Hold Back the Night (19 page)

He touched her eyelids, her cheek, her jaw, to determine her expression. 'I think you have it now,' he said softly. 'A woman who wants to be made love to . . . I'm sure I feel that in your face. I wonder if the rest of you is as ready for the moment of mating?'

Without lowering his head, he passed his hand downward to her breast, grazing the nipples to assure himself that what he wanted, she wanted too. And then he rose swiftly to his feet and turned his back, filling Domini with an aching emptiness because there had been no completion of the kiss she wanted and expected.

'Put on your robe now,' he directed in a toneless voice. 'That's enough modelling for today.'

Sick with the longings he had awakened, Domini raised herself on one elbow. 'Sander,' she whispered in a low tortured plea that betrayed the need that now washed through her like a cresting wave, flooding her limbs, driving even pride before it.

There was tension in the broad set of his shoulders. 'Yes, I intend to make love to you. But this isn't the right place ... you know full well we might be interrupted. I'm taking you up to my bedroom, Domini Greey, because no one ever walks in on me there, not even Miranda. Now put on your robe and come, and be quick about it.'

It was not a request but a command, a harsh and arrogant one at that. But it only echoed the command of Domini's own body, passionate by nature and too long deprived of passion. Without a word she rose, slipped on her robe, and followed Sander up the stairs.

Because it was still early afternoon, there was light enough in the bedroom. He closed the door and walked across to the bed, stripping the covers back in one fluid movement. Then he turned to face Domini, desire darkening his face and turning his breathing heavy. 'Come here,' he ordered in a rough voice that sent heat thrilling through Domini's lower limbs.

Again she obeyed the pull of her body and her heart. Moving across the room, she came to a halt inches from the man she now knew she loved, and looked up at him expectantly, her eyes feverish with wanting. His unbuttoned shirt revealed the firm flesh she longed to feel, the crispness of hair that disappeared beneath the beltline of his trousers. Something told her not to touch, not yet, although she could not have said why.

He raised his hands and pushed the robe from her shoulders, allowing it to slide unchecked to the floor. Not yet kissing her, he reached for the pins that fastened her hair and extracted them slowly, one by one. Then he ran his long strong artist's fingers through the freed mass, pulling it forward so that the gold of it spilled over her breasts, and through the curtain of hair his roughened fingertips sought the ripe swell of the breasts themselves, the caress expert, unhurried, supremely arousing against her nipples. If he was impatient, it showed in no way in the sensuous expression of his mouth.

And Domini knew that he intended to teach her to make love lingeringly and beautifully, as she had wanted to be taught so many years before. Instinctively she knew she was right to contain her own urgency, allowing Sander to do with her as he wished; a man of his particular mould and virility would not wish the advances to be made by her. Once, she had been too forward, and she would not make the same mistake again. This time she would leave the pace to him.

And so she stood, longing for his kiss and his mastery but willing to wait for the moment when it came. All the same, by the time he bent his mouth to hers, hands sunk into her hair to shape the curve of her ears, she was in a tremble of need that knew no bounds. Not breaking the kiss that started gently and deepened slowly, he lowered her to the bed and came down beside her, still fully clad but for the opening of his shirt, where the disturbing textures now abraded Domini's bare breasts. Against her thigh, she could feel the mounting male power of him, leashed only by the confines of heavy cloth. And now he twined one hand more urgently in her hair and his kiss became passionately probing, betraying his true hunger even as his other hand moved. It slid downward over the slender hollows of her waist, not halting until it reached a more intimate goal.

The contact was electric. Although she had sworn to herself that she would respond at the pace he set, Domini gasped and arched extravagantly against his hand because she could not do otherwise with shock waves invading her core. He lifted his head, ending the joining of their lips.

