by Jeya Jenson
Standing up on her tiptoes, Cassie reached up and pulled his head down, offering her lips in a tempting kiss. Tangling tongues explored the velvety softness of each other’s mouths. Tightly wound nerves began to relax.
Cassie moaned. Adrien, in response, groaned. Picking her up, he carried her to the couch, tumbling both their bodies onto the soft cushions.
“You make me want to do more than taste you,” he grinned.
“Is that good?”
She felt his chuckle begin from deep within his chest. “It can’t be bad,” she heard him whisper, then pass his lips across her ear. She shuddered; the sensation was one of exquisite pleasure.
“You like that?” Her curls, a cascade in his hands, became a weapon he used to tease her, to taunt her. With one thick curl in hand, he traced the contours of her ear, the smooth lines of her neck, the soft spot under her chin. His lips followed suit, leaving a trail of warm heat all along the way.
Tugging at his shirt, Cassie pulled him closer. “I want you, Adrien,” she said. “Not just tonight, but every night after that. I feel so…” For lack of words, she simply decided to show him how she felt by guiding his hands to her breasts and then lower. Her hands tugged at his shirt. Somehow she worked open the buttons despite her trembling fingers. It had been a long time since she wanted a man so badly that she ached inside. It was more than a physical pain, though. She felt that their attraction was far beyond instant lust. Dare she think that love could exist?
Adrien tried to redo his buttons. “We shouldn’t,” he started to say.
Cassie pressed a finger across his lips. “I think it’s time for a little payback.” She explored the length and breadth of his chest, traversing every inch of his pale skin. She paused at numerous scars, kissing each one as though her touch could obliterate the old wounds.
“What happened here?” she asked boldly, tracing a scar just above his beltline.
“Uh, I was…with…oh….damn…” He seemed to have lost the ability to speak coherently. She lowered her eyes, finding the hard bulge in his trousers. If she had doubt of his desire for her, this quelled it. She placed her hand lightly on his inner thigh, then added a little pressure.
Instead of giving in to her stroking, Adrien unexpectedly pushed himself off the couch. He quickly straightened his shirt, redoing every button she’d undone.
Cassie studied him. All the sudden he was again cloaked in his ill-at-ease attitude. Every time she attempted to get intimate with him and turn the sex play around, he became positively rigid and stopped her. It was clear he wanted her—his hard-on alone was enough evidence of that. She sighed. The only way to find out what was bothering him was to ask.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Nothing at all.”
“We’ve been seeing each other for almost a month,” she pointed out. “We’re way past that dreaded third date. You know the one where we decide whether or not we want to sleep with each other.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to—” he started to say.
She raised an arched eyebrow at him and frowned. “Then why aren’t we?”
Adrien faced her, hands on his hips. “You want to know the truth?”
Cassie nodded.
“Well, the truth is, I might not be around much longer,” he said bluntly. “Before I met you, I made plans. Just because you’re in my life doesn’t mean I can drop them.”
She blinked. “I’m not asking you to, Adrien,” she countered softly. “I’ve asked for a little of your time yes, but I don’t think I’ve ever said I’d like to tie you down and hold you captive here.”
Her words caused him to wince a bit. “I—I have—relationship issues,” he answered slowly.
“We all have them.” She tried to make her voice conversational, non-accusatory. The last thing she wanted to do was jump all over his hesitations like a nasty shrew. Adrien was the kindest, sweetest men she’d ever met. He treated her with something few men ever had: respect. “Something in our pasts didn’t work, we’re gun-shy going on to the next. I know that. Hell, I’ve had five husbands. Every one of them shit all over me. I don’t believe in that thing people call everlasting love. But I do believe when two people make each other happy, it should last as long as it can. That special something isn’t easy to find with every man.”
“It isn’t easy to find with every woman, Cassie,” Adrien countered. “And what scares me is that I think I’ve found it with you.”
Hearing his words, Cassie realized with sudden clarity that it was fear that had him in the corner he felt dating her was painting him into. His thoughts were not on just sex. His thoughts were on the what’s going to happen next?
