Trefoil (13 page)

Yes, he had, but it wasn’t enough. How quickly his presence eclipsed her existence.

“You don’t want to be parted from him,” Maria stated matter-of-factly.

Tears smarted in Lillian’s eyes. She smoothed her palms over her knees.

“Don’t be upset about it, Lillian. You and Nathan are bound.”

She burst into tears.

Maria scuttled around the ottoman and put her arms about her. “Can you talk to me about it?”

“It’s John,” she said. “I can’t hurt him. I love him. And I’m terrified to be around Nathan and John at the same time.”

“Nathan will make it easier on you, you’ll see.”

Lillian gawked at her. “Are we referring to the same man?”

They burst into laughter.

Lillian’s body vibrated with sensation. Nathan was two hundred and eleven steps from her. His heat washed over her as if she stood before a bonfire. If she Called to him, would he come to her?

She finished tea with Maria, and they talked companionably until dinnertime. Lillian followed Maria through the dizzying maze of corridors leading to the dining room. Before they reached the doorway, she put a hand on Maria’s bronzed arm.

The other woman’s chocolate brown eyes swung to hers.

“I’m afraid,” she admitted.

Maria wound an arm about her shoulders and hugged her. “Dante, Will and I are here to act as buffers between the three of you. I promise it will be all right.”

Lillian had never seen a more decadent dinner table. It could have been eighteenth century Europe or the palace of an Italian prince. The room was the rich hue of wines, claret and champagne, and an iron and crystal chandelier dripped from the soaring ceiling. Golden light glimmered upon the silver and china below.

Above the table shone the faces of her new friends. Dante was seated at the head, striking in a black suit and crisp white shirt, with Maria taking her place at his elbow—a dark jewel set against ivory silk. Beside Maria sat Will, boyishly handsome in navy, and directly across from him sat John, resplendent as always in a black suit. Lillian, of course, took a seat next to John, but adjacent to Nathan, who was stunning in a charcoal grey suit and an emerald tie.

She thought it a sick joke to be placed between these men, and decided Nathan had probably thought of it.

John’s fingers lingered on the base of her spine when he seated her. Nathan gripped the table edge, knuckles white. One look from Lillian stopped him. He slumped in his chair.

A volley of conversation took place around Lillian, but she sat on the outer ring and listened. Will and Maria discussed the menu, which Lillian was surprised to hear Maria had prepared herself. Will continually glanced at Lillian, his face blank, but his eyes concerned.

Maria wore a line between her arching brows. She fidgeted with the long ivory satin gloves which partially concealed the immortal tattoos on her arms. And Dante engaged John in conversation every free second, to keep him from noticing the man at the foot of the table, who unwavering stared at his wife.

John was at ease, Lillian knew by the way he touched her. While talking, he smoothed a strand of hair behind her ear. Beneath the table, he kneaded her upper thigh.

If he touches you again, I’ll kill him.

Their eyes clashed. The conversation stilled. John’s head swung toward Nathan. In a heartbeat, he assessed the situation. He lowered his head and glared.

“Do you have a love of music?” Dante asked John at the same moment Lillian Called to Nathan.

I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes off you,
she said into his soul. He was sharply alive within her, and she shivered at the feel of him. John drew her hand between his, chaffing it as if she was cold.

“John is an accomplished pianist,” she said, further distracting John.

Will was grinning like an idiot, gaze bouncing between the participants of this bizarre play. She wished she could kick him, but they were seated too far apart.

While John and Dante discussed music, and John agreed to play for them following dinner, Will and Maria drew Lillian into their conversation about food preferences. The topic had her blushing and Will laughing, teasing her about the unidentifiable sea creatures he had seen her eat. And Nathan’s stare was purely physical. Hot green gaze, full-bodied lust. She thought of his blood entering her veins, joining them. She dared not meet his gaze.

“Excuse me,” John said in a low tone. “I would appreciate it if you would stop staring at my wife.”

The voices about the table broke off. Lillian expected bodies to lunge across the table, sending up a spray of glass and destroyed china. But to her surprise, Nathan jerkily gained his feet and stalked from the room.

When he left, the room dimmed. Through lowered lashes, she looked at the seat he had vacated and wished for a moment alone to caress the smooth wood where his hand had rested. I am a puppet to the Calling, she thought, fighting the choking lump in her throat. She took a sip of wine and swallowed it down, steeling herself for the evening to come. Soon they would retire to the drawing room where Nathan waited, head in his hands.

Nathan burst from the confines of the mansion, shoving through the set of French doors and onto a secluded patio where Maria held breakfasts in the summer. The air was chill and his breath plumed outward, creating a trumpet on the air.

He felt his anger ebb, soothed to be part of the landscape once more. The sky he knew. The distant trees were old friends. But the structure at his back—bricks and mortar and beautiful commodities and modern conveniences—they did nothing to root Nathan to the earth. He had no history here.

