Pam Rosenthal (18 page)

Smiling shyly, he sat down in his armchair, manuscript in hand, and cleared his throat.

She took her old place in the window seat, tucking her bare feet under her as she listened with parted lips to his story. It
was
salacious: the sultan did put the harem girl through some cruel and fascinating ordeals. And then, just when Marie-Laure had begun to wonder what he could possibly do next, the story took a marvelous reversal: the sultan’s kingdom was besieged; the ruling family overthrown; the harem girl rescued and restored to her rightful position (for she was, in fact, an English lady of quality), and…

“Well, it’s not finished yet,” he murmured. “But what’s going to happen is that he stows away on a ship, comes to England, and gets the humblest of jobs in her service…”

“And is she cruel to him?”

“Yes, rather, for a while…”

“Does she demand that he take off his dressing gown and come to her on his knees?”

“I’d rather thought of that, though I don’t know if he has a dressing gown…”

“She buys him one.”

“Yes, of course.”

“After all,” she told him, “she wants him to look his best when he comes to her. Because she so,
so
loves to look at him.”

She leaned back on the pillows, watching intently as he rose to his feet and dropped his robe to the floor. And this time she could match the easy delight and frank carnal appreciation with which he’d gazed at her, their first night.

She could even pretend to be the heroine of his story—the “English lady of quality” who had the deposed sultan completely at her service.

Well, she could
try
to pretend. Though she wasn’t very good at being anyone but herself.

Perhaps for a moment, though. It was just a matter of playacting after all. Surely she could do that.

Timidly, she attempted a curt, proprietary nod in his direction.

He sank to his knees immediately. The rush of power was thrilling; she tried not to show how much she’d enjoyed it.

She nodded again, this time a bit more boldly, and he shuffled forward to her, still on his knees. His eyes were meek, his lips slightly parted. She untied the sash of her robe, feeling his warm breath in the space between her breasts.

She opened her mouth to give the next command…

Oh dear. This business of giving orders wasn’t as easy as one might think. At least when one wasn’t used to it.

A smile hovered at the corners of his mouth. “And if my lady will allow me…”

He dipped his dark head between her thighs. She reached down to touch his neck, his shoulders, his silky hair, while he nibbled at her, nuzzled at her, and then quickly parted her with his tongue.

He’s as much her slave
, Joseph had said of his sultan,
as she is his
. How like him, she thought, to turn complicated desire into provocative conundrum.

But she’d puzzle it out some other time.

Because right now she could barely think at all. Right now there were no more words, no more stories—nothing but the ragged fabric of her breath and the slow, insistent movement of his mouth.

She closed her eyes.

His tongue was light, delicate—almost not there at all and yet inescapable, a tiny torch flickering in the darkness, a glowing brand, a white-hot iron.

His hands had crept up to her hips; he held her firmly, gently, while she writhed, shuddered, screamed for release and prayed that it would never end.
How long
, she wondered,
can I bear these feelings?

But there was no time, no duration, only a shimmering, ever-changing
now
.

Now
, while her center exploded into a million tiny lights, like the night sky over Provence, and she tumbled from a great height through crystalline darkness.

Now.
If she couldn’t have forever, at least she had
now
.

He raised his head, kissing his way upward—her belly, her breasts, her throat, and then her lips. She could taste herself in his mouth.

She leaned back in his arms as he carried her back to bed. They held each other tightly; stretching her body against his, she tried to touch him with every inch of her skin.

As though their bodies were the world and the present moment the entirety of history. As though
now
was the only word in the language.

Well,
now
was all she had, anyway.

Now
would have to be enough for her. And—for the rest of that evening, anyway—it almost was.

Chapter Fourteen

She really didn’t know, Joseph thought a few days later, just how astonishing these past weeks had been.

And as she had nothing to compare them to, it was quite reasonable that she’d think lovemaking was always so wonderful.

Well, he wouldn’t enlighten her on the subject. She’d find out the truth for herself one day, when the man who deserved her finally made his appearance. No doubt he’d be a hardworking, high-minded sort of fellow; in truth, Joseph felt a bit intimidated by the exemplary personage he’d dreamed up. Marie-Laure’s future husband would be worthy of her in every way, with not a hint of petty spite or shallow self-regard in his fine, upstanding character. Still, Joseph consoled himself, this paragon of virtue would quite likely be rather a bore in bed.

But no more tormenting himself, he decided. Far more pleasant to devote his imaginings to her—as she’d looked last night, her hair like flame against the purple velvet bed curtains, skin glowing pink beneath the freckles…

Merde
, his thoughts
would
take that turn just at the moment when Baptiste was trying to button his new breeches for him. The valet gave a low whistle.

“That’s enough,” Joseph said.

Baptiste assumed an air of exaggerated respect while his eyes shone wickedly. Holding out his arms for the sleeves of his new coat, Joseph scrutinized his reflection in the mirror.

The suit
was
rather becoming, he concluded. The black brocade had violet threads subtly woven through the background of the pattern: rich yet suitable for mourning. He moved slightly to the right and the left as Baptiste tugged it here and there, smoothing it down over his flanks until it followed his torso like a second skin.

A distant echo of Marie-Laure’s voice wafted through his memory.

…she so
so
loves to look at him.

The little phrase had been hovering at the margins of his thoughts for three days now, light as a hummingbird, piquant as a whiff of lavender.

He loved the way she looked at him. So hungrily and yet so trustingly. There had only been one other woman who’d ever looked at him that way.

He shuddered.

