Chapter Five
Shay looked through the window, the old glass distorted into waves of blurriness, like his world, not quite real somehow. Until last night, like an onion peeled back layer by layer, he and Celeste seemed to go back to the centre, to the start, exposing the past bit by bit.
He didn’t know what came next and this unsettled him, for things were changing in a way he could not quite keep up with and that was a feeling he had seldom experienced.
Footsteps made him turn and Celeste stood there, wiping her nose with the back of her hand as she sniffed, the urchin completely replacing the woman who had come to his bed in the dark hours of the morning, sultry and sensual, her breasts heavy and her lips swollen. There was dirt on her cheeks.
‘You rise early, Major.’
Not a question but a statement and said as she walked into the dining room. She carried the bag that Madam Caroline Debussy had given her across her shoulder before unlinking the straps and handing it over to him.
‘These are your tools of the trade. The sneaky, clever and unexpected ordinary weapons. I hope for your sake that they can be as effective as a gun.’
Taking the offered bag, he wondered where her firearm was for she had not placed it into the hidey-hole in the apartment in Paris even after promising that she would do so. It was probably in the left-hand pocket of her jacket. Quickly gathered, eminently accessible. But if she was searched, the weapon would be found, and he swore under his breath.
The habits of a spy were pressed into one’s soul like a brand. Hers had been a violent apprenticeship and so she’d brought the things she expected to defend herself with. A blade and a bullet.
He turned to gaze again through the window, watching those who passed by the front step and sifting through threat. He knew he should say something about last night, but he could not find the right words and reasoned silence might be better.
‘Where’s your friend?’ Her stress on the word friend was cold.
‘He didn’t come. We won’t wait.’
A frown passed across her eyes.
‘He’s a dangerous man, you know. He’s tied to those who sweep through the city for any sign of dissension and snuffs it out without asking questions. There are things said of Aurelian de la Tomber that are not flattering.’
‘He works for me sometimes.’
As church bells rang close, counting out the hour, Shay wondered why he might have told her that.
‘And you trust him?’
‘With my life.’
‘Well, it might come to exactly that, Major. There’s still a good mile or two until we get to the Seine and if he means to betray you, there is plenty of opportunity for him to do so. Clarke’s henchmen from the Ministry of War could be waiting this very second right outside our door.’
She turned to the table and helped herself to a ripe fig, splitting it open. He could see the blush of blood on her cheeks even at this distance. He wished he could not.
‘If they take me, Celeste, I want you to run. I will stop them following you.’
‘Run like a coward?’ She threw this back at him and he smiled because he could not imagine she could ever be such a thing.
‘It is worth it for the protection of your life,’ he countered after a few seconds. ‘I promised your grandmother that if I ever met you on my travels, I would keep you safe.’
‘Safe from what, Major. Myself? My grandmother was not inclined to find favour in anything that I did and in the end I gave up trying.’
‘She might be surprised by your strength now if you went home.’
‘My strength to kill and cheat and lie?’
‘I was thinking more of the strength to survive no matter what the world throws at you.’
‘As if you know what life has thrown at me, Major. As if you have even the smallest idea of what my life was like after England.’ Now only fury marked her face. ‘Susan Joyce Faulkner would hate me a thousand times more now than she did then and she would be right to.’
‘The capitulation of the damned?’
She simply looked at him, flinted anger in the vivid blue of her irises.
‘I had not taken you for a quitter, Celeste. I thought you might fight for a better life, for a finer future.’
‘Not with her. Not like that. Not like before.’
‘Then where.’
She threw up her hands. ‘Anywhere but England. Anywhere away from fear.’
‘Make this the first step, then. Give me your gun.’
‘No.’
‘No one will be able to save you if you are searched. Not even me. There is no reason for a humble leather worker to hold such a weapon and that is where the danger lies.’
She swallowed, her tongue wetting her dry lips, and he looked away as his body tightened. ‘There’d be nothing left to fight with if they take us.’
‘Save wisdom, I think. And luck.’
‘Poor counterparts to a well-aimed bullet, Major.’
‘There is an army behind every soldier. Shoot one and they will all be after us.’
