*Please be advised Chapter 46 contains adult material*
The Sigh Of Things (46)
…envision calculation
as this passion values words unworthy
of the truth of you, abstaining entire
from Oxford and Webster to sift
amidst the mythic gods and ancient
maps to sacred realms convinced
the mere idea of us resides in
language lost upon a sea once sailed
by Argonauts.
These were old imaginings…
…of the kind you had as a child, when the world seemed complete and it was only a matter of learning the way. Everything was possible then, including perfection. And if your elders taught you to strive, told you that in striving anything could be driven to be - as his had - because it was all there, of course, all of that perfection was just there waiting to be taken by the right boy with the right mind (and for him the right title, the right family), then there was nothing you thought you couldn't achieve. And so you imagined long and hard about only perfect things. Perfect accomplishments. Perfect people. Perfect acts. This is how it's going to be, you told yourself, when I am old enough to know how to get things done.
Then you age and those imaginings age right along with you; curling at the edges, fading with the years, staining with your pain and your frustration and your tears for all of those things you come to understand will never be perfect, will never be complete, no matter how faithfully you strive. They are all of them lies or, if not lies precisely, then fantasies - foolishly bootless dreams that waste you with their endless occupation to be real. They rail within you, if you let them. They seethe and smolder and spark like dragons - just as ancient, just as mythic, just as intrinsically fantastic as a child's illusions can be. You try to shake them off, but you can't. They are always there, those perfect imaginings. Eternally embedded, entrenched, infixed. And it is, perhaps, the very last lesson one masters in life, learning how to ignore those dreams; to push them aside, cast them down, drive them deep and away from the day-to-day ordeal of a man's material existence. He thought he'd succeeded in this. He knew he had. Until she began to drag those dragons by twos and threes up from the pit where he'd buried them. Until she began to awaken what he thought he'd put to death.
She reaches for him only once and this is the dream, has always been the dream from the time he'd begun to imagine such things. His quicksilver spirit had never been content to endure a grasping hand, an imprisoning clutch, a suffocating embrace. So when he envisioned a questing touch he envisioned it just the once. Just the once to tell him yes. Yes, she would concede. It had been disconcertingly cruel to discover what a rarity this was. His first summer girl, the virgin blonde from Rafina, had come at him all claws and screak; her arms and legs like tentacles; slithering, squeezing, snaking to lay their claim. A prince. A young prince in Europe. Restless, rakish, mad with charm. They'd all wanted their piece. His whores - when he found them, paid them, made them roll aside - even they proved reluctant to release him without extracting a promise of return. Would that they were mute. (He'd laid the drachma to the table for this, only to find their faces inclined to do the pleading for them.) Laura comes. Laura, who doesn't want him, doesn't need him, will never reach for him even the once. And he settles here because he has to, because nothing is so much better than too much. But it wasn't what he'd imagined. It wasn't the dragon of his dream.
He can't even see her, by God, through the penalty of blindness he's taken as his due. Initially, and for a very long time, he's certain he doesn't have to. Sad. How could those eyes be anything but sad? That melting soul of hers, reflecting through a nimbus of Aegean green, would drench her gaze with sympathy, flood it with compassion, and perhaps not a small bit of fear. Fear for what would become of him now. No. Don't look at me too closely, no. He pushes her back but she's dauntless, the soft of a lip arriving to brush against his ear. Stavros, do you recall turning on a light? Eight whispered words and she's leveled the field between them, making this so much easier than it had any right to be. This is not the time. It is not the time. Did he say that? He believes he's said it out loud. But his thoughts…his own expression of his truth advances to rip the barrier down. Know this moment. Embrace it. Treasure it. Then move on to the next. It's all God's given us to do. Eyes kissed, these blinded eyes, these worthless eyes, these eyes that give him no measure of the scene or the substance of the offer she extends - her reach, his dragon's reach to be real.
His hand leaves her heart, rising to encircle her neck, to sink into the sleeve beneath her hair; those tangled curls the texture of beribboned silk ranging across his skin. His fingers spread to rake the roots, driving up the curve of her scalp until he holds her skull in the hollow of his palm. Such a small thing. Too small to contain that mind, that cleverness, that consciousness sharp enough to read him as well as he suspected it did. She'd provided a wealth of evidence for this, and was at it even now; withdrawing her kiss from his eye not in retreat, but more as a pause in contact. She waited - the Devil take her - she waited with the knowledge the next move was his. Once. She'd reached for him once. The rest, if there were to be a rest, would depend upon his taking.
He draws her forward, he can't help himself, to drink in the scent at her throat. This flesh, moist and fragrant, this pulse tripping beneath her chin; he knows these things, has viewed them with eyes greeded by their visible fragility, reckoned intensely alluring through the mere act of their exposure. Now he feels them - the gentle hammer of her blood beating against his brow, the smooth stretch of paper-thin skin a gossamer at his cheek - and finds them no less vulnerable in darkness than they had been in the light. Still an animal awareness of the fullness of her submission. And it wasn't so much a display of trust as one might expect, should expect from a woman consenting to be conquered. He wasn't sure how he knew, yet he did, that she bared herself with the implicit understanding he could take her life on a whim. It was part of the bargain of him; one she more than accepted and absolutely refused to fear. She was such a sin. Such a captivating sin.
He nuzzles at the base of her neck, the rough of his beard abrading, the low rumble of a growl grinding against her throat. The catch of her breath, coming as it does so close to his ear, is shockingly loud and appeases his need for reaction, revelation, effect. He'll bank this fire, fuel it, stoke it, build it and bury it at will. He can make that happen, he has the skill, if…if she possesses the restraint required to allow for its use. He had yet to find a woman who would, who could resist rushing to the finish; who could match him touch for touch, stroke for stroke, attending not only to her own desire but willing to retain the lucidity she'd need to track the trail of his as well. They foundered, they faltered, they fell away - some in an instant, some in the space of that initial hour - inevitably losing their minds as they ran wildly to their passion's end. Not one in all of those conquests, not one had kept apace. It's another dragon stirring, a larger beast; this dream restless to rise into his life, to know its fulfillment, to achieve its aim. He has no hope for it, none, and sends a command for it to still as his mouth opens and his teeth take their first negligent nip of her skin.
"Regret," he murmurs into this flesh, the sound of her name rich and ripe with the promise she requires to engage. She is tractable now, relinquishing control; the descent of her brow to rest against his own is proof of this. She is compliant. Acquiescent. Flawlessly composed. Her hand drifts to the hand he's balanced at her waist, exerting a gentle pressure, a silent request that he relax his hold which he grants to follow the flexing of her fingers, the bunching of the cloth, the lift of her dress to her thighs, her hips, her chest and, as he leans apart, the launch of it over her head. A definite improvement. A necessary step, and modestly undertaken he believes until his hands return to her body and, in tracing the line of its form, discover she'd been wearing nothing underneath. He stirs too soon, can feel himself harden on the cusp of the idea alone, the idea of her standing naked before him - his conception of the image rendering the knowledge dangerously explosive. The fact that he couldn't see her, couldn't behold this woman nude, couldn't compare her physical virtues with the guesses he'd gathered through the last several weeks, was a truth he found both annoying and overwhelmingly seductive.
He knows he should reflect on the design of this encounter, rein in his hunger, negate his lust as inconsequent to the art of the act, but he simply can't resist, won't resist the exploration of the bounty she's set before him. His hands rise covetously, sculpting the curve of her hips, inverting at her waist, expanding to traverse the vault of her ribs in search of those breasts, those magnificent breasts he senses looming just within reach. His thumbs find them first and his hands contract to balance each prize in a palm. As perfect as if they'd been measured to fit; buoyant, tremulous, warm with life. His need surges, his thoughts tripping over themselves, flickering over the choice. The right he'd known, he'd sampled before and so he advances to attend to the left. Too far, she stands too far away for this and he is forced to swing an agitated arm around her back to compel her closer. A stumbled step and she catches him for balance as he takes that breast in his mouth. A sensuous confection; supple and sweetly-tender to the taste. His tongue runs a circle; bounding, banking, bathing its swell; the trim of his teeth grazing the tip, taunting it to rise.
