Authors: Jean Stone
A golden
light vaulted through the fog like half a halo then disappeared behind the Matterhorn, a glittering arc on an angel’s cloud, a vision into the beyond.
Kris was mesmerized. “Holy shit,” she whispered and abruptly stopped.
The rope below tightened; the one above sagged.
A tug from below snapped her footing. The piton released its hold and skittered down the face of the mountain. Shards of ice and bits of rock splayed into the wind.
She grabbed a ledge; miraculously, it held.
The climber beneath her stopped. “Jesus!” he yelled. “Are you trying to kill us?”
Her heart pumped. She caught her breath. The rush was incredible. She wanted to see Peter’s face below her. She wanted to ask if he’d seen the light. Instead, she remembered the one thing she was told to never do: look down.
“Sorry,” she cried. “I’m only trying to kill Towanda.” She smiled slowly, then nodded down at Peter and upward at Hans, to signal that she was ready again. And again, the trio of climbers—a seasoned guide, a veteran of many
mountains, and tucked between them the rookie Kris Kensington—continued their guarded descent.
They passed into the clouds. She blinked the moisture from her eyelids; she opened her mouth, held out her tongue, and tasted the shroud of dampness.
The descent continued.
With each tentative toehold, each grasp of her fingers, and each breath of the cool, thin air, Kris logged into memory every sensation, every touch. It was the only way she could do research, to experience every detail that she would demand of the characters in her books.
Towanda was her latest character who was to come up against Lexi Marks, the female James Bond, heroine of the series of slam-dunk thrillers that had kept the name Kris Kensington on the
New York Times
bestseller list for most of the past fifteen years. Towanda, like the others, would meet her fate—this time, off the side of the Matterhorn.
Kris willed herself not to shudder; the slip of her footing was enough to give her the sensation of falling to her death. As for the real thing, she was not ready for that. Because life for Kris Kensington just got better and better.
Six hours later
they were back at the lodge in Chamonix. Kris showered, then wriggled a white lace slipdress over her aching yet invigorated body. Brushing her ultrashort, black hair, she smiled into the mirror at the glow of her skin, at the velvet blend of fresh air and jova cream glistening and smooth on her long, fine limbs. She layered charcoal makeup around her eyes, spritzed herself with moisture, and slid into four-inch-high sandals. There was only one thing she wanted next.
Peter opened
the door to his room, a thick terry towel tucked around his waist.
Wordlessly Kris reached for the towel, undid the loop, then watched as it glided to the floor. She kicked off her sandals, dropped to her knees, and took his immense penis in her mouth.
Behind her, Peter closed the door.
“You are a creature
of magnificent surprises,” Peter said later, his Swiss accent light, his voice soft. They lay naked in his bed, her nutmeg complexion contrasting with his creamy whiteness as they stroked one another in post-sex, intimate touches, languishing in the after-high of wet-hot climax.
“I’ve been scaling a mountain with you for four days,” Kris replied. “Surely this was not unexpected.”
Peter laughed. “What stopped you from attacking me at the top? The top of the Matterhorn … what a beautiful place for sex.”
“I didn’t want to offend Hans.”
“No?” He leaned over and sucked her breast. The flat, dark nipple sprung to life. “Perhaps Hans would have enjoyed it, too.”
“Perhaps. But it was your butt I watched all the way up the mountain.”
“And did you fantasize about this all the way?” His hand reached down and stroked her muscled thigh.
“Of course.” She sighed and raised her hands over her head. “Except on the way down. When I was too busy trying to stay alive.”
His stroke stopped. “What happened, Kris? How did you slip?”
“The light,” she answered. Her eyes widened. A prickle of excitement grazed over her flesh. Kris raised up on one elbow and felt her nipples stiffen again, felt the heat return to her thighs. “Did you see the light? It was golden and it looked like a crescent moon …”
“The fogbow,” Peter laughed. “You saw a fogbow.”
“A what?”
“A fogbow. Like a rainbow. Sometimes they’re yellow, sometimes only white. We often see them above the clouds. I barely notice any longer.”
