The Jewels of Tessa Kent (18 page)

Yet, on the other land, Tessa reflected, Tyler and Madison Webster had taken her in with ease and pleasure,
delighted to see Luke so happy. Luke’s stepbrother and his wife, a handsome young couple from Essex County in the New Jersey hunt country, had been the only guests at the wedding who’d been perfectly natural with everybody, from her father to Prince Rainier, from a shy wife of one of Luke’s executives to the youngest of her badly behaved second cousins. They had the kind of bred-in-the-bone manners that were unobtrusively the same for one and all.

Of all the guests who’d known her before she’d started making films, Mimi alone had remained herself, as devilish and free-spirited as ever, totally unaffected by Agnes’s darting looks of incredulous disgust at her presence. Fiona, heaven-sent Fiona, was bossily preoccupied with the amazing number of details that accompanied the wedding dress and her own maid-of-honor dress (which she and Tessa had purchased at Harrods’ Wedding Salon on a flying trip to London), as well as everything else Fiona had, in obvious delight, deemed necessary for her trousseau. Mimi, unimpressed by Fiona’s earnestness, waltzed around in Tessa’s suite wearing nothing but the green diamond, lace bikini underpants, and high heels. She was as irrepressible as ever, relating scandalous gossip about the post-school adventures of their classmates at Sacred Heart, detailing the pros and cons of her long train of boyfriends at college, demanding that Luke provide her with an Aussie exactly like him, ordering improbable things at improbable hours from room service just to prove that it could be done—only Mimi, and Tessa’s small group of Hollywood guests, had the fun that she’d wanted them all to have.

Oh well, her intentions had been good, Tessa told herself. She felt the solid wedge of tension between her shoulders begin to disappear as the wedding memories stopped occupying her mind. She could feel the light of the late-afternoon sun grow dimmer on her eyelids. Maybe … maybe, she’d just take a little nap until Luke stopped the car … they should be there soon …

Tessa woke up slowly, with the feeling she normally associated with a particularly good night’s sleep. Oh, she thought, without opening her eyes, why weren’t naps more appreciated? A nap was the only form of sleep that didn’t have any concept of duty attached to it. A nap wasn’t something you “needed” or “shouldn’t miss” or “had to have” to perform the following day. It was a divine treat, a brief blessing, in which you had no dreams but only a deep, luscious blankness that wiped away whatever had been bothering you before you fell into it. Churchill took naps, she remembered, every day. Would she become like him if she followed his example, or would she have to add brandy and the cigars to the mix? She must ask Luke, he knew things like that. Luke!

She sat up abruptly. She was still wearing the dress she’d put on after the reception, and there was a warm quilt covering her, but she seemed to have been napping right in the middle of a large bed in a room she’d never seen before. Luke must have carried her in from the car. There were heavy beams overhead and arched windows were cut into the thick stone walls. Tessa hurried over to the nearest window and looked out. A long field of still unharvested lavender, its spiky, concentric clusters planted in strict rows; olive trees; cypress trees; vines that crept around the outside of the window—nothing unexpected for a farmhouse in Provence. Not if you ignored the color of the light … light the clear color of dawn, not of sunset.

I must have slept at least thirteen hours, maybe more, Tessa thought, wrapping the quilt around her shoulders, and my God I need to pee more than I need to find my bridegroom.

Fortunately the first door she opened was that of a perfectly appointed bathroom. After her urgent quest had been satisfied, Tessa discovered that her cosmetics bag had been placed, unopened, by the side of the sink. She hastily splashed her face with water, brushed her teeth, took off her crushed dress, and decided to take a
quick shower since there was no sight or sound of Luke in the bedroom.

Once she had had her shower, she realized that traces of makeup were still on her face. She removed it expertly, brushed her hair until it fairly stood up and saluted, and, looking in the mirror, pronounced herself ready to meet the day. Now, all she needed was something to wear and a husband, in that order. She searched the closets for her suitcases without success. Wrapped in a large bath towel big enough to fasten into a sarong, Tessa opened the other door in the room and almost fell over Luke. He lay there, fully clothed, like the faithful bodyguard of some paranoid empress, sleeping on a runner in the corridor, huddled in a nest of pillows and covered by another quilt.