‘They already are.’
‘But not with such a personal vengeance. Escape depends on good contingency planning and a well-prepared charade. Not reactive force.’
He knew the second she gave in as she reached into her pocket and handed him the pistol. ‘Your protection had better be as robust as it is rumoured to be, Major Shayborne.’
‘I promise I will give my life to keep you safe, Miss Fournier, and that your enemies will have to walk across my dead body to get to you.’
He took the pistol in one hand and squeezed her fingers with the other, pleased as the warmth of them momentarily curled about his own. It was odd to be on such formal terms after what they had shared this night.
* * *
She wanted to hold on. She wanted to press into him and tell him of all that had happened to her. But she couldn’t. Not now. Not ever.
The small, quick connection was as much as she might hope for out here in the no man’s land of war, where even a simple mistake could see them both dead.
He looked tired this morning, the scratches she had left on his neck red and angry when he turned to deposit the gun in a box on the table. She hoped they hurt almost as much as she prayed that they didn’t.
She wanted to believe that he might drag her through the hundreds of miles of enemy territory to safety without betraying her. The face of Caroline Debussy came to mind and she shook it away, for once the woman had been like a mother to her before she knew the truth of her father’s murder. There was no faith left in anything.
‘We should go.’ She walked away and felt him follow behind her, his silence welcome.
Outside it was warm, the promise of greater heat carried on the wind that blew in from the south. She was wearing too many clothes and the jacket without the weight of her gun in the pocket felt peculiar.
Summer was dressed simply in his tunic, scapular and cowl, the hood pulled back so his face was on show. Watching him, Celeste saw the finesse and the solidness that held him apart from other men. The persona of a Catholic priest was in the kind lilt of his face and in the soft use of his hands, a religious man who walked as though the world was still new and beautiful and there were angels and not beggars on each side of him.
The children of the streets were numerous this morning and his kind face brought them to his side. There was no sign of the soldier, no hint of a man of war and espionage.
He humbly held out the last of the bread he’d taken from his bag and shared it whilst reciting a verse from the Bible.
‘For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’
She could hear the accent of the western mountains in his French today. His feet were bare and his nails were dirty. The stubble of two days lay upon his jaw and upper lip, catching all the colours of light.
But Summerley Shayborne was so much more than he seemed. There was a solidity about him and an innate goodness.
A group of soldiers further up had the urchins scattering. ‘May God go with you,’ he called after them, his hands held together now under his chin in the sign of prayer as the men approached. ‘And with you, too, brave sirs. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.’
He was rustling through his bag now, bringing out the faded portrait of her father’s ancestor. ‘In the name of the patron saint of St Barbara, I invoke success and protection so that your journey will be a kind one and a safe one and you will return home unscathed into the heart of your families.’
‘We thank you, Father.’ The first soldier said this, his smile wide and genuine. Each man bristled with weaponry which made a strange contrast to the homespun plainness of Shayborne’s priestly persona, yet he held them in the palm of his hand as he blessed them with charity, compassion and love. And then they passed, hailing a man further on, the street before them empty once again of threat.
‘Do you ever doubt yourself?’ Celeste’s voice shook because the fright was still there embedded in her skin, ice cold with fear. She seldom allowed herself to come so close to any soldiers.
He looked only perplexed. ‘This street has a cathedral and two small chapels, and when one operates within the boundaries of the expected there is seldom trouble.’
‘And further on? What happens then?’
‘We change into the next characters that make sense, allowing no chance of connection to the ones whom they see today.’
‘Because they might be able to remember us?’
‘No. Because they will. See that boy there, the one with the street urchins who lingers and watches us?’
She nodded.
‘His hands were softer than the rest and he did not reach for the bread with the same desperation as the others. He will report to his master tonight of our presence and that man will report to his handler at the very latest on the morrow. He will have seen which door we hailed from and after that it will be an easy leap from obscurity to recognition.’
‘They will find the gun?’
‘Aurelian will have taken that already and cleaned down the rooms. What will be spoken of is all the things that were not done. We did not pray at the cathedral. We did not take a bed in the house of the Lord for the night or attend a mass. What is expected is always more powerful than what isn’t and any digression will lead to questions.’
