by Sara Forbes
Hipster guy looks like someone stole his cotton candy. “Not my cup of tea, Your Grace. Do get in touch if you're thinking of moving anything around?” With a parting sneer at me, he struts off, Sir John shuffling after him.
It takes a while for my eyebrows to drop.
Alex lets out a long breath. “Thanks. Thought I'd never get rid of them. Wow, are you serious about all those shows showing interest?”
“I may have exaggerated a little,” I admit. “I think the Leonardo was a few years back, not a few weeks.”
He laughs. “You are something else.”
“I'm curious, though,” I say.
“About what?
“About the art you got stashed around there. I mean, if I'm your advisor and all.”
His fingers trace a pattern on the flesh of my thumb, down and up, lulling me into silence. “You'll see the whole castle in due time,” he says finally.
“Due time?” I laugh. He's made it sound like I'm here on some extended vacation. But hell, I'll play along.
Ken comes up. “Alex, you're wanted over with Gordon. Come on, it's your turn.” Ken nods at an old guy in a wheelchair who must be hitting a hundred.
Alex looks at the old guy, then at me, then Ken, and then groans. “Excuse me.” He walks off into the crowd, and I brace myself for more awkward conversation from his brother. From Ken's satisfied smile, it's clear that Gordon was just a ruse to break us up. It takes all my willpower not to throw my champagne over him.
15
ALEX
LUCKILY IT'S NOT JUST Father's art collection in the lower echelons of the castle; there's also a tunnel to our underground 25–meter, heated swimming pool. That's what I need. I need to calm down and get her off my mind.
I did my duty with old Gordon, helping him out to his car, listening to his health woes, and now they can survive without me for an hour. It was Letty's gig tonight, so I trust she can do the rest of the door duty and make sure everyone leaves feeling important. The sooner Seb's back and taking over the ceremonials again, the better, because I have no stomach for it.
There's a text from Marty telling me to call him, so I do. He tells me they located Lawson in a club in London late last night. He's safe for now, or at least, under their surveillance, and Marty advises me to stay out of it. I'm only too happy to stay out of it although I do appreciate that it gave me a chance to do something alone with Hayley, away from home. She'll be relieved to hear this news.
I'm already changed, so I dive into the water and stay under until the last second, before coming up gasping. I glide to the other end. Twenty more lengths like that and I'm calmer. Father had this pool built because he was petrified of death, petrified of his body getting a millimeter out of shape. But it didn't help him in the end. Despite his incredibly honed fifty–eight–year–old musculature, his heart still gave out prematurely. If I die at his age, then I'm already at midlife, and I've achieved nothing. Everything I have has been handed to me—money, fame, the dukedom, the family business, and yet I can't even get on top of my basic duties, responding to the farmers' demands, reading up on legislation, pushing the business into profitability.
With every stroke of my crawl, I tell myself I'm gaining control, that everything will somehow work out, especially if I diversify our efforts away from eco–farming, which I am hopeless at, and more toward the glitzier end of business—weddings, banquets, balls, which I feel I can manage. Exhausted after forty lengths, I pull myself out of the water. I'm gripping the handles of the ladder, panting, water up to my shins, when something moves in the shadows. I spin around. Someone's there. Marty always joked that if anyone was going to kill me, it would be in this pool room—with a candlestick. I don't want to prove him right.
I leap the last two steps and grab my towel from its hook. Great weapon.
“Who is it?” I growl.
The figure emerges from the shadows and I sigh in relief. It's Hayley. She's clutching her sandals, treading barefoot toward me, slowly. Her eyes are doing a full body scan of me and I suppose there's little left to the imagination, which is unfair, because that dowdy dress covers her up in a criminal way. Her breath is coming in sharp, shallow breaths. She seems nervous.
I'm torn. I wanted to get away from her and her mixed signals, but now that she's standing before me, I'm so glad she's here. I don't know what it is with this woman. It's not classic beauty or a hard, athletic body—the things I usually go for, but every time I see her, every time she's in the same room as me, I feel more alive, and I feel that nobody else can have her. Nobody. It's a raging conviction. It makes no sense.
