‘The folly,’ she managed to say, pointing in the direction of a more private space, thankful that the night was forgiving rather than freezing. ‘Do you have …’
He nodded, understanding the question. Neither of them wanted to risk a baby now.
She took his hand, hurrying them down the path, wanting the folly’s walls around them. As soon as they were inside, one of his hands tangled in her hair, bringing her mouth back into that fierce kiss, his other hand holding her tightly as if he thought she might run away. She was dimly aware that she was quite capable of curving her leg around him and unbuttoning his trousers and having it happen right there, but she also knew that she wanted more than a quick extinguishing of desire.
‘There might be blankets,’ she spoke against his lips, ‘in the box over there.’
She felt his forehead nod against hers, and the wrench as he pulled away. While he searched the box seats that lined one wall of the folly, she reached around behind her neck and undid the knot of silk so that her dress slipped off.
When he turned back to her, she stood in just her knickers and brassiere, the one he’d seen her in that day when he’d caught her sunbathing on a plane. He stopped, and almost dropped the blankets.
She couldn’t help smiling. ‘This wasn’t what you were expecting,’ she said mischievously.
‘God, Skye. You are …’ He swallowed, but it didn’t help to steady his voice. ‘There isn’t a word that can possibly describe how you look right now.’
‘I think it’s only fair that you take something off too,’ she said, smile growing. ‘It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you in your underwear.’
He laughed, threw the blankets onto the ground and shucked off his jacket. ‘You certainly didn’t look like that the first time I saw you in yours. Which is good, because if you had I would have been terrified.’
‘Are you terrified now?’
He unbuttoned his shirt and slid it off before he answered, and it was Skye’s turn to swallow as her eyes roamed the muscled expanse of his chest, his dog tags moving up and down in time with his uneven breathing.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Terrified and so damn turned on. Skye, you are magnificent.’
As a reward, she unhooked her bra and let it drop to the floor. The folly wasn’t completely dark; star shine and moonlight filtered through and she knew that he could see her, almost naked. He drew in a sharp breath and let it out slowly.
‘Trousers,’ she said, voice strangled.
Once his trousers were gone and they both stood in their underwear, Skye saw that Nicholas had grown into a very fine man. She watched his eyes travel over her body, up and down, sweeping across her breasts, lingering, falling down to her legs, crossing to her hips, resting there.
‘Skye.’
The word was the faintest whisper and then he strode across to her, taking her back into his arms, and they were kissing again, a clash of mouth on mouth, a skirmish of tongues, the unbearable agony of his hand moving to her breast to stroke, ever so gently, too gently, her nipples. Her leg lifted to wrap around him, and one of his hands dropped to her hip to slide inside her knickers.
‘Skye,’ he said again. ‘I have to stop kissing you for a moment.’ He drew back, and if she’d thought his breathing was fast before, now it was ragged. ‘I don’t want this to be over,’ he said. ‘I want this to take forever, but if you kiss me like that it won’t last more than a minute.’
He was right, she knew, so she took his hand and drew him down onto the blanket. He lay on his back, and she tucked her hair behind her ear, one arm bracing her body above his. As she sat astride him, she moved her hands to his underwear, suddenly uncertain.
‘Can I?’ she asked softly.
He grinned. ‘It will be much trickier to do this if I keep them on.’
She laughed. ‘You’re making fun of me,’ she said, fingers coming to rest on his hipbones.
‘I’ve just never seen you nervous before,’ he said, running his thumb over her lips. ‘Even when you jumped out of that plane at Tempsford after the Luftwaffe chased you, you barely raised a sweat.’
‘I’m not nervous. It’s just …’
She studied him: that face, so familiar, but also unfamiliar, overlaid with the man he’d become. And everything else about him unfamiliar too – his chest, the line of hair travelling down to where her hands were now.
