Storm of Shadows

  “Roughly. And do you know what’s there?” She couldn’t wait for him to answer. “The Sacred Cave.”

  Aaron let go of her arms and stepped back. “The Sacred Cave. What Sacred Cave?”

  “The one where Sacmis wrote out her final prophecy!”

  Aaron looked between Rosamund and Louis. “The Sacred Cave is here. In France. In the Alps.”

  “According to the legend that Louis explained to me, the Sacred Cave is one place that exists in different locales that are specific to it. Sacre Barbare has always been an outlet to the Sacred Cave.”

  In the dim light here in the private corridor of Louis’s home, with the noise of the party hushed by the walls that separated them from the people, the conversation, the music, Aaron looked almost pale to her. Probably he was distressed, as she had been, that she hadn’t found the prophecy in Louis’s book.

  Hastily, she reassured him. “The Sacred Cave is where Sacmis went to die, so that is the prophecy we’re looking for. I read it in a book. Her book.” Taking his arm, she lowered her voice and looked at him meaningfully. “Bala’s Glass helped me read it.” Putting her finger on his lips, she shushed him. “I’ll tell you about that later. But for right now, Louis has promised to help us.”

  “Why would Louis help us?” Aaron sounded so suspicious, she wanted to hit him.

  So she did, a good hard punch on the arm. “Stop that! He’s been wonderful. Haven’t you, Louis?”

  “I agree. I have.” As he watched them, a cynical fold creased his cheek. “I’ll arrange for you to take one of my cars into the mountains with all the equipment you will need to enter the Sacred Cave. I’ll have it brought around to the north entrance for you. No, Mr. Eagle, don’t thank me. It’s my pleasure.”

  Aaron flushed, a deep red staining his cheeks and making him look every inch an American Indian warrior.

  “Now about your clothes . . .” Louis ran his gaze over them both, and as he looked at Rosamund, his expression softened and grew avid.

  She wanted to laugh. She could read Louis now. He was trying to annoy Aaron, pretending to be attracted to her.

  From the expression on Aaron’s face, he was succeeding.

  Louis continued. “Sacre Barbare is very high, very windy, and cold even in the middle of summer. You’ll need coats and boots. Come with me.” He set off down the corridor, walking past the velvet rope without a glance at the ballroom buzzing with guests and music. He stopped at a closed door and, with a grand gesture, opened it. “This is the closet containing garments for my guests.”

  Rosamund peeked inside. The closet smelled of cedar and sizing. Coats and jackets hung on poles and lined the walls on either side. The shelves above were thick with gloves and hats. A chest of drawers was built into one wall, and a straight-backed wooden chair sat in the corner; boots and overshoes of every size and description were scattered on the floor around it.

  “Mr. Eagle, you’ll find many new down-filled jackets. Help yourself. Rosamund, my dear.” Taking her hand, Louis smiled into her eyes. “Take your choice from among the furs. There’s a particularly fine Russian sable that would contrast beautifully with your violet eyes.”

  Aghast, she pressed his fingers and answered firmly, “Thank you. You are so kind. But I can’t wear fur.”

  For one moment, he looked startled. Then he sighed. “What a foolish old man I am. You are, of course, concerned for animal rights, and opposed to furs. Very well. Take one of the down-filled coats. And for both of you—hiking boots. The path to the cave is reputed to be challenging. I would not have you fall to your deaths, not when at last you’re so close to your goal.”

  “Oh, me, too.” Aaron couldn’t have sounded more sarcastic.

  For all the attention Louis paid to him, Aaron might not have existed. Taking Rosamund’s hand, Louis held it warmly, lifted it to his lips, and kissed it. “If you were twenty years older, or I was forty years younger . . .”

  She laughed, hugged him hard, caught his face between her hands, and kissed him on his wrinkled lips. “You are very sweet, and I love you dearly.”

  He sighed and handed her her purse. “Twenty years older,” he muttered. “Forty years younger . . .”

  She stood watching him as he turned away and headed for his library. “I think I made a wonderful new friend. He gave me his private phone number. He’s going to visit me the next time he’s in New York City. He is such a dear man,” she said to Aaron.

  “A dear man?” Aaron grabbed her hand. “A dear man?” He dragged her into the coat closet, slammed the door after them, and backed her up against the far wall. “Did that old lecher do something to you?”

  “No! The old lecher is a sweetheart—which I can’t say about you!” She struggled in his grasp.

  He handled her all too easily, and his brown eyes blazed into hers. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means I can’t figure out . . . I just . . .” Doubt reared its ugly head. ”Why are you interested in me?”

  “Oh, honey. You can’t be that innocent.” He kissed her, a full-throttle kiss that took her from angry to passionate in a single leap.

  She shouldn’t be passionate with him. She’d already been passionate with him, and the experience had thrown her into a quicksand of worry that totally messed with her normal good sense. Usually she could focus on the task at hand, especially when she was thrown into a library composed of manuscripts and codices. Tonight she’d been in a library of treasures, and she hadn’t been able to fully concentrate. Instead she’d cried in the lavatory for a love she believed to be futile. Impossible.

