The Call of Distant Shores by David Niall Wilson, Bob Eggleton Read Free Book Online Page A

removed.   A crystal tumbler sat beside it, and Belle felt his fingers as he reached for that drink, felt them stroking her flesh and drawing her up, her hips rising to meet the fall of his lips.   His eyes never left hers, and the hand that did not hold the quill slid beneath her, curling into the small of her back.
    Belle cried out, trying to close the eyes that had opened when she clamped her own shut, trying to avoid the intensity, the absolute pleasure and terror and impossibility of that touch and that moment, but she could not give voice to the sound, or, if she did, she could not hear it.   Nor could he.
    He leaned closer, and she knew him, from portraits and descriptions, from the twist of the lips that would one day sneer at his own work, questioning its value and releasing it only at another's whim.   Those lips so close his breath, hot-sweet with absinthe, brushed her thighs.   Belle's entire being clenched.
    The air shattered with a sharp sound.   Belle clamped her eyes more tightly still, concentrating, but the moment was shattering around her, falling away.   The sound repeated, and she cried out.   She arched so violently that her back crackled, spine rearranging to try and compensate.   She ground her head into the floor, feeling the tug and tear as the motion pulled against her hair.   His face had faded and though the heat remained between her legs, the touch had never come.   The ice had faded to molten carpet that burned her as she stroked against it, and again, the sound, and again, blaring and bursting through her thoughts.
    Then there was nothing.
     
    Art turned his key in the lock at last, determined, if this was his last night in the house, that he would spend it painting.   He could not block the images, and though he'd poured drink after drink down his throat, doubling the shots when the first few rounds failed him, his heart pounded and his head spun, not with drunken stupor, but with the images, drawn from the memory of Sammy's voice and the faces floating in air, the words and the incense, and the failure.   He had painted, but now he knew that he had not been true to himself, or the images.   He hadn't failed, he'd been a coward.   He knew, and he wanted to share that knowing, but the only way to do it was the painting.
    He opened the door and burst inside, and he found her, Belle, prostrate on the floor, bent nearly double and writhing against the carpet.   The incense was so thick he could barely make out the bar beyond the altar.   He saw the bottle sitting there, and a glance at the floor showed the empty tumbler.
    Belle was unconscious.   He didn't know why, or how, but he knew she was breathing.   Art lifted her in his arms and carried her to his room.   He placed her on his bed, covered her tortured features with his sheets and blankets and turned away.   She was alive. She was safe.   He had to paint.
    Art never knew when Sammy returned.   One moment he was lost in the painting, and the next he realized he was lost in the painting and the sound.   She had entered, opened the case, pulled out her dulcimer, and she was playing, matching the notes to his motion, or was he matching his motion to the sound?   It didn't matter.
    As he neared completion, he was aware of something more.   Belle had risen, first to sit on the bed, staring at him in wonder, then to rise and slip closer, molding herself to his body and pressing closer.   Other times, other worlds, and he would have worried that she would jostle him, drive him from the images or vice versa, but it was right.   Each counterbalance she caused brought the brush closer to perfection, and she held tightly.   The eyes glared back at them from the canvas, the ice glistened, and the heat throbbed.
    Sammy began to sing along with the tune she was playing, the words distant and familiar, though neither Art nor Belle had ever heard them spoken.   The final words of the poem passed, and the milk of paradise ran