“I’ll like your Paris,” Alex interrupted. “And we’ll have plenty of time to kill once we’ve put the packaging problem into LeClerc’s hands.”
Caitlin’s expression cleared and the eagerness returned. “Then could we go out right away? We can always unpack later. I want to show you the view from the Sully Bridge at sundown.”
He smiled. “For the country mouse you call yourself, you’re amazingly enthusiastic about a big city.”
“But this isn’t a big city, this is Paris. Well, I suppose it’s a big city, but it’s not the—” She stopped as she saw he was laughing at her and made a face at him. “You’ll see what I mean after you have been here awhile.”
“No doubt.” He smiled and leaned forward to dust a kiss on the tip of her nose. “I’ll call and confirm our appointment for tomorrow with LeClerc and then we can leave.”
Caitlin nodded. “I’ll change my shoes.” She looked out over the city. “It seems different now. Isn’t it strange how our viewpoints change as we get older?”
“You’re not exactly Madame Methuselah.”
“But I’m not in my teens any longer.”
“When did you leave the university?”
“When I was twenty-two. I wanted to go on for an advanced degree, but the bank—Vasaro needed me.”
“So you gave up your education.”
“It was no real sacrifice. I’ve always known it was my duty to guard and preserve Vasaro, and the only thing I missed were my antiquity studies. Vasaro was what counted.”
Alex gazed at her silently for a moment. “Why?”
“Because it’s—” She stopped and then said slowly, “I suppose it’s because Vasaro’s always there and never changes. It’s not a terrifically wonderful world, is it? There are crazy people like those terrorists and wars and drug pushers. The world keeps hurrying and changing and there’s no place to get off. Except Vasaro. Everything in the world changes but Vasaro.”
“There are no exceptions. Everything changes, Caitlin,” Alex said gently.
“Not Vasaro. Not really. The years pass but every season there’s the blossoming and the harvest. . . .” Caitlin felt suddenly awkward as she saw the intent manner in which he was looking at her. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s important to be able to hold on to something in this world.”
“It’s dangerous to let anything become too important to you. It’s too easy for things to be taken away from you.”
“Vasaro isn’t a thing.”
Alex nodded. “Not to you.”
“What do you hold on to, Alex?”
“Myself. What I am.”
“And that’s enough?”
“I told you I didn’t believe in roots.” Alex moved toward the door. “I should be finished with the call in ten minutes. Why don’t you meet me downstairs after you change your shoes?”
“All right.”
He glanced back over his shoulder. “Do you know where I’d like to go first?”
“Where?”
“The Louvre. I want to see Juliette’s painting, ‘Boy in the Field.’ ”
Caitlin nodded eagerly. “We’ll go to the museum before we go to the bridge. It’s a wonderful painting, Alex.”
“I’m sure it is.”
Caitlin turned back to the window after Alex left the room. It was only a little after noon, the sun shone strong and bright, and the air was crisp and clear. Yet Caitlin felt suddenly as she had when she was a little girl running through the twilight fields of jasmine. The world seemed enveloped in a soft golden haze in which life was newly born and brimming with possibilities.
“I think that man’s following us,” Caitlin whispered as they moved past the large glass pyramid on the courtyard of the Louvre. “I’m sure I saw him in the square when we left the house.”
“Which man?”
“The one wearing the mirrored sunglasses and red shirt.”
Alex glanced casually over his shoulder. “The fat one with the guidebook?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. Do you suppose he wants to kidnap you and sell you into white slavery?”
“Alex, I’m serious.”
“So am I. I understand they like them tall and blond in the Middle East. And those magnificent boobs would be a definite plus.”
“I’m not blond.”
“You are in the sunlight. Otherwise you’re sort of streaked like a tabby cat or—”
“Shouldn’t we do something?”
“Dye your hair?”
“Call the police.”
“You haven’t been kidnapped yet.”
“Perhaps he’s a pickpocket.”
