Slowly, Louise lifted her gaze to him. What was going on? What was he doing? Saving her from suspicion? From gossip? Whatever, her heart beat faster than ever. She just didn’t know what to do about it. Should she call him a liar, force him to accept the alibi she provided? She swallowed down the instinct. She didn’t know what he was doing or why. So she held her tongue.
Aidan too was looking at him. Her brother must have known she didn’t come home until morning, but he said nothing. Thierry himself looked only at Davidson.
“Did you go straight to the caravan?” Davidson asked him.
“No. On impulse I drove past the gates, parked and walked a little way up Ardknocken Hill.”
“In the mist?” Davidson asked mildly.
Thierry gave his characteristic half smile. “Yes, in the mist. I like mist. It helps me to think, and I had an idea for a computer game I wanted to get straight in my head.”
“That’s what we were talking about when you came in,” Glenn added. “We’re going to call it Mists of Time.”
“I see.” Davidson leaned forward and heaped some sugar into his mug, added a slosh of milk before raising his gaze to Thierry once more. “Did you meet anyone on the hill?”
Thierry shook his head.
“Hear anything? See anyone or anything unusual?”
“No one and nothing. If Ron was there at the time, I didn’t see him.”
“Did you go as far as the waterfall?” Davidson asked, cradling his mug in both hands.
“Nowhere near. The mist was impenetrable. I came back and went to bed.”
Louise’s body flamed.
“Do you know what time this was?” Davidson asked. “When you went to bed?”
Thierry shrugged. “Not exactly. Maybe midnight.”
“Well, we might have a more definite time of death after the autopsy,” Davidson said. “But for now, did anyone see you come back here? Before you went to bed? While you were in bed.”
Thierry shook his head. Davidson looked at Glenn who merely shook his head.
“Do they all need alibis?” Aidan enquired. “Or just Thierry?”
“Possibly not even Thierry,” Davidson said easily. “We haven’t established foul play. It’s just suspicious that he died while he was investigating Thierry.”
“I’m not a violent criminal,” Thierry said with a hint of mockery. “Ask anyone.”
“Oh I have. I also know that you’ve stated to several people that you’ll never go back to prison.”
“Then killing someone on my own doorstep would be pretty bloody stupid, wouldn’t it?” Thierry retorted. “I don’t think anyone will tell you I’m stupid.”
Davidson curled his lip. “You got caught, didn’t you?”
“Technically, I gave myself up.”
“Leaving old crimes aside,” Glenn interrupted, setting his mug on the table in such a way as caught Davidson’s attention. “I never heard it was standard practice to demand alibis from suspects before you’ve even established a crime. Sounds like a waste of police time.”
Davidson smiled faintly. “It wouldn’t be the first.”
Aidan said, “But you’re not looking for a murderer, are you? Not yet. You’re looking for the money.”
A quick, irritated frown tugged Davidson’s brow and was gone.
“Oh for—” Thierry unwrapped himself from the chair and shoved his empty mug across the table. He looked Davidson in the eye. “There is no money for you to find. Whatever Ron was looking for, I don’t have it. I never did. I never will.”
And abruptly, Louise understood. While Davidson frowned—even Aidan betrayed a hint of bafflement, for truth seemed to shine out of Thierry’s words and his fierce, dark eyes—Louise grasped that either he was the best liar she’d ever encountered, or he really was telling the truth. Which meant he’d lied to her last night. Or…
Or he’d taken the money from London and Scottish and given it directly to someone else. “I don’t have it. I never did. I never will.”
Thierry had never been a true criminal like the others here. Maybe that was one reason Glenn liked him so much. Their friendship had never been the one-sided relationship some imagined—mere gratitude on Thierry’s part for Glenn’s physical protection in prison. Louise knew enough of Glenn to understand he’d been searching for redemption in prison, and he’d found it in one of the truly good men he’d ever encountered. Glenn and the others here were all trying to find a better way to live their lives. Thierry’s had been a temporary, if deliberate, fall from grace, for which he’d always intended to pay the price.
Ruled by fear for his sister and fury at the injustice of the company that just took and took and refused to play its part when they needed it to, he’d taken the law into his own hands. He’d made it pay. And he’d punished without personal gain.
