But I hated him so much right now, I couldn’t bear to respond. I didn’t want to get drawn into an argument. Because I knew that if I lifted the lid on my emotions, I’d find a lot more than hate there. And I didn’t want to know how far down it went, the pit of fear, desire and want that was making me feel empty inside.
After a while, we turned off onto a dusty road. It curved up a hill through the trees, past a small lake whose surface was rippling in the moonlight. I couldn’t see a light for miles around us. The world would have been pitch black if it weren’t for the car’s headlights. But eventually, we pulled into a wide driveway under a dark gabled roof.
“This is it,” said Alex.
I got out sulkily, and followed Alex to the front door with my bag. He opened the door.
I was looking into a wide, spacious living room through the corridor at the front. I could see a stone fireplace in the gloom, with long sofas and chairs scattered around. There were lampshades. On the walls, I could see huge picture frames. And on the floor, a bearskin rug. In the dark, the deadeyes of the animal looked at me.
“This place is giving me the creeps,” I said. “Where’s my room?”
“Well, hang on a minute,” said Alex. “First we need to get this place up and running.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
He flicked a switch, and the lights didn’t come on. “See?” he said.
Alex produced a torch from the chest of drawers which stood by the front door. I followed him through the sleek, modern stainless steel kitchen, down the stairs at the back of the house to a shed.
“What’s that?” I said.
“The outhouse,” he replied.
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“Of course I’m kidding,” said Alex, and chuckled. “There’s underfloor heating, solar energy. I redid all the plumbing.” But I was unmoved by his rare attempt at humor.
Inside the place was a generator. I watched Alex pull the cord, but nothing happened.
He looked at it for a minute.
“I don’t get it,” he said.
“You need to use the pump first,” I said.
“The what?”
“The pump. It’s there.” I pointed towards the handle.
“Oh, I got you,” said Alex, and pumped the handle four or five times to prime the generator. He pulled the cord, and it whirred to life, chugging gently. He shut the door and we went back inside. When we got to the living room, Alex flicked the light on. I could now see the homely, old-time room now. The brass fixtures of the lamps gleamed.
“Are you cold?” said Alex.
“A little. It’s fine,” I said.
“I’ll light the fire,” he said, and bent down. From the cage next to the fireplace, he took out a couple of logs with some kindling and newspaper. With a firelighter on the mantelpiece, he lit a fire.
“Can I go to bed now?” I said.
Alex turned and looked at me.
“You’re angry with me,” he said.
Genius, aren’t you?I looked away and said nothing.
He stood up.
“You are,” he said. “Look at you. You’re practically shaking. You’re furious with me.”
I tried to hold it back, but I couldn’t any longer.
“You’re damn right I am!” I yelled. The force of my voice shocked me, and Alex took a step back.
“You’ve taken me from my home, from my daughter. And you’ve brought me out here to the middle of nowhere, to some mansion. And I’m tired, and I’m afraid. Not just for me, but for Macy. I told her I’d be there tomorrow. She’s going to wake up—” I was beginning to cry now, “—and I won’t be there, again, and isn’t it enough? I mean, how much worse of a mother could I be? To have signed up to this, to have done all this, foryou?”
Alex stood, watching me. For the first time, it struck me how amazingly resilient he was. He’d just seen his most treasured business burned to the ground. He’d been arrested, and told he was in danger, and he’d driven me out here in the dead of night. And I’d just yelled the meanest thing I could possibly think of at him. And somehow he was still standing upright.
“You’re not a bad mother,” he said, and kneeled down with his back to me, tending the fire.
“What?” I said, stepping around to the side of him.
“You’re not a bad mother at all,” he said, and while Alex’s face was still and unmoved, I could see his eyes gleaming in the firelight, the orange tongues of flame playing strangely across the surface of his blue, shimmering eyes. He blinked mechanically, every few seconds.
I’d never looked at Alex’s face so closely before. And for the first time, I noticed that even though he wasn’t smiling, his eyeswere. He was trying to reassure me, to make me happy. How many times had he looked at me this way, and I hadn’t even noticed?
“I feel like I am,” I said. “She needs me. And I’m not there right now.”And neither are you, I thought.
“I know. But it’s not your fault, and she’s going to be fine.”
“You think?”
“How could she not be, with you for a mom?”
I was stunned––stunned at his kindness.
“That’s maybe the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” I murmured. My eyes were drawn to the stray locks of hair which hung over Alex’s brow, while he tended the fire.
He turned and looked at me, and there was a warm glow to his cheeks.
I kneeled beside him, my knees on the fur rug. It was soft, and I could smell the deep, heavy scent of woodsmoke and a few traces of the glorious, sweet cologne that Alex had worn to the church. The church where he’d chosen me, of all people, to marry him. A woman who’d given him nothing but trouble.
I wondered whether Alex would have ever married someone. He seemed to exist apart from the rest of the world, from its everyday concerns. To marry someone was an impossible thing for a man like him—requiring absolute trust, absolute loyalty.
And he had married me. Even if it wasn’t real. Even if it was in a moment of desperation.
“Hey,” I said, hearing my voice, low and husky, a little tired. He turned to me, and as he turned, I reached towards him, my hand coming to rest on the rough stubble of his chin.
