Nights Of Fire

by Laura Leone

  Yes, she knew now that was true. He had seen that. And so much more. "Sit up."

  He did, eyes closed. She dried his face, then started drying his hair.

  "You avoided me at first. That... well, it hurt my feelings, because I was attracted to you." She decided not to remind him that within days of meeting him she had broken off her brief affair with Jean Deschamps, the musician in her Resistance group. What did it matter now? "Then one day you came to my cottage..."

  "And?" he prodded.

  She pressed against his head injury as gently as possible, letting the cloth absorb the water without rubbing. "You saw my work—"

  "Your work?"

  Her heart contracted yet again with a sense of loss. "I'm an artist."

  He stiffened. "Wait." He pushed the towel away from his face and seized one of her hands. He studied it with intense concentration. "Strong hands, especially for a woman..." He closed his eyes, evidently trying to call up a memory. "Sculpture..."

  "Yes." Her heart started to beat harder.

  "You do... beautiful sculptures. Strong. Intense. More alive... than life."

  Her smile was tremulous. "You said things like that the first time you came to my cottage and saw the things I was working on. And I believed you—"

  "I meant it."

  "—because you obviously weren't trying to seduce me. You wouldn't come within arm's reach of me, and you acted like a scalded cat if I tried to get closer."

  "You make me sound like a nervous virgin," he protested.

  She giggled. "Worse."

  He let her pull away her hand to continue drying his hair as she said, "But admiring my work like that... Well, it was the most effective seduction of my entire life." She shook her head. "It's so hard for a woman to be taken seriously in the art world. Only men's art is serious and important and worthy of real attention, you know." She made a disgusted sound—something he had always called her "French noise."

  "But I am a man of rare taste and perception," he surmised, "and so I immediately appreciated your talent."

  "Something like that," she said dryly. "Then you revealed the purpose of your visit."

  He turned and squinted at her with his good eye. "If I wouldn't even touch you..."

  "You had come to urge me to run away. To leave occupied France. Maybe go live with my relatives in the Pyrenees. You also offered to help me get to America."

  "Ah. But I obviously wasn't very persuasive."

  "Oh, you were," she assured him. "Very persuasive. I thought it was a shame you weren't negotiating with Hitler."

  Now he grinned. "But you're just the tiniest bit stubborn?"

  "France is my home," she said firmly. "I'm certainly not leaving it before the Nazis do."

  He frowned. "That sounds familiar."

  "We've argued about this a lot," she explained.

  "Ah."

  She finished drying his hair, then tidied it by combing her fingers through it. "Much better," she declared. Then she rubbed her fingertips along his beard-roughened jaw. "But you need a shave."

  "Too bad there's no..." He stopped speaking when she produced a razor.

  "I brought this from home, when I got the food and other things."

  "You think of everything." His mouth quirked. "Everything except my clothes."

  "I wasn't expecting a sudden attack of modesty." She used the towel to dampen his face, then started lathering it. "Besides, I didn't think you'd be upright and active so soon. When I brought you here, you were so... Well, I'm very glad you're healing so fast."

  He closed his dark, long-lashed eyes and submitted easily to her ministrations. As she began shaving him, she did her best to be gentle with the part of his face that was bruised and swollen. "Does it hurt much?" she asked, touching the injured eye with her fingertips.

  "Oh, only in the sense that someone beat it black and blue."

  She bit her lip. "Also purple, yellow, and red."

  "I must look like a Picasso painting."

  "Wonderful. You can remember Picasso, but not me."

  "I wasn't trying to forget him."

  His eyes flew open and he gazed at her in amazement, evidently as startled as she was by that comment.

  "You were trying to forget me?" she asked weakly.

  He stared hard at her face. "Don't think about her," he whispered. "Not even a thought."

  "Who said that?"

  "I did."

  "I mean—"

  "I..." He looked around distractedly. "I kept telling myself that. Until it came true. Until there was nothing in my head about her."

  "Her," Gabrielle prodded.

