Chapter Eight

Abberline took a deep breath and turned back to where Lily stood surrounded by other people’s trunks and other people going someplace, and he held out his hand, “Will you come with me?”

“You think I have another plan, Abberline?” All but her smile drowned in the pistons and whistles as the train inched a long the platform and off to the East. Once outside the entrance of the station, Lily pulled Abberline up from his fast march, her hand slipping through his arm, “Where are we going in such a hurry? Do we have to return the egg to the police station?” In truth, Lily was so tired now she could hardly keep up with him, the idea of hours more without rest was only salvaged by the thoughts of afterwards. Abberline stopped, his smile down into her face a little lopsided and his eyes on her lips, and she could feel it already, that wave of heat through her. He was beautiful from afar, close up he took her breath away.

“The egg is as safe as it can be, Lily. You, however, have a nasty habit of slipping through my fingers, and I have no intention of letting that happen now. His mouth just next to hers and she could almost taste him already, her questions all lost in the feel of his breath in her mouth.

“Mon Dieu! Will you kiss me?”

“I will, when you are inside a locked room with me, where you can’t escape to save any lost friends, maids, nor even hurt puppies, where no one knows where we are even if all the Fabergé eggs save this one get tossed in the Seine, and where if the bloody place burns down around us then at least we will die happy.” Before long, almost without her realizing, he was guiding her up some long marble steps, and it wasn’t until she looked at the gilt handles on the revolving door in front of her that she noticed where she was.

A frown pulled her brow together and Lily put her hands to her hair, a whisper of, “I can’t go in here, Abberline!”

His smile would have made her fall, “Yes you can, we can go anywhere we want,” and with that, he pushed open the door to the Hotel Paris. The lobby was still quiet save the distant clink of silver being laid out for breakfast and a hum from the kitchens. The smell of coffee and warm bread filled the air, and Lily heard her belly protesting, which did little to calm her disquiet at being here in the same clothes she had put on what seemed like a lifetime ago for a visit to the sort of place she doubted any of the guests here could have even dreamt of. Peut être.

His hand was in the small of her back as they stood a little more than disheveled in front of a desk clerk, his silver buttons shining and the sort of look that would wither a lesser mortal at a hundred paces. Abberline winked at him, a lifetime of flouting what people expected had usually paid off, “You don’t happen to work for the DGSE at night do you?” A wry grin, “A room if you please...and some breakfast on a silver tray with a vase and all of that...” a wave of his hand encompassed everything that they might need.

The desk clerk didn’t even open the book. “I think, Monsieur, that you have the wrong sort of hotel.” It was quite unclear which one of them the clerk thought was going to hit him first, and as the air bristled around him, he swallowed hard, his nervous fingers flicking through pages of reservations.

“We will have a room with a bath too, in that case, and if there is a second more delay, I can assure you that the Commissioner of Police will hear of the illegal shipments of smoked salmon I have uncovered in my investigations into your hotel. That will be ‘Inspector Frederick Abberline’ you will be needing to write in your book.” Lily was giggling out loud as they ascended the carpeted stairs, the width of which she couldn’t quite get over, now the proud owners of a gold key with which to open the door to a “luxury” room.

Abberline had barely turned the key in the lock before they were kissing and touching everywhere, just a sense of where the bed was behind her as his mouth propelled her backwards, her hands inside his jacket, pulling it from his shoulders before it hit the floor with a thud on account of an egg worth several thousand francs, but no where near as precious as what he had in his hands right now. The edge of the bed tipped her back and she was there at last, his hips between her thighs and her hands all in his hair while he kissed her hard, no chance of a breath save to share each others. Feeling her hips rise to meet his, her body at last pressing into his cock, Abberline’s moans made her head spin, “Merde…” he had no idea what she said next but it sounded like sex itself.

“Let me undress you, Lily.”

His fingers were on the buttons of her dress, one by one down to her waist, a pull on the ties of her chemise underneath before he slipped it from her shoulders, his hands over her soft white breasts, just the palms of his hands making her shudder, light brushing touches that had her shaking with raw desire and her hips moving.

“You too, Abberline, “ she said between kisses, “I want to see you.”

Her fingers were tingling so much she could hardly undo the knot of his tie, funny since it generally looked half way undone already. A curse muttered under her breath brought his hands over hers, soft kisses just on her lips and the touch of his tongue as he helped her slip the buttons undone of that white shirt. His arms out, she ran her hands down all the way to his fingers, catching them to squeeze between hers while her mouth followed a trail down his chest, and his head went back to look to the ceiling, heavenly breath out of his mouth and fingers in her hair.

“Lily, I need everything you have and I don’t want to take it either. I want this, us here now, to last forever…will you let me bathe you while I talk?”

Lily brought her head up from his chest her lips dragging against his skin, “You can have whatever you want, Abberline.”

It was just a step into the adjoining bathroom, and Lily watched him lean to turn on the gilt taps, clunking pipes heralding a stream of steam and then gushing water into the white bath. She couldn’t keep away from him even if she wanted to, seeking his warm skin against her breasts and the feel of his hands pushing her dress down over her hips until it fell to the floor. Her hips would drive him mad, hard bone giving way to deep pink warm promise that shivered at his touch. Naked against the cloth of his trousers, she could feel him stiffen all the same, her fingers running down his back to his ass while the bubbles foamed in the bath.

“You are so beautiful,” he had hardly looked but his hands informed his brain nonetheless, well what was left of it, his hand reaching and slipping between her legs, the both of them curling against each before she felt his lips on her ear, “you are beautiful...and that’s why I need to talk to you before we do this.” The water was threatening to wash over the top, slopping in puddles on exquisite tiles under her feet. Lily reached up to hold his face in her hands, she could hardly speak as she stepped into the tub, just an involuntary moan spilled from her mouth as the warm water flooded over her body, and she sunk beneath to feel it in her hair, his fingers tracing the curve of her belly in the soapy satin heat.

