Satin Dreams (21 page)

“No, no!” Now it was she who leaned over him suddenly, her other hand pressing him back into the bed. “I can’t, not like this, I am horribly inhibited. But oh, Gilles—” Her great dark eyes were filled with emotion. “You never let me show you how much I love you. It is always you who love me so much.”
 

“But of course I let you love me.” Gilles’s bony young face had gone taut with surprise. “That is—” He tried to find the words. “My love, I want to look after you, to protect you, because you are the most beautiful, precious thing in my—”
 

She put her elegant long fingertips to his lips. “I don’t wish to seem aggressive, but I am feeling so—I don’t know how I feel,” she whispered. “It is very frustrating.”
 

“Whatever pleases you, my darling.” Anything, Gilles was thinking, other than these brooding depressions. When she had hardly been able to look at herself, there had been no sex at all. “I want you,” he struggled to say, “to be happy.”
 

She sighed. “Why is this so strange, Gilles, that I feel I don’t want lovemaking for myself? But oh, darling, how I do want to love you! Have you missed me, my love?”
 

“Every day,” Gilles said truthfully. “But you were so unhappy I couldn’t ask—”
 

“Shhh.” Under the covers her fingers passed with the lightest of touches along his legs, stroking his thighs, drawing the bedcovers slowly back. Gilles’s youthful body suddenly lay uncovered, dark and potent against white sheets. Somewhat hesitantly, Lisianne touched him, wrapping her warm fingers around the already stiffening stalk of his flesh.
 

Gilles made a little strangled sound. “My darling,” he said hoarsely, “there are things I can do for you. Let me also—”
 

“No, no!” Her fingers stroked him delicately, skillfully. At the same time, she leaned over him, her warm mouth trailing kisses across the ecstatically flinching muscles of his belly. “I want to ravish you with pleasure.” She lifted her head and gazed into her husband’s dark eyes, “Gilles, do you like me to love you?”
 

“I don’t mind, dearest.” He cleared his throat. “And yes, I like that,” he said to encourage her. His wife had forgotten her ungainly body, so absorbed in expressing her love that she was on all fours, her long hair trailing across his legs. Gilles was transported, terrified to give himself over to the passion he could feel coming. His wife was bathing him in exquisite fire.
 

“Ah, dearest, this is so unfair,” he gasped. “I must do something for you, also.”
 

Even as he said it, he knew that it was better to leave things as they were. Lisianne was happy for the first time in months. Somehow, he realized as he writhed with unbearable pleasure, it made her feel better to love him like this. For some mad reason she was less conscious of her worries, her inadequacies, even the coming birth of their baby.
 

It was a miracle, Gilles thought, groaning aloud. He promised himself he would make it up to his adored wife with the most exquisite demonstration of his love in—what? Six weeks—was it six weeks?
^{With what she was doing to him, he couldn’t think.}
 

Anyway, he told himself hurriedly, after the baby was born.
 

The winter wind roared down the rue Lafayette, following the slope of the hill, around the sumptuous edifice of the Hotel Plaza Athenee. The storm’s low moan shook the windows of Jackson Storm’s tower suite, but the king of mass-market fashion didn’t stir. He had fallen asleep watching television, his handsome silver head thrown back against a brocade bergere in the suite’s drawing room, his mouth slightly ajar, his empty highball glass still in his hand.
 

Jackson Storm was dreaming of beautiful, elusive women.
 

The forgotten program flickering on the television screen was a French variety show featuring the music of Charles Aznavour and the smoky voice of a sixties ballad singer. Some of the sensuous, evocative music had penetrated Jackson Storm’s dormant consciousness. His dream was perfectly lovely, if a little mysterious.
 

In it Countess Elsa von Trautenberg had appeared, one of the first great Jackson Storm “discoveries.” A sleek, darkly lovely Jewish girl from Prague, she had married Middle-European aristocracy, divorced, come to New York, and started peddling her dress designs.
 

But a tough nut, Jack remembered. Demanding, aggressive, even in bed. Fortunately, she’d had enormous success with a simple wraparound number, had gotten very rich, and moved on to Beverly Hills. And out of his hair.
 

Other women glided through his dream with bittersweet vagueness. Even the famous Jackson Storm jeans girl, Sam Laredo, whose All-American beauty had somehow failed, disastrously, to sell western wear.
 

The parade of lovely women faded into the shadows, and Jack Storm’s dreaming lips quivered. He felt a keen sense of apprehension. Then, almost as if he knew she would, the beautiful woman appeared.
 

He had dreamed of her several times lately, which was troubling. There she was, inexpressibly exciting, wearing a white headdress of feathers that covered the upper half of her face. She was an eagle. A heron. Some exotically hypnotic bird that drew him with an almost helpless sense of anticipation.
 

In his chair, Jack squirmed.
 

It was
madness.
She would erotically devour him, this inescapable bird-woman.
 

He felt as though he would die.
 

My God,
he was thinking frantically as the glittering figure in the mask came closer,
she is my destiny
!
 

Abruptly, Jack woke up.
 

He’d gone to sleep in the chair watching television again, he found. He had a crick in his neck from the bergere and could hardly move his head. His mouth was dry from sleeping with it open, and his drink had given him a slight headache. He couldn’t have felt more foul.
 

What the hell, he asked himself as he got out of the chair and switched off the television set, was he doing in Paris spending his nights this way—
dreaming
of women? When he, Jake Sturm, now the world-famous Jackson Storm, could have nearly any woman in Paris? He’d been alone in Paris before, and had had a ball! Why the hell was this year so different?
 

With shaking hands, he poured some water from the bar carafe into his empty highball glass and gulped it down. The water didn’t help his mouth. It still tasted like horses had slept in it.
 