Kris reached down and took his penis in her hand. She squeezed it gently, rubbed it deliberately. “You should notice. You should always notice. It’s the details of life that people overlook. Details that can feel so wonderful.”
“Details like another erection?”
“Mmm.” Slowly she stroked. Slowly the firmness returned.
He ran his fingers through her hair. “Why do you do this? Why are you such a risk-taking woman, such a … how do you say … daredevil?”
She smiled. “I am not a daredevil. I am a writer. I merely do research to make my books realistic.”
His hand returned to the mass of black curls that joined her thighs. Gently a long finger probed the hair, then firmly plunged into her heat.
“When is your wife expecting you home?” she asked.
He laughed again. “Are you so certain I have a wife?”
“Men like you have wives, Peter. It helps them be better in bed. They appreciate sex more from a stranger.”
He withdrew his finger. “And if I tell you I don’t?”
“I’d say you are lying.”
He rolled onto his side and looked deeply into her eyes. “More research for your book?”
“No. Well, in a sense, maybe. Lexi Marks is always on guard against giving her heart to sexy men.”
“What about Kris Kensington?”
“Kris Kensington gives her time, her body, and her experience. She does not give her heart.”
“That sounds like a badly written scene.”
“I assure you. It’s not.”
His hand darted back to her vagina. She jumped at a sudden burst of orgasm. “Oh, God,” she cried.
He massaged his palm against her pulsating flesh. She spread her legs; her opening swallowed his fingers, his strong, callused, rock-climbing fingers.
“Tomorrow I will take you somewhere even more extraordinary,” he said. “I will take you to my home in the country. We will go into the meadow with a hamper of cheese and fruit and wine, and I will fuck you in the tall grass, where the sheep graze in the sun.”
She reached down and pressed him more deeply inside her. She slid her hand to her breast and rubbed her swollen, aching nipple. “And your wife?”
“There is no wife, Kris. There will be only the flock of woolly beasts to watch.”
Slowly she rocked back and forth. Slowly she arched her hips as she pinched the pain of her nipple. “Then we’ll give them a show they will never forget. Now fuck me again,” she demanded. “Fuck me again until I scream for you to stop.”
He did.
She’d thought
about flying to Paris and catching the Concorde back to New York. But Kris was in no hurry, and the idea of spending more hours in a plane, secluded, uninterrupted with her laptop, was more appealing.
Devon, her agent, would not be thrilled by the delay, but the results would make him rich. Richer than she already had made him.
Her gloriously mellow frame of mind was, of course, thanks to Peter. It was not often that Kris found a gorgeous man whose lust matched her own, who understood what she wanted, when, and why, and who knew better than to ask for explanations, or to ask for more.
It was the only reason she’d broken her self-imposed
rule and had sex with him twice. And in a remote pasture in the Swiss countryside, their heat had proved to be even more exciting than in Chamonix.
Some people, Kris reasoned, used drugs. She only needed sex. Hot, great sex.
And now, 35,000 feet in the air—a little more than twice as high as she had climbed up the Matterhorn—Kris settled into her first-class seat of the 747, took a last glance at the carpet of white mousse clouds outside the small window, turned on her computer, and prepared for Towanda to meet her fate at the skilled hands of Lexi Marks at the top of the Matterhorn.
Needles of ice crystals power-sprayed her cheeks
, Kris typed. She sat forward on the seat, touching her face, trying to recall the sensation.
Then, from the corner of her eye, Kris noticed the man sitting beside her. He had shifted closer and was attempting to peer over her shoulder. She turned her head and looked squarely into his eyes with what she hoped was an obvious, blank stare.
He was very large and very black. He grinned, his wide, white teeth forewarning friendliness. Exactly what Kris neither wanted nor needed right now.
“Working?” the man asked pleasantly.
She nodded and returned her attention to the small screen, hoping he would get the message.
“My work is done for now,” he continued and rested his head against the seat-back. “I’m headed to Chicago. Back to the real world.”
His words were meant to prompt her to ask where he was from, what he did for a living, etc., etc., etc. They were meant to induce conversation, an act she performed with strangers only when she was doing research. Or was in need of a good screw.
