Greg Iles - Sleep No More

Eve’s black Lexus was parked near an opening in the garden wall. Waters pulled his Land Cruiser in behind her, blocking her exit, and walked through the gate. To his right rose the rear elevation of the mansion. Its scored concrete walls were relieved by jib windows, and its steeply sloped roof had several chimneys. To his left lay intricate gardens laced with brick walkways and shadowy paths, the centerpiece a fountain surrounded by statuary inspired by German fairy tales. The frozen figures of boys and girls had nothing in common with the stone angels from the cemetery; they captured an elusive quality of childhood, wonder mixed with boredom, a feeling that time had no meaning beyond the present moment.

As Waters approached the house, something made him look up. Through one of the jib windows, he saw the silhouette of a standing woman. She leaned forward and spread her palm against the pane like a starfish. His heart stuttered. Through the distorting blur of the century-old glass, she could be Mallory Candler. Her palm left the pane, and a forefinger pointed downward. A door stood immediately below the window, one of three in the back wall of the house. When he looked back up at the window, the figure had vanished.

He walked to the door, then hesitated with his hand on the knob. He felt like a man walking into a brothel, or a hospital, or a monastery. Once he walked through this door, he would never be the same. Some part of him even feared that he might not come out again.

The knob turned in his hand, and he jerked back his arm. He half-expected the door to open, but it remained closed. After several moments, he turned the knob and pushed open the door.

It led to a narrow, carpeted staircase. Looking up, he saw Eve Sumner standing at the top of the steps. Gone were the navy skirt suit and heels. She wore a bright yellow sundress that looked like something a St. Croix islander might wear. Her feet were bare, and her hair was tied back with a ruby scarf, exposing her fine neck and jaw. Waters was sure he remembered Mallory wearing a dress exactly like it on their Yucatan trip. Eve did not speak but watched him intently. She was waiting for him to enter on his own.

He stepped over the threshold.

“I’m glad you came,” she said, her eyes suddenly bright with tears. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”

He closed the door behind him.

She lifted a hand and beckoned him up the stairs.

As he ascended, he took in details of the room that served as a backdrop to her stunning figure: fourteen-foot ceilings, massive crown moldings, a carved medallion above the chandelier.

“I’m not sure why I came,” he said, reaching the top step.

She took his hand in hers, and he realized she was shaking. “You don’t have to be sure. Just be here.”

Waters looked around in wonder. The mansion was furnished with period antiques, giving him the feeling it was 1850 and that the owners had simply gone out for a carriage ride. To his left stood a massive, coffin-shaped piano, a Broadway from England, he guessed. Six doors led off of this central room, some to bedroom suites, the others to a kitchen, a marble-floored foyer, a dining room.

“We’re alone,” Eve said. “I have the only key.”

He looked at her.

“Come with me, Johnny.” She pulled him toward a half-open door. Through it he saw a short corridor, and beyond that a bedroom furnished with two tester beds. He pulled back against her hand, stopping them by a grandfather clock that stood beside the door. The heavy chimes in the clock gonged softly from the impact of their feet on the hardwood.

“Do you want to talk some more?” Eve asked, looking nervous.

“I don’t know.”

She blinked, her dark eyes still moist. “Do you want to kiss me again?”

He flashed back to the cemetery, to the kiss that had thrown him twenty years into the past. “I’ve thought about it. The way you kiss. It’s…”

“Just like her. Is that what you were going to say?”

“Yes.”

“Think of it that way, if it makes it easier. Right now I don’t care. Just kiss me again.”

Even as he shook his head, he moved forward. She dropped his hand and touched his face, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw, his lips. Her fingertip opened his mouth, and then she parted her lips and softly pressed her mouth to his. A shock like a static discharge went through him, leaving him tingling as the pressure of her lips increased. Her tongue slipped into his mouth, cautiously exploring. She bit his lower lip, tugging insistently, just as she had at the cemetery, letting him know the kiss was only a beginning, the opening movement of a symphony they both remembered. Or so she wanted him to believe. And God help him…he almost did. The desire she’d awakened yesterday had wound itself to an unbearable tension. He wanted Eve Sumner as he had not wanted a woman in more years than he could remember. He slid his hands up to her face and held her cheeks, searching her eyes for…what?

“Who are you?”

She didn’t blink. “You know.”

He shook her with sudden violence. “ What do you want? ”

“You, Johnny. That’s all. I want you. Right now.”

Her hand slid below his belt and gripped him with painful force. Had she done anything else, had she followed a subtler line of seduction, he would have repulsed her. But her animal directness-so unfamiliar to him now-shattered the cerebral restraint of loyalty to legal vows that had not been honored in this way for too long. All thought, all doubt flew out of his head. He bunched the yellow sundress in his hands and yanked it up over her hips. She wore nothing underneath. As he stared, she held her arms straight up, and he slid the fabric right off her.

She stood before him without a hint of self-consciousness, the way Mallory had at the falls, letting him absorb all of her. Then she pulled him to her and kissed him again, her hands working frantically at his clothes until he stood naked before her.

“In there?” he asked, nodding to the bedroom.

She shook her head and pulled his hand down, and he knew then that she’d been ready for some time. When her arms slipped around his neck, he slid his hands beneath her hips and simply lifted her onto him. There was momentary resistance, then none. They gasped and clutched each other like climbers caught in an ice storm, clinging together for warmth. He did not move within her; holding her suspended as she shivered around him was almost more sensory input than he could stand. After a time, a strange purring sound began in her chest. As it built slowly, another, deeper sound blended with a ululation in her throat, creating a strangely haunting music; it was the chimes of the grandfather clock vibrating in sympathy with their moving bodies, the waves transmitted through the seasoned floorboards. The quivering in Eve’s body suddenly focused in the pit of her belly, then radiated out through her limbs like the seizure of some hill woman about to speak in tongues. When the trapped cry finally burst from her throat, Waters’s legs trembled violently, and his vision went black as all the frustration and regret of the past four years poured into her. She was still screaming when his legs gave way, and he flung out his arms to break the impact of the floor.

They lay two feet apart, panting like winded sprinters stunned to find themselves naked together. The clock chimes still clanged on their chains, sending resonant waves through the room. Waters looked down at his hand as though at the hand of a stranger. But it was his hand, unchanged. After twelve years of fidelity, he had finally yielded to this ancient impulse, and the sky had not fallen. The earth had not opened at his feet.

Eve sat up and took his hand. She did not speak, but simply pulled him to his feet and led him down the corridor to the bedroom, where she drew back the covers on one of the three-quarter beds, gently pushed him under the sheet, and slid in beside him.