Thirty Nights Page 8

  In the distance, a tall-masted fishing boat chugged through the silver capped waves, then disappeared over the horizon. Below her, down on the beach, a trio of men, clad in high black boots and bright sunshine-yellow slickers walked behind the retreating tide, using rakes in the wet gray sand to uncover the clams, which were, in this part of the world, as valuable as a pirate’s booty.

  Seagulls followed in their wake, noisily demanding a handout, while other, more self-sufficient birds dove into the receding waters, emerging with shells in their beaks, which they dropped onto the sand to open.

  Unfortunately, more often than not, scavenger gulls were first to arrive at the broken shell, stealing the fleshy innards out from under the beak of the bird who’d worked for his meal. The small drama was familiar; she’d witnessed it innumerable times on her own coast.

  Gillian had been uneasy, almost disoriented since her arrival on Castle Mountain. Now, as she walked along the cliff, marveling at the beauty of earth, stone, sky and water, laughing at the antics of the greedy gulls, she felt herself beginning to relax.

  She was on her way back to the house when a sound caught her attention. Searching for the source of the strange mewling, she looked up into the branches of a hardy scrub pine clinging tenaciously to the very edge of the cliff and spotted a ball of multicolored fur.

  “Well, hello.” Her words came out on little ghostlike puffs of icy breath. “What are you doing up there?”

  The animal’s response was an arched back and an unwelcoming hiss.

  Not wanting to frighten it, she stood where she was and put her hands deep into the pockets of her parka. The cat’s long fur was a striped mixture of black, orange and cream. It had a white ruff around its neck, long pointed ears and bright greenish-gold eyes that looked as though they’d been rimmed with kohl, giving it a masked appearance. A tail thickened as it swished back and forth, warning her to keep her distance.

  “You look hungry,” she said gently. More than hungry. Beneath that filthy, matted fur, the cat appeared distressingly scrawny. “When was the last time you had a decent meal?”

  The cat responded with another angry hiss.

  “If I’d known I was going to run into you, I would have brought some food from the house. There was certainly enough of it.” She thought back on the biscuits she’d eaten. “If you want to wait right here, I could go back and—”

  Without warning, the cat sprang from the tree, deftly landed on all fours, then took off running into a bank of fog.

  “I guess not,” Gillian murmured, knowing it would be folly to try to catch it.

  But as she continued walking back to the house, she couldn’t get the half-starved creature from her mind.

  7

  HUNTER STOOD AT THE WALL of glass that looked out over the sea and watched Gillian walking along the cliff. The day had dawned gray and cold; in the scarlet parka, she reminded him of a brilliant cardinal. He was also surprised, once again, at how small she was, how delicate-looking.

  He saw her stop at a tree not far from the front drive, watched as she slipped her hands into her pockets and seemed to be talking up at it. A moment later a coon cat bailed from the limb. He watched her watching it and realized he was beginning to be able to read her mind.

  “It won’t do you any good,” he murmured five minutes later, when she returned to the tree with a plastic bag of food she scattered on the ground around the trunk. “You may as well try to tame a tiger.”

  Although he knew there was no way she could hear him through the wall of glass, Hunter was surprised when Gillian suddenly glanced up and looked straight at him.

  For a suspended moment their gazes met, then held. Then she did something totally unexpected. She smiled.

  And every muscle in his stomach constricted.

  His gut wasn’t the only thing affected. Hunter slid a look downward and cursed. His mutinous body, ever ready, had leaped to response.

  Yet more proof that George Cassidy had been right about one thing—emotions definitely clouded logic. For six months after being forced from MIT, wallowing in self-pity, Hunter had drunk himself into oblivion. He’d been on a steep slope straight into alcohol hell when he’d caught a glimpse of a seedy-looking boozer in the convex security mirror in a Cambridge liquor store. That he was looking at himself hadn’t immediately sunk in. When it did, he’d walked out of the store, leaving the bottle of high-octane comfort he’d paid for on the counter.

