Chapter Fourteen
Caesar
I wait as long as I can, but eventually I have to withdraw. Maddie goes to move away, but I pull her back into my arms. She sniffs and rests her head on my shoulder.
Frowning, I lift a hand in the darkness to cup her face and brush beneath her eyes with my thumb. It’s wet there—she’s crying again.
“What’s the matter?” I murmur.
“Nothing, I’m okay.”
“Honey, you’re crying, clearly that’s not true.”
“Just feeling a bit emotional, nothing to worry about.”
If that isn’t the case, she doesn’t want to admit the real reason, and I can’t force her to talk.
It was fun making love in the dark, but I want to see her now, so I get up, bang my shin on the tiny bedside table and curse, then rise to my feet. “I’ll switch on the generator,” I tell her, and fumble my way in the darkness out to the living room. “Where’s the switch?”
“By the door.”
It’s pitch black out here. I feel as if I’ve gone blind. Keeping my cool, I work my way to the front door, then begin to feel around the frame. “To the left or right?” I call out.
“To the left.”
Lightning flashes, lighting up the room for a split second, and I see it then, about halfway up the wall next to the door. As we’re plunged back into darkness, I run my fingers up the wall until I find the switch and flip it up.
The generator clunks, groans, and then bursts into life. The lamps flicker and come on, and the fridge begins to hum.
I blink in the sudden light, then go to the fridge and retrieve a bottle of water. After picking up the bar of chocolate from the table, I take them back into the bedroom and slide back under the duvet next to her.
Maddie sits up, reaches for a tissue on the table, blows her nose, and wipes her eyes. I open the bottle of water and pass it to her.
She has a few mouthfuls, and I do the same, and then I give her a piece of chocolate. She sucks it, pulling the duvet up around her breasts as she settles back on the pillows. I lean back next to her, and we study each other while we eat the chocolate.
“You want to talk about it?” I ask eventually.
“I don’t think there’s anything to say, really, is there?” Her voice is soft. Her eyes are a little bit sad.
I’m guessing she’s thinking about the fact that we both know this can’t come to anything, and it’s a crying shame, because she’s a lot of fun, and…
I like her. A lot. She’s smart and gorgeous and sexy, everything I want in a woman.
But she’ll never be able to change her ancestry, and it would always be there between us, like a chasm we’d never be able to cross.
“I’m okay,” she says. “Chocolate helps.”
I smile and reach out to stroke her white hair. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“Head all right?”
“What head?”
I chuckle. “And you’re not sore down there?” I gesture at her stomach.
She shakes her head.
“Good.” Of course, her PMS is probably why she feels more emotional than usual.
“What time is it?” she asks, stifling a yawn.
I pick up my phone. “Just after nine.”
“We could go to bed now, as we’ll be up with the sun.”
“What time is sunrise?”
“6:47AM.”
“You didn’t even have to look,” I joke.
“I checked earlier, although I tend to know the moon and sun cycles, roughly. You get in tune with Mother Earth when you spend a lot of time alone with her.”
I look around the cottage. The rain is still pattering on the tin roof, but the worst of the storm has passed. It was weird—a little scary, even—just how dark it was when the lights went out. “It’s funny to think of you spending time alone here. Are you ever worried?”
“No, never. I love it.”
I wonder whether her self-consciousness about her albinism has directed her down the road of isolation, or whether she would have been like that regardless of her coloring.
“I’m just going to the bathroom,” she says, and gets up.
I watch her walk across the bedroom toward the tiny bathroom.
It’s the first time I’ve seen her completely naked.
She’s not skinny, but she’s on the slender side.
Her breasts are more generous than I remembered from the evening of the ball, full and attractive.
Her pale skin is flawless, unmarked by freckles or moles.
She looks carved from alabaster, but she’s not cold at all.
She closes the door, and I lie back and look up at the four glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling.
We’re supposed to spend all day here tomorrow, and one more night.
It’s hard to tell how she’s feeling about the fact that we’ve had sex.
Did she cry because she regretted it as soon as it was over?
Or was she upset because she enjoyed it, and she knows it can’t lead to more?
Briefly, I picture us dating, maybe even living together…
coming home to our apartment or house on the beach and finding her there…
spending our evenings together, going to functions with her, having her in my bed every night…
I frown, my stomach giving an uneasy flip.
It’s impossible to ignore the feeling that I’m throwing away a perfect relationship here. But what other choice do I have?