And when things make no sense, I fall back on humor. “Hey, Miss Stalker, did you follow me? Are you coming to get wet?”
“No.” Her gaze lands on my chest. Then my shoulders. Then my legs. My dick had shriveled from the water but is reviving under her scrutiny.
I walk toward her. “Maybe you're wet already?”
“Yes, I did follow you. And no, I'm as dry as a bone.”
I grin. She's getting better at this. “So, are you checking up on me then?”
“You'd like that, wouldn't you?” Her words are soft, and I can't tell how she means them. But the fact that she's here means something.
“Maybe I would,” I say in a mild tone, planting my hands on my hips.
“Truth?” she asks, her hazel eyes serious, looking up into my face.
“Please.”
“I was worried. I don't know … if you were pissed off, or worried about something, just disappearing like that. You were brooding, weren't you?”
“I don't brood,” I scoff.
“Oh, I think you do. You're not the playboy you try to project.”
“I take offense at that.” But my smile is ruining my haughty act.
“Whatever. I'm not interested in the playboy Alex. I want to know some real things about you. The real Alex.”
I spread my arms. “At your service. Ask me anything.”
“Do you miss him?”
“Whom?” I ask sharply.
“Your father. Gosh, I'm sorry, that's such a personal question.”
I shake my head to indicate it's fine. “Yes, of course. He was formidable, obsessive, but a good father in the important ways—he loved my mother; he treated us kids evenly and fairly, and even if he didn't spend a lot of time with us, whenever he did, we got his undivided attention. Can't really ask for a whole lot more than that.”
She nods like she understands.
“I think he always felt he'd make it up to us when he retired from the business. He wasn't to know that was never going to happen.” My chest tightens because I'd never spoken this aloud to anyone before. “What about your mother? Do you remember much of her? Did she look like you?”
Hayley's quiet for a long time. Her head lowers. “Kind of. More blonde, though, more beautiful.”
“Hard to imagine,” I say quickly.
“Really, she was. And more talented. My memories of her are vague, though. Sometimes I don't know if they're real memories or just reconstructed from facts people have told me.”
I nod and reach for her hand.
“What did your father obsess about?” she asks.
I give a short laugh. “Oh, a lot of things. But modern art mainly. Stuff that mother wouldn't allow him to hang upstairs. She calls it rubbish. It's all in the basement. Nothing valuable, unknown artists. But it made him happy to support some lesser known struggling artists.”
“Collectors do get obsessive. One of them bought up my mother's entire collection anonymously.” Her eyes gleam. “I wonder could it have been your father?”
“Not possible,” I laugh. “Though it's a lovely theory. No, Father always put his name conspicuously to all of his purchases. So, what were her paintings like?”
“Neo–impressionist, vibrant, apparently,” she says in a wistful voice.
“Apparently?”
“I've never seen them.”
“What?” I reco
il in surprise and drop her hand.
“No.”
“Huh.”
Why does she assume her mother was more talented? I don't ask, though. I trust her gut feelings on this and there's no point in rubbing it in.
“So, you're just going to stand there freezing, are you?” she asks.
“No. I'm going to do this.” I bend down toward the pool, scoop up a handful of water and throw it at her. She shrieks, so I do it again because it's fun.
“Oh look, it's Countess Wet T–shirt again,” I say. “Except it's a dress.” The dress clings to her now like a second skin—a definite improvement. “I already guessed what you'd got going on under the dress even when it was dry, but this is so much better.”
I'm chest to chest with her now by the edge of the water. She's heaving. Hell, I'm heaving. Her eyes are huge pools of flickering light from the water's reflections. She looks like there are a million things flitting through her mind, not all of them conclusive. But me, I'm thinking clearly. I know what I want.
She puts her hand flat on my abdomen. It's warm. Her head tilts up to greet my eyes.
Pretty much … that.