  Then she remembered . . . Better to die free than to live in a cage.

  “Right.” She spoke to Louis, to her father, to the ghost of her former, repressed, librarian self.

  Better to die free than to live in a cage.

  Grabbing Aaron’s lapels, she pulled him as close as she could and kissed him back, thrusting her tongue into his mouth.

  He paused in astonishment; then his whole body hardened against hers. He held her against the wall and kissed her back. She could feel the passion in him gather strength, like a storm taking shape against the mountains. “You are in so much trouble,” he muttered.

  She pushed his coat off his shoulders, and declared, “I think so, too. But when I’m done with you, I won’t be in trouble alone.”

  Chapter 30

  Aaron took her purse and tossed it aside. He grabbed a handful of down coats off the rack and threw them to the floor.

  A bed. He’d made them a bed.

  Rosamund kicked off her shoes, peeled off her jacket, and used both her hands to unzip her skirt.

  A deep indrawn breath from Aaron stopped her.

  She looked up.

  With her hands behind her, her pale breasts swelled above the pure white lace that skimmed her nipples. She inferred from his fixed stare and frozen stance he could see nothing else.

  “That bra is all you had on under the jacket?” he asked.

  “Philippe said otherwise I’d be hot.” Apparently she was hot. Who knew? “Why?”

  “I’m going to kill him.” Aaron’s voice was furious, guttural. “Or . . . no, I’m going to kill him.”

  “Do you . . . like this?” She waved a hand over the area covered with lace. From the way he was acting, she wasn’t sure.

  “Right now, all I want to do is push that bra out of the way, take your nipples in my mouth and make you crazy.”

  He did like it, and just talking about his reaction made her wet. “I’d like that.”

  “Rosamund.” The way he looked at her, in absolute frustration, gave her a jolt of pleasure. The way he said her name, with absolute agony, brought a smile to her face.

  Being with Aaron had fed her heretofore unsuspected capacity for cruelty.

  She dropped her skirt and stepped out, then checked to see if the sight of her in that wretchedly uncomfortable thong and the frilly garter belt riveted him to the same degree.

  Sh
e had never been confident in herself as a sexual creature. Men and makeup were always too much hassle, and the rewards, as far as she could tell, were ephemeral at best.

  But seeing Aaron as he stood frozen in place, staring at her as if she were Little Red Riding Hood and he were the big bad wolf . . . well.

  She leaned against the wall, put one hand behind her, and used the other to push the hair off her forehead.

  Eating Little Red Riding Hood took on a whole new meaning. “Are you going to stand there all night?” she asked.

  He took a breath, apparently the first one in quite a while, and came to life. Grabbing a coat off the rack, he stuffed the crack under the door so no light could seep through. He placed the straight-backed chair under the door handle. “That’ll keep the bastards out,” he said with satisfaction, and with a flick of the switch, he turned off the lights.

  She blinked as her eyes tried to adjust, but the dark was absolute. “What . . . ? Why did you . . . ?”

  “There are security cameras all over this château.”

  “In here?” She looked around as if she could see an eye gleaming at her from some high corner.

  “I scouted it out,” he said, and she jumped.

  He stood a lot closer than she expected.

  He continued. “The guards don’t have an eye in here, but I don’t trust Louis Fournier any farther than I can throw him.”

  And while she couldn’t see a thing, Aaron’s hands landed unerringly on her cheeks. He removed her glasses and placed them . . . somewhere. On the shelf above them, she supposed.

  “What we are doing is not for the entertainment of some lascivious old man. This is for us.” Picking up one hand, then the other, Aaron kissed her fingers. “It is my privilege to be your lover.”

  “I like you, too,” she blurted, and then wished she hadn’t. Why couldn’t she be as smooth, as sophisticated as he was? “Are we going to . . . I’d love to . . . now . . .”

  “I swear to you, if the ice age comes and plows down this château, and we are the only two people left alive on earth, tonight we will finish this thing.” It was as if he were merely a passionate voice and two hands that stroked her collarbones, her ribs, her stomach.

  Blindly she put her hands out toward him . . . and touched bare skin. Warm, naked, smooth skin that heated under her touch. Her hands shyly wandered across his shoulders and lower, down his chest to his belly and around his hips. After he turned off the light he must have stripped completely.

  It was worth noting that when he had a goal, he moved very quickly and with great certainty.

  Somehow knowing that made her breath come more quickly.

  She had thought the dark would lessen the experience of lovemaking, but the deprivation of sight made her more aware of the calluses on his hands, and the indefinable power that pulsed from him to surround her.

  His hands slid up to hold her breasts. His fingers explored the dips and curves of the lace, never quite touching her bare skin. Her breasts swelled into his hands, her nipples tightened, and she gradually pulled him close so only an inch separated their bodies. The air grew heated between them, and the scent of his cloves and citrus soap filled her head, intoxicating her. His breath caressed her face. He kissed her mouth, warm and soft, filling her with the essence of sex and heat and Aaron.

