Only A Whisper

by Gayle Wilson

  “Go on. What else do you imagine?”

  “Am I right so far?”

  “Perhaps,” he said, his voice still neutral and controlled.

  “And handsome,” she breathed finally.

  He said nothing for a long time, but some infinitesimal change had occurred in the atmosphere of the room. His voice, when he answered, had lost none of its calm serenity.

  “I’m sorry you’ve imagined that. Given the blindfolds and the darkness, I should have anticipated what your mind would create, but I’ve grown so accustomed to what I am that I suppose I thought you would know as I do.”

  “Know what?” she asked, recognizing finally, beyond the matter-of-fact tone, some undercurrent of darkness.

  “That I am not the prince of the fairy tales, not the handsome prince little girls dream of.”

  “I dream of you,” she said, wanting to remove from the familiar beauty of his voice whatever darkness she heard.

  “Of what you had imagined.” Again the pause was too long. But finally he said, “Imagine me as you wish. I would like to think you find me handsome. You will never see the reality that might interfere with the illusions we will create during the days…and the nights…we have.”

  “Come to my room tonight,” she said, wanting to make it right between them again, to destroy the quiet bitterness.

  “Will you instead let Diego bring you to me? Without letting that destroy the fantasies we seek to create?”

  “I don’t think anything can destroy what you make me feel. I don’t mind Diego.”

  “I have a request.”

  “I’m not sure I want to hear this,” she said, smiling.

  “I’m afraid I found your gown a little less…” He hesitated.

  “What? Revealing? Sophisticated? Sexy? I know. Less of everything you’re used to.”

  “I would never be so gauche as to tell you that, my heart. I thought that perhaps you might have something slightly more feminine. If not, I would be delighted to provide you with something suitable.”

  “Do you have a closet of gowns you just pull out as the occasion arises? No pun intended.”

  “No,” he replied, amusement threaded in the richness again. “What do you imagine I am? I thought Diego might buy something for me to give you.”

  “And why wouldn’t you choose something for me? I don’t want something Diego picked out.”

  He hesitated, so that she wondered what she was missing.

  “I avoid public appearances if possible. The fewer people who see my face in any context, the better. I prefer to remain anonymous. My profession requires it.”

  “I have something suitable,” she said stiffly. The distance was between them again—a barrier that would always intrude if they talked of anything outside a dark bedroom, the only place, it seemed, where they could truly find complete compatibility.

  My profession, he had said. She blocked the images, feeling guilt over what she was doing. Surely there was some way she could get out of here. They didn’t even seem concerned anymore that she might try to escape. Her hands weren’t tied. There were windows in this room. Perhaps…

  But Diego was outside the door, and she had learned that she couldn’t go through Diego. She would have to overpower this man, hurt him beyond his ability to resist in order to escape. She knew that she was not mentally capable of that, even if she might be, given her training, physically capable. She was effectively held prisoner by what she felt for him. She sighed and didn’t know that he understood exactly what the sound meant, read in her face exactly what his words had reminded her of.

  “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t think of anything outside this house for the next few days. Less than a week, I promise you, and this will be over. You’ll be back in your world, and this will seem like only a nightmare. Or a dream. Parts of it. You are my prisoner, taken and held against your will. That’s all anyone else will ever know. And it is the truth.”

  “The facts but not the truth,” she corrected quietly.

  “The truth belongs to us and to no one else. The facts are as I have given them. And as you will give them to anyone who questions you.”

  “But I’ll always know.”

  “Don’t let this destroy who you are, what you are. I don’t intend that, Rae.”

  “I don’t even know your name,” she realized suddenly.

  “What would you like it to be? You may choose any name you prefer. I promise I’ll answer to it.”

  “But you won’t tell me yours?”

  “One less thing to forget. And you must promise me that you will forget all this. You agreed last night that it would be my way.”

  “I would have agreed to anything last night to get you to stay with me. And that statement alone should make up for any of the blows to the ego you suffered before.”

  “It helps. What would you like for dinner? I think breakfast was late enough that we could perhaps settle for an early dinner and then…”

  “An early bedtime?” she suggested.

  “How well you read me. An early bedtime.”

  “Earl. I think I’ll call you Earl. Or Hugo. Or maybe Herbert.”

  “Those aren’t Spanish names.”

  “How about Juan? As in Juan Valdez. He’s from Colombia.”

  “Who is Juan Valdez?” He seemed puzzled by her amusement.

  “The coffee man. With the donkey or the burro or whatever it is. I don’t know the donkey’s name, so I’m going to call you Juan.”

  “I suppose it’s better than Herbert,” he said, and called for Diego to take her back to her room.

  THE AFTERNOON WAS long, and finally she walked to the window and stood in the fading light looking down on the garden. The roses were drooping in the late-afternoon heat, and she wondered who cared for the grounds. She hadn’t heard the sound of mowers or trimmers, but they could have done it by hand. She realized that she had not been aware enough of her surroundings. Someone who could have helped her might have been below her window at any time during the past week and she had never looked.

