Lost in Me Page 3

  His widened at the sound of his name spoken intimate and low because my utterance had been airy, but also eager.

  He moved his hands back to thread into my hair. In the process, he cradled the back of my head and my neck, but he also held as if he was afraid I would pull away too soon. My hands ended up against his chest when he pulled my lips to his again. My arms were no barrier between us especially when one of my palms ended up over the heavy beat of his heart.

  His mouth slid across mine. I didn’t struggle when he urged my movements—to tilt, to open to his questing tongue—because I wanted to tilt, to open. Oh God, I wanted to open.

  My tongue met his and the beat of his heart pulsed beneath my hand, increasing until I felt its rhythm transferring itself through my fingers to every part of me. He moaned into my mouth and that too seemed to enter and flow and join with a marrow-deep vibration his touch and taste set off in me.

  We were in my nightmare room, but it didn’t seem to matter. The rocking chair could begin to sway. The doll could lift its lids. A body could appear on the floor at our feet, but our visceral connection—skin to skin, lips to lips, tongue to tongue—and his heartbeat held in the palm of my hand was even more raw and powerful than any of those horrible things.

  Finally, when I’d made the decision that oxygen was no longer necessary and that my starved lungs could explode before I gave up his mouth, Jonathan eased back.

  “No,” I protested against his retreating lips. I didn’t want the kiss to end because I somehow remembered all I needed to know for our mouths to join. Like painting, the kiss was pure instinct. I was consumed; therefore, strengthened and whole in a way I wasn’t when my fingers were clean and my lips were alone.

  “Not here,” Jonathan said, but his heart under my fingers said darker, hungrier things like ‘anywhere’ and ‘now’.

  I let him lead me from the room. I stood behind him, seeing the purple walls, stilled chair and sleeping doll when he began to close the door. The dolls eyes were closed, but its body had slumped and fallen to the side. I was glad when the door clicked closed and Jonathan turned the key in the lock.

  He pressed his palm against the door’s heavy panels with his head bowed for several seconds as if he willed it and all its contents to stay dormant and stale.

  Then, he turned back to me in the darkened hallway.

  “I won’t apologize. I’m not sorry. It would be a lie,” he said.

  I looked up at his shadowed face. His eyes were light in the darkness, but they looked hollow as if I had taken something from him when I hadn’t fought the kiss.

  I wasn’t as hollow as I’d been. The butterfly over my brow was replicated now inside my mind as if thousands of synopses fluttered and wakened and tried to fly. I couldn’t catch them. They were too flighty and light and quick. But they seemed to tickle long forgotten memories to life.

  I had kissed Jonathan before.

  “Don’t,” I said. I didn’t want him to lie. I didn’t want him to apologize. I was filled with enough regret for both of us. It ate at my insides with dull hungry teeth. I wasn’t sorry that we had kissed.

  I was sorry that the kiss had to end.

  Chapter Five

  I retreated to my paint.

  This, I could control no matter how uncontrolled the subject of my painting or my reaction to it. My breathing slowed and steadied while I worked even if my lips continued to feel the press of La Croix’s.

  I knew more of what to paint now.

  I added the rocking chair, the giraffe and even the sleeping doll. She frightened me as I painted with the red bow of her mouth and the thick artificial lashes on her cracked porcelain cheeks, fissured with age. But, most of all, with the pale lavender of the ribbons in her hair which exactly matched the one I’d had in my possession for all this dark, lonely year.

  I had to force myself to recreate those ribbons, one by one, twined and braided into her far too realistic black curls.

  It was almost a relief to move on to the crumpled form of the dead woman on the kaleidoscopic chaos of the Oriental rug. She took shape beneath my flying fingers, but as I tried to recreate what I’d seen and the cause of the darker stained patterns on the floor of the purple room, but my focus shifted from the canvas to the paint smeared pads of my fingers.