He is dimly aware of her fingers in his hair, her hands twining down his neck, the buttons of his shirt falling from their catch. Dimly disturbed by the need of an arm to release itself from a sleeve, vaguely discontent to find a similar ordeal demanded of the other. Better to be rid of the constriction, though, and better yes to unfasten that belt, that button, run the zipper down - any further and he would have to stand, to extract himself from the pleasure of this breast, and that was very nearly more than anyone on earth had the presumptive right to ask for. Very nearly but not, in the end, too much.
His lips retract reluctantly, tugging to the last before disengaging to rise from his seat on the corner of the desk. His legs are beneath him now, his toes tricking to the heels of his shoes to pry them off and toss them aside. His trousers fall, his thumbs burrowing the braces at his shins to strip them down, socks and all, past the ankle, the heel, the cover of his feet. He is done for the moment. He can wait no longer to draw her body back - and he knows this need is new, having nothing to do with the crave of an embrace but entirely connected to the loss of his sight. What was once considered a momentary absence of physical contact has become suddenly, despairingly, appallingly, a yawning abyss between them. He is more alone at the heart of this accursed carnal darkness than he should be, wants to be, is used to being. Always before he could see them, if and when he bothered to look, dancing in expectation of the resumption of his touch - fidgeting, fussing, frantically awaiting the mercy of his return. But here, in this instant and condition, it seems shockingly plausible she might actually have changed her mind, retrieved her clothing and left the room. He finds the uncertainty disabling and would have no objection to scouring the torment of this kind of doubt from every facet of his life. Yet it wasn't his life anymore, was it? Not the one he'd known. This existence was new, and to his tangled mind in that lonely, lonely moment, he judged it wholly abortable. Useless. More than useless. Obscene.
Her voice slips softly through the veil of his distraction. "I can't," she whispers, an obvious anguish threading through her tone. "I'm sorry, I just can't wait any longer."
And her hands traverse that abyss, stretching to where he stands; alone, adrift in the dark of a life that had once so radiantly blazed with light that his blindness seemed, as a punishment, almost doubly-done. She reaches through the isolation of this freshly-inflicted penance, she reaches through its wretched obscurity - she reaches, as she shouldn't, a second time and such a strange thing this was. A palm falls to each shoulder, fingers poised and lightly pressing as she rises to her toes. He can feel a thigh grazing, a hip glancing, those breasts brushing against his chest, all of this tenderly enticing enough to engender a response, and yet it is the kiss that calls him back; this inexplicably familiar kiss. Something in the ease of her mouth closing over his own, the habit of her height and angle, the genuine affection of the greeting and the way this alters and adjusts to introduce her passion, is nothing less than profoundly welcome to him now. His head cants instinctively, his lips parting to take her tongue; this old friend, this honest joy. And his logic, as it flies at the speed of sound through the tumble of the thoughts in his mind, suggests that this well-practiced act has come to offer him a home. It is what he knows, what he's done, where he's been and can, with absolute confidence, go again. If he could simply reach for this refuge, if he could reach for it himself, he knows he could abide. And so he does.
She teeters on those toes, her equilibrium ebbing in the effort to hold aloft, and his arm launches out protectively. She will not fall, he will not let her fall and draws her tight to crush against the silk of the boxing shorts he hasn't bothered to remove; this his last remnant of protection and the only remaining barrier between them. He wants them gone, extracted, excised; yearns to be as naked as this kiss that erases every mark of infirmity, makes him whole again, strong again, convincingly complete with its ardent insistence to be met. You know the way of this. Reveal yourself. Attend to the power you provoke. And he falls further into the bliss, a hand coming to cradle her head, his tongue contending, his breath blending with her own.
Her arms draw down to wind around his chest, her fingers coursing across his back. Ten itinerant pilgrims on excursion, they journey along a stretch of sinew, ride astride a twist of tendon and sail swiftly down the bone of his spine. He can feel them rise over the silk and, like predators, part to expand and enclose the abundant swell of flesh underneath. Damn if he doesn't stiffen to her hold. Damn if she doesn't make it harder, this harder, so much harder to stand and gauge the level of her lust, to think and to judge and to pinpoint the moment he'll choose to move her on to the bed. He grinds against her, ravenous, restricted, bleeding his need from every pore. All he knows, all he could hope to know at the heart of this infernal madness, is that his moment has arrived.
He drives her backward from the desk, forcing her hands to grab hold of his waist as her feet stumble in retreat. Not once does he break from the kiss. Instead he stakes it as his own, the power shifting to the lover with a plan and a purpose to put into motion. Back and back, he maneuvers from memory, grateful the bed he remembers is large and relatively close at hand. Three steps more, no four, no five - he has no patience with the tentative approach and howls in fury at his failure to find this furnishing where he'd left it. He is unprepared when she spins him about and, with one ferocious thrust, shoves him apart so violently he staggers to the mattress edge, his legs buckling to drop him down to that perversely undetectable bed. He yowls in protest and she growls back as she climbs onto his lap, lifting his chin to the degree she needs to face him.
"Are we going to do this or not?" she demands contentiously.
We are," he snarls, annoyed to discover she's nowhere near as fevered as he'd like.
"Then one of us is over-dressed."
He finds the fact that she can still speak thoroughly unacceptable.
He tosses her off to the side and rises to remove the one remaining and apparently offensive, remnant of his clothing, only to find her fingers closing over his wrists. She pitches his hands apart and takes the task herself, her thumbs diving beneath the band to expand and jockey them down; careful to allow for the restive surge of his arousal, this obvious greed convulsing in its rush to be attended. And as the silk falls away, gone to ground and discarded, she turns with a will to meet that need.
Her touch draws the length of him, coaxing, caressing, seducing the beast until it has the audacity to leap toward her. My kingdom for the sight of this, he moans in his mind as her tongue traces the tip, her lips meeting, parting, yawning to encompass him. A warm, gently-maddening friction, wet and wickedly provoked, sends him careening into pleasure, inspiring an audible groan as he turns hostage to this fire. His hands descend, his fingers raking through the curls of her hair. Too much. His heart is racing, his head thrown back…too much. He could finish here without even trying, without even caring, without even knowing she existed, so fully enslaved does he become to the pulse of this constriction. All that anchors him to earth is the knowledge that she knows, she is aware of the power she possesses; this mastery of his erotic ascent. It's a thread, a tenuous thread he travels back to establish some sense of himself, to unravel the spell she's cast and take charge of this intoxicating moment. Pride, he has his pride after all and the need to be, if not better, than at least equal in the practice of pursuit. And this is how he finds the strength to remove her, to ignore the disconsolate note of protestation, to lift her and lay her flat to the bed.
She is petulant now, he can sense it. He can feel it in the sudden arch of her foot and - as his hand travels up her leg - this stiffened calf, this knee locked tight, this line of thigh hard beneath the graze of his fingers. He sets aside the rest of the journey to prowl to the top of the bed where he nuzzles her ear and nips the lobe; jousts with her nose once, twice, encouraging her to come out and play. Her mouth meets his in a kiss full of teeth, snapping in annoyance at his lips, his tongue; conveying her irritation with the theft of her control. He refuses to relent. He will find her, he knows, deep in the cavern of that kiss. She is waiting to forgive him, waiting to be soothed, waiting to be hunted and caught and carried back to the hearth of her seduction. He is confident of this. So confident, in fact, that he pauses; pulling apart from her mouth to taunt her with the thought that he might move away, might abandon this exercise altogether for the sheer trouble it presents. His impudent touch descends to her breast, toys with it, teases it a moment as if questioning the worth of the effort. She hisses and he laughs as she tosses him off and pretends to turn away.