The trouble was, he couldn’t get in touch with his goddamned wife and family. And for some strange reason, he needed them. He lurched toward the desk and telephone to peer at the tiny ormolu clock. It was a few minutes past midnight in Paris. He could hear the wind howling like a banshee outside. But it was only late afternoon in Connecticut.
 

He was not awake enough to remember the right codes without consulting his notebook. Finally, on the third try, he got the Wilton, Connecticut house.
 

And spoke to the housekeeper again.
 

Marianna and the girls, Mrs. Ansel told him, were in Tahoe.
 

For a moment Jack stared at the hotel’s antique walnut desk and gold French telephone without seeing them. How could his wife and daughters go to Tahoe? And not tell him anything about it? Hadn’t he told his secretary to check in with them just a few days ago to find out how they were getting along?
 

With considerable control, because his head hurt and his hands were still shaking, Jack dialed the Tahoe Hilton.
 

“You’re lucky,” his wife said when she answered. “I was just going for my morning horseback ride.”
 

It was morning in Tahoe, he remembered with an effort. “What the hell are you doing in Tahoe?” Jack demanded. “Why didn’t you let me know where you were going? And why aren’t the girls in school?”
 

“Dammit, Jack, this is Christmas break!”
 

So it was, he realized with a start. He really had been out of touch. “I’ll be home for Christmas,” he said, his tone defensive. “I want to get there in plenty of time to do a little shopping.”
 

The arctic wind howled at the corners of the building, and Jack Storm put his finger in one ear to shut it out. The part about shopping he’d just thrown in. He’d actually forgotten about that, too.
 

After a long pause, his wife said, “Sorry, Jack, I’m staying in Tahoe.” Her chilly tone matched the weather. “The girls and I will be here through New Year’s.”
 

Jack couldn’t believe it. He always spent the holidays with Marianna and the girls at the Connecticut house with its big stone fireplaces, its snow-filled woods, its proximity to New York, holiday parties, and the theater.
 

Cool it, Jake, he told himself, don’t fly off the handle. Maybe they want to go to the house in St. Croix for the holidays. Christmas in the Caribbean made him shudder, but he began, “Okay, so we can go to the Islands. Meet in Miami and we’ll fly—”
 

“
Jack
,” his wife yelled, “will you listen to me?”
 

Jack closed his eyes. He could almost see Marianna dressed for her morning ride in English riding gear, her dark hair drawn back to fit under the little cap, her wide, beautiful green eyes snapping with fury. Resistant to anything he said. He’d forgotten his wife was a fascinating woman.
 

“Jack, stay in New York.” The voice on the other end was determined. “Stay at the Fifth Avenue condo if you want, or go the hell up to Wilton. But frankly, this Christmas I really don’t give a shit.”
 

“Marianna!” Jack hardly ever roared. Especially not at his wife, who admired, above all, his legendary unflappable cool. “Jesus, what’s going on?” For the first time in his marriage he was seized with a sickening suspicion. “Is there some man? Is that what you’re hiding from me out there in goddamned Tahoe, some hot young stud you’ve got in your bed?”
 

There was another pause on the long distance lines, punctuated by a little static.
 

“There’s no man,” his wife’s cold, precise voice came finally, “and there never has been. I don’t know what put that idea into your head. But after Christmas, after the girls go back to school—” Another pause, tantalizingly. “Who knows?”
 

He made a wheezing sound of pure frustration. But her voice went on, “Jack, you’ve always been very innovative. I’ve admired that in you. So thanks for the suggestion. I really should find out what it’s like to have a man in my bed again. And now I know what I should look for. Something,” Jack Storm heard his wife drawl, imitating him, “called a ‘hot young stud’, right?”
 

Before Jack could speak, a small, decisive click in far-off California broke the connection.
 

It was the wind, rattling in the skylight above the grand stairs that brought Karim out of the nightwatchman’s cubbyhole on the ground floor of the Maison Louvel where he had been studying his trigonometry.
 

Something had come loose up there, Karim thought, staring up four floors into the darkened stairwell of the old building. He wondered if he should call his father at home and tell him to come into work early, so that the two of them could go up to the roof and see what needed to be fixed.
 

It was then that Karim noticed the light, a thin sliver of brightness.
 

In seconds Karim’s tall figure in jeans and sweat shirt had bounded up the stairs, crossed the third-floor landing, and burst into the atelier. Panting, he skidded to a stop.
 

The seamstresses workroom seemed to be empty. But the drafting lamp was on over Princess Jacqueline’s drawing table.
 

The next thing Karim noticed was the smell. Sweetly pungent, like fire mouldering in new-mown hay.
 

“
J’suis ici
,” a throaty voice said in French. “I’m over here.”
 

Karim had to bend over to see. She was under the drawing table with a pile of sketch papers scattered all around, her back against the wall, her dirty Keds stuck out in front of her. She held a flattened cigarettelike object from which her lipsticked mouth took rapid, deeply sucking puffs.
 

“How did you get in here?” His heart was still pounding. “Where are your bodyguards? Where is your Rolls?”
 

In answer, she fished into the front of her Garfield sweat shirt and brought out an object dangling on a string. Princess Jacqueline Medivani grinned at him hazily as she swung the key to the Maison Louvel back and forth.
 

“But you’re not on the list.” He sat down on the floor beside her. “How did you get the front door key? What are you doing here?”
 

She looked at him through a cloud of exhaled smoke. “Which one,” the little princess said, “do you want me to answer first?”
 

He frowned at her. “You shouldn’t be doing that.” He looked pointedly at the joint in her hand. “It’s disgusting. It ruins your body.”