  My throat tightened. My teeth clenched. I brought my hands away from their task and held them out in front of me until several fat drops of red oil paint fell to the floor. The sound they made—pat, pat, pat—as they fell was horrible to me. I wanted to cover my ears, but I couldn’t because my hands were covered in angry crimson stain.

  Then, the distracting scent of jasmine crept into the room. It flowed on a draft that seemed to come from the door that led out into the hallway and down to my room.

  I stood up.

  I followed the scent with my fists clenched to keep drips of bright scarlet off the polished Cyprus floors.

  The door to my room was open. I stood in the doorway. I’d heard nothing while I painted for hours and hours until night fell, but on the table by the door another fresh sprig of night blooming jasmine had been left in my room. Its petals opened for the dusky night air flowing into my room through a window that hadn’t been open before.

  I stepped slowly toward the billowing white curtains carefully keeping my stained hands from their pristine diaphanous cotton. Down below in the garden, I saw nothing but an empty bench surrounded by blossom-heavy bushes and the movement of an old tire swing twisting and turning in the breeze.

  ***

  I washed the red from my hands. It swirled in gruesome mimicry of something far more sinister as it rinsed down the drain. When I realized that shades of red were all over me and not just on my fingers, I turned the shower on over the ancient claw-footed tub. I stepped under the steaming spray with my eyes closed so I wouldn’t see rivulets of red flowing down my body.

  ***

  After my shower, I pulled on a soft satin camisoleI found in a drawer of the bureau in my room and a faded skirt with a floral print that swirled around my ankles. They were mine. I recognized them and they fit my curves perfectly though I blushed to think La Croix had placed them here for me.

  Once I’d dressed, I returned to the studio.

  I don’t know how long I might have painted that evening if La Croix hadn’t stopped me. He was suddenly behind me, wrapping his arms around my body to still my compulsive movements.

  My fingers had sunk deeply into the thick paint I applied to the canvas when his hands enveloped them.

  My eyes focused on our hands as I blinked my nightmare world away. It was as if the purple room of the painting had tried to pull me into its dark and desperate depths, fingers first. Would I have allowed myself to waste away, finally consumed by this obsession to know and remember?

  I imagined myself as a skeleton found leaning against a violent canvas, my bones a part of its horrifying tableau.

  Then, La Croix’s breath on my neck brought me back to the land of the living.

  “Stop,” he ordered.

  He didn’t seem to care that his hands were taking up some of the paint I’d tried to bear. I could almost imagine him sharing the burden of the truths I tried to reveal on the canvas when his strong hands didn’t shy from the mess. No. He didn’t shy away. Instead, he plunged into their wet, silky depths where I was drowning and he brought me out.

  His hands slid from my hands to my shoulders leaving violet in their wake, physical evidence of the electric tingle he spread from my wrists to my neck.

  Then, he urged me to my feet.

  My body was stiff. I’d probably been in the same position for hours. La Croix must have seen me wince or felt me tense because, without another word, his paint-covered hands kneaded my shoulders.

  I groaned as much from the relief of the message as the sensual stimulation of my back and bottom brushing against his warm, masculine chest and thighs. Pleasure overcame my discomfort and all my thoughts of the purple room.

/>   My appreciative moan gave him permission to trail his fingers down my back, squeezing and shaping my stiff muscles so that they would warm and relax.

  When he found the edges of my camisole I didn’t protest against the paint or his touch. He lifted it to bare my stomach. Its pale expanse was made even whiter in contrast when my hands came up to trail after his and we both left more violet on my skin.

  I wasn’t wearing a bra. His hands found my hardened nipples easily and I covered his with mine, feeling him touch me. I breathed in a shaky breath and found myself more in the real world than I’d been in a long time with his hard body behind me and his strong hands holding me to earth.

  “The paint looks better on you than the canvas,” he murmured into my neck.

  I thought it was his fingers on my skin that were beautiful, but I couldn’t argue because he’d settled himself more firmly against me and the hard ridge of him above the slight rounded curve of my bottom made me lose the ability to speak.

