The Winter King

by Amanda Carpenter

  The taste of his salty sweat was delicious, the brute magnificent, and the indignity of her shredded clothing lay all around them like moulted feathers. Yvonne laughed and licked his damp, heaving shoulder. Adam cocked a rueful eyebrow against the side of her cheek and closed his eyes.

  ‘How am I going to get back to my trailer, in just my shoes?’ she whispered into his ear. It was a useless hypothesis. She doubted she could even stand upright, let alone walk.

  His arms tightened on her. He growled, ‘You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying right where you are, flat on your back. Oh, damn, we’ve got to retake the blasted barn scene tomorrow. I want to mark you. I want to mark you all over your thin, luscious skin, to tell the entire world that I put the marks there, to show them that you’re mine.’

  He had already marked her, in places the camera, or anyone else for that matter, would never see.

  ‘Hush, you fool.’ The words were harsh, the way she murmured them an endearment, as she covered his elegant mouth with her fingers, and then replaced them with her lips.

  ‘Fool, she says,’ he murmured, caressing the corner of her mouth with intense fascination for its texture and shape. ‘Hush, she says. The woman knows how to seduce without putting forth the slightest effort at seduction. She does it by being herself. She does it by being, without artifice or flirtation. The woman just is, and is bewildered by it.’

  ‘Adam?’ she whispered shakenly.

  Adam?

  ‘Go to sleep, Yvonne,’ he said, and he dragged the covers over them both, and wrapped his arms around her in an unbreakable, possessive hold.

  Where did she go? She wasn’t going anywhere. She went nowhere at the speed of light. She closed her eyes, snuggled against him, and fell asleep.

  After a dark and dreamless time, her eyes flew wide open. From one moment to the next, she was wide awake, and not quite sure what had awakened her. Then she knew the answer: she was alone in Adam’s bed. The crack between the curtains was still black, the illumination was still silvery and indirect, but she had a feeling of time that had passed and was not to be recalled. The bedside clock told her it was four-thirty in the morning.

  The door of the trailer opened and closed. Very quietly Adam walked down the hall towards the bedroom. Very quickly Yvonne shut her eyes and pretended to be asleep, then looked at him covertly through her slitted lashes. He wore only a faded pair of jeans. His hair was so dark as to appear black and lay sleek along the strong contours of his head. Her sensitive nostrils caught the faint fresh scent of soap; he had already showered.

  He moved with such care, so as to not wake her. When he reached her side of the bed, he put a small pile of clothes on the floor. He. must have gone to her trailer to find something for her to wear. She nearly smiled then, for her entire body was completely, falsely lax. and her heart pounded hard and quick with a hunter’s thoughts.

  The winter king was exquisite prey, hard and muscled and ineffably graceful, from the rippling width of breast muscles to the long, undulating flat stomach, and the heavy bulge of thighs.

  He squatted beside her for the longest time, and she nearly lost her control as she felt—felt, as a physical manifestation, his eyes roaming over her sleep-flushed, serene face and the upturned curl of one outflung hand, the only two things that lay uncovered by the tangled sheet. He touched her palm, a light delicacy not designed to awaken, and she had to restrain the dark desire to clamp her fingers over his hand.

  Then he left the bedroom. The predator heard him moving languidly around the kitchenette, and rose in panther-like silence, wrapping the sheet, somehow, toga-like around her taut body.

  She began to stalk. She paused in the shadow of the hall and watched him. Still he appeared to be unaware of her. Anticipation made her eyes dilate to ravenous, shining pools of blackness, her fine nostrils flare, her mouth go dry.

  His coffee was made. He poured himself a cup, then just stood at the counter, his weight on one leg, the other at an indolent angle. One would almost think he was posing that beautiful body in all its male pride and virile strength for her. One would almost—he sighed and rotated his auburn head, and then in a glorious act of un-selfconsciousness he put both hands to the small of his back and arced his spine in a great, bone-cracking stretch. It bent back those straight shoulders and widened his sculpted chest, and narrowed the gorgeous abdomen under the curved cage of his ribs where a fine dark arrow of hair shot into the confinement of the faded jeans.

