The Kiss (17 page)

“That’s the most stupid thing I ever heard.”

“That hardly matters.”

Eva jumped up, agitation making her edgy. “What do you want from
me, Grace?”

“I want you to return. I want you to give Adam the energy he’ll
need to get through another year.”

“You just said he lasted almost twenty without any. He’ll survive
one.”

Grace shook her head. “That was in the early days. It doesn’t
work like that anymore. Each year it becomes harder and harder to break free of
the stone. He can’t survive a whole year, not now, not after two hundred.”

“I can’t…” Eva whispered, more to herself than Grace. “It’s
too...”

“You won’t die, Eva,” Grace reassured, “you have my word. I’ll
nurse you well myself.”

Eva snorted. “I’d have extreme doubts about your bedside manner,
Grace.”

Grace nodded, something akin to respect flashing in her steel
eyes. “Then do it for him.”

“He’s already used me once, you want me to let him do it again?”
All
the things he said. All the things I believed.

“How has he used you?” Grace asked, flicking a piece of lint from
her immaculate jacket.

“You know how.”

“Because you were intimate?”

“Yes.”

Grace shook her head. “Do you remember the first night, in the
dining room? It was before you came down, you and Lily. Adam grabbed me the
first moment he could and peppered me with questions. He wanted to know
everything about you. Every scrap of information I had. I told him all of it
but it wasn’t enough. You’d spent a week talking to him and he was already
infatuated. I’ve never seen him like that.”

Eva shivered. “Grace, do you not see how weird this is? I spent a
week talking to a fucking statue! Not a man.”

“One and the same Eva, and by the time he came from the stone
you’d managed to wrap him up in knots.”

“Don’t, this isn’t fair.”
I don’t need to hear this!

“What is, Eva? The fact Adam has spent his life trapped for
something he never did? Felton had it easy, Granny simply killed him.”

“You’re twisting things, trying to get me to change my mind.”

“I’m trying to get you to see the truth. Eva. Adam needs you and
if you let him die you’ll never forgive yourself. You know you won’t.”

“He lied to me, you all did.”

“Yes.”

“You expect me to trust him now? To put my life in his hands?”

Grace shook her head. “It’s him putting his life in yours! Why
can’t you see that?”

Eva walked away to stare out of the window once more. “I wish I’d
never taken this job.”

“You didn’t have a choice, Eva. Remember there is no coincidence,
not around this curse.”

“At least then I wouldn’t be feeling like this, I wouldn’t be
full of…” Eva added, ignoring Grace’s words.

“Of what?” Grace pounced.

“I don’t fucking know!” Eva cried, goaded—as Grace no doubt
wanted her to be. “I’m angry and hurt and I feel like I don’t even know myself
anymore. Everything has become muddled. Adam isn’t the Adam I thought he was.”

“No,” Grace replied softly. “He’s more. So much more than you
imagined and you miss him already, Eva, admit it.”

Damn her
. “I don’t.”

“I saw how it was between you two,” Grace insisted. “I watched
you dine together and the sparks were obvious to everyone. Like an explosion
waiting to happen.”

“Like a Charlie fucking foxtrot.”

“Help him, Eva.”

Oh God, can I really let him die? After everything we’ve
shared?
“And then what Grace?”

“What do you mean?”

“If I do this, then what? You nurse me better and I go on my way
never to see him again? You find another woman next year to do this all over
again?”

Grace looked away and shifted slightly. “You’ll need to talk to
Adam about that. Those are not my decisions to make.”

A tiny kernel of something almost like hope wriggled its way into
Eva’s breast. She ignored it.
I’m just getting information, nothing more.
“So I could stay? I could wait until next year? Each year until he’s free from
the stone?”

“You need to talk to Adam,” Grace replied. “Come back with me
please, Eva. Come back and ask him these questions yourself.”

Adam’s face shifted across her vision and Eva’s heart raced. She
couldn’t get the image of him, head in hands, to go away.
I could just see
him one last time. One last time…

“If I did it would be to talk only. I’m not agreeing to
anything.”

“Of course.”

“And if I want to leave I will. You won’t stop me, Grace.”