Something twisted inside her. It felt like pride and pain rolled into one. She had to control the gasp that parted her lips, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Thierry. As if he felt the intensity of her gaze, he glanced at her, and for the first time that afternoon, didn’t look immediately away. He didn’t smile. But then, neither did she.
“Well.” Davidson drank and put his mug down on the table before getting to his feet. “That was definite. Thanks for your help. I’ll be in touch again if I need to. Thanks for the coffee.”
Glenn followed him from the room, presumably to see he went straight out.
Louise, released at last from Thierry’s mesmerizing gaze, said to Aidan, “You’ll notice we don’t get offered a lift back down the hill?”
Aidan gave a perfunctory smile. He was looking out the window. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he murmured. It seemed to be aimed at Thierry, who didn’t answer.
Aidan turned to face him. “I have to go back to Glasgow. If you want to talk, Louise has my number.” He strolled across the room, gave Louise a brief one-armed hug in passing and left.
Louise, still holding her cup because it was something to do, said awkwardly, “Aidan isn’t out to get you. He’s trying to stop you going back to prison.”
Thierry didn’t respond to that either. He’d taken Aidan’s place by the window, presumably watching the departure of the detective, and of Aidan who’d been a different kind of policeman and was now involved in private security. No wonder he felt hunted. And yet, still he’d lied to keep secret her presence on the hill and in his bed.
“Why didn’t you tell them I was there?” she blurted. “We alibi each other.”
“We don’t need alibis,” Thierry said without looking at her. “At least, I don’t think we do.” Abruptly, he turned to face her. “Why would Ron have gone up there in a pea-soup fog?”
She shrugged. “Why did we?”
“You think he had a girl with him?”
“No, it would have been all over the village by now. But maybe he just likes mist. As you and I do.”
Thierry nodded. “That’s what I thought.” His frown deepened. “He was out in the other mist too, when you and I were. He assaulted Nicole, as if overcome by uncontrollable lust. As you and I were.”
Warm blood flooded into her face, spread through her body. “I never heard that mist was an aphrodisiac. It’s cold and damp.”
“And yet we had sex twice surrounded by this mist. Ron tried to have sex with Nicole. Maybe on Friday night, he was so restless with lust he just kept walking until he fell over the edge.”
She stared at him. “Are you really trying to wriggle out of responsibility for your own actions? You had sex. Get over it. Trust me, it won’t happen again, not with me.”
He dragged an impetuous hand through his hair as she flung away from him. “Shit, don’t,” he said. “Louise, wait.” In one quick movement, he caught up with her, grasped her hand to hold her still. Upstairs, Jack laughed and Glenn’s voice rumbled. “Look, we can’t talk here in Glenn’s place. I’m trying to put some very weird thoughts into words, and I can’t if you get offended.”
“How can I be offended by the idea that you’re ashamed to have had sex with me?”
“Ashamed?” He stared at her. “Ashamed? A girl like you shouldn’t even look at a man like me, and yet…”
Her breath caught. “You think I had sex with you just to get information for Aidan or Ron or the police or London and bloody Scottish. You think you had sex with me because the mist overcame your natural repulsion. What the fuck is the matter with you?”
Laughter seemed to choke him. Unexpectedly, both his arms went around her. “God, you are so wrong! And so good for me. Don’t be angry. I admit I’m an arse sometimes, but—” He broke off as Jack’s voice sounded at the top of the stairs. He was only calling something to Izzy and Glenn on his way to the front door, but it served as a reminder that they were in someone else’s home and hardly alone.
“But what?” she demanded.
He pushed a strand of her hair behind her ear. “But I would always have wanted you. I always did. I’m just not sure that without the mist I would ever have had the fortune—or the courage—to take you.”
She searched his eyes, almost fearful. “Thierry, the mist didn’t make me do anything. I think this new game of yours is muddling your head.”
And yet, even as she spoke, she remembered how stunned she’d been by what she’d done with Thierry that first afternoon in the mist.
“Maybe the desire was there,” he said quietly. “I know it was for me. But I think you acted out of character. Which was why I wanted you to be very sure before we did it again…a scruple that kept me—just—away from you in Oban. Yet as soon as we hit that mist, nothing mattered but being inside you. It drew us in.”
