Caulder has done what he needed to do, and if it turns out to be Henry, which Dante is almost a hundred percent convinced it is, he’ll find out soon enough. Breaking the news to Sash may be a little more difficult, but he has her now, that is never going to change.
He kisses across Sash’s shoulders, familiarizes himself with the star chart of freckles and moles that pepper her back, and slides his arm out from underneath her. Sash turns with it, desperate not to let him go so easily.
“What time is it?” she whispers, her eyes still shut against the swelling light.
“Early”, Dante says. “Go back to sleep.”
“Where are you going?” she says, pulling him instinctively back to her.
“Nowhere, I’m right here”, Dante says, pulling himself upright.
He stays like that a moment longer while Sash rests her head on his thigh, curling up into him. When she’s fallen asleep again, he slides carefully out from underneath her, replacing his thigh with a pillow in the process, and heads out onto the terrace.
From here, he can see out towards the sea, the vastness of the pacific ocean beyond, which spreads out in the thin morning light like a silver blanket. Stood atop one of the largest buildings in the city, a hundred square meters of swimming pool and landscaped gardens around him, his queen still asleep in their chamber and the whole of the city below, Dante feels like a God. He feels completely invincible.
He showers, the memories of yesterday’s incredible fuck coming back to him so vividly his cock springs rock hard and the resistance of relieving himself becomes an even greater distraction than Sash’s father and the licentious photos he’s taken, pulls on a toweling robe and orders breakfast.
While Dante sips freshly squeezed orange juice, the sun still low but strong enough to dapple the terrace with warmth, he checks his watch. Twenty two hours of the twenty four are up. In a couple more, he’ll know the outcome of yesterday’s attack, and for Sash’s sake, he hopes he’s wrong.
“Did you order enough for me?”
Dante turns to the voice. Sash is stood in the doorway, one leg bent behind the other, her arm raised above her head to balance herself against the door frame. As she stretches, the hem of her T-shirt lifts, revealing the slight bump of her belly and a hint of her navel. She’s wearing expensive panties that are just about see through enough to drive Dante wild.
“You should be resting”, Dante says. “You had a major operation yesterday.”
Sash comes over to the table and sits down on Dante’s lap, her hand immediately going to a patch of bare thigh that sticks out in the gap where his toweling robe falls open.
“You said it wasn’t invasive”, Sash says, her hand snaking up to where she knows his cock will be.
“I was talking about what happened after”, Dante says. “I thought you might need to rest because of it.”
Sash is delighted to find that Dante isn’t wearing any boxer-shorts. She gives his cock a squeeze and watches his eyes light up as she does so.
“I’ve rested already”, Sash says, swinging her legs over him so she’s in a straddle. “I’m hungry for more.”
She spreads his gown so it spills into the chair either side of him.
“That right?” Dante says.
Sash bites her lip a little. As soon as he sees her do it, Dante wants to do it to her too. He can’t help but mimic the action and when Sash sees it she leans it for a kiss.
“Uh-huh”, Sash says, her tongue rich with his taste.
Dante pushes the T-shirt off her shoulder a little, exposing her clavicle. First he runs his finger over the delicate bone and then he goes to bite it. Sash squashes her head against his, the sensation too much to bear. She can feel him up against her, wanton and restless.
With a swing of her legs, she’s stood up again, Dante left to watch her, exposed and twitching. Sash takes a croissant, and without a word, stuffs the thing into her mouth. She smiles down at Dante, spins on her heels and heads back towards the french windows. Dante can’t help but smile.
“Where are you going?”
Her back to him, Sash shrugs her shoulders. Just before she gets to the door, she turns, the croissant in her hand now.
“I’m going to have a bath”, Sash purrs. “Want to come and join me?”
Dante is up before she’s even finished the sentence, chasing the squealing girl through the huge hotel suite and back into the bathroom.
On the table outside, Dante’s cell phone begins to ring, ‘Caulder’, coming up as the caller ID.
Chapter 9
There are bubbles everywhere. They climb up the side of the bath and ooze out over the top, drifting lazily to the floor. Sash breaks the surface of the water with her toes, lifts her leg into the air and observes the way the soap runs down her skin.
Dante watches his stepsister with admiration, a stolen moment in the natural fabric of someone else’s life.
“It’ll go wrinkled if you stay in for too long”, he warns.
The bathtub is a roll top victorian on pedestal legs, big enough to fit a whole family. Sash pulls herself towards the edge nearest her stepbrother, foam collecting in her hair as she goes.
“Come back in, and we’ll get wrinkled together”, she says, before splashing him with soapy water.
Dante takes the two small strides to the bathtub. He pulls his sister towards him and kisses her deeply.
Sash tires to pull him back into the water, but she’s not strong enough. Realizing she’ll just have to wait, she kicks away from him lazily, and stretches out on her back, pretending not to be bothered. With her ears underneath the water, the sound of Dante leaving the room comes to her in hollow thuds. She stays like that for a while, one hand on her belly, trying to discern what he’s doing by the way the sounds are interpreted by the bath tub, before she sits up, reaches for the control panel behind her, takes out the remote control and clicks on the TV. She’ll tell him over lunch, she thinks, when he hasn’t got a chance to run away. It’s not like another few hours is going to make much difference.
Sash flicks from channel to channel, happy to idle away a little bit more time in the water, with or without her stepbrother. She passes cartoons, old films, soaps, shopping offers and the news channel twice before deciding to settle upon it, the New York skyline falling away behind the reporter, a distinct and incomparable reminder of home.
“…Found this morning by a pedestrian out walking their dog”, the square shaped reporter comments. Sash settles back into the water, having the TV on in the background enough to satisfy the momentary absence of her stepbrother. She turns water around her body and investigates the shape of the tap hole with her big toe.
“Lying naked, face down in the sand at the edge of the waterline”, the reporter continues. “On a stretch of Coney Island Beach hidden away from the multitude of tourists that flock their way further up the coastline.”
Sash rests her head on the edge of the tub, a wet flannel draped across her forehead. In the bedroom, she can hear Dante getting dressed. A boy like him or a girl like me?
“Grey and distended, the body could have been in the water for some time.”
A droplet of water gathers at the base of the tap and dives into the water. Dante pulls a shirt over rigid muscle. Bubbles pop and fizz against the rising steam.
“The young man has been identified as twenty one year old Jason Edwood Walker, a promising athlete from Harriet Avenue, Brooklyn.”
It takes Sash several moments before she recognizes the name. As if someone has suddenly just thrown a toaster into the water, her eyes pop open and she springs into action. She tosses the flannel aside and pulls herself towards the TV, sending huge waves of bath water onto the floor in the process.