"Enough," she charges from the darkness beside him; her voice aiming at anger or, at the very least, command, but arriving to his ear broken and bleeding with frustration. Amused, he sends a conciliatory hand to curl around her shoulder, to draw her back for the kiss she craves, but she crossly pushes it away. In a voice so low one might mistake it for a sigh, she asserts, "I am worthy of you, you know."
And on the spin of a single second all the trappings of the game are gone.
"Of course you are. Who told you no?" he inquires softly, his temper shifting, ready to rise.
"No one," she admits in resignation. "It's been a difficult night. Perhaps you were right. Perhaps this isn't the time."
No. Oh no. He'd waited too long and worked too hard to arrive at this sexual crossroad. Bravery it asked for and bravery he gave, fighting through the thick of his detestable affliction to come to this bed desire in hand. He'd be damned if he'd relinquish it now. She had a reason for this, some reason for her doubt, and his mind rushed back to review the evening in a concerted attempt to find it.
She'd attended his Deciding as Stefan's consort, second to Laura, third were one to allow for Helena. Nothing there to disparage her worth, though he'd concede to the inevitable sense of exclusion. The Oath she hadn't signed was meaningless. As for the dinner, she'd carried it well. His Polonaise, her galliard, their deception, his triumph, there was nothing here, nothing he could find or put a finger on. Wait…wait…but she knew it was for show…she knew…she… And he couldn't even finish the thought.
Images unwound, painful scenes arrayed against the screen of black the pestilence had drawn over his eyes. His grip, the brutal grip of his hand restraining her to that ballroom floor, the crowd taunting, stomping their feet, demanding she be punished. The fear on her face, he remembered, had seemed almost real. And if it was? The destruction of her dress, the thrust of her off his leg, her public denunciation. She had rallied, but for what? To be driven like a reprobate servant to the discipline of that salon. She'd wept. He'd fallen to the fugue of the toxin and she'd wept; her anguish plain and peculiar to perceive. No one weeps for me. And how had her concern been rewarded? With the rip of that copper gown and the drive of her through the mob, to be dumped like soiled goods at the feet of his froward brother - stubbornly righteous Stefan who had refused to move, refused to bend, refused to gather her up or gift her the smallest degree of compassion. Had she faltered? No. She'd found the mettle to rise and provide the decisive denouement that had handed him his victory. His title. His life. Only to find herself abandoned to the conviction that he was dead. What had he said to this courageous soul who had haunted that house, who had hunted him down through the valley of her grief? Go. No, it was worse than that. You grow tedious, Regret. Tedious. As if it were possible. Of course, the blindness should forgive him this. The contest, the battle, the challenge he'd won made all of it worthwhile, every abuse pardonable as a means to an exigent end. And if she'd been injured along the way, she should be proud of the price she'd paid to be of service to The Empire. So went the party line, as he recalled. Such a corpulent arrogance; fat to rotting with its woefully pretentious distribution of just deserts. Was she worthy of this? Of him? In the end, the answer would have to be no.
He reaches once again for her shoulder, the edge of a finger tracing its curve. "You can't turn away from a blind man and expect him to find you." The logic brings her onto her back, but not an inch farther. His words will have to do the rest. A delicate thing, and difficult for a man of his disposition. Privilege had the onerous habit of resisting the bend of a knee. If it were offered the choice. He releases a wistful sigh. "Am I out of chances, then? I wouldn't be surprised. You've given me more than my share. And you're right, Regret, to reject me now. What can I promise you? Everything. What will I deliver? Less. It's a sad sufferance, owning an attachment to Stavros Cassadine. Ask anyone, anyone at all, and they will tell you so. I, myself, would advise against it. And have." He lowers his head and closes his eyes, astonished yet again to discover it makes no difference. "Now I'm blind. And angry, Regret, so angry," he admitted ruefully. "A better man would spare you that. But this man, this distinctly selfish man, is asking for a chance. That last chance you're hiding somewhere beneath your wing. It's what I want and you must decide, this very moment, you must decide whether or not I'm worth it."
Her hand lifts to his face, reversing to drift across his brow, her thumb drawing down the ridge of his nose. Her fingers come to rest at his mouth; tentative, unsure, hesitantly tracing the swell of a lip. He captures one in his teeth and emits a proprietary growl. It's enough. She draws him down.
Light, the spirit she sends, pale as a moon forsaken in a starless sky, blue to the balance of a sorrow - this soul suspended on the brink of despair rides the breath that passes between them and he wonders, through the meager residue of a conscience he never heeds, how it had been possible to miss this. Alone, she is so alone, the truth of it clear in the reticence of every touch; the tremble of her lips, the caution of her tongue, the halting rise of her hands to his hair, his cheek, his chin - as if it were a struggle to trust, as if she battled to believe not only that he was here but that a lover existed at all. The myriad quantity of chords she strikes with this revelation threaten to confound him. As a man possessed of a life so often exiled to history's shadow - long since dead, a conjured ghost, some nebulous nightmare of a demon drawn from the legend of a tale too absurd to believe - the idea that he was anything less than palpably present in this moment sinks like a blade to the belly of his pride. He is no dream, no fantasy, no illusory shade she or anyone else could banish on a whim to the back of their minds. He is real. He is alive. He is flesh and blood and bone. Damn it all to hell, he is Prince of the bloody Cassadine, proven yet again at the catastrophic cost of his sight. She's a fool not to believe it. A fool about to be relieved of her doubt.
His kiss develops a restive edge, his tongue sharp, his teeth introducing like thorns to tug at her lips as he steadily stretches the distance between them. He forces her to rise up and up in a desire to maintain contact, her head lifting from the bed to the degree required to slide a hand beneath her neck. Once he has his position the kiss gentles deceptively, allowing her to lure him down once more as she falls into his grasp. The weight settles and his fingers curl, his thumb closing to balance his grip at the base of her skull. He's taken the hold he needs to own her, to restrict her flight and defeat the prospect of escape. She's anchored where she'll stay barring a vigorous bid for release, though he sincerely doubts she'll make the effort or, if she did, would find she had the focus to succeed. She is aware in a vaguely peripheral sense of what's just come to pass, yet far too busy with his mouth to recognize the nature of the trap. That will change.
His active hand comes to rest on her knee, his fingers tracing circles of the bone before gliding up the grade of her thigh, marking her body's pose by touch, its structure by tactile sense alone. He lingers at the hip, appraising its breadth and the subtle declension of its slope to the smooth plateau of her stomach. A navel is plumbed, each rib run to its curve behind her back. He has distances to map, longitudes and latitudes of flesh to reckon and humble to the service of his mind; all of it marked to frame a reference, to construct an image of dimension suitable for use by his interior eye.
Her breasts, recumbent now, rise and fall with the breath of each kiss. His hand inverts, his knuckles ascending, climbing one modest mountain to its peak. He grazes the tip carelessly at first, as if the caress were unintended - as unintended as the catch in her throat and that quick intake of air she steals with the shock of this sensation. He distracts her focus by returning his attention to her mouth, fencing with her tongue, altering his angle to defeat her labor to contain him. She takes hold of his head in an attempt to control this reckless engagement, too concerned with the tumult to perceive the hand that returns to the peak of that breast and begins to roll it slowly against the surface of his palm. There, yes, she's caught it. She grasps, at last, the dual nature of this seductive assault. He can sense her indecision, detect her consternation; her wrangle with the choice of which pleasure to attend. But there is no choice. He hasn't given her one. A truth that, like the rising sun, is just about to dawn.
He abandons her mouth to journey down the column of her neck, his path cut by a series of tiny, tempered bites, precisely pinched and chased with a swath of his tongue. The palm at her chest widens its circle to encompass the entire breast, the tip gone hard as marble to the touch. It took no skill to determine the destination of his lips, and she calms in the mistaken belief that he's settled on a single site. A ribbon of amusement ripples through his mind as she combs through the hair of his descending head, awaiting the moment he will meet this expectant globe of flesh. He does not disappoint and lifts the breast to maneuver it into his mouth, his jaw expanding to consume its share, then contracting to force the airless vacuum required for its suckle. He hears her sigh of contentment and feels the muscles beneath him slacken with the pleasure. Does she notice his suddenly unnecessary hand depart the scene of this feeding? Does she discern its artless glide from chest to waist to hip? Doubtful. In fact, he'd venture to bet she'd been completely oblivious of his intent until the weight of that hand came to rest on the tufted rise between her thighs.
