Darkest Love (19 page)

“Lily!” Annie gasped. There was a new tan on her friend's face, and a grim look in her coral-lined eyes. Annie almost dropped her papers in confusion. She glanced back at the waitress–who was equally stern-faced. “Lily where did you—?”

“Drop your bag and let's go.”

Next thing Annie knew she was being led through a back door into a kitchen. Annie and Lily sped past leering Greek chefs and sullen-faced kitchen-hands. Everyone who wasn't tossing stir fry or delivering meals stared at the women with interest.

“Lily, slow down.” Lily's ass was moving fast, butt cheeks shapely in the fabric of the Lycra dress she was wearing.
Gorgeous.
Annie would have felt envious if she wasn't furious about the grip of the vicious little hand around her wrist.

“Lily, your nails are
cutting
me.”

The door swung and they were in the hallway. Lily turned, staring into Annie's eyes. The coral shadow changed color, glowing fluro in the light and bringing out the rich tones in Lily's brown eyes.

“Annie, you have to watch out. Things have changed since you went to Sivu. Sola… she's a thing. And the paps are out for a piece of you.”

A door slammed down the hall, making Annie start. Lily stiffened, and finally removed those talons from the place where they were piercing Annie's skin. Annie whimpered, cradling her abused arm in her elbow like a baby. She still had a nail crescent scratched in her cheek from where the AFA woman had swiped her.

“They're coming,” Lily said.

A flash like an electric storm filled Annie's eyes as a dozen photographers rounded the corner at once. Each pap had a camera in his hand. They clicked with eager fingers as they ran on eager little legs. The lightning-like flash of cameras was soundtracked by a hearty
clickety-click-click
sound
.

“Princess Sola!” Annie made out their shouts. She could not see their faces over the flashes, or through the ink-black SLR cameras they were wielding. The lights popped like fireworks.

Annie only got a quick look at that New Year's Eve-worthy display before Lily grabbed her arm again and pulled her up the stairwell to the rooms.

* * * *

“On the bed, woman!” Lily cried, locking the door. “I'll call security.”

Annie panted on the bed while the other woman dialed reception and barked a few words about Annie Childs.

“Why didn't you reply to my text messages, you silly beast,” Lily demanded. “You could have been trampled.”

“Whoa,” Annie raised an arm, suddenly frightened of her pretty friend, with her new tan and Rio-colored makeup and clothes. Lily had not even said hello. And she had sent exactly zero messages. “You sent me nothing.”

With an arched brow, Lily grabbed Annie's cell phone from the bed and took a look. “It's still off, you twit.”

She pressed the button, waiting for the FiOS ding and the light of the screen. Almost immediately a
zip-bang-pow-beep
of message notifications issued from the speaker. Lily held up the smartphone to show the inbox.

Sixteen new messages
. Fifteen of those were from Lily. One was from a money-grubbing fake prize draw company. Lily placed her hands on her hips. The arch in her brow was as sharp as her new outfit.

“I guess I forgot to turn it on after the flight.”

“I guess.”

Lily sat on the bed, placing the phone net to Annie's luggage. A final beep egressed from the speaker, making both women jump. Lily settled into a resigned posture: face in her hands, earrings dangling, braid looping around as if it wanted to strangle her.

“I've been dealing with non-stop press enquiries about you and your princess since I got to Australia. I became a little vain–dolled myself up for the paps. I needn't have bothered–the media companies isolated my vocals and didn't use my picture. They played my voice over images of Sola. Sola Sola Sola! Apparently that linguistics scholar Paulo sold a few grainy pictures of her to TMZ. After that the gossip storm rared up: Rain Mistern's fucked her! Annie Childs is a men's rights conspirator!”

“What?”

“That's the hot goss. That's what people are saying.” Lily dropped her hands again, revealing her very pretty face and two brown eyes filling with tears. One of her feather earrings swung pathetically–it had been nudged by Lily's perfectly-manicured hand. “They are saying she is the most stunning woman on earth. She proves Rain Mistern's theory that woman are better off—and better looking—in non-capitalist societies.”