Celeste glanced at the sky. A little after eight in the morning. The sweat trickled between her breasts and soaked the lawn of her camisole beneath her armpits.
‘Which way should we go, then?’ Suddenly she felt afraid.
‘Which way would you go?’ The question surprised her.
‘Towards the south. They would not expect to find us heading there.’
‘Very well.’
He handed her the skin of water and she drank because the day was becoming hotter by the moment and because suddenly all she could think of was his large body against her own in the night, taut, muscled and warm.
‘We will be safe, Celeste. Don’t worry.’
She could not say to him that the reason for her frown was the memory of those hidden hours beside him, of those moments of being suspended into only feeling, the empty yawning holes of her life filled with something else. Joy, if she might name it, or delight. Usually sex simply provided a void of feeling and it had been so very long since she had known these other things.
So she said nothing and allowed him to think that she was frightened instead.
Twelve hours of daylight at least before they could lie together again in the safety of darkness. But would he want to? She had surprised him last night, she had seen it in his eyes and on his face and in the guardedness that had covered all his words today. Would he have other barriers up now, pre-warned as he was and watching? Would it be fair to go to him again after a difficult day of evading an enemy? Would she be one, too, for that matter? An enemy of a different sort, but broken and fragmented and impossible to make whole again?
She shook her head. She would not survive into the night if she was not focused and she needed all her wits around her if they were to reach safety in one piece.
She observed him as he walked and saw how he covered his limp with a gait that swung him from side to side. A birth defect? An injury long sustained and acknowledged? An impediment so noticeable none looked for the other hurt beneath. A further disguise.
This was how he had evaded capture in Portugal and Spain right under the noses of his enemy. By stealth and cunning and outright bravery. Even now he turned and smiled at her, the sun on his head showing up the small new bristles of blond and the depths in his eyes of velvet amber. The fear that had been a constant companion for so many years fell away under his competence, the chance of life shimmering through a curtain of disbelief.
They would head south on the road to Orléans and towards that wide and useful waterway of the Loire. There were barges they could board to keep them out of the public gaze until they arrived at Nantes, the island port of Brittany. The water was deep enough there for the American trade ships to anchor safely up the river and away from the British blockade. Celeste imagined Shayborne would easily be able to pretend to be an envoy of Madison or a citizen of the American states caught up in an unexpected war and seeking safety.
Perhaps they might even be stopped by a British man of war standing out to sea once they had passed out of the river mouth at St Nazaire? She had heard that they were there.
So many questions.
‘It will rain again later today and tomorrow as well by the looks of it.’ Summer was observing the sky and frowning.
‘A hot wet season,’ she answered, the talk of weather a neutral topic that at least allowed conversation.
They did not venture close to one another as they walked among the shadows of the buildings and through the archways that led to smaller streets, though every time they touched inadvertently she held her breath with hope.
Then, all of a sudden, he seemed to have had enough of the awkward silences for he stopped to lean against a wall.
‘Thank you for last night, Celeste.’
Of all the things she had expected him to say, that was the last of them.
‘It has been a long time since I bedded a woman, you understand,’ he finished, truth in his eyes.
‘Your wife...?’
‘Yes.’
‘I have not been so discreet,’ she offered this and watched him swallow quickly and look down. ‘My husband, others who I might seek information from, those in my way who needed distraction from my true purpose...’ She could have carried on, but she did not. The tawdry reality of her years in Paris spoken out loud was shameful and yet it was a necessary truth.
‘You use it as a weapon, then? Your body?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Last night?’
‘No. Last night I just needed to forget.’
‘Forget me?’
At that she smiled. ‘Perhaps not you.’
‘Then I am glad for it.’
And just like that, the shyness between them dispersed and a new strength lay in its place, for he had allowed their midnight tryst some fineness. She could work with that and manage. No mandate had been set to do it again, but neither had it been negated to the lost realms of a mistake.
Gathering their things, they moved on and Celeste pulled her hat down further across her eyes for anonymity and for protection. There was no one watching them, she was certain of it. No one lingered or tarried, no one walked towards them or away with any sense of a purpose other than their own. She would recognise a careful observation for it had, after all, been a part of her everyday habit for so very long, the feeling of scrutiny was etched into her bones.