Whatever ease she feels, whatever satisfaction has arrived to float the finer passage of her bliss, is whisked away on the tempest of that touch to be replaced by the grueling strain of an ardently sensual anticipation. Again, the duality of approach, sensation, effect. That his hand is settled, motionless, still to the heat beneath it, does not come as a relief but instead amplifies her arousal through the entrancement of a possibility. Tension builds as he marks the firm twist of her fingers in his hair, the fit and start of her breathing, the soft note of distress she sends tumbling through the air. Perhaps she imagines he mistakes this cry for praise of his prowess with the breast; the way he submerges to its attending, his tongue fevered, his lips plucking, his teeth grazing every nerve. Perhaps she imagines he ignores it. Neither option serves the expectation she's desperately needing met. She groans with dismay at this inattention and tries to feed the fire herself, her hands taking hold of his shoulders, insisting he rise for another kiss. He will not. She attempts to rise herself, to shift her position, but that trapping grip tightens at her neck and she falls back in defeat. Left no other recourse, her hips begin to roll, one thigh restive and flexing to display her agitation. He sidles to her side and secures that leg beneath his own, pressing enough of his weight to the limb to render it immobile. She's caught now, fully fixed to the whim of his desire. Her agonized moan tells him so.
Is it his blindness? His long-neglected lust? Her incalculable mystique? He isn't sure why the circumstance moves him in the manner that it does. Having her imprisoned, however chimerically, however willingly, appeals to him on a deeper level than most he's used to encountering during the common course of a seduction. Here beneath his hand, his mouth, his measure, lay a woman who could rightfully claim she knew him - perhaps better than she should, better than it might have been prudent to allow. He couldn't take that back and, surprising as it was, in many ways didn't wish to. Even sightless, scratching in the dark, he can see the way she saves him - not from this affliction, this life or this world, but within them. Within them all. If he fears anything in this instant it is the recognition that she fits to the very fold of his madness and, in some dubiously suspect manner, is capable of making that madness right. Oh, the things she didn't know…all the things she didn't know were legion, true enough. But here, in this clutch of a moment, he feels somehow as if he's finally captured the key to the enigma of his hidden self and he longs, with a fierce, carnal intensity, to at last throw open the lock.
He rouses from this reverie to find his hand has begun, quite unconsciously, to stroke the rise beneath it, his fingers swirling through the down, the motion vagrant and mindless of its aim. She's gone concertedly still; he marks this as he does the expectant nature of her silence. She would center this thrill to the exclusion of every other sense she possessed. And if she succeeded? Such a shame.
He departs the breast to lift once again to those lips, open and chilled by the shallow aspiration of her breathing. He grazes her mouth once, twice as his hand glides into the furrow of her sex and his touch finds its crease. She gasps at the outer edge of his kiss, trembling as he traces the circumference of the sleeve; tender now and damp with her needing. A whimper sounds in her throat, a certain complaint of his malingering. He decides to give her this - she has earned it, he has earned it - and, with yet another curse for his blindness, he sinks through the cleft to the heat inside.
An arm locks around his waist, another at his neck as she forces her feast of his mouth. Her entire body undulates beneath him, wild with greed of the penetration, and there's little left to do but accommodate this writhing passion. He's compelled to free his hands just to brace against the onslaught and is caught off-guard as she fiercely spins him over onto his back.
"You're a bad man, Stavros Cassadine," she pronounces grimly as she rises from the bed to straddle him. "A very, very bad man." A palm is planted to the center of his chest, a hold taken of his burgeoning erection. He grows to the grip long before she begins her first agonizing stroke. "I often wonder who's the more ensnared, the slave or her master? Submission's but a blessing to surrender, domination a good deal harder to renounce. Who owns whom in the end?" Devil's hands, those, so snug the way they circled and rose, circled and rose. "There's a question on the table, Stavros," she mocked in a startlingly accurate impression of his voice. "I would have it answered."
A sorceress she was, wielding a riddle with only one response.
Pride, vanity and hunger fuse to a fury he has no will to control. She is beneath him again in a flash. He hovers less than a second taking aim, then thrusts himself inside her, every restraint collapsing into dust. The sensation of entry brings a raw rapture that robs him of half his strength. He pitches forward, a hand falling flat to the mattress aside her head. Leaning in, he quests through the darkness for an ear, menacing at its rim, "The answer, as you would have it, is this: I…own…all." A palm finds the small of her back and, lifting to gain his angle, he drives the point home.
Long and slow, this infiltration, its rhythm crafted to extract every thought from her mind - every contesting strategy, every plan of action - until all she knows is the motion of him and the razor's edge of her own arousal slicing straight to the core of her existence. Her kiss stalls to little more than a panting breath between them. Her hands, frantic to find a purchase, come to rest at last on his hips - their clasp forced to ride the rite of this forward and back, forward and back. A leg hitches high to his thigh, easing his access and inviting a journey deeper. He needs no coaxing and effortlessly adjusts his stroke. Her pleasure builds, he can sense it roil as she climbs closer and closer to the crest, and he wrests some satisfaction from this. Truth be told, his own desire has acquired a certain restlessness, and is becoming increasingly troublesome to tame. It shouldn't be so difficult to stand apart, to maintain a distance from the force of her need and the seductive heat of her passion. Yet it was, God help him, it was. With luck he could moderate the pace of his craving until she'd reached her finish. With luck and, yes, more than a small degree of circumventing skill.
She ruins this as she ruins everything with that irksome habit she has of making it all so much better. It's incredible, really; unbelievable, inconceivable, unimaginable what she's done. Somehow in the dark beneath him, induced no doubt by a malicious intent, she has managed to fall into a rhythm of her own. If he'd had his sight he could have stopped this, he's sure; stopped the sensuous swirl of her hips, the tantalizing tilt of her angle toward him, the frustrating game of fetch she played that forced him to ride her stronger and harder just to stay his berth. But he did not…he could not…it was not going to happen. It was not going to stop. So instead of one fire flaming, raging, blazing out of control, there would now be two; two and no savior between them, no careful orchestration of the burn.
He's lost, he knows, as all that is real begins to lose its focus. There is no boat anymore, no bed, no bargain that he's making. There is barely a girl, a woman, Regret, the willful witch he rides. More is she the earth, the wind, the air and water of his being - or hell, or heaven, some elemental afterlife, an erotically-actualized altered state. If he could, he'd wonder what she meets when she stretches through the skin of him, into him, beyond him like this, but he can't. That cogent quality of thought is a contrail now, the wisp of white that trails across a sky marking a civilized passage. Once I was here. No longer. Now I am something gone to become. And he falls to that becoming, falls on top of her with all his weight, falls to the pounding, the plunging, the plunder of her nature - this given thing, this aching thing, this capriciously seductive missing piece. Her voice is in his ear, calling, calling his name, reaching for his soul amid the rest of what he's yielding, reaching…take my hand…reaching down and down, it's where he goes, it's what he is, this eternal descent…take my heart…reaching out, reaching low, reaching through to the plight of his perpetual plummet…take my help. And the answer to the offer he's been waiting for throughout the course of this twenty year catapult to death is, as it has to be, yes. Yes, because this is the only way to rise, the only way to lift, the only way to stay aloft in the encounter. Yes because, although it's all he has, it's the only thing she's asked for. Yes, because he would see this to the end and to take her now is to know a moment's suspension, a moment delivered from the falling, a moment of this curse released. He grabs that moment with both hands and everything else the devil deems due.