“Ha. Rain never said that in his research.”

“Well, everyone knows that's his attitude.” Lily scratched her own arms. Alongside the tan and new freckles, Annie made out the splotches of a dozen or so Australian mosquito bites. Lily had obviously gotten her tan from bushwalks and jogs in the coastal scrub.

“Annie, everyone wants a piece of you. They're hungry for princess info. Please be careful.”

* * * *

Annie lay on the hotel bed listening to the whistle of the kettle as Lily made tea. She'd really missed these small things.

It had been over six months since she'd heard that sound, or drunk anything other than the oolong blend she'd taken to the island. The fragrance of peppermint tea from the mug made her nostrils rejoice. So did the glow of the bedside lamp—
made
just so she could read in comfort—and the whir of the air-conditioning. The sound was pleasant, soothing as the shores of the Pacific, with none of the hot gusts the land breeze brought.

This could use some cooling too
, Annie thought, taking a sip from her cup. She placed it with a
dink
on her coaster and turned to Lily.

“So, what do you think?” Annie had told the other woman about Rain's spiritual babbling. Lily appeared to be mulling it over as she sipped her tea, playing with her earring carelessly and sloshing the liquid about in her cup. Annie marveled at her friend's new absent-mindedness. The paparazzi invasion really appeared to have unsettled her.

“Oh,” Lily said, gripping the mug with both hands. “It's an existential crisis. My dad went through one. So did Rain's.”

“He told me,” Annie said, remembering the story of Clayton Mistern. He had filled his journals with insights for three decades, and then lost his mind. It was almost as if the rationality had drained out of his body and into those pages.

Did a human being have a limited amount of sanity?

Lily nodded. “It's a male scientist thing–a rite of passage. For the brilliant ones, anyway. All men like Rain go through something like that.”

“What should I do?”

Lily sipped again, earrings swinging like feathery pendulums. Annie narrowed her eyes at them, remembering the Kaamo totems she had seen during Tiltu: feathers on Sola's throne, tails of demon birds stuck to bare chests, bird skull-headpieces on the crowns of the warriors. There had even been a whole bird-skeleton stuck to the throne with blood, and feathers that swung like Lil's earrings from the pigskin belt around Sola's waist, between beads and polished bones, like a very morbid charm bracelet
.
A charm
belt
, actually.

Jesus.
Annie caught herself. Lily's outfit was probably from Forever 21, for Christ's sake.

The anthropology life is getting to me, too.

“Men like Rain always go through a spiritual crisis,” Lily said finally. “A spiritual awakening. He'll start to exhibit some strange behavior. He'll have vivid dreams. You'll hear rants about infinity, the source, new perspectives, and unity. Even God. He might start taking psychedelics.”

“You know a lot about this.”

“Both my dad and Rain's went through it,” Lily repeated. “He'll take mushrooms and mescaline. He'll probably read Aldous Huxley and say all this crap about how our perspective is limited.
Limited
, man,” Lily drawled the last words, putting on her best stoned-hippie voice. “He'll say that drugs open the doors of perception, letting you see
everything
, dude.”

Annie remembered the William Blake quote. “
When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they really are–infinite
.”

“Yep.”

“So he'll go crazy?” Annie flipped on her side, trying to appear casual, though her heart was thumping and her brain was doing flips.

“Oh, what does crazy even mean? He'll go kind of… guru. And he may come back to reality, or he may not. Just don't sleep with him again.”

Annie was silent.

“Ok? You?” Lily gave her a poke.

There was not a sound. Outside the window a warbling firetail was saying hello. Annie focused on the sound through the pane of curtain-framed hotel glass.

“Withhold sex. Do it for me, Ann. And for yourself. After all the crap Rain did to you. Crazy douchebag. Now he'll grow into a bona fide
crazy
old douchebag!”

A tear wobbled into Annie's eye and trickled down her cheek. She wiped it away, listening to the song of the firetail as Lily fell silent. She and the bird stared at each other as if both of them knew a terrible secret.

Rain had been a bad, bad boy.

“Oh,” He gasped as the princess rolled her lips up his penis again. It turned out to be the final roll–the feeling was so luscious he came unexpectedly.

