Bound in Moonlight (6 page)

I was wondering where the person was who had come up the stairs ahead of me when I noticed something move on the other side of the room, near the door. It was hard to see, both because of the distance and because the moonlight shone mostly in the center of the room, where the bed was, but I managed to make out a blurry figure standing there in a dark dressing gown. I assumed it was a man because of the height, probably about six feet, but then the gown slipped off and I saw slender, feminine contours, and realized it was a woman, albeit a tall one.

She dropped to the floor and sat on her haunches, very gracefully. I remember she put me in mind of a big, sleek jungle cat. Her eyes were closed, her mouth moving—although she was whispering too softly for me to hear through the glass. She clenched her teeth, trembling, then lowered her head, her hair spilling onto the floor in a gleaming bronze torrent. For a good minute or so she remained in that position, one hand braced on the floor, the other on her knee, back heaving. Finally she seemed to relax. She used an arm to flip her hair back as she rose to her feet.

I stepped closer to the glass and squinted. Although the figure was still indistinct, it was broad-shouldered, lean-hipped, and taller, maybe six and a half feet. This was no woman, although he still had hair that fell to the middle of his back. It was the blond man from the fountain, I realized, the one who'd been kissing one woman while screwing another.

I remember standing there with my mouth open, trying to make sense of what I'd just seen. Obviously, I couldn't help recalling Eugène's dusios, who could change from male to female and back again—not that I thought I was looking at a sex demon. I'd been feeling a little high ever since I got there. Remember the time we smoked hashish with Gertrude and Alice? It was kind of like that, as if I were watching a skewed version of reality from a slight distance. Given that, and the optical issues I was dealing with, I may very well have been mistaken in thinking I'd been looking at a woman before.

The man looked down and felt his genitals, not in a sexual way, but almost as if he were checking to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be. He rotated his shoulders, stretched his head from side to side, shook out his arms and legs, cracked his knuckles. Crouching down, he retrieved something from a pocket in the dressing gown, a ribbon or a piece of string, and used it to tie his hair back. And then he walked over to the bed and stood there looking down at the sleeping woman, who was facing away from him, in a way I can only describe as hungry.

I could see him better now. He was magnificent. Honestly, Rèmy, it was as if I were looking at a soft focus platinum print of a young god bathed in silvery moonlight. Sorry to wax so embarrassingly poetic, but he was literally breathtaking. He had an amazing face—radiant blue eyes beneath slashing eyebrows, an aquiline nose, a soft mouth. He would have been too pretty were it not for the geometric angles with which his jaw and chin had been carved. He was lean, but it was all muscle, every inch of him—including his cock, which rose and swelled as he stood looking at the woman, until it was standing almost straight up, shiny and hard. He stroked it very lightly with his fingertips, and it seemed to grow even longer and thicker. I was throbbing just looking at him.

He lowered himself onto the bed behind the woman and glided his hand lightly along her hip. She awoke with a start, but he stroked her reassuringly, whispering, “Shh,” and she relaxed. She tried to roll toward him, but he pushed her back onto her side and untied the lacing that secured the hood.

When she realized what he was doing, she shook her head violently and tried to pry his hands away. He used his outside arm and leg to contain her struggles as he unlaced the hood and pulled it off, freeing a mass of beautiful, rippling auburn hair.

“Calm down,” he said. “Calm down, Helen. It's Elic.”

“Elic?”
She tried to rise up, but he banded his arms around her, saying, “Relax, Helen. It's all right. You'll see.” He had a deep, pleasantly rough voice with a mild European accent I couldn't quite place.

Helen struggled and kicked, trying to free herself from his grip (with me panicking right along with her, wondering if this was a rape), until he stroked her forehead, murmuring something in a language that sounded Scandinavian. She relaxed completely then, her expression blissful as he stroked her between her legs. I have no idea what he said to her, but from that point on, she wasn't just willing, but enthusiastic.

Holding her tucked against him, spoon style, he squeezed the tip of his cock, producing a clear syrup that I thought, in my ignorance, must be semen, and spread it over the shaft. Now, of course, I realize he was lubricating it with pre-come. Rising up on an elbow, he took hold of his cock and tucked the head inside her, then closed his hand around her hip and pushed it all the way in. His expression, as he filled her, was utterly rapturous. He let out a groan that seemed to reverberate in my very womb.

