crypts and one doorway, Rowan.”
“I don’t understand. You play with me. You confuse me. I can’t follow anymore.”
Silence and that sound again, as if the whole air were sighing. Sadness, sadness enveloping her like a cloud, and the undulating layers of smoky shadow moving the length of the room, weaving through and around the chandeliers, filling the mirrors with darkness.
“You’re all around me, aren’t you?”
“I love you,” he said, and his voice was low again as a whisper and close to her. She thought she felt lips touch her cheek. She stiffened, but she had become so drowsy.
“Move away from me,” she said. “I want to be left alone now. I have no obligation to love you.”
“Rowan, what can I give you, what gift can I bring?”
Again, something brushed her face, something touched her, bringing the chills up over her body. Her nipples were hard beneath the silk of the nightgown, and a low throbbing had started inside her, a hunger she could feel all through her throat and her chest.
She tried to clear her vision. It was dark in here now. The fire had burnt down. But only moments ago it had been a blaze.
“You’re playing tricks on me.” The air seemed to be touching her all over. “You’ve played tricks on Michael.”
“No.” It was a soft kiss against her ear.
“When he was drowned, the visions. You made them!”
“No, Rowan. He was not here. I could not follow him to where he went. I am of the living only.”
“Did you make the ghosts he saw when he was alone here that night, when he went alone into the pool?”
“No.”
She shivered all over, her hands up to brush away the sensations as if she’d been caught in cobwebs.
“Did you see the ghosts Michael saw?”
“Yes, but through Michael’s eyes, I saw them.”
“What were they?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you know?”
“They were images of the dead, Rowan. I am of this earth. I do not know the dead. Do not talk to me of the dead. I do not know of God or of anything which is not of the earth.”
“God! But what is this earth?” Something touching the back of her neck, gently lifting the tendrils of her hair.
“Here, Rowan, the realm in which you exist and the realm in which I exist, parallel and intermingled yet separate, in the physical world. I am physical, Rowan-natural as anything else which is of the earth. I burn for you, Rowan, in a purity in which fire has no end, in this our world.”
“The ghosts Michael saw on our wedding night,” she said, “in this very room. You made him see them.”
“No.”
“Did you see them?” Like a feather stroking her cheek.
“Through Michael’s eyes. I do not have all the answers you demand of me.”
Something touching her breasts, something stroking her breasts and her thighs. She curled her legs back under her. The hearth was cold now.
“Get away from me!” she whispered. “You
“No.”
“Do you come from hell?”
“You play with me. I am in hell, desiring to give you pleasure.”
“Stop. I want to get up now. I’m sleepy. I don’t want to stay here.”
She turned and looked at the blackened fireplace. There were no embers anymore. Her eyes were heavy and so were her limbs. She struggled to her feet, clinging to the mantel. But she knew she could not possibly reach the steps. She turned, and sank down again on her knees and stretched out on the soft Chinese rug. Like silk beneath her, and the hardness and the cool air felt so good to her. She felt she was dreaming when she looked up into the chandelier. The white plaster medallion appeared to be moving, its acanthus leaves curling and writhing.
All the words she’d heard were suddenly swimming in her brain. Something touching her face. Her nipples throbbed and her sex throbbed. She thought of Michael miles and miles away from her, and she felt anguish. She had been so wrong to underestimate this being.
“I love you, Rowan.”
“You’re above me, aren’t you?” She stared up into the shadows, thankful for the coolness, because she was burning as if she’d absorbed all the heat of the fire. She could feel the moisture pumping between her legs, and her body was opening like a flower. Stroking the inside of her thighs where the skin was always softest and had no down, and her legs were turning outward like petals opening.
“I’m telling you to stop, that I’ll hate it.”
“Love you, my darling.” Kissing her ears, and her lips, and then her breasts. The sucking came hard, rhythmic, teeth grazing her nipples.
“I can’t stand it,” she whispered, but she meant the very opposite, that she would cry out in agony if it stopped.
Her arms were flung out, and the nightgown was being lifted off her. She heard the silk tearing and then the cloth was loose and she was sweetly, deliciously naked lying there, the hands stroking her sex, only they weren’t hands. It was Lasher, Lasher sucking her and stroking her, lips on her ears, on her eyelids, all of his immense presence wrapped around her, even under her, stroking the small of her back, and parting her backside and stroking the nether mouth.
Yes, opening, like the dark purple iris in the garden. Like the roses exploding on the ends of their coarsened and darkened stems and the leaves with so many points and tiny veins to them. She tossed and twisted on the carpet.
“Yes, your time, our time.”
Tongues licked her nipples, lips closing on them, pulling them, teeth scratching her nipples.
“Harder, rougher. Rape me, do it! Use your power.”
He lifted her so that her head fell backwards, her hair tumbling down beneath her, her eyes closed, hands parting her sex, parting her thighs.
“Come in to me, hard, make yourself a man for me, a hard man!”
The mouths drew harder on her nipples, the tongues lapping at her breasts, her belly, the fingers pulling at her backside and scratching at her thighs. “The cock,” she whispered, and then she felt it, enormous and hard, driving into her. “Yes, do it, tear me, do it! Override me, do it!” Her senses were flooded with the smell of clean, hard flesh and clean hair, as the weight bore down on her and the cock slammed into her, yes, harder, make it rape. Glimpse of a face, dark green eyes, lips. And then a blur as the lips opened her lips.
Her body was pinned to the carpet, and the cock burned her as it drove inside her, scraping her clitoris, plunging deeper into her vagina. I can’t stand it, I can’t bear it. Split me apart, yes. Laid waste. The orgasm flooded through her, her mind blank except for the raging flow of colors like waves as the rollicking sensation washed up through her belly, and her breast and her face, and down through her thighs, stiffening her calves, and through the muscles of her feet. She heard her own cries, but they were far away, unimportant, flowing out of her mouth in a divine release, her body pumping and helpless and stripped of will and mind.
Again and again, it exploded in her, scalding her. Over and over, until all time, all guilt, all thought was burnt away.
Morning. Was there a baby crying? No. Only the phone ringing. Unimportant.
She lay in the bed, beneath the covers, naked. The sun was streaming in the windows on the front of the house. The memory of it came back to her, and a hurtful throbbing started in her. The phone, or was it a baby crying? A baby somewhere far off in the house. Half in dream she saw its little limbs working, bent knees, chubby little feet.
