The Lover (16 page)

A red tide blotched her pale skin. It was not the becoming flush of sexual excitement.

Raoul firmly grasped the gold handle of Michael's cane, white-gloved fingers brushing scarred flesh. "Are we dining in this evening, monsieur?"

Anne's head jerked up.

It had just occurred to her what the literal translation for
sauce
, the French vernacular for a man's sperm, was.

And yes, it was edible
, his violet gaze told her.

"Yes," he said evenly. "Mademoiselle and I will be dining in this evening."

Anne's pink tongue darted out, moistened her lips.

Michael's body tightened.

"May I take your
chapeau
, mademoiselle?"

She automatically reached to unpin her hat, then halted midmotion, her gaze trapped by Michael's.

The splotches of red connected so that her entire face was a crimson glow.

Her lips quivered, so very sensitive, responsive to pressure. Nibbles. Licks. Kisses.

They would be equally responsive to the teasing of a feather.

To the kiss of his penis.

Slowly she lowered her arms. "No, thank you. I will keep my hat."

Michael inhaled sharply. Impossibly, he grew harder.

"
Très bien
." The butler stoically extended a white cotton-gloved hand for Anne's black silk gloves. "Would mademoiselle care to review the menu?"

"No, thank you." Glancing away from Michael, Anne stared at Raoul's black necktie, the cream-painted wall behind him, anything but the butler's eyes. Raoul blankly stared at her hat, not at all interested in her discomfiture. Clumsily she unfastened her cloak. "I am sure whatever the cook prepares will be fine."

"
Très bien
." Raoul calmly took the black grenadine cloak from her. "
Merci
."

"We will dine at eight, Raoul," Michael said coolly, his gaze never leaving Anne.

"I will inform the cook, monsieur."

Michael held out his hand, inviting Anne to touch him. Openly. Publicly. In the full light of day. Without shame.

Face shadowed by the brim of her hat, she stared at his scars for long seconds. At his flesh, which had caressed her. At his fingers, which had probed the depths of her body.

Squaring her shoulders, she reached out and clasped his hand.

Her touch was electric.

Friends. Lovers.

The bond was complete.

She would not turn away from him again. And he… he would protect her.

Somehow. Some way.

Satisfied—sensitive to her sensibilities now that he knew she would not repulse him—he released her hand and unerringly found the arch of her back. Purposely he urged her toward the stairs, his heartbeat counting their steps.

"Monsieur, a delivery came." Behind them, Raoul's voice ricocheted off of the high ceiling and painted walls. "It is in your study."

Michael did not pause. "Thank you. I will attend to it later."

Much later. Death was too close. He needed his spinster to hold it at bay.

Just one more day…

Head dipping, aigrette dancing, Anne grasped the intricately wrought-iron banister.

Five years ago the banister had been wooden. Diane had slid down it into his waiting arms, and impaled herself on Michel's waiting cock.

She had wanted nothing to do with Michael's flesh.

Anne furtively glanced at the hard bulge that tented the front of his trousers.

Wondering…
what
?

How he would taste?

How she would accommodate him in her other passage?

How soft a feather would feel, caressing the softest part of her body?

The tension inside him coiled tighter, hotter.

Nothing would interfere with their pleasure now.

Anne would give him what he needed: a few hours of respite to strengthen him for the coming night.

He would give her what she needed: memories to sustain her in the aftermath.

"Monsieur!" Raoul's voice came directly behind—
goddamn him
. He was following them. "The man who made the delivery said it is urgent that you read this
lettre
. He said it is from a man whom you recently made the acquaintance of but who is no longer with us."

No longer with us
raced up the marble stairs.

The sweet aroma of hyacinth clogged in Michael's throat. Coldness snaked through his veins.

How many more would die before it was over?

The warmth penetrating Anne's wool dress scorched his fingers, living testimony of the man's next victim.

Michael jerked his hand away from the small of her back and pivoted on the mirror-slick floor.