‘It’s clear.’ Shayborne’s words. He’d been scanning the street as well then and had reached the same conclusion. It felt good to walk with someone else like this, a double protection, another set of eyes.
* * *
She saw them half an hour later, two lesser agents of Les Chevaliers, standing outside a tavern on the corner of Avenue Bois de Boulogne and the Place de la Pompe. She was walking behind Shayborne and was glad of it for otherwise he might have noticed the shock that consumed her. Had she been far enough back so that an enemy would fail to place the two of them together? Could he still stay safe even if she was not?
Stepping away into one of the dark alleys to her left, she saw them both change direction and come her way, the washing lines and melee of people separating her for this moment. She welcomed the wet slap of cloth and the pushing humanity of those in the street. If she could get to the river bank, then she would be safe, the water at her feet and the wide countryside before her.
But there were more of them at the next junction. Four others at her count and she knew then that she was in deep trouble. Part of her wondered whether she should even bother fighting, or should she simply give herself up to the inevitable. Without a gun in her pocket she had little chance of escape and she did not wish for the innocents about her to be caught in the violence of a capture. Like the Dubois children had been.
Was this her punishment for the years she had lied and cheated and deceived? A small family moved past her and the fight in her was snuffed out. She waited for the knife or the bullet almost with calmness as she shut her eyes. A quick end and Summer would stay safe. She hoped he would take the rosary to her grandmother as she had asked him.
Then the major was standing there, tight fury beneath his smile and blood on his knuckles.
‘Let’s go.’
‘Where are they?’ She glanced around and saw not one of her stalkers.
‘Gone.’
She felt him pull her along, his fingers bruising her skin, the cries of people behind them fading as they turned a corner. He looked furious.
‘If you are not going to put up a fight, at least do me the courtesy of staying somewhere close so that I can do it for you.’
The dizzy fear that had consumed her made her nauseous and near tears. She had let in hope and the dry taste of it felt bitter on her tongue. Better not to care. Better to be isolated and alone as she always had been for so very long.
‘Thank you.’ She hated the breathlessness in her voice as she leaned against a door, knotting her shaking hands behind her and frustrated with the way she had handled herself. She was ashamed at her incompetence. Her mind flew now across an escape route and Paris was a city she knew well. ‘It is a half mile to the river. They will expect us to make for the bridge. If we turn towards the city wall, they may not follow.’ Celeste was pleased after such appalling ineptitude to offer at least a solution for escape.
She saw then that he had different clothes in his hands. A jacket and a shirt. When he peeled off the habit he wore trousers beneath, though his top half was bare and well muscled after all his years of soldiering. With speed he donned the shirt and tucked it into his trousers, handing the jacket to her.
‘Take off yours, too, and put this one on instead. Give me your hat and turn your old jacket inside out before wrapping it around your waist.’
He had done the same with his habit, rolled it into a wad of cloth and knotted it about him. The rope from his belt was formed into a rough coil and hung around his arm, like a fisherman might carry the tools of his trade, the hat jammed tight across clipped hair. Sucking at the blood on his knuckles, he lowered his hands.
It was the soldiers, Celeste was to think later, the ones who had passed them by so closely earlier. She had been rattled badly by them and had not recovered, the dreadful fear clawing at memory and leaving her breathless and brittle. At times like this in Paris, after meeting soldiers at a close call, she’d retreated to her apartment for days, curling into fragility until her usual steel returned and allowed her a resolution.
Here, she did not have such luxury. Here, she had to face her next enemy right on the heels of the last one, barely enough time to take in a breath.
Even after all these years the military smelt the same, she thought. Bitter. Pungent. Sharp. The softer scent of Summerley Shayborne rose to calm her. Caroline Debussy’s herbs. The ale he had consumed in the house of Aurelian de la Tomber was there, too, and the soap her father used. A mix of lavender and lemon.
Masculine. Safe. Familiar.