But his future was here. This manor sheltered his immortal mate.

At the sound of the door opening, he spun, heart thundering, hoping it was Lillian. When he made out Will’s shape, he screamed, “Wife. He calls her his wife.”

Will moved to lean against the stone balustrade. There was a scratch of a match, and a halo of light illuminated his face as he lit a cigarette. He puffed for a minute while Nathan fumed.

He opened his mouth to rant some more, but Will interrupted. “She is his wife, Nate.”

“What? There’s no ring.”

Will exhaled a long sigh of smoke, watching him warily. “There are two, actually.” At Nathan’s blank look, he said, “The bracelets.”

“Dammit,” he cried, striking the urn-shaped post with a fist, uncaring of the sting of a cut knuckle. “I knew there was a reason I hated those.”

Will explained the bracelets’ origins, and Nathan hummed with renewed rage, hating that Lillian wore John LeClair’s history on her wrists. She had been with John LeClair for six decades. She knew him inside and out.

Nathan felt at a disadvantage. He carried no chisel or granite here to prove his worth—nothing but his mind and his arms, which were untrained in the ways of love.

Or were they? She had yielded to his embrace, thrown herself headlong into his world.

“In my Visions, I always remove the bracelets,” he said.

Will laughed shortly. “Good luck. I’ve never seen her so much as adjust one.”

“Oh, I’ll get them off,” he vowed, swinging toward the warm cloud of interior light spilling through the French doors. “I need to talk to Dante.”

Inside, Nathan and Will approached the drawing room. The strains of piano drifted into the corridor, played expertly by John LeClair. Damn that man. Did he have any faults?

When Nathan entered, his eyes lit upon Lillian. She blended into the ostentatious drawing room without an ounce of effort. Leaning in a corner of a long silvery sofa like a starlet, her eyes burned at him.

He crossed the room to the drink cart, poured a vodka double and drank it off neat. When he looked up again, she was staring at him. How to approach her with John LeClair seated behind the ebony grand piano, playing like a fucking Rachmaninoff?

The itch welled in him, strong and sickening. Nathan couldn’t help but make comparisons. Light, dark. Both tall. Nathan’s shoulders broader from pounding stone. John was an exceptional pianist and Nathan a famous artist. Desiring the same woman.

Lillian sat as still as a statue. His hands twitched at the memory of her startlingly narrow waist and the ridges of her immortal tattoo beneath his fingers and the sweet give of her flesh beneath his mouth. No paint could be mixed to reproduce the color of her eyes, and the twist of hair on the back of her neck. Too easily, he recalled the feel of it falling in a silky sheet over his hands.

Stop looking at me like that. You’re making my blood boil,
she said.

The internal connection flooded him with need. He surged forward.
What way?

Her eyes shifted from John to Nathan.
Like you’re going to spring at me.

He bit down on a laugh.

John LeClair’s eyes were on them. He faltered. The Beethoven sonata drifted off, then began again. Suddenly, Will crowded next to Lillian on the sofa, too close, too intimate, covering the moment between Lillian and Nathan.

“Would you like to dance?” Will asked.

As Will led Lillian to the small dance area before the grand piano, Nathan ground his teeth. When he took her hand and clasped her waist, Nathan’s molars screeched.

A nudge at his shoulder made him turn. Dante passed him another shot of vodka, which Nathan accepted with a terse nod. The former sailor swept Maria into his arms and waltzed her about the room, spinning expertly around the place where Will and Lillian swayed. John LeClair’s dark gaze never left his wife.

Wife. Nathan bristled at the word, his eyes lighting on the silver bracelets which linked her to John LeClair.

Out of pure misery, Nathan slammed back his drink. John LeClair changed up the tune, and Lillian broke away from Will, performing a serious of twirls and footwork that put a professional dancer to shame. John LeClair grinned at her. Maria and Dante stopped revolving to watch. Will leaned against the piano, following her every move.

And Nathan was frozen. She was flushed and laughing, a liquid sound that soothed the itch in his pores. A light dew of sweat kissed her golden skin, stretching along her collar bones and down her throat to the top of her breasts in the tight bodice of her blue silk dress.

But when she spun, the breath whooshed from him. She had removed her sweater, revealing the twisting vine of her immortal tattoo. His legs threatened to buckle. He leaned heavily against the sofa arm. To touch it, to kiss it, would be to own her.

His feet carried him toward her, hand reaching to whirl her to his chest.

Please don’t.

I have to. Don’t you see? It’s you and me.

Will’s voice cut through the haze. “Don’t,” he hissed. “He’ll take her away.” With that, he caught Lillian about the waist and whipped her into a dip. Nathan turned away, but not before he saw a long, mahogany curl tumble from its pinnings to brush the marble floor.

