Burning for You (Blackwater) (24 page)

“I actually just realized you’re
only six years older than that boy,” I say in disbelief.  I turn to look at
Ash, feeling like a cradle robber for a moment. 

He laughs.  “Seven years,” he
corrects me.  “That’s a long time for a boy to grow into a man.  When I was
nineteen I was probably sitting at this table doing what Alex is doing.”

“Feeling up a Countess?”

“Of course,” Ash says, taking a sip
of his wine.  I can’t tell whether he’s being facetious or not from the
straight face he’s maintaining. 

My eyes drift over across the table
to Theo, whom I notice is looking right at me.  “What about your brother Theo?”
I ask.  “Is he married?”

Ash shakes his head.  “No, he’s
never been married,” he tells me.  “You ask a lot of questions.”

I look at him quickly and see he’s
just teasing me.  “Your family is perplexing,” I say.  “Is there an almanac or
something you guys hand out to first time guests at a Normandy dinner party?”

“No,” he says.  “We drug the food,
get the guests drunk and like things chaotic.”

“This is actually rather tame,
compared to what you prepared me for,” I reply. 

“Oh just wait,” he says, eyes
twinkling.  “Things will perk up once everyone has more to drink.”

“Does Theo have a catalyst?” I ask
suddenly.  I want to know.  I need to know.

Ash looks at me for a long time. 
“Of course,” he says quietly.  “Olivia and Theo are catalysts.”

Living on a vineyard means the wine
keeps flowing to the point where I wonder why they don’t just install water
fountains that serve wine where people can help themselves.  It would surely
cut the wait staff in half at Normandy.

At dinner, apparently only the
dress code is formal.  Besides the food and quality of wine being something
that would be served at a five star restaurant, the etiquette is more like what
one would experience at a fraternity house.  I’m not a prude, but I feel
completely scandalized from seeing people engaged in anything short of full-on
copulation at the table, on the stairs, on the sofa in the parlor and
ballroom.  I’m sure if I looked hard enough, I’d have seen everything, but my
own modesty and embarrassment prevents me from inspecting too closely.  Not
everyone feels the same way.  I see a nephew named Dillon watching his brother
Alex and the Countess Adela perform some sort of twisted game of wet nurse and
child.  Dillon hardly looks old enough to drive, yet here he is watching a full
on orgy erupt after dinner.  The scene makes me wonder what Ash was exposed to
during his own childhood, but I refrain from asking.  Time enough to learn
everything later.  For now, I continue to drink glass after glass of wine and
observe silently.

Annalise, whom I had met at the
masquerade ball, is playing the piano.  A man who is not her husband Rowan is
sitting next to her and kissing her bare shoulder.  Rowan, on the other hand,
has two women on the couch removing his shirt, having removed his bow tie and
cummerbund a few minutes back.  I feel like I just walked into Dante’s Second
Circle of Hell. 

Ash doesn’t attempt to sway me into
joining the debauchery, for which I am deeply relieved.  I’m not sure I want
the world to see me engaged in that level of intimacy with Ash, who reminds me
how committed I felt to him before I fainted on the way to dinner.  He rests
his hands on my shoulders and traces my collarbone with his index fingers on
either side.  His touch still sends tremors of yearning through me.  “Do you
still love me?” he asks.  I nod dumbly, wondering if everything I felt when I
saw Theo is me being ridiculous and scared to commit myself to Ash.  I can’t
deny that the same feelings that swept over me when I first encountered Theo tonight
are the same ones I felt when I crashed into Ash that day I first came back to
Blackwater.

As I’m questioning myself, I see
Lisette walk past me and cross the room.  She is wearing silver tonight, which
she seems to favor as much as the color favors her.  Her words are a warning to
me, I’m sure of it, but I’m not really sure what to do about it.  “C’mon,” Ash
says, pulling me away from my thoughts.  “Let’s go sit with Theo and Olivia. 
They have cake.”

It doesn’t take much to sway me
once the word “cake” is mentioned, even though I’m wary of everything related
to Theo tonight.  He’s hardly said two words to me yet I’m already afraid of
him and what he makes me feel.  Ash relays to me that of all of his brothers,
he’s always felt closest to Theo.  Olivia sits perched on a white sofa with a
black wood frame, her legs curled up beneath her, feeding Theo bites of a decadently
large piece of brown cake topped with fruit.  Theo compliantly takes each bite,
and his eyes light up when he sees us coming to sit down on the matching sofa
across from them.  The sofa is deceptively comfortable, which I never would
have guessed from looking at the design.  “Brother,” Ash greets Theo with a
nod.  “Olivia.”

