Beyond the Sunrise (27 page)

Her mouth was soft and warm. Inside it was hot and wet and inviting. She moaned.

She had wanted him to kiss her. For so long she had wanted it. Intimate as they had been for weeks, there had always been something missing. Some closeness. Some tenderness. And now suddenly it was all there—because he was kissing her deeply and because they were naked together and because they were in their bedchamber in their own house, a whole night ahead of them.

“Robert.” She stroked one hand through his hair as his mouth burned a path down over her chin and along her throat to find the pulse at its base. “Robert, this is more than physical, is it not? Tell me that it is more.”

And his face was above hers again, and he was gazing down into her eyes. There was depth in his, so that she knew her answer with almost frightening intensity. She had never wanted this of any man, had never expected it. She had wanted always to be in control. She could never be in control if she allowed him to look at her like this and say the words that accompanied the look—and if she responded to both.

And yet always, always in her dreams she had wanted nothing else but this. Oh, surely far back in dreams she had wanted this. This was all she could ever want of life. There was nothing else. Oh, there was nothing.

And he looked down at her and saw the vulnerability, heard the words she had spoken and the ones she had not yet spoken but perhaps would if he replied as he wished. And he was terrified. For if the
words were spoken, then they were not playing house at all. There would be no game involved, but only naked reality.

And he did not want reality. He wanted a night of make-believe. That was what he had agreed to. But, God . . . oh, God, she was beautiful. And not just the more-than-lovely body that he held naked in his arms.
She
was beautiful.

“Hush, Joana,” he said, his mouth against her ear. “Let's not talk. Let's make love. Sometimes the body can speak more eloquently than words.”

“Make love?” She turned her head and smiled slowly into his eyes. “We are going to make love, Robert? At last?”

“Yes.” His mouth was on hers again. “We will make love, Joana. On the bed, if you please. We are too different in height to be comfortable standing.”

“It is such a lovely bed,” she said, drawing away from him and leading him by the hand toward it. “It is large and soft. And look at all the warm covers we may pull over ourselves afterward.”

“Afterward?” he said. “Who said anything about afterward?”

She had never heard him tease so. She lay down on the bed and smiled up at him. She still held his hand. “I thought perhaps I might exhaust you before dawn,” she said.

“Now, that,” he said, lying down on his side next to her and propping himself on one elbow, “is a challenge pure and simple. We shall see who exhausts whom.”

Her breath was coming fast. She had never seen him like this, relaxed and teasing, a smile lurking in his eyes. Ah, she had never seen him like this. He was wonderful almost beyond bearing. She lifted a hand and set her palm against his cheek.

“Robert,” she said, “you have had much experience with women, have you not? No, don't answer. It was a rhetorical question. Use all that experience on me tonight. Will you? All of it? I want all. Please?”

“On one condition,” he said. “That you use all your expertise on me. We will see who has the most to teach, shall we?”

Oh, dear God, if he only knew! Joana smiled. “And who can learn more quickly,” she said. “Robert.” She was whispering. “Make love to me.”

“Joana.” He was smiling at her as his head lowered to hers. “Make love to me.”

God, he should never have agreed to her insane suggestion, he thought. For he knew even before his mouth touched hers and she turned on the bed to set her full naked length against him that dawn would come far, far too soon. A lifetime too soon. For pretense had only succeeded in opening the door wide to reality. And reality frightened and grieved him. He should have stayed out in the hills with her and taken her for his pleasure again beneath the inadequate warmth of their blankets. He should have kept telling himself and kept telling himself that it was purely for pleasure.

He touched her with his hands, and his hands could not do enough touching. And he touched her with his mouth, and his mouth and his tongue and his teeth could not have enough of her. And she was touching him, her hands and her mouth roaming over him as freely as his own over her. His arousal, his need to plunge his seed into her, was a painful throbbing. And yet he did not want to stop the touching. He did not want to be past the glorious anticipation—not yet.

His hand parted her legs, his thumb pushing at one, his fingers at the other. And he was touching her there, where she had not expected him to put his hand. And at first she was embarrassed to have him touch her there, and embarrassed at the knowledge that she was wet, embarrassed by the sound of wetness. But he sighed with satisfaction and she relaxed and knew that the sound was erotic and that the wetness was a part of her female response, an invitation to an easy penetration of her body. She set the soles of her feet together and let her knees drop almost to the bed.

And she stopped touching him in the wonder of what was happening to her own body. Fingers feathering over her, sliding up inside her, and then his thumb, so light that at first she did not feel it,
rubbing over one small spot, arousing an instant and almost unbearable ache that spread inward and upward into her throat.

“Robert.” She whispered his name. Her eyes were closed. “Robert.” Her hands pressed down hard against the bed.

He had not expected her to surrender so totally to the caressing of his hand. And yet he found her total absorption in what he did to her more exciting even than her hands on him had been a few moments before. He raised himself on one elbow again and watched her. He watched her mouth open and her head tip back.

“Ah,” she said, and she drew in breath audibly through her mouth.

He watched her whole body tense.

“Robert,” she said again, and there was agony in the sound.

And there was agony in him too as he stroked with his thumb and brought her to climax. She was Joana, he thought. She was not just any woman whom it was his pleasure to pleasure. He had always enjoyed bringing his women pleasure as well as himself. But it was not that with Joana. That was not it at all. She was Joana. He was not just pleasuring her. He was loving her.

She shouted out suddenly, agony and ecstasy in the sound. He set his hand flat against her during the minute or more while she shuddered into stillness.

The feelings of relaxation and well-being were almost not to be fought against. The urge to slide into a delicious sleep was almost overpowering. Except that his hand remained over her and she could feel that he was still up on his elbow looking down at her. And except that nothing had happened—nothing that she normally associated with making love. He had not been inside her.

