Elena gave her a beseeching look. "When he comes back, I have to be ready."
"Ready for what?"
Elena stared grimly out of a picture window at his fantasy world. The stable manager was exercising one of Audubon's thoroughbreds. The gardener was at work on an enormous plot of flowering shrubs. But beyond the grounds, the forest closed in, hiding the unbreachable stone wall deep within. "I'm not sure," Elena replied finally. "That's the problem."
It was two A.M. The manor was filled with lonely silence, and Elgiva had long since gone to her suite in the other wing. Worrying about Audubon, Elena stood at the deserted end of the hallway outside her suite, one hand balanced on a ponderous teak table in front of a picture window, the other hand extended in front of her as her bare, pointed foot drew ballet figures on the tapestry rug.
She liked the peaceful, shadowy hall and the knowledge she could go anywhere in the house she wished. Small freedoms. Her white silk nightgown was a mischievous influence, causing her to tuck her chin and watch as it clung to the length of her slowly moving leg. Always, her thoughts returned to Audubon. If she could only trace his patterns as easily!
"So you do know how to dance," Audubon said from the far end of the hall. His deep voice, though soft, reverberated off the paneled walls. She brought her feet together with a hurried snap and whirled to face him, instinctively pressing herself against the table behind her as if to make a fighting stance. Her hands braced on the edge, she drew a long breath as he walked toward her with his easy confident stride, his hands hanging calmly by his sides.
"How long has it been?" he asked, shaking his head. "Three days since I left? I feel as if I haven't seen you in years."
His gaze took in all of the simple sheath nightgown, from the thin straps barely caught on her shoulders to the loosely draped bodice and flowing skirt. She had too much pride to huddle as if ashamed he'd caught her dressed this way and performing ballet exercises in the hall.
"Beautiful," he said, coming to a halt, a stride away. "The dance, the dancer, the gown. All beautiful."
With a hidden sigh of resignation she admitted that every fiber in her body was humming. The combination of sexual innuendo and polite restraint in his admiration was irresistible. She silently admitted she was glad the gown revealed a detailed outline of all it covered.
"I didn't have the proper clothes for practicing. Ballet is my hobby."
"From a male perspective I say you have the perfect clothes for practicing."
She heard his lighthearted tone, but as she studied his face she knew it was a facade. His skin was gray with exhaustion; glancing down, she saw that his clothes, an oddly Latin combination of white trousers and a white shirt with tiny, colorful, glass buttons, were wrinkled and streaked with dust.
"I should have changed before I came up here," he said, his voice raw, probably from too much talking and too little sleep. "But I was hoping you'd still be awake. I want to apologize for the other day."
The gown was his ally. It stroked her skin with his sincerity. Oh, how she wanted to believe in him! Elena shook her head in a gesture that dismissed the incident at the pool. "I'm doomed to be in some awful state of 'dis-dress' every time we're together. It's only appropriate my new outfit and I should have been a flop."
"Not a flop. A splash." Chuckling hoarsely, he amazed her by suddenly sitting down on the floor. He did it in a single, limber movement that nonetheless couldn't conceal the slump of fatigue in his body.
"Audubon?" she asked anxiously. Elena had never expected to see him like this. Her swift fear for his condition made her drop to the floor near him, hugging her knees to her chest. "Did you just return from your Mexican trip? I mean, just a few minutes ago?"
He nodded. "Walked in, came straight up here." He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I thought you might loan me a cup of excess optimism. I'll gladly repay you on Tuesday for a tingle today... oh, never mind. You've never seen a Popeye cartoon."
Leaning against the polished wood as if it were the most luxurious pillow in the world, he gracefully jackknifed one long leg and then the other, pulling off his dusty white boots. Even his white socks were red with dirt. He tossed the boots aside, stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankles.
Finally, his eyes half-shut, he looked at her again. "How are you? Do you like Elgiva? I hope she reassured you about your safety here."