  The predator’s intent wait was over; her control snapped. She flowed into the kitchenette, a prowling feline driven by hunger, and his damp auburn head turned towards her.

  In the winter king’s eyes was vast amusement.

  He had known the entire time that she was awake, and watching him.

  Take me, his gaze said.

  She let go of the sheet. It fell to the floor. She was shaking with need when she reached to undo the fastening of his jeans, her ferocious gaze holding his unblinkingly. He positioned his body, leaning that powerful body back against the counter in a display of surrender. Her fingers found the zip and pulled it down. He was already a hardened inferno.

  Her thick lashes swept down to hide the sparkle of intent in her eyes as she thought to take her revenge on his subterfuge. As she pulled the jeans down the length of his legs, she followed them to the floor in a slow, graceful fall.

  She knelt before him, her naked body curled, and the light in the kitchenette shone on the slender wings of her shoulderblades, the hourglass curve of her tiny waist and flaring hips, the knobs and hollows of her spine a vulnerable submission. She stroked his thighs in a light, chaste caress.

  That was how she broke the winter king’s controlled surrender. Not in screaming rage or defiance, not in tempestuous explosion, not in indomitable pride, or with straight-backed fire, all those characteristics he saw, and was aroused by, and admired in her. She brought him down with humility.

  He groaned and came to his knees, and grabbed her downbent head to drag her up and kiss her searingly, shakingly. He was the victor, as he fell to the floor and yanked her astride him, and held the jutting bowl of her hips above him, and plunged inside her. He was the victor, and that was his downfall.

  His entry was a massive fulfilment. Her head flung back as she arced instinctively at the impalement, and cried her trembling desire. His grey eyes were ruthless, incredulous. She took him, she took all of him on a wild ride of no return and the sweetest of violent endings.

  The sight of her helpless climax made him spill into her with such force that his face contorted, and his entire body shook as if with ague. Then the slender feminine power that had sustained her flew out of her body like a capricious spirit, and she collapsed atop him in a fragile, strengthless heap.

  She shuddered against his thudding chest, her breathing in barely audible moans, the release of intolerable stress. He stroked her compulsively, murmuring something guttural and incoherent.

  Her hair covered them both in a glossy velvet blanket. It hid her face, for which she was so grateful, as her mouth bowed and her eyes filled and overspilled. His skin was so wet, he would never notice the added moisture.

  Act of will.

  She had looked at him with her deepest overriding passions. She had watched him peak, and it was beautiful.

  I will not love him, she whispered in her secretive heart of hearts.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SOMETHING had happened to her.

  Inevitably they separated, to prepare to meet the demands of the long, sun-drenched day. Yvonne showered and dressed in the clothes Adam had brought back for her, and went back to her trailer in an absent, weaving meander.

  The sense of loss at leaving him, already preoccupied with the mountain of papers on the dining-table, had been strangely intense. She had kissed him on the forehead; he had caressed her cheek with long, hard fingers turned back to his work. It was only sensible of him. She quite understood that. Their early morning lovemaking had already m
ade him start later than he had originally intended, a later start to a day that was more pressured than ever, with the make-up work from the previous afternoon on top of the original schedule.

  She drifted through her trailer like an abandoned, forlorn ghost who had misplaced the purpose of its haunting. For God’s sake, what was she wanting? She’d had a night of passion and fulfilment that quite took her breath away. It had been far more than she could have ever expected, hoped for, feared, longed for, dreamed of. She was sated, heavy-eyed, her nipples full and sensitised from his unshaven mouth, the rounded weight of her belly and hips tingling with remembered sensuality. The creamy remnants of physical satisfaction glimmered in her darkeyes, in the crushed-petal softness of her mouth.

  She was hungrier than she had ever been in her life, ravenous, dying from starvation, parched with desolate thirst and aching with need. For what?

  For what, Yvonne?

