The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,459

striking out. And on the dusty bed after, he had been irresistible to her in his exhaustion, his large, strong hands curled and lying empty on the counterpane. Loosening his thick leather belt and the zipper of his jeans, all erotic, that tins powerful thing was suddenly dependent upon her. But then the terror had gripped her when she felt his pulse.

She’d sat with him for a long tense time, until the pulse returned to normal; until his skin had cooled. Until he was breathing in regular sleep. So coarsely and perfectly beautiful he’d been, the white undershirt stretched tight over his chest, just a real man and so exquisitely mysterious to her, with that dark hair on his chest and on the backs of his arms, and the hands so much bigger than hers.

Only his fear cooled her passion, and his fear never lasted very long.

This morning, she had wanted to wake him up by clamping her mouth on his cock. But he needed his sleep now after all that had happened. He needed it badly. She only prayed he had peace in his dreams. And besides she was going to marry him as soon as it seemed polite to ask him. And they had all their lives in the First Street house, didn’t they, to do things like that?

And it seemed wrong to do what she’d done several mornings with Chase, her old palomino cop from Marin County, which was roll over next to him, press her hips against his flank and her face against his suntanned upper arm, and squeeze her legs tightly together, until the orgasm ran through her like a wash of blinding light.

It wasn’t much fun to do that, either—nothing, in fact, compared to being tacked to the mattress by an adorable brute, with a little gold crucifix dangling from a chain around his neck.

He hadn’t even stirred when the thunder rolled overhead, when the crack came so loud and sudden that it was like guns tearing loose the roof.

And now, two hours later, as the rain fell, and the breakfast grew cold, she sat dreaming, her mind running over all the past and all the possibilities, and this crucial meeting, soon to begin.

The phone startled her. Ryan and Pierce were in the lobby, ready to take her downtown.

Quickly she wrote a note for Michael, saying she was off on Mayfair legal business, and would be back for dinner, no later than six. “Please keep Aaron with you and don’t go over to the house alone.” She signed it with love.

“I want to marry you,” she said aloud as she placed the note on the bedside table. Softly he snored into the pillow. “The archangel and the witch,” she said, even more loudly. He slept on. She chanced one kiss on his naked shoulder, felt gently of the muscle in his upper arm, enough to drag her right into the bed if she lingered on it, and went out and shut the door.

Skipping the fancy paneled elevator, she walked down the carpeted stairs, staring for a moment at smooth-faced Ryan and his handsome son as if they were aliens from another universe in their tropical wool suits, with their mellow southern voices, there to guide her to a spaceship disguised as a limousine.

The small quaint brick buildings of Carondelet Street glided past in a curious silence, the sky like polished stone beyond the delicate downpour, the lightning opening a vein in the stone, the thunder crackling menacingly and then dying away.

At last they came into a region of burnished skyscrapers, a shining America for two blocks, followed by an underground garage that might have been anywhere in the world.

No surprises in the spacious thirtieth-floor offices of Mayfair and Mayfair, with its traditional furnishings and thick carpet, not even that two of the assembled Mayfair lawyers were women, and one was a very old man, or that the view through the high glass windows was of the river, gray as the sky, dotted with interesting tugs and barges, beneath the rain’s silver veil.

Then coffee and conversation of the most vague and frustrating sort with the white-haired Ryan, his light blue eyes as opaque as marbles, speaking interminably it seemed of “considerable investments,” and “long term holdings,” and “tracts of land which have been held for over a century,” and hard-core conservative investments “larger than you might expect.”

She waited; they had to give her more than this; they had to. And then like a computer she