  He’d gone back to his apartment, showered, shaved and, using the scissors that came with his Swiss Army knife, had hacked away at his long, stringy hair, giving himself his first haircut in months.

  Unsurprising, the only thing in his refrigerator had been three bottles of beer and something green and furry he’d vaguely remembered being a brick of sharp cheddar cheese. Hungry for the first time in a very long while, he’d uncovered the phone beneath a pile of dirty laundry and ordered a pizza. And a six-pack of Pepsi.

  While wolfing down the pizza, he’d pulled out a yellow legal pad and had begun a harsh, unrelenting review of his life.

  Looking at things rationally, he’d finally admitted to not being surprised by his mentor’s betrayal. Everyone knew that the seemingly placid ivy-covered halls of academia were nothing more than a facade, effectively concealing what could only be described as a shark tank.

  If you didn’t keep swimming forward, you died. Pure and simple. And Cassidy, as king of the sharks, had no intention of dying anytime soon. Which was why he’d chosen to eat Hunter instead.

  Deciding that his former mentor was right, that emotions were a liability in this scientific world of sharks and cannibalistic bunnies, Hunter had set about putting his often volatile feelings into cold storage. Where they’d remained out of sight, and comfortably out of mind, until he’d made the fatal mistake of bringing Gillian Cassidy to Castle Mountain.

  It was as if she’d arrived with her own personal blow-torch, determined to melt the ice that had dwelt within him for so long.

  And that, Hunter vowed grimly as he turned away from the window, was something he could not allow.

  THIS WAS GETTING ridiculous, Gillian decided on her fourth night on Castle Mountain. She was sitting in the kitchen, as she did every night—alone—eating her solitary supper. Hunter had made his purpose plain from the beginning, on her first night in the house when he’d kissed her senseless and stimulated feelings she’d never even known existed inside her.

  Feelings that continued to boil like one of Mildred Adams’s rich and hearty stews. When she reached for a crusty piece of bread, her nipples brushed against her sweater in a way that was anything but comforting. That was another thing that was driving her crazy.

  She’d always found cashmere to be the softest of wools. And, perhaps it was. But these past days, forced to go without underwear, she was all too aware of the fibers brushing continually against her nipples, bringing them to a state of near constant arousal.

  She’d given up wearing her warm but scratchy tweed slacks the second day. Unfortunately, that left her with a pair of jeans that cut into her crotch, stimulating her sensitive clitoris to a point just this side of pain, or her long, fluid skirts that when worn without panties left her feeling unnervingly vulnerable.

  Which was, she suspected, exactly the way Hunter wanted her.

  So, here she was, her mind having accepted her seduction, her body aching for him to just get it over with, and what had Hunter done? Locked himself away in his damn laboratory, or lair, or whatever the hell he called it, leaving her to think about him, to dream about him in ways that did nothing to comfort.

  Even without the constant thoughts of sex, the simple truth was that she was just plain lonely. Mrs. Adams might be a great cook, but she was a typically taciturn New Englander.

  Besides, even if she was willing to chat, she wasn’t a woman Gillian would be comfortable sharing her thoughts with. Especially the ones she’d been having lately, Gillian thought as she recalled, with vivid clarity, last night’s all-too-stimulating dream where she’d been a lusty Celtic peasant girl. Of course, Hunter had played the role of an invading Norman, who’d taken the concept of rape and plunder to amazing extremes.

  The all-too-vivid memory of the many sexual things he’d done to her, the brazen things she’d encouraged, then ultimately begged him to do, made Gillian blush even now. They also made her ache.

  “It’s part of his intimidation tactics,” she told herself as she slathered the bread with creamy butter and took a huge bite. The crusty bread was thick and yeasty, the melted butter smooth as warm silk against her tongue. “He’s playing hard to get, waiting for you to surrender your pride.

  “Well, it isn’t going to work.” She glared down at the robust stew and jabbed a piece of lamb. “I’m not going to play his damn game any longer.”

  In fact, she decided as she chewed furiously, part of the problem had been that Hunter had set the agenda from the beginning. It was time, she decided, for her to make a move.

