by Janet Dailey
“Not right now. I’m looking for my brother. Have you seen him?”
“I think I saw him duck outside a few minutes ago.” He grinned. “Our sin-loving Lady Cyn had him in tow, I believe.”
“Thank you.” Her smile came and went swiftly as her attention reverted to the dance floor. Silently she swore at Rob for disappearing at such an inopportune time while she watched helplessly, wondering how much longer that slow, seductive song was going to last.
When Luz’s reference to the cleft in Drew’s chin elicited no response from her partner, she wasn’t troubled by his silence. She was in a champagne mist. And if her living statue were to speak, it would likely have jarred her. As it was, nothing disturbed the swirling fog.
With the rounded point of a polished nail, she outlined the lower curve of his mouth. Lately she had tried to imagine what it would be like to have another man hold her and make love to her. All these years there had been only Drew. One or two times she had met men who had briefly tempted her, but she had never needed the stimulation of an outside affair. Now she wondered if that meant she’d been a coward all this time, afraid to try something new and different.
She had tried to imagine the passion of another man’s kiss devouring her lips—the taste of his tongue. She had gone so far as to visualize his hands roaming over her body, cupping her breasts, spreading across her hipbones and up the curve of a bent leg. Yet when she tried to see her imaginary lover’s face, he had none, and her fantasy was lost. A body could not make love to her. It had to be a person with a face.
And here was a face. She liked his clear eyes, the way they looked at her so steadily. And his hair, so thick and dark—she wondered if it was coarse like Drew’s. She hadn’t thought about a man’s hair before. She touched a smooth side, discovering its fine texture, so soft, almost silken. She slid her fingers into it, and decided it was more like velvet, hundred-dollar-a-yard silk velvet.
Of all the eligible men she knew, she had finally met one whose face could fit with the body of her fantasy lover. The man had admitted being a bachelor. Dimly Luz also recalled that he’d claimed his age as thirty-seven. He was younger than she was.
“How old do you think I am?” she asked, but when his glance sharpened on her, it almost pierced the alcohol veil that protected her. “No. Don’t look too closely.” Quickly, Luz lowered her chin and rested her head on his shoulder, partly hiding her face near the curve of his neck so that he couldn’t see the fine lines that had begun to appear.
This was better, not looking at him. Everything was becoming hazy from the champagne, and it was difficult to concentrate on more than one thing at a time. At the moment, she was satisfied with the sensation of his hand on her lower back, the pressure of his thumb on her spine and the alternating touch of his fingers on her waist. Luz felt loose and warm. Everything had been so wrong in her life for so long; this was the first time in months anything had seemed right.
His jaw and throat gave off the heady scent of a male cologne. She breathed it in each time she inhaled. At the same time, she could feel the warmth of his breath on her eyelids and knew his mouth must be somewhere near her eyebrow. Little things, yet they were so disturbing they made her ache inside. She wanted to cry, but she wasn’t sure why. Drinking did that to her sometimes. Tears would flow from her eyes on their own.
“Mrs. Thomas.” His voice seemed to prod her, and she wished he had kept silent.
“What?” she said impatiently. So little effort had been expended in movement that Luz was slow to realize they had ceased dancing. In her eyes, the room was still swaying.
“The song has ended,” he told her.
She listened and could hear no music, only the uneven hum of accented voices. With a push of her hands, she reeled away from him, and the room started to spin. Luz stopped and pressed a hand near her eyes, trying to clear her head and her vision. She felt his arm go around her ribs in support of her tottering body.
“The song ended.” When she looked up, her fantasy died, too. Men like her lord of nothing wanted young girls. A bitter laugh rolled from her arched throat. “I almost forgot. All men are bastards.” She badly needed a drink. “God, where’s Simms? Damn him anyway.” She shrugged away from the arm holding her and lurched forward to look for the servant. As he crossed the room with a drink tray, Luz saw him. “Simms.” But someone stopped her before she could go after him.
