Deep and Silent Waters

Terrified of her body’s response, she said shakily, ‘Don’t, Sebastian, please don’t. Go away, please.’

He ignored her pleading. Without taking his mouth from her nipple he ran his hands lingeringly down her body and she quivered, eyes half shut, heat following the track of his touch on her skin, as she fought to regain self-control, struggled to find the will-power to get away from him before it was too late.

Sebastian pushed her nightdress upwards until she was bare to the waist, slid his hand up over her smooth thighs into the warm cleft between, his fingers probing, exploring, making her gasp and shudder.

‘Oh, God,’ she groaned, eyes tight shut. ‘Oh, God … please stop it, I can’t, I mustn’t …’

‘Don’t lie to yourself, Laura. You want it as much as I do.’ His fingers slid backwards, forwards, the friction agonisingly pleasurable. ‘I can feel it, here, and here,’ he whispered. ‘You want me badly, you’re so hot you’re melting, and so am I.’

She stopped thinking then: he was right, why try to lie to herself? She wanted him. She waited in piercingly sweet agony for him to enter her, to complete the electric circuit between them.

Ever since she had seen him again in the lobby when she and Melanie arrived, this was what she had ached for: the ending of years of longing and frustration. While they were working together their feelings had been a guilty, secret passion that had ended almost as soon as it had begun, leaving her with this smouldering, unsatisfied need.

Breathing hard and raggedly, Sebastian was pulling off his clothes and it could only have been a matter of seconds before she felt the roughness of the hair on his legs and chest rubbing against her soft skin as he came down on top of her between her parted thighs. He slid his hands underneath her buttocks and lifted her legs into the air; Laura caught his waist with her knees and held him, her arms closing round his back. As he drove up inside her, her whole body jerked in anguished pleasure and, without even realising what she was doing, she drove her nails into his back with the clutch of ecstasy.

Clasping him, with arms and legs so that they were almost one creature, she arched to meet his deep thrusts, their sweat-slick bodies clinging, parting only reluctantly and coming back together again with frantic haste.

She was in orgasm a moment later, a pleasure so intense it was almost pain, her head flung back, her neck and face tortured and rigid, her mouth open as she cried out wordlessly like an animal, jerking and shuddering underneath him as if she was dying. Sebastian drove on faster and faster to his own climax. When it came, he collapsed with a long groan on top of her, his body pumping fiercely, his throat vibrating with deep sounds of ecstatic satisfaction.

Afterwards they lay for a long time without moving or speaking. Laura was cold, on the point of tears. She felt them behind her eyelids, then a few began to trickle out down her face. Only a little while ago she had been thinking of death, convinced that Sebastian wanted her dead – had he been thinking about doing this to her, all the time?

Death and sex were so close, after all. The intensity of desire followed by that spiralling downward into emptiness … wasn’t that a sort of death? The reverberation still beat inside her body, but now she was as chill and limp and lifeless as a corpse. As the kitten in the waters of the Grand Canal.

Sebastian slid off her, stood up. Then he bent down, picked her up, carried her over to the bed and slid her between the sheets. ‘I need a drink,’ he said, and walked across to the mini-bar.

Laura’s teeth were chattering. She stared at his long, naked back, the deep division of his spine visible as he bent to pour the contents of two miniature bottles of brandy into glasses. There was a feathering of dark hair above his buttocks; they were paler than the rest of his tanned body. He spent most of his time out in the open air when he was filming, and back in the States when he wasn’t working he was often still out under the hot California sun, half naked around a pool, studying scripts and working out storyboards, or lounging on the sand below his bungalow on the coast.

He brought the drinks over to the bed, got in beside her and offered her a glass.

She shook her head, icy cold and still trembling. Sebastian put an arm under her, lifted her up, held a glass to her lips. ‘Don’t be stupid, you need it as much as I do.’

Her teeth hit it with a clink, the liquid flowed into her mouth and she had to swallow, her throat stinging. She gasped and more went down; she felt warmth growing inside her. Sebastian laid her back against her pillow, swallowed his own brandy, put both glasses on the bedside table and came under the bedclothes with her, his arm covering her, heavy on her shivering body.

‘Go to sleep,’ he whispered, pulling her close to him.

She shut her eyes, grateful for the heat of his body, but she remembered her fear and was afraid to relax. Somehow, though, she couldn’t stay awake. Sleep engulfed her, and that night she had no bad dreams.

When she woke up Sebastian had gone. She might almost have believed he had never been there, except that the other side of her bed was still warm where he had lain beside her all night. By the golden dawn light she could see the impression of his body. From the dampness and heat between her thighs she could feel him there, too. It had not been another of her passionate dreams.

She turned over towards the imprint of him in the bed and felt something brush her cheek. Sitting up, she saw a white envelope on the pillow. Her name stood out in black capitals on the front.

Laura heart thudded. The printing was familiar. She sat upright and tore open the envelope. There was one sheet of hotel writing paper inside with more capitals written on it.

SHE DESERVED TO DIE. SO DO YOU, YOU WHORE. THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING.

Hands shaking, Laura read it twice more. It could only be from Sebastian. How else could it have got on to her pillow while she slept? And he must have sent her the other note, the one that had been pushed under her door soon after she arrived here. There couldn’t be two anonymous letter-writers here.

Her head swam as if she was going to faint. My God. My God, why? If he hated her that much, why had he made love to her with such passion? She remembered the feelings she had picked up last night in the dining room: the cold, black hatred. It must have come from Sebastian. This note proved it. He might desire her, but he hated her too, just as he had obviously hated his wife. SHE DESERVED TO DIE.

Clea. It must mean Clea. He was telling her that he had killed Clea.

Desperately her eyes darted around the room, looking for an escape route. What was she going to do? Seeing the clock on the bedside table, she flinched. Seven already. Soon it would be time to get up and go to his suite to meet him for breakfast. How could she face him now?

What sort of man was he, this man who had made love to her, got into bed and slept with her in his arms all night, seeming so tender and loving, but who, before he went, wrote such a terrifying threat to her and left it on the pillow beside her sleeping head?

He must be mad. What other explanation could there be?

What about you? she mocked herself angrily. Aren’t you mad too?