Pam Rosenthal (16 page)

She cared now, though; she wanted to be pretty, for him.

He put out an arm to lift her to the bed.

“No,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows.

“Not yet.”

The corners of his mouth twitched.

She reached for his sash, made a lucky guess as to what sort of knot he’d tied, and pulled gently.

He shrugged his shoulders out of the heavy velvet dressing gown, kicking it out of the way as it fell to the floor.

He stood easily, his weight lightly balanced on slender, muscular legs. His face was alight with mischief. Could she survey his body with the same ease and boldness she saw in his eyes?

Could she move her eyes casually and confidently over his shoulders, his torso? Or would she simply gape, dumbfounded, at the taut lines of his muscles, the tracings of fine black hair on his belly? At his flat pink nipples and the heavy sex rising from the thick wiry darkness between his legs?

She couldn’t pretend to be casual; it was all too new, too astonishing. Her eyes widened and a gasp escaped her parted lips.

“Mon Dieu
,” she whispered, “how beautiful you are.”

“And you, Marie-Laure, and you.” He was whispering too. He’d come closer; his chest just grazed the tips of her breasts. He pushed her heavy hair behind her ears, holding it at her nape while he brushed his lips against her earlobe. His other hand traced the curve of her spine, lightly at first, but holding her with increasing firmness, slowly pulling her to him. She could feel the insistent swell of him against her belly. She pushed back shyly, rotating her hips forward and back, to stroke him. How nice it felt, to move like that.

But now he was lifting her up; she wrapped her legs around his waist, moaning softly at the feel of his penis arched along the furrow of her bottom.

She thought he’d hurry, she’d imagined him as eager to get on with it as he’d been this afternoon. She remembered overhearing jokes Gilles and his friends made, about there being a moment when one was not able to wait any longer.

But Joseph seemed quite capable of waiting.

He carried her to the bed, sat down beside her, reached for something on the bed table, and handed it to her. Another of those sheathes, she realized.

“This time,” he said, “
you
put it on me.”

Which meant that she could touch him there, she realized. She’d wanted to since he’d taken off his robe. But her experience this afternoon had made her shy. Was there a decorum, she wondered, about where you could put your hands, a sort of dance pattern to what you might touch first and what second?

Or—an astonishing thought—was everything simply and gloriously permitted? Was it all right to do whatever you liked? Whatever gave you pleasure and—how thrilling—however you could give pleasure in return?

She examined the thin membrane, deciding that one put it on as one did a very delicate stocking. Slowly and gently, she stretched it over the head of his penis.

His lips trembled as she smoothed it down over him. Lovely to make that happen, and it was wonderful, too, how he continued to swell at the touch of her fingers. But how sad to have to hide him away like that.

“Lie down,” he told her.

There was a heavy candelabrum on the table. He moved it closer to them, and opened the bed curtain wider.

“I want as much light as possible,” he murmured. He brushed his lips against her breasts, her neck, her belly. It took her a moment to realize that he was tracing the path of the freckles on her skin, and trying to kiss every one of them.

She would have laughed if her quick, ragged breath had allowed her to.

“I’ve wondered about this for so long.” He smiled before bending his head again, his tongue lapping at all the little coppery spots on her body like a cat eating up spilled cream.

He worked his way downward. Marie-Laure had just a few freckles near her belly and thighs, but he paid special attention to each one, his silky hair flowing against her skin in the wake of his lingering, inquisitive kisses.

He moved upward now, his lips traveling to her breast again, his rough cat’s tongue flicking the nipple. She could see his wide, naked shoulders above her; she arched her back to try to touch the length of his trunk, the heaviness of his sex, with her trembling belly. She felt a stab of longing between her legs, just before (but how had he known to do it just exactly then?) he parted her thighs with his hand, opening and exploring her, caressing her with small, patient, delicate strokes. In her mind’s eye, she saw his hands—his long, strong, slender fingers. She felt them moving, searching. Stopping now. And suddenly all her senses converged upon a single point, her world, her universe, balanced upon his fingertip.