Well, in any case, he thought hastily, Marie-Laure would see him this morning. She’d be in the courtyard for the ceremony, along with the rest of the household, captive audience to Hubert’s public ascension to his title.

The formal name of the thing was “Homage to the New Lord.” Hubert and Amélie had decided to do it in a tedious style that no one used anymore. It would probably take hours.

No matter. He could spend hours simply thinking of her. And if anybody happened to notice that the front of his breeches wasn’t as smoothly decorous as it might be, it was no concern of his.

“It’s in the worst of taste,” Nicolas had told the group in the dessert kitchen. “They’re intending to stage the ceremony in a way that’s been obsolete for almost a century.”

“Nowadays,” he continued, “when a nobleman comes into his estates, he just goes down and signs a notarized document. Actually, it’s good enough simply to send a proxy.”

But not good enough for this Duc and Duchesse.

The October weather had turned cold, too.

So for several chilly, boring hours, Marie-Laure had stood shivering with the rest of the servants in the chateau’s courtyard. Clutching her shawl about her, she gazed at the unprepossessing figure of the new Duc de Carency Auvers-Raimond, seated in a large, throne-like, ceremonial armchair while a priest blessed him and little armies of village children presented him with bouquets of late-blooming flowers.

Dressed in a velvet suit, mink-lined cloak, and tricorne hat trimmed with marten, the Duc Hubert accepted each new expression of fealty with a befuddled look. He was too small for the chair; his feet had dangled like a child’s until someone had been sent for a footstool. When he’d sneezed, upon being handed a particularly large bouquet, the Duchesse had scowled at the few giggles that broke out in the crowd. Marie-Laure felt unaccountably mortified for her, depressed by the spectacle, and grateful to have Joseph to look at instead.

He stood at easy attention behind his brother, in a lovely black suit, with a blank, distant expression on his face. As though, Marie-Laure thought, in his mind he wasn’t here at all, but (perhaps) back in his bedchamber, where…

…he’d drawn the purple bed curtains closed around them like an oriental tent. And then he’d nodded. The nod had been almost imperceptible, but somehow—for it seemed that they’d begun to share a secret language of command and consent—she’d known exactly what he’d wanted. Somehow he’d made it absolutely clear that she should position herself at the center of the bed on hands and knees.

A loud sigh escaped her lips. Vainly, belatedly, she tried to turn it into a cough, shrugging her apologies when Monsieur Colet turned to her with a questioning look. Pardon, Monsieur. No, nothing wrong. Nothing at all.

Nothing except the sudden throb between her legs, the poignancy of her body’s memory…

…
of what it had felt like to be so open, so docile—vulnerable as an animal that allows itself to be taken from behind.

She’d thought that Joseph would enter her immediately. But he’d simply let her wait.

Untouched.

For a minute, perhaps?

It had felt like an eternity.

And then he’d stroked and squeezed and played with her breasts until she’d thought she’d go mad with wanting him inside her…

Ah, there she was, Joseph thought, half hidden behind the man in the chef’s toque.

But how visible, how utterly available and present she’d been last night. His to do what he liked with…

For now he knew the meaning of his oriental fable. It was about the intricate pleasures of power and submission, the joys of mastery and the willingness to be enslaved by your own desire. He’d conceived the story in an unreasoning haze of frustrated yearning, at a time when he’d thought he’d never see her again. But it was only in the past few weeks that he’d begun to understand what he’d been trying to say.

Ironic, he thought, that he’d called Monsieur X’s book
A Libertine Education
. His real education had begun with Marie-Laure.

She’d said that he needed to teach her about lovemaking and he’d responded that he’d be honored to do so. But they’d both been wrong: the truth was that each of them needed the other’s help—to understand what was happening, to give shape to the passions that threatened to engulf them. They were still discovering things, still teaching each other the pleasures of offering and giving—and of demanding and taking.

He hadn’t been surprised that he’d needed to learn to give; for him the big revelation was that taking wasn’t so simple either. There was something shamelessly intimate about it, something deliciously humbling about revealing exactly what you wanted. Even—or especially—when you wanted something as subtle, as ephemeral as an inch of elastic flesh.

He’d wanted her breasts to swing freely under his hands. And he’d realized that they would only do so f she were on her hands and knees.

He’d been right. Oh yes, exactly what he’d wanted—that little bit of womanly pendulousness her breasts had taken on in that position. He’d slapped them lightly, catching at them as though they were fruit on a tree, squeezing as though to calculate their ripeness. He’d caressed her belly, teased and flicked at the knot of hardening flesh at the apex of the triangle between her legs. She’d whimpered and shuddered. And then she’d begun to moan. He’d kept control of himself as long as he’d been able, savoring his anticipation, glorying in his (rapidly diminishing) self-discipline.

The Duc Hubert blinked, perhaps drunkenly, as each of the local mayors and deputies knelt before him, head bared. He must have rehearsed for this ceremony, Marie-Laure thought, but he seemed as astonished as everyone else as he acknowledged each man in turn as his vassal, with a kiss.

With a kiss.
How she’d ached for a kiss last night, during those endless moments she’d spent waiting—her nipples stiffening, her vulva’s lips swelling and moistening, with every maddening, teasing caress.

“Don’t speak,” he’d whispered.

Her face had been turned away from him; kneeling as she was, she’d already been deprived of the use of her hands. And now, to be forbidden to speak! It meant that she had only the most primitive ways to signal her impatience: arching her back, spreading her, legs, (yes, even) wriggling her derriere at him and all the while making pleading sounds in her throat.
She felt herself blushing, her cheeks warm against the chilly air in the courtyard, as she remembered opening, displaying herself so vulgarly.