He barely heard the words, and when the beep sounded at the end of the message, he let the receiver drop to its cradle without speaking. Not there. That was odd, but not impossible. Gates was a busy man. Christian reached for his bottle of scotch and one of the larger prints of Cherie. He lay back with a sigh.
Christian sipped the scotch, then placed it on the nightstand and grabbed himself with his other hand, stroking, remembering the silken feel of her flesh. He could still feel her lips on his own, brushing lightly across his skin, could feel the unbelievable heat she'd drawn forth, stolen. The bitch. That was it. He should have waited, should have killed her first.
It was a revelation, a blast of brilliance. He could have them, could have them without sacrifice. He could control them to photograph them, and he could control them for his own pleasure. They were his, once they were gone, once the spark in their eyes was replaced by the spark of his genius, he could do with them what he willed. Let the bitches try and steal from him then.
He imagined the hot, damp curves of Cherie's body, now cool and porcelain smooth, yielding but compliant. He imagined moving between those legs, running his tongue possessively over her, tasting the object that was his, not the woman that had belonged only to herself. He imagined sliding up her torso, positioning her head just right and sliding himself between those lips – watching the perfectly made-up face, the serene beauty he'd created, moving to his own rhythm, drawing forth his own pleasure, at his own pace.
As his pulse raced and his seed splashed out, coating the print in his hand and dribbling over his legs in a warm, sticky flood, he closed his eyes, arched his back, and cried out softly. So much better, and so much more perfect. Another level. He felt his mother's eyes on him, but they were not accusing, not lusting. They watched in approval, and Christian passed into a silent void, calling out to her, reaching for her hand, trying to drag her image into the world he now controlled. The darkness found him first.
The photo slid from his grasp and lay, smeared and glistening with pearlescent droplets on the sheet beside him. Vacant and emotionless, Cherie stared out through the filmy veil. The droplets shone like tears.
TEN
Normally, Hiram would have gone straight to Sid's first, but for some reason he decided to change the routine. He wasn't sure exactly why, but something told him that a quieter evening was called for, something softer and more personal. He hadn't spent any time with Madeline in quite a while. He didn't want to share her with an endless stream of business associates and clients; he wanted to take advantage of her smile, of her warmth. Hell, he decided, he missed her, and she only worked in the next room from him.
He was also worried that one of his newer acquaintances might surface, one of those dark, deep-eyed men who shelled out the big bucks without question when he presented Greve's photos. Not only did Hiram not want to see them, or to be associated with them, but also he didn't want Madeline to know about them. He wasn't ashamed of his new enterprise, not exactly, but somehow she just didn't fit into the picture.
Madeline was involved in every other aspect of his business, knew more about him than any living person, and yet he couldn't share this one with her now, maybe not ever. He could barely share the truth of the situation with himself, the personal involvement with the photos, and the obsession with them. He certainly didn't want to add her disapproval to his own growing concerns.
Hiram chose a small Italian restaurant on the outskirts of the city, one that he'd always enjoyed, ordering the linguini and a bottle of wine half as old as either of them. He felt freer than he'd felt in years; as though hundred pound weights had been removed from his shoulders. No Greve, no perverts, no photos. Only himself, and Madeline, together and close. It was very comfortable.
They were a pair, he knew. He'd told her on many occasions that it was so. She anchored him, his dreams and his grand schemes, found practical ways to make them work. Every time he'd been near ruin, every time it had begun to seem as though things might just fall apart, she'd found a way to turn the negative into a positive, putting him on top and making him feel as though he'd done it himself. It was her way.
On top of her other redeeming qualities, Madeline was beautiful. There was no doubting or arguing with that; it was her beauty that had first drawn him to her. She had an ageless, timeless quality about her, far beyond the physical, that drew people to her, not just men, everyone she met. Hiram didn't know why he'd been blessed with her, or why she'd stuck with him through so many years, but he was a wise enough man to be thankful for it.