She turned her head and opened her eyes. She looked up at him and smiled lazily. “You won that round,” she said. “How did that happen? How did you know to do that?” Her eyes strayed downward. He was still fully aroused, she could see.

He bent his head and kissed her warmly on the lips. “You are not
going to give in to defeat quite so easily, are you?” he said. “How disappointing.”

But she did not know what to do. She knew nothing except what she had learned with him. But even under present circumstances she was not about to resist a challenge. She smiled into his eyes and reached down a hand to touch him. Then she reached down the other hand and cupped him in her two hands, rolling them lightly about him, touching the tip lightly with her thumb. She heard him inhale.

“Come inside me,” she said. But there she could only allow him to complete his pleasure.

She turned onto her back, opened herself for him, lifted to him as he slid into her wetness. And she wished she knew more. She wished she had experience to match his own.

She acted from instinct. She nudged her legs beneath his so that he was forced to widen his own about her. And she held her legs together and moved, twisting her hips rhythmically against him, drawing him tight into her with inner muscles.

“God, Joana,” he said urgently, his arms coming up to grip her shoulders, “do you want me to come like a schoolboy?”

She kissed the underside of his chin. “How does a schoolboy come?” she said. “Show me.”

“Very fast,” he said with a gasp, and he moved in her with a frenzy of need.

God, he thought. God, the witch! And he had been beginning to imagine that perhaps she was not as experienced as he had thought after all.

He exploded in her with a cry and lost himself for the following few minutes, or hours—he could not be at all sure which. She was stroking one hand over his back and one through his hair when he came to himself. He was still embedded in her, her legs tight together about him.

“I must have squashed every bone in your body,” he said.

“Have you?” She turned her head to kiss his shoulder. “Then it feels wonderful to have every bone broken. Did we do equally well
on that round, Robert? And are we going to compete for the rest of the night? I would prefer simply to make love.”

He moved to her side and set his arms about her. She snuggled into him and sighed.

“Joana,” he said, “we ought not to have started this.”

But she lifted her head sharply and kissed him on the mouth. “There is no such thing as reality before dawn,” she said. “No such thing at all, Robert. You must not spoil this night. Oh, please, you must not.”

But it was spoiled nonetheless. For somewhere not far behind the pretense was the reality. A reality that was perhaps not painful for her, for reality for her was an artificial world where she piled up conquests for her own amusement. But for him reality was going to be painful indeed.

“Reality?” he said against her mouth. “What is that?”

“I don't know,” she said. “I have never heard of it. Robert?”

“Mm?” he said.

“Will you give me the sunrise tomorrow?” She lifted a hand and set it over his mouth. “Don't you remember at Obidos? What you said about ribbons and stars and the sunrise?”

Yes, he remembered. God, he remembered.

She should not have asked that question. She closed her eyes and buried her face against his chest. She should not have asked. Because the ribbons and stars and sunrise were what he would give his love, and his answer could bring her pain.
Oh, Robert,
she pleaded with him silently,
please give me the sunrise. Please give me the sunrise.

But she knew he could not. And she knew she had spoiled the night for herself.

“The sunrise comes after the dawn,” he said quietly, and his hand smoothed over her head.

“And so it does.” She lifted her head and smiled at him. “But what comes before dawn, Robert? Anything else? Or have I succeeded in exhausting you already?”

*   *   *

A
great deal came before dawn. They loved and dozed and loved and dozed. And each privately gloried in their love and each privately grieved at the imminence of dawn. And finally they lay together, passion spent, waiting for the moment when daylight would begin to gray the windows and there would be nothing to do but get up and dress themselves and resume their roles as jailer and prisoner.

She might have pleaded with him and tried to persuade him of the truth. It would not have been impossible, she believed. But she would not do it. Dawn had still not come and she was jealous of their one night of love. It was he who finally spoke.

“Joana,” he said, one arm beneath her head, his hand playing with her hair. “That first love of yours?”

“Robert?” She smiled and turned her head to him. “Is it not a coincidence that you have the same name?”

“Not really,” he said. “Joana, he did not boast to the servants about you. He did not call you a French bitch—not at that time, anyway.”

She looked at him and frowned slightly. “You think not?” she said. “I don't think so either.”

“He loved you totally,” he said, “as perhaps only a seventeen-year-old can. He did not lie when he said he loved you, though he did not want to say it aloud. And he did not lie when he said he would come for you on a white charger on your eighteenth birthday and ride off into the sunrise with you. I suppose he knew he would never do any such thing, but he spoke the heart's truth. That is what he passionately wished he could do.”

She was staring at him in the near-darkness, wide-eyed.

“If he is precious to your memory,” he said, “then know that the memory can be unsullied. If you have ever harbored doubts, however faint, you can discard them. He did not do those things.”

Still she said nothing.

“He was deeply hurt,” he said, “at being told that you would never seriously have given your love and your troth to a bastard. Even though he knew your words to be true, he was hurt. And hurt by his father's laughter that he had dared raise his eyes to the daughter of a count. He decided on that day that he would never again lay himself open to people's contempt. He decided to make his own way in life, starting at the bottom and ending there too if he could not raise himself up by his own efforts. He has not done badly. You can console yourself with that knowledge, Joana, if he is still of any importance to you. Your Robert is well-satisfied with what he has done with his life. There was no smallpox, you see. He did not die—at least, not yet.”

“He had his mother's name,” she said, “not his father's.” She was whispering as if she thought they might have been overheard. “What was it? What was his mother's name?”

“Blake,” he said. “Her name was Blake.” He closed his eyes.

The silence seemed to stretch forever.