Her body heated, mingling memory with fresh lust. “That’s nonsense, Thierry. Even if it isn’t, I don’t want not to have chosen this. Shit, I don’t want you not to have chosen this! I hate what you’re making me think.” She jerked in his arms, trying to pull away from him, but he held her firm.
“In my fantasy,” he said, “I would have chosen this. So let’s choose now, while there’s no mist.”
She stared up at him in silence for several moments, letting her anger melt away into very physical awareness of his lean, hard body. Her nipples were suddenly hard and oversensitive against his chest. Butterflies gambolled in her stomach, sweeping lower. She took a fistful of his shirt and tugged. “I wish you’d parked your caravan in the woods.”
He shook with silent laughter. “So do I. Come for a walk instead.”
She let her head fall onto his chest and closed her eyes. “What if Davidson’s out there with every cop in the Highlands?”
“Let them watch. After all, they already know we were out for dinner.”
“Were you saving my reputation? Is that why you told them you dropped me at home?”
“Partly,” he admitted. “I thought it would make things easier for you in the village. Whether or not we ever find a way past our suspicions. Louise?”
She glanced up at him and found his mouth tantalizingly close to hers. “Yes?” she said huskily.
“I’m sorry for what I said last night.”
“You mean I’m not a damned good fuck?”
His breath hitched, his heart drumming against her. Smiling, he bent his head, and the door above them slammed, causing them to spring apart. Stupid. Izzy already knew they’d spent the night together on Friday, and she had to assume whatever Izzy knew, Glenn did too.
“Come on,” Thierry muttered, seizing her hand. At the last minute, he remembered to scoop up his laptop and shove it in the bag he swung over one shoulder.
“Bye, guys!” Louise called as Thierry all but dragged her through the door. Outside, they had to walk down the narrow stairs in single file. It was beginning to rain, big, slow drops that splashed on their heads and the ground in front of them.
As they rounded the front of the house, Chrissy disappeared through the front door and closed it.
“Aidan must have left for Glasgow,” Louise commented thoughtfully. “Come on.”
This time, she led the way, not into the woods and the hills, but down the path towards the beach. The sea was loud today, the waves white and wild. As the rain got heavier, Louise pulled up the hood of her jacket, and as she dropped her hand again, without looking at him, she threaded her damp fingers through Thierry’s.
He said, “I’ve always wanted to make love to you in the rain.”
The tingling in her stomach intensified. “Always?” she said lightly. “You haven’t known me a week.”
“It’s been a good week.” His thumb caressed the soft skin at the base of hers. “Where are we going? I presume you know somewhere not overlooked by the house or the village or the beach.”
“I do.” She paused at the fork in the path as she caught sight of Mairi Moore on the beach with her dog, fortunately heading back towards the village. The tide was coming in fast and there wasn’t much sand still visible. Louise held on to Thierry’s hand. “One moment… Okay.” She tugged him on around the fork and along the path, where Aidan and Chrissy’s renovated cottage stood. The wind whipped at her hair.
“I think Aidan and Chrissy might object,” Thierry said, his tone neutral.
“No, they won’t. Not this once.” She led him up the repaired steps and along the side of the cottage to the back door, hidden from the paths and the house and the beach. As if released from a sling, Thierry spun around, bumping her back against the wooden door.
“What’s the matter?” His breath came just a little ragged. “Don’t you like sex in the rain?”
“I’ve never—” The rest of her denial was lost in his mouth, which devoured hers, hot and demanding. She gasped, lifting her hand to his face as she kissed him back. Rain ran down his hair and onto her face, trickling onto their fused lips until she could taste it in her mouth and his.
He tugged down the zip of her rain jacket, and then swept his hand under her skirt, stroking the length of her thigh. Excitement soared as she realized he really meant to do it here. A flood of lustful moisture pooled in her knickers. She opened wider to him, kissing deeper as if drawing him into her with her tongue, and pushed her hand inside the waistband of his jeans, smoothing over the warm, taut skin of his buttocks. The pressure of the fabric vanished from her wrist as he unfastened his zip, and then his hand, his beautiful, bliss-giving hand, delved between her parted thighs, yanking her knickers aside and bathing in her wetness.
