The Seventh Secret (24 page)

Running water could be heard, and Emily was obviously still in the shower—and outside the glass shower door, his back to Foster, stood the burly waiter, very still.

For a moment, Foster thought he had come upon a voyeur, or possibly someone who was going to attempt a rape. That instant Emily turned off the shower, and as she did so the waiter pulled a knife from beneath his jacket and yanked back the shower door.

Foster could hear Emily's choked outcry of disbelief. The waiter, knife upraised, was about to enter the shower.

In that frozen second, Foster felt all of his Vietnam-bred instincts to attack explode inside him, and he catapulted himself forward with a shout of rage.

Stunned, the waiter stopped and whirled about, knife still upraised, trying to make out what was happening. Foster was upon him like a madman, grabbing and twisting the waiter's raised wrist until the knife fell away to the floor. In a quick practiced judo motion, Foster crouched down, gripped the waiter, and flipped him high in the air over his head, sending the assailant crashing to the tiled bathroom floor behind him.

About to spin and grab the man, Foster's eyes held momentarily on Emily in the shower. He saw her naked and dripping wet, falling against a side of the shower, eyes closed, choking with fear, trying to keep her balance.

Assured that she was unhurt, Foster wheeled to deal once more with her attacker. But the burly waiter had managed to stagger to his feet, and without a backward glance he plunged into the bedroom. Breathing heavily, Foster started after him. By the time he reached the door into the living room, the waiter was gone. Foster rushed to the open door of the suite, and looked up the hotel corridor. He saw the waiter, on the run, disappearing around a corner.

He wanted to pursue the man, but he knew the murderous bastard would have carefully planned his own escape route. He would never catch him. He wondered whether he should phone down to the lobby, but he knew that interception was impossible, too. The killer would have found other means to enter the hotel and to leave it.

And all Foster really eared about at that moment was Emily and her safety.

He rushed back into the bathroom to help her. She was still in the shower. She had slid down the side of the tile shower and lay cringing beneath the dripping shower head in a state of collapse.

He ducked inside. Kneeling, he reached for her and tried to get hold of her wet, slippery body. As his arms went under her, trying to, take a firm grip, Emily realized it was Foster who was holding her and that she was safe, and she laid her head against his shoulder with a moan of gratitude.

With little difficulty he lifted her off the tile floor, and, as she curled tightly against him, he backed out of the shower, snatched one of the hotel's terrycloth bathrobes, and dropped it over her. Carefully, he carried her across the bathroom and into the bedroom.

"How are you? How are you?" he kept whispering.

"Thank God for you, thank God."

"Here," he said, still holding her and awkwardly tearing back her bedspread and blanket at the same time. At last, he managed it, and gently he deposited her on the bed and pulled the blanket over her body, throwing the robe beside her.

Covered, she began to regain her composure, blink-ing up at him. "What happened, Rex? Who was it?"

"It was a room-service waiter bringing in your drink order, or so I thought when I followed him in here."

"But I never ordered from room service," she said. She pulled herself upright, holding the top of the blanket over her breasts. "I already had drinks here for us. There wasn't supposed to be any waiter."

"And there wasn't. Somebody came here to kill you. When I saw him in the bathroom, I went berserk." He peered at her. "You're sure you're all right?"

"I'm alive," she said. "I guess that's being all right." She paused. "Who could it have been?"

He gave her a lopsided smile. "Apparently a Constant Reader who saw a photograph in the morning paper, someone who didn't like your nosing about in the Nazi past."

She shook her tangled wet hair with disbelief. "But murder . . ." she said.

"You know a better way to discourage snoopy people?" He looked down at her again with concern. "Emily, how do you feel?"

"Still a little scared, but recovering. I'll be fine in a short while. I'm afraid I'm not up to dinner though. I seem to have lost my appetite. You know what? All I need is company, if you can stand being company on an empty stomach. Company and a long drink. Maybe Scotch. And you?"

"Company and a long drink," he affirmed, "and to hell with ordering dinner. This is cozier. I think we should both celebrate survival and togetherness by getting a little drunk. Let me pour a couple of Scotches for starters." He paused before going into the living room.

"You know, Emily, I meant to tell you something tonight. I mean, at the first moment we were together."

"What?"

"That I think I love you, that's all. Now let's drink to that."

I
t was nearly midnight. In the bedroom of Emily's hotel suite, they had been sipping their drinks and talking for close to three hours. Emily had managed to pull on the unbelted robe, and pushed aside the bedcover. She was still sitting up in bed, the robe loosely hiding her breasts. Foster had soon moved from a chair to sit on the side of her bed. She'd had three drinks of Scotch, and he was finishing his fourth.

In the last hour, their talk had become more intimate. Sleepily, a trifle woozily, she had told him about her brief marriage, her juvenile mistake. And, feeling safe with him, she had related some details of her humiliating affair with Jeremy Robinson. In turn, he had discussed some of his encounters with other women, and his dissatisfaction with them. Finally, for the first time ever, he had volunteered to speak of his fiasco of a marriage with Valerie Granich. Emily had heard him out understandingly. "So we're both casualties," she murmured. "Casualties of—what?—the war between the sexes?" He had smiled. "I would put it more affirmatively. Survivors of bad judgment who've learned what we want."