Raoul held out the silver post tray.

There was nothing sinister in the offering. Just the unrelenting reality of the butler's message.

Anne stood motionless beside him. His for the taking. Already marked for another.

Face expressionless, Michael picked up the sealed envelope and ripped it open.

A key fell into the palm of his hand. There was another envelope inside the first. It was simply addressed.

The handwriting was small, neat, feminine.

A note was scrawled underneath the lawyer's name. It was neither small, neat, nor feminine.

The message was blunt:
From one solicitor to another
.

Black dots danced in front of his eyes.

"Please do not feel compelled to keep me entertained." He heard Anne's voice as if through a long, dark tunnel. "I quite understand if you have… personal… matters to take care of."

Personal matters.

Yes, death was very personal.

The writing on the white vellum paper blurred.

It would be so much easier if he didn't like Anne Aimes.

Had
he liked the women in the past who kept the nightmares away?

Had he liked Diane?

"Thank you." Raising his head, he smiled. Anne's pale blue eyes mirrored two smiling faces—Michael, Michel. Michel, Michael. Condensed, there was no difference in their appearance. "I will only be a few minutes. Raoul, show Mademoiselle Aimes to the library."

There were no runners, no rugs, to silence his steps, no carpeting in either his town house or his home in Yorkshire that could ignite in a blazing conflagration.

The man's house was also bare of carpeting.

Twenty-nine years ago he had never known what to expect when he walked into the man's study. Knowing what he was going to walk into now did not alleviate the fear, or the anger.

Impotent emotions.

But unlike the man, Michael was not impotent. His cock continued to pulse and throb.

Inside his study a black trunk squatted beside the marble-topped desk.

He was not surprised at its contents, any more than he was surprised at the contents of the letter inside the second envelope.

Dear Mr. Little:

My meeting with Michel des Anges was quite satisfactory.

I know that you were concerned for my safety. Please do not be. I am well and happier than I have ever been before.

Per the terms of the contract, you may deposit the first quarter of Monsieur des Anges's payment.

I will be available at the below address. As I will remain there for the designated month rather than traveling back and forth between my place of residence and that of Monsieur des Anges, I would greatly appreciate it if you periodically visit my town house to ascertain that everything is as it should be.

Sincerely yours,

Miss Anne Aimes

Michael stared at his address, neatly written at the bottom of the vellum paper. Lowering the letter, he stared down into Little's wide, frightened eyes.

There would be no deposit. The contract had been dissolved.

Its charred remains protruded from Little's blistered, blackened lips.

Death had not brought the solicitor peace.

He had not known why he must die. Neither would Anne.

Michael stared and stared at the little old man whose demise he was responsible for. And he could feel nothing.

No sorrow.

No regret.

Just the pulse of his erection that remained stiff and hard while the blood inside his veins turned to ice.

Tiny images flickered inside Little's fixed pupils: white egret plumes crowning a black felt hat. Pale eyes aglow with sensual awareness. Dark, bruised nipples. Creamy white breasts. Golden brown pubic hair. A tantalizing peep of swollen pink-lips. White garters. Flesh-colored stockings. Black, pointed half boots.

The humanity Michael had clung to throughout the years hovered over him, a ghost that could so easily fade inside the dark hole that was his past.

Little's murder clearly stated the man's intentions.

He would not rest until it was Anne who stared in blank horror. Until it was her flesh that stiffened with rigor mortis.

Until it was her body that waited for disposal.

The man had released Diane. Michael had hoped he would do the same for Anne.

But he would not.

He did not intend to let Anne live—whether she and Michael were taken together or not.

A soft knock splintered the silence.

Not the man.

His minions would not knock.

Michael woodenly closed the trunk lid and relocked it. He pocketed the key. "Come in."

Raoul's graying dark head poked through the door. His nose wrinkled fastidiously. "Did you burn something, monsieur?"

Two solicitors had been burned. The lawyer was dead. The male whore was still alive.

Or was he?

