Читать книгу Modern Romance Collection: March 2018 Books 5 - 8 - Annie West, Robyn Donald - Страница 19

CHAPTER NINE

‘THIS,’ ANNOUNCED NICKY with a happy sigh, ‘is the best day ever!’ He sat back in his chair, a generous smear of chocolate ice cream around his mouth.

Christine laughed—she couldn’t help it. Just as she hadn’t been able to help herself laughing when she’d realised just where Anatole was taking them.

‘A holiday camp?’ she’d exclaimed disbelievingly as they’d arrived in Anatole’s car.

He’d somehow procured a child’s booster seat, and Nicky had stared wide-eyed with dawning excitement as they parked.

‘Day tickets,’ Anatole had replied. He’d looked at Nicky. ‘Do you think you’ll like it?’

The answer had been evident for over six hours now. From the incredible indoor swimming paradise—towels and swimwear for all three of them having been conveniently purchased from the pool shop—with its myriad slides and fountains and any number of other delights for children, to the outdoor fairground, finishing off the day with a show based on popular TV characters.

Now they were tucking into a high tea of fish and chips and, for Nicky, copious ice cream. Christine leant forward to mop his face. Her mood was strange. It had been impossible not to realise that she was enjoying herself today. Enjoying, overwhelmingly, Nicky’s excitement at everything. And Anatole’s evident pleasure in Nicky’s delight.

His focus had been on her little boy, and yet Christine had caught herself, time and time again, exchanging glances with Anatole over Nicky’s expressions of joy at the thrills of the day. Brief glances, smiles, shared amusement—as the day had gone on they had become more frequent, less brief.

The tension that had netted her before they’d set off had evaporated in a way she could not have believed possible, and yet so it was. It was as if, she suddenly realised with a start, the old ease in his company, which had once been the way she was with him until the debacle that had ended their relationship, was awakening as if after a long freezing.

It was disturbing to think of it that way. Dangerous!

As dangerous as it had been when, emerging with Nicky from the changing rooms at the poolside, her eyes had gone immediately to Anatole’s honed, leanly muscled form, stripped down to swim shorts. Memory had seared in her and she’d had to drag her eyes away. But not before Anatole had seen her eyes go to him—and she knew that his had gone to her.

Although she’d deliberately chosen, from the range available in the on-site shop, a very sporty swimsuit, not designed in the slightest to allure, consciousness of her body being displayed to him had burned in her as she’d felt his gaze wash over her.

Then, thankfully, Nicky, his armbands inflated, had begun jumping up and down with eagerness to be in the water and the moment had passed.

That consciousness, however, resurfaced now as, tea finished and back in the car for their return journey, she realised that Nicky had fallen asleep, overcome with exhaustion after the day’s delights. In the confined intimacy of the car, music playing softly, Anatole’s presence so close to her was disturbing her senses.

She felt his eyes glance at her as he drove. Then he spoke. ‘What I said last night—has today shown you how good it would be, making a family for Nicky?’

His tone was conversational, as if he’d asked her about the weather and not about the insanity of marrying him.

She was silent for a moment. Though it seemed to her that her heavy heartbeat must be audible to him, as it was to her. She tried to choose her words carefully. One of them had to be sane here—and it had to be her.

‘Anatole, think about it rationally. You’re running on impulse, I suppose. You’ve only just discovered about Nicky, and Vasilis is barely in his grave. For you—for either of us!—to make any kind of drastic alteration to our lives at such a time would be disastrous.’ She looked at him. ‘Everything I’ve read about bereavement urges not to take any major decisions for at least a year.’

Would that sufficiently deter him? She could only hope so. Pray so. Yet in the dimming light of the car she could see a mutinous look on his face. He was closing down—closing out what she’d said.

‘It’s the right thing to do,’ he said.

There was insistence in his voice, and he could hear it himself. How could she not see the obvious sense of what he was proposing? The rightness of it. Yes, he was being impulsive—but that didn’t mean he was being irrational. In fact the very opposite! It was so clearly, unarguably right for him to make a family for this fatherless boy by marrying his mother—the very woman who’d once wanted a child by him...the woman he’d desired from the first moment he’d set eyes on her.

