by Wendy Burge
Christina shook her head, her smile bitter. “That is the last thing I should do.”
“No, it’s not. You will do what is right. Never doubt that.”
“God help us, Laure, but I hope you are right.”
“I believe I shall take this little lady with me.” Laure easily caught up the prancing puppy, knowing that in this case three would definitely be de trop. “Shall I send him in here or will you dress and come out?”
Taking a deep breath, Christina asked that he be brought in, and when the door closed on Laure, her blood surged through her, making her weak-kneed. The pounding of her heart was as thunder in her ears, and though she missed the sound of the door opening again, she felt his presence. Turning, she watched him walk into the room.
He was such a magnificently gorgeous man, and when his gaze captured hers with such wild hunger, she felt herself melting under the heat of it. The maroon velvet jacket molded his broad-shouldered torso with a precision that left no doubt as to the power that was leashed beneath the trappings of sophistication. And those white pantaloons hugging his hips and thighs were as close to indecency as society expected and left little to the imagination as to his physical endowments. Yet, despite the passion heating between them, his regal features were suffused with a look of deep sorrow. Her fingers twisted together as her body began to quiver with the premonition of her worst fear. She had to take several deep breaths before she could even speak.
“You’ve come to say goodbye, haven’t you?”
Varek stopped in the shadows. He knew he was being a coward as he hung back in the concealing dimness, but with his emotions stripped bare, he couldn’t face her yet. It took him a moment to catch his breath as he watched her. She was so damn beautiful. The loose wrapper she wore clung with a seductive softness to her curves, which were visible to his hungry gaze with the firelight behind her. Her sable hair tumbled about her, clinging to her shoulders and hips in lush tendrils that made his hands clench with the need to bury his fingers in its silken weight. He closed his eyes on the sting of tears. How was he going to give her up again? He was almost thankful that his time on earth was so limited, for he wouldn’t live long with his heart torn to shreds again.
“Yes. I have to go to Austenburg, but I promised Francis I would join the Austrian forces when the conflict starts. I know not when we will see each other again.” Which he doubted would be in this world.
Christina looked down at her clenched hands. “I cannot begin to understand why we were brought together only to be torn apart again. I refuse to believe that we are still being punished for a love that was as pure as ours. What we have is so special, Varek. So rare.” Looking up, she tried to search his face, which was impossible as he hid from her in the shadows. They stood staring at each other with a room separating them, and in the blink of an eye, it was suddenly crystal clear what she wanted. A sense of peace began to suffuse her body with a lightness that was liberating.
Her fingers relaxed and her body tingled in anticipation as she slowly smiled at him. “Would you do one last thing for me, Varek?”
“You know I would die for you, lark.” His voice was a hoarse whisper.
“Make love to me.”
He stared at her stunned, praying he hadn’t misheard her. “And in the morning? Will you hate me in morning? For I couldn’t bear it, lark.”
“Oh, Varek, how could you ever think that? I will spend every day of my life loving you. Give me what is left of this night to hold in my heart. These few stolen hours will not harm my son. They will not harm my husband. For this one night I want to be selfish and hold you in my arms again. I need it, Varek, as surely as I need to draw breath.”
Varek came into the light, and the look on his face suddenly opened the door her soul had been locked behind. When he stood beside her, he tenderly traced the faint bruise still marring her temple. “You are the air I breathe.”
Christina raised her arms and encircled his neck. She felt herself lifted into those powerful arms and held against his pounding heart. This was the sense of sheltered tranquility she had been missing all these years. When next her feet touched the floor she found them beside her bed, firelight flickering gently over the cool silk sheets. Looking into his eyes, she reached up and pushed his jacket off his shoulders. “I am starved for the sight of you.”
“I vow that I will not leave you hungry.” His promise feathered over the tender skin of her nape as he pushed the heavy tresses aside.
Impossible, Christina thought as she plucked at his cravat. Already her hunger was out of control and she only had this one night. “Take these off,” she demanded with breathless greed.
He stripped off his garments in mere seconds, and Christina ran her hands over his chest, luxuriating in the feel of his satin skin. Even after six years his tautly muscled chest was as familiar to her as her own body. She sighed with delight as her fingers burrowed into the golden pelt that lightly covered his chest. Closing her eyes, she let her fingers be her sight as they trembled in their rediscovery of the beauty of Varek. She felt the muscles of his flat stomach clench beneath her light exploration, and the scent of him made her lightheaded with desire. His breath exhaled on a hiss as her hands smoothed over his flanks and cupped his firm buttocks, chuckling when they flexed in her grasp. His thighs were the sculpted muscles of an avid horseman, and they quivered beneath her touch as she teasingly glided her fingertips up the sensitive skin of his thighs.
His moans were the most beautiful sounds she could ever remember hearing as she knelt down before him, her wandering fingers grazing the soft hair of his calves, then skimming over his slender feet.
Breathing deeply, she opened her eyes and saw that most stunning length of flesh that for years had held her a slave to unbridled pleasure. Reverently, her hands encompassed the burning heat of his erection. His body jolted, but he stood firm under her tortuous teasing. She felt his hands in her hair, his fingers gently massaging her scalp and then raising handfuls of her long tresses so he could bury his face in them.