“Lola,” he said, and for the millionth time I wondered how it felt so good to have someone hear my name.
He leaned towards me, and we kissed, a rush of dark desire forcing its way down from my lips as they pressed against his. He pulled back for a moment, and I looked into his eyes, blue eyes, sweet eyes, welcoming and warm. Their hard, glassy surface dissolved at last, by the warming reach of the fire.
He kissed me once again, and this time I heard a soft moan escape up through my mouth as it pressed to his, and through his lips, I felt the excitement and wonder I stirred in Alex. Slowly, as I grasped at his sides, at the shirt he wore, the shirt which smelled of smoke and ruin and sweet cologne, he bore down on me, until I lay on my back.
Alex reached down, his hands sending a pleasurable tingle of lust through me as they explored my breasts, my hips, and finally my waist. I felt like a woman with him. It was as if the last few hours had stripped away every mask I wore—waitress, mom, former singer—until I was just me, was just the essence of who I was. And a smile played on my lips and I sighed contentedly as he reached beneath the folds of my wedding dress, and his hands rested on my thighs. One of his arms reached up my skirts, and before I knew it, he’d rested his palm against my panties, and I began to grind my hips against his hand in response. I wanted him to know how much I desired him. I had to have him.
I sat up, in the firelight, as though shocked out of a dream. My hands reached instinctively for the buttons on his shirt. I wanted to peel down his defenses too, let him feel just like a man, with me, just a woman.
But Alex firmly gripped my hands.
“What?” I said, suddenly worried he didn’t want this, that somehow I’d misread every one of the signals, even though that was surely impossible.“Let’s do it right this time,” he purred. “After all, it’s still your wedding night.”
I beamed, and he stood up, offering me his hand. With seemingly impossible strength, he gripped it and pulled me up in one, swift motion, and I stood there, tottering, the blood rushing to my head, before he took my hand in his and led me up the stairs.
In the room, he unzipped my dress, and turned me, span me in the moonlight creeping through the window. Before I knew it, I was on the bed, and Alex was covering me, over the top of me. We rolled over, and I delighted at being on top of him, cradled and yet possessive in his arms, showing him that he was mine. I reached down and undid his suit pants, and he slipped out of them a little so I could rest my hand on his groin, feel his desire poking through the fabric of his underwear.
Next came his shirt, and in the silver light, I counted and kissed each of the strong muscles on his bare chest, while my hands slipped over his back.
“I’m ready,” I told him, and took his hand, letting him feel how wet I was through my panties.
He laid me down, and I opened my legs for him, resting them on the bed, astonished as I always was at how small my body felt in his arms, and yet how strong he was, how broad his shoulders were. At how physically prepared I was for him to take me.
I felt the head of Alex’s erect cock pressing against me, and I knew this time it was going to be easy, as he slipped inside of me and I arched my back, moaning loudly, feeling my nails dig into the back of his neck a little where I held him. Alex rested his elbows beside me, supporting his weight with ease, allowing me to control how much of him I received as he thrust gently, slowly.
Rolling his hips, Alex eased every part of his large manhood inside of my body, and I yelped a little, wilder now, stirred back to life by the sheer force of his body.
“You’re mine,” he said.
“And you’re mine,” I said.
I saw the look of sudden confusion in his eye, and then an understanding spread across his face, framed by the silky, soft light from outside. “I am,” he told me.
Alex began to go faster, and I began to hear myself cry out, even as my lips were pressed to his beck and shoulders, kissing him, encouraging him.
“Fuck me,” I said, in that crude, primitive way I knew would bring on his darkest urges, and he responded in kind, pinning me to the bed, his thumbs stroking my wrists even as he began to go harder. Something about that, the meeting point of the gentlest and the roughest feelings, made me clench my legs. And then I felt myself coming to climax, astonished at how quickly the feelings had come on. Like my body had been waiting to see whether Alex wanted me too, before telling me what it wanted. For without him, there was nothing to want at all, and I thought about that as I leaned back, my neck lying on the soft mattress of the bed as he fucked me, until we came together in the dark, and flooded with him, with his heat, I tightened my legs around him as Alex sated himself, with sharp, piercing cries of desire which rang through the empty house.
He rolled off of me and before I knew it, I was wrapped up in his arms, and he was kissing my cheeks, my lips.
“You’re amazing,” he said.
“So are you,” I replied, and we lay there in the silence, until I felt my eyes closing and my breathing go soft, and the strangest, craziest, most awful, most wonderful day of my life came to a wonderful end.
Or so I thought.
***
That night, I woke up, startled, as if from a dream. Then I turned and saw Alex next to me, and knew it was all real, every moment of it. And I felt like I was soaring away from the world and into the night sky outside our bedroom window.
I got up and went downstairs to the kitchen for a glass of water. As I stood at the sink, filling my glass, I looked up and down over the pale moonlight resting on the surface of the lake.
My eyes traced the tree-line for a moment, and then I was startled by a dark shape moving by the surface of the water and off, down the hill. I blinked, and peered again. Was it just some foliage rustling in the breeze? A wild animal, perhaps? But it looked big.
I watched the lake for a few minutes, but there was nothing. The surface of the water was still.