"The merchandise inside the trunk was scorched from a previous fire," Michael said flatly. "What is it that you require, Raoul?"

"Your dinner, monsieur. Shall you have the usual?"

Food.

Dead flesh for the living.

Live worms for the dead.

"I shall have whatever is prepared for Mademoiselle Aimes."

"
Très bien
, monsieur."

The butler's graying, dark head withdrew.

"Raoul."

The butler instantly reappeared. "Monsieur?"

He had bought the Georgian town house eighteen years earlier. Raoul had been in the employ of the previous owner. Michael had allowed the butler to marry the housekeeper; in return Raoul and Marie silently, diligently performed their duties.

They did not question. They did not gossip. When the town house had inexplicably gone up in flames and Diane with it, they had overseen the repairs and stayed on as caretakers.

Michael realized how little he knew about his two principal servants.

"Send a message to Gabriel. Tell him I need him. Tonight. And Raoul—"

The butler stoically met Michael's gaze.

"I do not think I need tell you that I will not welcome any more interruptions."

Bowing, Raoul discreetly withdrew.

Michael stared at the closing door.

He could not let the man take Anne Aimes. When she died, her final thoughts would be of pleasure. Michael would be the last thing she saw. Not the man.

Anne restlessly perused the rows and rows of leather books lining the library walls.
Beowulf. Canterbury Tales. Le Morte D'Arthur
, an Englishman's account of King Arthur and the man and woman who betrayed him.

The butler's voice continued to ring inside her ears:
no longer with us
.

A euphemism for death, as if the deceased relocated and carelessly forgot to pack their bodies.

She lightly ran a finger over embossed gold lettering. Shakespeare… Charles Dickens.
Wuthering Heights
, by Emily Bronte… The leather spine was buckled with wear.

Anne could not imagine Michel reading a romance.

She could not imagine a man who was named for his ability to satisfy a woman being vulnerable.

To a spinster's words.

A spinster's body.

A spinster's needs.

To death.

The smell of expensive leather and freshly cut lilacs surged through her.

Death had no place in a house filled with flowers and pleasure.

Anne whirled around, evading the past, the present. Death was an inescapable reality.

Afternoon sunshine checkered the polished oak floor. Gilded chaise lounges upholstered in dark blue silk cast uncompromising shadows; ormolu-applied pedestal tables stood at attention beside each lounge chair, daunting reminders of another era, another culture. Bone-china lamps covered with dark blue and gold fleur-de-lis-patterned silk shades glowed in the fading light.

Eyes widening, she halted; her bustle swayed back and forth underneath her dress.

Michel leaned against the door, eyes hooded, watching her.

She forgot to breathe.

He did not look like the man who had confessed his need for a woman. Or who had propelled her toward the stairs with unmistakable intent.

His violet eyes were flat. Dead. Like the marble eyes in the stuffed owl decorating the foyer in her parents' town house.

He looked, she thought, like a man who had never enjoyed the pleasures of intimacy.

He looked like the butler her solicitor had hired.

Deadly. Dangerous.

"You kept the hat on."

Michel's observation was harsh, discordant.

Anne was abruptly, acutely aware of the white plume that crowned her hat, and of how he must interpret the fact that she wore it still. "Yes."

"Men don't expect women to kiss them."

Her head shot back in surprise. "I beg your pardon?"

"You wanted to know what I expect from a woman."

"You don't expect a woman to kiss you?" she asked carefully.

"No," he said flatly.

She swallowed. "I see."

Electricity rode the air like a gathering storm.

"Don't you want to know what I expect from a woman, Mademoiselle Aimes?"

Anne inwardly cringed at the impersonal form of French address.

"Yes." She stiffened her spine. "I do want to know. Otherwise I would not have asked."

"I expect a woman to lick me. Suck me. Bite me," he said in that curiously harsh yet distant voice. "The same as I did to you last night. And again this morning, when I brought you to orgasm."

It was a direct challenge.