  "You?" he asked.

  Paul...

  "I was afraid to think about her," he continued vaguely, focusing on inner shadows now. "Afraid I might say her name in my sleep, ask for her when I was barely conscious. Afraid I'd put her in danger." Their eyes met. "You," he whispered, sounding both convinced and confused.

  "If you can remember that—"

  "Then why can't I remember you?" he supplied. He brushed his cheek against her outstretched fingertips. "Maybe I'm starting to, chérie."

  Now her heart beat even harder. "And are you starting to remember the rest?"

  "What rest?"

  "Whatever else happened in the chateau!" she said impatiently.

  "Beating and interrogation seem like a pretty safe guess."

  She needed to know more than that. "But did you—"

  "Ah!" He lowered his head, wincing.

  "It hurts?" she asked.

  "No." He realized how stupid that lie sounded and amended, "A little."

  So "little" that his half-shaven face had gone pale and his eyes were starting to look glassy.

  "Paul, you—"

  "I'm fine," he insisted, his voice hoarse.

  Men.

  "Is there any more tea?" he asked.

  "I'll make some as soon as I've finished shaving you. Have some water for now."

  He accepted the cup she offered him, drank with his eyes closed, and sat very still as she finished shaving what she judged to be a week's worth of growth. When she was done, she made him more tea. He sat sipping it quietly while she tidied up around him.

  Some of his color had returned when she asked, "Feeling better?"

  "Yes."

  He still looked tense. She came up behind him and put her hands on his shoulders, hoping to soothe him. His skin was warm and smooth, the muscles thick and sturdy beneath his flesh. Also hard as rock, at the moment. She started rubbing them gently.

  He groaned. "Oh, that feels good."

  She felt the hot glow of desire that touching him always ignited inside her. It spread through her body, warming all the cold places. Her skin tingled with awareness of him as she kneaded his muscles and caressed his shoulders.

  "The first time I ever saw you without your shirt, I wanted to do this," she murmured, remembering that day. And also remembering, after they became lovers, what her massages inevitably led to them doing together.

  "When was the first time?" His voice was husky.

  "It was a few weeks after you came here. Didier had us watching the roads for a shipment of artillery. I came one night to report having seen it. It was much bigger than expected." Gabrielle was starting to feel a little hot, as if her clothes were too heavy and needed to be removed. "Didier insisted we wake you to discuss what we should do. So he and I went out to your shed..." She leaned down and whispered, "That's when I found out you almost always sleep naked."

  "How shortsighted of me," he muttered.

  "That's what I thought," she agreed. "Until you started sleeping with me. Then I decided I liked it." She liked curling up against his warm, naked back on a chilly morning. She liked waking up in the middle of the night to find him hot and hard and ready for her. And she loved the intimacy of him sprawled naked across her bed in the middle of the day, on those rare afternoons when they were able to enjoy a few uninterrupted hours together.

  "Do you sleep
naked?" he asked.

  "Unless you're planning an annulment, I suppose you'll find out," she murmured.

  She felt his puff of laughter and pressed herself against the length of his naked, bandaged back. She could make him remember. She would. "That night, when Didier and I came to the shed to speak to you, I saw the way your skin was..." She switched to French, unable to make love to him well enough in his foreign tongue. "Like polished oak. The way your muscles were... like sculpture. The hair on your chest..." She slipped one hand around his torso to touch the light furring over his breast. "I couldn't even think straight." She rubbed her cheek against his damp hair. "Didier told me to report... and I just stood there staring at you, like some mute schoolgirl."

  "Surely I wasn't naked?"

  She smiled. "No. You were buttoning your pants and buckling your belt. My mouth went dry. I wanted..."

  "Yes?" he asked archly.

  Heat spread through her belly and seeped down to pool in her loins, which throbbed in response to her memories and ached with fresh desire for him. "I wanted you to take your pants back off. To put your arms around me. To touch me..."

  "And?"