  I couldn’t help it.

  I bumped my hips back to move against him and I was rewarded with his sudden intake of air in a surprised gasp against my skin.

  “Chloe, don’t…move,” he said.

  I didn’t obey.

  I rocked my hips, once, twice, three times. I knew it was dangerous, but I didn’t care. There was so much I didn’t know, but for the first time in many months, I was consumed by something other than nightmares and paint.

  La Croix and my attraction to him burned away everything else.

  When one of his hands left my breast and smoothed back down over my chest and stomach to cup between my legs and press me even closer to his erection, I whimpered in need.

  “Yes,” I urged.

  His warm hand was separated from my heat by the merest layer of thin georgette and satin. I could feel his fingers so close to where I needed them to be. And then even closer as he pressed gently, seeking and discovering the hidden recess that ached for his touch. I rocked against his hand, sighing and he moaned, rocking with me until I was teased in front by his questing fingers and behind by his movements and the fantasy of what could be if I allowed it.

  But, then, a door closed in the distance with a solid mahogany bang.

  Both of us were startled, our movements halted by the intrusion of…who? What?Weren’t we the only ones in the house?

  I turned, pulling my camisole back into place as La Croix slowly stepped away, his fingers reluctantly trailing from my body.

  “I left étouffée for you in the kitchen. Get out of this studio. Eat,” he said. He was flushed. His eyes heavy-lidded, but he looked toward the door as if expecting more noise or movement. The whole of Belle Aimée should be silent, yet I’d already learned that the line between should be and would be in this house was indistinct.

  La Croix looked back at me and a slight smile unexpectedly lit his face.

  In an instant, I forgot about slamming doors.

  The smile, no matter how slight, softened the angular edges of his jaw and turned his normally handsome face into something even more beguiling. Could I trust that softening in his features when his face was usually dark and tight?

  “I’ve gotten paint all over you,” he said.

  I looked down and pressed my violet hands against my hollow stomach. It was past time to eat. But I thought maybe I felt hollow and empty because it was past time for me to finish the painting and get on with my life. My body yearned for more of what it had felt seconds before. The electricity of his touch still lingered. My skin was sensitized and neglected parts of me had wakened.

  La Croix was only a few feet away, but he looked back at the door again as if there was something urgent that pulled us apart. There was something other than the paint on me or crawfish stew that required his attention. “I might need to go out for a while, but I’ll be back soon,” he said. His voice sounded strained. I don’t think I was alone in regretting the interruption.

  I didn’t try to stop him when he walked away. One last penetrating look in my direction showed me that his smile had been fleeting. I didn’t think the unlit hallway was responsible for the shadows that had reclaimed his face. I shivered, my body suddenly chilled by his absence.

  I was alone in the studio once more.

  Behind me, the painting waited. I turned to it wrapping my arms around myself, for restraint or comfort I couldn’t be sure. I’d never created such a three dimensional image. For one startling moment, I had the memory of brighter works filled with lush gardens and colorful flowers, but then the memory was gone. In the here and now, heavy layers of oil paint gleamed wetly, their thick swirls and gloomy ridges raised from the canvas as if seeking and searching to enter the real world. The likeness of the old porcelain doll caught my attention. Had I painted her with her eyes open? She sat in the straight-backed chair, looking out at the room where I stood with the blank stare of her glittering eyes.

  I backed away from that stare. I might have had to let La Croix go, but I would give in to his suggestion and go down to the kitchen and eat the étouffée he’d left for me.

  Because he’d saved me from the painting, but I was suddenly afraid to be with it alone.

  Chapter Six

  After a savory dinner, I padded quickly through a far-too-quiet house. I didn’t know when La Croix would return. I hadn’t heard his car, but I could tell the house was empty around me. I went back upstairs to wash and change clothes trying very hard not to think about the purple room. This time, I pulled on soft, lacy underthings from the bureau and I found a cheerful yellow sundress in the closet. It was lightly faded and I imagined I’d felt the swish of its skirt around my legs before.