And I desire her still! And she desires me too. There is no doubt of that—no doubt at all!

Yet still she was denying it. As her blunt answer proved.

‘No,’ she answered. ‘It isn’t.’

Her head dipped, and she stared at her hands, lying in her lap. What more could she say without ripping apart the fragile edifice of her life—plunging herself back into the desperate torment she had once known with Anatole? The torment that had raked her between temptation and desolation?

She felt him glance at her. Felt the pause before he answered, with a tightness in his voice that she could not be deaf to.

‘I’m not used to you disagreeing with me,’ she heard him say. There was another pause. ‘You’ve changed, Tia—Christine.’

Her head lifted, and she threw him a look. ‘Of course I’ve changed,’ she said. ‘What did you expect?’

She took a breath that was half a sigh, remembering, for all her defiant words, how she’d used to love watching him drive, seeing how his hands curved so strongly over the wheel. How she’d drink in his profile, the keen concentration of his gaze. How she’d always loved gazing at him, all the time, marvelling over and over again at how wonderful, how blissful it was that he wanted her at all, how he had taken her by the hand and led her into the fantasy land where she’d dwelt with him...

He caught her eye now, and there was a glint in it that was achingly familiar.

‘You used to gaze at me like that all the time, Tia. I could feel it, know it—sense it.’

His voice had softened, and though there was a trace of amusement in it there was also a hint of something she had not heard from him at all since the moment he’d stalked into her life again.

Tenderness.

She felt her throat catch and she dragged her eyes away, out over the road, watching the cars coming towards them, headlights on now as dusk gathered in the countryside.

‘That was then, Anatole,’ she said unsteadily. ‘A long time ago—’

‘I’ve missed it,’ he answered her.

She heard him take a breath—a ragged-sounding one.

‘I missed you, Tia, when you left me. When you walked out on me to marry my uncle, to become his pampered young bride.’ There was an edge in his voice now, like a blade.

Her eyes flew to him, widening. ‘I didn’t leave you!’ she exclaimed. ‘You finished it with me! You told me you refused to have a relationship with someone who wanted to marry you, to get pregnant by you!’

She saw a frown furrow his brow, and then he threw a fulminating look at her, his hands tightening on the wheel. ‘That didn’t mean you had to go,’ he retaliated. ‘It just meant—’ He stopped.

‘You just meant that I had to give up any idea of meaning anything to you at all—let alone as your wife or the potential mother of your children. Give up any idea of making a future with you!’

Christine’s voice was dry, like sandpaper grating on bare skin. She shut her eyes for a moment, her head swirling, then opened them again, taking another weary breath.

‘Oh, Anatole,’ she said, and her voice was weary, ‘it’s all right. I get the picture. You were young, in the prime of your carefree life. I was an amusing diversion—a novelty! One that lasted a bit longer than you probably intended at first, when you scooped me off the road. I came from an entirely different walk of life from you—I was pretty, but totally naïve. I was so blatantly smitten by you that you couldn’t resist indulging yourself—and indulging me. But I know that didn’t give me any right to think you might want me long-term. Even if...’

She swallowed painfully, knowing she had to say it.

‘Even if there hadn’t been that pregnancy...scare...’ she said the word with difficulty ‘...something else would have ended our affair. Because...’ Her throat was tight. ‘Because an affair was all it was. All it could ever be.’

She knew that now—knew it with the hindsight of her greater years. She had been twenty-three... Anatole had been the first man in her life—and a man such as she had never dreamt of, not even in her girlish fantasies! He’d taken her to fairyland—and even in her youthful inexperience she had feared that it would all be fairy gold and turn to dust.

And so it had. Painfully. Permanently.

‘But now I want more,’ he replied, and his words and the intensity of his voice made her eyes fly to him again. ‘I want much, much more than an affair with you.’

He took a breath, changing gear, accelerating on an open stretch of road as if that would give escape to the emotion building up inside him. Emotion that was frustration at her obstinacy, at her refusal to concede the rightness of what he was proposing.

‘Christine, this works—you, me and Nicky! You can see it that works. Nicky likes me, trusts me...and, believe me, I meant exactly what I said to him last night. That he can believe that his pappou sent me to look after him in his place. To become his father—’

He could have been my son! Had Tia been pregnant then—five years ago—Nicky would be my son. A handful of months older...no more.