She swallowed away the lump in her throat and knotted the jacket. Out of Paris she would cope better. Her fingers fastened on the weighty butt of her knife in the pocket of her trousers and she clung to the steel with all that she was worth.
* * *
Celeste looked pale and shaky. The girl who had stood there with her eyes closed, expecting to be summarily slain, so unlike the woman who had walked into the underground dungeon of Les Chevaliers to save him that the shock still stung. Who was Celeste Fournier now? Which version of her was real?
He knew she kept a knife close in her pocket for he could see the tension in her left arm. Beads of sweat rose on the skin above her upper lip and her eyes looked glazed.
Fright, perhaps, he surmised, or memory? What had happened to bring her so easily to her knees in the face of a danger that was far less than the daring of her risky dungeon raid?
He weighed his options and made a decision, pulling her into a doorway a few hundred yards further on and tapping out a code.
The man who answered shut the portal firmly behind them as they came in. ‘De la Tomber said you might come.’
‘Is he here?’
‘No. Last night he arrived late and said there was a possibility you might have need of a room. You and the lad are to have the chamber at the top of the house. I’ll send up some food.’
The key was in his hand and then they were climbing, just the two of them, the small room situated among the rafters high above the street. The glass was so dirty he could barely see outside. For further protection, he thought, and pulled the curtain, waiting until the gloom settled into vision.
‘We’ll stay here until we know more about what’s happening. Someone will find us other clothes to wear.’ The doorknob was under his fingers.
‘You are going out?’
‘Just for a short time. Don’t worry, it’s safe.’
She’d sat down now, her hands either side of her splayed out. Like an anchor.
‘I am sorry.’
She didn’t elaborate, but he knew exactly what she meant.
‘Get some sleep.’ He could hear the irritation and shortness in his words as she looked away, her frown deepening, but he did not feel like being kind. He left before the pooling tears spilled across her cheeks.
* * *
It was full dark when she awoke and Summer was sitting on a chair by the opened window looking out towards the sky. He was dressed differently again, a crisp white shirt tucked into snug breeches, the leather boots below well polished. She went from sleep to wakefulness in a second and tried to gauge the time of night from the moon’s position.
Not as late as she thought. Somewhere around midnight perhaps? The empty silence of this part of Paris was unsettling. It almost surprised her when he finally spoke.
‘They think we have crossed the river already. From the information I have gathered, it is in the area of the cathedral at Saint Lambert they will now be looking.’
‘This information is to be trusted?’
‘As far as a good measure of gold will allow.’
‘And Aurelian de la Tomber?’
‘He’s the least of our worries.’
‘You knew him then, before Paris?’
‘In school at Eton. We met when he was being bullied by those who just needed someone to pick on and who didn’t care for his French accent. He’s been a friend ever since.’
‘He’s a soldier like you?’
He shook his head. ‘A diplomat. Trying to play both sides of an impossible game and coming up short in both camps. I told him to get out of it years ago, but he has...stuck. His father’s family is here and I suppose he does not want a repeat of the Terror when anyone with money and lineage in Paris was dragged from their house and murdered. Or at least, he wants to have a warning of it so that he can get them out. That’s what conflict comes down to sometimes. A personal fear and a vested interest as a way to protect those you love.’
‘Is it the same for you?’
He shook his head. ‘There was only ever one reason in it for me.’
‘England?’
At that he reached for a glass she had not seen before, raising it to the moonlight so that the numerous shapes reflected back into the room. Crystal, she supposed, and of good quality. ‘For all of her faults and for all of her glory, there is no place like home.’
A dig at her perhaps, caught without a past, a future, or a place to call home?
‘Your home is still in Sussex? At Luxford?’
The stillness in him magnified. ‘It is. My brother Jeremy is ill and one day I will need to be there.’
She remembered his older brother. He was tall and thin and he’d coughed a lot. His young wife, whose name she had forgotten, had always looked sad and there had been rumours even back then that they were having trouble conceiving an heir. She said none of this to him, though, the grief in his eyes palpable.
‘If you stop struggling, you stop living,’ she gave him this truism quietly, one of the sayings that Caroline Debussy had always been so very fond of. When he smiled she flushed, for he was probably thinking of her inane lack of struggle today and was too polite to say so. A woman who might give advice and yet take none herself. Tiredness swept in about her.