“Luz, you’re drunk.” At the low and angry denouncement, she frowned, while Trisha’s face kept going in and out of focus. It was true.
“More champagne, madam.” A sea of glasses swam in front of her eyes, all filled with amber-pale liquid.
“No, thank you, Simms.” Luz formed her words carefully, making an effort to speak clearly. “I believe I am sufficiently inebriated. Would you be so kind as to escort me to my room? I should not like to pass out in front of … all these people.”
“As you wish, madam.” He offered her a dark-sleeved arm, which she tightly gripped with both hands.
The incongruous pair crossed the room at a slow, stately pace. Trisha watched them, angrily ashamed yet grudgingly admiring the measure of dignity Luz was able to maintain. “Only Luz could get away with that.” She hadn’t intended to think out loud, and glanced quickly at Raul. “I’m afraid my mother—”
“No apology is needed for her,” he interrupted. “If you will excuse me.” He turned and walked toward the terrace doors.
Trisha stood uncertainly, then swung in the opposite direction and came face to face with the young man who had asked her to dance earlier. “I didn’t think those musicians could play anything that had a beat to it,” he said, drawing her attention to the up-tempo song. “Want to try it?”
“Sure.” She didn’t glance in the direction of the terrace as they walked onto the dance floor.
In a secluded corner of the terrace where the shadows were thick and deep, Raul paused and took a thin cheroot from his inside pocket. He struck a match and cupped the flame to the end of the narrow black cigar. Blue smoke swirled in front of his face as he exhaled.
He was unsettled by what had happened. He had danced with countless women over the years. Some had aroused his lust, but few his interest. Yet this woman was different. The reaching out for love and comfort had touched something inside him—and the way she had bitterly rejected what she couldn’t have had enforced the feeling. He sighed heavily and took another drag of the cheroot, wondering why she had gotten into him for even that brief time and why he still thought about her. Forgetting came easy to him. He’d forget her, too.
Beyond him lay the formal patterns of the knot garden, the hedges and plants arranged to create intricate knot designs. But the light from the terrace couldn’t penetrate it, and the garden was a dark blur, black shadows dissolving into one another. A hedge rustled nearby, and Raul caught muffled sounds, groaning whispers and heavy breathing. He dropped the half-smoked cheroot onto the stone terrace and ground it beneath his heel. He wasn’t interested in listening to some couple make love. Besides, it was time he went back inside and made his presence seen so he could leave this obligatory party.
The thin material of her gown offered little barrier to the sensation of the nubby point of her breast under his hand. Its outline was as definite to Rob as it would have been if he were actually touching her flesh. The wild little sucking sounds she made while he drove his tongue deep into her mouth stimulated his own building excitement, and the hands kneading the muscles in his shoulders and back needlessly urged him to do more. He was almost half crazy now. The bulge in his pants had stiffened into a rod after the first kisses had exploded in passion. He could feel his throbbing penis straining against his trousers. He felt hot enough to pop right now.
He rocked his mouth off her wet lips and dragged it across her cheek to lick at the opening of her ear, his rough and labored breathing sounding loud in his own ears. “God, you’re beautiful.” He meant it the way that anything with two bumps where a pair of breasts b
elonged and a hot quivering cavity between a pair of legs was beautiful to an aroused male. Only Rob knew she wasn’t some ugly cunt a bunch of horny high school boys had persuaded to spread her legs for them. This girl was some sexy bitch, and she was hot for him.
“So are you,” she whispered rawly, kissing the side of his jaw and neck with an abandoned eagerness. “So are you.”
But when he tried to force her onto the grassy carpet of the garden, she resisted. “The grass. I’ll get green stains all over my gown.” Rob groaned in agonizing frustration, thinking quickly and desperately.
“Let me take off my jacket. You can lie on it.” He urged with his hands and his nuzzling mouth, trying to keep her as aroused and wanting as he was.