She shudders in this instant, achieving her end, and her contracting rapture only fuels the force that drives him up to the ceiling of the sky - a Promethean ascent, his dare to the gods as he streaks toward a blinding midnight sun. Close, so close, he can almost touch the fire, can almost feel the heat, can almost thieve the blaze from Apollo himself before the whole of the conflagration explodes, as reason explodes, as he explodes like a universe inside her - then collapses, wracked to ruin, to the gentle bound of her embrace.
He's held, neither long nor too tightly, until she falls asleep. Only then does he disengage to move his head to her chest. The labor of her heart comforts like a lullaby; warm, soothing, consoling with its beat. It's doubtful this place can contain him. He isn't sure. He cannot tell. He sighs and lets the matter slide. In truth, all he can ascertain from beneath the blind of his afflicted eye are the curious shapes of the countless dragons she's caught and so carelessly left behind.
The Sigh Of Things (47)
She will be different when you find her, brother.
This is not something that needs to be forgiven.
The aroma of coffee insinuates itself into her dream; warm, strong, richly black coffee that nudges her away from the entrance of the castle, pulling her back just long enough to watch that drawbridge rise. I am asleep. And there is coffee. Her senses trigger to the bed, the bunching of the pillow at her cheek, the drape of a sheet arranged across her legs. But only to the thigh, explaining the chill. She sends a hand to recover it until she remembers there was something else. Something grand has happened. Here it is, the memory's found and that hand stretches out to canvas the space at her side. Empty. He's gone. A troubled frown. There's a discouraging need for eyes to open now. Open. Open just a bit. Focus. Blink. Smile.
"You're here."
"I am."
He was. The chair beside the bed was filled with him; one leg ranging, one heel hooked to the cushion of the seat, an elbow balanced on its elevated knee. His lax hand held a cup of tea suspended by its mouth in the air above his lap. An irresistible force at rest. Force on the basis of that flex of muscle expanding from the waist of those lounging pants, fold after fold of sculpted tendon dancing in and out of shadow all the way up to his chest; a chest so flat and tight it seemed an armor plating over his heart. Irresistible for equally obvious reasons.
"There's coffee."
"I know."
She knew. But she was more interested in how long he'd been sitting there - transfixed, it appeared, with the sight of her asleep. A reflexive modesty asserted, suggesting she lift the sheet to cover herself. She disregarded the impulse though, assured there was nothing on display at the moment that he hadn't seen before. Seen before…
"You can see."
"I can," he affirmed sagely, the slip of a grin apparent behind the lift of the tea to his mouth. "Your magic, I'm sure," he added as he tipped the cup to drink.
"Not mine," she demurred, suddenly happier but at the same time increasingly exasperated by the distance stretched between them. "My gift is not as strong as that."
"Are you certain?" His expression grew speculative, a brow arched to betray his doubt. "You accomplish so many things in the end, few of them visible to the naked eye. It's possible you come blind to this. As blind as…a master to the power of his slave, perhaps?"
Too fresh. That memory was entirely too fresh to resist its resonant sensual effect. Her hand lifted from the sheet, her palm open and extended, earnestly reaching toward him. He set down his cup and moved to the bed, taking a seat at the headboard. His fingers folded over her wrist and he drew her into his lap where she curled like a child against his chest. She eased as his arms wrapped around her, his lips finding her brow for a kiss, his chin rising to rest in a nest of entangled curls. A solace of seconds collapsed into minutes as they settled into this common space and embraced the tranquility it offered.
"She never came. That was part of it."
Here were the thoughts he'd been wrestling with as she slept so soundly before him - thoughts he'd given hours to unravel; thoughts he'd unearthed to sift for an answer to whatever question pressed hard upon his soul. Clueless to his reference, she closed her eyes and sent a finger chasing the chisel of a bicep, gliding down the arc of its swell, admiring the way this velvet skin encased its muscle like a glove. She would come to know his mind soon enough. In the meantime there were so many other savage regions to explore.
"Would Helena have left my father's side, even for an instant, as he fought for his life through a surfeit of poison?" he reflected quietly. "Could she have borne any other face but her own greeting his eye the moment it opened to see? Is it possible to conceive of a circumstance that would prevent her from assuming control of the whole of his convalescence - his treatments, his medicines, each and every step he'd be forced to take on the rigorous road to recovery? No. Absolutely not. The mere insinuation of the possibility might inspire her to kill you, so profoundly insulting would she find the thought. Yet when my turn came to fight that poison…this woman who'd agreed to be my wife, did she come? Did she stand a single night's watch? Bother to voice a single prayer?"
She turned to place a kiss on his chest and snuggled deeper into his embrace, but he was too far gone to the memory now for this to make a difference.
"It's true, we took her. She owed us nothing," he asserted dismissively. "And, as I said, her neglect was only part of it." She could feel his chin graze her head, his bearded jaw running up and down, across and back, and knew the motion was mindless. He was still working those thoughts.
"Cyrus was the proving ground. Everyone knew it. The road to the title passed through him. Win or die. A very clean equation. And if I won, what wouldn't be mine? I'd own the great wide world." He stretched the statement like a traveling salesman hawking panaceas to the poor. They'd sold it to him, then. Told him of a treasure waiting beyond that conflict's bend. "All I wanted was my father, and all they could promise were my father's things. His power, his estate, his empire. 'Be your father,' everyone urged. 'It's what your father would want.' But I knew it wasn't what he'd want at all. It was what he'd require."
"You won, Stavros. It's over now," she whispered into his skin, knowing as she did the path he was on would run straight through the heart of his despair. She would follow him there - she would follow him anywhere, but only if he insisted.
"My point exactly," he murmured at her brow. "I won. But what? What was my prize? If you think there was a celebration, think again. Oh, my mother made a big noise, graced with great huzzahs of calculation and cupidity. My brother, as you might imagine, sullenly sent his regards. None of the relatives stayed behind to offer their felicitations, most gone sour with the sight of Cyrus being carted by coffin to the docks. The rest were dead or on the run, their poisons having missed the mark. What was I left with? Duty. Obligation. An empty bed. A very small world, Regret. A world full of nothing."
He took a troubled breath, his head tipping back to rest against the board, his eye wandering the stateroom's ceiling. "Mother holds the count at three. I don't remember those initial killings. I reject them, in fact. If you can't recall the taking of a life, how can you be held accountable for its loss? Even the courts allow for that." A dark deduction, laced with a darker humor. "This makes me insane, though, doesn't it? Enter Polonius. I will be brief: Your noble son is mad." His laugh was a bite of air, its temper sickened with the gruel of his truth. A hand tightened at her hip. "I would tell you to get to a nunnery, Regret, if I thought I could bear to lose you. I can't. And that is such a dire development."
"Dire because you fear you'll kill me?"
"Dire because the killing will stain. It always does. Those choices are so terribly arbitrary. I don't even feel them myself. But you will. Your tender soul will feel them all." His head dipped down, a forefinger lifting her chin to capture her eye. "Someday you will try to leave me. I grieve that day and all that is destined to come after."
She sighed solemnly, accepting every caveat he offered and waiting a moment for his mind to still. Once she was certain he'd listen, she said, "A wise man once told me this: There are two types of imprisonment. The one embraced and the one repelled. Be careful which you choose." Her gaze hardened with emphasis. "Destiny is nothing but a prison, Stavros. Do not let it hold you."
He drew back in surprise, stung as the meaning came clear, then presented her a peevish frown. "Is there nothing I say that you will not end in using against me?"
"Nothing," she pronounced definitively, extracting herself from the circle of his arms. "I'll be taking my shower now." She felt his attention trail her as she crossed to the door of the bath. Just as she slipped through the opening, she turned back in a fit of genuine impatience. "I'm sorry, Your Grace. Did you require a formal invitation?"
The way he leapt from the bed made her smile. There was just enough here to make her smile, just enough in this moment to please - not the least of which was the fact that, yes, there was coffee.