  Picking up her plate and the glass of wine, she left the kitchen and headed off to confront the dragon in his den.

  ALTHOUGH IT HADN’T BEEN easy ignoring the lure of the hidden video screens tracking Gillian’s moves, Hunter had actually begun to get some work done. When he heard the determined footfalls marching toward him down the hall, he sighed and decided that the woman might look like spun sugar, but she definitely had a steel core. He should have realized Gillian wouldn’t continue to play by his rules forever.

  She entered the room without even bothering to knock.

  “This Beauty and the Beast scenario is getting boring,” she announced.

  He saved his data, darkened the screen, then turned from the computer. “Beauty and the Beast?”

  “Ever
y morning Mrs. Adams has my breakfast waiting for me when I get up. Dinner, as you colorful islanders call it, is served promptly at noon, and every night, at six on the dot, my supper appears on the dining room table, where I’m expected to eat it, again, alone. It’s beginning to remind me of all those invisible servants feeding Beauty.”

  “I suppose the analogy is somewhat valid,” he allowed, thinking that she certainly fit the title role. “Because you’re stunningly beautiful.”

  In her flowing scarlet skirt that skimmed the tops of her boots and matching tunic-length cashmere cardigan sweater she reminded him of a small, defiant flame. He rubbed his chin and realized that once again he’d forgotten to shave.

  “I am curious, though. Do you see me as a beast?”

  Hunter knew that despite his obvious physical scars, some women, prone to flattering a man, would hasten to assure him they thought nothing of the kind. He was pleased when once again Gillian demonstrated that she was a breed apart.

  “I don’t know.” She sat down on the leather couch, pushed aside some papers and put her bowl on the low granite table in front of her. “You’re certainly far from civilized. But a beast?”

  She gave him a long, judicious look, earning more points when he couldn’t detect any overt pity in her moss-green eyes. “I suppose I’ll have to think about that.”

  “Why don’t you do that,” he agreed.

  She glanced around the office that Hunter knew was an anachronism, a definite throwback to another time with its dark woods, shelves of leather-bound books and antique sailing paraphernalia. Although he’d never really had any roots to speak of, the first time he’d stepped foot on Castle Mountain he’d felt as if he’d come home.

  He’d spent his rare free time the past three years on the phone to antique dealers up and down the Maine coast, collecting a half-dozen framed schooner prints, a trio of whaling harpoons, a brass ship lantern and the ridiculously expensive group of scrimshaw figures.

  “I’m a bit disappointed,” she said.

  Hunter arched a brow, inviting elaboration.

  “Well, as intriguing as this room admittedly is, it certainly doesn’t look like a mad scientist’s lair.” She shook her head and picked up a small ivory carving of a whale. “No steaming, bubbling sulfurous beakers, no petri dishes growing green alien life-forms, no mold-covered, wet stone walls that could have come from some Transylvanian castle.”

  She exchanged the whale for a miniature pewter schooner. “The least you could do is have a few bodies laid out on slabs with electrodes attached to their shaved heads.”

  “If I’d known you expected Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory, I would have arranged to have some rats scurrying around in dark corners.”

  “Rats aren’t necessary.” She shivered visibly at the thought. “Actually, this is quite cozy.”

  “I’m pleased you approve.”

  The hell of it was that Hunter really was pleased. He shouldn’t care whether or not Gillian liked anything about his house. After all, in less than thirty days she’d be leaving. Back to her own life in California.

  “I definitely do.” She picked up her spoon and pointed at the bowl on the desk. “Your stew’s going to get cold. Why don’t you bring it over here and we can eat together like normal people living together under the same roof.”

  “So, you consider our situation normal?”

  “Of course I do… Why, I’m always being brought to isolated locations as some man’s sex slave….

  “The first time was when I was dragged into a taxi after a glorious day in the Louvre by an eccentric Parisian painter who used to paint Monet’s Water Lilies all over me with flavored syrups, then lick them off.”