The older woman smiled in her usual grim fashion. “I doubt even
Granny Hildegarde herself could have.”

Chapter
Twenty-Six

Adam was curled up asleep when Eva returned. The moment her eyes
fell on him her heart did a strange sort of cartwheel and a squadron of
butterflies took up residence in her stomach. Even now, knowing what she did
about him Eva couldn’t help but desire him.
It’s twisted, weird, totally
fucked up.
But it was there all the same.

Gently, hand on his bronzed shoulder, she shook him awake.

“Eva…” he breathed.

“Adam. We need to talk,” the words left her but seemingly he
didn’t hear them. Before Eva could stop him a hand snaked round her waist and
pulled her down on top of him. She fell against his taut body, his obvious
erection nudging her stomach. Heat pooled between her legs as his scent
overwhelmed her. She moaned inwardly and ignored the throbbing in her stomach.
I
need to stay in control here.

“I was sure I’d never see you again,” he whispered, planting tiny
kisses on her eyelids. “After two hundred years you’d think I’d be used to
that, but…”

Eva bit her lip and pushed against him, not wanting to hear any
more of his incarceration. The thought of what it must be like to be trapped
within the stone had plagued her on the drive back. Grace, no doubt guessing
what Eva was thinking, had kept quiet. Her hands competently steering the way
home—a journey accomplished far quicker than when Eva had walked it.

To spend so much time unable to move, unable to do anything but
think! The curse was cruel beyond imagination and Adam hadn’t even deserved it.
Eva was torn between wishing Grace hadn’t followed and a desperate desire to
see him again. To kiss away the pain, which now she saw, shadowed his eyes.

Time is something I do not have a lot of… Nothing changes does
it… things can pause forever here, on this Estate…

Eva pulled away, her hands meeting the slick, steel hardness of
his chest. “Please we need to—”

He silenced her with a kiss. Their lips melting together in
perfect unison, their heartbeats racing as one.  “Let me love you once more
before you leave,” he begged.

Eva tried to remember all the reasons why it wasn’t a good idea.
Point one with him being a statue and all, and then the draining of essence
thingie. But his lips felt so good against her and her reasoning seemed to
float way in a fog of desire.
Need to find some bloody control.

“You mustn’t,” she began but he interrupted her.

“I will not hurt you, Eva. Never will I do anything you do not
permit. Surely you realize that?” The sincerity in his eyes was clear and Eva
doubted anyone could fake such an emotion.
Certainly not my Adonis.

“I didn’t come back for this,” Eva protested.

“I want you,” he said, kissing his way down her neck, his lips
causing tiny frissions of need. “Just once more.”

“But we need to talk. You know we do.”

“And we will… later.” His lips continued their downward descent
and Eva’s sanity went with them. She gave herself up to the sensations he
created, the emotions whirling though her.
Just once more.

In a matter of moments Eva was naked, their skin tingling against
each other, sparking off one another like live wires.

Eva reached down between them and wrapped her hand around the
length of his cock. He was hard and ready for her, and in one smooth motion she
sheathed him inside the wet, wanting walls of her pussy.

“Ah, God,” he groaned.

It felt so good, so perfect. Eva wouldn’t have been able to
explain it with a thousand words, not the sensations his body created, or the
emotions his liquid brandy eyes stirred.

“Yes, Adam, yes,” she whispered, angling her body so that his
cock could achieve maximum penetration.

“Take it, Eva,” he said. “Take it all.”

So she did. Eva rode him like her life depended on it. Pushing up
and down, taking him into her over and over again. Her clit ground against his
stomach and each movement sent pleasure searing into her pussy, building and
building like an inexorable tide.

His lips found her nipples, hardened and waiting. He lavished
attention on one then the other. Sucking and licking and grazing them with his
teeth.

Eva cried out and rode him harder. Desperate to take everything
he had to offer.

“Eva,” he chanted, before angling her back and reaching down to
stroke her exposed clit. His thumb flicked it in time with her motions.
Creating a duel sensation that threatened to overwhelm her.

“I’m going to—” The orgasm took her in one blinding flash. Racing
from her pussy, out to her thighs, and up to some quiet, waiting part of her
brain—where it sizzled and exploded, until all she could do was say his name
over an over again.