He screwed her with long, steady strokes while reaching around to finger her clit. She was absolutely transported, moaning and clutching at the sheets. From where I stood, I had a pretty good view of the operative organs, and I found the sight of his hard, slick cock reaming her like a piston unbelievably arousing. I think I was breathing as hard as the two of them, and I was so wet that it was actually trickling a little down my inner thighs.

Helen came twice. As her second climax approached, Elic raised himself up on an arm, I think to help him deepen his penetration. His entire body heaved with each sharp thrust, every muscle bulging and flexing. He stilled for a moment, then let out a series of ecstatic groans, hips pulsing. I could see his balls pumping as they emptied—fascinating! And incredibly exciting. The orgasm went on a good deal longer than I now know to be the norm. Toward the end, a creamy fluid that I realized was semen (although I recall it being thicker than normal semen) began to seep out of her.

When it was finally over, he sank back down onto the bed, breathless and spent. He lifted her great swath of gorgeous hair out of the way, tucked her up against him, and kissed the back of her neck very softly and tenderly, while whispering things I couldn't hear that made her smile. Gripping the base of his cock, he withdrew from her with apparent care. He was still semi-erect, and dripping come that looked like melted ice cream.

He sat her up to divest her of the corset and gloves, then laid her down again, suckling her breasts as he stroked his fist up and down his cock. Within seconds, he was fully erect and lifting her legs over his shoulders, this not five minutes after having withdrawn from her. Now, of course, I know this was unusual, but at the time I didn't realize that men needed a recovery period between orgasms. He fucked her a second time, again making her climax twice before he came. From all appearances, it was as powerful an orgasm as the first, though perhaps not quite as lengthy. And I didn't see any more semen, so he may have been tapped out, given how much he'd ejected the first time. A few minutes later, he guided her hand up and down his slightly waning erection to revitalize it, positioned her on her knees and elbows, and took her again.

Fine, Rèmy, don't believe me. I saw what I saw.

Or rather, I remember what I remember. Who knows if they're the same thing?

On that note,
mon chéri,
I must bid you
adieu,
because it's almost two in the morning, and I'm having a hard time keeping my eyes open. Please don't think I'm crazy for what I've just written. The only thing I'm crazy about is you.

Tu me manques,

Em

Four

E
MMELINE SHRANK BACK
against the wall, trembling in awe and trepidation as Tobias's colossal man-root reared up like a proud, untamed stallion straining at its tethers.

“Does it . . . does it hurt?” she asked, staring with rapt fascination at the towering pillar of flesh.

“It aches for release, Emmeline. It aches for you.”

February 9, 1922

Steamboat Springs, Colorado

Dear Rèmy,

Your last letter was much appreciated, as always. Loved your observations and wisecracks (so happy to have been able to provide you with “wanking material” in my absence), and I think you might be right about the power of suggestion as regards Elic. Eugène had put the idea of a dusios in my mind, so given my fatigue (it
was
the middle of the night) and the mild wooziness I'd felt since my arrival there, I imagined that the blurry shape I was seeing looked like a woman turning into a man. Makes perfect sense.

About your letter, there's something that's been niggling at me ever since I read it (and reread it about a dozen times). It has to do with this whole disclosure business as regards our playmates, if any, since we've been together. I think I was admirably forthcoming in telling you there'd been no one else, especially considering I didn't owe you that information, that I just volunteered it out of concern for your feelings. Given that, I don't for one moment think I was out of line in asking you to reciprocate in kind. For you to say that you don't owe me either fidelity or an accounting of your infidelities because we're not man and wife strikes me as surprisingly cold (really quite unlike you, Rèmy) and transparently conniving.

If you think I'm going to marry you just to find out whether you've screwed anyone else in the past year, you don't know me very well. It's not as if it's even that important to me. I've already told you—I've
always
told you—that we're both adults and may do as we please. I don't care if you've slept around. That's not the reason I'm so ups bringing this up. I care that you're being coy and calculating when I was so open and honest, and that you're trying to punish me when all I wanted was for you to show me the same consideration that I showed you, not because it's an obligation, but out of love.

Anyway, I just wanted to get that off my chest. I'm not dwelling on it, so if it seems like I am, I just want you to know I'm not. I just can't help thinking that if you really It doesn't matter. It's not important. If you don't want to tell me, don't tell me.

Anyway, on to
Emily's Adventures
.

