"Van Lustbader, Eric - Linnear 04 - The Kaisho" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

'Finished?'
She nodded at him, too terrified to speak. In bed, she pulled the covers over her, turned away from him. He extinguished the light,. She felt him - she imagined that she would always feel him: that curious sense of menace and arousal which confused and appalled her.
She put her hand on the thatch of hair between her thighs, moving her forefinger over the end of the razor. She forced herself not to shudder. She closed her eyes, trying to still the hammering of her heart, but surely it was only her imagination that warned her this might betray her.
All the same, she started when she felt the press of his hand on her shoulder.
'You're vibrating.'
She had given a little moan.
He knew what she was thinking.
'What do you mean?'
'I can see the energy boiling off you like smoke.'
She turned around in the dark to face him. 'You can see what?'
'I can see auras,' he said. 'There's a way. I've been trained.'
'Okay. So you can see I'm frightened. What did you expect? I'm all alone here with my little girl,' Had her voice cracked? She bit her lip, determined to keep better control over herself. But she could feel the rivulets of sweat under her arms, in the small of her back, at the idea that he had the ability to see inside her, to know her very thoughts.
He said, 'We're all alone, in the end, with our sins,'
She shuddered. 'I was never alone. Ever since I can remember I've been in the company of men: my father, my uncle, then boyfriends, lovers, a husband. What must it be like to be alone? The freedom it must -'

'I've always been alone,' he said thoughtfully. 'Even in the most crowded city street I am isolated,'
'Don't you have any family . . . friends?'
'Who can I really count on,' he said, 'but myself?'
For the first time she thought she could see behind the dangerous shell of him, and she thought. He's been damaged.
'What family I had is dead. Dangerous,'
Margarite turned toward him, clearly fascinated. 'Dangerous?'
He continued to stare at the ceiling, striped by pale, phosphorescent light. 'Family,' he said, after a time. 'Family is dangerous.'
'No, no. You're wrong. Family is the only solace in times of tragedy.'
'Not if the tragedy destroys what family you had,' he said.
'All the love you missed.'
Damaged.
'We rise at dawn. Go to sleep,' he said.
She watched him, afraid now to turn away. 'How in Christ do you expect me to sleep?'
What would it be like to see mother and father, sister destroyed in front of one's eyes? she asked herself. The very idea was impossible to imagine. If she were an actress, perhaps, weeping bitter tears she contrived to well up out of her, the bodies strewn in front of her, blood that would never coagulate or turn brown smeared over them, weeping, until the director yelled 'Cut!' and the cameras stopped rolling. Only then. But in real life? No, never.
'Come here,' he said, in a voice that floated over her like a buzzard crossing a ravine.
It took her a moment to realize that he was holding his arms out to her.
She wanted to laugh, to spit in his face, but she also felt the razor, warm inside her - and there was something else.

a mysterious emotion, elusive as mist, which locked her lips together.
In retrospect, it still surprised her that she crawled into his embrace, as meekly as a child; stunned her that in the grip of that embrace she felt more protected than she had ever felt before.
What was happening to her? She had no answer. Had he somehow managed to enchant her with one of his magic potions? She thought back to when she had eaten or taken something to drink. Had he secreted something at those times? Terrified, she could not say.
'How like his signature these bruises are.'
With his fingertips on her purple flesh she could not speak; her mind was blank save for the warmth she felt flowing from him, entering her where she hurt the most.
His head bent and his mouth opened against those bruises, and she felt his tongue, a pressure, and then nothing, as if even the memories that had lingered in those painful places had been exorcized.
She shivered when she felt his lips on her neck, at the tender place where her carotid artery softly pulsed. He did something then with his tongue that sent ripples of desire through her. She felt her nipples stiffen, and she grew damp between her thighs. It was then that she reached down. The razor thus lubricated came out without the difficulty she had had in sliding it in. It lay in the palm of her hand, gravid with its promise of death, warm as a living thing.
Margarite closed her slender fingers around it, and her lips opened to expel a soft groan. She used her forefinger to swing open the blade, and now she was ready.
His tongue slipped into the hollow between her breasts, a place that had always been a spot of intense arousal for her. He knows, she thought.
The blade moved as if of its own volition, a beast hungry to taste blood, to slice through flesh and sinew.

Kill him now, said a voice in her mind. It's what you want. It will get you out of the trap.
She squeezed her eyes shut and, grunting with the effort, swung her arm across the space between them. The edge of the blade struck him dead on but, instead of cutting him, the steel slid' harmlessly along the skin of his lower belly.
She could see him grinning, his teeth large and white in the dimness as he held up her hand with one of his, clasped the opened razor blade with his other one.
Margarite gasped as he opened his fingers. They were uncut.
Touch it,' he said. 'The blade is unsharpened. The one I use is locked away.' His grin broadened. 'I could feel you watching me, your eyes following the track of the blade as it scraped away my hair. I know greed, Margarite, and I could feel your greed. You wanted my razor .. . and I gave it to you,'
'No,' she said faintly, dropping it on the sheets between them. 'You gave me nothing,' The acrid taste of bile was in her mouth. She thought she might be sick.