He missed her kiss the instant it left his lips, her touch as it drew its final trace down the length of his arm, her attention the second it turned to the matter of making her escape. The curtain opened and closed, her damp body disappearing from view, their encounter transformed to memory in the blink of an eye. He wouldn't concede this a last assignation, not yet, not when it was all so vividly real, raw, intact - not only to his mind but to his skin, this flesh, these muscles that ached with the strain of pleasing her. What didn't throb or sting could be felt contracting to the soreness of sexual aftershock; a consequence of consummation, of desire delivered its due. And while he retained a tactile thirst, a longing to embrace her, he did not consider her decision to depart a denial of any sort. She could be insensible in just this way, unconsciously oblivious of another's need for contact; never quite aware of the worth of a caress, the comfort of a hand, the humanity of a hug. One learned not to take this personally, and certainly not to use it as a measure of intent. No, they were only barely done, not conclusively so.
By the time he emerged from the shower she was already swathed in the cocoon of a robe, belt hitched tight, a preponderance of terrycloth launched in a twist around her head. Lotion poured to pool in her palm, then was deftly applied to her elbows, her wrists, the knuckles of her hands. She caught his eye through the mirror and gifted him a sufferable smile. Little things. It was always the little things that tore apart your heart. He reached for a towel.
"I don't understand why we can't just leave. You can send someone back for her. She isn't going anywhere. She can't."
Little things and bigger things too. "You can go, I told you that. If you're willing to risk escape on your own then do so. I have to stop Helena. She must be stopped here and now." The towel came more roughly to the drying, his ire finding its way into the task.
"This is as much about Sancia as Helena. Do you think I don't see that?"
"And what if it is?" he asserted, wrapping the bath sheet around his waist and reaching to the counter for a comb. "She's my responsibility, not yours. You may do as you please."
"Why are you pushing me away?" She turned from the mirror, curiosity in her tone, her hands still manipulating lotion down the length of her fingers. "I could have left last night. I didn't. I waited for you."
Once he'd been new enough to love to believe statements like this. "You waited because you require a diversion. You know you're the only prize she's got that either one of us would fight for. She's not about to let you slip away." He could hear the soak of reproach in his words and cursed himself for revealing this much. If she thought him dim that was her miscalculation to make. To prove he knew it, and resented it, left him far too exposed.
"Is that what you think? That I stayed because I needed a distraction? It is, isn't it? Well you're wrong." She returned to her reflection, gingerly unwrapping the towel from her hair. "Your mother could not have done much last night, and she won't come quick this morning either. It's not what I wanted, but I took what I could get."
His interest peaked with lightening speed; its common response when confronted with a scheme that had somehow managed to evade his notice. Recollections shuffled and cut through his mind until he dealt the memories true. "How many?" he asked, finished with the comb and passing it into her outstretched palm.
"Not enough," she pronounced, angling the tool to begin the arduous process of grooming the tangles from her hair. "Too many fell to Regret during the time she spent in the salon. A drink she never went back to, by the way. That was a waste. Then Stavros made good and the rest went to Argos. I had a very small constituency. I could only turn the few too bewildered to make a choice."
"You must have an estimate," he insisted, unable to believe more than one or two of the 'bewildered' could possibly have succeeded in slipping their poisons past the Dowager's guard.
"Nine." Her eyes blazed in triumph through the glass. "She was so intent on protecting his drink she gave very little thought to her own. Of course, the minute he took it back I was done. No one would listen to me after that. I thought he'd keep the girl longer. He must be getting old."
He might have arched a brow at the aside but was more concerned with her astonishing lack of foresight. "You couldn't know whether he'd win or not. How could you take the chance?"
"I'll take any opening against her. Any opening at all," she proclaimed, her features fixing in firm resolve.
"You would endanger Nikolas to enact a revenge on Helena?" He didn't know why, but he hadn't expected this. Few as her maternal gestures had been, he never conceived an animosity, any animosity, would be powerful enough to compel such disregard. His rage rose accordingly. "And if Stavros had died? Nikolas would be next. Did you think of that? My God, Laura, Nikolas is your son!"
The comb halted halfway down its course, her chin lifting imperiously, her eyes gone cold on the note of his condemnation. "I have two sons, Stefan, and a very long memory. A motive even your mother could respect." A moment passed in silence before she returned to attacking the knots in her hair.
"I didn't realize my mother's respect was so important to you," he countered dryly, disgusted by her callous rationale and the recognition that, yet again, a Spencer had come to eclipse all else.
"Glass houses, Stefan," she offered in warning. "Put down your stones before you break something you won't be able to fix."
He could feel his rancor stall, lurching to a stop - restive, chafing, fierce with fire yet wary of the place its foot fell next. A dozen venomous ripostes idled at the forefront of his mind, suspended not by affection or regard but by the inescapable consequence of loss. He could lose her here. Is this what he wanted? Was it something he was certain he could live beyond? It was all so uncomfortably dramatic; this quickened fear and the shame of his hesitation to respond. A chaos cavorting. A crucible of conflict grinding down his soul. The idea of her gone - introduced, as it so often was, with the subtle flavor of extortion - never failed to drive him to a panic. Thoughts twisted in upon themselves, their logic stunted by a sudden hemorrhage of feeling. Indignation, desolation, self-loathing - dread for the myriad delicate dreams he could destroy with the voicing of another word but would not, could not, had not on so many past occasions. Such a weakness. He was weak. He had lost all control, all ability to marshal the roiling contents of his heart. His integrity collapsed, his pride leeching away…on what? The truth of him? The lie of her? The perversely debilitating tie they sought to sustain so selfishly between them? How was it possible to love someone who made you so much less than you wanted, no, needed to be?
She wouldn't wait, it wasn't her style - almost as if she knew he could fret the matter out given time. Laying the comb to the counter, she advanced with a deliberate timidity, cautious with the arms she extended to wrap around his waist. The eyes meeting his were deceptively demur, her voice a soft, submissive song. "What would you have me do?"
Bring me peace, he longed to reply, but pushed the thought aside to address a more achievable end. "If I haven't come for you before she calls, let them take you down. I have the code. I should be able to shut the signal off at the source. Failing that, we'll be forced to find a way to make Helena do it for us. She won't be able to resist this second banding. Your cognizance will make it all the more attractive to her taste." His hand came to her face, his thumb running the curve of her cheek. "Are you certain you wish to go through with this?"
Those eyes narrowed acrimoniously. "If she dies, I want to be there. I wouldn't miss it for the world."
"I don't imagine it will come to that." Although he was sure, if she were given her way, it would. Another element to watch for. "Very well. Bring Sancia in from the hall. I'll be with you once I've dressed."
He entered the sitting room to find both women waiting in what seemed to be a fairly companionable silence. Sancia, while a little worn about the edges from standing guard throughout the night, appeared alert enough to meet the day. He signaled Laura to leave and held his tongue until she disappeared behind her bedroom door.
"Regret hasn't returned?"
"Did you expect her to?"
He attributed that remonstrative tone to fatigue and briskly moved the conversation on. "The house is quiet?"
"Helena's still in bed, as far as anyone can tell. Louis has yet to call for her tea. Should they follow their routine you have two hours more. The guard has changed. The man in the control room is fresh. Are you sure you want to do this alone?"
"As opposed to what? With you?" He motioned to the band on her wrist. "Your every movement is tracked."
"Stavros could…"
"Stavros is blind. Even if he weren't, he'd be a last resort. There's not much there to depend upon." He motioned to the pocket of her coat. "Do you have it?"
Sancia sunk a hand into her jacket and produced a folded cotton kerchief. She unwrapped the cloth, then extended the trinket for his taking. He plucked up the ring and slid it down his finger. "There's only enough sedative for one," she reminded, stuffing the kerchief back into its sleeve and reaching around the waist of her pants. "You'll need this as well."
The blackjack slapped hard into his palm. He gripped the handle and hefted it twice, idly testing its weight. "Are you suggesting I lack the skill to take a man down on my own?"
"Between speed and skill, which would you choose? And how fortunate to have a choice."
He took her point and, ignoring the satisfaction of her smile, slipped the weapon into his belt. His eye launched to the trim of the ceiling. "You'll get these cameras running again?"