‘I feel as if everything,’ she continued hesitantly, ‘everything since the moment I cartwheeled in front of you has been leading to this. As if the future’s been waiting for us to kiss. And now here we are, and there’s so much at stake.’
His response was to reach up and kiss her again, and in that kiss Skye knew that the moment was there at last, and they were going to sink bodily and sensually and with their entire beings into it. So she did reach down and remove the second-last piece of clothing between them, and he did the same to her, and then she lay beside him, more aroused by his thigh against hers, her chest grazing his, their lips almost touching, than she’d ever been by anything she’d done with a man before.
‘If it feels this good just to lie next to you …’ she said.
‘I can’t even imagine how it’s going to feel very soon,’ he replied, his words a whisper in her ear as his hand dropped to explore her.
He slowed time then, his fingertips drawing a soft circle in the hollow between her collarbones, another between her breasts, and then around her navel and back up to trace that same light and sensual path around one nipple, again and again, and then the other.
Skye felt her back arch, and arch still more when he stopped using just his fingertips and stroked each breast with his hands. All she could do was say his name and reach up to kiss him, rolling him onto his back, straddling him, doing the same to him but with her mouth – kissing one shoulder and then the other, his chest – and she hadn’t even reached his navel when he said her name, more loudly even than she’d said his. Then she was on her back and his mouth and his eyes told her that he wanted her, and she told him the same thing in just the same way.
He slid inside her and she braced herself, used to this part being somewhat uncomfortable and rather a disappointment, but he lifted her hips a little, moving tenderly, unbearably slowly. She felt her legs wrap around him tightly, felt too much all at once, until she gripped his back and he smiled at her and that was it – she was falling into St Elmo’s fire but this time she wasn’t alone. Nicholas was with her, in the explosion of her body and his, her mouth and his, her soul and his.
Thirty
They didn’t stop kissing for a long time after, not until their breathing settled and their hands unclenched. Eventually, Nicholas reached across to wrap the edge of the blanket over her, mistaking her shivering for cold, but it was impossible to be cold when he was still so close to her, chest against chest, leg against leg, forehead against forehead.
‘That was worth waiting for,’ he whispered.
‘It was very surprising,’ she said, and he looked suddenly worried.
‘You didn’t like it? I’m sorry—’
She smiled and kissed him again. ‘Nicholas, for someone who knows me as well as you do, you say some very strange things at times. Did I look or sound as if I didn’t enjoy that?’
‘No, but—’
‘I just meant that on the other two occasions when I’ve done something similar, it wasn’t like this. It was at best interesting and at worst uncomfortable.’
He drew back so she could see the intensity on his face as he said, ‘There is so much more that we will do together, Skye.’ She shivered again at the prospect. ‘And it damn well won’t be either interesting or uncomfortable. If it is, you have to tell me because I want you to love us being together like this as much as I do. Every single time.’
‘Every time?’ She smiled. ‘It sounds as if you plan to do this rather a lot.’
He grinned. ‘As much as you want to.’
‘So all the time then.’
He laughed.
‘I loved it,’ she said. ‘I promise.’
‘And I love you, Skye. So much.’
It almost hurt to hear those words, so longed for. She clung to them, turning them over and over in her mind with the wonder of a person seeing the moon for the very first time.
‘I didn’t know what love was when I left Cornwall at fifteen,’ Nicholas said, kissing her forehead, her cheek, and then her lips, ‘but I loved you then and I’ve never stopped. Not ever. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do to not tell you I loved you over this past year and a half. Every time I saw you, I wanted to hold you or kiss you; do anything except be the person I had to be.’
She blinked and buried her head in his chest, but he lifted her face to his so he could see her eyes.
‘Are you crying?’ he asked gently, bringing the pads of his fingers up to sweep away, so softly, the tears that she was indeed weeping.
‘I try not to do it very often,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘But I’ve cried more tears over you than you know.’
She lay with her head on his chest then, his arms firm around her, her leg wrapped over his. Until the sound of voices, closer than the general waft of noise from the party, threatened.