“No, silly.” She laughed and pulled a half-step away from him. When he reached out to gather her back, Rob noticed her hoist her long skirt up around her waist. “I’ll just climb on and neither of us will get soiled. Unzip your pants.”
The shadows from the hedges and the overhanging branches of a tree made it seem as if he were moving in a dream. And everything was centered on the ivory paleness of her legs and hips. He could hardly take his eyes off of them. Then she was too close, a hand on his shoulders and another holding up her skirt in a bundle while a long, slim leg hooked itself high around his hips. Instinctively he lifted her.
“Jeezus,” he swore at the ease with which he was swallowed into her hot, tight hole.
Her legs locked around his hips in a scissor hold, the strength of their muscles surprising him as she began rocking against him. But there wasn’t any one thing he could concentrate on, not with that hot little tongue darting in and out of his ear and driving him wild. He felt the slap of her bottom against his pumping hips.
“Yes. Yes.” Her urging moans were getting louder.
“Sssh. Someone might hear.” From where he was standing, he could see the smokers on the terrace and glimpse the guests milling inside the Great Hall. But there was no way he could stop now.
“Do you suppose someone’s watching us?” She sounded excited as her fingers dug into his hair, clutching him tighter. “I hope so. Let them watch. Let them watch,” she moaned.
It ceased to matter as he drove into her, thrilling with each shuddering sensation until it was all pumped out of him, weakening his knees. There was nothing left but a pleasant tingling ache. He wiped himself with his handkerchief, then belatedly remembered to offer it to her.
“You were fantastic.” Rob never quite knew what to say to a girl afterward.
“I know.” There was a smug, feline quality about her smile as she tossed his wadded handkerchief under a bush. “Let the gardener wonder about that in the morning. Or did you want to keep it for a souvenir?”
“No.” Such coarse remarks didn’t appeal to him.
“I told you I wanted to find out everything you did well.” She came over to him. “And it was good, wasn’t it?”
“You know it was.” Standing close to her this way, he remembered the heat of her and the things it did to him.
“I know something better,” she said.
“There is nothing better,” Rob retorted. Except maybe the thrill and excitement of polo—that stimulating chill of danger—but she wouldn’t know about that.
“You disappoint me.” She unfastened the clasp of her beaded evening purse and removed a mirror and a tube of lipstick. Turning so the light from the manor reflected on the mirror, she redrew the outline of her mouth with the red lipstick. “I thought all you rich American boys knew about stardust.”
“What?”
“Stardust. Spelled with a C—as in my name, Cyn.” She shook her head at him, doubting that he understood her. “Cocaine, darling boy.” The lipstick was tucked back inside her purse, but when she took her hand out, a vial of white powder was between her fingers.
Rob felt a surge of excitement, and stiffened to resist it. The pull of that remembered feeling was hard to fight.
“Haven’t you ever tried it?” she chided his apparent innocence. “I promise you it will make you feel good.”
“Yeah, I’ve … snorted it before.” He hadn’t had any since his folks split.
It sounded stupid and superstitious, but everything had been fine at home until he started messing around with cocaine. Things had gone to hell so quickly, he’d sworn off using it. It had only been an occasional thing with him anyway—not like some of the guys he knew who were tooting every chance they got.
Besides, it was expensive, and Rob wasn’t sure how much of his own money Luz was going to expect him to spend to finance this year of polo. Christ, additional horses for his string, “made” ponies, were going to cost five to ten thousand dollars each, and a pro usually had thirty or more ponies in his string. Add to that the grooms, stabling and feed, veterinary bills, horse trailers, traveling expenses to tournaments around the country, a coach, and sponsorship of a team, and the investment started to get near the million-dollar mark.
Money wasn’t the problem. He’d spend his own inheritance if necessary. Polo was what he wanted. The exhilaration of playing and winning, like this afternoon. It was a sensation like no other. Except, maybe, the glory of cocaine.
