow and easy like a tropical summer surf. When at last he gave himself up with a shuddering, ecstatic groan, Delia felt her lips open into a smile. This was happy. She was happy. She wasn’t thinking, calculating or planning for the future. She was just…here. With Grant. Who believed her and had asked her to stay.

She reached a tentative finger forward to stroke his face as he lay panting atop her, their heartbeats slowing together. She felt the groove of his cheek, how it curved out in an answering smile. She rubbed her fingertip along his bottom lip, and he kissed it, absently. She burrowed in deeper and fell asleep, fully protected and warmed by his heat and weight.

***

Cecily climbed the first oak in the line of trees. Through the upstairs window she saw Grant naked on his back. Delia hovered above him, her breasts brushing up his chest.

She shouldn’t be watching. She should get in there, knock him out, take Delia’s soul and the drain him enough to keep him forever. Every last drop of her rest-stop snack had burned away, and here she was wasting time. It was highly unlikely that these two could show her anything she hadn’t seen in a porno—except that the air around them shimmered with an energy, an aura she’d never seen before. Delia and Grant together created a glow that had never shown up on any television screen, and it was as mesmerizing as fire itself.

Delia’s hands framed Grant’s face and her back arched in a soft curve, her smooth buttocks licked by the golden, flickering firelight. He lifted his chin and Cecily saw his tongue swirl the dark tip of a nipple capping the creamy globe of Delia’s dangling breast. Grant locked on and Delia’s head fell back, her pelvis rocking forward and back in the air. His dark hands slid around her shoulders and he tipped her to the side, rolling her onto her back. He placed himself above her, shifting back on his heels, and Delia stroked her hand through his hair.

Cecily simply couldn’t figure it out. What were they doing? These bodies were made for a cataclysmic clash. Delia had power and Grant had life—they should be rocking the foundations. Instead, they were dallying, playing, sucking and licking and stroking one another. She saw him slide a hand between Delia’s legs, and Delia arched back once more. Cecily heard her cry. It was the sound of utter dissolution, and it made Cecily feel hungry for something she could not and had never been able to name. She slid the ragged fingernails of her own hand between her thighs, but even though she pressed and rubbed, it was as unimportant as scratching a momentary mosquito bite. She hardly felt like dissolving.

They changed again. He slid off the bed, his long back to the window. He was muscular, and hard, and his shoulder blades flexed in the firelight as he turned Delia, spreading her legs open over the edge of the bed. Cecily got a glimpse of dark curls between her creamy thighs and he knelt between them, obscuring Cecily’s view. His hands stroked up the inside of Delia’s legs and his head dipped forward and lifted up. Beyond the top of his head Delia’s face flashed as it twisted back and forth. Delia kicked a leg. Her fists pounded the bed in the same rhythm as his shoulders pressing in and back.

Oh, for Pete’s sake. No one had ever done that to Cecily. No one had ever tried. Cecily wrapped her arms around herself and scowled. Such a waste of time. Finally they got down to business. The muscles in Grant’s tight ass flexed over and over. He howled as he came, a dark, primal, claiming cry. No one ever howled to claim Cecily. They never got the chance.

She dropped from the tree lightly, ignoring the twinge in her ankle. Behind her she heard a rustling—looking over her shoulder she saw a flash of silver, a dark silhouette in the trees. She couldn’t afford to be associated with her late cousin’s demise, so she turned to find the intruder, following the shape as it melted into the trees between her and the caretaker’s shed where she’d parked Dad’s old Volvo.

She heard the bird rustling on top of the shed roof.

That old fuck.

She’d done a poor job last time, had let sentiment get in the way of common sense. If he made it into the house, he’d tell Delia she was out here, ruining Cecily’s surprise.

“St. Francis.” She jogged lightly into the trees. “Welcome home.”

Delia awoke in a cold bed to see Grant facing the dresser mirror, knotting his tie in the shadows before dawn.

“I’ve got some business to take care of in D.C. today. I should be back by dinner.”