* * * * *

Dawn brought an Indian summer, and Maria urged the house party outside for breakfast. Nathan glared at Lillian’s back, thinking for the fourth time,
Answer me.

With a pointed look at Dante, he caught Lillian’s hand before she rounded the corner on the arm of John LeClair. Dante claimed John’s attention and Maria hung back to give the illusion of speaking with Lillian. Nathan almost smiled at the intricate and well-timed ballet.

He gathered her in by the waist, fingering her spine. She arched at the electrical surge. White heat slithered through his fingertips, shoulders, filled his lungs with a groan, gripped his groin. His cock hardened instantly, pulsing against the front of his jeans.

“Why are you blocking me?” he asked through clenched teeth.

Her eyes widened, slipped downward to his mouth. “What are you talking about?” she whispered.

“I’ve been Calling to you all night, and you haven’t responded at all,” he growled.

She met his eyes with a look of complete incomprehension. A deep blushed swept from neck to hairline. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

“Unblock me,” he said, bending her over his arm and kissing her. Beneath his forearm, her immortal tattoo was alive, electricity snapping about his flesh like clinging vines. Waves of sensation crashed over them both like those preceding orgasm. Her mouth was warm and hungry, and oh, God, he couldn’t stop.

Maria shifted. Nathan released Lillian. She swayed. Maria steadied her, and then led her through the French doors behind the others.

The long teakwood patio table was filled with good things. Platters of scones and other pastries made by Maria stood on silver salvers. Coffee urns steamed in the morning air. The wind lifted the edges of the linen napkins.

Beyond the patio, a garden was waking. Birds chattered and squirrels fought over nuts. Tall spires of ornately carved evergreens marked the entrance, and Lillian was drawn to it like a bee to nectar. At a single hopeful glance, Maria said, “Of course we must have a tour of the gardens before breakfast.”

Will stepped up and took Lillian by the arm, leaving John LeClair to walk ahead with Dante. Dante’s voice drifted on the air, discussing his shipping empire.

Nathan watched the twitch of Lillian’s hips as she rounded the first bend. She was dressed immaculately, in a way women didn’t dress anymore, in slim trousers and tailored jacket and blue silk blouse. Total pin-up girl, from crocodile heels to Marcel wave. His fingers clenched into knots, imaging how he could muss those mahogany locks. Her porcelain skin was slightly pink where his beard scraped it.

She bent over a late blooming rose, her eyes slowly ticking upward to meet his. When she smiled, the earth trembled. His hands trembled. His veins trembled.

With a glance at John LeClair’s back disappearing behind a hedge, Nathan reached her. And she stepped into his arms. His hands found her hair, longing to pull the pins and feel it fall over his hands, bury his face in its lavender-scented depths and never surface.

“I dreamt of you last night,” she said.

Her words struck him. He swallowed hard. His dream had involved blood and shrieks and terror.

He gripped her upper arms.

What is it?
she asked into his soul, and abruptly, the dream image tipped into her mind.

Her mouth opened in an O of horror, the breath scraping through her tightened throat with a sound of tearing cloth. Her hands took flight, flitting about her paling face. Her fingers turned to claws, snagging the pearls at her throat.

A black cloud pressed on her mind, pressed on his until he only saw spots of black, blue, mahogany. Lillian drowning in a rusty pool of their combined blood. Blue lips. Black universe. Nothing more without her.

She arced into Will’s arms. In a flurry, he lowered her to the grassy path, her head cradled on his lap.

Nathan’s knees hit the ground, raising the scent of crushed grass. Across her limp form, he and Will stared at one another.

“She’s all right, Nate. Like yesterday. She’s fainted.”

He bent over her, her tender earlobe beneath his lips. “It was a dream. What you saw is a dream. I won’t let that happen to you. To us.”

At the sound of pounding feet, Nathan straightened as John LeClair bellowed, “Get your hands off her, you filthy—” The heel of his hand struck Nathan’s chest, shoving him off-balance and simultaneously throwing John LeClair with the jolt from his lightning bolt tattoo.

“Don’t ever put your hands on me again, LeClair.”

They glared for two heartbeats.

Lillian’s voice broke through the haze of rage. “Stop, please.” Eyes closed, one hand grappled in the air, searching.

John LeClair scooped her off the grass and ran toward the house.

Nathan looked on, numb. My fault. Dammit. I had her in my arms, and now I’ve lost her to LeClair again, he thought.

Will’s hand came down upon Nathan’s shoulder, jarring him from his thoughts. “Come, man. She’s okay. And she’s still in your mind, not John LeClair’s.”

Yes, he thought, steeling himself for the troubles to come. The corner of Nathan’s mouth contracted, part angst, part smile.
Get ready, LeClair. I’m coming.