Emotion rolled him over. Over and over and over—like a boulder propelled down a mountainside by an overwhelming, unstoppable force. Emotion about what might have been, about what had never been, that silenced him until they arrived at Vasilis’s house—now Christine’s home.

The home she kept for her son—his uncle’s son—just as the legacy of Vasilis’s work, his endless endeavours to preserve the treasures of the past, would pass to her guardianship.

And she will guard it well. How strange that I can trust her to do that, that I know now that I can trust her.

Yet it was not strange at all—not now that he had seen her in London, at the exhibition opening, and here as chatelaine of this gracious house. She had grown into it—into a woman who could do these things, be these things.

Just as I have grown into what I am doing now. Accepting that I want a wife. A child.

He scooped up the sleeping boy, cradling his weight in his arms as he walked indoors with him. Christine opened the front door, leading the way upstairs in the quiet house—both Mrs Hughes and Nanny Ruth were out for the evening.

In his bedroom, they got Nicky into bed, still fast asleep, exhausted by the day’s delights. For a moment, Anatole stood beside her as they gazed down at the sleeping child, illumined only by the soft glow of the night light.

His hand found Christine’s. She did not take it away. She stood with him as they looked down at Nicky. As if they were indeed a family indeed...

Was there a little sound from her? Something that might have been a choke? He did not know. Knew only that she’d slipped her hand from his and was walking out of the room. He looked after her, a strange expression on his face, then back at Nicky, reaching almost absently to smooth a lock of dark hair from his forehead, to murmur a blessing on the night for him.

Then he turned and went downstairs.

Christine was waiting in the hall by the front door. Her head was lifted, her expression composed.

‘Thank you for a lovely day,’ she said.

She spoke calmly, quelling all the emotion welling up inside her. What use to feel what was inside her? It was of no use—it never could be now.

She opened the door, stepped back. He came up to her, feeling that strange, strong emotion in him again. This time he made no attempt to kiss her.

‘It’s been good,’ he said.

His voice was quiet. His eyes steady. Then, with a quick smile, the slightest nod of his head, he was gone, crunching out over the gravel beneath the mild night sky.

As he opened his car door he heard the front door of the house close behind him.

Shut it, if you will—but you cannot shut me out. Not out of Nicky’s life—or yours.

Certainty filled him as to the truth of that.

* * *

In the week that followed Christine did her best to regain the state of mind she’d had since her marriage to Vasilis. But it had gone—been blown away by the return of Anatole into her life. His invasion of it.

It was an invasion that had been angrily hostile, and he had been scathing in his denunciation of her behaviour. And the searing irony of it was that anger and hostility from him was so much easier for her to cope with. What she couldn’t cope with—what she was pathetically, abjectly unable to cope with—was the way he was with her now.

Wooing!

The word stayed in her head, haunting her.

Disturbing her. Confusing her.

Changing her.

And she didn’t want to change. She’d made a new life for herself—made it in tears and torment, but she was safe inside it. Safe inside the life Vasilis had given her. That was what she wanted to cling to.

Anatole is my past. I can’t—I won’t—have him as my future!

She dared not. Too much—oh, far too much—was at stake for her to allow that. More than she could bear to pay again.

Her resolve was put to the test yet again the following Friday—the day the Barcourts had invited her and Nicky over. Her hope that Anatole had forgotten proved to be in vain. He arrived in time to drive them over. And at the rambling Elizabethan mansion the Barcourts’ welcome to Anatole could not have been friendlier.

‘I’m glad you could come this evening, Mr Kyrgiakis. We were all so sorry to hear about your uncle—he was well liked, and very well respected.’ Mrs Barcourt smiled kindly at Anatole as she greeted him, then led the way into the oak-panelled drawing room.

Nicky was scooped up by the nursery party, who were rushing off to see the puppies with the nanny, and Giles’s sister Isabel, as cheerful as her brother, launched into a panegyric about the beneficial effects a puppy had on childhood, adding that Nicky should also learn to ride—as soon as he could. Giles agreed enthusiastically, volunteering their old pony, Bramble, for the job.