'So wild, so soon?' he murmured into her ear, the expelled breath against her lobe only serving to quicken her passion. He had not changed the placement of his hand. As if he knew what urges were possessing her, Sander laughed softly and triumphantly, the laugh of a conqueror who knows the conquest has been made and can afford to take the spoils at his leisure. He dragged his tongue temptingly across her lips, evading the parted eagerness of them with a forbearance that was a deliberate torture to her. Then with his hand he began a slow, expert stroking that caused Domini to moan and writhe, all thoughts of curbing her responses now flown completely out of her mind.

'There's a pleasure to be had in putting off pleasure,' he murmured as his head slid downward and his mouth moved to her breast. He seized a taut crest gently between his teeth, slowly increased the pressure, then found it softly with his lazy tongue tip. Domini gasped again, a long, shuddering gasp that travelled the length of her naked body. It was the first time his lips had ever touched her in such a way, and as he began to caress her breasts in earnest, hungrily seeking the nipples even as the expert feathering of his hand continued to arouse, Domini reacted with a wildness and ardour she could not possibly conceal. Her fists clenched against his chest, ungentle in their urgency; her hips strained upward to invite the moment nature intended her to know. At once he withdrew his touch, again with the husky laugh of a victor.

'Do you think I'll let you escape so quickly?' he murmured in a low, husky voice. 'You're too importunate, my lovely friend. Hasn't anyone ever taught you that half the pleasure lies in getting there?'

Alternately tormenting her and gratifying her, he led her to the brink again and again. As his parted mouth ranged her nakedness, plundering it, lingering and lifting, his tempting incendiary kisses sent a flash fire raging in her blood, until her weakness became wantonness. She began to clutch at his hair, dig her fingers into his shoulders, tear at the shirt that still covered his muscles too well. And at last, satisfied that she would reach no higher heights, he relented.

Still containing his own desire, he began to bring her to the breathtaking conclusion. She resisted nothing, invited everything with responses as uninhibited as the lips that seared over her vulnerable flesh. Where his torrid mouth travelled, her skin ignited, and when he moved onward to kindle new flames, the moist imprint he left behind left erotic fires burning in her flesh. His hands were like brands that roamed and aroused as masterfully as his lips, firing her blood, turning her restless thighs to molten gold.

And all too soon, brought to mindlessness by the burning intimacies of his mouth and the expertness of his caresses, the fire in her exploded, consuming her in a final skyrocketing burst of ecstasy that sent her hips arching higher and caused her fingers to clench hurtfully in his hair.

She cried out in the moment of release, although by then she was so wild with wanting that she could not have said what words she cried. And then, limp and clinging, she shuddered helplessly as she floated back to earth.

At last, radiant with satisfaction, she opened her eyes and turned her head to look at him, the well of her love deepened because he had reined his ardour to give full freedom to hers. So her instincts had been right years ago: Sander was indeed a man good at teaching a woman what it was to be a woman. She knew he had taught her skilfully and well, taking time to arouse every sensory response she possessed.

He had detached himself and lay a little apart with one loosely curled hand resting over closed eyes. His expression almost approximated pain, and Domini thought she knew why.

She reached out to touch him with light fingers. 'Make love to me,' she whispered, wanting to satisfy his deep need as he had satisfied hers.

His mouth turned callous, matching the sudden flare of his nostrils. He uncovered his eyes and opened them. Lighted by the daylight from the gable window, they seemed to glow as they turned unseeingly towards her. 'Fair is fair,' he said tersely. 'I just made love to you. Isn't it your turn to make love to me?'

Domini stared, shocked at the sudden change in him. No more the considerate lover, he had become the arrogant man locked into a prison of bitterness and pride. She sat up, only to have hard fingers feel for and then curl around her wrist, preventing any attempt at departure.

'Can you leave me like this ... unsatisfied?' He pulled her hand to his waist and below, forcing it against the cloth concealing the potent contours of his manhood. For a long moment he held her fingers in place with a grip of steel.

'I don't think you could be so heartless,' he mocked as he finally released her wrist. 'Now undress me.'