"I am... open-minded. Let's leave it at that." She leaned forward and casually rested a hand on his foot, while she continued to scrutinize his haggard face. "Audubon, what's wrong? What happened?"
His green eyes flickered to her hand. A languid look of pleasure began to cause the tense muscles of his face to relax. "I hoped you'd touch me. I was wondering if I'd imagined the... comfort in it. But it's real. You're real."
"I want to help you. If you want me to trust you, then trust me."
"It's not a matter of trust, it's... it's habit, I suppose. I've never shared very much about myself with other people. Growing up, it was a necessity. But now... well, it's ingrained. I do it instinctively."
"Can't you tell me anything about your business? About your trip to Mexico?"
His somber eyes assessed her for a moment. "I have an adopted son. He works for me. He's twenty six years old, and he's in trouble with a Mexican businessman who disapproves of a project we've been working on. He disappeared a few days ago, and I've been trying to find him. I have reason to think he's okay and merely hiding until it's safe to call."
"Oh, Audubon, I'm sorry. Your son. What are you going to do now?"
"It's too dangerous for me to go back to Mexicodangerous for my son, that is." Bitterness had entered his voice, and she saw clenched muscles flex in his jaw. "I have to let other people look for him, while I 'supervise' from here, dammit."
"Audubon," Elena said softly, her eyes never leaving his, "Elgiva Kincaid convinced me your businesswhatever it is--is nothing illegal. Please tell me she was correct."
"It's not illegal, but it is unusual, and if I don't tell you more about it, it's because what you don't know can't hurt you. Another old American saying."
"All right. At least you've told me a little. Perhaps we can trade small secrets until we feel safe enough to share the larger ones."
He smiled, but with a certain hardness in his eyes. A chill ran up her spine as it had the day he took her from the island. Did he intend to use her in some way she didn't yet understand?
Then he destroyed such thoughts by leaning forward and stroking his hand over her hair. "You 'unroll and fluff' fantastically, as Mr. Rex would say."
She dampened her lips and intoned with great drama, "When I'm good, I'm very, very good, and when I'm bad... I frizz." He choked on laughter, and suddenly Elena realized that his laughter meant more to her than anyone else's in her entire life. She wanted to please this man, and it was different from wanting to please other people. Wanting to please in the past always had been based on fear... or at least the knowledge that she needed someone's goodwill. Wanting to please Audubon was based on the simple, pure need to see him smile.
"When you're good... you're puzzling." He gently brushed the end of her nose with one dusty fingertip. "Where does a Russian find Mae West films?"
"I watched one today," she explained shakily, wondering how the tip of her nose could be such an erotic area. "Bernard and Elgiva and I. But Clarice watched soap musicals."
"Soap musicals?" His eyes squinted, deep lines fanning from the corners as amusement reached them. "You mean soap operas!"
"Whatever."
Leaning his head against the wall, he shut his eyes and smiled, but there was still such anguish in him that it seeped from the edges of his smile like water from a dangerously full dam. Elena caught a soft sound of distress in her throat and slid next to him, her lifelong need to heal anyone who needed her mingling with devotion for him alone.
Murmuring soft words in Russian he didn't need to translate to understand, she unbuttoned his shirt then slid h
er arms around his waist and hugged him, nuzzling her cheek against the downy mat of dark hair on his chest.
He put his arms around her convulsively, then caressed her back with long, quick strokes of his hands. Each time his fingers moved from the bare skin of her shoulders to the silk-covered region beneath, the change in texture exploded in her nerve endings. She felt dazed with what he was doing to her and loved the hard, masculine textures she absorbed with her own hands as she rubbed slow circles on his spine. "I give comfort, but I also take comfort," she whispered. "Perhaps we can make each other feel better."
"I must have been very, very good to deserve this," he said against her hair. "A whole lifetime of good."
"Some moments are worth a whole lifetime. I have not had many of those, but I'm hoping for more."