Last night he had teased her with his lips, tongue, and teeth. This morning he had satisfied her with the same tools.

He knew what to do to a woman, how best to please her, whereas she knew nothing about men, or how best to please him.

She struggled to reconcile the man before her with the one who had urged her to accept him as her lover.

She could not.

In the carriage he had been abrupt, angry at circumstances he had no control over, yet which had forever altered his life.

Emotions she could relate to.

She did not know how to respond to the man standing in front of her.

Her short fingernails dug into the palms of her hands. Belatedly she remembered digging them into Michel's back last night.
Had she marked him
? "An acquaintance of yours… passed away?" she asked stiffly, hating the euphemism but unable to bring herself to utter the word
died
.

"Yes."

"Please accept my condolences. I quite understand if you would prefer privacy…"

Michel continued staring at her for long seconds, until even her heartbeat fumbled.

"It was not unexpected," he replied finally.

Pushing away from the door, he strode stiff-leggedly toward the white marble fireplace and squatted down.

Anne remembered the pile of white ashes in Mr. Little's iron fireplace. She would not have thought the solicitor the type of man to indulge in the extravagance of burning a fire in April.

She would not have thought to find a Frenchman's library filled with English titles.

Yet Michel's was.

The sharp strike of a safety match pierced the palpitating silence. A faint waft of sulfur mingled with the smell of leather and lilacs.

Rising so quickly that he stumbled, Michel jerkily stepped away before turning his back toward the flickering yellow fire that licked at the black coals.

For one fleeting second his life was clearly delineated on his face: the pain he had suffered five years earlier, his flesh eaten by flame. The fear he experienced still, forced to daily handle a substance that had caused him unimaginable suffering.

The loss of someone who was far more dear than a mere acquaintance.

Anne had lived with death for many, many years before it had actually taken her parents. When it had finally come, the relief she had felt had been more of a betrayal than the actual demise of the only two people she loved. But he had obviously not been prepared.

Michel had forced her to accept her loneliness. In return he had unselfishly given her comfort—with words, with pleasure.
He had made her laugh
.

He did not deserve to mourn in solitude.

Anne offered him the only solace she suspected he would accept. "How does a woman ask a man if she may lick him… suck him… bite him?"

"Men are not shy," he said, coldly provocative, the stallion Madame Rene had called him. "If a woman wants a man, all she has to do is tell him."

Her heartbeat accelerated. "I want you, Michel."

An ember popped in the fireplace.

Michel flinched, as if bracing himself for pain. Lowering his lashes, he suggestively reached for the front of his trousers. "How do you want me, Anne?"

"In front of the window," she replied evenly. Beneath her dress her knees threatened to collapse at the actuality of giving pleasure to a man whose services she had purchased for her own pleasure. "Facing the sunlight. So that I can see you."

His nostrils flared, scarred fingers stilling.

"Taking a man's penis inside your mouth is not like taking his tongue. You may not like the taste of sex." Rawness overrode the crudeness in his voice, remnants of memories devoid of joy. "Not all women do."

"But you enjoy kissing a woman's genitals," she said with a calm certainty that she was far from feeling.

"Yes, I do."

"Why?"

"Because I know that it pleases a woman. Sex is the taste of pleasure."

He did not have to say that it had been five years since a woman had cared to please him.
To taste him
.

It was all there in his stark violet eyes.

"I want to taste you, Michel. To feel your heartbeat against my lips, my tongue. I, too, want to lose myself in another's pleasure."

Long seconds passed, the silence broken only by the crackling of the spreading flame, the pounding of her heart, and the memory of his voice. Telling her he had felt her heartbeat against his lips, his tongue…

Just when she thought that he would refuse her, he silently, wordlessly walked toward the large bay window, into the afternoon sunlight. A gilded round table held a large Ming vase filled with lavender lilacs. He halted a few feet in front of it, his right profile facing her, his body wreathed in golden light.

