Eighty Days Yellow Page 28

  I had promised Dominik that I wouldn’t take the Bailly out in public, busk with it, that it was too dangerous with an instrument so valuable, but I thought he’d understand, just this once.

  The cab dropped me at the door to my apartment and I gave the driver a good tip to thank him for keeping quiet for the whole journey.

  I ran up the stairs two at a time, dropping the black dress on the floor as soon as I got inside. I wasn’t sure I wanted to wear it ever again. Perhaps I’d get a new outfit for concerts, one that didn’t hold so many memories. I put on some ordinary clothes, so I wouldn’t draw any more attention to myself than was necessary, picked up the Bailly and headed for the park.

  The Washington Square Arch was my chosen spot to play. It reminded me of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and of places that I wanted to go, of the pictures that Dominik had shown me from his visit to Rome.

  I stood by the main fountain, overlooking the arch, and placed the Bailly to my chin, gripped her neck firmly and drew my bow along the strings. As to the question of what to play, my body made that decision before my mind even had time to think.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on the first movement, the ‘Spring’ allegro, of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

  Time passed, the minutes of my performance going unnoticed until I drew the last section to a close, opened my eyes and realised that it was nearly dark.

  Then I heard clapping. Not the raucous clap of an entire audience, just the firm, clear clap of one individual.

  I turned, the Bailly held protectively to my side, in case a psychopath was about to launch himself on me and run away with my instrument.

  It was Dominik. He had come for me.

  Dominik opened his eyes.

  It was the witching hour of the night, and just the light of the Washington Square Arch peered through the window of his hotel room. The air-conditioning’s peaceful hiss breezed through the bedroom like a kind, cool wind.

  Next to him Summer slept. The quiet sounds of her breath rising and falling in unison with her heart, her shoulder uncovered, just a glimpse of the underside of her breast in the window of vision created by her folded arm, which she held between her chin and the pillow.

  He held his own breath.

  He remembered the feel of her lips around him as she had taken him for the first time into her mouth, her velvet caress and the delicate way her tongue had curled round the stem of his penis, almost playfully toying with it, tasting it, exploring his texture, inch by minute inch, grazing over the skin and its valley of veins and minuscule promontories.

  He had not asked, nor ordered her to do it. It had just happened naturally, like the right thing to do at that moment, as they had both lowered their defences, exposed themselves fully to each other, banishing the past, the mistakes, the roads taken in error and now regretted.

  The echoes of the lust he felt for Summer still rushed across his whole being, and Dominik mourned for all the days that he had wasted. Before her, after her. Those days he could never recapture.

  He watched her sleep.

  Sighed.

  In happiness and in sorrow.

  Outside the window, joyous voices passed by, trekking back from the bars on Bleecker and MacDougal on their way uptown, and for a brief instant, Dominik felt truly happy that he had found Summer again.

  The moments they had shared tonight had been normal, not part of any game.

  He fell asleep, lullabied by her presence at his side, the warmth radiating from her naked body next to him as she spooned herself against him like a balm.

  He awoke again with dawn still a fillet of light on the Manhattan horizon. Now Summer was awake too, her eyes fixed on him, her gaze curious and affectionate.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said.

  ‘Good morning, Summer.’

  And then silence again, as if they had all too quickly run out of things to say to each other.

  ‘You’ll find out I’m also a man of silences,’ Dominik said, apologising for his being lost for words.

  ‘I can live with that,’ Summer replied. ‘Words aren’t that important. Wildly overrated, I believe.’

  Dominik smiled.

  Maybe this would work out after all, go beyond the bed and the sex and the darkness he well knew they both harboured deep inside their souls. Maybe.

  She extended her hand towards him, rose slightly, one breast cheekily emerging from the covers. Her fingers settled on his chin.

  ‘Your beard is hard. You need a shave,’ she remarked, stroking him.

  ‘Yes,’ Dominik confirmed. ‘It’s been at least two days,’ he added.

  ‘I’m not partial to all marks,’ Summer grinned.

  ‘Marks won’t always be necessary,’ Dominik pointed out.