  “There’s a thought,” Hunter murmured, idly wondering if Mrs. Adams kept any Hershey’s syrup in the pantry.

  “Oh, he was a nice-enough man, despite being a kidnapper, but the chocolate kept clogging my pores and made my skin break out terribly, so at first I wasn’t at all unhappy when he sold me to a Swiss banker who lived in a nine-hundred-year-old house built like a cuckoo clock, dressed me in dirndls like Heidi and yodeled every time he came.”

  She shook her head with mock regret. “Unfortunately, he tasted like sausage and beer, so you can imagine how relieved I was when he passed me on to one of his bank’s clients, a Saudi sheikh who flew me back to his country himself, in his luxurious jet.”

  Her eyes turned reminiscent, her lips curved in a slow smile as she took a drink of the ruby-red cabernet sauvignon.

  “When we landed in his country, his servants were waiting with a pair of the most beautiful Arabian stallions I’d ever seen. It was dark when we arrived, but unlike tonight, there was a full moon that floated like a ghostly galleon in the sky. We rode a long way out into the desert, our way guided by that huge silver moon to a tent beneath the stars that had been erected just for us.”

  Hunter understood that she’d begun the tale as a joke, to sensually taunt him with her erotic stories as he’d been taunting her with his absence.

  Interestingly, the tables had seemed to turn. Looking at her flushed cheeks and overly bright eyes, he realized that she was becoming aroused by her own words. She’d never looked more beautiful. Or more desirable.

  He took the glass from her hand, slowly turning it so that the faint pink crescent left by her lips was facing him.

  “Don’t stop now. It’s just getting interesting.”

  She seemed enthralled as he took a drink from that same place her lips had touched. More color touched her cheeks, her throat. He half expected her to stop, but was ridiculously pleased when she continued.

  “We’d no sooner arrived when a pair of gorgeous, incredibly handsome nearly nude servants undressed me, then bathed me, inside and out, in scented water upon which they’d scattered orchid petals.”

  Once again it crossed Hunter’s mind that she was an excellent actress. Her husky voice vibrated with sex and sin.

  “While the guy lounged back on velvet pillows and watched,” Hunter guessed.

  Gillian shrugged. “Since I was, at least for the time being, his property, it was Khamil’s show. That was his name. Prince Khamil.” She closed her eyes, leaned her head against the back of the couch and sighed. “To be perfectly honest, the experience was sublime.”

  Her words excited him, as he knew she’d intended.

  Hunter had spent the past four days staying away from her, determined to test his control to the limit. He’d waited long enough, he decided on a burst of resolve as he returned his attention to her erotic tale.

  “It was amazing,” she was saying. A milky topaz ring gleamed like the ghostly moon she’d described as she combed her hand through her long hair. Her voice had taken on a rich, breathless quality that had Hunter biting back a groan.

  “After I was bathed, the servants rubbed fragrant oil over every inch of my body, preparing me for their master’s ravishments. Then, when I was gleaming like molten gold and feeling every bit as hot and dangerous, he dismissed them.

  “At that moment, we could have been the only two people in the world. In the universe.”

  Just like tonight, Hunter thought as her gaze drifted out the wall of glass into the huge dark void outside. He wondered if she was realizing that they were every bit as isolated as she and her fictional Arab prince.

  “And what happened then?” he asked, his voice roughened from a desire too long denied.

  Gillian turned away from the ebony night sky. As her gaze collided with Hunter’s, he could tell that she realized the waiting was coming to an end.

  She shrugged again, seeming to tire of the game. “I forget.”

  “It’s just as well. I’ve never thought of myself as a jealous man, but with you I just might make an exception. Having to listen to the nitty-gritty details of your erotic adventures might just make me want to go kill your depraved desert sheikh.”

  “He was fictional, Hunter,” she said softly, as if concerned he hadn’t understood her stories had been merely a game.

  “I realize that. Which is why I’m finding the impulse to murder even more puzzling.”

  He took another sip of her wine. “You are, by the way, a very good storyteller. I could easily imagine myself listening to Scheherazade weave her entertaining tales.”