She knelt by his side and scratched the back of his hand gently. He slept on. She kissed his earlobe lingeringly. Nothing. She pulled gently and then less gently on various short tufts of his hair. His breathing didn’t even change. Tessa sat back on her heels and contemplated the sleeping man. He might as well be in a coma. She didn’t want to shock him awake, but on the other hand she didn’t want him to keep on sleeping now that she was up. Who knew when he’d fallen asleep? He could have been up half the night keeping watch over her before he’d mysteriously chosen to settle on the floor. But if she allowed him to keep on sleeping now, they’d be out of sync; one of them would always be sleeping when the other was awake, and that was no way to begin a marriage. Anyway, she was chilly in the morning air.

With determination Tessa removed her towel and crept under the quilt stark naked. At first it was enough just to be warm again. A man who could be counted on for body heat, was Luke Blake, she thought, light-headed at being naked next to a sleeping man. Surely he’d feel that she was there and wake up … wouldn’t a person know when someone had joined him under his quilt? Some bodyguard he’d make … a troop of rape-minded
Cossacks could have stepped over him in the night, and it had been, officially, her wedding night, at that.

Tessa indignantly unbuttoned Luke’s shirt. At least he’d taken off his tie in the car, so she didn’t have to deal with that. She put her head next to his chest and puffed all over it, thinking to wake him with her breath. Luke slept on. Tessa reflected. She could poke him in the ribs, she could tickle him under his arms—but she didn’t know if he was ticklish. She could shake him, but he was too big to shake. Or she could unbuckle his belt. Yes, that would be the next logical thing to do, now that she had his shirt open. It would give her a wider field of operation. She unbuckled his belt easily and unzipped his fly easily, considering that she’d never done either of those things before except on a pair of her own jeans. Luke rolled his head away from her, but otherwise there was no change in his sleep. Tessa followed the line of hair on his chest down past his waistline, pulling firmly on it at every step. Wouldn’t you think that if somebody pulled your stomach hair, you’d wake up? She certainly would, but there was no hair on her stomach.

Eventually her exploring fingers found a thicker growth of wiry hair and Tessa stopped abruptly. You couldn’t, you simply couldn’t pull a man’s pubic hair. That must come under the heading of things not done. Particularly with a man whose penis you’d never seen. But, on the other hand, an unseen penis was not in the same category as pubic hair. It was a definite invitation. An irresistible invitation, which came under the heading of things you could investigate if you were so inclined. Squirming until she could reach lower, Tessa took Luke’s penis in her hand and cuddled it, without moving. It felt … friendly, she thought, not at all frightening, like a soft, warm, agreeable, oddly shaped little animal, a sort of household pet. A pet with potential, a pet more responsive than its owner, since he continued to sleep while his penis showed signs of acknowledging her touch. Fascinated, she continued to hold it as it grew
larger and longer and harder, losing its pet qualities by the second, although it still, to her way of thinking, remained definitely friendly. Soon it was so big that the only way she could take its measure was to move her hand up and down its length. It had all sort of interesting parts and subdivisions to it, she thought, breathlessly. It would reward further exploration.

“Hey! What the hell!”

So that was the secret of waking him up.

“You were sleeping,” she said accusingly, not letting go, in case he thought this was a particularly vivid dream.

“Stop that!”

“Aren’t you supposed to like it?”

“I do, but let go!”

Reluctantly, Tessa abandoned her discovery and raised her head to a level with Luke’s. “Good morning,” she said demurely.

He snorted with laughter at her tone. “What convent did they teach you that in?”

“I was merely following my natural instincts.”

“Oh, darling,” he said, covering her face with kisses, “I hate to repress your instincts, but not on this floor.”

“What are you doing out here, anyway?”

“I brought you in from the car and put you in the middle of the bed because I was afraid that if you woke up on the side of a mattress in a strange bed you’d fall off, trying to find out where you were. Then, when you didn’t wake up for hours, I didn’t want to move you, because obviously you needed the sleep. I thought about going to sleep on the rug next to the bed, but I was afraid you’d wake up in the middle on the night and fall over me in the dark. So this seemed like the best place to wait, where you’d find me when you woke.”

“Why didn’t you leave a little light on in the bedroom so I’d see you on the rug?”

“Oh.”

“You weren’t thinking straight,” she said, forgivingly.

“I’ve never been in this situation before. In fact, no woman has ever been in this house or on that bed before.”

“But I thought you’d had a place in Cap-Ferrat for years?”