It was a little bit eerie, he realized. Her features reminded him of a living, breathing model of Greve's talent. If he didn't know her, hadn't known her for years, he'd see the same qualities in her he did in the photos. She seemed beyond reach, independent and untouchable. Even when they made love, it was on equal ground – out of mutual need and desire.
They had shared everything, but now he had allowed something to come between them. He felt it like a wall, growing steadily thicker and blacker, and he knew that there was no way he would ever be able to breach it. He knew that to tear it down would end everything. Madeline had forgiven him many faults, but this was not a fault, it was a disease, and he feared he might never recover from it. He had to keep the wall low enough for him to slip over and back when he needed, and one day soon he knew he’d have to put in steps and forget that business altogether, if he wanted to remain sane – and free.
"So," Madeline said finally, her eyes averted slightly, as though moving into uncertain territory. "I was wondering, Hi, about this man, Greve? Is he a new client, or a customer? He left you a package today, some photographs . . ."
Gates felt the color draining from his face, felt his heart hammering, and thundering against his skull. What had Greve done now? What had she seen? He took a wheezing gasp, and she turned to him, concern in her eyes, and confusion.
"What's wrong, Hi?" she asked, half-rising and reaching out to lay a hand on his arm in alarm. "Are you okay?"
Concentrate, he told himself, Get it together, Gates, don't blow it now. Aloud, he said, "I…I just swallowed something wrong, Maddy. I'm fine." He took a couple of quick breaths to restore his nerves to some semblance of control. "Wh… what pictures did he leave?"
She smiled, a little uncertainly at first, then more broadly. "They're wonderful pictures, Hi, children, families, portraits, all from his studio downtown. I didn't even know he was there, but he's really very good, don't you think?"
Hiram felt the biggest inner sigh of relief he'd ever experienced flow through and out of him, felt his heart and breathing normal out. Blinking slowly, he answered her. "Yes, yes Maddy, he is. I've been thinking of letting him take on some of the advertising work for the company, setting up some models, that sort of thing. You really think he's good?"
As he spoke working his story out as he went, he cursed Greve inwardly. What had the man been thinking? What had he been doing in Hiram's office while he wasn't there, talking to Maddy, probably undressing her with his mind and snapping his filthy photos? What did he call it? - "Capturing images."
Hiram barely repressed a shudder at the thought. He knew Maddy would never question anyone he'd already accepted into his office, especially not anyone as innocuous as Christian Greve. The thought that the man could reach out to her, be near her like that, was disturbing on levels Hiram could barely comprehend.
"Oh yes," she gushed, "I mean, they are much better than anything we've used in the past. He seems to have a sort of vision, you know? Anyway, there was one other picture, a bit strange, but very, very interesting.
It was more of the type of thing we'd use, though a trifle exotic. It was of a young woman, nude, with colored stripes in her hair and dressed to the nines. I thought maybe I'd seen her somewhere before, but now I'm not so sure. That shot was truly remarkable, Hi; people would pay well for work like that.
"If he doesn't have an agent, I think you should take him on. If you don't someone will. He's that g
ood."
Hiram was barely aware of her words, barely hanging on to the thread of the conversation well enough to nod when he was expected to, and he knew she'd catch him at it soon, if she hadn't already. He decided to go with it, for now, let Greve have his little laugh. Nothing he could do about it, in any case, nothing at all.
He only prayed that the photos in the paper and on the news, the continuing coverage of the Kodak Zodiac would be dim and obscure, that she would not see them. If she put two and two together and realized he'd been lying to her, there was no telling how she might react.
"Where did you leave the pictures?" he asked finally, trying not to let the nervousness in his voice quiver through, trying to appear as though it were a trivial matter, nothing of real importance. Failing. He remembered the cold, calculating eyes of the two detectives who'd come to question him, and he thought of that picture, lying on Maddy's desk in plain sight, catching their eyes.
