A Novel Seduction (10 page)

He gave a rumbling laugh that tickled her skin, then rolled her over.

“Now I can proceed at my pace,” he said, kissing his way up her stomach and pausing to suckle each nipple.

He lowered himself between her thighs and entered. The smell of their joining hung on him, making her woozy with desire. He moved with care, pleasing himself with each stroke. He gazed into her eyes as he moved, and she found she had no barrier to raise.

“Would you like this each night?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“I would too.”

He worked slowly, moving when she did and smiling at her throaty gurgles. The aftershocks were quickening, and she could feel her still-tingling flesh tighten around him. She stretched her arms as far as they would go, wiggling her fingers as he plucked her nipples. The earth was moving again, and, sensing the shift, he lifted her knee and changed his gentle thrusts to a hammering.

Lava bubbled deep within her, and she flung her head back. The silvery clouds wheeled and turned in the private heaven they’d created, and her fingers stretched along the bench’s length to reach them, as if the magic they’d conjured would allow her to command the sky. Then his measured blows unleashed her. He bucked hard, driving
the liquid fire from her belly to the top of her head, and she jerked wildly under his shuddering weight.

“Oh, Axel.”

He settled against her and held out his hand. “Friends?” She laughed. “Better.”

Looking into her eyes, he made a low, contented noise. “Indeed.”

Offices of
Vanity Place
magazine,
Present Day

Axel sat in an empty cube, gazing at the LCD of his camera and fast-forwarding through the shots still carefully preserved even after all these years. The edge of the bench just protruded into the lower left of the frame, and the first four hundred or so shots were nothing but a montage of slowly tumbling flashes of Mylar, beautiful in themselves but nothing compared to the last thirty. He’d set the automatic repeat on the shutter for ten seconds that night and forgotten it. It wasn’t until they finished the shoot and retired to his place that he’d even thought to look at what he’d gotten. He still remembered sitting at his desk, listening to the sound of her soft, sleepy exhalations and gasping when he’d realized what he had.

He looked at the shot numbers. Three ninety-three, three ninety-four, three ninety-five. This is where it began, though the sequence ran for hundreds of pictures. He let the memory slip over him like an old sweater. There they were. Her hands. Stretching into view, palms up, fingers
flexing and curling as the clouds of silver danced overhead.

He watched the shots roll by, thinking about that wonderful joining and the time that followed. He’d felt like a vampire himself, his veins infused with this heady new life force. God, he and Ellery had barely left the bed the first few months. It was a wonder
City Sill,
the name she’d given her paper, had ever launched at all. But it had. In fact, it had sold quite well its rookie year—that is, until the end, when everything that had been magic between them died.

He opened another album in his camera’s memory, the one entitled “Ellery Before.” It held only a dozen pictures, random shots of her those last couple of months they were together. In one she held her hair up in a knot, vogueing for the camera; in another, taken in the stands at a hockey game, she frowned as one of the Penguins missed a shot; in a third she gazed into a mirror, unaware he’d had the camera pointed at her.

As he always did when he looked at these pictures, he examined her face for signs of a change. How had she hidden it from him? And why? Had there been another man? How had Axel—who, after photographing it thousands of times, knew her face far better than he knew his own—missed it? He’d been a fool, and in his foolishness he’d failed her at a time when she’d needed him most. But why, why, why hadn’t she told him?

He shook off the regret and smiled instead, thinking of the lunch. There was something thrilling about being on assignment with her again, even if, knowing Ellery, it was going to be equal parts adventure and agitation.

She wheeled into the cube, and he nearly dropped the camera.

Ellery shook her head. “Always lost in the shots, aren’t you?”

Axel powered the camera down surreptitiously. “You know me.”

“Good stuff?”

“very.”

“My admin dropped off the trip information.” She slid a copy in his direction. “Everything is set.”

He kept his face neutral as he scanned the arrangements. Looked like she was traveling with him to Pittsburgh. “Great. Thanks. Are you looking at those books?”

She gave him a dubious look. “Not often you get to see the word ‘lave’ in the back cover copy.”

“Pittsburgh, you’ve been hanging with the wrong crowd.”

Chelsea, Manhattan

Ellery gazed at the contents of her dresser drawer. Exactly what sort of clothes did one wear to the gates of vampire hell? She held up a pale pink twin set. Jill, who was sprawled on the bed with a textbook, shook her head violently. Kate, who had offered to keep Jill company in Ellery’s absence, stopped paging through
Vamp
long enough to say, “Honestly, have you ever been to a bar?”

Jill gave her sister a sympathetic smile. “Think edgier.”

Ellery frowned. There was that black turtleneck. Black was always edgy. She dug down to the bottom of the drawer and pulled it out.

Kate sighed. She wheeled over to the chest, dug around and drew out a length of lace-edged silk.

“That’s a
slip,
” Ellery said.

“A slip
dress,
” Kate corrected. “Very cutting-edge.”

“Yes,” Jill agreed. “Exactly right.”

Ellery held it up. The silk was the color of coffee au lait, with a see-through black lace panel running down the seam on both sides. She had purchased it before her
third date with a slightly self-centered corporate attorney, who’d given her a potted Meyer lemon tree to mark the occasion. She’d dumped the attorney and kept the tree. When life gives you lemons…

“It seems to be a tad, er, air-conditioned for public consumption.”