  Where to find what she didn’t know she was looking for? It was an impossible task, worthy of rank among the most celebrated of searches throughout literature and history. The knights of the Round Table in their hunt for the Holy Grail, Moses in need of the still, small voice of his God, Macbeth in search of kingship and greatness, Orpheus desperate to find his Eurydice, humanity reaching for the moon.

  She dropped her head into her hands. Once she had been lost and in search of herself, but she had that now, indisputably, and it was not enough. Yvonne was not enough.

  Naturally the day progressed. Naturally came the time when she was reunited with Adam. All of this was to be expected and not even open for discussion or debate; but what was an intolerable surprise, what rocked her on her feet and sent her head into a giddy, intoxicated fume, was the quality of the experience, the exotic, ascendant, coalesced, sheer driven impact of the man and her reaction to him.

  The stress was gone from him. The violence, the compulsive, furious inward gnawing, the harsh severity: he was a slate wiped clean of the strain-induced fissures. He had fractured and come close to some terrible breaking point of stamina and intent, and now, after a night of very little sleep and a marathon bout of physical expenditure, he emerged in a ravishing whole, a prime and incandescent man shimmering with intellect and animal vitality.

  She stared upon his golden, handsome face, which was vivid with bright laughter at something Richard had said to him, and she was numb with a solitary, private shock. He was lovely. He was a masterpiece of transcendence. All previous outbursts of temper were forgiven and forgotten. The complex swarmed around him, drawn by the sparkling effervescence, eager to bask in the magnetic glow. Whatever his inner demons had been, he had struggled with them and overcome them; but she—she had demons of her own to battle with, and she was floundering.

  She acted the whole, interminable day long. She was Hannah with superiority, even according to her own punishing standards, and when she was not working she was the best projection of Yvonne that she could possibly be: light with an employment of delicate malice that struck infallibly at her intended victims’ sense of humour, and never at their vulnerabilities; relentless with a wicked charm that even her opponent Rochelle succumbed to at long last; molten with sultry, sensual laziness; hooded, massive eyes smiling with secretive, unshakeable poise.

  She never broke character, never unmasked, not for one single moment. Yes, the shabby performing clown knew how to shuffle.

  The end of the day saw the end of Christopher’s job. Dinner was a going-away party for him, and all the cast and crew assembled for it, an affectionate and regretful farewell. In warm gratitude her father proposed to host a reunion party for everyone who was returning to Los Angeles after the filming, and his invitation was greeted with uproarious acceptance.

  Afterwards, Adam gave Yvonne the keys to his BMW so that she could drive her father to Phoenix Airport; what they talked about for the two hours, she never recalled. She only knew that the trip had been pleasant and undemanding, and that she hugged her father goodbye and told him that she’d see him in Los Angeles in a few weeks’ time, and she watched him stroll into the airport terminal with unexplained tears in her eyes and a lump in her throat.

  It was ten o’c1ock in the evening, and she was bone-weary. Adam had offered to juggle the next day’s schedule so that she wouldn’t be needed until later in the morning and she could stop in Phoenix overnight, but with typical self-defeating obstinacy she had refused.

  She made the drive back to the location in an hour and a half, breaking the speed limit quite emphatically, pushing fate, the powerful car, her luck. She drove well, and the highway was practically deserted, and there was nary a policeman to harass her. How typical. Sometimes one couldn’t find trouble no matter how enthusiastically one looked.

  She gentled the BMW’s hurtling speed upon reaching the dirt road turn-off, for she didn’t want to mark the expensive car, and crept up to the location in a nearly soundless purr. Eleven-thirty was a terribly late hour on a work night when the next day began, as always, at dawn. Aside from a very few floodlights, and one or two windows still profligately shining, the temporary little city was silent.

  She left Adam’s car in its usual place with the keys in the ignition; there was no fear of anybody stealing it, after all, and she walked to her trailer in a slow stride eloquent with exhaustion, her head bent.

  She climbed the steps to the door, and opened it, never noticing that hers was one of the few windows still shining with light. The golden lamp-glow was a fresh and surprising onslaught, as she entered the trailer and found Adam wide awake, engrossed in a newspaper; and reclining on her settee.

