21
lawful behavior—rule three—alice is up against it—renegotiations—mutual assassination
Alice was afraid of too much expression on Daniel’s part. But after clipping a blank piece of paper to an easel, they listed more than a dozen rules for lovemaking, and her concerns were relieved. Should Cupid have come upon their contract, he’d have gone blind trying to read the fine print.
“Most especially, A.U.N.T. must never learn of what we’ve done,” Alice declared, writing a final exclamation mark then stepping back from the easel.
“I certainly agree with that,” Daniel said. But he frowned as, with arms crossed and eyes peering over the top of his spectacles, he regarded the list. “I still aver we cannot regulate the degree of pleasure experienced.”
“That is why we have a range,” Alice explained. “By all means, induce my physical satisfaction anywhere up to level eight out of ten, but higher than that and I’m liable to strangle you.”
“Uh huh.”
“And don’t forget to employ your tongue when kissing. That was most gratifying.”
“Understood.” Removing his spectacles, he placed them tidily on the easel’s shelf, then turned back to her and extended his hand. “So we have a covenant?”
She regarded him (that is to say, his left shoulder) for a long, cool moment. The evidence was undeniable, he desired to partake in coital activity with her—I want you, meaning he wanted her body. And equally impossible to deny, she was in love with him. But she felt sure the rules they had formulated would provide a safe, tidy structure in which physical pleasure could be experienced with hopefully a reduced risk of murder.
“We do.” She took his hand in a firm grip and gave it a brisk shake. “Now, let us start with—”
He yanked her suddenly. She stumbled against him, her pulse shattering on the hard planes of his chest, and he enfolded her at once in his arms.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice as taut as every muscle in her body.
“Hugging you.”
Alice frowned. Really, this did not bode well. Restraint was one thing—she had negotiated for that safety measure and had gained an assurance he’d use a constrictor knot if he was called upon to tie her up. She almost hoped it would happen. But this random embrace? It only served to slow the pace of the action.
Well, she would be accommodating. He could have sixty seconds of hugging before she brought them back to the schedule.
She began a silent count toward sixty. Daniel rested his head against hers but otherwise did not move. Ten seconds. Alice tapped her fingers against her thigh. Twenty seconds. Her frown eased. Thirty seconds, and her breath slowly loosened. Senses that had been overstimulated for days—years, really—began to gentle within the silent, unrelenting compass of Daniel’s embrace. Twenty-five seconds. Wait, no, thirty-five. Or was it forty? Numbers dissolved as she softened, and Daniel’s arms grew tighter about her in response.
“Is that a gun in your trouser pocket,” she murmured, “or are you—”
“It’s a gun.”
She stroked it through the dark wool of his trousers. “What model?”
“Smith and Wesson .38. An American weapon.”
Her breath caught. “Say it again.”
She felt him smile against the side of her head. “Smith and Wesson .38 double-action hammerless revolver with a five-round cylinder and nickel finish.”
“Oh.” Her tranquil layers began to melt like warmed honey, pooling in the secret dark place between her legs. “I’m going to garrote you,” she said, nestling against him.
“Hm,” he murmured in her ear. Her nerves trilled just a little—a delicate sensation she was surprised to declare pleasant.
Then he drew her earlobe into his mouth, sucking on the trapped flesh, and “pleasant” flung off its drab-colored cloak with a dramatic gesture, revealing the bright, spangled form of bliss.
Alice gasped. “This isn’t on the list!”
“Yes it is,” Daniel said. “Rule three. Kissing.”
“But—but—” she stammered.
He stopped, moving back slightly. “No?” he asked. “Or yes? Your word is my command.”
This sudden requirement to choose sent Alice’s nerves into disarray all over again. She contemplated asking for a pause in proceedings so she might read a calming scene or two of All’s Well That Ends Well but remembered she’d left it in the pocket of her skirt, which was currently lying in a heap in the ballroom downstairs. Bother! That was the second skirt she’d lost on this mission. Very much longer and she’d be entirely naked.
Oh. Wait.
At the reminder that she was in fact going to be naked in—she glanced at the timetable—twelve minutes, Alice’s nerves jumped out of the frying pan of disarray and into the fire of absolute chaos. “No,” she said. “I mean no, it’s yes. Yes to all the yes things, unless I say no. Yes?”