“Brother,” Theo replies in that
smooth voice of his.  His hair is longer in back than Ash’s but just as long in
front, though tucked behind his ears to stay out of his water colored eyes. 

“Welcome home,” Ash remarks.  He
turns to me.  “Theo was in France for almost six months.  I’m sure Olivia
missed him terribly.”

“Not too terribly,” Olivia says,
flashing her own watery eyes at Ash in what looks like anger.  “Maman kept me
under lock and key and you know how much I love to be boarded up with no one to
talk to.”

“Saying there’s no one in this
house is like opening a full fridge and saying there’s nothing to eat,” I pipe
up.  “I do that all of the time, but what I really mean is that there’s nothing
I actually want to eat.”

Theo and Ash laugh, and even
Olivia’s black lips twist into a smile.  Though I doubt any of them have needed
to open a refrigerator to find something to eat in their lives.  I relay this
thought to them as well.  “I guess the analogy to you guys would be when room
service doesn’t bring what you want.”  The three of them laugh even harder.

“So where have you been hiding out,
Leah?” Theo asks me, leaning forward to put his glass of wine down on the
table.  Olivia hands the cake and fork across to Ash and he tries a bite.  “I
don’t think I’ve ever seen you in Blackwater before.  I know your mother, of
course.”

I nod.  “I just came back to town
last month.  I grew up here and left to move to Chicago.”

Theo raises an eyebrow.  “Why
Chicago?”

“I was under the impression I would
find my dad there.”

Theo looks at Ash and something
passes between them.  I look from one man to the other, but decide that the
best thing to do would be to corner Ash and confront him about it when we’re
alone.  Ash puts a forkful of cake up to my lips and I bite.  “Oh my god,” I
say, screwing up my face from the taste.  “What is in that cake?”

Olivia laughs.  “It’s mead cake. 
Mead is like honey wine.  Our brother Aspen keeps bees here.”

“Seriously?”

She nods.  “Oh yes.  And Aspen adds
a few other things to it.  My advice is not to eat too much for your first
time.”

“Like pot brownies?” I ask, warily
looking at the next small bite that Ash has poised in front of me.

“Something like that,” Theo says. 
“It cures what ails you.”

“You people are weird,” I say,
accepting the bite.  “Everything in this house is weird.”

“It also loosens your tongue and
your inhibitions,” Ash adds, grinning and taking a bite of his own.  “So
whatever you have hidden is liable to come out.”

“Oh?” I ask, my heart thumping in
response.  I look to Theo, who is resting against the sofa now and letting
Olivia gently push his hair away from his forehead with a delicate long
finger.  The gesture appears to be almost like something a wife would do for
her husband, but I hold my tongue. 

Ash moves to lie sideways on the
sofa and pulls me between his legs so I am resting back against his chest.  I
feel his hands come up around my thighs and over my hips, up to my waist.  They
keep running up my body, making me arch against him and feel his hardness
pressing against my bare back.  In a room full of people, in the middle of the
strangest party I’ve ever been to, he seduces me.  I want to tell him to take
me upstairs, to be alone with him, to take me away from all of this.  At that
moment I turn to look at Theo across from us on the other sofa.  He stands up
and comes to sit by my feet, bringing his glass of wine with him.  Ash lifts me
up under my arms so I am sitting up and Theo takes ahold of my chin and puts
the glass against my lips.  I have no choice but to drink from his cup, and he
continues to hold it there until I finish.  The wine he drinks is a pale gold
color, but it tastes thick and syrupy in my mouth, unlike most white wines I’m
accustomed to.  When Ash puts his hands under the arch of gold coins draped
over my breasts, I moan softly.  As my lips part, Theo leans forward and
catches the bottom between his own lips, pulling softly.  I feel the twitch and
pull of desire between my legs the moment he touches me.  My hands come up to
bury themselves in his hair.  I feel Ash’s lips on the nape of my neck between
my shoulders, sending chills down my spine.  His hands push the straps of my
dress down my shoulders, exposing my breasts. 

