Trefoil (5 page)

“Something like it.” She lifted her face to the sky, pinpricks of hundreds of stars witness to her lie.

“I think we should go,” he said, and she knew he didn’t mean the cemetery but the city. Lillian allowed him to swing her into his arms and bear her from that place, wondering how he could carry her so easily if she was veiled in granite.

Goddammit, Nathan thought. I'm in Seattle, probably feet from my immortal mate and I am stuck in another traffic jam. His chest welled with frustration and he gnawed the inside of his cheek to keep from howling.

He dumped a pile of bills over the seat, leapt from the cab and into a cloud of exhaust fumes. The day was dim and dreary, the traffic screaming. He shot between vehicles, running. He passed shops overflowing with outdoor equipment, bookstores, flower stands and clothing boutiques. As he ran, he allowed the music of the city to fill his head. Deep in his soul, he felt the throb of Lillian’s heart.

A great cloud of blue smoke roiled from the tailpipe of a van and Nathan bounded through it like a boy in a puddle. He bumped into a woman, steadied her with a hasty apology and kept running. Dogs barked and a saxophone sobbed. His muscles burned with the release of running. Running toward Lillian felt good. Running toward her felt right.

He followed her footsteps to the restaurant where she had sat across from John LeClair, smiled into his eyes, toasted with wine.

Had the wine sucked from her fingertip.

Nathan braced his hands on the table, wanting to overturn it. A quiver that had nothing to do with his need to bind himself to Lillian gripped him. When he got his hands on fucking John LeClair, he would break his jaw.

Breathing heavily, he turned on his heel and stomped through the maze of tables. Outside, he was deluged by images of Lillian. Her hand in the crook of John LeClair’s arm, high heels splashing through the streets, the sway of her hips, hair floating loose about her torso. Nathan stumbled along in her wake, unable to move fast enough through the crowd.

He caught her womanly, lavender scent and nearly came to a dead stop. His body reacted instantly, his cock hardening, pushing against the zipper of his jeans. His hands clenched. Push on, Halbrook, he thought. She’s near. And no matter what, she is yours.

He trailed the invisible length of ribbon created by her step, leading up the stone steps of a cathedral. He placed his palm against the smooth, old wood of the door, pushing it inward. His heart thumped his chest wall, a feeling of dread washing over him.

The vestibule was still and the silence sharp. Here, John LeClair had touched the sweet curve of Lillian’s lower back, fingers kneading the bottommost flower of her immortal tattoo.

Nathan moved farther into the space. The room closed in on him, suddenly confining and dark. He touched the back of the pew where she had sat with John LeClair. He didn’t want to be here, but he had to follow her, possess her or die trying.

When he sank to the gleaming wood seat, he sprung up as if doused by hot tar. At the close of the Revolutionary War he had seen men tarred and would never forget the bodies writhing beneath the boiling liquid. This was infinitely worse. This was anguish of the soul.

John LeClair’s hands skimmed Lillian’s smooth abdomen, up her ribcage like keys on a piano. His mouth was open upon hers, devouring her gasps. Her golden flesh shimmered in the shadows and quiet pressed around them, enclosing them in a lover’s embrace. Her slender fingers tangled in his dark hair, trapping his face against her bare breast.

Enough. E-fucking-nough.

Nathan stumbled from the pew and into the aisle, breathing like he’d outrun the British troops. He trudged toward the doors, his throat closed about a bellow. His brain was searing agony. He wished he could find that vat of tar and burn out the images.

“Goddammit, Lillian,” he cried, launching down the steps and running, running, running away this time.

* * * * *

Nathan walked blindly because he would not allow himself to see. If he did, the sick, twisted sense he’d developed would follow her. I should go home, back to my tools and granite, away from this God-awful pain, he thought, yet knew he didn’t want that at all.

For decades the chisel and rasp had been at his service, but now he must employ fortitude and strength. Many years had passed since he’d called upon such character traits. Had they been lost or simply lay dormant?

In a way, he felt like a great sleeping bear, a wild thing. Lillian’s Call had awakened him, ready to be tamed and answer to love.

He paused at the sight of a low wall of dry-stacked stone. He smoothed his palms over the gritty material for the sheer familiarity of touching stone.

Darkness had descended. The North Star winked against a rich midnight sky, urging him to follow it through the gates of Lake View Cemetery. His heart was in his mouth. She had strolled through these grounds with John LeClair, snuggled warmly against his side, her breast brushing his arm.