My cock springs to life with a hallelujah chorus. There's no hiding in these swimming briefs anyway. But she's still staring intently into my eyes, whispers of words starting to form on her lips.
“I'm—” She stops and can't seem to finish.
I raise my brows at her. The most plausible continuations are “pregnant” or “a virgin,” neither of which I want to hear right now.
Her hand moves down to my lower abdomen. “Begging—”
I gape at her in speechless surprise as her eyebrows twitch and her fingers trace the skin above the rim of my shorts.
“You.”
Her eyes fill with wickedness and the tip of her tongue protrudes a fraction outside her lips. Oh mother of all that's holy.
Before any of my limbs can react appropriately, there's a pressure against my sternum, so forceful that I have to step back to counter it. It's her hand. She's pushing me. Hard. My foot grapples for tile but find only air and then I'm toppling backward. With a blast of cold, I fall shoulder first into the water. I stay under for a few seconds, absorbing the shock of sudden cold, bubbles percolating from my nose and mouth, planning my revenge.
I swim to the ladder and shimmy up, not taking my eyes off her. She hasn't moved. She's got this goofy look of dread and amusement. Adorable. And she's got nowhere to go.
With every step of my approach, she sinks back farther toward the wall.
“You're going to pay for that,” I say, and I like how it comes out rumbling and serious.
She giggles. “Oh?”
Her back's right up against the wall now, her eyes glowing through the dark.
“No escape.”
She smirks back. “You win.” Her eyelids flutter as I lean in.
My damp fingers graze down her neck and down to her hard nipples. I squeeze one through the damp fabric. A whining sound comes from deep in her throat. I capture her mouth with mine and use my tongue to open her jaw wider. Even though I'm being rough, there's no resistance, so I take her wrists and pull her tighter against my body. Let her share the wetness, a preview to how it'll be when I toss her in the water, too.
As our mouths and tongues collide, my hands smooth all over, wanting to know every part of her. I don't even care about revenge now, I have to have her, to drive her to ecstasy, to mark her as mine.
Our groans echo out in the stillness. Water drips from my hair and trickles between our noses. I don't know whether it's water or sweat or whether I'm shivering from lust or from the damp. Goosebumps spring up all over me. Her rosy perfume mingles with the chlorine from the water and all of a sudden, I'm sixteen again. I hold a handful of her wet hair and squeeze droplets of water onto her shoulder. The tiny stream trickles down over her collarbone and I chase it with my tongue. Her breath accelerates.
But then I hear a low thud. It's the door to the tunnel. Christ.
“I hear someone.”
She nods. “Yeah, I hear it.”
“Hayley, I need to grab my clothes from the locker. Quick, you go out that door and meet me at the other end.”
“I don't care. Let them find us.”
“Please—go!” The urgency in my voice makes her skitter across to the door.
16
HAYLEY
A PASSAGEWAY OF LOW doors unfolds in front of me, long, slightly crooked, musty smelling. Alex told me to go to the end.
Halfway down, he still hasn't come out from the pool room. Curiosity wins out and I slow down to a halt, getting my bearings in the dim light. I turn the door handle of the room directly to my left, and to my surprise, it gives way, easily but with a groan. I tiptoe in.
It's a long, rectangular room, cool and with a damp, musty smell of lack of use. Through the gauze–curtained windows near the ceiling, I see roots of a bush. We're half underground. I proceed to the center of the room. The carpet is red and faded. The walls are wallpapered in dark green and adorned with intricate gold light–fittings. I search for a switch. There's a bronze panel by the door. I go back and pull the lever down. Yes, it works.
Then I see. I really see. Paintings—everywhere. A jumble of artists and themes. Some are hung on walls, others lie stacked against the walls, others still are unframed, lying flat or rolled up in tubes resting on the cabinets that hug the walls. It's quite a mess. All that talk upstairs about Old Masters hasn't prepared me for this. It's resolutely modern. It's like dropping into the MoMA for one of their avant–garde specials. I can smell the father's obsession clearly.
