Destiny Read Free Page B

and to equally sudden depression.
    This was not discussed. A series of physicians was hired and fired. The Baron de Chavigny did everything in his power to please her. He gave her new jewels: a set of perfectly matched sapphires; a magnificent necklace of rubies made by de Chavigny for the last Czarina, which had found its way back to the Baron in the wake of the revolution. Louise said the rubies made her think of blood; they made her think of a cellar in Ekaterinberg. She refused flatly to wear them. The Baron bought her furs: sables of such quality, each pelt could be drawn through the circumference of a wedding ring. He bought her racehorses; a superb Irish hunter, for she liked to ride to hounds. He bought her cars: a Delage, a Hispano-Suiza, a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost; a sports car built to order in Bugatti's factory. And when these bagatelles failed to please her, he took her traveling. To England; to the West Coast of America, where they were guests at Pickfair, and her spirits revived, briefly. To India, where they stayed in the Viceroy's palace, and shot tiger with the Maharaja of Jaipur. To Italy, where they had an audience with the Pope. Back to England. Back to France.
    Each night he would escort her to the door of her bedroom:
    (^a va mieux, ma cherie?
    Pas mal. Mais je m'enniue, Xavi, je m'ennuie. . . .
    Then she would turn away from his kiss, and close the door.
    In 1930, when his wife was thirty-four and the Baron was forty-four, he finally took the advice his male friends had been giving him for some years,

    DESTINY • 19
    and took a mistress. He made sure Louise found out, and to his delight, jealousy revived her. It also excited her, he observed with a sinking heart, when, in bed together once more, she questioned him feverishly, obsessively, about his affaire.
    Did she do this, Xavi? Or this?
    She leaned back on the lace pillows, her thick black hair tumbUng around her perfect face, her dark eyes glittering, her full hps rouged. The Baron had torn the lace of her neghgee in his impatience, and that had pleased her. She had high rounded childish breasts, which he had always loved, and her slender creamy body was still as lithe as a young girl's. She hfted her breasts in her hands now, and offered them up to his seeking mouth.
    Calme-toi, sois tranquille, je t'aime, tu sais, je t'adore. . . .
    He took the small pointed nipples between his Ups and kissed them gently. He would be slow, this time, he promised himself. Very slow. He could hold back, and he would, bringing her to climax once, twice, three times before he came—and she would tremble, and cling to him, the way she used to. The memory made him hard, and she felt his body stir against her belly. She pushed him, feverishly, quickly, lifting his head.
    "Not Uke that. I don't want that."
    She spoke in English now when they made love; before it had always been in French.
    "Put it in my mouth, Xavi. Go on. I know you like it. Put it there—let me suck you. ..."
    She pulled him up in the bed, maneuvered him so his stiff shaft was poised above her hps. She smiled at him, touched the tip of him once, twice, with a httle snakelike flick of the tongue.
    "Your cock tastes of me. It tastes salty. I like that. . . ."
    Her eyes shone up at him darkly. She opened the full red lips, and he shuddered as he felt the warmth of her mouth, the steady sucking. He shut his eyes. She was good at this, she always had been. She knew how to tease, to draw her tongue softly around the hne of his retracted foreskin. She knew how to quicken his response, sucking him just hard enough, so he thrust against the roof of her mouth, sucking him sweetly, moistly, rhythmically. Now she drew her hands slowly down over his buttocks, shpped them between his legs, massaged him there where the skin was loose and damp from their lovemaking. She cupped his balls in her delicate hands, and tilted her head back, so he felt as if he were driving at the back of her throat. He felt the surge