“Casserole.” Delia yawned. “There’s a mountain of it in the church fridge I guess I’m supposed to pick up.” She fluffed the pillow and rolled to her side. Then her eyes popped open and she slowly returned to her back, gazing at the plastered medallion in the center of the ceiling.

“Any of Mrs. Hardcastle’s chicken salad left?” he asked, as if they discussed leftovers every day.

Delia pulled the sheet up under her arms and sat up. “The furniture and inventory trucks should be here…” She glanced around the room and sighed. No alarm clock. No change on the dresser. No flowers in the jade-green Rookwood vase on the sill. No figurine on the fireplace mantel. The room lacked the details that would make this a true place of homecoming, and she wouldn’t be here to see them. “Soon. The trucks’ll be here soon.”

He scowled in the mirror and caught her gaze, then smoothed his face into his usual blank mask. “When will you be ready for the final walk-through?”

“When you get back.” The words ripped themselves out of her. If she wasn’t at rock bottom yet, she would be soon. She would push through it and collect whatever fragments of herself were left in the aftermath.

Grant left the room, and she exhaled, swinging her legs to the floor. But he stepped back in, his nostrils flaring and his blue eyes turning silver as he saw her naked and slightly chilled in the pre-dawn light.

“Thank you, Delia,” he said, his voice solemn. He looked uncertain, uncomfortable as he glanced around the room, and then his eyes returned to hers. “So, casserole?”

She pressed her fists into her thighs, refusing to reach for him, refusing to wrap her arms about his waist or lay her check on his chest even if he welcomed it. She had a job to finish.

“And chicken salad.”

Grant left. She dropped back onto the bed, her chest caving. She would find scraps of herself, but would she be able to mortar them back together?

In spite of her pain, Delia dozed off, only to be slapped in the face by shaft of sunlight. She lurched up on a gasp.
Frank.
She’d forgotten to return Frank.

***

The sunrise glinted off the hood of the first truck, which pulled in as she was heading out back, her hair still damp from her shower. She waved at the driver’s genial greeting, gritting her teeth. She could check on Frank, but she couldn’t move him, not with people around.

“Where is he?” Cecily Johnson’s voice trilled.

Delia cringed and turned. Cecily stood in the trees between the house and the shed. Delia recoiled as Cecily stepped forward, a rusty shovel in her left hand. Her right arm dangled loosely as if it had been yanked from the socket. Black soil spotted her shirt and jeans. Two leaves dangled from the disheveled curls snaking about her face. She had a scrap of black fabric tied around her left pinky finger and her large brown eyes, usually so sharp and brilliant, were the color of muddy basement window glass.

Delia decided to play innocent. “Isn’t he at the hospital?”

“Why the hell would be there? The last I saw him, he was here.”

“Why would he be here?”

“Because it is his house.” Cecily’s voice dripped disdain. “I need to see him. Now.” She was shaking.

Grant.
She meant Grant, not Frank, Delia realized with relief.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I just…tripped back there.”

“The landscapers filled that trench a while back.”

“Obviously the ground settled.” Cecily sighed and waved the shovel at the house. “A little early, isn’t it? You need breakfast at least before you get into all of that.” Her grin was manic and she looked to be missing a canine in her upper jaw.

Delia’s stomach flipped. The urge to step back was almost irresistible, but she clenched her fists and held her ground. “Was Grant expecting you?”

“He won’t mind, I’m sure. We have an understanding.”

“You do?”

“He understands my natural affection for this place, as well as its value to the community. I never did congratulate you, by the way.”

“For what?”

“For landing him. Though I must tell you, he’s going to be a hell of a lot of man to hold onto. I could see that during our…meeting at Fleur.” Cecily slid her bandaged hand along the length of the shaft and slung the shovel back so that it thwacked her shoulder. She winced and glared at the shovel as if it had hurt her on purpose.

“I think you should put that down.

Instead, Cecily wrapped her bandaged hand around it and hefted it like a baseball bat. “Let’s go to breakfast, you and I. I know some things about your father I’m sure you’d find fascinating.” Her voice flayed Delia’s skin.

“What things?”