‘We need to get dressed,’ she said reluctantly.
They stood up, which meant seeing him naked once more, and she couldn’t help kissing him as if she intended to do all over again what they’d only just finished.
‘Skye,’ he said, fingers dancing along her back, ‘you can’t kiss me like that if you want me to get dressed.’
‘I don’t really want you to get dressed,’ she confessed with a grin and he laughed.
But the voices sounded again, closer.
‘Damn,’ he said, and this time they both grabbed their clothes and fumbled into them.
Even so, it was impossible for Liberty and O’Farrell to interpret the scene in any innocent fashion when they walked into the folly and saw the blanket on the floor, Skye’s hair a tangled mess around her shoulders, her cheeks flushed, and Nicholas with his jacket off and shirt unbuttoned.
‘You two have been having a reunion,’ Liberty said with a grin.
‘Perhaps you could give us a few minutes,’ Skye said to her sister.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. When I suggested to O’Farrell that we go for a walk, I didn’t realise I had to avoid the folly in case of possible debauchery. I was actually planning my own debauchery, but I can see I’ll have to find another location for it.’
‘Let’s go,’ O’Farrell said, turning around and striding off.
‘Not back to the party,’ Liberty called, hurrying after him. ‘Or Margaux. I have to talk to you.’
Nicholas sighed. ‘I should explain to him.’
Skye shook her head. ‘I don’t think he’s mad. He chose my sister months ago. And he and I never shared more than a few kisses.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. I just couldn’t …’
Nicholas drew her back into his arms and she forgot about Liberty and O’Farrell as he whispered in her ear, ‘I can’t bear it if I don’t see you again for weeks. Can you get leave for the weekend, before it’s all revoked?’
‘My leave started tonight. I have the next two days.’
‘Let me arrange my own two days,’ he said. ‘I haven’t had leave for six months, and full moon’s over. It shouldn’t be too hard. Especially as there won’t be any more for the foreseeable future.’
‘Let’s go to Cornwall. To the house,’ she said, knowing that the place where they’d first met was where she wanted to be with him.
Nicholas stepped out of the car at Porthleven and whistled. ‘It’s exactly the same as I remembered,’ he said.
‘It is,’ she agreed.
They stood together, staring, as sunrise set the sky aflame, rendering the cottage a silhouette. Its shape sent him tumbling back into the past, to the first time he’d stood there with Skye, awestruck by this amazing cartwheeling girl who’d shared her cove with him, and with whom he’d shared his father’s pocket watch.
An absence of weight had him reaching into his pocket only to discover that the watch wasn’t there; it must have fallen out in the folly. It didn’t matter. He’d find it before he next went flying – O’Farrell might have picked it up. Besides, he had Skye now and she was a more powerful good luck charm than any timepiece.
He reached down to touch her cheek, marvelling that he could do that now; that the restraint of the past year and a half had vanished, never to return.
The smile she gave him stole his breath and he couldn’t do anything other than kiss her, arms circling her waist, already regretting the end of these two days.
They hardly moved from the bed all that day, finally falling into sleep towards evening, a sleep Nicholas awoke from near midnight with a nightmare fading behind his eyes. Somehow, Skye sensed it because she stirred and reached out for him.
‘What is it?’ she asked sleepily.
‘You’re going to do it, aren’t you?’ he said, certain of her answer.
She understood the question. ‘I have to.’
Of course she would. She had been asked to help her country, and it wasn’t in her nature to refuse.
He saw his nightmare now: the SOE agent who’d been shot in front of him blurring into a Nazi leading Skye into a hotel room, and her having to do what Margaux did. They wouldn’t ask that of her, surely? He would never know – she wouldn’t be allowed to tell him anything: not her codename, not the details of her missions, nothing. For the first time in his life, he knew the heart-pounding sickness of real terror. He closed his arms around her so tightly that he thought she might pull away, but she only held on.