A little thrill of warmth filled her. She was more than a casual fuck. He was thinking about her, wondering why she’d burrowed so deeply into his mind. She knew he was. The same thing was also happening to her. When she wasn’t with Adrien, she was thinking about being with him. When she was with him, she was thinking about the next time they would be together. And so on, and so forth. He’d even invaded her dreams, visiting her in her hours of slumber. It was like stepping aboard a merry-go-round, only instead of stopping and getting off, the damn thing whirled faster and faster until you were dizzied and lightheaded. Instead of a thirty-five-year-old woman, she felt as giddy as a sixteen-year-old girl experiencing the first blush of true love.
Was it fate or just blind luck? What exactly had brought Adrien Roth into her life? Why now, at a time when she couldn’t really offer a long-term commitment either? Like him, she had plans that couldn’t be changed. Mainly, her cancer. If he stayed around long, he’d eventually find out the truth.
Cassie got up off the couch and took both his hands in hers. “I think I’ve found it, too,” she whispered, fighting to swallow the lump that had risen in her throat. Her eyes blurred, but she blinked back her tears. She didn’t want to cry. That would be a tad too emotional and would probably send the man running back to the desert hills.
“What do we do?” he asked.
She drew a breath, hoping the answer she gave was the right one. “If we need to take things slow, then we will. But we can’t just let this pass because we both have—issues. And if that’s the only thing keeping us from exploring things a little further, then it’s a sad excuse.”
A pained expression flashed across his face. “What if I can’t give you everything you want?”
She gave a small, mirthless laugh, her tears still unspilled. “I’m not worried about material things,” she said. “I have more than I’ll ever want or need for the rest of my life and then some.”
His shoulders slumped. “No,” he said slowly, his mouth briefly becoming a thin line. “I mean, what if I can’t give you what you want, uh, physically?”
Thinking that he might be suffering some sexual dysfunction that he had yet to confess, Cassie said slowly, “There are a lot of ways a man can please a woman. You’ve proven that. And there are ways I can please you. We just need time to work through it. And now, all I’m asking—no.” she paused. “All I am saying is that there seems to be something between us that more than just sex. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, but I’m willing to take that leap of faith and find out. Are you?”
Adrien paused, then nodded, pressing a kiss onto her hands. “I’ll give you what I can. I promise.”
Cassie, filled with a sense of joy and rightness, hugged him tightly.
“How about that wine?” she whispered.
Chapter Fourteen
Devon couldn’t sleep. Too many thoughts were racing through his head. These last weeks had been a battle to get a little rest—one he’d been losing.
Sighing, he rolled over. For a welcome change, Rachel was sleeping peacefully. To accommodate her bulging tummy, she lay on her side. Eyes closed, her body moved in the gentle rhythm of deep sleep. The twins were due any day and she was handling it with a lot more grace than he was.
Propping himsel
f up on one elbow, he reached out and slid his hand under her arm so that he could feel her belly. Two babies rested inside her. The miracle of conception and birth wasn’t one he’d given much thought to in past times. Like most men, he’d found a lot of the idea unfathomable. In his day, the man stayed firmly downstairs, smoking over a glass of brandy while the physicians attended the wives upstairs and out of earshot. Producing heirs was at the top of the list of reasons to have children, and Victorian society believed that producing a son was a service a wife owed a husband and his family.
Devon had never believed that he’d ever be the kind of man who wanted a wife and children. He reveled in the freedom and joys of a playboy—even when he was mortal, the idea of settling down into a domestic routine had fairly curled his hair. People had told him that meeting the right woman would change his ideas. He’d never believed them—he was too much a Bacchanalian rabble-rouser to ever want to settle down.
That didn’t mean he didn’t like women. He did. With a passion. Everything about the female sex fascinated him: he loved the look of them, their fashions and passions. But marrying one! Preposterous!