He groaned into her gasping mouth, hauling one of her legs up over his hip, and at last she felt his bone-hard erection against her pubic bone, then sliding over her slick folds.
“What’s the matter with you?” she all but panted against his lips. “Can’t you wait until I open the door?”
He lifted his head. “No,” he said, pushing into her. “I can’t wait.”
“Oh God,” she whispered. One arm clutched around his neck; the other flailed behind her until she found the door handle and clung to it as he drove all the way into her. She wriggled, squeezing him, and the immediate pleasure sparked into building orgasm. Only with Thierry had she ever found this kind of arousal and need and satisfaction. “Oh, now,” she pleaded. “Do it, now, Thierry, quickly!”
He needed no second urging. Hard and fast as she’d begged, he hammered her. The bag containing his computer tangled with her leg, bumped against her body and his. Rain ran down his shoulders and head, seeping through her clothes. The sea rushed and thundered in her ears, mingling with her own gasps and moans, all one with Thierry’s panting breath as orgasm burst upon her, soaring and wild.
Her fingers twisted on the door handle. Unexpectedly, it turned; the door gave way behind her, and they stumbled backward. She was falling, his hand behind her head, but there was no crash landing. She came to rest gently on the hard floor, her legs still clinging around his waist as he strained into her, groaning and thrusting, and came with her at last, emptying deep inside her.
She couldn’t move. She didn’t really want to. Thierry’s weight pinned her to the floor. Every nerve in her body seemed to tingle still with joy and satisfaction. And they weren’t even undressed.
Thierry’s mouth closed on her throat in a sensual kiss.
She smiled and managed to draw her fingers through his damp, tangled hair. “We really must do something about contraception,” she said lazily.
His head shot up. “Shit, I’m sorry, Louise—”
“Don’t be. I should be safe still, though I wouldn’t like to risk it into next week.”
He smiled, kissing her lips in a lethargic, sensual way that caused her internal muscles to clench around his still-hard cock. “Does that mean you want to do this some more?”
“Maybe. Though only to prove to you your damned mist doesn’t make a blind bit of difference.”
Thierry glanced over his shoulder out the open door. The rain was torrential now, the sky dark, but no mist swirled in the air. With a jerk of his foot, he kicked the door shut and slid out of her before hauling her into a sitting position and pulling off her jacket.
“Your clothes are wet,” he observed. “You’ll have to take them all off.”
“So will you,” she agreed co-operatively, pushing the computer bag and his jacket off his shoulders and tugging. “How will we dry them?”
Thierry’s eyes gleamed. “Friction.”
* * * * *
The room that would become Aidan’s kitchen was their bedroom for the afternoon. Between the bare, newly plastered walls that awaited the delivery of kitchen units, they piled their clothes, with coats spread out at the bottom and everything else on top to make a small and not very comfortable bed. It didn’t seem to matter.
Wrapping her lips around Thierry’s cock, which she’d been teasing for some time, she sucked delicately, and loved the uninhibited groans she elicited. She released him long enough to observe, “Still no mist.”
“My theory stands,” he got out as she worked him more seriously.
She lashed him with her tongue. “How did you even come up with such a daft notion?”
“Talking to Glenn,” he said between his teeth as she sucked hard and then let him go. It seemed he’d had enough of her teasing, for without warning, he rolled her onto her back and straddled her chest. Deliberately, he guided his cock into her willing mouth and thrust slowly, gently. “When I mentioned the mist on Monday afternoon, he actually blushed. I’m sure it affected him and Izzy as well.”
He threw back his head in bliss, and she held his cock in her hand, working the foreskin as she sucked and licked and he moved faster in and out of her mouth.
“Little things,” he managed. “Added to us, and Ron and Nicole…”
She drew her mouth away, holding on to his cock. “So why didn’t Nicole want Ron, then?”
“I never said the mist took away personal taste.” Thierry detached her fingers, held both hands on either side of her head and re-entered her mouth, pushing inexorably towards his climax. “Oh fuck,” he said desperately, and shuddered into orgasm, his clouded eyes locked on her face.
“I love watching you come,” she whispered when he withdrew. His care of her, even in such urgency, enchanted her.