‘Don’t you agree?’ Isabel said to Anatole.

‘I’m sure my young cousin would love it,’ he answered. ‘But it is Christine’s decision.’

He glanced at her and she smiled awkwardly. What the Barcourts were making of Anatole, she had no idea—knew only that they were asking no questions about him and seeming to take his presence for granted.

But her relief lasted only until after dinner, when their hostess announced they would leave the menfolk to their port and drew Christine and Isabel off to the drawing room. There, a bottle of very good madeira was produced, and Isabel went off to see her children.

Mrs Barcourt, Christine realised with dismay, was about to start her interrogation.

‘My dear, what a good-looking young man! Such a shame we’ve seen nothing of him until now!’ she exclaimed. She bent to absent-mindedly stroke the ancient, long-haired cat lounging on the hearth rug. ‘I take it we’ll be seeing a lot more of him now?’

Her smile was nothing but friendly. The question was clearly leading...

Christine clutched her glass. ‘He would like to get to know Nicky,’ she managed to get out.

Her hostess nodded sympathetically. ‘Very understandable,’ she said. ‘And very good for Nicky too.’ She paused. ‘It’s early days, I know, but you will need to think of the future, Christine—as I’m sure you realise.’

She stroked the cat again, then looked at her guest, her expression open.

‘A stepfather would be excellent for Nicky—but you must choose wisely.’ She made a face and spoke frankly, as Christine had known she would. ‘Not Giles,’ she said, with a little shake of her head. ‘Fond though he is of Nicky, you wouldn’t suit each other, you know.’

Christine’s expression changed. ‘No, no... I know that.’

Her hostess nodded. ‘I know you do, my dear, and I’m glad of it.’ She sat back, picking up her glass. ‘You and Anatole seem to get on very well...’ She trailed off.

Christine had no idea what to say, but Mrs Barcourt did.

‘Well, I shall say no more except that I can see no reason not to look forward to getting to know him better. You must both come over again before long. Ah, Isabel—there you are!’ she exclaimed as her daughter breezed in. ‘How is little Nicky?’

‘Begging for a sleepover, and my brood are egging him on! What do you say, Christine?’

Christine, abjectly grateful for the change of subject, could only nod. ‘If you’re sure it’s no trouble?’

‘Not in the least,’ Isabel answered cheerfully. ‘And tomorrow morning he can try out Bramble, if you’re all right with that. Loads of kiddie riding kit here!’

Christine nodded weakly. But belatedly she realised that if Nicky slept here tonight she would be without his protective presence herself.

It was something she felt more strongly at the end of the evening, when she sat beside Anatole in his car, heading home.

He glanced at her. She’d looked enchanting all evening, wearing a soft dark blue velvet dress, calf-length in a ballerina style, with a double strand of very good pearls—presumably a gift from his uncle—and pearl ear studs. Her hair was in a low chignon, with pearl clips. Simple, elegant—and breathtakingly lovely.

Young Giles Barcourt had thought so too, Anatole thought, with an atavistic male instinct. Was that why he’d felt the need to make a point of emphasising his family link with Christine? Staking his claim to her?

Re-staking it.

She is mine. She’s always been mine!

Certainty streamed through him. Possessiveness.

Remorse and regret.

Why did I let her go—why did I not rush to her and claim her from Vasilis before he married her? Instead I gave in to anger and to my determination not to be forced into marriage and fatherhood.

Well, he hadn’t been ready then—but he was ready now. More than ready. All he needed was to persuade Christine that he was right. And if words could not do so, then other means might.

He made some anodyne remark to her now—about the evening, about the pair of Gainsboroughs hanging in the dining room that Vasilis had itched to see cleaned—and said that he agreed with their hosts that perhaps they were best left covered in thick varnish. He had the gratification of hearing Christine chuckle, and then she asked if he’d spotted the very handsome Stubbs in pride of place over the fireplace.

‘Indeed,’ he replied. ‘Do you think Bramble is one of the descendants?’ It was a humorous remark, and intended to be so.

‘I hope not!’ Christine returned. ‘That Stubbs stallion looks very fearsome!’