Summer would one day be a lord. Viscount Luxford. He stepped further and further away from her grasp with each and every thing he told her.
‘Aurelian said the day after tomorrow is the best day to leave Paris. There is some sort of celebration that the military will be involved in which will keep them occupied, so we will lay low here until he sends word. He also brought us wine. It’s a fine white from Cabarets, outside the walls of the city.’ He lifted up both the bottle and another glass.
Celeste recognised the flavour as she took the first sip and her mind sifted back into memory.
‘It is good.’
‘Different at least to the dry whites of Paris and no excise tax either.’
Summer told her this just as memory clicked. Once, she and August had sat on a painted barge on the Loire and watched the sunset each night for a week, drinking this same brew until they had finally made their way back to Paris. Once, August had been a good father. Once, he had been exciting and gentle and kind, until he had been buried under a bitter elixir of deceit and lies.
Then the zealousness had taken over and he had forgotten all the things that should have been important to him. Including her.
* * *
Shay had been watching her for a good hour before she’d woken and knew the broken restlessness of her slumber. In sleep she looked softer, younger, less prickly. She’d removed her jacket before retiring and the lawn of her undergarment had barely covered the outline of her full breasts. When she sat up she’d hauled the thing on again despite the heat, all of last night’s intimacy lost in the gesture.
He’d wanted to touch her. That thought was surprising. He’d wanted to feel again what he had before, that desperate relief. The warmth of the night loosened restraint, caught as they were in the heat above Paris. Somewhere he could hear music playing, an accordion by the sounds of it, plaintive and melancholic. He laid his head back against the leather rest and asked his question.
‘Do you think there is a reason behind everything that happens?’
He saw a half-smile. ‘I used to.’
‘What changed?’
‘Life, I think. Hardship. Death. Now I think it’s all random and if you are unlucky enough to be in the place where the world falls in on you, then that’s just how it is.’
‘Fatalistic?’
‘Realistic.’
She said this without even a whisper of doubt.
‘I remember you told me once that you wanted to be a writer.’
She breathed out and stood, moving towards the window and looking across the city rooftops.
‘You are probably the only person in the world who knows this about me.’
‘I kept the story you wrote. The one you gifted me for my eighteenth birthday.’
‘A tale of two sisters. One good and one evil. I used to imagine myself as the commendable sister, the one whose life ran along the path of righteousness, but now...’ She stopped and placed her palm on the glass. When she took it off, the frosted warmth of skin left a mark into which she wrote her initials. C.V.F. Celeste Victoria Fournier. Another thing he remembered about her, the two sides of her heritage.
‘I panicked today. I have never done that before and it worries me, because if it happens again it will be too dangerous for the both of us and I would not want...’
He stood and took her hand and the same sense of shock he had felt last night seared through him again.
‘The dangers are there anyway, Celeste, crouching and close, no matter what we try to do to lessen them.’
She was soft and unresisting as he drew her in, the smell of her familiar as he found her upturned mouth and claimed the warmth. Elemental and uncomplicated. Everything was peripheral and far away save for the longing welling up inside.
Slanting the kiss, he came in harder, demanding things she had not surrendered yesterday, the breath of her mixing with his own, a woman who was an enigma and a chameleon.
It was not love he could call on after all these years of separation, he understood that, but what was left was enough.
‘Lie with me, Celeste. Please.’ Whispered under his breath, the saying of it caressed the skin at her throat.
She did not pull away, but neither did she help him. Today she was compliant, with a quiet sense of consent. He stripped off her jacket and it tumbled to the ground, leaving the wispy lawn in its place, the darker tones of her areolas easily seen through the loose weave of the fabric. His mouth closed over the left one, wetting the cloth, feeling his way as her head tipped back, the veins in her throat almost transparent under her pale skin.
One finger came up to measure the beat, the rhythm tripping fast along the slender and fragile column, though bruising was also visible there. He shook the reality of it away and concentrated instead upon the demands of his body.
