So was the woman.
It wasn't the cognac. It was the man. This man.
She'd waited a lifetime for one who just might be her equal. "Christine," he said.
She turned and saw him backlit by the glow of the fireplace. He raised his glass to his lips. "When you get in there, be sure to light the candles."
His bedroom was modest and spare, though every piece spoke quietly of his taste. A simple walnut mirror hung over a Hepplewhite chest of drawers. An old, primitive oak wardrobe that had probably once belonged to the servant class. A Saladino bookcase, a Louis XVI writing table and a Louis XV bergère. A William and Mary four-poster bed.
Two candles stood on the Louis XVI, two more on an inlaid cherry nightstand by the bed. Wooden matches lay in a Georg Jensen silver pit plate. She lit the candles and turned off an oil lamp.
From the wall beside the bed sprang a wooden Magalenian atlatl carved in the shape of a horse. Yet another masterpiece.
Christ…
A plain white hatbox sat on the bed. She opened it, parted the taupe tissue within.
And stared into the face of an African lioness.
Magnificent.
She touched it. The fur was real, smooth and soft in the direction of its growth and courser as she moved her fingers against the grain. A soft linen lining had been sewn in. Rich creamy leather fashioned the wide nose and think dark lips and carbon-black lashes seemed to flutter above each eye slit — she could not imagine what time and care it had taken to do this. Perfect, genuine whiskers lanced from the snout.
She picked it up. Her fingers teased around the edges. Some sort of plate obviously had been slipped inside to give the mask some rigidity, plastic or thin wood. The mask felt surprisingly light, delicate as Tibetan silk. Beautiful, she mused.
The ears lay back flat against the head. They and the open mouth gave the lioness an appearance of waiting. She could almost see her in the tall, waving grass of some veldt. Crouched, scenting the wind.
She stepped out of her kidskin heels, unzipped the back of her dress and allowed it to flow down her shoulders, heard its silky hiss to the floor. She draped it carefully over the back of the bergère. Then the stockings and the black slip and finally the sheer lace bodysuit. She stood naked before the mirror, aware that already she was participating in some sort of arcane ceremony with him. That this was not just sex but ritual. The thought excited her in the way that sex itself hadn't for a very long time.
Her body was the object of that ceremony.
Her body…and the mask.
She'd never had a child. She had never allowed the tight smooth flesh to disappear. At forty her body still deserved to wear the mask. She took it to the mirror.
There was no strap. It was designed to extend across the back of the skull almost to the neck. Her own coiffed hair was nearly the same color of the lioness' fur. She could simply tuck it in.
She slipped it on.
The fit was perfect.
She leaned in close to the mirror and turned her head from right profile to left. Then stepped back and gazed at herself.
The mask hugged her like a second skin.
She was aware that she was trembling. It was warm in the room but her nipples had gone rigid, dark.
A cat, she thought.
A predator.
You've never been so beautiful…
Trace sweat gathered between her breasts. In the mirror she saw the door open slowly behind her.
He stepped silently into the room. He'd changed into a sheer, plum-colored kimono. She saw him smile at her image. She turned.
"You like it?"
"Stephen, it's… spellbinding."
"I'm glad," he said.
He moved across the room to the bed, reached beneath it and withdrew a second box. He smiled again.
"It's Tutsi, isn't it?"
His smile widened as though impressed. Or…
"You knew this was coming, didn't you?"
She nodded, smiling too beneath the mask.
He opened the box, extricating its contents from the tissue. He looked up at her and opened the kimono and let it fall off his shoulders. He was naked. She saw that, like her, the years had barely breathed upon his body.
In his hand he raised the massive head, its mane trailing eighteen inches at least. Its dark wide mouth hung open in a howl.
He drew it on over his head.
She sensed the sudden pull of him as he held his arms out to her and she saw the shadow of his erection, saw the muscles of his arms twitch and the muscles of his shoulders. She crossed the distance between them and the supple grace of her walk seemed like something unknown and new to her.
She knew what sex with him would be like. Something crimson. A crimson gash in time.
She wanted his hands on her, the long polished nails tearing.
She gazed into the eyes behind the mask, saw them flick across her body like the tongue of a whip. Were his eyes different somehow? No, she thought—just hungry. His hands were electric as he reached for her — power flowing from fingertips, bared ends of wires. Power that had nothing to do with wealth or position or even intellect, but something deeper and much older.
She could feel it clawing out of her too. A power of her own which very nearly matched him.
Already she could taste his blood.
The sheets were streaked with blood.
It was morning.
The masks lay beside them on the bed.
She watched him sleep.
He was Stephen and she was Christine and they lay in bed in a Manhattan loft in Soho. Outside, below the windows, were shops and galleries. One of them was her own — she, Christine, with a masters in history and an doctorate in art — who had never wanted for anything nor ever failed at anything, born of New York privilege, who had been engaged not once, but twice, only to find each man bereft and even empty in both the moral courage to stand up to her and the wisdom not to try. Who had neither regretted these men nor missed them. Who had been quite content alone to this very moment.
Below too and uptown were Stephen Gannet's offices — Gannett Financial Services, snapping at the heels of giants like Paine Webber, Salomon Smith Barney, Dreyfus, and outperforming all of them. He said he'd been in the military once but he didn't seem the type. Before and after, he said, he'd prowled the world while his curious fortunes amassed. He'd been on digs but spoke of them as though bored. She only knew a little about him. Fortune suggested a net personal wealth exceeding ten billion dollars. She'd looked him up. In the financial world the fact that he chose to live in SoHo was considered eccentric if not downright crazy. He supported the arts and was notorious for ignoring all other forms of charity.
They'd met at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, at a benefit for the Lincoln Center Library of the Peforming Arts. They'd talked about sculpture, architecture, Expressionism and Post-Impressionism, and Post Neo-Expressionism. She found him more than knowledgeable. And amazingly attractive.
They went to bed. And now…
Her body ached, stung.
Claw marks etched her breasts and thighs. She could feel their sting glowing across her back.
Yet she'd given as good as she'd received. You only had to look at his shoulders.
Cats, she thought. A mating of lions.
God knows what we did.
She could remember only in knifelike flashes of flesh on flesh, torso to torso, torso to back. She remembered him pulling so astonishingly hard at her nipples that she came merely from that. At some point they'd discarded the masks to use their mouths, their tongues, their teeth, but that seemed to change none of the scarlet animal fury of their lovemaking. Something had worked its way inside them. Some primal kiss of fantasy, some gossamer thing that lit her nerves and dropped her into fiery bliss.