‘Do you mind Nicky learning to ride?’ Anatole asked as he steered the car along the dark country lanes back to the house.

She shook her head. ‘I’m very grateful to Giles and Isabel,’ she acknowledged. ‘I want Nicky to grow up here, so riding will certainly make him feel at home. And he’s very attached to Giles—’

The moment she spoke, she wished she hadn’t. Even in the dim interior she could see Anatole’s face tighten. She recalled Mrs Barcourt’s words to her—not about her son, who was perfectly well understood between them, but about Anatole. Dear God, surely she and Anatole weren’t coming across as a couple, were they? Please, please not! The very last thing she could bear was any speculation in that direction.

It was bad enough coping with the pressure from Anatole, let alone any expectations from the Barcourts. Consternation filled her about how she was going to handle Anatole’s comings and goings—even if they were only to see Nicky. Talk would start—it was inevitable in a small neighbourhood. People would have them married off before she knew it.

Turmoil twisted in her, keeping her silent.

Anatole, too, was silent for the remainder of the short journey.

When they arrived back at her house she got out, preparing to bid him goodnight before he drove back to the White Hart. But instead he said, in a perfectly conversational voice, ‘I could do with a nightcap. As the designated driver I got very little of that excellent claret over dinner—and none at all of the port that Barcourt Senior tried to press on me! So I could still have one more.’ He glanced expectantly at Christine. ‘He mentioned that he gave Vasilis a bottle at Christmas...’

Reluctantly, she let Anatole follow her inside. The house was very quiet—the Hugheses were in their apartment in the converted stables, and Nanny Ruth was away for the weekend. In the drawing room she switched on the table lamps, giving the elegant room a soft warm glow, and extracted the requisite bottle and two port glasses from a lacquered cabinet, setting them down with a slight rattle on a low table by the silk-upholstered sofa.

Anatole strolled across and seated himself, but Christine chose the armchair opposite, spreading her velvet skirts carefully against the pale blue fabric. He poured her a generous measure, and himself as well, then raised his glass to her. His gaze was speaking.

‘To us, Christine—to what we can make together.’

His eyes held hers—dark, long-lashed, deep and expressive. She felt their power, their force. The long-ago memories they kindled within her. Emotion swirled, dark and turbid, troubling and disturbing.

It was as disturbing as feeling Anatole’s lambent gaze upon her, which did not relinquish her as he took a mouthful of the sweet, strong, rich ruby port. She took a mouthful herself, needing its strength to fortify her.

The bottle had not been opened before—Vasilis’s health had worsened steadily, remorselessly after Christmas, and he’d openly prepared her for the coming end. She felt her eyes blur with a mist of tears.

‘What is it?’ Anatole’s voice was quiet, but she could hear the concern in it. ‘You’re not worrying about Nicky, are you?’

She shook her head. ‘No—I’m used to leaving him for a night or two. He never fretted when I went to London with Vasilis.’

Her voice trembled over her late husband’s name. Anatole heard the emotion in it and it forced a recognition in him. One he had held back for many years.

‘You cared for him didn’t you? My uncle?’ he said.

His voice was low. Troubled. As if he were facing something he didn’t want to face. Something he’d held at bay for five long bitter, angry years.

‘Yes—for his kindness,’ she said feelingly. ‘And his wisdom. His devotion to Nicky—’

She broke off. Thoughts moved within Anatole’s mind—thoughts he did not want to think. His uncle—decades older than Tia and yet she’d had a child with him.

His mind blanked. It was impossible, just impossible, to envisage Nicky’s conception. It was wrong to think of Tia with anyone else in the whole world except himself. Not his uncle, not young Giles Barcourt—no one!

The same surge of possessiveness he’d felt in the car swept over him again as his eyes drank her in, sitting there so close to him, looking so beautiful it made his breath catch.

How did I last this long without her?

It seemed impossible that he had. Oh, he’d not been celibate, but there had been only fleeting liaisons, deliberately selected for their brevity and infrequency. He’d put that down to having had such a narrow escape with Tia, when she’d so nearly trapped him into marriage—into unwanted fatherhood—exacerbating his existing resistance to women continually seeking to marry him. And yet now that he did want to marry her—the same woman who’d once dreamt of that very thing—she was refusing him.