A smile crossed his face. I’ve been thoroughly hooked and reeled in, he thought. He gave Rachel’s cheek a gentle kiss and slowly slid out of bed. He was just too damn restless to sleep.
Going downstairs, he tried to walk off the nervous energy racing through him. His children’s birthday was so close.
“And not a blasted thing has been resolved with Adrien,” he muttered. Heading into the den, he lit a few candles and poured himself a sherry. Though he lived in the modern age, he sometimes had the hankering for that obscure, more innocent time. Drink in hand, he walked to the French doors and stood, staring out over the gardens. Dawn wasn’t even a sliver on the horizon.
He took a sip of his drink. It had been two and a half months to the day since he’d spoken to Morgan. He had expected something to happen weeks ago. But there’d been not a word. Problem was, he wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to expect or when. He knew what had been said, what the resolution should be. What he anticipated, though, and what he might get could be two different things. If Morgan had located Adrien, surely he’d have had word by now.
“Damn it,” he muttered. “He has probably blown me off and is laid up in some French whorehouse, drunk as a lord.”
Finishing his sherry, he had a second glass and then a third. He’d never been a heavy drinker, didn’t really like the taste of hard whisky. He hadn’t eaten much and the sweet wine went straight to his head. By the fourth glass he was stretched out on a chaise lounge, dead asleep, glass tipped over on the carpet.
It was then a visitor arrived, in a most unusual manner.
Suddenly, he felt a presence awakening him, a heavy weight sitting on his chest, smothering the air right out of him. His eyes flew open in panic.
Upon his chest sat a being; black, hunched, of no real shape. Its eyes were yellow, its mouth no more than a nasty slit, rows of sharp fangs for teeth. It sat, looking down at him, head at a quizzical angle.
After a long moment, it spoke. Or, at least, it communicated, for it did not seem to be speaking with its mouth. It seemed that the words reverberated in his mind.
“You have a concern,” the demon said. “I have the answer.”
Shocked nearly speechless, Devon shook his head. He did not dare move or lift a finger. The wheels in his mind turned a mile a minute. Was he trapped in the wall of some crazy dream or was this vision indeed real? He thought he was awake. He could clearly hear the grating of his own breath. Though no window was open, an almost polar breeze winnowed through the room. His body was damp, covered in sweat, and he shivered. The flickering flames of the candle threw strange shadows around the room, the otherworld ballet of apparitions walking the veils between dimensions.
“I don’t understand,” he stammered.
The demon lifted a misshapen claw. As if drawing something from an invisible pocket, a rectangular object appeared. “Here is your answer,” it ominously croaked.
As though his hand had no will of its own, Devon reached out. His fingers closed around a stiff piece of parchment. The paper was old—how old he could not begin to guess. Its color was a dirty beige shade, as though time and the elements had taken their toll. There was no writing on its face. Folded in thirds, it was sealed in red wax embedded with a strange lion’s head mark.
Barely daring to breathe, Devon broke the seal and unfolded the page. He was immediately enveloped in a strange greenish glow radiating to from within the core of the page itself. At first, there was nothing written on the face of the page. Then, cryptic letters began to rise to the surface. The script seemed to dance with a life of its own, each letter writhing with sensual animation.
The flaming letters of the ancient language at first made no sense to his eyes.
Mouth agape, more entranced then frightened by the vision, he watched as the dancing letters began to rearrange themselves into words he could understand:
Delivery will be made tomorrow.
There was no signature. One wasn’t needed. He knew exactly who it was from.
He blinked, eyes cutting from the page in his hand to the haunting messenger delivering it.
“Can it be so?” he asked. “Can I trust my eyes?”
The demon hopped off his chest, dropping to the floor. For a thing of such stubby limbs, it was amazingly graceful. An echo murmured back the words. “To trust your eyes is to know the price.”
“The price was a favor,” he whispered.
The demon’s narrowed eyes burned into his heart, its words a hiss. “Always.” Turning, it shuffled more than walked, crossing his den, apparently heading toward a solid wall. There, it stopped and holding out a single finger, said, “My obligation has ended.” That said it melted into the shadows, leaving no sign that it had ever been present.