“Nonsense,” Jill said. “Nothing a little thong won’t fix. Guys love ’em.”

Ellery winced. Did her sister have to grow up so loudly? Would it have killed her to pretend she still liked
Dora the Explorer
and
That’s So Raven
?

“I know this is going to surprise you, but I’m actually not that comfortable having my underthings show through my clothes.”

“Gosh, I didn’t think about going with no panties, but I guess that’s an option too.”

Ellery opened her mouth, but her sister forestalled her. “Jeggings,” she said calmly. “I can lend you a pair.”

Ellery
hmm
ed, throwing the slip into the suitcase and tossing in a nice pair of sweatpants to counterbalance the blow to her psyche.

“Ahem.” Kate fished them out.

“I’m not trying to impress anyone,” Ellery said pointedly. “Just hoping to bury myself in my piece.”

“Sounds like romance novels are going to be the perfect inspiration, then,” Kate said. Jill laughed.

If Ellery was going to wear a slip dress, she was going to need a strapless bra. She threw in her wonderful Slapz brand “Hands of God” convertible bra, lingerie’s equivalent of a Swiss Army knife, a bra that boosted, padded, anchored and smoothed, while adjusting its straps for up
to nine kinds of top styles. It had cost her almost a hundred dollars, but it had never failed her. Control for her breasts was critical, and she bet she could clear a dozen half twists on a trampoline in it and those babies would move less than a glacier.

Her cell rang, and the number was from out of state. Since she thought it might relate to the rescheduling of the Irving interview, she dashed into the hallway for some privacy, but it was only an exceedingly long-winded recorded call telling her the scheduled departure time of her flight had been changed from 8:18 p.m. to 8:21 p.m. When she hung up, she could hear Kate and Jill talking and paused.

“Gosh, I hope she has fun,” Kate said.

“Ellery? Isn’t that sort of wishing zebras had TiVo? I mean, what’s the point?”

They both laughed, and Ellery felt like she’d had the wind knocked out of her. She knew she was more serious than most people, but surely she didn’t give the impression she didn’t have fun?

“Sometimes I wonder if the fun gene was flushed out of her after our mom died,” Jill said quietly. “Actually, what I wonder is, was it me—taking care of me, you know?”

“I’m not surprised. You guys went through a lot.”

“I know,” Jill said. “I just worry.”

“Well, she’ll certainly have fun on this assignment, right? I mean, it’s practically a requirement.”

“Yeah, nothing like getting paid for one-handed reading—Oh my God, speaking of that, did you love that scene with Harold and Ynez on the platform or what?”

Their conversation turned into a giggling exchange of favorite moments in the book. Ellery collapsed against the hallway wall. Part of her mourned for the fun she had let go of in her life. Part of her was upset that Jill was worried about her. And part of her longed for the easy connection Jill and Kate had formed over
Vamp
. What did Ellery lack that made a sisterhood on such a topic so hard for her? But she could no more crack open a romance than she could a chest for bypass surgery. It just wasn’t in her.

She was just about to reenter the room when another snippet floated out: “… the whole Axel thing is very curious,” Kate was saying with obvious interest. “What exactly happened there, do you know?”

Ellery froze.

“He, ah… he lived with us, you know. That was after Mom died. I really liked him, but he was out most nights, photographing, I guess, or with his friends. I’m sure it was trying for Ellery. She was working so hard to get her career off the ground. She… she doesn’t know I know this, but she went to the hospital once in the middle of the night. I saw her doubled over, but she straightened up and told me Aunt Janet was coming over to watch me so she could go to work. Later that night, though, I overheard Aunt Janet talking to her on the phone, asking her if everything was okay and if she should come to visit the next day.”

Ellery put a hand on her chest, feeling her heart pounding, remembering the night vividly and despairing for the tumult she’d caused her sister.

“What happened?” Kate asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t know if it was stress or something else. Ellery never told me. She was back at home when I woke up, and I asked if she was okay. She said yes. She looked fine, I guess. But that afternoon when Axel came home they had a huge fight. She told him she wanted him to leave, and she told me their breakup had been brewing a long time. Which might be true,” Jill added softly, “but she closed herself in her room and cried the rest of the night.”

Kate tsked sadly. “Poor Jill. Poor Ellery.”

Ellery cleared her throat loudly and walked down the hall into the bedroom. “Just a call from work,” she said. “Where were we?”

Kate and Jill had been packing for her while they chatted, and while Ellery couldn’t determine everything they’d put into her suitcase, two lacy bras and a handful of thong underwear were scattered across the top, which gave her a general feel for the rest.

“Hmm.” She picked up the flimsiest thong—a red-sequined one she’d gotten as a joke at a bachelorette party—and twirled it on her finger. “This will keep me nice and toasty in the Scottish Highlands.”

“I thought that’s what the sweatpants were for,” Kate said.

Jill grinned. “I believe you can use them to signal for help if there’s an avalanche.”

“If you don’t mind, I think I may pack just a few black cotton briefs.” She bent to reach into the drawer and heard the sound of the zipper closing on the suitcase and the click of the little travel lock.