“Come with me, Delia. Now.” She opened her mouth wide on the last word, her voice echoing as if her chest cavity were hollow.

Delia was torn. Cecily looked as if she’d just come off the world’s longest bender, but after today Delia would have no contact with anyone who’d known Vernon Forrest again.

“Miss Forrest? Where does this go?” Ralph held one end of the Cloverham painting of the quarry and Travis held the other.

“Good God. Where’d you get that?” Cecily extended the shovel, pointing the muddy blade at the painting.

“It’s part of the estate. We found it in the attic.”

Cecily shuddered visibly and wrenched her gaze back from the painting. “I can shower and be back here in forty-five minutes. Is that enough time for you?”

Delia faced her even though her legs trembled, “I have to work. You need to go.”

“Lunch then. It won’t take long. Have you had the salmon at Fleur? It’ll be my treat.” Her voice crackled and it cut Delia’s nerves like tinfoil in teeth.

“It’s getting heavy, Miss Forrest.”

“Take it to the piano room.” Delia kept her eyes on Cecily’s face. “I’ll be right there.”

“You sure I can’t convince you to come with me?”

“I have to get back to work. Please put down that shovel.”

“Come and get it.” Cecily held it out with both hands.

Delia pressed toward her even though the very air pushed her back. She gripped the handle between Cecily’s hands and jerked, but Cecily still managed to brush her pinky. Delia’s legs buckled from the icy pain that shot to the base of her spine. Cecily, however, stood straighter and rolled back her one good shoulder.

“Miss Forrest?”

She didn’t know why Ralph kept calling for her, because he didn’t really need her. The movers had the placement layouts in hand already, and she was as much decoration today as the statues she would bring into the house in the afternoon. But she was grateful for his incessant interruptions. She could feel her legs unfreezing, itching to run back into the safety of the house.

“Everybody wants you today.” Cecily smiled. “Everybody.”

Delia dug the shovel into the ground and leaned on it. “Go now.”

“You sure I can’t be of some assistance? I have a great eye for placement. It’s all about energy, after all. Feng shui.”

“You don’t belong here.”

Cecily’s nostrils flared. “We’ll see about that.”

***

“I have a surprise, Mother. Do you hear me?” Cecily’s voice crackled into wild, tangling threads. “I’m coming tonight.” They were going to have a destination wedding, damn it, complete with a beach and theme park characters. And this time her parents would be there for it.

Static was her answer, the only sound in her house except for the scraping of that damned stone head. She’d put him in the fruit bowl because he kept rolling off the counter, so he rolled back and forth, the remaining half of his mouth gaping and closing like that of a fish.

“Does it hurt? Missing your nose and all?”

The stone head wobbled in the huge walnut bowl, jostling the last shriveled lemon.

His body lay in the filled-in trench behind Steward House. It had frozen rigid when she knocked the head free with the sledgehammer that now rested on her dining table. She couldn’t decide whether to return it to the shed or not. It was one more piece of crap in a whole steaming pile she’d managed to heap around herself—but soon none of it would matter.

After today, she’d go where she wanted, be who she wanted and take what she wanted from anyone she wanted.

“You can tell her whatever the fuck you want.” She lowered the lid to the overstuffed suitcase and then sat on it to close the latches. “Tell her I killed Carl Benson. Russ too. Tell her I killed her daddy. But it was quick for him, painless, It was a good way to go. I’d wish the same for my own father.”

The rolling head stopped. She walked over to the bowl and looked down at him.

“It was a good way to go,” Cecily repeated, hearing—and hating—the plea in her own voice. He should have said something nice, made comforting sounds to her. He was, after all, a monk. But St. Francis’s head just closed its remaining eye.

***

As the sun set, the movers finished placing the sculptures where Delia asked, and she sent them home. For one blissful hour she fussed and cuddled and kissed the sculptures, wiping away her own tears as she thanked her friends, new and old, and reassured them that she would be all right.

Delia and the statues heard the squeal of tires at the same time. The sound of the concrete cracking was like a bullet through the air.

“Goodness gracious,” Chloris said.