He’d always been so very careful and correct, but now he was neither. This was undeniable, the roar of something in his blood that he hadn’t felt there before, unguarded and heedless.
He wanted to be inside, in her centre, where they could be joined under another law, a different edict that negated all he had thought proper. The craving in him burnt caution into ashes, argument into acquiescence, and he stripped the bodice from her, firm breasts in the moonlight waiting to be taken.
It was he who did the work tonight, he who covered each nipple and sucked the sweetness from it. He wasn’t gentle or tender or quiet, the need in him urging her response, and when he felt her fingers lift his shirt and scrape across the bare flesh on his back, he simply lifted her and took her to bed.
She did lay there, looking up, the colour in her eyes paled by darkness and moonlight, her hair ragged hanks of mismatched lengths, her lips full and ripe.
He had his trousers and boots off and then he tended to hers, the ties knotted fast. Reaching for his knife by the bedside table, he sliced through the tangle, releasing cloth, finding flesh beneath that was hot and ready, one finger slipping into her warmth before reaching deeper.
She did not glance away, but challenged him for more, her legs opening, the movement of their bodies the only thing audible in the silence of the night.
‘Lord,’ he muttered and closed his eyes, undone with passion. ‘Lord knows how I want you.’
Her hand came around him then, around the engorged flesh of his sex, claiming him as her triumph and directing him home.
He positioned himself at the entrance to her womanhood and plunged in.
* * *
Afterwards he didn’t speak as they lay there cocooned into silence. The great want had been replaced by pleasure, the tangle of her limbs arranged in all the lines of ardour.
He turned inwards to try to find comfort and normality again. He wished she might sleep so that he could slip off without explanation, but he knew she watched him. He could feel the scratches in his flesh where she had risen to his need and let him understand that her own were important, too.
This was no game of unequals.
He had never felt so formless. And neither had he wanted a woman so desperately straight away afterwards that his manhood rose unbidden, throbbing, and when she kneeled and took him in her mouth he leaned back and let her have her way. The groans he stifled with one hand, but he could not dampen the reaction of his body as he spilled himself upon her.
The spoils of war.
Then he lay down against her, wrapping his body around her own and they slept.
* * *
She woke to a netherworld, neither day nor night, the heat between them like glue. She could not move for one of his legs lay over her thighs, pinning her to the bed, the hand cupping her breast still in place even in sleep.
Mine, his body said, even in the midst of slumber. She shallowed her breath, remembering the feel of him in all the places he had touched with such tenderness.
They had a whole day to wait out before they could leave, twenty-four hours to attempt to interpret again what was between them. She moved slightly, just a small shimmer of flesh, understanding the power in such a gentle friction, becoming aware when Summer’s sleep changed to wakefulness and his big body rocked her own.
She was glad he was behind her and she could not see him, glad when he simply slipped into her wetness without words and took her slowly, the desperation of the night changed into a quiet and certain skill as he angled her hips and penetrated further. Deep and then deeper, she felt the ache of him building until all she knew was the blinding light of otherness, lost in time and space and self.
She closed her eyes and slept, anchored by flesh.
* * *
He lay there spent and disbelieving, the day lightening now into warmth, the sounds of the street muffled and the sun dancing on to dusty panes of cheap glass.
The sheets all about them lay in untidy mounds, crumpled with the weight and heat of their bodies. He was glad for the heavy key in the lock and the steel bar beneath it.
No one was getting in or out lest they wanted them to. They were prisoners of ardour and slaves to desire.
His fingers opened and found her centre, the warmth of her sucking him in, the beating pull of her sending him deeper. The other hand lay across her stomach so that he could feel himself inside her, joined together.
‘I can’t, again...’
He stopped her words with his mouth, taking her answer into his own and rolling across her, heavy with need. There was no other way.
And she knew it.
The ardour in him built and he grabbed her hands so that both arms were stretched upwards, secured against the bedhead.
‘Come to me, now.’ It was a command and as she rose towards him he took her mouth with his own, understanding exactly what such compliance had cost them both.
He didn’t roll away afterwards, but stayed there upon her, a heavy weight of masculine flesh, his fingers clenched around the curve of her bottom.