Carte Blanche - Jeffery Deaver [102]
They approached his hotel, Bond fishing the van key from his pocket. Felicity slowed. The night sky was clear above them, encrusted with a plenitude of stars.
‘A very nice evening,’ Felicity said. ‘And thank you for your help in delivering the leftovers. You’re even fitter than I thought.’
Bond found himself asking, ‘Another glass of wine?’
The green eyes were looking up and into his own. ‘Would you like one?’
‘Yes,’ he said firmly.
In ten minutes they were in his room in the Table Mountain Hotel sitting on the sofa, which they had turned and slid close to the window. Glasses of a Stellenbosch pinotage were in their hands.
They looked out over the flickering lights in the bay, muted yellow and white, like benign insects hovering in anticipation.
Felicity turned to him, perhaps to say something, perhaps not, and he bent forward and pressed his lips gently to hers. Then he eased back a little, gauging her reaction, and moved forward and kissed her again, harder, losing himself in the contact, the taste, the heat. Her breath on his cheek, Felicity’s arms snaked around his shoulders as her mouth held his. Then she kissed his neck and teasingly bit the base where it met his firm shoulder. Her tongue slid along a scar that arced down to his upper arm.
Bond’s fingers slipped up her neck into her hair and pulled her closer. He was lost in the pungent musk of her perfume.
A parallel to this moment is skiing: when you pause on the ridge atop a beautiful but perilous downhill run. You have a choice to go or not. You can always snap free the bindings and walk down the mountain. But in fact, for Bond, there never was such a choice; once on the edge, it was impossible not to give in to the seduction of gravity and speed. The only true choice left is how to control the accelerating descent.
The same now, here.
Bond whisked her dress off, the insubstantial blue cloth spilling leisurely to the floor. Felicity then eased back, pulling him with her, until they were lying on the couch, she beneath him. She began tugging at his lower lip with her teeth. He cupped her neck again and pulled her face to his, while her hands rested on the small of his back, kneading hard. Felicity shuddered and inhaled sharply and he understood that, for whatever reason, she liked touching him there. He knew too that she wanted his hands to curl firmly behind her waist. Such is the way lovers communicate, and he would remember that place, the delicate bones of her spine.
For his part, Bond found rapture throughout her body, all its aspects: her hungry lips, her strong, flawless thighs, breasts encased in taut black silk, her delicate neck and throat, from which a whispered moan issued, the dense hair framing her face, the softer strands elsewhere.
They kissed endlessly and then she broke away and locked onto his fierce eyes with her own, whose lids, dusted with faint green luminescence, halfway lowered. Mutual surrender, mutual victory.
Bond lifted her easily. Their lips met once more, briefly, and he carried her to the bed.
Thursday
DISAPPEARANCE ROW
44
He awoke with a start from a nightmare he could not remember. Curiously James Bond’s first thought was of Philly Maidenstone. He felt – absurdly – that he’d been unfaithful, yet his most intimate contact with her had been a brief brush of cheeks that had lasted half a second.
He rolled over. The other side of the bed was empty. He looked at the clock. It was half past seven. He could smell Felicity’s perfume on the sheets and pillows.
The previous evening had begun as an exercise in learning about his enemy and his enemy’s purpose but had become something more. He had felt a strong empathy with Felicity Willing,