Her words to him echoed in his head, giving him a reason for her obduracy that he could not accept. Would not.

‘But that does not mean you cannot marry again!’ he said.

Her gaze shifted away. ‘Anatole—please. Please don’t.’

Her voice was a thread. It was clearly unbearable to her that he should say such a thing. But he could not stop.

‘Did he...care...for you?’

He did not like to think of it. It was...wrong. As wrong as Tia having feelings for a man who had probably been older than her own father, had he lived.

‘He was fond of me,’ she said. Her eyes went to him. ‘And he adored Nicky.’ She took a breath. ‘That was what I valued most—that I was able to give him Nicky. He would never otherwise have had a child had he not married me.’

There was defiance in her voice, and Anatole knew the reason for it. Felt the accusation. Knew he had to answer it. That it was time to face what he had said, what he had done.

He took a breath—a difficult one—and looked her in the face, his expression sombre. ‘I’m sorry, Christine. Sorry that when we were together I did not want a child. That I welcomed the fact you were not pregnant after all.’

He took a mouthful of port, felt it strong and fiery in his throat.

‘I was not ready to be a father.’ His eyes met hers. Unflinching. ‘But now,’ he said, ‘I am. I want to be the father to Nicky that Vasilis did not live to be. I feel,’ he swallowed ‘I feel my uncle would want that. And I want so much for you to want it too.’

There was a choking noise from Christine and immediately Anatole was there, his port glass hastily set down, kneeling on the Aubusson carpet before Christine’s chair, taking her hand. The mist of tears in her eyes was spilling into diamond drops on her lashes.

‘Don’t cry, Tia,’ he said softly, lifting a finger to brush away the tears. ‘Don’t weep.’

His hand lifted the hand he was holding, which was trembling in his grasp, and he lifted it to his lips, smoothing his mouth across her knuckles.

‘We can make this work—truly we can. Marry me—make things as right between us as they were wrong before. Make a family for your son with me—for his sake, for my uncle’s sake. For my sake. For your sake.’

His eyes were burning into hers and she was gazing down into their depths, tears still shimmering. He took the half-empty glass from her trembling hand, then retained that hand, getting to his feet, drawing her with him. Light from the table lamp illumined her and his breath caught. How lovely she was...how beautiful.

His mouth lowered to hers. He could not stop—could not prevent himself. Desire streamed within him, and the memory of desire, and both fused together—the past into the present. Her lips were honey to his questing mouth, sweet and soft, and he felt arousal spring within him, strong and instant. His kiss deepened and he heard her make a low noise in her throat, as if she could not bear what was happening. As if she could not bear for him to stop.

His hands slipped from hers, sliding around her slender waist, pulling her gently, strongly, against him. He felt the narrow roundness of her hips against his. Felt his own arousal surge yet more. His blood coursed through him and he deepened his kiss as passion and desire drove him on.

She was quickening in his arms—he could feel it—and he remembered, with a vividness that was like a flash of searing lightning, how she had always responded when he kissed her like this...how her slender body trembled, strained against him...how her eyes grew dazed as they were dazed now, with a film of desire glazing them as her pupils flared with arousal and the sweet peaks of her breasts strained against the wall of his chest.

He felt her nipples cresting, arousing him. She was kissing him back now—ardently, hungrily. As if she had not kissed anyone for a long, long time. As if only he could sate her hunger.

The last of his control broke. He swept her up into his arms. She was as light as a feather, as thistledown, and the soft material of her skirts draped over his thighs as he carried her from the room, up the wide sweep of stairs into the waiting bedroom. He laid her down on the bed, came down beside her.

How his clothes were shed he did not know—he knew only that her hair had been loosened from its pins and was spilling out upon the pillows, that he was parting the long zip of her dress and peeling it from her body so that her pale, engorged and crested breasts, so tender and so tempting, were exposed to him.

Memory knifed through him of all the times he had made love to her—to Tia, his lovely Tia—so soft in his arms, so yielding to his desire. And she was his again! His after so, so long. All that was familiar flooded back like a drowning tide, borne aloft by passion and desire, by memory and arousal.