He had read her well. Domini could not leave him now, and not only because she would be leaving him in a state of arousal. Already the touch of him had sent frissons of new excitement chasing over the surface of her skin. He might be trying to demean her by ordering her to remove his clothes, but that was exactly what the primitive part of Domini wanted to do.

Less disturbed than Sander might have hoped, Domini smiled a smile he could not see. Now that she understood that his intent was to hurt her for some twisted reason of his own, she thought she knew exactly how to deal with him. She simply returned her hand to its resting place of a moment before.

His reaction was sudden and violent. Expecting reticence, not forwardness, he practically jack-knifed to a sitting position, sucking in his breath in a long unsteady rasp. Unable in his blindness to foresee her actions, he had been taken totally by surprise, and the surprise robbed him of whatever self-control remained to him.

His kiss exploded against her mouth, driving her back against the pillow. After that there was no pretence of waiting for Domini to undress him. He released her mouth long enough to tear off his clothes, baring the strong muscles, the virile thighs whose power she longed to feel. He came crushing down on her at once, knees intruding to push her legs into readiness, hands almost violent in their seizure of her exhilarated body, mouth already opening with desire as it descended to ravish hers. As his kiss took her he drove home with no waiting, his hard-muscled body claiming absolute and instant dominion over hers.

This time he seemed not to care for her response. Yet, wildly excited by his sensual savagery, she gave it. She wound her arms around his shoulders, laced her fingers in his hair, clung to his mouth, arched to the pulsing age-old rhythms of love. And at the end she matched his final passion with her own, finding once more the culmination of desire.

Afterwards they lay silent, Sander's face so totally forbidding that Domini dared not speak. She spent the time with her eyes learning all the intimate shapes of him, storing them in memory just as he sometimes seemed to memorize her with his hands. In the wake of passion a great sadness seized her as she contemplated how little he cared for her. At last she became conscious that the slant of the sun decreed that she ought to leave. She eased over Sander's naked body, for he lay on the outer edge of the bed.

He caught her as she slid to her feet, gripping her hips to prevent immediate departure. He came to a sitting position himself. Domini didn't try to pull away; she merely twisted within his arms in order to take one more lingering look at the man who had aroused her so.

'I have to go,' she said quietly.

'Will you be back tomorrow?'

In her unhappy reflections Domini had been wondering about that, but her voice made the decision for her. 'Yes,' she heard herself say. 'I will.'

For a moment he buried his face at her waist, and Domini thought she saw a small shudder travel over his shoulders. Then he released her, and she decided she must have been mistaken, for his expression was no warmer than before.

'Next time we have sex,' he rasped with deliberate and unkind emphasis on the last part of the phrase, 'remember that I can be much kinder if you don't cry out meaningless words at the end. As long as you avoid them from now on, I'll be more ... considerate.'

Domini paused midway through reaching for her robe. 'I don't know what you mean,' she said, honestly puzzled. And then she remembered that in one moment of rapture, she had given vent to some kind of feeling. 'What did I say?' she asked in a very low voice.

'Surely you can imagine.' His face was discouragingly enigmatic, his eyes brooding. 'Please spare me any repetitions, for I assure you I have no intention of ever feeding you the same sort of lie that you fed me.'

Domini retrieved the robe, slipped into it, and fastened the belt, taking time with her answer because she knew full well what she must have said. And she knew that to let Sander know she loved him was to put herself too much into his power.

'It wasn't a lie exactly,' she said as casually as possible. 'Just the sort of thing one says in the heat of passion. Haven't you ever heard a woman say 'I love you' before? It doesn't have to mean a single thing.'

'It never does,' Sander returned bitterly, and Domini knew he must be thinking of Nicole.