  "And Didier saw that I had lost my wits, so he started talking, telling you what I had told him. You were staring back at me, and you kept saying, 'What? Huh? Say that again.'"

  "I guess I wanted to take my pants back off, too?"

  "You've never said."

  "I haven't?"

  "We've never talked about that night," she admitted. "I mean..."

  "This is the first time you're telling me you wanted my body that night?"

  "Yes."

  He turned his head slightly. "Did I look like I wanted to touch you, too?"

  She smiled. "Maybe."

  "I'll bet I did. I'll bet I was stupid with wanting you, especially if I saw how you were looking at me."

  The renewed realization that he didn't remember made her heart ache.

  As if aware of this, he gently prodded, "So what happened next?"

  "You turned your back and started looking for your shirt." She brushed her fingers across his broad shoulders. "And I wanted to touch you just like this." She pressed both her palms into his warm skin and inhaled his scent. "Then you put your shirt on."

  "How unkind of me."

  "That's what I thought." She kneaded his shoulders, seeking and unlocking the tension there. When he sighed and sagged, she suggested, "Put your head down."

  He folded his arms on the rough work table, then rested his head atop them. "Your touch is magic," he said.

  Magic enough to make you remember everything?

  She moved her hands to his neck, finding the tendons there and warming them into supple relaxation.

  "So I was still..." He sighed with pleasure before continuing, "...playing hard to get?"

  "Didier was amused. I was confused and frustrated."

  "I've a shrewd suspicion I was confused and frustrated, too." He groaned as she stroked his neck, then said, "Falling in love when I was supposed to be concentrating on my duty. Disrupting plans because I was worried about your safety. Trying to convince a useful Underground operative to run away." His breathing was deep and even now, his muscles giving up their pain-locked stiffness to her coaxing. "I punished myself for this craziness by denying what I wanted most—and that only made me crazier."

  She couldn't tell if he was remembering, or just figuring it out. Maybe even he didn't know which was the case.

  "I tried to stay away from you..."

  "Yes."

  "But..." He shifted and twitched his left shoulder, showing her that he wanted her to massage it. When she did, he sighed with delight. "But... Didier knew. Didier... I liked him."

  "You remember him?"

  "I remember that I liked him. I remember..." He nodded and turned his head sideways. "I remember that he knew I loved you."

  "What else?"

  He opened his eyes and stared at the far wall of the barn. She felt the tension start to creep back into his body. "I... I don't know..." His breathing became uneven. Gabrielle immediately regretted pushing him. "There's... Ah..." He turned his head and pressed his temple against his forearm, evidently trying to stop the pounding ache from returning in full force.

  "Don't," she urged. "Shhh. Shhh... Let it go."

  She melted down over him, rubbing her cotton-clad breasts against his back, wrapping her arms around him as she pressed her cheek against his hair. Trying to comfort him with her presence, with her weight and warmth and love.

  He was panting a little. "Tell me more." His eyes were squeezed shut.

  She rubbed her hand over his balled fist. "Didier lost his sweetheart in the Great War. Instead of becoming bitter, he became a hopeless romantic. He saw what was between us and wanted us to... claim it. So did I." She kissed his earlobe, remembering the many days and nights of emotional torment and sexual frustration she had endured because of his scruples. "But you were so stubborn."

  "Pot. Kettle. Black."

  She was pleased to see his humor returning and his fist relaxing. She moved one hand to stroke up and down his ribcage, luxuriating in the feel of him beneath her palm, delighting when he quivered under her touch.

  "Wait," he murmured. "Didn't you say Didier has a widow?"

  "Yes."

  "So he got married?"

  She nodded, her cheek moving against the soft carpet of his hair. "His sweetheart was dead," she said, feeling her voice reverberate through her chest to echo against his back, "but he wasn't."

  "And a man has needs," he murmured lazily.

  Now she let her hand creep towards his modestly blanketed lap. "Some men even more than others."

  "And some men have very demanding wives."