“Good,” he managed, collapsing down beside her on his stomach. “Because I’d really like to do a lot more of that.” He leaned over and kissed her mouth before dropping his head on her chest. One hand came up, cupping her breast, idly caressing. “I’ll tell you what. Next time the mist comes down, I challenge you not to fuck me.”
She laughed. “To be honest, I’d probably fuck you anyway, with or without mist. My record of resistance isn’t great around you.”
“Even though I’m an ex-con under suspicion of more crime?”
“Doesn’t appear to matter. But you can’t blame that on the damned mist. And here’s another. How come Ardknocken folk haven’t been having sexual orgies in the mist for years? We get a lot of mist on these hills! And off the sea.”
Thierry frowned as if seriously considering the matter. “I don’t think this is a regular, normal mist. It’s too thick, too…alive. On Friday night, I could swear I saw it in the caravan with us. For an instant, it even had a face.”
“You need to up your medication,” Louise said derisively.
“I’m serious!”
“So am I.” She pushed him onto his back and leaned over him. “You’re obsessing. Can’t we just like each other? Just for once, can’t we be swept off our feet?”
His hand came up, cupping her cheek. “I am.” He kissed her. “And a lot more than once. A lot, lot more.” Rolling her over, he pushed her knees apart and lay between her legs. His cock began to grow and harden against her inner thigh. “I said I’d tell you everything.”
“About the missing money?” she said with some dread.
As if he felt it, he shifted, and with his hand pushed his still-growing cock inside her. Perhaps he meant it as distraction, or bribery to stay on his side. It seemed to work.
“Go on,” she said unsteadily.
“I took tiny amounts every day, put them in the accounts of lots of different customers all over the world, constantly moving them through traceable and untraceable bank accounts, none of which had anything to do with me, my family or friends, and in such small quantities that no one ever really noticed or made much fuss. If they did, it could never be explained. Anyway, eventually it all ended up where I wanted it. Where it still is.”
She was almost afraid to ask. She moved beneath him in unconscious distraction, and he pushed down with his hips, pinning her to stillness.
She gave in. “Where?”
“A children’s cancer charity in France. They were kind to Annette, do great work in care and in research. They got an anonymous donation. It didn’t come from me, and the money can’t be traced back to London and Scottish, let alone to me.”
She slid her hands over his naked shoulders, curled her fingers around his neck. Questions chased around her head, making her feel curiously helpless as well as proud and sorry and frightened for him.
“Thierry, you can’t police the world. It isn’t up to you.”
“I know.” He began to move inside her, gentle, exploratory little motions that inspired instant response.
He seemed to need the closeness to talk about this. She knew instinctively he’d never told anyone else.
He said, “The way I felt then, I couldn’t sit back and let it go. Annette wasn’t the only one. I came across lots of other cases across the world. People who’d paid their premiums for decades, generations in some cases, without ever asking for a penny, a cent, a euro; and then when they needed it, the company wriggled out, justified it with small print, and the law, apparently, was behind it. So I broke the law for Annette. It made no difference to the others, of course, but at least that money did more good than it ever would have weighing down the bloated pockets of London and Scottish shareholders.”
He took her face between his hands, tender and sensual as he thrust with more serious intent. “I thought about it a lot in prison, but I couldn’t be sorry I did it. I’m still not. London and Scottish will never get it back, and I’m glad.”
She moved beneath him, taking him deep, urging him on as she caressed his back, his constantly moving hips and bottom. She strained against him until he let her push him onto his back. She rolled with him, straddling him, riding him, letting the pleasure build slow and intense from their every friction, every motion.
“Then it’s finished, past,” she said, rocking, “and all we have to do is find out what happened to Ron.”
His fingers tightened on her hips, and he pushed up, hard. “The mist happened to Ron.”
“What mist?” she whispered, lowering her mouth to his. He rolled her again, half-off their little pile of clothes. Arching, he latched his mouth to her breast and drove into her. Her naked shoulder scraped across the hard floor, but she didn’t care, so lost was she in Thierry and sexual pleasure. He wrapped her close in his arms, holding her head and shoulders off the floor as he brought her to yet another blinding orgasm.
She thought her vision was still clouded as she lay sprawled across him, gazing towards the kitchen window. She blinked several times, but although the walls were clear, the window wasn’t. White mist swirled across it, thick and opaque.