“Ah, there you are,” he murmured as her flesh stiffened to meet him, his finger a tiny torch setting her center aflame while the rest of her body seemed to melt, to moisten, like sugar bubbling in a copper pot. She heard herself moan. She knew she was ready.

He lowered himself onto her, his thighs around hers and the hair on his chest prickling her breasts. He raised himself again, his hands cradling her hips and lifting her as he entered her.

She could see anxiety in his eyes. He didn’t want to hurt her this time. He wanted it to be delicious for her.

It
is
delicious
, she tried to whisper.
Yes, yes, I’m beginning to understand
, she tried to call. But her whisper became a gasp and her call a sigh. And the gasps and ragged, wrenching sighs grew deeper with every confident arc he traced within her.

He rose above her onto his knees, onto his toes it seemed, before each thrust; she strained to open, to widen, to grasp and contain the entire miraculous length and thickness of him before each slow, teasing stroke outward. But oh! he went so far away each time, almost, it seemed, to her vulva’s swollen, wet outer lips. As though he wanted to repeat the moment of entry—as though every time might be the first.

She allowed herself an instant of exquisite panic that he might leave her empty, starving, gasping with desire.
Oh
no he won’t
, she told herself stoutly.
Not if I have any say in the matter.
She wrapped her arms around him, grasping the small of his back (it had been so lovely to touch his skin there, that first night in her attic room). She held him, she pulled him closer, moving her hands down over his lean, thrusting buttocks and squeezing him to her. Greedily. Gracelessly. Shamelessly. She watched his anxiety fade, she saw joy rise in his eyes, a mirror of the joy that he could see in her own.

Faster now. Somehow he must have taught her to move in time with him, to take active part in this arching dance, this high-spirited gallop, this intricate weave of pleasure and desire, desire and pleasure.

A whimsical twist to his mouth, and suddenly the world turned upside down and she was astride him, her breasts bobbing in his hands, her entire body, it felt, filled with his rising sex. She blushed to be so visible; she tried to hide behind her hair, all tangled now into wild, tight, sweaty, copper coils.

He held her breasts more tightly, catching the nipples between his fingers. He arched his back and thrust harder. And suddenly she was past caring what he could see. Let him see—let him know—every inch, every iota of her, let him hear the deep moans, the gasps, the greedy, bestial growls issuing from her lips, rising from the volcanic tremors (but he must be able to feel them too!) at her center. She threw back her head and cried out; she heard him cry out as well, before he pulled her down to his wet, salty-tasting chest, his heart (or was it her heart?) pounding wildly, his arms hard around her, both their bodies drenched, trembling, exhausted—as if they’d been out together in a hurricane.

Perhaps she’d slept—for an instant? an hour?—or perhaps she’d simply been wandering in the new country whose citizen she’d become, the republic of love and pleasure. In any case, when she heard the hoarse whisper of his voice, she couldn’t tell if it came from far off or very near indeed.

“I was nervous, you know. About competing with Monsieur X.”

His arm tightened around her, and his thigh wrapped around both of hers. She nestled into him, the side of her face happily burning from the growth of new beard on his cheek. The country she’d been exploring—she realized now that it was his body, its paths and byways, curves and arches and moist, voluptuous gardens. She found his hand, squeezed it, kissed the knuckles. She turned her head a little, so she could see his eyes, his slightly anxious smile.

“After all,” he continued, “he’s an awfully impressive gentleman in bed. I’ve been worrying all day that I might disappoint you, being just of flesh and blood as I am.”

Just of flesh
and blood.

“You’re quite impressive enough for me the way you are,” she assured him. “But there’s so much you’ll have to teach me.”

He rose on his elbow, his face glowing, his mouth solemn, his eyes like warm, velvet night.

“I would be honored and grateful, Marie-Laure,” he said, “if there were anything at all that I could teach you.”