"Maybe I can give you one right now." His fingers lingered at the top of her shoulders, then slid under the gown's straps and eased them aside. Her breath shattered as the silk bodice cascaded down her chest, pooling where her breasts pressed hard against his stomach.
Audubon's hands roamed over her neck and shoulders, then trailed down her arms. She tilted her head back and met his kiss, then traded her muted cry of pleasure for the husky purr of his appreciation. Elena knew the slightest shifting of her body would send the gown to her waist. She reveled in the anticipation for a moment, caught in the delicious exploration that her hands were now enjoying along his outer thighs. Then she flexed her torso just enough to let the inevitable follow through.
He broke away from the kiss as their bodies touched again. His tired, worried mood gentled the urgency, but not the deeper bond between them. "You have choices now," he reminded her, drawing his fingertips down her neck, then letting them rest lightly over the pulse point at its base. "And privacy. Your body is your own."
"I know. It's wonderful to share it with you."
With a sigh of satisfaction he pulled her onto his lap and bent his head to her breasts. Elena burned with pleasure as he draped her backward over the sweet, harsh vise of his arm. Every pleasurable sensation in the world shot through her as he tenderly explored her with his mouth.
She clung to his shoulder with one hand and stroked his head with the other, weaving her fingers through his silver hair. Looking down, she watched him in a trance of ecstasy. Her breasts were only average in size, with delicate pink nipples that had never looked large enough to her. But Audubon smiled at their excitement, flirted with them until they were unbearably sensitive, and murmured compliments at their perfection.
Elena lost a smile of wonder in a moan of delight; putting her arms around his head, she shuddered against him and nuzzled his hair. He lifted his head and turned his face against the delicate inner surface of her forearm, placing small kisses in a progression toward her hand. "How do you make flowers bloom?" he whispered, touching the tip of his tongue to her wrist.
"It is... a side effect of... the energy." Dazed, the cool air enticing her breasts, where his mouth had left the nipples damp and strutted, she carefully shifted herself atop his lap. And she knew when he inhaled sharply and flexed to meet her that she had returned a little of the pleasure he was giving her.
"Does it happen often?" He tilted his head back so that she could dab kisses on his ruddy, parted lips.
"Rarely. Not like it has since I met you." She kissed his chin, his nose, his tired, lined eyes, and the boyish smile that was growing on his mouth. "I could embarrass myself, if I'm not careful. Or frighten someone, like poor Mr. Rex."
Audubon looked up at her with an expression of wonder, making her feel no miracle was impossible between them. "I'll buy you a flower shop. But I insist on being your only customer."
She made a noise that came out sounding like a dove's coo--and they both chuckled. The laughter mingled in another kiss, slow and deep, with small, provocative sounds all its own. She stroked his face, and while one of his hands began to tease her breasts with distracting mischief, the other caught her right hand and brought it to his mouth.
She loved the rough-velvet texture of his lips, especially when they slipped across her palm, then brushed her wrist. The air around her shimmered with anticipation; soon there would be no turning back, but she didn't mind.
"Elena? Elena. What is this?"
Hearing his voice through the pleasant fog of desire, she responded slowly, leaning her head atop his. "Mmmm?"
He rubbed the pad of his thumb over the small bump nestled beside the sinews in her wrist. A rivulet of uncertainty and sorrow crept through her. Straightening, she looked down into his troubled eyes. "It's a birth control implant."
After a startled reappraisal of the bean-sized bump, he asked, "I've read about these, but they're not used in this country."
"It releases hormones regularly, something like taking birth control pills, only there are no pills to take. Once it's placed under the skin, it stays there for two years. It's safe."
"And perfectly acceptable, if it was something you decided for yourself. Was it?"
She looked away. "No."
His shock and anger hummed through her like sympathetic vibrations preceding an earthquake. He gripped her hand in his. "Were you forced--"
"Not forced really, just strongly encouraged." She looked him straight in the eye. "All part of the rules for being a healthy, happy, useful research partner."
"Oh my God."