Considering this, Emily had wondered aloud, "What do we want? What do you want from a woman, Rex?" Haltingly, he had tried to tell her and then she had begun to tell him what she hoped for from a man. The words closeness and empathy and tenderness were quietly reiterated.

Now they were silent, beyond the region of words.

He felt high, trembling inside with wanting her, desiring her, aroused by the natural perfumes of her breasts and skin, but unable somehow to make the transition from verbal to physical intimacy. He decided not to press it, to allow the relationship to mellow, to wait for another time.

He began to get up from the bed. "I think I'd better go now."

She stared up at him. "Why?"

Uncertainly, he answered. "To let you get some rest."

Her eyes held on him, and she seemed to be making some kind of decision. Deliberately, she set her empty glass on the side table. "I thought you said, long ago this evening, that you loved me. Did you?"

"I did."

"You said I shouldn't be alone any more. I hope you mean it. I don't want to be alone, Rex. I want to be with you." She pulled off the robe with which she had been partially covering her breasts. "You've seen me naked—"

"Well, hardly—" He found speech difficult, his gaze fixed on her small, firm, round breasts, the large brown circles accentuating the hardened and pointed nipples. "I didn't really see you . ."

She pulled at the robe again and cast it entirely aside. "Now you can," she said. "I think turnabout is fair play. I want to see you naked, too. For Chrissakes, Rex, take off your damn clothes—that is, if you want to."

"I want to," he said, setting down his drink. "Are you sure you're up to it?"

"I'm up to it," she said. "The question is—are you?" He had never undressed more quickly, flinging his clothes aside, until he stood before her naked.

Her eyes never left him, and they both knew that he was up to it.

She reached out to caress the hardness of his erection. "How lovely," she whispered.

He felt that his head would dissolve, and his rigid body, too, if he did not have her soon.

He lowered himself onto the bed beside her, and her slender fingers continued to flutter around his penis. She was staring at it with a half smile. "I like what I see," she said softly. "What I see looks very serious."

"It's as serious as can be, and it wants company."

She released him, still with her half smile, and fell back on the pillow. "You're invited," she whispered.

Rising to his knees, at last he saw her clearly nude. From below the protruding milky white and brown-tipped breasts, her abdomen was flat, her rib cage tautly outlined, her navel a slash, the auburn pubic hair down-thin, a marvelous stretch of triangle that revealed the bud of her clitoris and the pink narrow folds of her vulva and labia.

She spread her legs wide, and he bent between them to kiss her clitoris with his tongue.

"Oh, God, darling," she groaned.

Then he was over her, between her thighs, and sliding his penis deep inside her, feeling the fantastic sensation of the moist parting and the snug clinging and hotness of her vulva and his penis as they held together so deep inside her.

"Oh, God," she was repeating again and again.

He tried to find his voice. "I never—never—felt anything like this is my life. Emily, I love you."

And then he was moving steadily inside her, long, smooth strokes, and then faster ones, harder ones, un-ceasing ones.

He could see her gorgeous face, eyes shut, her head going from side to side on the pillow, her lips mouthing something he could not hear. He could see the rise and fall of her globular breasts, and feel the circular motions of her buttocks. She was lifting her hips higher, lifting her trembling thighs, and he drove deeper into her unremittingly. Her hands groped for and found his testicles, bunching them together. He sighed and came down on her fully, feeling the give of her breasts, seeking and finding her full lips, her tongue, hearing his heart and her own hammering in unison.

Her wetness below engulfed him, but he did not slow, driving, pulling, driving inside her slippery passage.

Abruptly her torso heaved, her buttocks rising, her thighs tightening around him in a vise of flesh in one great and prolonged convulsion. "Oh, darling," she gasped.

But he went on, and then she had another shuddering orgasm and, moments later, explosively, he came too.

They lay still in each other's embrace for what seemed countless minutes. After a while, he could see that her eyes were closed in sleep and he could hear her breathing in relaxed slumber.

Gently, he removed his body from her own, withdrawing his flaccid and sated penis.

After a while, sitting on the bed beside her, his legs crossed, he sat watching her in sleep. He had never felt more content, fulfilled, at peace with himself. Watching her with love, he could no longer quite remember this woman as she'd seemed when they had first met. He half remembered her as someone too composed, self-possessed, self-contained, forbidding in her scholarship and independence, desirable but seemingly unattainable.

And now she had bared herself to him totally, surrendered her passion to his own, fused herself to him, become a part of him as he had become a part of her.

The love he felt for her was almost unbearable. And so was his happiness.

Drawing the blanket back over her, he realized more than ever how precious she was to him. It gave him a jolt to remember what had happened not many hours before. Someone had tried to kill her. Someone might try again. He must not allow it. He didn't dare lose her.

Yet, he knew, she could be safe only if she abandoned the quest for Hitler and ignored the riddle of her father's death.

No matter how much she loved him, wanted to be with him, Foster realized with certainty that Emily would abandon neither hunt.

Slipping beneath the blanket beside her, he felt her stir slightly, then lay an arm across his chest. He searched her lovely face in repose, reached to put out the lamp, and tried to think what he could do to protect her, them, their future. In the darkness, it seemed insoluble. And soon he was lost in sleep.

When Foster awakened, at midmorning, and focused his eyes on the ceiling, he knew that he was not in his own room, and for a lapsed moment was unsure of where he had been sleeping.