I am reminded briefly of a night
with three strangers who held me down and caused me so much pain that I stopped
running from my past.  The difference between that night and the scenario I’m
in right now is that I want this.  I can feel myself craving these men, wanting
them to take me and touch me and pull this dress off of me.  Had those three
men never done what they did, and Michael never made them do it to me, I
wouldn’t be here right now with Ash and Theo.  I find that knowledge a complete
paradox right now.  I would be still in a miserable marriage with someone who
deserves to be hated.  Now I’m in Blackwater to where I swear I would never
come back, giving myself to these two brothers in the middle of a room full of
people.  The people are present, but in my mind, they’re not really here.  I
glance over to Olivia, recalling that she is with us.  She is sitting in the
middle of the sofa across from me, and her eyes are focused directly onto
mine.  She sits with her legs folded and her hands on her knees, black material
flowing softly away from her body.  She looks flushed and breathless.  I see
her bite her dark lips together, and at the moment a tremble of pleasure
courses through me, she throws her head back and cries out.  I tear my eyes
from her and see two pair of hands between my legs.  I’m panting hard between
the two brothers, my dress wrangled around my waist and my bare legs wrapped
around Theo, while my arms wrap up and behind me around Ash.  I lean my head
back to kiss Ash on the lips, and feel Theo’s lips close around my nipple. 
Olivia gasps and I look to see her with her hand clutched over her breast
beneath the billows of black fabric of her dress.  It’s the same breast that
Theo is kissing on me.  She looks up and at her twin brother.  “Taste her,
Theo,” she whispers.  Theo looks up at me and I nod, looking down and watching
him back down the length of my body, stopping when he reaches my center.  Ash’s
hands press my breasts together and he leans forward to plunge his tongue
between them, causing me to gasp and cry out.  My cries are muffled as his
chest presses against my face.  I am completely naked on either side of the
material of my dress wrapped and pushed up and down around my waist.  When I
feel Theo’s tongue on my clit I feel myself floating above it all, the rapture
coursing through me like ocean waves covering my body and dragging me away from
the shore.  Olivia and I cry out at the same time, and I feel Ash’s lips press
down on mine and his tongue tasting my mouth while Theo’s tongue takes a final
taste of me between my legs. 

I watch Theo as I lay catatonic on
the sofa, as he gracefully gets up to plant a chaste kiss on Olivia’s black
mouth and continues to walk away and out of the ballroom.  I glance at Olivia,
who has tears flowing down her cheeks, dragging black lines over her white
skin.  Her eyes are closed, and her lashes are long enough and black against
the tops of her high cheekbones.  I curl myself into a ball and allow Ash to pull
me close to him and stroke my hair, soothingly.  I can’t talk, I can’t ask him
what happened, and watching Olivia makes me want to cry too. 

I don’t know how long I’ve been
lying on the sofa, curled against Ash, but when I am finally able to lift my head,
I feel the wetness of his shirt lift away from my cheek.  He is awake, and looking
down at me.  His face is serious and full of apprehension.  The ballroom is
quiet, though I can see that a few people are strewn about, some sleeping and
some awake.  The smell of a cigarette makes me turn my head to see Ash’s nephew
Alex sitting on the top of a baby grand piano and smoking.  “Where is
everyone?” I ask Ash in a whisper.  It doesn’t feel right to talk.

“It’s past their bedtime,” Ash
replies.  “Do you need me to carry you upstairs?”

I shake my head and sit up slowly. 
My breasts are still loose and I self-consciously attempt to pull up the straps
over my shoulders, but they’ve been ripped on one side.  “I’m sorry about the
dress,” I say, feeling sorry for so much more and feeling the ache in my chest
rise into my throat. 

“I don’t care,” Ash says.  He
stands and pulls me up.  I sway slightly and he catches me in his arms.  “Hey,”
he says, bending down to look at my face.  “Are you hurt?”  I shake my head no. 
He nods and holds his arms open to me and folds me into his embrace.  “Are you
okay?”

“No,” I whisper, feeling new tears
form and fall.  “I don’t think so.”

“Me neither,” he replies. 

I can’t talk, I can’t explain, I
can’t stop crying.  Ash has brought me up to his room and undressed me.  I’m lying
down in his bed, sobbing against his grey pillowcase, leaving a mess of makeup. 
He doesn’t undress himself.  Instead, he sits up in bed next to me, still in
his now-rumpled black tie, outside of the covers.  I wonder if he’s slept at
all.  The clock in the room says it’s almost four in the morning.