  She paused and tilted her head to look suspiciously at him. His eyes were still closed, but a smile curved his mouth. "How's your lip?"

  "As good as new," he lied. He shifted on the stool, jarring her seeking hand, and asked innocently, "Were you looking for something?"

  "Nothing important," she assured him, straightening up and returning to massaging his shoulders.

  He sighed with disappointment. "Just as well, really."

  "Oh?"

  "To tell the truth," he confided, "I'm a little sore there."

  "Sore? You didn't seem sore this... Um..."

  "No, this morning that was about the only part of me that wasn't sore. But now..." He shifted again. "Not that I'm complaining."

  "You have nothing to complain about," she pointed out. Really.

  "It was well worth a little soreness," he assured her.

  "I wasn't rough," she insisted. Then she paused, remembering more accurately. "Was I?"

  "Well, I'm weakened," he said generously. "Not as resilient as I probably am under normal circumstances."

  "If you're looking for sympathy—"

  "I'm sure I would know better than to seek it here."

  "If you hadn't said things like 'harder' and 'deeper,' then I wouldn't have—"

  "Did I really say that?"

  "There's nothing wrong with my memory," she reminded him.

  "I don't remember speaking at all."

  "So if you're sore now—"

  "Just a little sore. Nothing that would prevent us fr—"

  "You have no one to blame—"

  "I'm not blaming—"

  "—but yourself."

  He reached for one of her hands and brought it to his lips. "I can't claim to remember," he murmured, his warm breath caressing her fingers, "but I feel certain that you do that better than any other woman I've ever known."

  "I should," she told him. "God knows I've had enough practice."

  He laughed—then winced at some new pain this caused him. "I keep you busy, do I?"

  "As I've said—"

  "And you..." He pressed her knuckles against his cheek, his eyes still closed. "Can't keep your hands off me."

  Her heart was thudding. "You're guessing."

  She knew this
mood of his. Knew it so well—even if he was currently a stranger to it, feeling his way blindly through his own habits of intimacy with her. The teasing mingled with tenderness. The playfulness edged with hot desire. The dark strength tempered by bright gentleness.

  "All right, I'm guessing about you," he conceded, "but I can tell..." He sat up slowly. "That I can't keep my hands off you." He used her hand to draw her around to face him, so that she was standing between him and the table.

  His dark eyes were soft in the dim, flickering light. He looked at her... the way he often looked at her. She felt her eyes mist even as desire knotted in her belly.

  "Do you know me at all?" she whispered, longing for him to remember her as she gazed down at him.

  He was honest, as he always was with her. "I'm not sure. You seem so familiar, but I..." He shrugged, his expression regretful and frustrated.

  "I want to make you remember me," she said huskily, her whole body aching for him.

  "I want to remember you," he assured her, clearly understanding what she meant.

  Gabrielle saw him hesitate, even so—probably because she'd been so annoyed about this morning. So she cupped his bruised, clean-shaven face between her hands. "You're my husband," she said encouragingly, "and I have never wanted to deny you."

  His eyes grew lambent, sending her senses reeling. "And if I weren't your husband," he whispered, "right now, I'd be wishing that I was."

  Her mouth trembled. She hadn't wanted to ask, but she had needed some sign from him that he was glad she was his wife, that he was pleased rather than appalled by their unremembered marriage. She had needed this and, in that way he'd always had with her, he had known and he gave.

  "Paul," she whispered.

  He sighed, then lowered his head and pressed his face against her belly. "Gabrielle."

  "Let's go upstairs," she murmured.

  "No," he said, still seated on his stool. "This is fine. Right here."

  Chapter Five

  June 5, 1944

  Gabrielle felt his fingers on the back of her knee, gentle, exploring. He stroked down to her calf, then cupped his palm over the curve of muscle there.

  Her legs weakened as his other hand slid under the hem of her slip to caress the back of her thigh. She moved her hands to his broad shoulders and let him take some of her weight as she sagged towards him, her breath shallow and faster than before.