Sancia nodded brusquely. "She'd already retired when the connection failed and they were too, shall we say, courteous to wake her? The serviceman isn't due until nine. By then the problem will be solved."
"Solve it before she opens her eyes. With any luck that courtesy will ride." He patted down the pockets of his jacket and his slacks - code, phone, the stolen trigger box, everything seemed in order. He turned to go and felt the pressure of her fingers pressing on his sleeve.
"Stefan, I…I just wanted to…"
The look she sent said the words for her. He covered that hand with his own and gave it a steadying squeeze. "Miles to go," he quoted softly. "We've got miles to go before we sleep."
She hardly had time to acquiesce before he opened the door and soundlessly slipped into the early morning hush of the hall.
The Sigh Of Things (48)
Cerberus, it must be remembered,
held the dead to their hell.
It was his only labor.
When she crashed to the floor the second time she knew the nose was broken. She'd heard the crack as the heel connected, her head snapping back brutally, her body unable to withstand the blow. Balance lost and senses swimming, it was all she could do to remember not to catch the fall. (An arm extended at the wrong angle could fracture on impact - the most a tuck could cost was the dislocation of a shoulder and only if she did it wrong.) The day's fighting had just begun and she couldn't afford any injury that would render her less than effective in the battle still to come. He would need her soon perhaps more than he'd ever needed her before and, despite these small rebellions, she had every intention of reserving herself for deployment at his command. She'd tested their skills (rudimentary), their strengths (compelling only when combined), and their tactics (tainted with duplicitous tricks which, considering their mistress, one had to expect). She had their measure, she could leave off now, and so spent the rest of her seconds on the ground recovering her breath and staunching her blood on a sleeve.
While the capabilities of the henchmen had been adequately marked, obtaining a fix on her companion in captivity continued to elude her. Laura had capitulated not like a mouse but more like its mortal enemy the cat, succumbing to the role of hostage with indifferent disregard - as if this seizure came as little more than egregiously inopportune and she, though not quite certain of her rescue, stood complacently unwilling to discount the possibility a saving was on its way. If this attitude was designed to irritate her captor, it succeeded rather neatly. Madame Cassadine fairly bristled with annoyance, rankled by the fact that even with every sense intact, every awareness available and turned to the truth of her apprehension, Laura Spencer still refused to cower or flinch or feign a fear in finding herself at the mercy of her foe. The only refractory feature of her listless acquiescence was her steadfast refusal to be touched. Once Helena had the men back off, her prisoner left that bedroom without complaint. Sancia chose a more adversarial approach and, yes, had the injuries to prove it.
"Look at him! So diligent. So determined. So desperate to be true. Why, his dedication to free you is very nearly laudable! If only they gave out prizes for tilting at windmills, his life would be so much richer, don't you think?" Helena turned from the one-way mirror with a calculated smile, eyeing the prisoner who had yet to give her the time of day. "Ah, but that's your secret, isn't it, Laura? Burning your flame behind that glass and watching men pitch themselves against it, breaking their minds, their bodies, their spirits, in an effort to reach the unreachable heart. They may never give up, my dear, but the day will come when they die. How will you amuse yourself then?"
It was almost imperceptible, the slight recoil in the Spencer woman's frame; as if a breeze had stiffened into wind and required a physical compensation. Sancia would have missed it had she not been watching closely. Too closely it seemed, as her attention caught Helena's regard and elicited a foul frown.
"What are you waiting for?" she barked to the guards. "Pick her up and let's have a look."
Hauled to her feet and roughly held between the same two thugs who'd sent her to the floor, Sancia sought her equilibrium and lifted her head. Helena took her by the chin and clucked at the damage done. "Such a mess," she lamented, snapping her fingers for a cloth. A disjointed moment ensued as the men scrambled to meet her need, finally producing a fistful of tissues she plucked from a hand one-by-one. Blotting the blood from beneath the nose, the edge of the cheek and mouth, her gaze sharpened in critique. "Why, this may actually come as an improvement!" she announced, wagging the jaw she held.
Sancia sniffed in response, sneaking a glance past the woman's shoulder and through the mirror at Stefan. Her captor caught the turn of eye and glided in beside her, content to share the view. "Sad, isn't it, my little cub? He could sit at that computer all day long and well into the evening, never able to access the program that will disengage my sensor. The termination files were encrypted last night, before I went to bed. Louis never had the flair for keeping secrets. Poor boy. He'll have to prove himself now or the punishment will be…stiff."
She cast a scornful glare at the newly-disgraced favorite sullenly stationed at the door, his arms crossed resentfully, the butt of a pistol peeking out from the waistband of his pants. "I've given you the benefit of the doubt, pet," she cautioned in a colder tone. "Disappoint me again and no fond feeling for your hidden talents will prove persuasive enough to spare you."
Laura expelled a weary sigh. "Is this the extent of the entertainment or will you be serving tea?"
Helena's expression steeled on the remark, her head swiveling portentously, her every blade brought to bear. "You miss the bracelet that much, do you? Never fear. The next we weld to that wrist of yours will be worn for the rest of your life. A constant reminder of my affection and the need to please me through and through. We will be friends in the end, you and I, no matter the trouble it takes. Your son could attest to the truth of that…if you were permitted to see him again. Ah, Lucky," she mused wistfully. "I do so miss that boy."
She smiled at the spark she'd struck in her captive's cold façade and straightened with an air of command. "You long for entertainment? Entertainment you shall have. Let's move on to the clown."
Her arm stretched toward the wall, her nimble fingers finding the switch. A firm flip of her thumb sent a panel sliding apart to open the way to the control room and her oblivious second son.
He found the octagonal shape of the room blatantly distasteful. Eight walls cornered to eight angles of ridiculously wasted space - no span long enough to hold the whole of her technology, forcing the creation of this awkward station pitched like an architectural afterthought directly in the middle of the floor. Command Central, he assumed when he'd first walked through the door, to the surprise of the lone technician at the helm. (A brutal weapon, that blackjack, hard and silent and happy to serve. The man dropped like a rock.) Yet when he took his seat behind the screen of her primary computer to search her files and insert the code, his concentration balked. Something about the room's crude configuration disturbed him to the point of disrupting his thoughts. He couldn't shake the sensation that the walls were closing in on him. Four of them, at least. The four at his back. It was so uncomfortably distracting he'd had to stop to search for a cause. Once he found the reason he returned to his task and nothing he discovered afterward came as much of a surprise. Adapt and adjust, detect and conform. It was the key to surviving the Cassadines.
"Shall we end this now or would you prefer to wallow in your failure?"
He didn't bother to turn around, but cast a finger into the air to signal his need to finish. She would simmer at that, was certainly simmering now, yet he couldn't afford a backward glance to revel in the pleasure. Eighty-nine…ninety-three…ninety-six…one hundred percent. Operation complete. He extracted the disc with satisfaction and rose from the chair.
"Good morning, Mother," he greeted as he turned, his gaze narrowing to measure her mood. "You appear a bit dyspeptic. Did the poisons disagree?"
Helena's expression soured with contempt, contorting like a prune overdried by the sun. "I can see you've been expecting me. Though the sheer length of time you've dawdled here did guarantee someone would come."
"Or, perhaps, had already arrived?" he countered obliquely, nodding toward the wall at her side. "For future reference, and you might write this down, a mirror is always a mistake. Especially one so badly placed. Whatever happened to the portraits with the removable eyes? True, they required a certain skill, but they were so much more interesting to look at."
If her lips pressed any harder to a line he thought they might fuse shut. "Are we in the mood for faces then? Far be it from me to disappoint. Louis?"
The black patch behind her, where the panel had parted to reveal her blind, suddenly filled with the forms of people filing into the room one-by-one. Sancia, who'd put up a resistance he could tell, was shoved through the opening by force, followed by two mulish brutes who restrained her by the arms. One snarling face had an eye puffed red and ripely swelling, the other a grimace for the knee he couldn't lock. Good for her. Next came Laura who appeared untouched though nettled by the inconvenience of her state, trailed by a third man doggedly alert to her every minor move. Last to emerge was Louis, traitorously spent Louis, gruffly grasping at redemption with a pistol in his hand.