“Then you know what it’s like,” she said, smiling. “I have enough for two. I think it’s always better when you can do it with someone. It’s like the difference between masturbation and making love. It’s never as much fun getting off by yourself.” She took his participation for granted, and Rob couldn’t make himself say anything to correct her as her hand delved inside the purse again. “I have everything—mirror, razor blade … damn.” She began frantically digging through the scant contents. “Where’s the straw?”
“No problem.” Rob took a fifty-pound note from his money pocket and rolled it into a small cylinder. It was a trick he’d learned from his buddies at school; if they were searched, they wouldn’t get caught with drug paraphernalia in their possession.
She tucked the purse under her arm and handed him the square makeup mirror. “Hold this.” Rob held it level while she carefully tapped the white powder into a small mound on its shiny surface. Then she used the single-edged razor blade to divide it into thin lines easily sniffed through a straw.
“Ladies first,” she said and took the rolled bill from him. Bending over the mirror, she pressed one nostril closed and inserted an end of the makeshift straw into the other side of her nose, then lowered the bottom of the rolled paper to the white line and inhaled. Rob saw the look of pleasure that spread over her face when she straightened.
“My turn,” he said and waited impatiently for her to hold the mirror.
He breathed in through the money straw, catching first the bitter taste of the cocaine, then that slow-spreading numbing sensation and the warm glow of energy. It was wonderful, great. The whole world was his for the taking.
“Are you coming to the polo match tomorrow afternoon? It’s going to be a helluva game,” he declared exuberantly. “Those ponies I’m riding are the best I’ve ever played on. Sometimes it’s like they know what I want them to do next before I ask them. That bay horse with the four white stockings? I was riding him in the third chukkar today, and I swear, I barely pulled on the reins to stop him, and in the next second, he had reversed his field and we were racing hell for leather the other direction.”
“When I met you at the party last week, you were so quiet. But when I saw you play today, I said to myself, ‘I’m going to get to know him better.’ I planned this whole evening, and it worked perfectly.”
Rob laughed. They talked eagerly, about everything and nothing. But the exhilaration was too fleeting. In less than ten minutes, he could already feel himself coming down. It never lasted long enough.
After a little while, she removed the other vial from her purse. “Have you ever free-based?”
“No.” A guy he knew at school did it all the time and swore by it.
“You have to try it sometime,” she said. “It’s really more potent t
hat way. And the high it gives you is better than anything.”
“Maybe I will someday.” At the moment, he was only interested in recapturing the previous feeling as he watched her painstaking division of the powder with growing impatience.
“Once you have, this will seem like kiddy stuff,” she warned. “And you won’t want to settle for it. A friend of mine can show you how to do it if you’re interested.”
“We’ll see.”
“No more,” Trisha protested when Don Townsend—she had finally remembered his name, although she still couldn’t recall his father’s title—tried to drag her back onto the dance floor. “My feet need a rest.” She’d been dancing solidly for the last hour.
“I haven’t stepped on them that many times. Come on,” he urged.
“I don’t think you stepped on them at all, but they’re worn out,” she insisted. “And I’m thirsty.”
“All right. What would you like to drink? I’ll get it.”
“Something tall and cold—and nonalcoholic,” she told him.
“Done.”
As he walked away, Trisha fanned her flushed skin with her hand and moved toward the terrace door where the air was fresher and cooler. All that dancing had made her tired, but it was a good feeling—the blood flowing through her body, her muscles loose and relaxed. She admitted, although only to herself, that a lot of her tension had left when Raul did.
“There you are, Trish. I was just looking for you.”
“Rob.” Her brother’s sudden appearance took her by surprise. Her glance swept over his slightly rumpled hair. “You’ve been gone so long I don’t think I’d better ask where you’ve been—or what you’ve been doing. Where’s the siren? Did you lose her?”
“Cyn?”
“Cyn’s her name and sin’s her game.” Trisha mockingly repeated the catch-phrase Don Townsend had used to describe her.