  She turned away, angry at herself, and vowed that she would not simply drift along in the situation he had created for her. She could not deny herself tonight, but she had made no promises not to escape. She knew escape would somehow allow her to regain her self-respect and might even allow her to go back to what she had always been. My profession, she echoed his phrase.

  She laid across the bed the nightgowns she had thrown so hurriedly into her bag the day she’d been taken. There were two besides the nightshirts and although she thought briefly of wearing the T-shirt again as a form of rebellion, she rejected the thought almost as it formed. She would do what he asked. Each night held the possibility of being their last, and she wanted no regrets to cloud the memories of whatever time they had together.

  She finally selected the plainest and most severe—a white satin cut like a thirties evening gown, long and straight. She tried it on, enjoying the cool fall of the material against her body. She smoothed it over her breasts and looked in the mirror above the dresser. She brushed her hair for a long time and then put it up as she had on the day she’d waited for his return. She wondered where he had gone for those four days and whom he’d met. Less than a week, he had said, and this would be over. Less than a week, and she would be free. Only she didn’t want to be free. She wanted to be with him, and the nearer it came to the time to go to him, the more she knew that.

  As the sun set, she lost all concerns about fitting back into her former life. She didn’t even care anymore. She would ask him tonight to take her with him when this was all over. No one would ever know.

  She put her hands on either side of her head and pressed as if she could push all thoughts of the man she was so carefully dressing for out of her brain. But she didn’t succeed. He hadn’t asked for her help in whatever he was doing. She was not hurting anyone else by being with him. She was betraying no one but herself. As long as that was the case, she could live with it.
As long as he didn’t ask her to betray others to help him be what he was, to do whatever he was doing, she could live with it.

  She was still by the window when Diego knocked. She realized with surprise that it was fully dark; the garden below was invisible in the heavy heat of the summer night.

  “Come in,” she said, and Diego stepped into the room. In spite of what she had told him earlier, she had dreaded Diego seeing her dressed to go to him, but Diego never looked at her body.

  “He’s waiting for you,” he said softly. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes, thank you, Diego. I’m ready.”

  There was no blindfold, but the hall outside her room was unlighted, so she held Diego’s arm as a blind person would hold her guide. He took her a very long way before he stopped to knock on a door. She wondered how he could navigate so fearlessly in the darkness and how he knew which door, and then she heard the beloved voice inside the room give permission and Diego opened the door for her. She wondered if he would guide her to the bed or if…

  The door closed behind her, and she was standing alone in the midnight blackness.

  Chapter Nine

  “Are you afraid of the dark, my heart?” he asked, the seductive caress of his voice coming from across the room.

  “Not if you’re there,” she answered, knowing, in spite of her trembling knees, that was true.

  “It is my natural element,” he said. As always, she could hear his mood revealed in his voice. He was amused by her fears and anticipating touching her.

  “I think I fell in love with your voice first. Before anything else.”

  “Or perhaps that’s all you really know of me.”

  “That’s not true anymore.”

  “No,” he agreed softly. “Not anymore.”

  She waited for him to tell her what to do and felt the darkness gather around her. His natural element. She could smell the fragrance that had haunted her room all day, enfolding her in his darkness.

  “Five steps,” he whispered. “Five steps and you will find the footboard. Come to the right side. I’m waiting for you.”

  “Did you count them for me?” she asked, prolonging the moment before she must step forward.

  “For you, my heart,” he answered.

  Because he was waiting, she commanded her feet to take those five steps. She reached out and the curved footboard of the bed was under her hand. Just as he had told her. She trailed her fingers along the wood until she felt the post and then down to the top of the mattress. She could hear the whisper of their movement along the sheets until his hand grasped her wrist. She gasped, although she had expected his touch, and he laughed, pulling her into the high bed.

  He leaned over her, propping his elbows on either side of her arms, imprisoning her so his chest rested lightly over her breasts and his long legs lay beside her body. She waited for his kiss, but instead she felt his thumbs trace both sides of her forehead and then trail down her eyelids, to her high cheekbones, over her nose, across her parted lips. He finally lowered his mouth to hers and whispered before his tongue invaded, “So beautiful.”

  Then he was inside her mouth, tasting, caressing, demanding. She ran her fingers through the curling hair and down the strong column of his neck and across the broad shoulders.

  When he broke the kiss and lifted his head, she brushed her lips along the ridge of his throat and into the hollow below. She felt him swallow against her touch and sensed the slow pulse beneath her lips. “My heart,” he had called her, and she felt the reality of that strong beat against her body.

  “Did you think about this today?” he whispered into the soft curls piled atop her head.

  “About this and you.”

  “Why did you put your hair up? I want to feel it around me, over my shoulders.”

  “I don’t know. I dressed for you. I put on makeup for you. I fixed my hair for you, and there’s only the darkness. I don’t know why I did any of those things,” she admitted, laughing at her own stupidity. She took out the pins to let the long strands spill over them both.