Winter slush had been replaced by weak spring sun, and weak spring sun had turned to cloying summer heat. Heavy coats had long since been shed, boots had been put in closets, and now bare-armed women complained about the abominable temperatures that sometimes scorched New York in June. Tubs of flowers appeared on the hot SoHo sidewalks, secondhand books were laid on outdoor tables for the delectation of passing browsers, and sales of air conditioners were brisk. The pavements were crowded, not with Christmas shoppers but with tourists. Architecturally minded visitors came cast-iron looking, taking pleasure in nineteenth-century lampposts and gargoyles and acanthus leaves and great arched windows; others came to sample the exotic extravagances in Dean & DeLuca's huge and fascinating food emporium. SoHo in summer was hot, alive, energetic, and colourful.

Domini had lost some weight. Her relationship with Sander occupied too much of her mind and too many of her afternoons, and because it was a relationship with no hope that she could see, it brought deep anguish, as well as moments of exquisite ecstasy when all the anguish seemed of no moment at all. Often she swore she would stay away from the small gallery, but just as often she found her heart and her body tugging her back.

Sander's small cruelties had ceased, to be replaced by a dark and brooding passion that meant as much time was spent in his bedroom as in his workshop during her visits. Miranda could not help but become aware of what was happening upstairs, and although Domini avoided discussing it with her, she knew Miranda approved. She had the idea that Miranda hoped it might end in marriage ... possibly for her own sake as much as for her brother's. If Sander married she would no longer have the responsibility of caring for him and could follow her own heart.

Overtired by trying to do too much, Domini began in early spring to restrict her visits to two a week, even less if her will power behaved, or if Tasey had to miss day care because of the inevitable childhood episodes of sniffles and croup.

When informed of the reduction in the number of sessions, Sander had made no comment beyond a brief tightening of the jaw, which Domini interpreted as annoyance that her private life should interfere with his wishes. Wanting her as a model, he had become more careful of her feelings. Although pride and male arrogance were a part of his nature, he was no longer so tempestuous in anger, although he remained satisfyingly so in bed. As long as she betrayed no compassion and no emotional involvement, Sander was considerate, ardent, at time dryly humorous or even engaging in his manner. When sudden arrivals knocked on the door of his workshop, he now draped a cover over Domini before answering, a change of attitude for which she was exceedingly grateful. On occasion, depending on who was at the door, he draped his damp sheets over the sculpture too. He never spoke of love, nor did Domini.

For a time she had dared to hope he would. There was sometimes a tenderness in him in the moving moments after they had made love, when he would hold her close and stroke her hair or simply lay his hand gently alongside her cheek as if to read what changing emotions might be patterned in her face. At such times his own expression would remain remote and unrevealing. But on occasion during the sculpting sessions, when he thought himself unobserved, she would see a fleeting anguish flicker across his face, an expression than closely approximated her own hopeless feelings about the affair.

At the beginning that passing pain, so seldom sighted and so swiftly masked, made her wonder if his feelings were becoming involved more than he cared to admit. But one day while modelling, she forced a conversation that sounded the death knell to such wishful thinking.

'Have you ever been in love?' she dared to ask.

He stiffened. 'I hope that's not a leading question. I don't believe in love.'

'Just idle curiosity.' Domini paused. 'All those years you spent in Paris ... surely you weren't so cynical then? There must have been someone.'

'There were quite a few,' he said harshly. 'Women come and go and they mean nothing to me, especially now. In the dark one female is much the same as another.'

Domini thought he was lying. He had once loved Nicole, she knew that; and she was also fairly sure that Nicole's desertion must have soured Sander's attitude towards women. She waited until he was touching her again, stroking her side to determine the exact flare of hip bone in the indolent posture he had asked her to assume. 'There must be some woman you remember from Paris,' she prodded.

'And if there was, how should that be your concern?' he countered with little inflection, but his hand came to a halt. Domini wondered if she detected a tremble in his fingertips. Or was it mere imagination?

'Because I imagine she was one of your models, like me,' Domini said. 'I'm curious about the competition.'