Heart tripping inside her chest, heels clicking on the sun-checkered floor, she closed the distance separating them and stepped between him and the window.

Warmth caressed her exposed nape. Tension weighted the dust motes.

"I don't want you to regret the time we've spent together," Michel said tautly.

The scars on his right cheek and temple were raw in the glare of the sunlight.

Anne ignored them. "I do not regret my decision."

He reached for the buttons fastening his trousers.

She experienced a curious sense of déjà vu.

"No," she impulsively protested.

He paused, eyelashes lifting, his gaze impaling hers.

"No?" he asked softly.

He had dared her to unfasten his trousers last night—a virgin who did not know what to expect.

She now knew what to expect.

"Please. Allow me."

She wanted to bury, now and forever, the memories of death and disease.

Anne did not fumble with his buttons as she had the night before. The hardness behind the scratchy wool was inviting, familiar.

It was for her
, he had said.

Not because she paid him. But because he desired her.

Kneeling, dress and petticoats cushioning her knees, she reached into the open vent, finding wiry hair; humid heat; unmistakable male arousal.

A faint whiff of something—something that had been scorched—teased her nostrils. It was immediately gone, replaced by the clean, musky odor of masculine flesh and the pervasive sweetness of lilac. Sunlight danced along the length of his erect penis, revealing every vein, every gradation of color. A curlicue of black hair. Darkening skin that ripened into dewy plum.

Gently she grasped him, encircled the first five inches. A thin thread of silvery arousal glistened on the engorged purple head that protruded from her fingers.

He did not look like a sausage. He did not look like a cigar.

He did not look like the shriveled mass of desiccated flesh that had been her father.

Michel was what she would remember in the forthcoming years.

Anne traced the path of moisture; the plum-shaped crown was slippery smooth. A faint pulse throbbed underneath his skin.

The moisture in her mouth dried up with sudden apprehension at taking him into her mouth. Licking him. Sucking him.

Her fingers tightened; she studied the tiny slit that looked like an eye. It wept a lonely tear. "Is it necessary that I take all of you inside my mouth?"

"No." She could feel his stare; his voice was strained, still harsh but no longer remote. "Just the first couple of inches."

Slowly, carefully, she grazed the throbbing head with her lips.

His flesh jerked.

Anne snapped backward.

Michel's hands were fisted at his side. His head was thrown back. The muscles in his exposed throat were corded, as if he were in supreme agony—or utter ecstasy.

Leaning forward, she tentatively nuzzled him as he had nuzzled her. Inhaled his scent as he had inhaled hers.

It was not offensive.

Closing her eyes, she tasted him, there where his flesh throbbed like a heartbeat.

He tasted… clean. Faintly salty.

Anne hesitantly took the thick, plum-shaped tip between her lips, her mouth opening wider, wider still until she encompassed his full circumference.

It was awkward, but not uncomfortable.

He flexed inside the circle of her fingers, as if in approval.

A murmur of surprised pleasure rose inside her throat.

Large, scar-roughened hands banded her neck.

Anne started. Jerking back, she glanced up.

Michel did not loosen his hold.

His eyelids were heavy, a slash of black lashes. Underneath them his pupils were a pinprick of darkness that swallowed the light; his violet irises glittered. "Do you like it?"

"Yes," she said in all honesty.

"Do you know what will happen if you continue?"

She stared at the purple crown that pulsed and throbbed and wept the tears that he did not. "You will ejaculate."

"Inside your mouth," he affirmed.

The thought should repulse her.

It didn't.

Leaning forward, she planted a kiss on the velvety tip of his
bitte
—a beautiful French word for a beautiful Frenchman. Then she swallowed as much of him as she could comfortably take.

One ridged hand slid free of her neck. A heartbeat later a weight depressed her hat. Steel slipped through her hair—the hat pin.

A shiver of alarm coursed down her spine.

Her head snapped back and up.

Michel held the hat pin. Light played along the sharp steel, fluttered along the glistening wetness of his flesh.