"Why, Mother!" he exclaimed, mocking a moment of cultured shock. "You have a gunman. How thoroughly Third World of you. Tragic, how the mighty have fallen. I remember, as if it were yesterday, your elitist entrancement with biological weaponry. From germs to bullets, now there's a trajectory worthy of note. Is it age, do you think? Has science gone beyond you? Has technology advanced to such a point that you can no longer hold its calculations straight?"
Helena glared at him balefully, her rage compounded by the earnestness of his inquiry; as if he had a genuine interest in getting to the bottom of this. "What I hold is quite clear, Stefan. It is you who have failed to make the calculation." Her voice grew rich with vengeance, a prideful preen infusing its words. "The instant you entered my password I knew what you were about. Ah yes, we were waiting for that. I watched you pound against all of those safeguards, knowing the walls couldn't be breached, knowing the strength of my defense and the weakness of your nature. Pound, pound, pound, like the dull boy you are, incessantly chasing a treasure forever out of reach. It was so pitifully predictable as to be boring beyond belief. Why I had to seek out these friends of yours just to prevent myself from falling asleep!"
"It was boring, wasn't it?" he conceded with a dismal sigh. "Even I found the task too tiresome to take. Hence the urge to go exploring. Imagine my surprise at the number of supplementary files I could access with an ounce of thought and a modicum of effort. Not the one I wanted, true, but a trove of treasures nonetheless. Mother, you look a bit perplexed. I fail to see the reason why. It's just your deplorably dull little boy pound, pound, pounding his way through your mainframe. And it's not as if I could read them all, I didn't have the time. Sad to say I was reduced to copying the bulk of them to disc." Two fingers waved the offensive square aloft in the air before her.
Helena hissed, unimpressed by the display. "Louis," she ordered calmly, "train that gun on my son. Adolfo, the disc. And everything else in his pockets."
The man guarding Laura moved apart to swipe the prize from his hand, then searched his clothing for the rest. He brought his findings to his mistress and laid them on the shelf at her side. She plucked up the trigger box at once, then gestured to the disc. "Destroy that," she commanded, and watched as the blackjack fell to crack the casing into pieces. Convinced her files were no longer retrievable, she turned in smug satisfaction to her son. "An abysmal ploy, Stefan. I'm honestly disappointed. I've come to expect somewhat more from you than this."
"But you didn't permit me to finish," he disputed, blinking his eyes in affront. "I copied those files to disc, yes. I thought it a wise precaution before wiping them all from memory. Of course, had I known how worthless they were," he offered with chagrin, pointing to the shelf and her pile of shards, "I can assure you I wouldn't have bothered."
Helena's gaze skittered back to the disc now destroyed beyond repair, her mouth opening and closing like a freshwater fish. "Meddlesome fool!" she spat as her fingers sifted through the wreckage of plastic. "You will pay for this. You and these women you value will know the consequence of my loss. Mercy will be a memory to you; Life a burden you will beg for me to lift from your shoulders."
"Not so worthless after all, it seems." His eyes grew cold, his voice colder, as he straightened to his fury. "I suspected as much and, yes, took the appropriate course. Not only did I copy those files, I had the foresight to transfer them overseas, to one of my personal computers." She threw him a gruesome glare, suddenly aware she'd fallen to his trap. "But which one, Mother? Milan? Geneva? Vienna, perhaps?" He smiled at her indignation and slowly strolled to where Sancia stood. When the henchmen made to block his way he turned to their mistress with disdain. "You have the trigger. You may destroy us at will. These guards are superfluous. Gentlemen," he announced, returning his attention to her men. "You are aware your prisoner is strapped with enough explosive to kill? On second thought, I may be mistaken. It's possible you'll only lose an arm, and a leg if it's standing nearby. Move aside," he thundered imperiously, forcing them to seek Helena's leave. She must have nodded as they quickly stepped apart, unable to hide their relief.
"Are you alright?" he murmured, laying a hand to the girl's shoulder while measuring the damage to her face. She tried to toss the question off with her usual brusque bravado but a squeeze of his fingers brought her eye around to register his concern. She nodded and he nodded back, then moved on to Laura. "Anything new?" he inquired, a wry grin gracing his face.
"You must be joking," she replied tartly. "It's all too old and entirely too familiar."
He leaned in close, his expression intent. "It feels that way, doesn't it?" She almost laughed and he wanted that but suspected it might send Helena's ire right over the edge. He needed his mother to think, to opt for logic over lunacy and so, with a touch of reluctance, he focused once again on the problem at hand and the woman he'd compel to solve it. "Kill any one of us, or all three, and you will never see those files again. Oh, I'm sure you could work to reconstruct them, but the labor involved would be prodigious. I advise you to release us immediately. Once Laura and Sancia are safely away, I will transfer those files back. The choice is yours, Mother. Suffer the loss to retain your captives or free them and preserve your schemes intact."
Helena arched a brow at his audacity. "And how will I know you haven't made a copy? Or - as you so rarely sit this catbird's seat - that you won't feed them to me piecemeal simply to prolong your pleasure of the perch? No, Stefan," she demurred. "You've left too much to trust. I have no faith in your promises just as I have no faith in you. Such a pale shadow of a man you are, skulking through computers to find your edge. No passion, no presence, no power of your own, just the might you manage to steal from others. Why, you've sucked the Empire dry through the years with your mummery of a stewardship. What authority do you possess that you didn't poach from the Cassadine throne? What wealth? What influence? What pinch of prestige? Poor Nikolas. You've robbed him blind and he thanks you for the theft! Yes, Stefan, I see you for the scavenger you are, in all of your pilfered glory. Lord of the Light-Fingered Gentry. Freebooter. Despoiler. A dauntingly desperate debit of a son. That you are my child would shame me if I bothered to give it thought. On the odd occasion my mind travels back to the grey day I bore you, and all the years you've wasted in-between, I inevitably find myself forced to arrive at the same sad conclusion. I should have stopped at one."
Stefan withstood her blistering barrage with his characteristic fortitude - abiding this eruption of antipathy behind a face so placid, so patiently proud, that it served to dull her every barb by evincing its patent lack of effect. He was impervious to her vitriol, had been so since his youth, and thought this the reason her rancorous remarks had grown more maliciously acidic with the passing of the years. He'd been little more than a barber's strop to the razor of her hate for as long as he could remember, and would likely continue in similar service for the rest of her unnatural life. Or his, depending upon the outcome of this current confrontation. His window was closing, yet he couldn't resist a parting comment on her screed.
"You may not see what you wanted, Mother, but I am certainly what you've obliged me to be. There's credit for the taking, if only you possessed the awareness to perceive it. Of course, perceptual awareness has no ranking on the list of qualities you respect, now does it? What were they again? Passion, presence and power, I believe. And how do these men you so admire put those attributes to use? Is it passion that decrees a Deciding to risk our fortunes on the fickle whim of our treacherously faithless kin? Is it presence that thrusts a woman to the floor and revels in her degradation? Is it power that drives a man to rape in his hunger to make a point? Some would call such behavior amoral. Some would go so far as to label it insane."
"He did what was required," sniffed Helena, her shoulders squaring primly. "And he won that challenge. He won. Don't bother to pretend you could have done the same. Had we placed our fate in your hands last night we'd all be in coffins this morning. Try as you might, my pathetically perceptive blunder of a son, you will never be the man this empire needs. You will never, ever be Stavros."
"And a good thing, too, or I'd be forced to kill him."
All eyes turned to the door of the control room and the man now leaning against its frame - his careless stance and bemused expression giving rise to the question of how long he'd been standing there. They only noticed the woman at his side when he brought her hand up for a kiss, then straightened to stride into the fray.
"Speak of the devil and the devil appears," quipped their prince with a wink and a smile. "Someone, anyone, tell me - exactly how much has the devil missed?"