The door opens, and she comes out. She’s removed her makeup, so her eyebrows and lashes are now pale, and she’s tied her hair up in a loose bun.
“Can you put the lamp on?” she asks, gesturing at the bedside table on her side. She goes into the living room and starts turning out the lamps.
I lean over and see it for the first time. It’s an LED projector lamp. I flick it on and… oh… as it starts up, it begins casting a moving pattern of colors across the ceiling and walls that look like the Aurora Australis—the Southern Lights, complete with twinkling stars.
She turns out the last lamp in the living room, then comes back in and climbs onto the bed. “What do you think?” she asks as she slides under the duvet again.
“It’s fantastic.” I smile at her. “It’s very you.”
“I like the stars.” She lies back on the pillows so she can look up at them. “I have a telescope in the other room. I spend hours outside, looking at the moon and the planets.”
I slide down beside her. “You’ll have to show me tomorrow.”
“If the weather’s better, yeah.”
I put a hand on her shoulder and encourage her to turn onto her side away from me and move so her back is against my chest. Then I draw the duvet over us and hug her tightly.
“Are you sure this is okay?” I ask. “You don’t want me to sleep on the sofa?”
“That would seem a bit mean after what we’ve just done.”
“Yeah, but you obviously enjoy your own company here, and I don’t want to assume.”
“It’s fine,” she says softly. “Makes a change.”
I nuzzle her ear. “I like your white eyebrows.”
“Not too bland?”
“I think you should dunk yourself in custard and ask me again.”
That makes her laugh. “You like vanilla?”
“I love vanilla. And I love tasting you, so the two go together perfectly.” I kiss her ear. “You’re so not vanilla, Maddie. I don’t know what the guy was talking about.”
“I wasn’t like this when I was with him,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
She hesitates. “I was… different. You… bring me out of myself.”
I stroke her arm. “That’s a nice thing to say.”
She doesn’t reply. I kiss her shoulder, up her neck, her ear, her cheek, and when she turns her head, finally, her mouth.
“Goodnight,” I murmur.
“’Night.”
Outside, the wind whistles and the rain patters on the windows. Inside, the stars and lights turn slowly in the semi-darkness. And soon, we fall asleep.
*
I wake with a little jolt. For a second I don’t remember where I am, and then I look at the stars still passing across the ceiling, and it all comes flooding back.
Maddie is asleep, facing me, curled around a pillow. Her white hair turns blue and then pink as the Southern Lights pass across us. I reach for my phone—it says 6:14AM. My alarm normally goes off at this time. It’s funny how your body has its own internal clock.
When I look out of the window I can see a faint glow, heralding the sunrise. We have about half an hour before we have to get up. I’m glad it’s stopped raining. I bet it gets cold up here in winter. But right now it’s warm and cozy.
She gives a tiny snore, and my lips curve up. Feeling a little surge of mischief, I begin to kiss down her body.
I start with her neck, shoulders, and arms, and then her ribs, by which time she’s starting to stir. She stretches and yawns, and I take the opportunity to turn her onto her back and kiss down between her breasts, ducking under the covers as I do.
“Mmm, Caesar…” She slides a hand into my hair. “What are you doing?”
“Helping myself to breakfast.” I kiss over her right breast. Her nipples are relaxed and soft, but as I suck one into my mouth and tease the tip with my tongue, it tightens to a bud, and she groans. “Just relax,” I instruct, kissing across to her other breast and repeating it with the other nipple.
“It’s difficult to relax when you’re doing that.”
I kiss both her breasts for a while, then start moving down. “Just pretend I’m not here.”
“Ohhh… wait… where are you going?”
“Shhh…” I move between her legs and kiss her stomach.
“Oh no, please let me have a shower first…”
“Are you trying to turn me on?”
She laughs and covers her face. “Oh God…”
“Mmm.” I kiss the slight swell of her stomach, then down over her silky, smooth skin. I felt the small strip of hair there last night, but I didn’t see it, and of course it’s white. How fascinating. I slide my tongue down it, then say, “Open your legs.”
She pauses, then slowly obeys. Smugly, I lower down, hook my left arm beneath her thigh, and then use the fingers of my right to open her ready for my tongue. Gently, I blow across her sensitive skin, and she shudders and sighs. Smiling, I lower my head and slip my tongue down into her.
“Fuck,” she says.