“My work never ends,” she said brusquely. “And I have a deadline awaiting me in New York, so if you’ll excuse
me …” She started typing again; this time not really writing, just putting down garbage to reinforce her disinterest.
“Wait,” he said, sitting up straight. “I know who you are. My goodness. You’re Kris Kensington. You’re the writer.”
A small groan threatened to escape from her lips. “That’s me,” she responded without looking up.
“I’ve read all your books. In fact, so has my wife. We both think it’s marvelous that you’ve had so much success. Especially a sister—a black woman—such as yourself.”
It was
another twenty minutes before he got the message and retreated upstairs to the lounge. By that time, her good mood was gone.
Kris turned her laptop to “sleep” and wondered why her stomach hurt. Why was it that every time someone called her a “sister,” a “black woman,” she felt sucker-punched in the gut?
She leaned back and closed her eyes. In the first place, she questioned, why did most people assume she was black? She was not. Her father had been white, her mother black. So why did everyone call her black? Why did no one call her white? And what the hell did it matter? She had proved herself to the world. Why the hell did anyone still care what color she was … or was not?
It wasn’t as though she had a husband to answer to; it wasn’t as though she’d had children. No, she thought. No children. Only men. Many men.
The men in her life—the never-ending string from the Matterhorn to the Australian outback—perhaps all assumed she was black. In their beds, however, it did not seem to matter. There, she was who she was: a hot-blooded, horny woman who thrilled to the quick flash of sex, who loved the climax after climax they all made her achieve. She had never been one to expect to be held. Or loved. She
had only wanted their sex, as they did hers. Color didn’t matter beneath the sheets.
Still, it seemed the more famous she became, the more people wanted—needed—to make it an issue. It was not the way she’d been raised, in a cultured home where her political activist, South African parents did everything possible to make Kris’s world free of prejudice, free of pain. They sent her to the best schools, exposed her to the finest people.
But their mission, apparently, had not been completely successful. Now that they were dead, and Kris was on her own, she wondered if it might have been better if she’d learned to live as a black-and-white woman in a black-or-white world, if she had learned how to live and how not to get sucker-punched.
She checked her watch. Over six hours to New York. There was no point in working right now; her agitation was too great, and the mellowness of Peter had melted, had cascaded down the slide of reality. She closed the lid of her laptop and reached for the airphone. There was only one way for Kris to regain her balance, and that was by talking with her agent, Devon Reynolds.
Unbelievably
, Devon was in his office. Unbelievably, he picked up the phone.
“My wandering beauty,” he chortled. “How was the Matterhorn?”
“Delicious,” Kris answered. “I do believe Lexi Marks has done it again.”
“Fended off evil and peril to the world?”
“Of course. Now tell me what’s happening in the city. Any news on
Acapulco Gold
?” The book depicting Lexi Marks’s quest to stop the resurgence of a hashish invasion into the United States had been released last winter; the film had been optioned but not yet produced.
“They renewed the option for another six months.”
Kris smiled. The longer it took the studio to get into production, the more money she made for doing absolutely nothing. “Good. Anything else?”
“Lots that can wait. You did have one interesting call, though. From Abigail Hardy.”
Her eyes locked on the seat-back in front of her. A small rumble began somewhere in her sucker-punched gut. “Abigail?” Visions of pop beads and hula hoops came into Kris’s mind, 45-records and scrawling the names of boys across the pages of schoolbooks and … and Windsor-on-Hudson. “What did she want?”
“At first I thought she wanted you to cook on her show. Then I remembered you don’t cook.” He chuckled. “Hell, you hardly even eat.”
Kris squirmed. She wished he’d get to the point.
“I didn’t know you were in school together.”
“We were more than ‘in school,’ ” she answered quietly. “We were best friends.”
“You? And the queen of the kitchen?”
She closed her eyes and gripped the receiver more tightly. “What did she want?”
“Lunch. Wait a minute. The note’s here somewhere.”
Kris heard papers being rustled. She wondered how long it had been since she’d seen Abigail … not since the baby-naming ceremony for Maddie’s twins. Had they talked since? No. She knew they had not talked even once.