Nathan jammed his fingers into his hair, fighting away the images. He hunched his shoulders against the pain gnawing at his heart and wove through the paths of sleeping monuments—crosses and small square stones, spires and arches. The wind quickened, adding its voice to the drum of his heart. He tried not to think of Lillian with John LeClair, of his mouth dropping to hers. He searched upward for the North Star and inhaled sharply.

His own work stood beneath that blinking beacon, and Lillian’s steps led to it. The granite goddess stood in the sea of night, bobbling amongst other rock vessels. He closed his eyes and let the Visions seduce him. Flipping her, exposing her curving spine, the flowering vine tattoo dipping into the hollow of her lower back. A single bead of sweat breaking free from her hairline, cutting a path through the inky lines.

His fingertips grazed the draperies of the monument he had created. A shock shot straight to his core, like touching the church pew. He saw Lillian leaning against the stone figure, her face obscured by darkness, tears streaking her cheeks as she had Visions of him and the feather mattress. His mind spun with darkness, the rough chafe of tweed, sodden steps and the softest weeping.

Resting his forehead against the cool stone memorial, he drank in huge gulps of lavender-scented air. Her quiet sobs were balm to his sore heart, because now he knew she felt as torn by the Visions as he did.

John tucked Lillian into the luxury rental car and fastened the seatbelt around her. The street lights were a brilliant blur as they sped away from Seattle. The drizzle glared on the black asphalt.

“Are you all right?” she asked, voice cutting through the darkness. His face was in shadow, but when she took his hand, she felt the vibration of his anxiety. The tires on the wet roadway sounded like tape placed on a surface and torn off again. The noise grated on her. “We don’t have to continue this journey. We could go home.” She thought of the library of their Virginia home, a cozy fire on the grate and her head in his lap as he read aloud to her.

“No,” he said. “I want this. And I promised to show you a fabulous time on the next leg of our journey. Please forgive me for the past few days, Lily.”

She fidgeted beneath his level gaze. “It’s nothing of your doing. Let’s not speak of it. Why don’t I sing for you?”

He straightened with a nod. She fiddled with the radio until she landed upon some Rogers and Hammerstein she knew from years past.

As the car streaked through the night, Lillian sang. She tried not to stare at the way the bluish lights of the dashboard turned John’s hands into something distorted and frightening. The eerie glimmer streaked up his forearms and disappeared into shadow.

A flash of blond hair rippled past her vision. Her voice faltered. She blinked. The scent of leather was in her nose, the taste of scalding black coffee on her tongue, and agitation burned her chest—an emotion which was not her own.

“John, stop the car.”

He tore his gaze from the road. “What’s wrong, Lily?”

“Stop, John. Here. Anywhere.” Her fingernails dug into her knees, snagging her pantyhose. She squeezed her eyes against the inky blue lightning bolts sparking behind her eyes. Their trace imprinted on her brain and she saw the white hot negative of them.
Oh, God, please stop
, she thought.
Leave me alone
.

“Honey, tell me what’s going on,” John demanded.

She grabbed the wheel and jerked it, sending the Cadillac careening toward the guard rail.

“Lily! What has come over you?” He whipped the vehicle onto the roadway before it struck. She’d almost welcome the shriek of steel-on-steel if it obliterated the rasp of
his
breath in her ears.

She saw the blond man’s full lips, quirked up at the corner and bracketed by a line. Her hands shook as if she’d experienced an electrical shock. Struggling to breathe beneath the assault of these hallucinations, she dropped her head into her hands. Black spots revolved before her eyes, but she looked through them to the long blond sweep of hair concealing his eyes.

John’s hand clamped over hers. “Hold on. Here’s a place to stop.”

The quivering traveled down her arms to her chest, rattling her ribs, vibrating her stomach. She folded around it. A scorching tendril of desire wove through her lower belly to clasp her pussy. Wetness trickled from between her sealed lips. She compressed her knees and held onto the sensation.

“John,” she said through her clamped jaw. “I need you. Now.”

The tires screeched to a stop. John jammed the gearshift into park. Lillian tore off her seatbelt and threw herself at him. They slammed against the driver’s door, her hands frantic, fumbling with his belt, button, zip. She straddled his hips, her skirt ruching up about her waist. He opened his mouth to protest, but she plunged her tongue between his lips, tasting the only man she had touched in over sixty years.