The disgust in his voice made her chest shudder with the tiny cramps that come from an immediate need to cry out loud with harsh, unrelenting sobs. She subdued the feeling and spoke with a semblance of normalcy. "This is one secret I should never have told."
He cursed under his breath, and though she realized he wasn't cursing at her, but at what had happened to her, still she felt outcast and unsavory, as if she'd told him that she'd been a prostitute. American men were very traditional in some ways, she suddenly recalled being told. Maybe she had the wrong ideas about many things, but she suspected that Audubon was more traditional than not.
But when she pulled her gown straps back into place and tried to move away, he held her tightly and practically growled at her. "It's all right. I'm just angry. Hell, not just angry, I'm so damned angry I could strangle Kriloff with my bare hands."
It wasn't an idle threat, and she knew it. The compliment of his anger was lost on her as she considered the repulsion in his face and voice. "How many men were there?" he asked.
She froze, disbelieving. "Does it matter?"
He slumped a little, and his voice softened. "No, even one would be too many, considering you had no choice."
There had been only one boy when she turned twenty-one, a boy her own age, and no one had twisted her arm to make her accept him. But after that she had refused to cooperate, until Pavel came along. And because Pavel was one of the psychologists who worked for Kriloff, she had thought he was off-limits. Falling in love with Pavel--who said he loved her too--was rebellion, she thought, until she learned the truth about him.
She was afraid her explanation wouldn't make any difference to Audubon. He was looking at her with something she judged to be pity, the last thing she wanted from him.
"It's not good for us to get so involved, as we did a few minutes ago," she said as cheerfully as she could, while a huge hollow spot grew inside her. "It will make things more complicated when I leave. I don't want to remember you as a lover. I probably won't see you again, so it's smart we stopped when we did."
"Yes. I wasn't thinking when I came up here to see you. I don't know what's going on in my mind right now. But I believe you're right--considering what's probably going to happen, we shouldn't let ourselves be foolish."
She eased away from him, and this time he let her go. "What do you mean, 'What's probably going to happen?' I'm going to get permission to stay in this country, just as soon as Kriloff stops complaining and goes home. Then I'll be free, like everyone else. That's what's going to happen."
"Yes. That's what I meant." He got to his feet and held out a hand. She ign
ored it and rose by herself, now feeling exposed in the revealing dress. His polite reserve was worse than having strangers study her.
"Good night," she said, and circled around him to the doors of her suite. He stepped forward and opened one of them for her, and she started to tell him that she hated a gallant gesture with no heart behind it. But her eyes caught the miniature plant on the hallway table she'd used as an exercise bar. It was covered in small, starlike pink flowers where there had been nothing but green leaves before he'd come to visit her.
He followed her line of vision, swiveling his head and freezing when he saw the plant. Elena knotted a fist under her throat to keep a sob in check. "Don't worry," she told him, "that won't happen again."
His hard, hurt gaze turned to her, and she absorbed it for as long as she could before she stepped inside the suite and shut the door.
Elena quickly realized that Audubon hadn't told Elgiva or Douglas Kincaid about her unusual powers. She didn't know why he'd keep it secret from his best friends, whom he obviously trusted, but she was glad he had. She didn't know how people on the outside--anyone who hadn't lived at the institute was an 'outsider' to her--would react to her talent. Kriloff had always told her she'd be laughed at and disbelieved, but she was learning that very little he had said was true.
Sitting on the low stone wall of an herb garden a short distance from the main house, she darted a glance past Elgiva, who was picking tiny sprigs off the neat patches of fledgling spring plants. Audubon walked out of the house with Douglas, and Elena's senses went on alert immediately. She heard nothing of what Elgiva went on saying about sage and thyme.
It disturbed her that the mere sight of Audubon, standing next to the brawnier, black-haired Douglas like an elegant white falcon next to a hawk, could make her forget good sense and feel a deep ache of longing. After the traumatic encounter last night, she had to be realistic.
Silver Fox and Red Hot Dove Page 8