“Lily, I need to tell you about my wife, to let her go so I can love you.”

Her back against the walls of the bath, one hand pulling through her hair and the other reaching for his lips, just a touch over that mouth, and she nodded, “Then talk, Abberline.”

It would have easy for him to sit with his back to the edge of the bath and talk into the air, let the wall see his face and his pain, let her be an anonymous hearer of his tale, but Fred was very rarely about easy. So instead he knelt by the side of the bath, his fingers tangling in Lily’s hair, his eyes searching her face and her body for understanding and comfort and inspiration really that he could do this, and Lily did inspire him to believe he could do anything, there was no other reason to be here.

Lily watched this man smile with happy memories of a wedding day, a “match made in heaven” everyone said, she could almost hear the tinkling laughter of a honeymoon by the sea at Brighton and smell the salt air as they paraded along the shore, his beautiful mouth bending to kiss his new wife when he could bear it no more. She listened to his regrets, the long hours trying to make a name for himself in the police department, to give her all those things he thought she should have, if she asked for them or not, but the joy of coming home to her, to their bed.

Fred Abberline’s eyes closed to catch his breath and Lily sat up, the water running rivulets down her skin and she held him while he told her of how one night he had returned at 3 a.m. after some chase through the dark streets only to find her awake still with a candle burning by the side of the bed and her hair all curled over the pillow, and how he had laid on top of her while her sweet voice told him she was going to give him a child.

Lily lifted his head in her hands to see his face and it was all right there—the overwhelming surge of love and despair and pleading that she understand why he was here. Her own eyes smarting, she placed a kiss on his lips and she whispered, “Tell me…”

It could never be different with him, painstaking details of the round of her belly as the months passed, the crib, the way that she walked that had made him smile, and then the birth. Lily could hardly keep from weeping to see him pulled apart at the seams as he told her about the midwife’s face when she came down the stairs to tell him that he would have had a son, that he had tried to run up the stairs to find his wife to tell her it was alright, that he loved her more than ever despite the wrench in his heart, but that the midwife had caught his arm to tell him that the delivery had taken his love too.

She was out of the bath in a second and holding him up, her arms all around him. “I am not finished yet, Lily. That was 5 years ago and the rest has been about forgetting. Any unsolvable case, absinthe, opium…” his eyes up into hers to see her react, but he just saw Lily, and if she could bleed for him he knew she would, “…anything that would make it better.”

Lily looked right up at him, her fingers tracing the lines on his face, those cheeks and that moustache, the curve of his eyebrows, mustering a watery smile she mouthed, “Then let me help you too.” Her fingers dug in his belt and moved over his hips to slip his trousers to the floor and they were there with the bright light of day now pouring through the window, naked, visible, and raw in front of each other, the tracks of tears still sticky on their faces when she kissed him hard and felt him move.

Calm now she took his hand and they walked back to the bed, minutes where they lay opposite just looking before his hands moved to cup her breast. She let Fred Abberline take everything he needed, soft lips over her skin, suckling and pulling her into his mouth while his fingers found the dips and swells of her, found all her wet and heat. All that he had, now hers, the palm of her hand coaxing him, leaking and harder still, the sounds of their moans indistinguishable in the morning air. “Christ, Lily, it has been a while, this will not take long,” was the first time she had seen him smile in a while.

“Then we will do it again and again, Inspector Fred Abberline.”

“Is that what you want, Mademoiselle Lily Dubois?”

“Mais non! I insist!”

His body sleek and moist now on top of hers, Lily wriggled to let his heavy cock fall between her open legs, shifting to tease the last drop of anticipation from his body as she squirmed against his tip, little pushes against him that made him bite his lip, not a single nerve that didn’t scream for release and she whispered “Yes.” They hardly breathed as he slipped inside her, his mouth hovering over the honey of hers to feel every ridge and fold and degree of heat. “Jesus…Lily…”

“Je suis à vous…”

His hips grated against hers as he struggled to speak, “And I am yours, God help you!”

Lily pulled his head from her shoulder, burning dilated dark passion eyes searching his, “I don’t need God. Merde…religion and saving souls demain, huh? Today is just us,” she smiled and with her hands on his ass, pulled his cock right to where she ended, a gasp of head-spinning pleasure, “that’s where I want you.” A guttural feline stroke of a moan and his hips bounced off her thighs, soft slick movement almost too wet to grate enough until she lifted her legs. There was more and with the very depth of his cock, his balls against her ass, she closed her eyes and wailed, “Venez!”

There may even have been a promise of the gas lamps being lit before Lily woke from another doze entangled in his limbs and the white cotton sheets, her sighs soft while he stirred, a hand curling instinctively round her waist to prevent her from moving too far  from him.

“Abberline, we should go…” she was muttering against his skin with all the conviction of a cat settling down on the best rug in front of the fire, the taste of cream on its whiskers. He didn’t even open his eyes, just nuzzled into neck, that mouth would be the death of her and now that he remembered what it was meant for it seemed like she would indeed.

“Or we could just send more of that breakfast.”

Lily laughed, her body flushing at the thought of his teeth and her fingers and those little sweet pieces of pastry. “It is more like cocktail hour, Abberline!” The room really did look like it had been taken over by wayward aristocrats—clothes strewn over the floor, silver trays of unfinished food and an empty bottle or two, the once-pristine bed all tangled and twisted, and to cap it all, a Fabergé egg that had rolled from his jacket.

~~~The End~~~