With fascination she watched her fingers stroke along the purple veins of his heated flesh to the tip, which was engorged and wet. She touched her thumb to the pearly moisture and delicately smoothed it over the enflamed tip. His penis jerked and seemed to grow even more in her tender grip.
“How I have dreamed of this.” Laying her cheek along his hot flesh, her lips brushed the dense curls at the base as she reminisced in whispered awe. “How I have dreamed about taking you in my mouth and loving you. I have never forgotten your taste, the exquisite scent of you. I never will.”
“Lark,” Varek groaned as he fell to his knees in front of her. “Let me see you now,” he pleaded, his voice strangled with the force of his desire. It was killing him to go slow, when all he really wanted to do was pull her beneath him and thrust into her—and finally come home.
Her eyes and smile were so sensuous; he had to bite back a curse of impatience. “Lark, God, please, let me see you.”
She rose gracefully to her feet, and with a whisper of silk, the dressing gown pooled at her feet. Varek felt the air sucked out of his lungs as he stared up at her. God help me, but how will I ever let you go again? he thought in anguish as he worshiped her with his eyes.
Her slender curves were lusher than he remembered, yet the feel of her flawless skin and the scent of her were so very familiar. Overwhelmed at the sight of her, he traced a delicate circle around her tightened nipples, larger now, and her breasts—though just as firm as when she was a young girl—were fuller, filling his hands with a sensuous weight that had him trembling. His hands surrounded a waist still so tiny he could encompass it fully in his grasp, but her stomach was gently rounded, with the faint, silver tracery of the noble scars of childbirth. As he drew a finger along one he again cursed the fates that had not awarded these upon the births of their own children.
Christina had stiffened with this gentle exploration, and wanting to reassure her, he replaced his finger wi
th his tongue, worshiping every mark, holding her close by gripping her firm buttocks in his large hands. Her skin was still so petal soft that he couldn’t get enough of fondling those perfect globes.
Her head dropped back on a groan as she felt his breath feather over the hungry core of her, and she thought she would faint from the wonder of it. Then his fingers were stroking through the tight curls and his lips nuzzled into her damp heat. The fire that had been steadily burning in her now raged into an inferno that had her wild with ravenous need.
“Varek,” she gasped out, “please, lay with me. I need to feel all of you on all of me. Please…” Before she could finish he had stood and swept her up into his arms, and then she felt the coolness of the bed beneath her. When he covered her body with his, the world as it had existed just an hour before splintered and melted away. Her arms and legs snaked around him and she held on tightly—heaven was finally in her arms again and she wasn’t about to let him go.
“Love, I need to be in you,” Varek panted into her ear, his body held so stiffly over her that he was trembling, his chest heaving as if he couldn’t draw breath.
“Come home, my love,” she entreated, and then he was driving deeply into her, filling her with such perfection, the room exploded around her into a glittering mist of stars. As he pulled back to again drive himself deeper inside her, she thrust against him, reveling in the stunning ravishment of his heart pounding against her with the force of his wild thrusts. His groans echoed through her soul, and suddenly, with a scream of pure ecstasy, she began to spasm beneath him, clinging to him with a strength that defied the fates to take this moment from her.
When she shattered in his arms, Varek let loose a shout that rivaled her own, and they ascended to the heavens, wrapped tight around each as their bodies strained together, both fighting against the moment when reality would claim their starved senses, both reluctant to let the moment of passionate surrender go.
All too soon they were slowly floating back down to earth, their panting gasps the only sounds that fractured the dark silence, until Varek groaned into her neck, “I can’t believe I just did that!”
She grinned at hearing the utter embarrassment in his voice. “It was rather quick, wasn’t it?” she teased, her own voice laced with a heavy dose of mock disappointment.
Growling, he rolled them onto their sides and playfully swatted her delectably rounded buttocks. “Are you complaining, my lady?” Then his large hands were sensually massaging the silken globes that had always fascinated him so.
“Well, I am still hungry and you did promise…” Her eyes slid closed with a moan as his massaging hands became more aggressive with her tender flesh.
His lips stole the rest of her grievance into his mouth, and for the next hour he gave her nothing to complain about as he feasted on every inch of her delectable flesh.
He was, after all, a man of his word.
∞∞∞
In the blessed cover of night the lovers lived in a world of their own design. All ceased to exist but the two of them—both insatiable to fulfill years’ worth of heated dreams and fantasies.
When Christina began to stir from a lethargic daze of bliss, she moaned as Varek’s mouth deeply suckled her breast, then soothed the tender nipple with slow, luxurious strokes of his tongue. She raised a heavy hand and ran her fingers through his hair; the feel of that silken mane was a memory she had never forgotten.
She still couldn’t believe this night was happening, and she had never been happier. She couldn’t dredge up even a moment of guilt. After tonight the rest of her life would be devoted to Robert and her baby. But not tonight. Tonight was Varek’s alone.
And then came the stunning thought that perhaps tonight would give her something else to carry away with her other than delicious memories. Varek’s baby. Her heart began to pound as, with a will of its own, her hand stole to her stomach.