I'm drawn to the most striking exhibit, a massive–as–hell El Greco–esque painting of the Madonna, but painted in garish pinks and yellows. And framed in ruby red. It's so ostentatious, I let out a gasp of awe. The contrast between this bunch and the rest of the house couldn't be more startling. I can understand why the dowager duchess was appalled.
The temperature in here is a little too warm, and a tad too moist, not ideal conditions for oils or charcoals, but at least it doesn't look like the sunlight would directly hit any of the pictures. I examine them, one after the other. There are some I've heard of before—painters famous enough to be on the radar of art students, but most I've never seen before.
The door squeaks open. I gasp and fling around. It's Alex, watching me silently. He's thrown on clothes but looks damp.
“I'm sorry, I …” I blurt. I feel super guilty like I'm an art thief caught red–handed. “I got curious. The door was unlocked.”
He slams the door behind him with his foot. He turns the key in the lock. “Not any more.”
“H–how long have these been hanging here?” I ask, pointing to the nearest painting.
He crosses the floor separating us with determined steps. “Anything between one and eighteen years. Father got serious about collecting on his fortieth birthday. You're practically salivating … And it's not at the paintings, is it?”
I take a mock swipe at him. He's right. The greatest treasure in this house is standing right before me with a smarmy smile on his perfectly sculpted face, and I'm unable to believe my luck. “Come on then, show me your hidden treasures and I'll tell you what they're worth.”
He takes my hand and presses it to his chest. “Let's start chronologically, in the caveman era.”
He bends his head down. I reach out with my tongue to touch his. The moment we connect, the kiss explodes. His arms tighten, drawing me hard against him. His mouth is hungry and moves against mine in a kiss so blatantly possessive, so claiming, it would hurt me if it didn't feel so perfect. Then Alex lifts me. I wrap my legs around his waist as he carries me over to a large table.
“This is what I should have done the first night you stayed here.” He sets me down on the hard surface and lets out a low growl. “Unzip your dress.”
At his order and his hot, blazing eyes on me, a rush of heat hits between my legs. Normally I don't like being
bossed around, but because it's Alex, I'm not even thinking. With shaking hands, I slowly reach around and unzip the back. I lower the zipper, relishing the way his eyes flare at the rasp of metal.
“Slide it off,” he says.
I do it. The dress falls to my waist, exposing my black lace bra.
“All the way.”
I maneuver my hips so that my skirt pushes down. Luckily, I've got matching black panties on, no Hello Kitty tonight. I'd like to pretend it wasn't planned, but it totally was.
“Now the rest,” comes his voice, low and insistent.
I want to be naked for him. I don't care anymore about long–term repercussions. I just need whatever is coming next, and he seems to need me to do it this way for him. I unhook my bra as quickly as my fingers allow and cast the garment aside.
“Everything,” he says.
When the panties are down far enough, a final wiggle makes them drop to the ground. I wait, the tension winding my belly tight. He's silent and moving, just a shadow on the gilded wallpaper, looming over me. I'm starting to feel exposed.
“Now …” His voice is low, insistent, coaxing. “Lie back.”
The polished wood surface of the table is cool against my heated skin. Staring at the ornate ceiling of the gallery, I feel like an exhibit in his private gallery. But again, he's silent and as I wait, my core is getting wetter, more needy. My nipples draw together; my entire body readies itself for him. When I feel a finger land on the inside of my right knee, tracing a line up my inner thigh, I know what to do.
With a groan of abandon and pleasure, I open my legs. The stroke of his tongue following the path of his finger is sheer torture. He's so close to touching me where I need him the most. I open my legs wider, making it clear what I want. He doesn't make me wait. His tongue comes down flat on my clit, pressing, tasting, wrenching a high–pitched sound from me as my head lolls backward.
I've never had a man who knows what he's doing take me like this before. Alex isn't going to back off, saying it tastes weird. He's going to eat me until I come. Just the thought of that twists the tension inside of me a notch tighter.