'Ah,' he said unrevealingly, and his hand went back to its task.

'Was she your last model?'

'I've told you, life sessions don't always end up in bed,' he retorted misleadingly.

Domini thought about squeaking bedsprings, and old jealousies came spilling back, surprising in their intensity. Her voice was a little stiff when she replied, 'Maybe not, but don't tell me hers didn't!'

'And what makes you so sure?'

'I've seen pictures of the sculptures you did of her.' Domini plunged compulsively on, uncaring whether the memories were painful to Sander or not; his evasiveness was a goad. 'One or two of them looked like they had been done after love-making, not before.' Sander's face was impassive as stone, neither confirming nor denying. Splintered with jealousy, Domini added, 'What was her name?'

'Nicole,' he said, frowning down at the hip he could not see. Domini saw a small pulse ticking in his temple.

'Did you love her?'

'Love is a word that's not in my vocabulary,' he grated discouragingly. 'It implies a certain depth of emotion.'

'And you've never felt that deeply?'

'Women are too fickle to be worth the involvement.'

Domini's reactions to that comment were very mixed. If he thought of Nicole as fickle that was well and good, but she resented being put in the same category. She made efforts to curb the tautness in her tone, without much success.'Well, then, did you... care for her?'

'Look after her … pay her way? Yes. Is that what you want? To be paid for your services, as she was?'

Usually Domini ignored barbed comments such as these, inflicted as they were out of Sander's embittered and eternal night. But this time she longed for him to dispose of Nicole forever with some damning verbal condemnation. 'No, I mean, did you like her?' she pressed.

'Of course. If I didn't like a woman, I wouldn't take her to bed at all,' he said in a clipped tone.

Domini's fingertips began to curl more than her pose called for. 'Then you must like me.'

'Well enough,' he cut back, 'for the purposes you serve.'

Domini glared at him, her eyes hot. 'Do you like me as well as you liked that... that woman Nicole?'

'As a model or as a mistress?'

'Both,' Domini said, frustrated that he would speak no words betraying any emotional tie to her. Did he really cast her in the same mould as Nicole?

'If I dared to say she was better at either of those things, I'd have no model whatsoever for this sculpture.' Sander's stance challenged Domini in some obscure way. 'Choose the answer that pleases you best,' he finished curtly.

That particular answer didn't please Domini in any way at all. If he cared so little about giving her the benefit of the comparison, perhaps he still carried some kind of torch for Nicole. How could he still feel anything for the selfish bitch after what she had done?

'Do you still think of her?' she pressed, her voice a little sharper.

'Clearly I'm doing that right now,' he returned acidly, running his powerful fingers into the hollow beside Domini's hip and punishing her persistence with pressure a little too extreme for comfort. 'But if I'm thinking of Nicole, it's only because you're forcing me to do it against my will. Once a woman is out of my life, I prefer to put her out of my mind altogether. I'd rather concentrate on the one at hand, which at the moment happens to be you. By the way, you're allowing yourself to get too bony for my liking.'

'At the moment happens to be me!' Domini retorted, because she could not prevent some small outburst of jealousy. 'You make me feel like temporary help! How long am I going to last?'

Sander's dark eyes glittered. With an arrogant and deliberate assertion of the rights she had ceded to him, he allowed his hand to slide downward to an openly intimate position. 'You'll last as long as you continue to satisfy me,' he retorted insolently as he took his liberties. 'And I think I'd like to be satisfied right now.'

'Damn you,' Domini gasped, abandoning her pose and trying to twist away. But already the point of no return had been reached. Holding her in submission with a sweep of his muscular arm, Sander dropped his dark head to the pale flare of her hip, passionately kissing what he should have been sculpting, and before long they were clinging as they climbed the stairs to his bedroom, Domini as urgent as he and no longer asking for the words of endearment he chose not to say.