“God’s breath, I wish I had legs,” Brogan bellowed.

Bert reached for the front door but Delia opened it. Together they lurched onto the porch.

“Oh, no,” Delia flipped on the porch light and reached for the round object lying in the dirt. “Oh, no.”

St. Francis’s head had been severed at the neck, and much of his left face was missing. He still had his right eye, a wedge of nose and half of his mouth.

“Oh, Frank.” She hoisted the heavy stone head onto her forearms. “Frank?”

“Seh-wee.” he moaned. “Seh-wee,” he repeated.

She turned to Bert, but his ears were drooped and his paws hung limply at his side. He shook his head.

“Cemetery?” She felt the stone head vibrate, rolling in her palms. Did he meant “yes” or “no”?

Grandmère and the twins and all the others were up there. She had to go. She had to see, and she had to stop whoever it was who was hurting her family. She snatched her purse off the table, fumbling for her keys and her phone. She yelled back into the house, “I’m going to Grandmère. If Grant gets here, tell him…” She paused, and her laugh came out as a sob. “Yeah, tell him.”

***

Steward House was dark. When he entered, Grant almost tripped over Bert, who all but blocked the door. Grant flipped on the lights, closing his eyes briefly against the glare, then stepped forward to examine Bert’s ears—both were as straight and solid as the day they had been sculpted. He stroked his thumb inside Bert’s ear and the stone gave ever so slightly.

Grant kicked aside a packing crate as he entered the piano room where Mozart and Beethoven held court on the baby grand. They faced away from each other and a huge vase of roses and wisteria formed a wall between them.

“Have I interrupted something, gentlemen?”

Mozart scowled. The shepherdesses huddled beneath the Cloverham, Sophie’s arms wrapped around them both.

“What’s wrong, ladies?” Their mouths opened, but he couldn’t hear them.

He called her name, his excitement flipping to frustration. This had been, without a doubt, the longest day of his life. What should have been a simple transaction had taken his attorneys two hours of dithering about the tax ramifications of his decision.

To his credit he hadn’t told them where to stuff their ramifications. Nor had he answered the unspoken question in their voices and eyes:
Why on earth are you doing this?
When, during lunch, he overheard a junior attorney mutter, “Old guy’s gone soft. He needs to retire,” Grant turned on the boy and gave him a slow smile.

He’d raced from the city, the thrumming in his veins driving him across the county line. By the time he’d reached Main, the resonance had become a steady hum. Two moving trucks—his moving trucks—passed him as he hit the main drag, and he was forced to slow down to the municipal speed limit. He smiled with gritted teeth at the two people who waved at him and clenched the steering wheel at the red light, fighting the compulsion to gun the motor.

When she saw what he had in the envelope, she would agree to be his wife. She had to.

But the house was silent and the statues were in disarray.

“Delia.” He strode into the kitchen where Brogan glared from a recessed niche next to the Aga cooker. His mouth gaped in a wide O and the leaves on his face flared and fluttered. “You too, old man? What’s going on here?”

Hearing a scuffle, Grant turned, and Bert was standing directly behind him, his paws clutched over his belly, his ears tilted back. “Where is she?” he asked the hare, even as fear swamped through him, making his legs weak. Grant tried to contain his impatience at the slow side-to-side turning of the stone head. “Delia!”

Grant raced up the stairs, his heart pounding in panic. She should be here. She belonged here. All of his plans were contingent upon her still being here—but her car wasn’t in the drive.

Romana lay on the floor next to her plinth and her mouth, her mouth open in distress.

“Where is she?” he demanded.

He heard sound of breaking glass in his bedroom. Frank’s bird lay twitching beneath the shattered window, its wing broken off. “Aw, Christ.”

Grant picked up the bird, reaching into the glass shards for the fragment of stone wing. He held the piece in place, shaking his head. His palm tingled as the stone melted back together.

“Holy shit,” he breathed. He slapped his pocket for his phone. The bird fluttered weakly on his palm. “Do you know where Delia is?” he asked it, and the bird gave a little hop.