She guided his palms upward to cup her breasts, which she’d bared with one scrabbling hand. She swallowed his groan with her demanding kiss and sent one back into him.

“Lily, let me pull into the hotel parking lot.”

She groped with their clothing. “No. I need you. Now,” she whispered again and joined their bodies in one slippery movement. His closeness was pounding, loading her veins.

“Oh, baby, I can’t stand this goddamned itch,” he muttered between guzzling kisses. He gripped her waist and thrust hard, the engorged head of his rod pressing against the place she most wanted it.

Her head fell back and he sucked the tender spot behind her ear, making her writhe. The window behind his head began to fog. Rain fell in long, snaking streaks, and beyond that, the Quik-Mart’s lights blazed. In her mind’s eye, the pale light of dusk shimmered off the blond man’s immortal skin.

A wave of contractions struck her, and her pussy fastened hard on John’s cock, holding him deep inside her. The searing heat pulsed through her body. Her muscles tightened. When his thumb pushed against her hard nub, grinding it in a circle, she screamed. A gush of cream burst from her, drenching his cock and pubic hair. The sensation of squirting rocketed her upward and she clung to John’s shoulders as she rode out the dizzying release.

Still quaking, each nudge of his cock brought her close to the brink once again. Suddenly, he cupped her ass, stiffened and fucked her hard and fast. “I’m gonna fucking explode,” he said and sucked her tongue between his lips.

She felt him spurt, bathing her with his love fluids. The wave they rode curled and broke, lifting them anew on the turbulent water. They were nowhere near finished.

John met her eyes.

“More,” she breathed.

“Yes, but not here.” He moved her enough to shift the car into drive and guided them to the adjoining hotel parking lot. In minutes he had checked them in and was at her door, drawing her into his arms.

As she placed her mouth against his rain-damp skin, she didn’t taste his salty, musky flavor. She tasted coffee and the brimstone of lightning tattoos. She tasted twilight and desperate passion. She tasted another man.

Tears sparked in her eyes even as her body reacted to the tang in her soul of her dream man. John was like coming home, and Robert a tender recollection, but he. . . he was all consuming.

* * * * *

Lillian smoothed the crisp white sheet over her nude torso and watched John’s chest rise and fall. His head was canted hard to the side, and his black coloring was a sharp contrast against the pillowcase. With the lovemaking, her tremors had been lessened, but she still felt the deep inner quake. It maddened her, made her want to scream, like a ticklish itch she couldn’t reach.

Beneath the North Star, her blond man had trembled and wept. She folded her fists around the urge to sweep away the pale hair mixed with moonbeams and violet shadows, and instead slipped her hand under the sheet. Her thighs were slick with the fluids of John’s passion, but her own flowed anew.

She trailed her fingers through the moisture and let her thighs fall apart. Her pussy was swollen and needy again, a rhythmic throb guiding her fingers between the slippery folds. Her outer lips were plump and round and bare. She cupped her mound, her short fingernails sinking into the soft, giving inner lips.

Fighting to control her breathing and movement, so as not to awaken John, she ground her clit beneath the heel of her hand and plunged two fingers into her soaking slit. Her nipples pinched into hard knots, and she circled the right one lightly, urging it into the tightest mound before drawing it to her tongue.

Her fingers worked the heated gash of her pussy, stroking her g-spot and sending a flood of juices over her hand. She lost herself in the sensation, lapping the bud of her nipple and sinking into the Visions of her dream man. His mouth was at her collarbone, soft hair on her breasts, but his jaw was hard and rough and unshaven.

A bolt of excitement lashed her to the bed. Her thumb wiggled her engorged clit and her sex answered by releasing more fluid. His tongue darted downward. One big hand kneaded her breast, and he captured the nipple between his lips, flicking it with his tongue. She sucked her nipple harder, mirroring the action of her fantasy.

His hands explored her, brushing the undersides of her globes, down the Vee of her ribs, tracing a path about her navel before threading into the dark curls that graced her mound. She released her breast to rub these now, her breath quickening as she envisioned his blond beard scraping the length of her body, following the wake of his hands.