  “Because it made you feel more beautiful,” he said. “A woman needs to feel beautiful before she is beautiful to anyone else. It’s not really how a woman looks that’s important, but how she feels about how she looks.”

  “The voice of experience?” she accused, smiling against his shoulder.

  “Perhaps. I like beautiful women. And that’s a compliment, querida.”

  “If you didn’t like the way I look, would you throw me out of your bed?”

  “If you weren’t exactly who and what you are, you would never be in my bed at all,” he said, stopping her questions with his mouth.

  It was much later, long after he had removed and discarded the satin gown, as he was tormenting her with the denial and then the sensation of his lips against nipples that he had already made ache for him, that she spoke the thought his words had evoked.

  “It’s not how a man looks that’s important, either,” she whispered into the darkness. Her hands were tangled in the dark curls of the head that was bent over her body. She felt him still and then raise his face to look, she supposed, where he knew her to be against the whiteness of the sheets.

  “It’s how I make you feel,” she finished.

  “Like the prince,” he said.

  Daringly, she touched his face and felt the slight indentation in the center of his chin. Her fingers found his bottom lip, and he opened his mouth to capture them gently with his teeth. She let him hold them a moment before she removed them to trace the bow of his top lip and then up to the strong nose, feeling his breath feathering out against her touch. Bolder now, her exploration moved up the bridge of his nose. At that, his hand fastened hard on her wrist, pulling it away from his face to lie prisoner against his suddenly heaving chest.

  “No, querida. Fantasy and not reality. No more reality tonight. Promise me.”

  “I promise. I won’t touch your face again. Not if that’s what you want.”

  “It’s what I want.”

  “Is there anything else that’s off-limits?” she teased, trying to lessen the sudden harshness in the beautiful voice. She touched the hardness that grew into her hand as she caressed him.

  “Nothing else. Whatever else you find is yours to explore,” he replied, turning onto his back to give her greater access.

  She intended to torment him as he had done to her last night—to tantalize and then deny release. But after only a few moments of her somewhat tentative touching, instead he guided her over his body again and, dear and familiar, moved inside her, filling her as she had known all day that he would.

  “Do you like this?” he asked, and, not understanding, she laughed.

  “Being on top of me,” he explained, amused.

  “On top. Under. Beside. I don’t care. With you. Around you. Surrounding you. You told me last night. Made for you.”

  His hands taught her how to move against him, to give them both the greatest pleasure. For a long time. As he had done for her alone last night. To the edge of release and then denial, cessation of all movement. Held hard against his heaving chest, her hips stilled by his command, by his hands holding her, cupped commandingly over her slender bottom. She clenched against his hardness, knowing that she alone controlled what happened within her body and felt his teeth against her neck and shoulders. She stopped then, waiting for his permission.

  Finally he moved within her, softly at first. And then he released her hips, sliding his hands up to cup her breasts, raising her to sit upright over his sweat-slick body. The shift in position deepened the already powerful sensations, and as he lifted into her, she cried out with her need. He let her control then, setting the tempo for her own release until she felt him join her as she reached the edge of the abyss. Then there was oblivion.

  She found his hands still holding her, caressing now in gentle circles her body that shook in the cold she hadn’t felt before. The moisture on her skin was his and hers, and she shivere
d at his touch. Branded and marked, he had promised. And she was.

  No one else, ever, my heart, she promised silently, lowering her head to kiss lips that were still gasping slightly for air to fill his tortured lungs. He pulled her down to crush against his strength, hurting her until she whimpered with the pain. He released her then, whispering apologies and love words in Spanish.

  “I lose my English,” he said in that language, finally. “I have no brain, only a body, when we make love.”

  She laughed, recognizing its shaky quality in the stillness. “I know. I know.”

  Time ceased to exist for either of them. He did not plead tiredness tonight and although her bones felt liquid in the aftermath of their passion, he made love to her twice more. As unhurriedly as the first time. Teaching her sensations she had never dreamed existed. Finding places on her body that she had never thought of as being erogenous. Under his lips and his hands, they suddenly were. He wasn’t always gentle, but she had learned that his strength was not used to overpower, but to guide, and if she let him control, he could make her feel things that she knew she could never explain. Never put into words. Nor would she want to. She belonged to him and did not even mind the idea of that slavery. She gloried in it. As she did in his touch and the hard force that invaded and owned her body. Made it his own. Claimed it and sealed it forever against anyone else’s touch.

  “How did you learn all this?” she asked as she lay limp against his side. His hard arm was around her, his hand locked on her breast that he caressed gently now in contrast to what he had done only minutes before.

  “A misspent youth,” he said, laughing, as he turned his head to kiss her cheek.

  “How many women—” she began, but his hand tightened suddenly on her breast.

  “Only one. You must know that. Only one,” he commanded. She nodded, knowing he could feel the movement against his lips.

  “Go to sleep. Diego will come for you before dawn. He will touch your arm, and you will go with him. Don’t be afraid when you feel his touch. He’ll take you back to your room. Do you understand?”