“I like the white-slavery idea better. It brings to mind all sorts of lascivious thoughts. Jewel-studded leather manacles, aphrodisiacs, naked houris dancing to arouse my libido.”
“You don’t need any arousing.” Caitlin laughed. “You’re outrageous. Dammit, I tell you I saw him at the square.”
“The Place des Vosges is the oldest square in Paris and probably in every guidebook. And do you really think a pickpocket would wear a red shirt and mirrored sunglasses, for God’s sake?”
“I guess not.”
“If we see him again after we leave the museum, we’ll alert the gendarmes. Good enough?”
She nodded.
“Now lead me to Juliette’s painting. I need to inundate my overcharged libido with a cool stream of cultural pursuit. I keep seeing visions of you in nothing but a harem veil, bent over with that lovely ass wriggling . . .”
Caitlin giggled. “Kinky. Definitely kinky.”
“You’re the one who brought up the subject. I wonder if the Louvre has Delacroix’s odalisque on display. We’ll have to take a look at it and see if you’d really suit the life. Personally, I think you’d look very sexy leaning against a pile of silk cushions. Or, better still, on them, positioned just right for fun and games.”
Still chuckling, Caitlin tried to sift through his nonsense. “Delacroix? There’s an odalisque here, but it was painted by Ingres.”
“There are several odalisques. Artists through the ages seem to have been caught up in the harem fantasy. Ingres’s harem girl is very cool and self-contained, while Delacroix painted his nude as totally abandoned to sensuality. You’re much more Delacroix than Ingres.” He opened the door and allowed her to precede him into the museum. “It’s a great painting. We’ll have to find out if both are here so you can compare them.”
Alex could hear the sound of Caitlin’s shower running in the bathroom as he moved quickly past it, down the stairs, and into the salon.
He picked up the receiver of the telephone and stabbed in the number in Langley, Virginia, with a decisive finger.
After three rings the phone was picked up on the other end. “Charles Barney.”
McMillan’s ever efficient second in command. “Barney, put me through to McMillan.”
“Alex?” Barney’s soft, hesitant voice held a note of reproach. “What is it? You know I can’t disturb him without good cause.”
“Barney.” Each of Alex’s words were enunciated with icy precision. “Put me through.”
Barney sighed. “Very well.”
He was put on hold and a moment later Rod McMillan picked up the phone. “McMillan.”
“McMillan, get rid of my tail or hire someone who has the sense to do it right.”
“Alex?” Rod McMillan’s voice was silky smooth. “You can’t expect to get top-notch surveillance for such routine work. You’ve been hopscotching all over the place and we had to call in outside help. I hear you have a lady.”
“Get rid of him or I’ll take him out.”
“I wouldn’t advise that.” McMillan’s tone lost some of its evenness. “You could be a little more cooperative. After all, we did fix that nasty business of Pavel’s death with the Swiss police for you.” He paused. “You know the tail is only insurance, Alex.”
“If she sees him again tomorrow, he’s gone.”
Alex’s lips set grimly as he replaced the receiver, turned, and left the salon. Caitlin hadn’t indicated she had seen the CIA tail after they had left the museum, but he had to make sure she had no suspicions. He had been lucky she had taken Jonathan’s revelations so well, but facing his past was different from confronting his present.
Nothing must go wrong now that he was coming so close.
The little blue flowers on the Delft tile on the walls surrounding the tub were enchantingly pretty and exactly matched the flowers on the shower curtain, Caitlin thought dreamily. She lifted her face to the warm spray and sighed contentedly as she let the heat sink into her. Of course, the tiles weren’t in keeping with the age of the house, but then, neither was the claw-footed bathtub, or a bathroom itself, for that matter. To judge by the decor, this room must have been converted from a dressing room to a bathroom sometime in the 1930s. Her great-grandmother had performed the same face-lift at Vasaro in 1935. Tradition was all very well, but it didn’t replace the joys of modern plumbing and—
“Hello.” Alex drew back the heavy shower curtain, stepped naked into the tub, and pulled the curtain closed behind him. “I could hardly fight my way to the tub through all this steam.”