“Um . . .”
Frustrated, she kissed him on the mouth—firmly, in the proper regulated manner.
Daniel welcomed her efforts with a response that slowly deepened, turning the kiss sumptuous. She began stroking him, getting tingles from the fine, crisp texture of his shirt. Instructions on how to murder him kept flashing through her brain, even as she slipped her tongue against his. Tiny inner Alices ran around smoothing down her tranquility, only to have the edges curl up and blacken in an intensifying heat of lust. Indeed, so busy was her interior that she didn’t even realize Daniel had unbuttoned her bodice until he began removing it.
She gasped. “Already?”
He paused. “This is the scheduled time for undressing.”
“Good heavens. I now understand the phrase ‘time flies when you’re having fun.’ ”
Daniel grinned. Bending, he proceeded to kiss and lick (subclause 3b) and nibble (unnoted, but Alice was willing to let it slide) a path down her throat to her collarbone. Alice trembled. She hadn’t felt so good since the time she was allowed to arrange all the desks in the Academy classroom. Daniel’s hand slipped down her back, then lower still, tucking itself beneath the waistband of her petticoat. At this new experience of touch, she stiffened.
Immediately Daniel withdrew the hand. “Sorry,” he said. “I was moving toward point six on the schedule, but would you like me to stop? Or should I—”
Alice shook her head, not in reply but from sudden, overwhelming anxiety at having to make yet another decision. Aroused as she was by so many strange but pleasurable sensations, these choices felt like bombs in her brain. Yes! No! Maybe! Slightly! Sometimes! Stop! Go faster! A hundred consequences of her every possible answer exploded in wild, loud colors. She tapped fingers against her brow in a desperate attempt to regulate them. She tried to count her breath, but the numbers changed depending on whether she said yes or—
“Oh!”
Surprise flooded her mind with white silence as Daniel lifted her abruptly. He walked her two steps backward and pressed her against a wall. Then he set her hands at either side of her, palms to the wood paneling.
“Keep them there,” he instructed, and gave her a look—cool, untroubled, safe. She swallowed heavily, her nerves thrilling at his mastery but her pulse easing, her mind sighing contentedly now that he had relieved the burden from it.
“You have the right to remain silent,” he told her, “but anything you do say will be taken as the word of law. Do you understand this right I have just explained to you?”
“I do,” Alice replied—and suddenly envisioned them standing at a church altar, with her saying those words while he slipped a genuine ring onto her finger.
Daniel’s eyelashes fluttered, and she wondered what he was thinking. Not one hint of romantic hooliganism threatened his impeccable countenance. But his voice trembled when he asked, “Do you wish to proceed under these conditions?”
She nodded.
Reaching up under the lustrous red billows of satin, he set his hand against her drawers’ open crotch. Alice gasped delightedly, clutching at the wall, as he began deploying one finger in such a manner that several rules quit on the spot, instead setting up recliner chairs, sunglasses, and tumblers of lemonade with paper umbrellas in them, so as to bask in the heat.
Although Daniel had touched her there before, this time nothing interrupted him, and he progressed further than Alice had known was possible. Indeed, should they make it back to London without being murdered by pirates, killed in a house crash, or electrocuted after using a hairbrush designed by Dr. Snodgrass, Alice would have to nominate him for promotion solely on the basis of his thumb skills. He was not gentle, and the sensations that rampaged through her body did not so much trip her alarms as smash them down and trample them. Moaning, Alice began to flounder. It was too much feeling—too much—she could not breathe. But Daniel did not pause, driving her right to the upper limit of pleasure’s level eight, then pounding her against it over and over again.
“Willows whiten,” she gasped, to no avail. Her muscles began to quiver more than a whole forest of aspens. Level eight gave a little cry and collapsed beneath the swollen, pulsing weight of levels nine and ten. Alice herself sagged against Daniel, and he stroked her hair with his free hand, whispering fragments of Tennyson until her heart no longer felt like it was going to burst.
“I estimate we’re a third of the way through our schedule,” he advised.