“I do, that’s where I keep my boat. I bought this when I came down here after we got engaged—a place just for us. My God, you’re naked!”

“I wondered when you’d notice.”

Luke scooped her up, quilt and all, and carried her back into the bedroom and deposited her gently on the bed.

“Will you wait here, without going anywhere else, just stay put, absolutely put, while I brush my teeth and take a quick shower?” he demanded.

“May I breathe?” Now that Luke was properly awake and in charge, she found herself taking refuge in a sort of silliness that wasn’t natural to her.

“From time to time.”

Tessa waited for him, confused beyond measure, overcome with curiosity, anticipation, and anxiety. Her mind refused to function as she looked at the beams of the bedroom ceiling without seeing them. A short interval passed, a blank time of waiting, almost without breathing. When Luke returned he peeled off his towel, and rolled under the quilt next to her. Tessa was overcome with a sudden attack of acute shyness. She pulled away from him and hid as much of herself as she could under the quilt. One of her eyes looked out from under her hair.

“Darling, Tessa, darling, you’re breaking my heart. Don’t look at me that way,” he pleaded. “We don’t have to do anything at all, there are no rules about this, we can get up and have breakfast and go exploring, we can spend a week doing nothing at all if you let me kiss you from time to time.”

“No.”

“No, you won’t let me kiss you?”

“No, I don’t want to get up and have breakfast.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. You’re supposed to know.”

“Normally I would. But you’re a …”

“I know, I know, don’t remind me, just do whatever you’d normally do if you were in bed with some woman.”

“You’re not ‘some woman,’ you’re my wife, the love of my life.”

“Then make something up.”

“First I’ll investigate the only part of you I can see,” he said, smiling at her childishness. He drew closer to her and traced her eyebrow with his lips. When she didn’t pull farther away, he kissed her with tiny, soft kisses along the curve of her bone from her eyebrow to her nose.

“Fiona said that was my best feature,” Tessa mumbled.

“I can’t tell yet,” Luke murmured. “You could have a better one hidden away somewhere.” Gently he turned her head so that he could kiss her lips. Mutely, Tessa returned his kisses, but Luke could tell, from the tension he sensed in the trembling pressure of her mouth, that she was filled with apprehension. Of course she is, he thought, what could be more natural? He modulated his passion to her timidity, keeping his kisses utterly undemanding, reining in any sign of his desire. For long minutes they lost themselves in a chain of soft, almost tentative kisses, while his fingers were plunged into her hair, caressing her skull with calm, reassuring movements. Some time after he felt her lips grow more confident, Luke allowed his mouth to stray from her mouth to her ear, holding her bundled up from her collarbone downward. He kissed her ear, leaving no fraction of its lobe untouched, and then he kissed her down the long, firm curve of her neck; and when he reached her shoulder he kissed her along the fragile skin at the base of her neck. Each time he reached her collarbone, his mouth retraced its journey down from her ear, never venturing lower and never breaking its rhythm.

Tessa’s breathing grew faster with each voyage of his lips from her ear to her collarbone, until, suddenly, she flung back the blanket and revealed her high breasts, their small pink nipples as erect as if he’d been sucking on them without mercy. “Put your mouth on them,” she panted, “and leave my ear alone, you’re driving me crazy!”

“That’s more or less the idea,” Luke mumbled, as he bent his head toward the points of flesh whose delicacy had grown so bold. Tessa reached her arms out blindly for him, but Luke drew the lower part of his body out of her reach so that she couldn’t again tantalize his rearing penis. She needed so much more to make her ready, he thought, so much long and careful preparation, yet she could have no idea of what her touch did to him. They lay facing each other while he cupped each of her breasts in his hands so that he could move quickly from one nipple to another, using his tongue, his teeth, his lips, firmly holding back the full force of his passion, entirely focused on giving her delight throughout every cell of her exquisite nipples that grew more engorged by the second. Tessa squirmed under the quilt that covered her from her waist down, trying to push it off, but Luke’s superior strength prevented her, even as he held her breasts captive to his sweetly plundering mouth. She pushed herself forward, trying to get as much of each breast into his mouth as possible, and when he switched from one to another, the instant during which he was unattached to her seemed unendurable. “Come on, come on!” she implored him through clenched teeth. Oh no, he thought, you won’t make me rush you, you can’t make me take you before you’re so excited that it won’t hurt.