She gazed at him over her shoulder, startled. “I . . . like hot showers. They relax me.”
“You don’t look relaxed.”
“You surprised me. I’m used to showering alone.”
“We’re not showering.” He leaned forward, his gaze on her face. The tanned flesh of his cheekbones gleamed with a moist luster through the steamy mist, and his light blue eyes were narrowed and intent. Strange, how she had first thought those eyes were icy. “Give me your tongue.”
Her heart began to beat harder. “What?”
“Stick out your tongue.”
She slowly obeyed him. He leaned still closer and touched her tongue with his own for only a few seconds. The very brevity of the action somehow made it unbearably intimate.
“Nice.” His palm cupped her cheek. “Now turn away again, lean forward, and put your hands on the tiles.”
Caitlin laughed shakily. “Perhaps we’d better get out and go to bed.”
“What a lack of imagination,” Alex murmured as he took a bar of soap from the blue marble holder affixed to the wall. “Don’t look at me and do exactly as I tell you.”
Caitlin turned around and rested her palms on the tiles. “Is this a game?”
“Oh, yes, a very pleasurable game.” With lazy circular movements he rubbed the soap into her breasts and belly. “Now part your legs, Caitlin.”
He palmed the bar of soap and dipped between her thighs, rubbing slowly back and forth. The muscles of her stomach clenched as she felt the alien slickness of the soap, the warm hardness of his hand caressing that most intimate part of her. Then she heard the bar of soap hit the tub. “You’ve dropped the—”
She inhaled sharply as two fingers entered her and began to move in and out.
Her breasts were lifting and falling as she tried to force air into her constricted chest. The steam was hot, filling her lungs as he was filling her body. “What—brought this on?”
He leaned forward and his teeth nibbled at her left earlobe as his fingers left her. His palms began to massage her buttocks. “I suppose I got to thinking about white slaves and harems and how nice it would be to have my own.”
“Harem?”
“I’m not greedy. One concubine would do.” He began gently pinching the rounded flesh of her bottom between his thumbs and forefingers. Erotic sensation sent a long shiver through her body and caused her hands pressed on the tile to curl inward.
His warm, moist tongue entered her left ear. “Want to play?”
“I’m not sure I’d be good at it.”
“You have a very passive role.” He widened her stance, pressing against her. “I guarantee you’ll be fantastic.” He entered her in one deep plunge and she gave a low cry. “Let me do it all. Pretend you’re a slave and I’m the sheikh who’s just bought you. Let me play with you as if you were a pretty toy.” His lips brushed the sensitive place just behind her ear. “We’re in the middle of the Sahara Desert. You tried to run away from me, but I caught you before you reached the door and pushed you against the wall of my tent. No one can hear you or help you.”
“It sounds barbaric.”
“I suppose most men have a touch of barbarism.” He moved still deeper inside her and then was still. “Now you’re bound to me. Can you feel it?”
Her upper teeth sank into her lower lip. “Yes.”
“Are you frightened?”
“No.”
“Do you want the cavalry to come along and rescue you?”
She drew a deep, shaky breath. “No.”
“That’s good. Unfortunately, the Sahara is deplorably low on cavalry troops.” His hand slid around and pressed hard on her belly as he slowly rotated his hips. “Do you like this?”
“Yes.” Her eyes closed tightly and her palms splayed against the smooth, wet tile. She could barely force the words from her dry throat. Tight. So tight.
“Then stand very still. If you move or look at me, I’ll stop.”
He pulled slowly out and then sank back to the hilt with excruciating deliberation. Her teeth sank into her lower lip to keep from screaming.
He began to pull out again, and she made an involuntary movement to keep him.
“No.” His hands pressed her shoulders to keep her facing forward and totally withdrew from her. “I told you that if you moved, I’d stop.”