“I’m not going to make it,” Alice moaned into the cool linen of his shirt. Even the scent of laundry soap and masculine sweat threatened to spiral her into confounding bliss all over again. “You go ahead, leave me behind.”
Daniel smiled. “I’ll wait until you’re ready.” And he slipped his hand slowly from her drawers.
Alice straightened as if electrified. “It’s fine. I have my second wind now. Let’s continue.”
He looked through his eyelashes at her, stirring that second wind into a storm. “As you wish.”
And before she knew what he was about, he’d removed her drawers and knelt before her, and she discovered that the postdoctoral thesis on coitus had been missing a few pages.
Forget hooligan; she was a delinquent now. “Um—” she attempted. “What—”
“Rule three,” he reminded her. “Kissing.” And when she gasped, clutching at his hair—“Subclause 3b: with tongue.”
By the time he finished, level eight was a mere speck in the eye of level twenty, and Alice could barely stand. In a haze, she felt herself being lifted, then carefully lowered to a narrow bed. The metal frame creaked; a smell of mold wafted up. Her petticoat had disappeared somewhere along the way, leaving her clad in only a thin linen camisole embroidered with enchantments.
She lay stiff, thighs pressed together, arms crossed. Daniel removed his shoes and trousers, then climbed onto the bed, kneeling astride her legs. Without a word, not even looking at her, he unfastened his tie and began unbuttoning his shirt.
“Don’t tell me to relax,” she warned, her voice raspy after all its recent moaning.
“All right,” Daniel said evenly. His shirt fell open, and as he turned his attention to his cuffs, Alice urgently counted her breath. One . . . two . . . elephant . . . seventy-four . . .
The shirt came off, revealing his tanned torso, lean, deadly arms, and a certain other anatomical feature that, had it been included thusly on Michelangelo’s David, would have tripled museum profits due to the crowds of visitors. Daniel gave the shirt a crisp shake and began to fold—
“Um . . .” he said, blinking with surprise, as Alice snatched the shirt from him and threw it to the floor.
“I’m just streamlining the schedule,” she explained, and he laughed.
The lovely, rare sound glimmered through her. Her fingers fluttered in response against her bare arms.
“Hm,” Daniel said, taking one hand in his. Alice immediately made a fist, but he pried the fingers apart with ease. “These remind me of a poem I once read in an old American newspaper. I enjoy seeing them ‘leaping like leopards in the sky.’ ”
As she watched him kiss each fingertip, emotions broke through the haze of physical pleasure and threatened to overwhelm her. “I’m going to stab you,” she whispered.
“Uh huh.” He stroked his tongue across her wrist.
She shivered. “I’m going to break your legs.”
Unperturbed, he began kissing up her arm. “Behold, thou art fair, O my love,” he murmured against her skin. “Behold, thou art fair; thy eyes are as those of doves.”
Trust a Catholic to quote the ultimate book in a moment like this.
“Behold, thou art fair, my beloved,” she answered. “Also, our bed is green.”
Daniel frowned at her with mock solemnity. “If I didn’t know you were quoting, I’d suspect you of breaking the rule about jokes. This mattress is indeed disturbingly mildewed.”
Now Alice was the one to laugh. Daniel bent to kiss it greedily into his own mouth. She could taste his desire and wanted to serve it—with all her heart, wanted to please him. So she reached down rather awkwardly to make his intimate acquaintance—
“Alice,” he growled, pressing his brow against hers. But it did not sound like an order for her to cease operations, so she continued. A few salient questions occurred to her, such as Do you like it when I employ my thumb in this way? but Daniel’s breathing became so erratic, conversation would be impossible.
“Wait,” he said finally, wincing as he struggled to control something within himself.
Alice moved her hand away. “Are you ready to be finished?” she asked cautiously, giving one thought to the unfinished schedule and one to the strained look on his face, and not knowing whether to be disappointed or apologetic.
He smiled at her then, that beautiful, melting smile which always made her want to sigh a little, hug him a little, marry him a little, and take him away to live in the peaceful countryside. “Most definitely not, which is why I need you to stop. Or else I will be finished far too soon.” His smile faded slightly, and she recognized in him the same shyness she felt. “Are you saying you want to be finished?”