When she loved him so desperately, how could she deny him anything, even when his demands were issued in such peremptory and loveless fashion?

The sculpture of Domini progressed with agonizing slowness. This time the face was not left unfinished, and Domini saw … as Miranda must see, and as anyone but Sander could see when the sculpture was not shrouded … that it was the face of a woman deeply in love. There was sadness in it as well as sensuality. Sander spoke only of the sensuality, and if he detected the range of other emotions expressed in Domini's eyes and mouth and rendered faithfully by his talented hands, he failed to remark on them. Perhaps the subtler nuances were transmitted by his fingertips without actually registering their meaning on his brain.

In the passing months he had started and finished other pieces equally large. Some of them were stored in corners of the workroom; some of them were stored in the basement of the gallery; some were stored in an empty room on the third floor. All other sculptures were of subjects other than Domini … Joel, Miranda, the attractive nurse who lived down the street, and others whom Sander had been able to cajole into sitting either clothed or unclothed. The nudes awakened no particular jealousy in Domini, as Nicole had, because with her heart she knew full well that for the time being Sander's only sexual obsession was herself. And with her heart she also knew that he was deliberately stalling the completion of the large clay model, declaring himself unsatisfied with this aspect or that, because he wanted her afternoon visits to continue and was too proud to suggest she come for the sole purpose of occupying his bed.

On several occasions and with no great sense of guilt, Domini had surreptitiously removed some of the tiny maquettes he had done in the early days. Sander was too obsessed by his larger sculptures to even note that they were missing. Domini had made the plaster of Paris moulds herself and arranged for a foundry to cast them in bronze, twenty copies of each. Unknown to Sander, Miranda was handling the small bronzes in the gallery, and though unsigned they were selling very well, especially the figurine of a faceless man and woman entwined in the act of love. Domini had long since recovered her initial investment at the foundry, and as the sculptures sold for a modestly substantial amount, there was no need for Miranda to urge Sander back to the construction of toys.

With relief Domini noted the signs of easing finances during her visits. The toys, as well as the bronzes, were producing a decent revenue, and one of the younger artists handled by the gallery was beginning to enjoy some small success as well. A telephone appeared on the sales desk, and Miranda reluctantly admitted that prior to Christmas it had been taken out due to non-payment of bills. A new table materialized to replace the one Sander had preempted for his sculptures. Miranda bought a couple of flattering new dresses, and upstairs the light bulbs became a brighter wattage. A few small repairs were done to fix the fallen plaster, and Domini noted with pleasure that a wallpaper sample book had joined the pile of old art magazines on top of the gallery's sales desk.

The workshop itself changed, tools of carpentry and workbenches giving way as the number of finished sculptures grew, until one day Domini decided it could no longer be called a workshop at all. It was a studio, a sculptor's studio, less sunny and pleasant than some but a studio all the same.

One chance conversation with Miranda produced for Domini a deeper understanding of the financial problems that had plagued Sander for four years, and also filled her with dismay. 'It would have helped,' Miranda sighed at one point, 'if he had received payment for the sculptures he did while he was in Paris. But he didn't. There was some funny thing about his dealer advancing money by mistake because of a murky arrangement with a man named D'Allard. For some reason this D'Allard seemed incensed … made a fuss about putting money out of his own pocket. Sander didn't explain the whole thing, but he told me that because of the circumstances he had to reimburse the man. In lieu of cash, he had to sign everything over to D'Allard ... all of the finished sculptures at his dealer's, and even some things in the workshed he used. I think they all sold, but Sander didn't get a penny.'

Domini felt ill. So her trouble had all been in vain after all. Losing her father from his stable, D'Allard must have set out to recoup the money he had advanced for her own indifferent art. No doubt Sander knew what the foolish young Didi had tried to do too; it must have been explained to him at the time. Not vengeful by nature, Domini nevertheless remembered with spiteful pleasure that D'Allard must have suffered considerable losses when her father severed connections.