Rain Mistern loved those unexpected orgasms. They were clattering and spectacular, like a pile of bricks falling. His brain sent out a big,
yes, thank you
. Every fiber of his being gloried at the unexpected twist.

“Hwooh.'” He managed that noise before collapsing on his back. It was uncomfortable on Annie's bamboo-backed foam mattress, but he was only letting Sola suck him off inside today. He had insisted.

The risk of photographers capturing his blow jobs with a telephoto lens was not one he wanted to take.

“Rain. I want you to take me.” Sola nuzzled him, breathing into his pecs and fingering his bicep with appreciative strokes. Her breasts felt so good against his skin. It would have made Rain hard if he hadn't just come his brains out.

“Sola. You are a
virgin.”
He gasped. Rain could actually see the skin between his pectorals pulsing, like a drum skin just bashed with a stick. “I would be burnt alive for doing that.”

“You would be burnt alive for what we have done already,” Sola said, giving him a lick. He hated to admit it, but she was right. “Your trust is in me.”

“It sure is.” Rain still regretted it. He tried to treat the princess well, tiptoeing around her when she was in a bad mood and attending at once to her concerns. Treating her well came easily, thank goodness—Sola was a charming woman. “My ass…” He grabbed her wrist, relishing her giggle, and let it smack down onto his rear. “…is in your hands.”

“I want your hands on my ass,” she said. It was so animal Rain actually moaned. He turned to peer at the princess.

She was captivating. Sola had eyes like amber stones, flecked in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. They were comprised of all the colors of a sunset—yellow and red and marmalade orange and dazzling, engagement ring-quality gold. All the colors of victory, and of royalty. He'd thought they were brown the first time he saw her.
Nope
–here in Annie's dwelling, with the sun shining through the same window that had let a fresh breeze in as she sucked him off, he could see them clearly: eyes assembled from flecks of magic.

Her breasts heaved below her slim neck and angelic heart-shaped face. They were the color of mocha coffee and the texture of his wildest fantasies—womanly, wondrous, bite-able, bouncy, firm.

With an improbable stirring of his cock, Rain was ready to go again. He grabbed Sola by the wrists and pinned her to the bed, listening with a smile to her squeals. The sight of her startled eyes made him harder, especially when her mouth widened too, releasing a puff of hot breath.

Rain grinded. He thrust his cock between her legs without entering the sweet space. My God, how much he wanted to fill her: to hear her squeak of pain, as the barrier to her secret woman's space was ripped. Every violent pocket in his being rejoiced at the thought. With every grind, his brain screamed: Do it. Really do it! Take her!

Sola's fingers on her nipples were not helping matters. She fingered the buds, twisting them and letting her breasts bounce. She moved with Rain's rhythm, surrendering under his body and letting him lead.

He watched, hypnotized, as a shining spot of drool gathered in the corner of her mouth. It spilled over, trailing down her chin, an echo of the cum that had spilled down her face when they 69'd on the beach.

He did not want to be in her mouth anymore. He wanted
her.
He wanted the part of her that only one man would ever take: her sweet virginity.

“Mmm.” Rain kept grinding, watching Sola's face. Her eyes were squeezed shut now. Her bosoms were moving in a tiny arc on her chest, from one full moon-shape to another. They looked great at every angle. And–oh God–she did not even make a move to wipe her chin.

She was so primal. It really made him horny.

“Rain, do it,” she ordered, princess tone in her voice. “Take me.”

“No.” Maybe it was the bossiness, but he was turned off like a shot. “I am not going to…do that.”

The light was fading in the hut. Rain spotted Anne's candle on her table, ready to be lit, and took that excuse to break Sola's stare and shuffle away, erection still bulging. He mumbled something about nightfall and rose to his feet.

“I've told you I want it,” the princess's musical voice trailed after him, filling the hut. Rain admired her voice, the way authority sat alongside girlish charm in her tone. He sparked Annie's lighter, waiting for a good little blaze, and hung the flame over the scented candle. He did not turn around, although Sola's words kept coming: