Sudden Legacy (10 page)

I was at a loss as to what to do in this situation. I felt like a heel leaving Doc to worry about his goat alone, but at the same time I wanted to find Pops and try and get some idea of how close this fire was getting. “I’m on my way to the Johnson’s place to see about the firebreak. I’ll keep a look out for Milly, okay?” was the best I could offer.

He waved me away with a nod, and I continued across his field and into the trees. I stayed to the path until it opened into a meadow. The smoke hung thick in the air, and I caught myself questioning if I was headed in the right direction. The meadow was eerily quiet, as if the birds couldn’t sing through the smoke. I had just made up my mind to turn around and head back when I thought I heard a faint bleating from the far side of the meadow. Doc’s goat, Milly.

Smoke does funny things to the way sound carries. It’s similar to fog, in that you’re never quite sure which direction a sound is coming from. When I reached the edge of the meadow the bleating was louder. “Milly?” I called. “Here girl!” I don’t know what I expected to happen. She wasn’t a dog. The bleating became more insistent at my voice. It sounded almost panicked. “Milly?” I continued on, deeper into the far woods until I stubbed my foot against a chunk of cement and stumbled forward gracelessly. Looking down I realized the cement was part of an old house foundation. I had never come across this place before.

“Milly?” I called again.

The foundation wasn’t large by modern standards, but it did sink down to form what must have been a basement toward the far end. I was grateful I had tripped over the shallow lip instead of the other side. Tripping over there would have meant an eight-foot drop. There were the remains of a fireplace and chimney to my right. It sounded as if Milly’s bleating was coming from behind it.

I chose my footing carefully to avoid any more stumbles. There were rusty broken pipe pieces sticking out of the ground here and there and other bits of debris to navigate around. The smoke was getting thicker by the minute and I couldn’t tell if it was my imagination or if the temperature was rising. At last I made it to the chimney ruins. Milly was there, wide eyed and frothing a bit at the mouth. Her collar had caught on an iron hook at the back of the old fireplace, and every time she pulled against it she choked herself. “Easy girl, it’s okay...” I crooned to her as I eased over to unhook her collar.

I had the presence of mind to keep a hold of her collar once she was free. She was panting and quivering in a mixture of panic and pain. Her back legs were wet and I was just about to investigate what looked to be a smear of blood on her left hock when her whole body seemed to tense and two hooves and a nose began emerging from her back end. “Oh, no.
Really?!
Is this really the time for this?” I said in exasperation. I was more frustrated with fate than I was the goat. As if in answer to my complaint, a hot wind pushed through the surrounding trees, bringing with it even more smoke. This smoke was thicker and blacker, and inspired in me a great unease.

The hooves and nose disappeared back up inside of poor Milly and she relaxed a bit. I gave her a reassuring pat on the neck. “Alright, girl. The next one should do it.” I had great sympathy for Milly. I had given birth without pain medication and could only imagine how much worse it must be to be laboring while caught on a hook and choking.

As expected, the next contraction produced a wet, rather slimy kid. I wasn’t sure how long it took a new baby goat to start breathing. Milly nosed at it a bit, but she seemed more focused on delivering the placenta. After a long moment, I decided to meddle. I wiped the slime away from the doeling’s nose and started rubbing it vigorously. I could feel the instant the baby woke up. Her whole body seemed to shimmer to life and she let out a watery bleat.

By this time the air was becoming nearly unbreathable. My throat was starting to burn and my eyes were weeping streaks of tears down my cheeks. We couldn’t stay where we were, but I was disoriented and unsure of which direction to take to get us back to the Dambacher house. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my head to think. What did one do if caught in a wild fire? I couldn’t see any flames, but I certainly couldn’t deny the fact that they were too close for comfort.

“Miles is
pompier.
A “fireman”,
non
?” Marla looked up at Miles and graced him with a sickeningly sweet smile. “He is American, Lara. You two will have much in common.” She ran her hand over Miles’ chiseled pectoral muscles, motioning for him to join me at my table.

We were docked at yet another coastal town with a bent for hedonistic debauchery. I was beginning to wonder if all of Europe was like this, or if Marla just had a taste for depravity. As if reading my thoughts she joined us at my table and purred into my ear. “I enjoy surrounding myself with beauty, Lara. Don’t you?”

I looked at her blankly for a moment, not sure exactly how to answer that. I was always uncomfortable around Marla, but never more so than when we were in each other’s company without Julien there to serve as a buffer. “Uh... yes?”

Marla smirked at me with a wicked glint in her eye. “I think Miles would make a wonderful addition to our little pleasure cruise. What do you think?”

I looked from Marla to Miles and back again. “I think Miles looks old enough to make his own decisions.” I was trying to sound annoyed but much to my displeasure, my voice came out sounding wary instead.

Marla bit her bottom lip. I noticed how white and even her teeth were. I always noticed her teeth. They were one of her best assets. Those, and her pert breasts, which were also on display, as she was wearing a sheer floral blouse that hung off one shoulder, and no bra.

We both looked at Miles at the same time, catching him appreciating the see-through quality of Marla’s blouse. “How about it, Miles? Do you want to come play on my boat?” asked Marla. He stared at us as if he couldn’t believe his luck.