When last we saw our plucky heroine, she was observing a marathon shagging session between Elic and Helen. I don't know how many more times they did it that night. I left in the middle of the third act, went back to my room, ran a hot bath, and gave myself three or four ferocious orgasms while recalling what I'd just seen.

I slept till ten the next morning, having been up half the night. I probably would have slept even later, but I was awakened by a knock at my bedroom door. I assumed it was Hickley wanting to say good-bye, but I was groggy and in my nightgown, and I really didn't want to speak to him again until I'd had a chance to think things through, so I didn't invite him in.

I'd been hoping the weather would have cleared so that I could drive back to Lyon, but rain was still battering the windows, so it didn't look good. Unable to get back to sleep, I dressed, grabbed
My Secret Life
and
The Autobiography of a Flea
(which I hadn't even started yet), and headed downstairs to the library to spend the day reading.

The library was at the front of the castle, with French doors leading to a ground-floor balcony overlooking the gravel driveway. The departing guests stood under black umbrellas next to a queue of waiting carriages. I recognized Hickley and stepped behind the velvet drapes, peeking through a gap between them.

He was chatting with a couple standing beneath a single umbrella, and whatever he was saying seemed to amuse them enormously. At one point, he made a circular gesture around his head, as if to suggest a large hat, then pretended to yank down on its brim as he pouted forlornly with big, cow-like eyes. His friends roared with laughter.

I felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach.

A woman in a tarty yellow-striped dress with an enormous bustle ran from the gatehouse to the protection of Hickley's umbrella, lifting her skirt with one hand and holding her hat down with the other. I recognized her as the dark-haired vamp he'd been tonguing when I interrupted his little threesome the day before, the one who'd been whipping him with the riding crop and ordering him to fuck the blonde harder. Hickley pulled her close and gave her a good, long kiss.

I shook my head, whispering, “You son of a bitch.”

“Who?”

I wheeled around to discover Inigo smiling at me over the back of a leather couch in the middle of the room.

“How do you always manage to sneak up on me like that?” I asked.

“It's a skill I've cultivated in order to watch people unawares and listen in on their conversations.”

“Are you serious?”

“Rarely.” Shifting his gaze to the window, he said, “So, which one is the son of a bitch?”

I sighed. “Randolph Lytton, Baron of Hickley.”

“Ah, Randy Randy. What an excellent judge of character you are, Miss Townsend.”

I invited him to call me Emily. “I say, who is that woman under the umbrella with him?”

Squinting, he said, “That's Priscilla Brisbane,” as if it were blatantly obvious.

“Who?”

“You know Randy, but you don't know his mistress? I've only just met them—they'd never visited before—but I'm told they've been together for four years, that they're never seen apart, and that he would marry her in a heartbeat if she weren't an actress with no name and no money. Have I said something funny?”

I realized I was laughing, not ha-ha laughing, but that kind of bitter, exhausted chuckling that sometimes comes out of you when you're just too far gone for tears. I told him I was just a little giddy from not having slept well.

Outside, a coachman took a lady's umbrella as he handed her up into a landau, the one that had been the scene of Claude Morel's little tryst out in the carriage house the day before. The lady was Helen, whom Elic had so thoroughly rousted in
le Boudoir des Miroirs
the night before. She was smiling, as well she might have been.

I asked Inigo if he knew who she was, and he said sure, he was always briefed on the visitors who came to Grotte Cachée. He told me her name was Helen Forrester, and that she'd come there in the hope of getting pregnant. Her husband was evidently sterile (she was fairly sure it was he, and not she, because his first marriage had produced no offspring, either). She was desperate for a baby, but she balked at taking a lover for this purpose, not only because she loved her husband, but because she wanted her child to be of Forrester blood. She found out that her husband's estranged brother, a Don Juan named Cyrus Forrester, would be visiting Grotte Cachée, so she followed him there in the hope of convincing him to father a child on her. A lecher he may have been, and a leather fetishist as she soon discovered, but he had too much honor to cuckold his brother, estranged or no. Helen's tears and entreaties fell on deaf ears, so she was in despair of remaining childless—until she learned that a woman named Cassandra had booked an overnight stay in
le Boudoir,
and that Cyrus intended to pay her a visit. Helen somehow convinced Cassandra to let her take her place, which she did, wearing the hood so as to disguise her identity.

“She looks pretty happy,” Inigo said, “so the little ruse must have worked. Here's hoping it bears fruit.” He lifted a cup as if in a toast, then said, “I'm being even ruder than normal. I've brought a pot of java. Would you like some?”