  Once I’d accomplished all those necessary things, I brushed my fingers over the jasmine that always seemed to be fresh by the door even though I never saw it being replaced.

  By the door.

  I found myself walking back to the studio. The steady beat of my heart increased in tempo, but I didn’t stop myself. I fisted my hands, already imagining the cool slide of paint on my fingers. The compulsion to remember was too great for me to ignore.

  Only, when I stepped into the studio, La Croix was there. He must have returned while I was changing out of my paint stained clothes.

  The trunk was open. Many of the portraits I’d tried to paint of him over the last year were unfurled.

  “Chloe?” he asked as I stepped over the threshold.

  He opened his arms and the portrait he’d been looking at slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor, its wrong eyes paling in comparison to the ones that bore through me with the heat of a thousand New Orleans summers.

  “I didn’t remember,” I replied, but I continued into the room, closer and closer to the man I should probably avoid.

  “But you did remember…something,” he argued. He looked at all the paintings scattered around, then back into my eyes.

  “Someone,” I said. “I remembered someone.”

  Him, but wrong. Angry and frightening with a dead woman lying at his feet. Still, I came closer, drawn by his open arms and his face, lighter than I’d yet seen, but somehow familiar and compelling in its lightness.

  I wanted a closer look at this lighter La Croix. I wanted to soak up every detail of his face out of the shadows.

  But I came too close.

  I stepped into the circle of his arms and they were already closing around me. Shadows returned to his eyes in between one blink and the next.

  “I thought you’d left without saying goodbye, but I couldn’t make myself believe it. I still watched and waited to hear from you. I thought of you…often,” La Croix said.

  He pulled me closer as he said it. A tug of his arms behind my back so I took the final step to bring my chest to his. I gasped because the full body contact overwhelmed, but it also reminded. I fit against him so well as if our bodies had missing interlocking pieces that only became whole when we touched.

  And we’d touched before.

  We’d been
whole before.

  “I only thought of you,” I confessed in a ragged whisper. “I only remembered you.”

  I didn’t tell him that he’d frightened me. Every night for a year. Because that wasn’t all he’d done. He’d attracted me and tempted me and haunted me as well. He’d made me ache.

  La Croix’s hand came up to touch my face. He threaded his fingers into my hair and softly caressed my butterfly scar with his thumb.

  “I was the last person you saw,” he said.

  He leaned to brush his lips where his thumb had been and my heart kicked in my chest. Because this was tender, but it was also dangerous. The low southern rumble of his voice against my breasts. The strength of his arm holding me close. The heat of his mouth on my skin.

  And the blue.

  The oh-so-perfect shade of blue glittered behind his lowered sable lashes.

  My lips were already open and hungry when he moved his lips down my face and along my jaw to find them. I couldn’t have stopped the eager pained sound I made in the back of my throat when our mouths came together. I twisted my hands into his shirt to hold on and my ferocity popped his top buttons free.

  He moaned in response, flicking his tongue out and questing between my lips with its hot tip. I suckled, urging him to probe deeper, tasting his late evening sweet tea, a hint of lemon and maybe, just maybe a clandestine cigarillo. Had he needed something stronger than caffeine to settle his nerves after our earlier embrace?

  Both his hands were in my damp hair now and he held me for deeper and deeper explorations. I undid the remaining buttons of his shirt, fumbling and eager to feel his muscular chest, but when I brushed the tailored fabric aside, I was startled. I found hard, rippled abs and the broad plane of firm pectorals, and, then…a small irregular ridging in the shape of a rough circle over his heart.

  My fingers paused.

  La Croix broke his lips from mine and I was able to see the scar I’d uncovered. His impressive chest rose and fell beneath my explorations, but he dropped one of his hands to press over my fingers.