Varek felt his love’s increased heartbeat and looked up, a sensuous smile curling his bruised lips. “Still hungry, are we?”
“For you? Always.”
He stilled as he watched her, sensing some deeper emotion that she seemed hesitant to share with him. Pulling himself up next to her, he took her into his arms, and her head nestled with natural ease onto his chest. From long habit his fingers combed through the dark tresses that he loved so much. He was quiet as he spread them out over his chest and down his stomach.
“Years ago I lived in paradise, taking for granted my good fortune.” Beneath her cheek his chest rumbled with his softly spoken words. “Then it was stripped from me and I found myself walking in a hell I couldn’t find my way out of. Yet somehow I must have done something right, for here I am, basking in your light again. I do not know what is to come; now I don’t even care. All I know is that whatever happens I will die a happy man.”
Christina jerked upright and glared down at him, “Don’t even jest about something like that!”
He stared at her with an intensity that frightened her when he finally asked softly, “Do you know why I am resigned to the fact of losing you again?”
Swallowing, she shook her head. She didn’t like where this conversation was taking them one little bit. He sounded so…fatalistic.
“All our life together I have spoken; rather prosaically I am ashamed to say, of our souls being joined. But after having lost you and then this miracle of finding each other again, I finally understand what that really means, lark. In this life, or another, we will always find each other. God created us, not as two souls coming together to form one, but each of us a half of one soul. When we come together we are complete. When we come together, only then are we home. No matter what happens to us in the years we are forced to be apart, it is part of the greater design that we will find each other again. It is quite simple, really. It is just a matter of suffering through the times we must be apart. If we lose each other in this life, I will find you in the next, lark. It is predestined.”
Was it really that simple? Christina wondered sadly. She stared into Varek’s tranquil gaze and wished she had such faith, but just the idea of Varek not existing in this life with her, even if oceans separated them, was too wrenching for her. She had to know, at the very least, that they were watching the same sun rising and setting, that she breathed in the same air he exhaled.
And yet what he said made such sense to her, for when they had been parted she had felt as if half of her was gone. Even the birth of her beloved Eddie had never filled that void. Not until the moment she had seen Varek striding across a ballroom to claim her again had she been whole.
“I love you, lark. Nothing will ever change that. Not time, not distance— not even death.”
Death. There was that word again, and it struck such terror in her. Her heart slowed to a hard, heavy thud that made it difficult for her to breath. “What are you trying to tell me, Varek?”
He didn’t hesitate in his answer, “Only that I love you beyond life itself. Nothing more.”
She leaned closer and gazed deep into his shadowed eyes and could read nothing there. “Swear to me that you are keeping nothing from me,” she demanded with a harsh insistence that was foreign to her.
When the emotion in his eyes turned haunted, her stomach clenched with a painful lurch. Then his gaze shifted away and he gently brushed her hair back over her shoulders. “I swear, my love.”
“You’re lying,” she accused, angry and hurt at his lack of faith in her.
His hands closed about her waist and he lifted her above him. When her legs naturally settled about his flanks he thrust up into her with a force that had her gasping.
Angered even more by this tactic, she pushed away from him, holding herself suspended over him with stiff arms. “Why are you lying to me?”
His eyes were gleaming in the firelight. “Make love to me, lark,” he whispered, turning her own plea of hours ago back on her. “Please.”
Her arms relaxed and he pulled her closer, his lips closing hungrily about an
aching nipple before drawing it into the warm cavern of his mouth.
“Damn you, Varek!” she moaned, her head falling back as he turned her into a slave to their passions.
“When the dawn comes I will be damned well enough. Just love me now, lark. Just love me.”
And she loved him with a wildness that made them hunger for each other all the more.
∞∞∞
Even as much as they cursed the coming of the dawn, not even their great love could hold it at bay. They lay in bed, wrapped in each other’s arms, and watched with heavy hearts the inevitable beginning of a new day. With every minute that lightened their haven she was tempted to beg him to take her with him—but she knew she wouldn’t.
He was tempted to convince her to leave with him—but he knew he couldn’t.
Reality had a way of tarnishing even the most precious dreams. For what could he offer her but the life of a notorious woman, ostracized by her family in England and separated from her beloved son? Truth be told, even if he wasn’t marked for death, he would never ask of her such a sacrifice. He knew that once more he had to love her enough to let her go.
But he also knew that someday, in some other life, they would be together again.
He had to believe that or go mad.
Sensing her sadness, he rolled over and nuzzled her face with his scratchy cheek. “Well,” he teased as he nibbled her ear, “have I satisfied you?”
She blinked her tears away. She would not ruin these last minutes with her weakness. She would be strong for him if it killed her. Which it probably will, she thought dismally. “A thousand nights like this could never be enough to satisfy me.”
“We will be together again, lark. Please believe that as strongly as you love me. I will find you again. If not in this lifetime, then in the next.” He kissed her softly, a tender brush of lips that made the tears rush to her eyes. “Promise you will wait for me.”
She flung her arms around his neck and clung to him with a ferocity that disturbed him. “I will wait for you, my only love. For eternity and beyond.”