Chapter Thirteen

Of course he was very much more experienced than she was. But it seemed to Marie-Laure that he and she taught each other, as every night their fingers and lips described the lines and arcs of each other’s bodies—curve of belly, articulation of wrist or collarbone, small of back swooping to slope of buttock.

They became explorers, discoverers of landmarks and natural wonders, collectors, connoisseurs of oddities and curios. The wound in Joseph’s thigh that Gilles had sewn up: Marie-Laure traced it in wonderment. It was almost all healed now, and “a much neater job than the one on my side—yes, there—the work of a butcher of an army surgeon.” She shuddered, not wishing to think what would have happened if the bullet had been an inch higher and to the right.

The burns on Marie-Laure’s fingers, from oven and hearth: Joseph brushed his lips against them with the lightness of cobwebs. “I dreamed,” he whispered one night, “that my kisses turned them back to ink stains.”

The twin deep dimples above the curve of Marie-Laure’s derriere. “You don’t know that you have them?” he exclaimed. “Come to the mirror, I’ll show you.” She’d never had a three-sided mirror. What an astonishment, she thought, to see her small, freckled, rosy self together with him, long-limbed, olive-skinned, tautly muscled and proudly erect. She peered within the triple frame at an infinity, a lifetime of Josephs and Marie-Laures—surrounded by the shifting rainbow edge of beveled mirror—from virtually every angle.

They posed, giggling, as though for a series of engravings of the sort that he had once smuggled into France. They made up titles for the tableaux they struck:

“The Importunate Master.”

“The Bawdy Serving Maid.”

“The Sultan,” he announced, wrapping his cravat around his head like a turban, “and his Odalisque.” She stared nervously, wondering about the sudden keen look he’d given her.

And so her life was transformed. Quietly and invisibly, everything had changed forever. She was grateful for the invisibility, glad she’d endured everybody’s teasing at a time when there hadn’t been anything to tease her about.

Whereas now—when all the pretense had come true—no one cared a fig about what she and Joseph might be doing during their night meetings. During these anxious days after the old Duc’s death, the servants were far too preoccupied with their own uncertain fates. They worried continually: the most trivial of rumors would be seized upon and plumbed for every possible shred of meaning, only to be rejected in favor of the next equally baseless speculation.

And when the firings actually did happen, they weren’t the ones anyone had expected. Everyone was surprised, for example, that the old Duc’s valet Jacques had been kept on. Pierre, the quiet, circumspect fellow who’d looked after Monsieur Hubert since his boyhood, had been given the sack and Jacques had taken his place.

“I smell a rat,” Monsieur Colet confided to Nicolas, Robert, and Marie-Laure. “He’s a sneaky piece of work, that one. Who knows what he promised to do for the family in return for them keeping him here?”

Marie-Laure took his meaning. Planting a spy among her servants was exactly the sort of thing the Gorgon might try, and Jacques was certainly scoundrel enough. She and everybody else would be wise to hold their tongues in his presence.

And indeed, for a week everybody exercised prodigious restraint when Jacques was around. But for a week only—because nobody liked being rude or stingy with household gossip. And anyway, however Jacques had managed it, the fact was that he’d kept his job; everyone hoped his good fortune would somehow rub off on them.

Besides, he was a good entertainer. Unlike his loyal, boring predecessor, Jacques was willing to share the funniest, nastiest stories about the new Duc and Duchesse. Everyone enjoyed his descriptions of their grim, tooth-gritting efforts at conceiving an heir.

“He’d drink himself into a stupor if I allowed him to,” Jacques confided. “I have to be careful not to let him have too much, the nights he visits her. Just enough, you know, to—to take the edge off the encounter. But not enough so he’ll wilt completely.”

Marie-Laure laughed and hooted along with the rest of them. But every now and again she’d also feel a surprising twinge of pity for the new Duchesse. How sad, she’d think, to have to make love to someone you weren’t in the least bit attracted to and who didn’t want you either.