Adam took control then. Hands clenching her hips he pumped into
her. His cock thrusting into her sensitized walls. Eva screamed and bucked
above him, urging him on, until with one hoarse cry his seed pumped into her.
Hot and heavy and totally fulfilling.

Eva collapsed against his chest, tiny aftershocks throbbing
across her skin. Wrapping his arms tightly around her Adam held her to him as
if he never wanted to let go.
I never want him to.
The thought came to
Eva’s orgasm dazzled mind, and it didn’t even shock her.
You knew it all
along, from the very first moment you laid eyes on him. Out there in the cold.

They lay together, their sweat intermingling, their breathing
ragged. In that moment nothing existed but them.

“And now we talk,” he finally said and Eva sighed

Chapter
Twenty-Seven

“I’ll be having a strong bloody word with Grace!”

 Adam paced the room, as naked as the day he was born. Eva
watched him move back and forth, her eyes unable to leave him. Looking closely
she began to see the statue in the man. The firm sculpt on his arms, the curve
of his back, the line of his legs. The stone that she’d pored over for so many
days came alive in front of her and any lingering doubts Eva might have had,
however dormant, fled.
My Adonis, come to life just like I wanted.

 “She had no right to tell you anything.”

“Well you weren’t going to were you?” Eva asked. “And she was
right, Adam, right to come and get me. You kinda neglected to tell me that
you’ll bloody die without my help.”

He shuddered. “I can’t ask this of you, I won’t, the idea is
abhorrent. Please do not mention it again.”

“But Adam this is serious shit. You could, will die.”

 “I won’t discuss this with you, love. You need to leave.
Please.”

Eva wrapped the blanket around her nakedness. Stay or go? What
was her fate?
A little help here.

Adam must have felt her hesitation but he did not try to
influence her and Eva knew, as he did, what the smart option was. She knew that
she should grab her bag and leave immediately. Forget the amazing sex, forget
the strange emotions.

She knew that in her head but her heart, her heart said something
else.

“You’ll die if I go,” she said, he did not reply. “Why would you
do that? Why not make me stay? Take the energy by force?”

He reared back as if she’d struck him. “I’ve never taken it by
force!” he roared. “They never guessed, not once. I took it in love and Grace
took care of them until they were well again.”

“The four month contract.”
The last piece of the puzzle falls
into place.

“Yes.”

“And twelve staff, one for each guest.”

“Yes.”

“Why has no one ever gone to the police or the newspapers or
anything?”

Adam ran a hand through his hair, tousling his locks and Eva bit
down hard on her lip to contain the sigh that wanted to fall. “And here comes
the bit Grace neglected to tell you, Eva. God, that woman gets sneakier every
damn year.”

“What? Grace told me everything.”

“Not this. They remember nothing, that’s the whole point,” he
said. “The entire experience fades from their memories, as does many of the
days before it. Finn takes them home and they forget us all.”

“That’s all it is, all that happens?” Eva asked. “A loss of
memory?”

He shook his head. “I wish that were all. But no, they’re
different afterwards, they change in subtle ways. Their personality even
sometimes the way they look. They’re alive and well but... different.”

“I would be different,” she asked. “And I would forget you?”

“Yes, Eva,” he replied. “But that would make you the lucky one
because I would not be granted the same relief. I would not forget anything.”

“You remember them all,” she said and he nodded.

“I remember them all fondly. I’m grateful to them, how could I be
anything else, and I make sure Grace keeps an eye on those still... alive, just
in case they need anything.”

“You’d remember me
fondly
?” Eva asked and wasn’t even
surprised by the stab of pain she felt at that thought.

“No, Eva,” he replied. “I would remember you as the one who I
could not ask the sacrifice of. The one I could not bare to change. For as long
as I have left I will remember you as the one who changed
me,
altered me
somehow,” he shook his head. “Such a small amount of time, mere days, a drop of
nothing in all my years, and yet they’ve bonded us together in a way I can not
explain. Maybe it’s because I get so little time in the real world that it
becomes so much to me—I don’t know.”