Devon was almost prepared to believe his wine-addled mind had invented the whole devilish scenario—except that the page remained. Before he read it again, the paper burst into flame. In a whiff of sulphur it was gone, leaving behind only think wisps of smoke and chary black ashes on the tips of his fingers.
Instead of being frightened by the experience, Devon was intrigued. He’d sought the answer to his questions, and without provocation, without any prayer to a greater deity, it had arrived.
“Amazing,” he whispered. “You do not fuck with that man.”
Chapter Fifteen
Cassie turned off the taps and stepped out of the shower. Steam billowed around her in the air, fogging the mirrors. She breathed in the soothing heat, feeling it clear her clogged head. A headache was building behind her eyes. Seeing no way to escape it, she wrapped a thick towel around her wet body, then padded to the medicine cabinet. Opening it, she overlooked the variety of vitamins she regularly took, instead selecting a prescription painkiller. She popped two tablets into her mouth and washed the pills down with a quick drink from the faucet.
She straightened and wiped the fog off the mirror with one hand. Her thin, peaked reflection stared starkly back. Dark circles ringed her eyes. Her cheeks were sunken. She was losing weight despite her best efforts not to. No matter what she ate, no food appealed to her. Her appetite was dying as fast as the cells in her brain.
She sighed. The cancer was certainly taking its toll with a vengeance. She had not told Adrien about her illness. No time through the months they’d spent together seemed right. Now, she was glad she hadn’t. He was leaving, probably for good.
Giselle meowed, stretching up on her hind legs to poke her with a forepaw. Cassie reached down and picked up the cat. The Persian snuggled against her, purring with abandon. She scratched the cat behind the ears, then under the chin. Adrien had given her his pet a few weeks ago, when he’d told her he had to leave. The thought of not seeing him again brought a hitch to the back of her throat. What a goddamned way to open the New Year. Not with a bang, but a fucking whimper. With February going into its seco
nd week, she had a feeling Valentine’s Day was going to be one big bust.
“Men always leave,” she whispered. “They never stay.” She hugged the wriggling feline tighter. “We girls have to stick together, huh?”
Giselle meowed in agreement.
Adrien was a hard man to pin down. He owned almost nothing, had less interest in owning anything of value. What he did have was well worn and oft-used. He could be called thrifty. For a woman used to purchasing anything she wanted, Cassie was at first dismayed by his frugal nature. But as bits of his past slipped out in conversation, she pieced together that he’d come from a poverty-ridden background. She also got the feeling that he’d witnessed a lot of bad things in this world, vile things. He trusted no one, was very tight lipped about the hours he spent away on his own and clung fiercely to his independence. The fact that he made no attempt to use her intrigued her even more; he would take nothing she offered, not even a new leather jacket. All her life, men had taken advantage of her generous nature. Adrien seemed to want nothing more than her company. And just as she’d decided that she wanted to keep him around, he was leaving.
Cassie put the cat down, watching in amusement as Giselle promptly splayed her body out on the counter, sending cosmetic and perfume bottles rolling in every direction. She laughed and righted a few bottles. The cat usually crashed wherever she happened to land. She’d snooze happily for hours, have a bite to eat, then go back to her napping in a new place. Cassie had never had a pet before. She liked the funny scrunched face of the Persian, though. Maybe I’ll buy her a boyfriend, she mused. At least one of us will have someone then.
Determined not to let their last night together be marred by sadness, Cassie combed and pinned her wet hair into place, arranging a few stray curls around her neck and face. She dusted a little powder across her shiny nose, then put on a little mascara and some blush for her pale cheeks. She finished with a light gloss across her lips. She’d just purchased a stunning peignoir especially for him. It was short, sexy and silky—just what every man should like. She slid it on, along with a matching pair of thong panties. She loved the feel of the soft fabric against her skin. She rubbed her nipples so they would stand out against the sheer white material. She wanted Adrien to notice everything about her tonight.