His palm cupped her breast and he heard her moan again, low in her throat. The dazed look in her distended eyes was dim in the shadows of the night. His mouth lowered to her breast, fastening over her crested nipple, and his tongue worked delicately, delectably, around its sensitive contours.

The moan came again, more incoherent, and he felt her hands helpless on his back. Her neck was arched against the pillows, her throat exposed to him, and he drew his fingers down the length of it, stroking softly, holding her for himself as he moved his mouth to her other breast, to lave it with the same ministrations.

But her sweet ripened breasts were not enough. He wanted more. He felt a low, primitive growl, deep in his being.

He drew her dress from her completely, revealing tiny panties, slipping her free of them. Her thighs slackened and the dark vee between was a darker shadow. He propped himself on one elbow, taking her mouth with his again, feasting on it with slow, arousing sensuality, splaying his free hand on her soft pale flank.

He smiled down at her in the darkness. ‘Tell me you do not want this. Tell me you do not want me,’ he said to her. His voice was low. Driven. ‘Tell me to go, Tia—tell me now, or do not tell me at all.’

It was impossible for her to give such an order. Her resistance was gone. How could it persist when his mouth, his hands, his tongue, his lips, his body and all his being were taking her where she should not be going, to what she should not be yielding to?

And yet she was yielding. Was succumbing hopelessly, helplessly, to what her body was urging her to do. It was taking her over, demolishing, drowning what her head was telling her. Her head was telling her that it was madness, insanity, to do what she was doing. But she could not stop. It was impossible to do so—impossible not to let the muscles of her thighs slacken, not to tighten her fingers over his strong, warm shoulder as delirium possessed her, as her body swept away the long, empty years since Anatole had last made love to her, had last taken her with him to that place only he could take her to. Where he was taking her again...now, oh, now!

She moaned again, her head starting to thresh, her spine arching, the muscles in her legs tautening. Her body ripened, strained as he readied her for his possession. The possession she yearned for, craved, was desperate for.

She heard her voice call his name, as if pleading with him. Pleading with him to complete what he had begun, to lift her to that plane of existence where fire and sweetness and unbearable light would fill her, where the rapture that only he could release in her would be.

He answered her, but she knew not what he said—knew only that his body was moving over hers, the strong, heavy weight of it as familiar as it had ever been, and her arms were snaking around him, enclosing him as her hips lifted to him, yearning for him, craving him, wanting only him, only this.

He thrust into her, a word breaking from him that she did not know but remembered well. The past and present fused, melded, became one. As if no years separated them. As if there had been no parting.

His possession filled her and her body enclosed his, embracing his even as her arms wrapped him to her. The strength of his lean, muscled form, the weight of it upon her, was crushing and yet arousing, even as his slow, rhythmic movements were arousing, and her legs wound about his as each thrust of his body pulsed the blood through her heated, straining body.

She wanted him—oh, dear God, how she wanted him—wanted this—wanted everything—everything he could give her.

He cried out—a straining roar—and as if it were a match to tinder she felt her body flood with him, with her, and she was lifted up, up, soaring into that other world that existed only at such times, forced through a barrier that was invisible, intangible in mortal life, but which now, in Anatole’s arms, in his passion and embrace and the utter fusion of their bodies, was their sole existence. On and on she soared, crying into the wind as the heat of the sun in that other world burned down upon her.

Then, like the wind subsiding, she was drawn back down, panting, exhausted. Sated. Her whole body purged and cleansed in that white-hot air. She was shaking, trembling, and he was smoothing her hair, talking to her, withdrawing from her and yet folding her back against him, so that she was not alone, not bereft. She was crushed against him, his limbs enfolding hers, his arms wrapped tight around her, and his breath was warm on her shoulder, his hand curving around her cheek, his voice murmuring. She could feel the shuddering of his chest, the thudding of his heart that was in tune with hers.

He was saying her name, over and over again. The name he’d always called her. ‘Tia, my Tia. Mine.’

And she was his. She was, and she always had been—she always would be. Always.

Sleep rushed over her, as impossible to resist as if it had been slipped into her bloodstream like an overpowering drug. Her eyes fluttered closed. Muscles slackening, her body slumped into the protective cradle of his arms.

They tightened close around her.