She prodded her clit with one fingernail, feeling his razor-sharp jaw against it. And then his mouth opened wide and closed over her nethermouth, sending waves of delight through her. She fingered her pussy with both hands, circling, grinding, pinching her clit between her fingers. Two fingers thrust into her weeping hole, and she gave herself up to the dream sensation of his mouth and tongue and rough beard. She felt his blond hair on her inner thighs and his broad hands spreading her further, shoving her knees up so he could better access her gash. He licked it wildly from clit to hole, fucked her with the point of his tongue, and slipped back up to her hard nub. He sucked it into his mouth, pulled his head back, stretching her big clit, and let it release. Again and again he sucked her, drawing her hips off the bed as she sought to meet him.

Her hands repeated his actions, rolling her clit between her fingers, tugging it outward and releasing. A deep burn gripped her, held, swelled, and without warning, she burst. Cream shot from her pussy with a low hissing sound as her entire body stiffened. Her pussy contracted around her fingers, and she fucked it until she grew too sensitive to continue.

Controlling her gasps, she smoothed the wetness over her thighs and tits, letting the sheets soak it up and pinching her nipples hard as her dream man licked at these juices in her mind.

John shifted and his breathing changed. Lillian let her head fall to the side to look into his open eyes.

“Good morning, gorgeous,” he said, voice gritty.

She felt the blush crawl over her cheeks. Never, in all these years with John had she touched herself with such abandon, or experienced the squirting ecstasy that followed. John brought her off in this way, but she had never achieved it alone. Yet she hadn’t been alone, had she?

John flipped atop her and groaned at the wetness he felt. “God, baby, you’re ready for me already,” he said, thick cock poised at her entrance.

She spread her legs automatically for him even as he found her mouth. And as he fucked her slowly and thoroughly, tears stung her eyes. Something deep inside her had broken open, and she felt as though
she betrayed her blond man, her dream man, the man to whom part of her soul was irrevocably bound.

* * * * *

The Cadillac geared down and rolled to a stop overlooking an expanse of sand. Lillian squinted through the windshield into the blinding sun. Across the baking sands, the ocean shore glittered, and a black outcropping of rock writhed.

“What is that?” she asked without removing her gaze from the view.

“Come and see,” John said. He leapt from the car, his step lively as he came around to open Lillian’s door. He drew her hand into his and led her to the edge of the beach, where she removed her high heels and looped them in her index finger. The breeze brought the sound of barking.

“Seals,” she exclaimed, stopping dead. He flashed a grin and towed her faster.

The rock appeared to squirm as the elephant seals crawled over the surface. Sometimes a young one would be shoved into the water with a little splash. John removed his jacket and flattened it on the ground for Lillian to sit. She curled up, ankles crossed and her knees to her chest. John sank cross-legged next to her and she leaned into his side.

“Are you warm enough?” he asked, chaffing her upper arm where she had slung a sweater in the old-fashioned way—without her arms through the sleeves and buttoned at the throat.

She had always adored his manners and consideration for her welfare, but now irritation bubbled up her throat. She swallowed it. “Yes, I’m fine.”

The wind caught her hair, sending wispy tendrils dancing around her face. How long had it been since she truly relaxed or escaped the fear plaguing her mind? She tilted her face up to the sun, letting the golden beams sink into her pores and burn away all thought. Time slowed. Her breathing deepened to match the waves breaking over the rocks. Her mind cleared of pain and confusion and her muscles relaxed.

When the tide sizzled up the sand and swallowed her toes, she jumped up with a cry, and John laughed, wondering aloud how she hadn’t noticed the surf rolling in.

“Do you want to move or shall we go?” he asked.

“That depends.”

“On?”

“Where we’re going next,” she said, knowing her fragile psyche couldn’t withstand another trip to a cemetery or memorial at the moment.

“Dinner?” he asked, judging the time by the sun. She nodded and silently threaded her hand through his arm to wander back up the beach.

Minutes later, seated across from her mate in a five-star restaurant, the chaos of Lillian’s last few days took control once more. She avoided John’s steady gaze and forced her mind away from her dream man, though it continually wandered to the strangely realistic release he had forced on her that morning.

To make matters worse, the blond-haired waiter showed her undo attention, which made her squirm. She could not stop staring at his hands, at the golden sprinkle of hair on his knuckles, comparing the beefy palms and thick fingers to her dream man’s long, tapered ones. Flushed and concealing her twisting hands in her lap, she met John’s gaze. His eyebrow lifted like a small pointed blade.