  ‘No, that’s OK,’ she said. ‘I’m sure we’ll find a balance.’

  Dominik smiled, touched her uncovered breast with all the delicacy he could muster. ‘Does that mean we can still be—’

  ‘Friends,’ Summer interrupted him. ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘More than friends,’ he added.

  ‘I think so,’ she said.

  ‘It won’t be easy.’

  ‘I know.’

  Dominik delicately pulled the covers away from her body, exposing her all the way to her pale thighs.

  ‘I see you’re still shaved,’ he remarked.

  ‘Yes,’ Summer said. ‘It felt too messy and awkward growing back, and I came to like it that way.’ She didn’t tell Dominik that Victor had ordered her to remain smooth, although it was true that she had learned to enjoy the vulnerability the smoothness of her condition evoked in her heart and mind, and the sheer sensuality of being able to feel herself so naked down there when she touched herself.

  ‘And if I asked, would you agree to either leave it that way or grow your hair back again?’ Dominik asked. ‘At my whim, or maybe command?’

  ‘I’ll have to think about it,’ Summer said.

  ‘And if I ordered you to play the violin for me, would you again?’

  Her eyes were shining in the faint morning light.

  ‘I would,’ she replied. ‘Anytime, anyplace, with clothes or without, any tune, any melody . . .’ She smiled.

  ‘A gift from you to me?’

  ‘A submission. In my own style,’ Summer said.

  Dominik’s hand moved to her pussy, lingered over her lips, parted them open and slipped a finger inside her with slow deliberation.

  Summer moaned softly.

  She’d always enjoyed making love in the morning, straight from the drowsy embraces of sleep.

  He withdrew his finger, shifted his whole body, slid down the bed and brought his lips to her. Summer gently threaded her fingers through the tousled curls of his hair to hold him in place and control her pleasure.

  I opened the door to my apartment, set my violin case gently down on the floor and headed over to my wardrobe. I’d popped back home to pick up a change of clothes. Dominik had just one more night in New York, and he had asked me out for dinner, and a Broadway musical, to celebrate.

  It would be an odd celebration. Bittersweet. Our last night together until some unknown point in the future, with the time in between to be spent in the embrace of separate continents.

  Could it work? I mused, pulling my short black dress out of the wardrobe, the one that I had worn for him, briefly at least, for one of our early recitals.

  I thought so. We were two halves of the same whole, Dominik and me. Even an ocean couldn’t keep us apart indefinitely.

  I packed a small overnight bag with my outfit for that evening, gave the Bailly one last glance and headed out through the door.

  Dominik still hadn’t visited me at home.

  Perhaps next time I would invite him in.

  Acknowledgements

  We would like to thank all the people who made the writing of the Eighty Days series not just a possibility but a pleasure – Sarah Such at Sarah Such Literary Agency, Jemima Forrester and Jon Wood at Ori
on for believing, and Matt Christie for photography – www.mattchristie.com.

  Special thanks to all the unnamed individuals who assisted along the way with research, support and violin lessons; the Groucho Club and Chinatown restaurants for hosting our perverse speculations; and to our respective partners for standing by at all hours of night and day as we typed away in overdrive and neglected them.

  One half of Vina Jackson would like to thank her employer for her extraordinary support, understanding and very open mind.

  And a final thanks to First Great Western trains for facilitating the wings of fate through the lottery of online booking which brought us together.

  If Eighty Days Yellow

  left you breathless for more,

  get ready for the next two books

  in Vina Jackson’s compulsive

  new trilogy

  Eighty Days Blue

  and

  Eighty Days Red

  Coming soon in 2012

  About the Author

  Vina Jackson is the pseudonym for two established writers working together for the first time. One a successful author, the other a published writer who is also a city professional working in the Square Mile.

  Copyright

  AN ORION EBOOK

  First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Orion Books.

  This ebook first published in 2012 by Orion Books.

  Copyright © Vina Jackson 2012

  The right of Vina Jackson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978 1 4091 2775 8

  Orion Books

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper St Martin’s Lane

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

  www.orionbooks.co.uk