"They're on your desk, Hi, where else would I put them? Are you sure you're feeling okay?"
The waitress arrived just then, a tall, lithe girl with long braided hair and a bright smile, and she had the wine. Hiram reached for the glasses, splashed a smile forcibly across his lips, and nodded for the girl to open the bottle. There was more than one way to escape your troubles, more than one way to blur the reality of a moment. He took his time swirling the wine and sniffing the tart aroma, letting his eyes close and his head clear.
When the girl was gone and the wine was poured, Hiram leaned close to Madeline, breathing in the odd perfume she always wore and whispered in her ear. "Nothing could make things better, right this minute Maddy. Nothing in the world. I'm just on edge, that's all. That's why I needed to get away."
"Is that why I'm here, too?" she grinned up at him impishly, the smile erasing years from her face in a flash, "to take your mind off your troubles?"
"Nobody does that better than you, Maddy, nobody. I was hoping you might stop over this evening, after dinner, have a drink? I don't really feel like being alone, for some reason."
"You're almost never alone, Hi," she laughed, tossing her hair back off her shoulders in an oddly girlish gesture and smiling at him again, mischievously this time. "You know I'll come, though why you wouldn't call any of a hundred younger, prettier girls you might call is beyond me."
"I know better than that," he chuckled, his good spirits returning slowly. "You know better, too. There's nobody like you . . . not at work, not in bed, not ever. You are the only person of lasting importance in my life. Do you know that?" He shocked himself more than he did her with the words, feeling the truth of them pounding through him.
She was still looking at him, but he noticed an odd dampness at the corners of her eyes. He felt an unfamiliar glow in his own chest as he returned her gaze, and he wondered why he'd never really noticed the feeling before. It was as comfortable as an old pair of jeans, as subtly overpowering as expensive cognac. For a successful, worldly man with more money and women than he knew what to do with, he found himself surprisingly naive when it came to deeper emotion.
"You've never said anything like that to me, Hi, not in all the years I've known you," she said, her voice trembling slightly. "I've always known you felt that way, always felt that you did, but you never bothered to tell me. You never singled me out, made any type of commitment. Why now?"
He had difficulty getting a suddenly very dry throat to respond, but he forced the words out, concentrating on bypassing the lump that seemed intent on clogging his throat. "I don't know, really," he answered, reaching out to take her hand in his. "I guess I'm just thinking a lot more lately about my life, about what is important, and what isn't.
"When I do that, you keep coming up at the top of the list, and you've been there all along. I guess I'm just coming to realize it myself."
Tears flowed from her eyes, and she leaned closer to him, put her head delicately on his shoulder and wrapped her slender arms around his neck. He wasn't used to seeing her lose control, and he reached out to hold her, feeling the nearness of her more intimately than ever before, feeling her emotions.
Regaining her composure, she raised up, brushing him with damp eyelashes, washing his chin with her tears, and found his lips, kissing him deep and long.
Now Hiram had a whole hell of a lot to think about, a lot to do and to change. If what he was almost certain had just happened, after all these years, had indeed happened, things were going to be different for him. There would have to be some settling down, some cutting back, maybe a vacation somewhere, just the two of them. Where in hell had this come from?
Then it hit him like the point of a knife. Greve. It was the nervous fear the man brought him, the odd, lingering sensation that ate away at his confidence. He was afraid of losing her. It was that fear that had made him realize how much that would hurt, how much it would take from him. The thought of that perverted maniac even being in the same room with her brought a shiver to his spine.
They ate in thoughtful silence. Madeline was like a schoolgirl on a date, suddenly, looking at him differently and smiling more. It was as if she wanted to keep him in her sights – make sure he didn't change, or disappear. She seemed to be memorizing the moment, imprinting it in her mind. A 'captured' image. Damn, why couldn't he get that asshole out of his mind?