  Sometimes one had a talent for finding trouble when one least expected it.

  His auburn head jerked up at her entrance, and her dark gaze and his ‘grey eyes met, in one melded instant of mutual astonishment. He was the quicker to recover, however, as his dark brows plummeted into any harsh frown and he took in the digital display of his wrist-watch, then looked at her in a classic double-take.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded.

  She stared at him as he rose off the settee and stalked over to her. ‘What an odd question,’ she uttered, and threw her bag carelessly on to the table. ‘Shouldn’t I be asking that of you?’

  He was absolutely furious, and she didn’t have the energy to face him. He accused, ‘You’re not supposed to be back for at least another half-hour yet!’.

  She blinked, feeling sluggish under his attack, and was immensely proud of how her mouth reacted without conscious volition, as she heard herself say in a dry voice, ‘If you like, I shall be happy to leave and come back again.’

  A tiny muscle moved in his jaw, ominously displayed along the clean line. He growled, ‘How fast did you drive, Yvonne?’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ she snapped wearily, ‘I was fast, but I wasn’t foolish. Your precious car is safe enough!’

  He looked as if she’d punched him in the stomach, then his hands snaked out to fasten on to her shoulders and haul her against him. ‘My car?’ he repeated, in mild, terrible contrast to the violence of his actions. ‘I wait up for you, get worried with the thought of what might have happened when you walk in far too early, and all you can bitch about is my stupid car? Do you really think so little of me?’

  Her face paled, her eyes widened; she was already regretting the thoughtless remark, but she cried, ‘You’re not my keeper and I don’t have to account to you for my actions. If you don’t want to hear bitchy remarks, then don’t attack me the minute I walk into my own door!’

  He was frozen, his eyes darkened to pewter with even greater hurt. He said coldly, as his fingers loosened and fell away, ‘Of course you’re right. Whether you kill yourself or not should be no concern of mine.’

  If she was the dark mistress of vicious goading, then he was the master. The sardonic bite of his words sank into her jugular, and she would have shielded herself from him if she could only find out where that vulnerable blind spot was inside her. She squeezed her
eyes tight and dug the heels of her hands into them, never one to be extravagant with her tears, especially twice in one day, forcing the weak flood back, back.

  ‘Adam,’ she said then, raggedly, ‘I’m tired. I’m sorry you feel the need to take your anxieties out on me, I’m sorry you don’t approve of how fast I drive, I’m sorry I lost my temper. Most of all I’m sorry because I could have felt happy that you waited up for me, and yet I don’t since it’s been such a nasty experience. Now, if you’re still Spoiling for a fight, you’d better just go away, because I’m not in the mood to oblige you.’

  He was silent. His ‘ silence went on and on. He said quietly, ‘I shouldn’t have attacked you like that. I was looking forward to seeing you too.’

  His rich voice was so gentle that it enticed one of her eyes to make a wary appearance from behind her hand. It considered him thoughtfully. She offered, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have gone at eighty. I just wanted to get back.’

  ‘Eighty!’ The word burst from him like a bullet, and she winced, and he checked himself abruptly. He gritted his teeth, and said with a smile of severe control, ‘You don’t want to fight, and I don’t want to storm out of here. Let’s try something new, shall we? Let’s attempt to compromise. You do know what the word means, don’t you?’

  A little more of her face emerged, a very little grin. His eyes were so gorgeous when they were rueful and smiling like that, and she didn’t want him to storm out either. What a horrible let-down to the wonderful surprise of finding him awake, and waiting for her. But she was cautious. She said dubiously, “It depends. What kind of compromise do you have in mind?’

  His stern expression softened, like harsh mountain snows melting, and he brushed away the barrier of her hands as he reached for her face and stroked the hair back from her forehead. He warmed, in face and body and spirit, and shed that warmth all around her, and he bent to kiss her upturned mouth with a light fervency that made her gaze go smoky with delight.

  He didn’t crash through her defences. He slid through them with sensuous liquidity.