“You ladies want me to join you on your boat? I would-”

I cut him off before he could finish his thought. “‘
Lady
’, not plural. No offense, Miles. You seem like a nice guy and all, but I don’t care either way, as I have no intention of getting to know you better. Besides, it’s
her
yacht.”

Marla’s eyes flashed venom. “She’s right, of course. It is my yacht. She is of little importance, as she is just along for the
ride
.” There was no mistaking her meaning. I clenched my jaw and turned away to scan the crowd for Julien.

Miles seemed a little uneasy with the palpable tension at the table. He had an easy charm about him, and I could tell his usual modus operandi was to smile and go with the flow. He focused on Marla as he said, “I would love to join you. Care to give me a tour?” He made as if to rise, but Marla stopped him with her hand on his arm.

“Not just yet,
Monsieur Le Pompier
. I want to stay ashore a little longer. How about you show me what you can do with those strong hands of yours?” She slipped her perfectly pedicured foot out of her sandal and ran it up his thigh, smooth as silk. He was both surprised and delighted. He took her foot in his hands and began massaging it. Her resulting moans were blatantly sexual. “
Mmmm, mon dieu, c'est orgasmique.”
She bowed her back, and threw her head back in ecstasy. I was convinced this woman could harden her nipples on demand.

“Oh, Lara! He is amazing -
très magnifique
! You must feel this.” She motioned for Miles to do my feet, and eager to please her, he quickly made a grab for them before I could beg off. He popped my sandals off as I tried to pull away. He assumed I was just ticklish and clamped down on my ankle. “Just relax into it,” he said.

“No, really. That’s okay.” I managed to pull my foot from his grasp just as Julien came up behind me. He didn’t say anything at first; he just offered Miles a friendly smile. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Marla was beaming. Bitch. I should have known she was up to something.

“Julien,
mon amour
, this is Miles. He was just giving Lara a foot massage. He has the perfect hands for it, don’t you think, Lara?” Marla cocked her head and batted her lashes at me innocently. I just glared at her darkly. She didn’t miss a beat. “Miles is American! Isn’t that wonderful? They will have so much to talk about. I know I love the sound of a fellow countryman whenever I travel abroad.”

Julien raised his brows at this. “Oh, will he be joining us on the water, then?” He sounded politely interested.

Marla smiled a sexy smile. “Yes. He will be my
personal
guest.”

Miles had maintained his happy-go-lucky smile throughout this exchange. I got the feeling he was trying to figure out the group dynamic and where he would fall into it. Julien offered Miles his hand. “Well, let me be the first to welcome you aboard.
Les amis de Marla sont mes amis.”
Off Miles’s look of confusion he repeated himself in English, “Any friend of Marla’s is a friend of mine.”

Miles shook Julien’s hand and thanked him. Then, when he still had Miles’s full attention, Julien pulled me to my feet and kissed me thoroughly. The kiss was so complete that for a moment I forgot where I was, and when he reluctantly ended it, I was short of breath.
Oh my.
“If you’ll excuse us,” Julien said softly, “Lara and I have a few errands to run. We’ll see you onboard.” And with that, he wrapped his arm around my waist and led me away before I even had the chance to put my sandals back on. I had just been one hundred percent claimed, and I couldn’t have been happier.

Later that evening I was sitting on my bed as Julien was rattling things around in the en-suite. I could hear water running as if filling a bucket. When he emerged from the bathroom carrying a large basin filled with sudsy water, I smiled at my aural accuracy. “What’s all this?” I asked.

“
This
, is for you,” he answered. “I’m sorry I dragged you about town in your bare feet today.” He set the basin at the side of the bed and gently lowered my feet into the warm water. I would hardly call our little walk being ‘dragged about town’, but my god the water felt like heaven. I couldn’t contain my moan of enjoyment.

He was still kneeling at my feet. Pouring a bit of lavender oil into his palm he began to massage my calves; his strong fingers knowing just where to press and glide. “Mmmmm. That’s divine...” He washed my feet, dried them with pats from a fluffy towel, and then began to run his thumbs up my arches. When I sighed in bliss, he dropped one foot to concentrate on the other with both hands. “Do you enjoy foot massages,
ma chérie
?” he asked. I moaned in response and let my head drop back; causing me to think of the way Marla had reacted earlier at the table. I snapped my head back up, refusing to admit to any similarities between the two of us.

He immediately felt the tension in my foot. He rotated my ankle, and began massaging again, using his thumbs to press certain pressure points in my foot. It was a totally new experience for me. I was amazed how his pressing parts on my foot could make me feel things in other areas. I had been given foot massages before during pedicures, but they were nothing like this. This one was so much more intimate. Erotic even. I was in heaven, and thoroughly unprepared for what he did next. As I closed my eyes in contentment, he dropped a kiss on the ball of my foot, and then, without warning, my big toe was in his mouth.

I sucked in a breath in shock. Not shock over the fact that my toe was in his mouth, but shock over how incredibly
good
it felt. I had always laughed at the idea of men with foot fetishes, and if I was being honest, the thought of licking or sucking someone’s feet had always seemed positively disgusting to me. I had never understood the appeal. Until now. Julien explored my foot with his tongue the same way he had explored every other part of my body - thoroughly, expertly, and with barely contained passion. I was mystified at his ability to make me orgasm never having touched me above the knee, and when he finally rose up and entered me the way I had been waiting for, I was mystified again that I could come a second time so quickly.