Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [16]
‘Thank you, sir.’ Amy Cowan got up from her chair and noticed the puddle of melted snow on the carpet. She turned to flee in embarrassment.
‘Oh, one last thing,’ said Creed.
She turned back and looked at him expectantly.
‘Do you always go through the Magyar routine on the first day at a new job?’ said Creed.
Amy Cowan’s face lit up with a spectacular smile. ‘Sure,’
she said. ‘But I don’t usually go as far as the handmade skis.’
Amy Cowan had blonde hair. Short blonde hair. Your fingers graze the short bristles near the roots, tracing the delicate contours of that graceful skull so full of intelligence and notions, and dreams.
Then your fingers move on, slip through her hair on to the sudden smoothness of her face and against her clean flawless skin, drifting down to encircle her high cheek-bones.
They touch the lashes of the startling greenish blue eyes, which are gazing levelly into your own. Then your hand moves down her face, down that smooth skin to the oval bud of flesh under her nose and then down to her red lips, so firm and lush they almost seem swollen. And you caress them with the back of your hand, feeling them graze the skin there in an inadvertent kiss of contact, cool and slightly moist. Then you turn your hand over so that the more sensitive skin of your fingertips can touch those red lips.
And they are as smooth as the petals of a flower, but now you’ve got lipstick all over your fingers, like a stain that won’t come out. And there’s someone who mustn’t see this stain. But all thought of that is being lost now because you’re looking at Amy.
Amy’s lips look heavier and fuller because of the smeared lipstick at the corners. And as her level jade eyes look into yours, you stretch out your finger as if you’re pointing. And you put your finger gently between her lips and let their delicate pressure kiss it for a moment. Then you push your finger and her lips yield as you press deeper into her mouth. Now she smiles, opening her lips slightly and your finger slides all the way in, slipping with a warm moist shock into her soft mouth.
And you wake up with your heart ricocheting in your chest.
You’re soaked with sweat and disorientated. The pulse is slamming in your skull, sending dream fragments throbbing through your mind.
A dream.
Only a dream. And dreams don’t mean anything and dreams certainly can’t harm you. Can’t harm anyone.
You tell yourself this a few times and then you turn and look down at Justine.
You look at your wife, curled up asleep beside you.
Chapter 6
The Doctor was waiting for Benny when she arrived at the house. ‘Good evening,’ he called as she got out of the car.
He was standing in a patch of moonlight near the front steps.
He walked towards her, his feet crunching on the gravel.
‘Where’s Roz?’
‘She said something about meeting us back here later.’
Benny still felt vaguely ashamed of abandoning Roz at the airport. ‘Why don’t we have a stroll in the garden before supper?’ The Doctor held out his arm in a courtly, old-fashioned gesture and Benny took it. The moon was high and yellow over the dark garden as they walked up the steps that led through the hedge on to the big lawn behind the house.
After her hours on the plane the fresh country air was like nectar.
‘The garden smells wonderful.’
‘Doesn’t it just?’
Benny found herself wondering for the hundredth time whether the Doctor experienced sensations in the way she did. When he smelled blossoms on a ripe late summer evening, for instance. Did he breathe the same rich fragrance that she did?
She looked over at the Doctor strolling beside her in the moonlight. His wrinkled, almost simian, face was abstracted and thoughtful. He held his head at an odd angle as though listening. But there was nothing to hear. Just the silence of a warm, summer night. They walked down the gently sloping lawn towards the shadows of the apple trees. Benny glanced at the Doctor again. He was clearly listening to something.
Benny strained her ears but all she could hear