'More'n your Pa?'
There was another pause. Pietre's eyes searched hers and she lost the next question. What was she doing? Had she intended to reveal her knowledge now? She couldn't remember.
'Why are you so curious about my family,' he asked in the indifferent tone she knew all too well. A chill wind of fear intruded on her warm sea.
'I'm not. I just… Sometimes you look…' she lost her train of thought, scrabbled, 'You look at me strangely.' Her heavy hand on his shoulder fell away. She composed her face and declared misterioso, 'I want to know everything about you.'
He stood, moved away, a blur of darkness and Belle gratefully surrendered to gravity.
Collapsed in his chair, her eyelids closed, she smiled languidly as her fear slipped away from her like a sodden coat and sank peacefully into the silent depths below. On the surface, she rocked, buoyant, one with the rhythm of her sea, staring upwards — not at the stars — but at the impenetrable blackness they clung to.
She knew a thing about that blackness. A thing no-one else knew.
Her smile grew dreamy, intimate.
Pietre was that blackness. He was her night, the necromancer of her soul. 'Dark, dark, lover…' she whispered.
'When you are like this you remind me of someone,' he said softly, and Belle thought she heard longing in his voice. But was it real, or merely an echo of her own desires? She looked at him from beneath heavy lashes, trying to focus on his expression but it was impossible. Her eyelids drooped shut.
'I need you, Belle,' he admitted, and this time there was no mistaking the harsh submission in his voice. 'I need… proof.'
Something within Belle jerked her awake. She fumbled with the vial at her throat. 'Just let me… wait…' she stumbled over the words, not bothering to finish. The cap came off in her hand and she up-ended the contents into her mouth, swallowing convulsively.
A long forgotten sensation, like liquid ice rolling through her veins, stiffened her body and gripped her entrails like a glacial fist. She blinked, saw every detail in the room with unnatural clarity, her eyes glittering with fierce awareness.
From the door, Pietre watched her transformation, awed by the random pooling of genes that had created this replica, this miniature of the only human he had ever felt an emotional connection with.
Her smile took him back twenty years. 'Come with me, boy.'
Chapter Seventeen
Dee lay in a hammock, staring past the dark curls of the head that was nestled against hers, past the palm fronds that framed their breezy boudoir to the cobalt blue she knew to be mere illusion at the outer boundary of the atmosphere — but which here, looked nothing less than the breath of God himself.
This island wasn't off the coast of Queensland. It had to be in an alternate universe.
The daytime sky she was used to glancing at had never been so vivid, so achingly pure in colour that even Van Gogh couldn't have done justice to it.
And green. The vegetation here was so rich in colour, not only could she differentiate the shades by smell, her taste-buds responded to the air as though to drink the differences.
The commonest food was ambrosia and her skin felt so alive, so sensitive, the slightest stroke along her inner arm or back-of-knee could bring responses that previously, had lain in wait of orgasm. No drug Dee had ever heard of could produce such euphoria of the senses without revealing other evidences of its presence. But if not a drug, how was the change achieved? Within herself?
Had living with the constant knowledge that she might die on this island super-charged her awareness? Or was it the amount of adrenalin being released into her bloodstream? She was, at times, prone to episodes of trembling and sudden exhaustion.
Or, perhaps she was already dead and this was her own private heaven. A pleasant thought.
She drank the sky again. 'So beautiful.'
'Mmm?' The body beneath hers moved slightly. Nick or Tony? She couldn't remember. And who was this lying above her, feathering her neck with his deep, even breaths?
'Talking about me again?' murmured the voice from below.
She smiled. 'The sky.'
The body moved again and she felt fingers near her ear, brushing her hair away. 'Storm comin'. Big sucker,' it said authoritatively, and this time she recognised the voice as Nick's — slightly more accented, and infinitely more colloquial than Tony's English.
Josh had delivered her to them the previous afternoon and she'd had almost twenty-four hours to discover their idiosyncrasies. Voice, scent, skin taste, pleasure noises, gestures — all the subtle nuances that differentiated one twin from the other.
In personality they were opposites, yet physically they couldn't have been more alike. Hot olive skin with even hotter eyes and black, black, hair that curled into the fingers like a kiss. They were dual copies of Michelangelo's David, fleshed out and packed full of machismo and testosterone, and fun. They'd made her laugh, but they'd also made her die. Again and again.
'Hey, Man. Wake up.' Nick reached past her to slap the shoulder above. 'It's gunna rain. We gotta get Wendee back or Xavion'll gut us.'
The hammock rocked.
'Fuck off,' mumbled the voice at her neck.
'I'd rather fuck up,' Nick said, and playfully raised his pelvis, lifting both Dee and Tony. When he relaxed, the hammock rocked again, more violently this time but Dee could still discern the pressure within herself where he was starting to swell. Despite her unfamiliarity with this strange form of penetration, she had no trouble distinguishing which cavern was being rapidly filled.
She murmured appreciatively and wriggled against him.
'That's it baby,' Nick crooned, licking her shoulder, biting the soft flesh gently. 'Fuck me good.' Then he punched the shoulder above her again. 'Get your sleepy ass up and give her room, Man.'
'Fuck you,' Tony mumbled, obviously exhausted.
'I'm trying,' Dee said, and both she and Nick burst into giggles. When they'd subsided, she raised her head licked the only part of Tony she could reach. His ear.
'Oh, that's nice,' he breathed as she ran her tongue delicately around the whorls and caught the ear lobe between her teeth. He lifted his head and they kissed, slowly, explicitly.
Dee felt Nick's impatience but she wanted to enjoy Tony. There was a single-mindedness in his kisses — a level of concentration that was immensely flattering and she wanted to savour it.
He broke away finally and raised his head to look down on her, his eyes sultry with the heat they'd generated. 'I think I'm awake now.' They smiled at each other, Dee breathless with the need to begin.
She could feel both shafts hard within her again, ready to plough through the stickiness of their previous coupling. The adrenalin rush — the excitement that came with the imminence of sex overtook her.
Although she had never injected a drug into her bloodstream, she was sure it would be like this — her stomach jumpy, a smoky thrill racing around her, awakening her nerves — tightening some, loosening others, her mouth tingling, her skin alive, hungry.
She closed her eyes, savouring it as she had savoured Tony's kiss. When she opened them again, he had raised himself off her, his weight transferring onto his knees as he steadied himself on the bar above her head. Below her, Nick's body contacted hers at every point, their legs spread, one pair atop the other around Tony's knees.
Nick was fondling her breasts as Tony said, 'Ride us, Wendee.'
She lifted her head, lapping the toasted-honey of his chest with the daintiness of a kitten, her fingernails exploring the dark hairs that surrounded each nipple, enjoying herself, prolonging the anticipation.
Tony groaned.