“Please.”

Inigo patted the couch next to him and poured me a cup, offering to spike it with brandy, like his, but I declined. As I settled down next to him, taking care to tuck my two dirty books under my skirt, I considered and rejected the notion of telling him what I'd seen in
le Boudoir
the night before. Mostly I didn't want him to know what a snoop and voyeur I was. And how could I tell him that it looked as if Elic might have switched genders, something a crazy old handyman had told me certain demons did in order to achieve a
“transfert de sperme”
between a human couple?

Instead, I inanely complimented the coffee, telling him it was the best I'd had since leaving the States. I asked him if he was from New York, because he sounded as if he was.

He said, “Not originally, but I love New York, and I have a house there. Well, we share it, but—”

“We?”

“I live here with some friends—in addition to the Archers, of course, and
le seigneur
and his son. Elic and Lili travel sometimes, but rarely to New York, so I think of the house as mine. We have another house in Paris, and that's where they usually go when they want to trade the country for the city.”

“Paris is my favorite city in the world,” I said. “I'd give anything to live there.” I told him I knew who Elic was, but I wasn't sure about Lili.

“Long dark hair, very exotic looking. She and Elic are devoted to each other.”

I wasn't sure how to respond to that.

Inigo said, “You're wondering why you've seen them with other people. It's because Elic can't . . . Well, it's complicated, but they can't make love to each other.”

I didn't question that, not wanting to display my naïveté, but I must have looked puzzled, because he said, “When I say, ‘make love,' I'm talking about actual, you know . . . intercourse. They can do other things. Or rather, he can do things to her, but it doesn't work the other way. I'm saying too much. You're confused, and I can't . . . Archer's always telling me to keep my big . . .” He sighed and shook his head. “Sorry. I get a little too talkative sometimes.”

I've wondered ever since why a man who wasn't impotent should be unable to have sex with just one specific woman. “Must they sleep with other people?” I asked. “Can't they just . . . do without?”

Inigo smiled and shook his head. “I'm afraid that wouldn't be possible.”

I was about to question that when, in a conversational backtrack, he told me that although he kept a house in New York and sounded American, he wasn't. He said people often speculated on his origins, and that he was frequently accused of having gypsy blood, for some reason, but that he was actually born in Santorini. I said I knew all about Santorini. It was the Greek island cluster that Kit Archer had identified in his novel as being the real Atlantis. Inigo told me he'd helped Kit with his research.

Inigo said he'd been born Inignacios, which had been Latinized to Ignatius when he lived in Rome, and then to Inigo when he made his home among the Basques on the border of France and Spain. I asked where his house in New York was, and he said, “Greenwich Village—the East Village.”

“Oh, my word,” I said. “That's where I know you from. I saw you once. It was just in passing, but I know it was you. You were leaving Bertha Chalmers's brownstone just as I was walking up the front steps. You tipped your hat and smiled as you held the door open for me.” That smile had made me weak in the knees (you had to see it to understand) but of course I didn't tell him that.

“You know Bertha?”

“I attend her literary salons. That's where I met Kit. How do you know her?”

“She spent a week or so here a while back when she was traveling through Europe. Ah, Bertha. She had it all—wit, beauty . . .” He looked off with this dreamily carnal smile, shaking his head a little, as if she still held him in her sexual thrall.

“When was this?” I asked. “That she stayed here?” Bertha Chalmers had to be eighty if she was a day.

“Oh. Um . . .” He lifted his cup, took a sip, shrugged. “It was some time ago. We've remained friends.”

“Yes, but . . . I mean, she's—”

“Did you like the books?” he asked, nodding toward the lump under my skirt.

I've never been much of a blusher, but I could feel my cheeks growing warm as I took the books out from under my skirt.

“You know, you really don't have to hide that kind of thing around here.” Pointing to
My Secret Life,
he said, “What do you think of that one?”

“Not much. I was told it would help me to understand the sexual inclinations of men, but . . .”

“Of men who ought to be locked up, maybe. Who told you that?”

“Lord Hickley.”

“Of course. They're cut from the same mold, he and old Walt. How do you know Hickley, anyway?”

“He's asked me to marry him.”

Inigo winced, no doubt recalling his revelation about Hickley's mistress.

“I'm not going to,” I said.

He turned that smile on. “Oh, I do love brainy women.”