How had he missed her feelings before? How could he have missed them? She had been right there in front of him, right behind him when he fell, lifting him up, holding him close. And she was, after all, the most beautiful woman he'd ever laid eyes on. Somehow the years and the money had confused the facts in his mind.
After dinner they drove slowly to his penthouse, leaving the BMW with the parking attendant and walking in together, snuggled side by side. Her hair tickled his nose, and her hands wandered provocatively over his belt, his waist, below. The pleasant freedom he'd felt at the restaurant had followed them, surrounding them like a euphoric cloud.
They sipped scotch on his couch, then moved to the bedroom in due time, not hurrying. Casually, as if commenting on her hair color, or the way her lipstick matched her mascara just so, Hiram asked her if she would move in, still unsure of where this new possessiveness was coming from, this new desire to be with her.
"You know the answer to that," she teased him, using his own words from earlier in the evening. "I want nothing more in the world than to be with you. If you weren't such a stubborn, blind old coot, you'd have seen that years ago."
And that was that. Hiram Gates, entrepreneur, businessman, agent and snuff-photo monger, was no longer available. Off the market. It should have felt like a trap, should have closed in around him with the suffocating closeness of prison walls, but it did not. It felt good, safe, and very, very right. It had been a long time since anything had felt so right.
Late that night, her head resting softly on his shoulder and the bare, breathtaking length of her pressed tightly against him beneath his velvet sheets, she whispered his nightmare into his ear, and the shadows returned, snatching at the edges of his new happiness and tugging it away, bit by bit.
"That photographer," she said softly, twirling the ends of her hair between her fingers and tickling his chest with it, "he really does do good work, Hi. I was thinking. Maybe I could do some posing? Just for you, I mean?"
She looked up at him, eyes filled with innocence, glowing with the emotions of the evening and the after-sparkle of their lovemaking, and he nearly screamed. He clutched her so tightly that the air left her lungs, holding on so that nothing on the earth or beyond it could have ripped her free and howled his fury to the wind. Nearly.
"No." he said simply. "I don't want you near that man, Maddy. Not now, not ever, do you hear me? He isn't all he seems . . . he . . ." Hiram stopped, knowing he'd already said too much. "I just wouldn't feel right. There are other photographers. Ben Stiles, Mike?"
"They aren't as good," she pouted, pulling away and searching his eyes for whatever it was that had broken their mood so suddenly. Hiram knew h
e'd tensed up, that she'd felt it. She was beautiful, but one thing Maddy was not was stupid. "You know that. You also know that guy Mike can't keep his eyes, or his hands, off of me. I hate him. I wanted to do this for you.
"You don't understand, Hi. That last picture, the girl's makeup was so perfect, so beautiful. I want that. I want to be so breathtaking for you that you can't look away, that nothing else shines so brightly. For you."
"You are all that and more without any photographs or makeup," he said, his voice still trembling. "You are perfect now, this way, the real you. Promise me you won't go to him?"
She didn't answer, but kissed him instead, insinuating herself between his legs softly and flowing over him, bringing a groan of pleasure and a wash of warmth that drained all thought from his mind. As she slid her tongue down, he whispered his question one more time, but only he could hear. "Promise?"
She lifted her head for just one second, looked up at him with a wicked grin on her lips and said simply, "I love you, Hiram Gates. I love you."
Then she was back at his body, and his thoughts emptied into the darkness, swirling away in a wash of pleasure.
* * *
Christian showed up at Gates' office much earlier than he had on any other occasion, barely able to contain himself until the place opened. He was eager to get started, eager to move on and complete his work. The delays that came with selling the photos, finding buyers and checking them out, the secrecy of it all, had seemed exciting at first, almost worth the effort they cost, but now they only annoyed him.
It was art they were seeking, that he was seeking. The business, the money, they weren't important. Clandestine games were fine for sport; good for a quick thrill and to fire the imagination, but they were not his focus. Christian needed results, needed to know he was nearing his goal, not just treading water.
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