She felt an aching emptiness. She wanted him back. She clenched yearningly. “Alex, for heaven’s sake . . .”
“You want it?”
“Yes!”
“Then be perfectly still.” He entered her again with the same maddening deliberation. “Don’t move a muscle.”
She gritted her teeth hard together. It was like nothing she had ever experienced. She felt totally subjugated, not by him but by her own sexuality. The slow, torturous seduction continued for minutes that seemed like hours. She could hear Alex’s heavy breathing behind her, felt the slickness of his wet hands on her shoulders, glimpsed the wisps of steam coating the blue flowers of the tiles on either side of her spread palms. She began to make low, whimpering sounds deep in her throat.
“Do you want to move?” Alex whispered in her ear.
“Yes.” She swallowed. “Oh, yes.”
“How much?”
“A . . . great deal.”
“Then tell me how you feel.” His hands moved around to cup her breasts. “Here.”
“Full . . . swollen.”
One hand wandered down and began to rub. “And here?”
“Hot . . . I—ache.”
“And it would be better if you could move?”
“Yes.”
“Then move.” He swatted her lightly on the buttocks. “Now!”
She bucked backward as if released from tethers, taking him wildly, deeply, desperately.
He held her hips firmly, keeping them sealed, and stood motionless, letting her expel all the frustration and desperation that had built in those moments of enforced stillness.
She could feel the tears run down her cheeks as she moved in a frenzy until the wild climax forced her to collapse forward against the tiled wall.
“Shh.” Alex’s wet cheek was pressed to her own, his chest pressed against her back. “Easy.”
“Easy?” She laughed tremulously. “There was nothing easy about that.”
“But you liked it?”
She was discovering she liked anything and everything he did to her. “It was like riding a tornado.”
Alex chuckled. “Thank you. I’ve never been compared to a force of nature before.” He turned off the shower, drew back the curtain, and steadied her as he stepped out of the tub. “I think we’ve had enough water for the time being.” He grabbed a towel from the rack, lifted her out of the tub, and began to dry her. “I’ll really have to get yo
u a harem outfit.”
“The hell you will.”
He was gently rubbing her hair dry. “No?”
“No. Playing a harem slave is strictly a one-time occurrence. The role wouldn’t suit me at all in real life. I’d find a way to castrate any bastard who did that to me.”
He sighed. “Pity. You’re spoiling my fantasy, you know. Maybe I’ll have to hire our red-shirted friend to kidnap you and whisk you away to my tent in the Sahara. Of course, first I’ll have to buy a tent to put in the Sahara, and then—”
“Red-shirted . . .” she repeated vaguely, scarcely remembering the fat tourist who had caused Alex so much amusement and triggered these moments of erotica.
“I’m sure the poor man would be devastated if he knew you’d dismissed him so quickly.” Alex enveloped her head in the towel and began to rub her hair dry. “You seem to have forgotten his existence since we left the museum.”
“Because I didn’t see him again. And if you say I told you so, I’ll—”
“Would I be so dastardly after you’ve let me play sheikh to your concubine?” He wrapped her in the towel and pushed her toward the door. “Into bed with you before you catch cold.”
Henri LeClerc was bored.
Caitlin looked at his long, graceful fingers toying idly with an ivory-handled letter opener. Since she and Alex had been ushered into LeClerc’s office ten minutes before, the packager’s expression had reflected first politeness, then impatience, and now he was definitely bored.
Caitlin nervously fingered the fastening of her purse. Alex finished outlining his offer. LeClerc was a slight man whose narrow, triangular face laid no claim to good looks with the exception of a pair of wide-set gray eyes of exceptional brilliance.
Now a faintly sardonic smile lifted one corner of his mouth as he shook his head. “You’re very eloquent and I can’t deny your offer is very attractive, Monsieur Karazov. That’s why I’m sitting here listening to you when I should be working.” LeClerc shrugged his thin shoulders. “After all, I’m only a poor artist who must think of practicalities.”