If only he could be the one to fly her into France. But if Wylde had known enough about Nicholas and Skye to give Nicholas permission to tell her what he had, there would be a note on a file somewhere that Nicholas Crawford and Skye Penrose were never to go on a pick-up operation together.
He’d make sure it was O’Farrell who flew her over. But once she was on the ground in France, what then?
There was also the matter of Liberty. Nicholas wasn’t allowed to tell Skye about that either, unless for some reason they crossed paths at the cottage in Tangmere. The risk of a captured agent giving up everyone else in the organisation was too great so SOE tried to keep meetings between agents and knowledge of who else worked for the organisation to a minimum. What would Skye say when she found out about Liberty, and that he’d known all along?
‘All I want is this,’ he said vehemently, needing her to understand. ‘The dreams I had before the war, which seemed so large and important, are nothing now. All I want is you, here. Alive.’
‘That’s all I want too,’ she said.
He shut his eyes. It was almost April 1944. War had been declared four and a half years ago. Surely it must end soon?
He opened his eyes and kissed her, using his lips to study the terrain that was Skye Penrose. He began with her back, so tiny now, rations and hard work making her almost too thin. He followed each ridge of her spine with his lips then he turned her onto her back and moved his mouth to her breasts.
‘Nicholas,’ he heard her say, and he kissed her mouth quickly, one of his hands clenched in hers, his other hand drifting down to the flat expanse of her stomach, then down lower to her thighs.
He felt her hips arch towards him and as much as it was almost torturous to delay, he wanted to, because to watch her like this – naked, body crying out for his touch – was the most sensual thing of all.
He let one hand graze lightly between her legs, and she whispered, shakily, his name once more. Then he kissed one thigh softly before moving slowly upwards, his hands a little ahead of his mouth. He glanced up and saw that her eyes were closed, her head tipped backwards, her legs open, and he finally let himself do what he’d been wanting to do since the moment they’d lain together naked on a blanket in the folly. He placed his mouth where his hand had been
and heard the sharp and sudden intake of her breath, felt her body move urgently towards him, and then he saw her tremble, heard her cry out once, twice, three times – and it was the most perfect moment of his whole life.
When she’d recovered enough to open her eyes, she stared at him, then grinned. Her hair was spread across the pillow like the dark strands of evening, her cheeks were flushed, and she looked as wild and beautiful and utterly Skye as she ever had before.
‘Your turn,’ she said, drawing his hips towards hers, legs circling his waist.
‘Maybe yours again too,’ he said.
‘Twice in five minutes,’ she said incredulously.
He smiled and nodded. ‘Maybe.’
‘Well,’ she said, drawing his mouth down to meet hers, ‘you’ve never once broken a promise.’
The way she said it made his heart squeeze. ‘You have no idea how much I love you,’ he said.
‘But I do,’ she said. ‘Because it’s as much as I love you.’
He slid inside her, making sure to lift her hips again as he’d done the night before, and it wasn’t long before he saw an expression traverse her face that he was coming to understand and to adore, an expression that told him she was on the threshold of a pleasure so intense it had to be taken with their hands threaded together, their mouths too, him breaking away for just one quick moment to say, ‘God, Skye,’ before they fell together into the only place he ever wanted to be.
As their breathing gradually settled, she bestowed on him again that brilliant smile. ‘Luckily for you, you still haven’t ever broken a promise.’
He could do nothing other than laugh.
Nicholas was soundly sleeping when Skye woke the next morning. She lay for a long time watching him, seeing all the new things. The stubble along his jaw, the long curve of his beautiful eyelashes, the faded freckles just discernible in a patch on his nose. The breadth of his back, the sound of his voice when he’d said her name the fourth or possibly fifth time they’d been together – she’d lost count. Every moment of their lovemaking rolled into the next, making her feel like a hedonist, addicted to this bed and to Nicholas naked within it.
The Paris Secret : A Novel (2020) Page 32