  In the silence of the closet, she could hear nothing but the beat of her own heart, and when he opened the clasp of her bra, the snap sounded like liberty. When without warning his lips swooped to suckle at her nipple, she hissed at the shock of his warm, wet tongue, the sharp edge of his teeth, the suction that fired her need and her passion. “Aaron.” She supported herself against the wall.

  His mouth moved to the other nipple.

  “Aaron,” she said again. She stroked his bottom, cheeks hollow and taut, then his thighs, athletic and sturdy.

  His hand reached between her legs. His fingers pushed the thong aside and explored her, touching places only she—and he—had touched before.

  She would do for him what he did for her.

  She stroked his belly, taking pleasure in each muscular ripple. She cupped his testicles, marveling at the texture and the weight. Finally, as he stood frozen beneath her touch, she found his penis, silky, heated, with ridges and veins she wished she could see. He filled her hands, filled her fantasy of how he would ride her—with determination, and patience, and fire.

  Taking her down to the floor, he rolled her under him. The down-filled coats crinkled beneath them. He pushed her panties down her legs, freed her from the garter belt and stockings. He opened her thighs, and kissed her as he had done in the limo—deeply, using his tongue to penetrate her body, rolling her clit between his lips like a piece of hard candy. The sensations she had experienced earlier with such caution and wonder hovered close to the surface, and having discovered them once, the ache of passion returned easily, bringing her heartbeat up, wringing small moans from her throat.

  “Now . . . I’m going to satisfy you in a way no other man could ever do.” His low, husky, confident tone made her toes curl with anticipation.

  Then somehow, everything changed.

  He changed.

  He was no longer a weight on her, no longer a mouth that tasted her, no longer hands that caressed her.

  Instead, he was over her. He was around her. He kissed her lips, her throat, her fingers, her toes. His embrace was a breeze, stroking her belly, her shoulders, her thighs, her spine, so lightly that every nerve clenched in response. He molded her breasts, tasted her nipples, her navel, her clit. He brushed her hair away from her face and slid subtle fingers around the shell of her ear. Blindly she tried to grasp him, to hold him, but he was everywhere, and he was nowhere. He lifted her legs and slid between them, smooth as silk and warm as water, and as he did, sensation flowed along her bottom and between her buttocks, then surged into her passage as smoothly as a spring torrent. As the heat and strength of him touched the deepest part of her womb, she couldn’t restrain her small cries of desperation and pleasure, nor the movements of her hips as her body demanded to be filled. He grew inside her, longer, thicker, stretching her, making her wild and damp with need. She pressed her hands behind her head and against the closet wall, in suspense, desperate, straining to have more—more heat, more passion, more . . . him.

  “Rosamund.” His voice sounded deep and rich in her ears. “Give yourself. Give everything. Move for me. Breathe for me. Be part of me . . . forever.”

  His urging was all she needed to push her over the edge. Her blood thundered in her veins. Her orgasm caught her, lifted her, gasping, struggling, in anguish and in joy.

  And suddenly, Aaron was there, a man’s weight on top of her: muscles and sweat and need. He moved forcefully on her, thrusting deep, groaning with need, and through the glory of her orgasm, she felt the power and the pain of this man inside her. She cried out, startled, but he held her hips and moved her with him, and her next climax roared through her, sweeping away the last remnants of her innocence.

  He groaned in magnificient agony, caught in the glory of her body, his body, clasped in the primitive embrace that welded them into one.

  Wrapping her legs around him, she lifted herself, opened herself, gave herself to him in every way possible.

  This was it. This was unity. This was love.

  This was all she had ever dreamed of, hoped for, imagined.

  As he finished, subsided, and slipped beside her to hold her in his arms, somewhere in the depths of the closet, her phone rang.

  A text message.

  He grew tense in her embrace. “What is it?”

  Without a single thought, she lied. “It’s my alarm. I can’t figure out how to reset it.”

  He chuckled and relaxed. “I’ll do it for you . . . later.” He lightly kissed her forehead, her cheek, her lips.

  “Much, much later,” she murmured, and kissed him back.

  Before she slipped into slumber, she thought about Lance, and how unfair sh
e had been to him, and that she would have to tell him the truth about loving Aaron.

  But she would worry about that much, much later, too.

  Because right now, all that mattered to her was Aaron. Being with Aaron. Holding Aaron. Loving Aaron.

  Chapter 31

  Aaron and Rosamund slept, huddled together in a stack of coats in Louis Fournier ’s closet, and when Aaron woke, he smiled into the darkness. Perhaps this hadn’t been the most elegant of lovemakings, and certainly it wasn’t the most comfortable, but as long as he lived, he would treasure these moments with Rosamund. Here, in the deepest dark, he had become his other self, his dark mist. He had caressed her everywhere at once, given her pleasure inside and out, until the moment when his climax swept all control away, and he became a man once more.