“No.” She looked away. “If I asked for more, please, would you forgive me for referencing Dickens at such an inappropriate moment?”
Daniel laughed. “God, I love you.”
Idiom! her brain declared at once. But her heart swelled with helpless wishing. She began trembling, frightened she might murder him in that moment out of sheer joy. He must have seen it—naked against her nakedness, he must have felt it—for he gathered her in his arms and held her close.
“Tighter,” she growled, “in case I break free and strangle you.”
He laughed softly into her hair. “I’m not scared of that.”
“Then why are you restraining me?”
“I’m hugging you.”
“But you’ve already done that.”
“Alice, sweetheart, you deserve all the hugs I can give.”
Sweetheart. Was that an idiom too? And was she a fool for glowing inside at the sound of it?
Daniel kissed her throat, her jaw, kissed words against her mouth. “You deserve to be cared for, Alice. You deserve everything.”
He would not let her argue or explain the logical fallacies in his statement. And she would not let herself weep with desperate yearning for it to be true. Instead, they kissed, hard and deep, with a languid, heavy passion. And while he kept her occupied with that, Daniel quietly spread her legs, pushed up her knees, and advanced the schedule.
Pain shot through her. Alice closed her eyes, silently counting one cycle of breath and then another, willing her countenance to remain undisturbed. According to her scientific reading, women did not enjoy sexual intercourse, but if they waited patiently until the man was finished, they’d feel a sense of achievement that would be satisfying indeed. Alice rather doubted this, considering the discomfort she was in, but she was prepared to endure.
“Sorry,” Daniel whispered, withdrawing.
She caught at him with something akin to panic. “Don’t leave.”
He smiled. “I’m not going to leave you, sweetheart.” Shifting his angle, he moved closer, deeper, again. “I just don’t want to hurt you.”
“You can hurt me,” she answered promptly. “I don’t mind.”
“I do.” And shifting his angle again, slow, patient, he watched her face until its disguise faded and she was helpless to pretend. Her breath became an unmeasurable mess of gasping and broken sound. Then he moved more firmly. Things began to feel nice delightful oh my good God she wanted to do this and nothing else for the rest of her life.
“Alice?” he asked gently.
“Umhunmghm,” she replied—which was about as effective a rebuttal to science as it was possible to get. She glanced at him, and their eyes accidentally met.
He stilled.
She stopped breathing altogether.
The whole universe tilted on its axis, pouring starlit silence into the small, shy distance between their eyes.
And when Alice exhaled again, it felt like her soul emerged with it to embrace Daniel, drawing him close for a kiss that was only soft, brief, yet somehow more profound than any they had shared before.
He smiled, making her shiver right through. “You know when you open a new book and realize it’s going to be perfect?” he whispered.
“Yes,” Alice said.
“That’s how I feel when I look at you.”
He gave her no chance to respond as he lifted himself to a steeper angle and, discarding rule after rule, made her climax even more emphatically than before.
“Oh, valiant dust!” she cried out, overmastered.
Daniel’s movements grew almost desperate then. The bed shuddered and wailed. Alice lay rocking beneath him, feeling boneless, defenseless, peaceful at the eye of a storm. He lowered himself once more, fingers twining with her hair, mouth so near hers they breathed the shivering fragments of each other’s breath. He said something she could not quite hear but it sounded a great deal like the inarticulate love and grief that lay at her own core.
“Daniel,” she whispered.
He went suddenly taut, as if she’d stopped everything in him—as if speaking his name had broken a curse. Then he collapsed. For a sweaty, overwrought moment they clung to each other, still connected in deep and wishful ways, while the bed sagged as if it was equally exhausted. At last, Daniel rolled away.
Alice felt the sharp flash of the world against her body. Immediately, she moved to press herself against him again. He had one arm up, his hand clutching his damp hair, and he laid the other around her shoulders. She relaxed then, safe in his steadiness.
“Are you well?” she asked tentatively.
“Should I escape cardiac exhaustion in the next few minutes, I am well indeed,” he said. “Are you?”
She wriggled up a little so she could kiss the inexplicable tears on his face. “I am. Yes, I am, now.”
He smiled at her.
And the bed broke apart.